“The kayan all died out, Aunt. We can’t wait for them to show up.” Rafe spread a hand out to indicate Oakhaven. “Look at what we
have
accomplished without them. We use steam to drive our trains and run our factories. Ironheart builds machines without mage-worked quartz. With or without the kayan, we need to go looking for the Tower and find it before Blackstone does. Do you know where the rest of the Keys are?”
“Your uncle has the three, Shimmer has the one that my ancestor sold—scorch the man!—and one is rumored to be in Ironheart, though it’s never been confirmed. The sixth has been lost for years and no amount of searching has ever turned up a trace of it. Even if a kayan should be born to us after all these centuries, five Keys would not help him discover Renat’s secrets. All six Keys are needed.” Bitterness lay thick in Amanthea’s voice.
In answer, Rafe pulled out the battered artifact and held it out to her in the palm of his hand. It lay there, warm and friendly, like a great big smile on the face of a wrinkled old man.
Amanthea gasped. “Where did you…?” Her hand fluttered out to it, then checked.
“I found it on a train in Blackstone.”
“You just
found
it?” Amanthea gave him a skeptical look.
Rafe hesitated. “Well, it… buzzed in my head. Like the machines do. I thought it would bring the stazi down on us… me. So, I found it, stopped it from buzzing, and brought it home.”
Understanding washed over Amanthea’s face, along with something else that looked like regret. “Of course.”
“Take it, Aunt. It’s a poor substitute for your family’s heritage, but maybe in some small way it can ease your pain.”
“Ah, Rafe. You are good-hearted.” Amanthea gently closed his fingers over the Key. “You keep it. It called to you. Perhaps like the Keys in your uncle’s study did too, hmm?” She gave him a shrewd look, but Rafe had no answer for her. Somehow, the onset of his quartz sickness had provoked the Keys. Or was it the other way around? “Promise me you won’t tell your uncle about this Key.”
“I…” He stopped, feeling traitorous.
“Promise me, Rafe.” She was fierce and pleading, and he owed her for the way the Grenfelds had appropriated the remnants of the Ferhani legacy.
“I promise.” He slipped the device into his pocket.
Amanthea relaxed, though her gaze followed his hand with yearning. She shook her head, smiled at Rafe. “You needn’t walk me home, Rafe. Go get some rest.”
“No, ma’am. I have to see Bryony, and do my penance for not going to her immediately upon arrival. If her employer’s housekeeper will admit me, that is!”
A frown appeared between Amanthea’s brows. “Oh, my dear. Bryony has left Madam Brajini’s employment.”
“Where is she now?”
Amanthea spread out her hands. “I believe she’s living on Belle’s Row.”
Home of theater types, mistresses, and other undesirables. Poor Bryony. “I’ll find her,” said Rafe. “I have news for her. Good news.” His spirits lightened at the thought of her reaction. He didn’t blame Bryony for leaving the irascible Goldmoon refugee’s irksome company and restricted household, but could hardly say so to his aunt, who had secured Bryony the position in the first place.
“You are a good brother to her, Rafe.” Amanthea squeezed his arm as they left the fountains and the park behind.
“I took her place, Aunt,” Rafe said quietly. “I don’t know if I can ever make that up to her.”
“It’s your father’s fault, not your own,” began Amanthea, but it was an old argument. Rafe didn’t reply as they walked into a residential area.
Here, the houses were smaller and squatter, made of red brick instead of stone, with an air of prim middle-class respectability. Rafe frowned when they reached the Public Square, which had once been a rectangle of springy grass for children to play on. A small garden to the side had once held plants grown, not for food, medicine or fiber, but only because they pleased the senses. All of those had been dug up and plowed under. Naked earth reared up in small hillocks, like a dirty sea.
“What happened here?” he asked.
“It’s being turned into a food garden, Rafe. It’s happening all over the city.”
Food. It was always about food. Even Oakhaven, with its tradition of public squares for games and picnics, bowed before necessity. “I hadn’t realized things had gotten this bad.”
“There was a blight in the Honeymead agri-caves about a month ago, and a rock fall at Blueverge. Your brother refuses to overwork his terraces, and this is the result.” Amanthea indicated the park-turned-garden.
“He’s right not to,” said Rafe curtly. His brother might not be the brightest lamp in the square, but he was a farmer to the very bone. “The caverns are fragile places. Soil depletion and disease are a real threat.”
How can Uncle not see how much we need the Tors Lumena?
“Oh.” Amanthea flushed, easily hurt as always.
