“You could try to be patient for a change.”
“You say that every time.”
“Maybe I should stop saying it and tattoo it on your hand.”
“Wouldn’t make a difference. Irritatingly persistent, remember?”
I jolted when Bel took my shoulder. One of his knees crooked, brushing the pleating of my skirt. The skin on my leg tingled. “Can’t you just smile and curtsy when I tell you to do something like any other worker here would?”
“So you’d rather me be a mindless puppet you can pluck to your every whim?”
“Sounds like fun.”
I scowled.
His attention shifted to my mouth. “You know . . . I think I’m growing fond of your scowls,” he said. “Goodnight, Mol.”
After my meeting with Bel, one week went by without any news. I did as he said and kept my head down. But as I stirred soup, my mind would wander to Alastair’s ledger. I liked to imagine myself gleefully shredding everything inside to bits. His power was in those contracts. Because of it, my obsession with them grew into an itch that I wasn’t allowed to scratch.
Soon the days felt like years, and the nights felt like eternities. I’d lie awake, churning through memories of my childhood, because I didn’t know how much longer they would belong to me. The only downside was I would miss Zosa all over again. And the missing hurt, like mourning. I guess I was mourning in a way. She was my sister, but in Durc she was also my best friend. It was painful to not have either one.
Early one morning I passed the staff dining hall, the forêt à manger. The kitchen worker I’d helped with deliveries stood at a tree branch hung with glass dishes. He piled clouds of fluffy brioche on his plate, laughing as the pastry magically replenished.
I pictured Zosa beside him waving me over like she used to at Bézier’s when I was hesitant to join the other girls.
A maid I didn’t recognize tapped my shoulder. “You going in?”
I shook my head and moved out of her way.
In the kitchens, Chef was already in a mood, barking orders beside a row of delivery carts stacked with everything from raspberry mille-feuilles to oysters on ice.
“What’s going on?” I asked a pink-faced, sweating cook.
“Didn’t hear? We’re in Barrogne.”
My blood chilled. Barrogne was a lakeside village in northwesternmost Verdanne, hugging the Skaadan border. Skaadi had staunch laws on magic and still executed suminaires.
Chef stormed by. “Two minutes and all delivery carts head to the lobby.” She pointed at me. “Back of the line for you. I need all delivery workers manning carts. Ma?tre’s orders. Doesn’t want to upset that fancy ambassador.”
“Wait. The Skaadan ambassador is here?” Many in Durc assumed the young ambassador could convince the stodgy ruling party to reverse the Skaadan laws and allow the hotel entrance. It hadn’t happened yet.
“The ma?tre is sending out a welcome party, along with the ambassador’s fee to let us into their backward country.” Chef grunted. “Everyone was supposed to be outside twenty minutes ago. Get to your cart.”
My eyes widened as her words sank in. “I’m going outside?”
Chef snapped a towel at my skirt and stormed off.
Minutes later, I stood at the rear of sixteen carts waiting to pass through the lacquered doorway. At the sight of sunshine, my heart sailed up, plummeting a moment later when Alastair appeared.
I’d snatched glimpses of him since his office but never this close. As he walked along the line of workers, his boots clicked an uneven rhythm—a limp I hadn’t noticed before. Bel’s warnings sounded in my ears. When Alastair got to me, I looked down, meek as a kitchen mouse, while he passed me by.
“Everybody move!” Yrsa boomed.
Behind me, suminaires surrounded a large object hovering beneath a silk sheet. A suminaire I’d seen at the escape games concentrated as he blew through his miniature weather vane, levitating the object, while the other suminaires coaxed it through the air. I tried to peek under the sheet, until Alastair and Yrsa joined them, starting the procession.
I forced my feet to walk. With a little muscle, I heaved my delivery cart across the demarcation and onto a stone walk that surrounded a mountain lake. The sunshine was blinding, but I gulped it in.
I was outside. Elsewhere.
“Move,” Alastair said as he came through the door.
I pushed forward, past buildings surrounded by pine trees and framed by Skaadi’s Bjor Mountains. But nothing compared to the dwellings on the water.