He leans back, looking proud. “Yes, he is very popular among the people, which I do hope—”
A deep guttural sound rises from the Margrave’s gullet and sets him hacking, his cheeks burning scarlet as he spits into a golden pot at his feet. I watch to see if anyone will try to help, but his attendants just look on nervously, weighing whether to step in or let him continue in misery. When the horrible sound of his spitting settles and he accepts an offered sip of tea—or something stronger, I really couldn’t say—he snorts loudly and continues, pressing a handkerchief to his face.
“I do hope he finishes the glockenspiel in time for my fall proclamation. Much depends on it. You and all those makers will be especially pleased to hear of my succession plan. Thanks to my two fine sons, Tavia’s margraviate will continue to thrive long after I’m gone.”
Which, from the sound of it, will be soon. I barely dare to wonder whether he means to name Emmitt as his heir over the younger von Eidle—or somehow in tandem with Laszlo? Could Emmitt’s fortunes really be about to change, and all of ours along with it?
Another spitting spell attacks the Margrave, and once again the pressure of the steward’s hand on my shoulder spins me around. I am shoved up the long aisle of the stateroom. I have delivered the saboteur and can return to my father with a little money and some news to share.
After my audience with the von Eidles, I carry myself home, my purse filled with the promised francs and my mind with the news that the Margrave may indeed be choosing to let Emmitt lead in his stead. I take some comfort in knowing I have restocked our coffers from my work on the saboteur, if only for a little while.
I return to find my father worsening by the minute.
“Cosima? Cosima? Where are you?” A deep rattle seizes my father’s chest at the end of his frantic, wheezing pleas for his wife, the bride who passed away before I ever came to be. A woman small and dark-haired like me, with a great mind for figures, who kept all his books and accounts straight and secure.
I forced myself to send Gita home now that my great work with the saboteur is complete, and have been sitting for hours in a chair at my father’s bedside, knees drawn up to my chest. As if I could somehow shield myself from what he has become. From what is happening to us.
I tried to spoon-feed him, but no amount of broth seems to settle him or restore his peace. Teas, herbal remedies, poultices for his fever—we’ve tried the tried and true, but nothing is proving effective against the heat that burns in his limbs and pours like tears from his temples.
I look at his large, capable hands, whose nimble fingers absentmindedly knead at his sheets, worrying the seams. I can’t help but think of what death means. In the wood, death isn’t an ending, not really. It’s merely a season. If one tree falls, its husk becomes shelter. Its bark becomes food. Its ribs become a ladder for new seeds to climb to reach the sun.
I have faced death before. With the bite of the axe, my first life was cut off from one season and thrust into another. Without ever knowing to hope for it, I was reborn. Will it be so for Gephardt Leiter? Or will he just vanish from the world, a rare breed of creature made extinct at his last breath?
He hasn’t seen me, hasn’t known me, in days. I feel something inside myself start to slip away with him and begin to fade. Who am I, without this man who loved and made me?
The moon is waning tonight, the rounded toe of a pearled slipper peeping beneath dark and clouded skirts. Its light is faint, and yet my father has demanded in these last days that the window shutters be kept open, always open, to let the moonlight in.
I know why he hungers after the moon, though the Sorens do not. The moon, in its constant state of waxing or waning, comforts him. He still remembers the magic. He understands its possibilities.
I must have nodded off in my chair, my forehead pressed to my knees, because I am startled awake by his voice. I brush my bangs away from where they stick to my eyes.
“Pirouette,” he whispers. “Poppet.”
My heart lurches to hear my name on his lips. I look to his eyes, which still burn at the edges but are fixed solidly on my own. He sees me. The old maple’s branches scratch against the wall, joining me in mourning. “Listen,” it says. “Listen.”
“Papa?”
He taps his fingers on the coverlet, indicating that I should come closer so he will not strain his voice. I slip to his side, and without thinking, curl up next to him, tucked into his chest with his beard brushing my forehead, my hand over his heart. When I was smaller and a night terror plagued me, I would sneak into his room and settle like this, comforted by the solid rhythm of his dependable heartbeat beneath my cheek.
“Time is fading for me, Piro.”
I nod against his chest, which sounds hollow; the heartbeat is still hammering, but faintly.
“There is something you must know, something more to our blue moon story.”
He licks his cracked lips and flutters his fingers lightly against my arm. I sense he is trying to comfort me, to stave off the harshness of what will come next.
“The power of the spell, it has … a price.”
I wait, my breath trapped in my lungs, a gust of air drawn into a blacksmith’s bellows.
“You must know … you are worth any price, to me.”
I cannot breathe. My tears spill freely. He’s quiet a moment, garnering strength, and my pulse pounds
