Overhead, seagulls squabbled, and clouds scudded across the sky. She missed her view from the townhouse on the Crescent.
You should go home.
The thought came to her complete, a message dropped into her mind as if it were a communication from beyond. Why not? In the weeks since they returned from school she had resolutely stayed away from the Mederos mansion on the Crescent. She hadn’t wanted to go near it or be reminded of it. Now she felt a powerful need, a pull stronger than homesickness. She needed to go back to the beginning.
Surely the house where she had first used her dangerous powers would be the place where she could learn how to use them again.
There was just the small matter of who owned the house now.
It had been a constant question since she and Yvienne had come home. She had wanted to ask, but it never seemed the right time. Her parents knew, no doubt, to whom the Guild sold the house. It must burn horribly to know which of their old friends or rivals now lived in their home and who refused to bow to them. She couldn’t ask them; she mustn’t ask them; but she had to know for herself. So, she had pretended it didn’t matter until now – at this moment, it did.
Tesara took one more glance back at the small, rickety, blue house, and made her decision. She let herself out the gate and began the long walk up to the Crescent.
Even with the wind at her back it was a stiff hike up the cobbled streets. Her legs burned and her breath came short. The street was filled with traffic, the horse-drawn coaches with the brake set on the downhill to prevent the coaches from oversetting, the men carrying the closed palanquins bearing rich merchants or their families, or the carters and deliverymen who provisioned the great houses day and night.
She kept her eyes straight ahead, but she could tell that the occupants of the carriages and the litters were carefully pulling aside the curtains to get a better look at the younger Mederos girl striding about wild in the street. She could imagine the tittering behind pale white hands as the gossip spread. With a sense of defiance she kept up her fast walk, head up and eyes forward. The exercise soon cast all thoughts of shame from her, and the red that spread in her cheeks was because of the wind and the exercise. The cold air was even brisker this high up overlooking the harbor.
The houses marched up along the road, their ornate facades brooding down and casting her in shadow. Each house was different, some with columns, others with cathedral-like carvings, and still others with black wrought-iron window grates and brass lamps, each mansion a symbol of the family whose fortunes raised it.
And there it was. House Mederos. She stopped in front of the huge gate with its iron spear points thrusting at the sky. The gate was closed, the wrought-iron “M” in the center mocking her with its inaccessibility. The short circular drive had been graveled with a reddish stone – expensive, she thought. It must have come from the granite quarried in Marble Falls. There were gold brocade drapes in the dining room windows. Thin smoke came out two chimneys; Alinesse’s old study on the western side of the house, and the kitchen.
Walking toward the servants’ entrance, she made her way around the huge smooth stone and mortar wall. At the servants’ gate she hesitated, but she knew she couldn’t loiter. She would just ask the housekeeper who owned the house now. And if they asked her business, she would say she had been a governess at House Mederos once and wondered what happened to the family. Goodness knew there had been enough governesses; who could keep track? And who knew what she might find out, so long as they never knew she was Tesara Mederos.
Steeling her spine, she took a breath, smoothed back her untidy, wind-blown hair and tried to tuck it beneath her bonnet, and rang the bell at the kitchen door. There was a pause, and then marching feet came down the hall and the door opened.
Chapter Fourteen
The housekeeper took one look at Tesara standing in the servants’ doorway and snapped, “Well, it’s about time you’ve come. Don’t think that just because you don’t live in you can be as late as you please. I swear to Saint Frey himself, the girls nowadays! Thinking themselves too good to work, that’s what it is. Cook, did you ever?”
“I never,” called an agreeable, if disembodied, voice from the kitchen.
“And do you think you will be wearing those things?” she said, nodding at the gloves Tesara wore to hide her hands. Tesara gave a start. “Take them off at once. Just what do you think you are, putting on airs? Now don’t just stand there, girl.”
The housekeeper was a big woman. She towered over Tesara and her enormous bosom filled out her pinstriped lavender dress with the white apron straining to keep all contained. She advanced dangerously on Tesara, who struggled to find something to say to stop the torrent of speech, all the while hastily stripping off the offending gloves.
“Good glory,” the woman cried out when she saw the damage. “Can you even work, girl?”
“I–” Tesara began.
“Poll!” the woman yelled, with no regard for Tesara’s attempted response.
“Coming, Mrs Aristet,” a breathless voice called back, followed by a young woman carrying an enormous kettle, bending sideways to
