My final manifesto, she thought, and she hoped never to set type again as long as she lived. Her back ached, her shoulders ached, her head ached, even her jaw throbbed because she had been clenching her teeth with effort. She was desperately hungry, and she was covered in ink and dust. She fancied she could taste all of that and the paper, too.
She locked up the door to the cottage, and pocketed the key, and then stopped, looking at it for a long time. This could very well be the last time she came here.
All for a good cause, she thought – their cause. House Mederos would come back from its shame and its poverty. She had her revenge. They could go home.
A strange feeling overcame her. The past weeks had been the most free she had ever been. She hadn’t been a merchant’s daughter, civilized and mannerly, whose life was laid out before her in an endless row of days, with all the milestones occurring at regular intervals: Taking on management at the House, courting and marrying a suitable young man, having two perfect children, and becoming her mother.
Instead, she had been a rabble-rousing newspaper columnist, a Gentleman Bandit, and the savior of her family.
She was exchanging freedom for a gilded cage.
“Yvienne!” Tesara called. “Come along.”
She came back to herself. “Right. We need to hurry, get these to the newsies. Mathilde?” She wondered where the girl would go, now that she could no longer be their housemaid. Alinesse and Brevart would never get over this one, Yvienne thought.
Mathilde smacked the dirt off her long coat, and stretched to get the kinks out of her back.
“I thought my brother was dead, and I thought you and your family had killed him,” she said. Her eyes were dry, as if she had cried all the tears she had. “I saw you in my power, and I liked that. Your mother and father, so dependent on me…” She shook her head. “I was ashamed how much I liked it.” She drew a breath. “But I never meant to cause Treacher’s death. I thought I was only getting the dirt the Guild wanted on you.” Her mouth twisted. “Have you named me in that broadsheet too?”
“I should have,” Yvienne said, matter-of-factly. “But I didn’t. You didn’t know. You’ll go now, though, and if I were you, I wouldn’t be coming back. The Guild will look unfavorably on co-conspirators, especially those who can attest to what’s in this broadsheet.”
Mathilde nodded. “I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t matter to you, nor should it, but I am very sorry, and I’ll never forget what I’ve done. And now you’ve given me back my brother. If there’s a chance to find him I have to take it.”
“Good luck,” Yvienne said. “I do hope you find him. I think, had we met under different circumstances, we might have been friends.” Not as merchant daughter and housemaid, perhaps, but under some other condition in which they were equals and allies, not enemies.
“Thank you,” Mathilde said. “I like to think that too. I’m sure it will be a long time before we see each other again, but if you like, I’ll write to you and let you know what becomes of my journey.”
“I’d like that,” Yvienne said. Mathilde walked off, a tall brisk angular woman in a duster and a traveling hat, on her way to adventures unknown. Yvienne felt a pang of jealousy. Then she hoisted up her stack of broadsheets, and Tesara followed suit. “Let’s go make some news.”
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Three months later…
The sun came up on a fine day in Port Saint Frey. The sky glowed a crisp deep blue, and the whitecaps on the harbor were a blinding white. Tesara breathed deep in the salty air, and then closed the window and slid off the window seat. She had always loved this view from her old bedroom and she was glad to have it back. She picked up her summer straw hat and deftly, even with crippled fingers, tied the gay ribbon just under her chin and let the ends fly freely down the back of the washed silk green walking dress. It would have been lovely to have gone out walking with Jone and Mirandine, equals at last, but she had heard nothing from them since the newspapers had been full of the Great Fraud, as it was being called. It stung, but she had to accept that she had been nothing but a novelty to them. The cut contributed to the pall that overlay their triumphant return. Revenge was sweet, but they had experienced too many losses and revelations to ever go back to the way things were. The shadow would always be there, no matter how many pretty dresses she wore or bright smiles she bestowed.
She drew on her gloves, awakening a spark beneath the fine kid leather. No longer could gloves quiet her power. She was keenly aware that the last expulsion of energy against Trune had freed something within her, and now the magic danced just beneath the surface. Trune was no fool. He saw her power and knew it for what it was – a dangerous, valuable, potent weapon. If she didn’t learn how to control it, she would fall into another enemy’s hands, and another, and another. It was overwhelming to think of it, because she didn’t know where to begin.
And learning that Alinesse had known and had tried over the course of her childhood to repress her talents was a sobering and painful realization. That was why Alinesse had been sanguine about Tesara’s crippled hand. Job done, she could almost imagine her mother thinking. Tesara felt even worse for Uncle Samwell, imagining the confused little boy who grew up to become a blustering man-child. No wonder we were both friends and enemies,
