A Throne for Sisters

What are you waiting for? Jump!

Kate flung herself forward, and even in springtime, the water was enough to knock the breath from her. They hadn’t bothered teaching the girls to swim in the orphanage, so Kate spent a moment flailing before her hand closed around the pole the other girl was holding out.

She was stronger than she looked, reeling Kate in with the pole the way someone else might have hauled in a fish. Kate gasped as she pulled her way onto the barge.

“Here,” the girl said, holding out a blanket. “You look like you need it.”

Kate took it, gratefully. While she wrapped it around herself, she looked at the other girl, who was small, blonde, and streaked with the dirt of the things she shepherded down the river. She wore a leather apron over a dress that had probably been blue once, although now it was closer to brown.

“I’m Kate,” she managed.

The other girl smiled. “Emeline. Quiet now. Whoever’s after you, they won’t see us in the mist.”

Kate huddled down in the stern of the boat, watching the docks, or at least what she could see of them. They were quickly fading away behind a wall of fog as the barge kept moving.

As they disappeared from view completely, Kate dared to breathe a sigh of relief. She’d done it.

She’d escaped them.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Sophia could hardly believe that she was inside the palace. Back at the House of the Unclaimed, it had seemed like a magical place; another world that the likes of her could only hope to set foot in if they found themselves indentured to the right nobles through some special skill.

Now, she was there, thanks to little more than the willingness to fool those who wanted to believe in her, and the courage to actually try. Sophia couldn’t help a note of amazement at that, and at the space around her.

It was beautiful, it was elegant, and it was about as far from the orphanage as any building could hope to be. Instead of cramped conditions, there were high ceilings and spacious rooms that seemed to have been designed more as displays of opulence than simply as places to live. There were soft chairs and chaises carved in the elaborate style that had come in from across the water, thick carpets from the water looms of the Merchant States, and even a few worked silver statuettes from further off, in the lands where it was said that men had never even heard of the Masked Goddess.

This palace was everything Sophia had ever wanted.

No, not everything. This was a beautiful place to be, but it wasn’t enough to simply get here. Sophia had to find a way to stay. She’d come here in the hopes that there would be a way to find a life among the nobles. A way to be safe.

Sophia didn’t feel very safe right then. There were paintings on the walls of beautiful women and strong-looking men, probably representing different facets of the kingdom’s noble lines. Right then, Sophia probably looked like one of the women, but she felt as though that façade was as thin as one of the canvases, easy to tear through and likely to fall away at any moment.

“Focus,” she told herself, trying to act the way she thought a foreign noblewoman would on arriving in the palace. She walked through the crowds of people there, smiling beneath her half mask and nodding, pausing to admire paintings and sculptures.

There were nobles there – other nobles, Sophia corrected herself – standing in groups and laughing amongst themselves as they waited for the ball to begin. She saw a group of young women of perhaps her age, all wearing dresses that had probably taken someone weeks of work to produce. One, resplendent in a gossamer blue gown that seemed designed to show off her figure, was complaining to the others from beneath the ivory oval of her mask.

“I sent my servant there, and you’ll never guess what happened. Someone had taken my dress. My dress!”

Sophia held her breath, feeling certain that at any moment, the girl would turn and see her; would spot the dress she was wearing and denounce her as not just a fraud but a thief. Sophia guessed that this was “Milady D’Angelica,” as the dressmaker had called her.

“I never even got to see my dress,” the girl continued, and Sophia dared to breathe a sigh of relief. “I had to settle for one the dressmaker had ready for some burgher’s daughter.”

One of the others, whose mask formed an elaborate bird’s beak, laughed. “At least that means there will be less riffraff in here.”

The others laughed along with her, and the girl who had been complaining about her dress nodded.

“Come on,” she said. “It will be time for the dancing soon, and I want my makeup just so, if some handsome young man happens to unmask me. Perhaps one of the dowager’s sons will want to kiss me.”

“Angelica, you are daring,” one of the others said.

Sophia hadn’t thought of that. She’d come here with some half-formed thought of being able to fit in at court and marry some rich man, but she hadn’t thought enough to consider what she would do if she had to take her mask off. Presumably, somewhere in between her coming to the party and living happily ever after, someone would want to see her face?

So she followed them, trying not to make it look too obvious as she went, pausing to look at the statuary there.

“Ah, you’re admiring the latest Hollenbroek,” a fat man said.

A truly awful thing, but it’s what I’m expected to say.

“I think it’s awful,” Sophia said, with the slight fleck of an accent she’d picked out to let the nobles forgive any of her mistakes. “Excuse me, though, I still need to do my makeup for the ball.”

“Then perhaps we can dance later,” he suggested. “If you have your dance card…”

“My dance card?” Sophia asked, puzzled. She couldn’t see the man frown beneath his mask, but she could feel his confusion. “Yes, of course. I don’t seem to have it with me at the moment.”

She walked away swiftly even though she knew it was rude. It was better than being found out because she didn’t know the rules that these people had. Besides, the noble girls were almost out of sight.

Sophia followed them to a small antechamber, glancing inside to see a girl perhaps a couple of years older than she wearing the gray of an indentured servant, standing there surrounded by mirrors and brushes while the girls sat themselves on high-backed chairs in front of her. The servant had dark hair that fell short of her shoulders, and features that might have been pretty if she’d been allowed to use any of the tools of her trade on herself. As it was, she mostly looked overworked.

“Well then,” the first noble girl snapped. “What are you waiting for?”

“If my lady would care to remove her mask?” the girl suggested.

The noblewoman did it with bad grace, muttering something about rude servants, while the others did the same. They set their masks beside them, like upturned faces, but Sophia was more interested in watching their real features. Some of them were good-looking, some plainer featured but still with the smooth skin that came from expensive lotions and the confidence that came from knowing they could buy half the city if they wanted. Probably only Milady D’Angelica was truly beautiful, though, with features that could have come from one of the paintings adorning the walls, and an air of sharp superiority that said she knew exactly how beautiful she was.

“Get on with it,” she said. “And be careful. I’ve had a very trying day today.”

Presumably not as trying as that of a servant having to wait on her, or as someone risking her freedom trying to sneak into the festivities. Still, Sophia didn’t say anything. Instead, she watched as the serving girl started work with powders and paints, subtly transforming the features of each of the nobles she worked on.

“Work faster!” one of them snapped. “Honestly, these indentured girls are so lazy.”

“That’s not all they are,” another replied. “Did you hear that Henine Watsworth caught one in bed with her fiancé? No morals, any of them.”

“And the way they look,” Angelica added. “You can see the coarseness of their features. I don’t know why we bother to mark them as what they are. You can spot it a mile away anyway.”

They didn’t seem to care that the servant was standing right there, or that she couldn’t talk back because of her position. Sophia hated that cruelty. In fact —

“Excuse me, my lady,” a passing servant asked. “But are you lost?”

It took Sophia a moment to remember that they might mean her. “No, no, I’m fine.”

“Then would you care to go in for your makeup? I’m sure that another chair could be found.”

The last thing Sophia wanted was to have to sit in there with the others, unmasked, where she was sure that someone would guess what she was. Or, more precisely, what she wasn’t.

Sophia heard a snippet of the woman’s thoughts, and it didn’t do anything to reassure her.

Is she all right? I don’t recognize her. Maybe I should —