CHAPTER 5
THE FIRST BROADSIDE
The next day, Luca disregarded Cantic’s “suggestions” and went on her first proper visit to El-Wast, to the largest bookshop in the city, run by a Balladairan man with a squint and a shining bald head. She had hoped to go with Cheminade, but the governor-general was busy with the fallout from the hanging.
She had woken this morning to a small unmarked parcel. It was a book about Shālan history. There was no name card or note, though it seemed like the sort of gift Cheminade might give. But why wouldn’t the governor leave a note?
The text was simple, but not in a foppish way. More like it was an introduction to a work that could be longer with more research. She didn’t recognize the author, whose name was inscribed only as PSLR. It included an intriguing discussion of a Shālan text about the last emperor of the Shālan Empire, before it shuddered under its first blow five hundred years ago—The Last Emperor by bn Zahel. The author had never read this elusive book, or even seen it, but said the last emperor was rumored to be a sorcerer and that it was sorcery alone that allowed her to so devastate Balladaire’s coastal cities.
Luca tried to tell herself that her research itself wouldn’t save or ruin her attempts in Qazāl. In the back of her mind, however, she thought about how easy it would be to rule Balladaire if she had magic on her side. If magic actually existed. How people would look at her if she managed what her father could not.
And if she failed? How would people look at her then? If they thought she was chasing down gods to worship, as uncivilized as the colonials?
She wasn’t doing that, though. She had no interest in savage gods or prayers. She just wanted to learn magic. To see its proof, to use it for Balladaire. No one could fault that. They were two very different things. Magic was a tool, perhaps even a weapon. Religion was folly dressed as hope.
Luca was skimming the shelves when she heard women tittering noisily near the door. She huffed loudly and did her best to shut them out, but the shop was small. They kept on. She huffed again, louder.
Her newest guard, Lanquette, shifted uncomfortably on his feet. Luca shot him an annoyed look, then caught the women’s conversation.
“She looks exactly like that, leg and all. I saw her at the hanging. I told you, I was there.”
“She can’t possibly be that—why, she looks like—have you seen those tall, spotted horses at my mother’s menagerie back home?”
“Those giant, skinny things? A… zeeraf?”
Luca’s face burned as she stepped out from the shelves and approached the entrance. The two young women stood outside, parasols raised against the sun, staring at something on the wall of the building. One had dark hair, the other fair, both in a braid that coiled about the head in the style of the colonial nobility—supposedly elegant yet cool. Luca wore her hair in its usual bun, pale wisps tucked behind her ear.
“A giraffe, exactly like them.” The dark-haired one leaned into her companion and lowered her voice. “She only needs a fourth leg.”
Luca cleared her throat, and when the women turned, their faces paled. Luca wanted to hurt them, to punish them, but what, realistically, could she do besides harbor a grudge against them and call the debt later? She lingered on the notion of having Lanquette shatter their legs slowly. With a blacksmith’s hammer. Actually, she’d rather do it herself. Ah, but for diplomacy.
“Hello, mesdemoiselles.”
The women bobbed into curtsies, but Luca pushed past them to see what had caught their attention. The single sheet of a broadside had been pasted to the clay wall. A picture took up most of the space on the page, a crude woodcut rendering of two women on puppet strings—one with a dark tricorne, a sagging, lined face, and hands dripping dark ink; the other with a tight bun, lips pursed sourly, hunching over a cane on impossibly crooked legs. The strings linked their hands to wooden handles held by sausage fingers. A large belly filled the background of the picture. She wondered if it was meant to be Duke Regent Nicolas Ancier, who was known for his belly, as Luca was known for her leg. “Puppets of the Empire’s Hunger” was printed in large block letters across the top. She scowled.
It came too close to her own feelings for comfort. Her uncle had sent her here as if she were nothing more than an errand child to clean up his messes or chase his coin. The humiliation of it made her eyes sting. She ripped the broadside off the wall. Her fist convulsed around the page.
She turned to the women. She didn’t recognize either of their faces, but only one woman in Balladaire—besides herself—had enough money and land to maintain a menagerie with giraffes. Lady Bel-Jadot. She could turn this to her advantage one day.