Midnight strikes, p.8
Midnight Strikes, page 8
But it makes you wonder what it took to get there.
“You don’t like the Cardonas, do you?”
If Gaspard feels at all discomfited about walking the halls of the palace that saw the last gasp of the Landaulan sultanate against Carlos Cardona, the greatest of the dynasty’s conquerors, he makes no sign of it now. He only says, “They’re not there to be liked. They’re there to rule.”
“I’m not trying to pry. I just want to know.”
“What’s there to know?” he echoes. “For four hundred years, they’ve been telling us who they are and how we should see them. And tonight we’re to renew our fealty based on the past four hundred years, not the present. Because without being able to rely on magic to prop up his rule, the only thing Rey Rodrigo has actually managed to do is create a police state. The taxes, the public gathering restrictions, all of that—you tell me what else this could be about.”
Taken aback by his vehemence, I try to measure my words. “You mean if he were a magician…he wouldn’t be doing all these things?”
“I didn’t say that. All I mean is, what use is magic when you have power?” Gaspard’s eyes flick to mine and stay there for what feels like a long while before he snaps back to himself. “People aren’t happy about these laws, Anaïs. Up in Lutesse, anyone speaking ill about the crown in public is practically guaranteed a cozy jail cell. Rodrigo is cracking down on any room the people had left to engage with the government or with each other. It’s goddamn disturbing.”
So this is the experience that transformed the promising young discontented into radicals. Spending the last five years in the second-largest and second-most-important city in the kingdom seems to have exposed Gaspard to more than the gentlemanly academic pursuits his parents had in mind. He’s seen a whole world beyond the wide-open pastures of Proensa. I can’t even imagine what that must be like.
His righteousness evokes another wisp of a thought in the back of my head. “You’re not opposed to there being a throne in the first place…are you?”
For the third time tonight, I’ve surprised him. From his slack-jawed expression, this might be the one that takes the cake. “Are you okay, Anaïs? You’ve been acting strange all night. And not in the ever-amusing, make-forts-out-of-potting-soil-in-my-mother’s-morning-room sort of strange, which, admittedly, I wouldn’t mind doing here. What’s going on?”
It’s one thing to be dismissed by your overbearing parents, and another to be ignored by strangers. I don’t want the experience to be replicated by the only friend I have in a seven-hundred-mile radius. How I wish I could explain it to him and get him to help me. But for some reason, all I can think to say that can even begin to justify my behavior is, “Leo’s a magician.”
Gaspard’s mouth falls open. For a moment I think it’s because I called him Leo, as if I had a right to use his nickname. Then: “Infante Leopoldo? A magician?”
“It’s true. I lost my locket and he helped me find it. With magic. I saw him do it. You weren’t there.” The falsehood leaves an ashen taste on my tongue.
“Huh.” He forces his mouth shut. “Then maybe Rodrigo does have some cards up his sleeve after all.”
I’m not sure why they’re up his sleeve, though, and not in his hand. The king should be trumpeting the fact that not one but two of his children are carrying on their family’s legacy. Not that I know very much about the other magical Cardona. Infanta Clara has pursued magic as her signature talent where other highborn girls might pursue watercolors or opera—as an advantage to be pressed among courtly rivals or as a talking point to be batted about in discussions of one’s marriageable qualities. Certainly her powers were not meant for politicking or war, the way her illustrious ancestors’ magical talents were infamously applied.
My mother has occasionally tried to use Clara as an example of how I might turn my otherwise unseemly magics into an asset in the hunt for a husband; if Paloma was right when she said that the princess was already betrothed, apparently it worked for her.
But I’m not the daughter of a king, and carrying the blessing does not mean having powers like an Ivarean. It means being burdened with a weak magic and dubious bloodline that has afforded my people little more than scars where we must split our skin to accomplish the smallest of tasks. It might as well not exist.
“I’m sorry about all this,” I finally tell Gaspard. “I think this place is driving me mad.”
He grimaces, as though all the feelings he’s tried to keep to himself, with varying degrees of success, will break free if his lips quirk even a hair upward. “You’re not the only one.”
But that’s the tragedy of my incredibly specific, particularly horrible situation. I am the only one.
Absentmindedly, I drift forward and hitch up my skirts to climb the narrow, winding stairs. The stone seems to shudder, as if shocked to be used. The dirt of centuries stripes my gown and smears my gloves when I drag my hand along the railing. I take a few steps and stop in front of the first of the windows. The view is less than breathtaking, the walls of the Alcázar complex dappled in palm-tree shadows, but it is a view. Of something other than a ballroom destined to cave in. Of gardens about to go up in flames.
“Maybe we should go back,” Gaspard calls from the ground.
I can’t go back.
“There’s something you should know. Something I’ve been trying to say.” I start back down the stairs, so I don’t have to meet his gaze quite yet. “Promise you won’t laugh.”
He frowns. “If you promise to tell the truth.”
It’s easier to swear oaths than to follow through with them.
Luckily, my lady, I’m no oath breaker.
No. Stop it, Anaïs, you foolish, useless thing.
