The trip took five days. Zosa spent the time dreaming about all the frivolous things she’d buy in Durc, like fingerless lace gloves and the striped tins of crème de rose Maman would smear on her face. I couldn’t stop smiling, convinced that my life was about to begin.
Things felt different the moment we disembarked. The docks were crowded. Zosa was only nine so I made her stay close. It had hit me then: everyone I cared about was either dead or in Aligney. We were alone in a strange city, and it was all my doing.
It was a mistake to leave home. For the past few months, I’d been saving every coin to buy passage back to Aligney. But at the rate I was going, I didn’t want to think about how long it would take. The hotel would probably get us there years faster.
My breath stilled at the thought, and crisp, golden memories of home rushed to me. I could practically feel the uneven cobblestones I ran over as a child, my belly full from gorging on strawberries plucked from swollen summer bushes.
“Move,” barked a pale-skinned woman clutching an otter fur stole, snapping me from my thoughts. She walked around us, careful not to come too close.
Zosa fingered the holes in her good frock. “She must think we crawled out from under the docks. Everyone is so glamorous today.”
I took off my ruffled lilac hat. The style was terribly dated, but it was the nicest thing I owned. Bending, I fastened it on Zosa as if it were a crown.
“No one is as glamorous as us, madame,” I said, and my heart lifted at her grin. “Now let’s hurry. The ma?tre d’h?tel himself is expecting us for tea.”
Together, we walked past the vieux quais and into town. Streams of purple bunting hung from eaves while pink and green carnations decorated every doorstep. The celebration was unlike anything I’d ever seen, and all for the hotel.
“There’s so many people.” Zosa giggled as we rounded a corner near the famed alley. “I can’t see my feet.”
I maneuvered her out of the way of a large group. “If you don’t watch it, someone will stomp on those pretty feet and I’ll never hear the end of it.”
She twirled. “I don’t care. It’s wonderful.”
“Only until we can’t find each other.” The thought of losing her in a crowd always put me on edge.
“Are you trying to have no fun?”
“I made it a rule to never have fun until after lunch,” I teased.
“Truly?”
“Come on, you,” I said, and steered her into a clearing occupied by street performers in satin brassieres, faces hidden behind maché masks. Zosa jerked back when one performer popped forward, tears of painted blood dripping down her mask as she sang for coin.
“A suminaire called up la magie.
And turned his wife into a pyre.
He scorched her eyes and cracked her bones.
Her fate was rather dire!”
I’d heard the same words sung many times before. Here, suminaires were still the subjects of songs and stories, even when nobody had seen one in ages. In the last few decades, sightings became so rare that people stopped worrying about magic hurting anyone, instead growing curious about it, and Verdanniere laws grew lax. The hotel only added to the allure. People were so eager to experience magic that fears about it were forgotten the way one might forget the threat of a lightning bolt striking you dead in a field.
“Do you think we’ll see a suminaire today?” Zosa asked.
“Hopefully only inside. Where the ma?tre makes it safe for everyone.”
“I bet the ma?tre’s handsome.”
“He’s too old for you,” I growled, and pinched her nose. “Let’s keep moving.”
A moment later, we passed two men with brown skin and giddy smiles. They each clutched thick envelopes. Invitations.
“Six winners this time!” someone shouted.
“They already picked the winners?” My face fell. I supposed the contest was good—it gave everyone hope. Still, I felt a stab of jealousy that I couldn’t shake. Before I could take another step, Zosa tugged my sleeve so hard she nearly took my arm off. “Hey!”
“Would you turn your big head?” She pointed.
Then I saw it.
The hotel looked like it had spent its whole life sewn into the narrow alley between Apothicaire Richelieu and Maison du Thé. Clad in slatted wood, a single column of windows went up five floors. There couldn’t be more than ten cramped rooms, tops. Above the door hung a sign too ornate for the shabby building, where a pair of words swirled with inlaid pearl: HOTEL MAGNIFIQUE.