Rafe rushed to make amends. “Save a dance for me at the Brenwoods’ tonight, won’t you, Aunt?”
“Everyone will be so pleased to see you there, Rafe!”
“
I’ll
be pleased to see Lady Brenwood’s buffet table.” Rafe patted his stomach. “How many different kinds of seaweed will she serve this time, d’you think?”
“Oh, Rafe,” sighed Amanthea.
R
AFE FOUND
B
RYONY’S NEW
lodgings by walking down Belle’s Row until a passing laundry maid gave him the information in exchange for a smile and a copper coin. Bryony was not at home, so Rafe stuck a hastily-scribbled note in the door and hurried home. It was a smidge after moonset when he scrambled into his formal clothes (fashionable a year ago) and combed his hair (too short to tie back after his Blackstone mission), and set off for the Brenwoods’.
The Brenwood mansion was up among the hills surrounding the Oakhaven valley, in the new part of the city, and it took him half a stage to get to it. He caught two trolleys out to the base of the hills. A broad multi-colored brick avenue rose up from the crowded inner city and wound itself, ribbon-like, up the hill. Rafe, already late, took the stairs cut into the slope instead. Buildings marched step in step beside him. Through the bright-jewel glass of their windows, he caught sight of a butler cleaning glass goblets in a pantry, a maid folding laundry, the steam and confusion and red faces of a busy kitchen.
Rafe climbed until he reached a silver path arrowing to the left. It turned into a series of shallow steps, opened onto a snowy expanse of veranda that became a portico, its roof help up by slender pillars. Servants swathed in heavy coats held branches of twinkling silver lights. Rafe half-expected them to chime as he walked past and into the warm yellow glow within.
A footman met him in the vast foyer and silently took his heavy outer coat, hat, muffler and gloves. Lord and Lady Brenwood were no longer at the door, but entertaining their guests inside. A pair of stragglers in the foyer stared at him. Rafe didn’t recognize them, but he heard their whispers as he passed. “Say isn’t that Grenfeld? Rafe Grenfeld?”
“I thought the Stonies had executed him. Did he escape?”
Rafe grimaced. Just what he didn’t want to have happen—to be turned into a hero.
Heroes didn’t make good field agents. If he didn’t dampen his popularity, he’d be stuck in a desk job forever.
The Brenwoods’ ball room, withdrawing rooms, parlors, and supper rooms were all on an upper floor, reached by a lazily magnificent staircase. Strains of music, of flute and harp and violin, wafted to Rafe’s ears and he followed the sounds to an open doorway, painted double doors folded back like the wings of exotic birds in the Zooarium.
Rafe paused just inside the doorway, suddenly lightheaded. The yellow glare from the great chandeliers above, the wink of mirror and glass and jewel, the waterfall rush of a hundred voices, the closeness and heat and smell of sweat and stale perfume, all washed over him in a great golden noise. He shut his eyes, remembering the reek of rotted cabbage and potatoes, the warm dark of underground tunnels. He wanted to run, wanted to be out breathing in shards of cold thin air. He turned.
“Why, Rafe! Rafe Grenfeld!” Lady Brenwood’s strident tones cut through the oceanic murmur of voices. His hostess bore down upon him like a royal barge, swathed in a costume of rose tints that bled into each other. Pink drops of quartz swayed from her headdress.
“Ma’am.” Rafe kissed the matron’s imperiously outstretched hand. “I hope you’ll forgive me for showing up at your party, even after having the most abominable manners to not reply to your kind invitation. I was detained out of the city, you see.”
“Silly boy.” Lady Brenwood tapped his shoulder with her fan. Her green eyes glittered in triumph in her bronzed face. She was known to tan herself under quartz lights every day, at great expense to her husband. “As if you need to stand on ceremony with me, who has known you since you were knee high.” Her Ladyship was in good humor and Rafe knew why. Rafe Grenfeld, believed to have been executed by the evil Blackstonians, had made his first public appearance since his return at
her
party.
“Oh come now, ma’am,” he protested. “Surely you don’t expect me to swallow such large bait. I know you can’t be more than five-and-twenty.”
Lady Brenwood tossed back her head and laughed, well-pleased, but her painted nails were still hooked into the sleeve of Rafe’s jacket and the gleam in her eyes was avid. “So,” she said, lowering her voice to a dramatic whisper, “how
terrible
was it?”