“The truth is, I’ve been stuck in this…” I pause on the second-to-last step. “I don’t know what to call it, but it’s as though time is loo—”
Footsteps.
Those are definitely footsteps. Coming from above—higher up in the ruined tower.
I freeze mid-step.
I hear pacing from above. Whoever’s there, they’re not descending.
Not yet.
I’ve spent all night trying to get close enough to the attackers to see who they are and how they pull off their plan. But my gut tells me that I don’t want to be this close.
If I die before midnight, will I still wake up in Marenca this afternoon?
We stare at each other, each startled by the new arrivals. Ball crashers? he mouths.
I suppose that’s right, in its way. Any other explanation would be too little, too late, at this point. Let’s go. Quickly.
He nods and puts a cautious foot on the bottommost step to pick me up. He spins slowly around and sets me down in silence, as easily as if my gown weighs nothing at all. With one last curious look at me, he leads us outside.
We don’t speak for several long minutes. By the time Gaspard tugs me down a tributary hallway, still half a palace away from the ballroom, a cold sweat has broken out down my back.
“What the hell? Who was that?” He glances back at the glowing maw of the corridor perpendicular to us. I can’t hear anything but the pounding of my heartbeat at first. But then, just like that, a door squeaks, warped wood against cold stone.
We shouldn’t have stopped.
Gaspard shrinks farther into the hall until his hands find another door. He turns the boar doorknob’s bronze snout just as the footsteps make it into the central corridor of the west wing. I follow him inside. There are no windows in this little room, and what little carved wooden furniture is here has been covered with sheets. If the people stomping down the hall are heading to the ballroom, we could hide here until they pass.
Gaspard breathes shallowly, staring at the door he just locked. “Anaïs?”
A muffled sound from outside is growing louder. Out of some latent instinct for chivalry, Gaspard barricades me in a corner with his body. I can’t bring myself to yelp.
“What were you going to tell me?”
Helpless, I gesture toward the door. “An attack. The ballroom. Midnight.”
“What? How could you know that?” He’s never held me like this, with barely contained frenzy. “Anaïs, what the fuck is going on?”
Laughter as bitter as tears boils up my throat.
“Anaïs!” Even his whispers are suddenly thunderous with fear, but I can’t stop laughing. “Anaïs, what’s going on?”
“What’s going on? We’re dying!” I double over, clutching my stomach. “We’re going to die in this goddamned place, and there’s no stopping it! We wait, and we die, and we live again!” Sobs twine with the laughter and burst from my aching chest. “Well. I do. No idea what happens to you.”
The sounds from the hallway are louder now. Closer. I bite my tongue so hard that it bleeds. No time for follow-up questions.
“Right.” Gaspard’s terse whisper seems as loud to me as the horrible footsteps approaching the door. “Right. Forget midnight. First you have to make it through this.”
I swallow blood.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
With a hard, strange look in his eyes—the expression of someone staring down death—he lowers his head and kisses me.
I’ve never kissed Gaspard before, but even in my wildest dreams, I didn’t think it would be like this. Awkward and panicked and desperate, my face plastered with tears, my mouth tasting like iron. One of his hands dips below my waist, clutching me close to his body; the other threads through my hair, catching on a cavalcade of pins. A stupid, suddenly lustful part of me says that if I’m going to die, it might as well be dragging my hands down Gaspard’s chest, but the door opens, and I know I’ll be robbed of that mercy before I duck my head.
“Oye!”
Gaspard doesn’t break off the kiss for several beats yet, as if reluctant to let go. Finally, he slides in front of me and turns around, blocking me from the scrutiny of strangers.
A shield against death.
My lips are swollen. I still taste iron.
Three men crowd the threshold. Their faces are indistinct enough that they could be from any province. All three are clad in reasonably well-cut jackets and worn leather boots—not Anniversary Ball fare by any means, but nothing that would seem out of place or draw particular attention in the capital. None look like hardened killers, if you set aside the shotguns at their backs.
“What’re you doing here?” one of them asks in coarse Castaran.
Gaspard flinches as he takes in the sight of the intruders. I can see his jaw clenching as though he’s trying to swallow his own tongue to keep himself from saying the wrong thing. Though at this point, anything could be the wrong thing. I just don’t know what he’s thinking. What he actually wants to say.
It’s only been a few seconds, but it feels like an age before Gaspard finally dips his head in a wooden impression of a gentleman. “Good evening, señores, forgive the trespass.” As if we’re the ones who broke into the palace. “My lady and I were in search of somewhere more…private. I’m sure you can understand.”
Another of the men, with sandy hair and wide-set black eyes, steps forward. “We cannot blame young people for taking liberties while they can. Especially young lovers like you.” He smiles blankly at me over Gaspard’s shoulder. “Good evening, my lady.”
I dig my hand into Gaspard’s side, silently willing him to stall. Midnight can’t be that far away. If I’m not in the ballroom, if I die before it happens—
He seems to take the hint and addresses the sandy-haired one directly. “Is there something we can do for you?”
