“The other maiden?” he asked, removing his glasses to look at me more closely. “But there is just the one Lorelei.” He paused for a moment, inspecting my face. His usual pleasant expression was gone, replaced with fierce intensity. “What did you see, Miss Anna?”
I glanced back at the rock, now behind us. I saw only a smiling face and a fall of golden hair.
What had I seen?
“Nothing,” I said at last. “A shadow.”
Herr Steinberg did not allude again to that episode, but in the weeks following, I caught him watching me more than once, a worried line drawn across his forehead.
We arrived at last in Vienna, and Grandmama insisted upon buying me new dresses—lovely, grown-up gowns with full bell sleeves and skirts that swept the floor when I walked. The dresses necessitated the purchase of a new, stiffer corset: when the stays were cinched tight, I could scarcely draw breath.
We attended the opera one night, the opera house as splendid as I had imagined, a riot of gilt and red velvet and heavy curtains over the stage. I smoothed the shell-pink satin of my skirts, unease drawing cold fingers up my spine. What if someone were to recognize me for what I was: a young lady who had been sent from London in disgrace? An impostor? I forgot my fear during the performance, Mozart’s Die Zauberfl?te, but it returned again during the interlude, as a steady stream of visitors came to our box. When none of them perceived anything untoward about me, I began to relax. And when one of Grandmama’s old school friends invited us to a ball the following night, it confirmed the evening as one of the most pleasant of my life.
Though I was not technically “out” in society, Mama had given Grandmama tacit permission—that is, she had not forbidden it—for me to attend social events in the hope I might acquire some polish.
The next night, Ginny buzzed around our rented rooms in growing excitement, helping me dress for my first ball. Standing before my mirror, an emerald silk taffeta gown pooling about my feet, with heavy lace falls at my throat and wrists, I scarcely recognized myself. The skirt was gathered and tucked into elaborate poufs, and it billowed around me when I walked. A mixture of excitement and terror prickled through me. I fingered my topaz necklace and wondered how much it mattered that I was not also adorned with a soul sign, the social symbol of magical worth.
“You look lovely,” Ginny said. “Those German lords will be fighting to dance with you.”
I grasped her hand. “I wish you were coming with me.”
She shook her head, her ginger curls dancing. “Nay, I’d not fit in with such company.”
“Perhaps I shan’t either.”
“Nonsense. Your blood is just as good as theirs.”
But not my magic.
Ginny whirled away to fetch my shoes and did not notice my failure to respond. I may have been born Luminate, but Mama had made it clear to me that though I might be tolerated by society, I would never be embraced.
Herr Steinberg appeared promptly to usher us to the ball, in a neoclassical mansion near the Hofburg Palace in the center of the walled city. Someone had gone to great effort to construct an illusion guiding guests into the building: either the family was extraordinarily powerful or they had powerful friends. Over my head, branches of gold, silver, and palest green trees stretched brittle fingers. Exotic birds flew from tree to tree: a phoenix with a tail of flame, a gigantic golden eagle, a bejeweled nightingale. Pale fire circled the entrance.
A small crowd of commoners gathered, watching the illusions with wide eyes and open mouths. Two guards stood at the fringes, ensuring no one pressed too close to the Luminate entering the building. A thin girl, only a little younger than myself, darted past one of the guards and rushed toward me, her hands outstretched.
“A kreuzer, miss?”
My hand dipped automatically to my reticule. The girl’s dress was ragged and her cheeks bore the hollowed-out look of someone who did not eat frequently enough. But before I could press a few small coins into the girl’s hands, a wall of air shot past me, striking the girl and knocking her to the paving stones.
I sprang forward and crouched down beside the girl, trying to help her up. She shrank back from my hand, her dilated eyes fixed on something behind me. I whirled to see one of the guards trotting toward us, his mustache quivering. Herr Steinberg followed him.
“Leave her be. The emperor Ferdinand has issued orders that the lower classes are not to disturb Luminate events. This girl should know better,” Herr Steinberg said.
“But she’s starving,” I said. “A few coins won’t hurt me at all.”
“If you give money to one, we’ll have hordes descending upon us. She must learn her place.”
He held out his arm to escort me toward the gleaming illusions where Grandmama waited, dismayed. I ignored him, turning back toward the girl, but she had already melted into the crowd. I scanned the faces, looking for hers, and found row upon row of glittering eyes. These people hated the Luminate—and feared us too. I am worried about the gap between Luminate and others, Papa had said.
I let Herr Steinberg lead me back to Grandmama. We stepped through the fiery doorway, embraced by light but not heat, and left the streets behind us. Our short, rotund hostess smiled and kissed Grandmama’s cheeks in the European manner when we were introduced. Then she turned to me, patted my cheek, and told me I was ein sch?nes M?dchen.
The theme from the entry continued in the ballroom, with lights picking out the shapes of enormous trees on the ballroom walls. Another phoenix swam through the air overhead. I accompanied Grandmama to a chair near one wall and sat beside her. As the music swelled around me and dancers swirled past, I could not seem to shake my encounter on the streets. The divide the guards wanted to enforce between that girl and me was as artificial as the illusions gracing this ballroom: the product of money and magic. But for an accident of birth, I might have been her. She might have been me. I shivered, feeling alien in my own skin.
A spotty young gentleman approached us, before halting a few paces from me, his eyes fixing on the bare spot above my collarbone where my soul sign should have been. Abruptly, he swung around and marched off.
Grandmama put her hand over mine and squeezed. I shrugged. I did not care if a spotty gentleman preferred not to dance with me. The music eddied and fell around me, and my feet tapped to the rhythm. The hostess brought a tall young gentleman to us to be introduced. He bowed, and professed himself flattered, but I marked the way his eyes lingered on my absent soul sign, and he did not ask me to dance.