“Awful!” said Rafe cheerfully. “The only hot water was to be had before Seed, the food was mush, and we were forced to endure an entire stage of patriotic songs. And that was only on the first day we were there!”
A manservant whispered in Lady Brenwood’s ear. She frowned, but her duties as hostess took precedence. “I must leave you Rafe, but here is Lady Petronella Verice. She’d like to talk to you about her beloved home.” Her smile held a touch of malice as she flounced off, leaving Rafe to be confronted by a tiny old woman with an enormous wig of curls, a splendid hat with a ship and a clock on it, and hooped skirts wide enough to hide an army or two. “How is my fair city, my beloved Goldmoon, given over to savages for too long? No, do not tell me, all at once… only a little at a time. I cannot bear to know too much, too soon.” Lady Petronella closed her eyes and fanned herself with languid sweeps of her delicate wrist.
“I would not wish to distress you at all, ma’am. Perhaps, a glass of sherry…?”
The steely blue eyes snapped open and a claw-like hand grasped his wrist. “Tell me, does the theater still stand? And the Great Park? The statues in Queen’s Square—are they entirely defaced? The gardens? Tell me, young man!” Her bosom heaved as her voice grew higher and higher.
“You are overwrought, ma’am.” Rafe steered her to a chair and sat her down. “I will fetch something for you to drink.” More Goldmoon refugees made their way from all parts of the ballroom, gathering together as if by some bizarre pack instinct. He looked hopefully for Amanthea, but she wasn’t in the ballroom. Instead, Rafe found a manservant, grabbed a glass of lemonade from his tray and returned to find Lady Petronella being petted and soothed by other Goldmoon ladies. One of them half-turned to him with a disapproving look. Rafe put the glass into her hand. “For the lady, with all solicitude.” He retreated smoothly and hastily.
As he disappeared into the crush, he thought he heard a high thin voice wail, “Young man, wait!” but he had just caught sight of Bryony. “Excuse me… my sister… beg your pardon,” he said aloud as he tapped a gentleman on the shoulder here, slid past a lady, smiled at a pair of gossiping girls.
The crowd fell away like a cape sliding off his shoulders and he could see and breathe without difficulty again. Bryony stood in a plant-shaded alcove not ten paces away, talking quietly with a man. Her forehead was marked by slight furrows as she listened. Rafe smiled. When Bryony listened to someone it was with her full attention, as if they were the most important thing in the world.
She had not seen him yet. The usual lurking humor in her dark blue eyes had been banished by a dark wariness. Looking at her eyes, at her smooth dark brown hair pulled into simple chignon, the elegant straightness of her posture, Rafe was reminded of Isabella.
Except Bryony was more lovely, more expressive, thought Rafe loyally. Her glance swept over him, sharpened and locked. Her nostrils flared as she inhaled.
“Hello, Bryony.” Rafe couldn’t stop grinning, which rather spoiled the nonchalant air he was aiming for.
“Rafe!” A mixture of emotions flitted across Bryony’s face before finally settling on exasperation. Her hands fluttered as if she couldn’t figure out whether to hug him or admonish him. She stepped away from her conversational partner. “When did you get back?
How
did you get back? Why didn’t you tell me, you wretch?”
“Ah, the prodigal brother returns.” The man Bryony had been talking to turned, and Rafe recognized him. Blisbain, Blackstone’s ambassador to Oakhaven
Blisbain’s expression was both quizzical and pleasant. “Society has mourned the loss of your conversation, females have sighed over the absence of such a congenial dancing partner. Yet here you are, and our spirits are uplifted.” He bestowed an urbane smile upon Rafe, as if his government hadn’t arrested the Oakhaven embassy and hunted Rafe through streets and tunnels.
Rafe shrugged with good humor. “I’m delighted to have lifted your spirits at least, Ambassador Blisbain. You overestimate my popularity, though. Do convey my compliments to your government for an exciting stay.”
“Certainly.” Unruffled, Blisbain smoothed his jacket, plain, yet made of such fine cloth and so well cut that a Blackstone drone family could’ve lived a month on the price of it. “I will leave you to your reunion with your sister. I must be quite unwelcome.”
“You are indeed,” said Rafe under his breath as the ambassador departed. Then, “Ow,” as Bryony tapped him unnecessarily hard with her fan. “Why were you talking to that muck-crawler?”
“Trying to find out any news of you,” she shot back. “If you’d had the decency to send me a message that you were back, I would’ve been spared his odious company. The Ministry would tell me nothing!” She pressed her lips together. “Rafe, I’ve been so worried.”