“Well, that depends, my friend.” He steps farther into the room, the others on his flanks. The closer he gets to us, the clearer it becomes that his eyes aren’t black at all. They’re a sickly, hypnotic green, glowing even in the semidarkness of the abandoned room. Tears and blood forgotten, I slip a little farther out from behind Gaspard to meet his gaze. “You are subjects of the Ivarean king? Celebrating this glorious regime?”
Gaspard shifts uneasily where he stands, choosing his words more carefully than ever before. “It is a celebration…señor. Few people ask for more than that.”
“I see,” says the green-eyed one, noncommittally enough, before he turns to me. “And you, my dear? Have you found what you were looking for tonight?”
I have to swallow several times to force something, anything, out of my mouth. “I…I’m beginning to think so.”
The intruder’s blank smile widens. “I’m glad to hear that. It’s important in this world to go after what you want. Wouldn’t you agree?”
The other two men chuckle. They’ve probably been told to make a sweep of the rooms, not to tarry and toy with young prey. Yet here they are.
Because he wants to be. Because he’s their leader.
I step fully out from behind Gaspard. Now we’re standing side by side, the two of us before the three of them. Even if we weren’t outgunned and outnumbered, I would have some notion as to how this has to end.
I draw myself up to my full height. “And you, señor?” Gaspard stares sidelong at me, as if trying to warn me off baiting these people, and tries to herd me behind him again. But I find, in the face of certain death, that it’s astonishingly easy to dismiss his concern. “Who are you? What exactly do you want from us?”
“From you?” The green-eyed one draws out those two syllables with dripping amusement. He opens his mouth, as if to actually answer my questions, but before he can, Gaspard steps forward.
“Please—please! Take no offense. My lady won’t bother you, I promise. Just let her go, and whatever else…” His hands are out, already offering a surrender. “Whatever it is you want, I believe we can come to some sort of understanding. Just let her go.”
An understanding? With these men? What does he think he’s doing? In what world could that possibly happen?
You fool, Plamondon.
The green-eyed leader sighs with a heavy dose of irony. “Ah. A chivalrous instinct. Perhaps you are not the type of man I thought you were.” He raises his voice but does not loosen the grip of his gaze on me. “But your lady asked me a question, and she deserves an answer before she takes her leave. What say you, friends?”
My hand snakes around Gaspard’s in the silence.
The leader swings his weapon around and aims it squarely at me. “What is it we owe our fellow citizens, if not the truth?”
All he needs is one bullet.
But as I leap forward, he does not leave it to chance.
In the precious, useless seconds after, as I struggle upright in my bed half a city away, all I can think of is the desperate press of Gaspard’s lips against mine. All I taste is his blood welling in my mouth. Violent, angry tears wear the skin of my cheeks to nothing. When my mother asks me what is wrong, again, I can’t find the words.
I cannot fathom why the forces that shape human lives decided to steal mine that first night and replace it with this purgatory. An in-between space and time that isn’t mine and that I can’t hope to understand. If the only way to keep this curse from claiming me over and over again is to stop the midnight attack, surely there were hundreds of people in that ballroom who could have done so by now. Clever people, gifted people, people who know things, who care about something more than their lives and their loved ones’ safety. People like Gaspard.
I’m not clever. I’m not gifted. I don’t know anything, least of all what the hell I’m supposed to do next.
But as long as I’m stuck like this, and as long as that requires trying to stop the attack, I don’t want to unnecessarily drag others to their deaths. Especially if they think they’re saving me. No one can do that: not my parents, not Gaspard, and certainly not a Cardona.
As long as I’m stuck like this, I don’t want to be killed without a fight.
At least not every night.
* * *
Before Béatrice can fasten me into my gown, I tear downstairs toward Papa’s study. My robe flutters at the hem, hastily fastened over my corset and petticoat, as I slam the door shut behind me. He is in the middle of writing a letter to his brother, who is overseeing our estates while we’re here in Marenca, probably promising him a speedy update as soon as my betrothal is set.
Unfortunately for him, there’s no chance of that now.
“I need one of the Aubanel daggers.”
He replaces his pen in the inkwell and peers at me carefully. “Those are blessed objects, Anaïs, not accessories.”
“Exactly.”
Proensan legend holds that blessed objects were transformed into magical wonders by the fairies themselves—books whose contents changed with every page, brooches that bled poison, pitchers of water that never went dry. But after the disappearance of the fairies, the Proensan houses that bowed to the Cardonas were forced to either send the blessed objects in their possession to Marenca as tribute to their new king, or destroy them. My father’s ancestor, Conte Pèire Aubanel, protected a set of three daggers with gemstone-encrusted hilts from the Ivareans by hiding them in a cave normally home to aging cheeses. Of course, even if Ivareans could use blessed objects, their powers can only be maintained with blood magic, and all of the magical objects the Cardonas took as the spoils of victory have long since become punishingly ordinary.
That makes the Aubanel daggers, and any other stray blessed objects that escaped Cardona greed, the last of their kind; mythical origin story aside, the blessing is so weak these days that it cannot imbue new objects with powers anymore. As such, Papa is extremely circumspect about using them. If he didn’t have to keep the daggers whetted with his blood, he never would have brought them with us to the capital.
