Only one man asked me to dance, an acquaintance of Herr Steinberg’s. He was large and overweight, and nearly as old as Papa. Gentleman or not, his eyes crawled over my body in a way that made my flesh creep. As he had trouble keeping his hands in the right places, I struggled free of his sweaty grip before the waltz had finished and returned to Grandmama. Better not to dance, I thought, than to endure that again.
I spied Herr Steinberg on the far side of the room, deep in conversation with a man of middling height. As if he felt my eyes on him, the second man looked across at me. His eyes were unusually light for his dark complexion. Even when his gaze had moved on, a curious crawling sensation still lingered between my shoulder blades.
Halfway through the evening, a mild tremor shook the crowd. I sprang to my feet to see the source of the disturbance: a small party had entered the ballroom, and the entire company seemed to drop as one, sweeping deep curtsies and bows. I curtsied too, my mind spinning. This must be the Hapsburg royal family. The eldest gentleman, dripping with gold medallions on his coat, must be Emperor Ferdinand, who had given the order that the lower class was not to disturb Luminate events. Beside him was a handsome boy about my age. I asked Grandmama who he was.
“That’s the archduke Franz Josef. He’ll be emperor after his father and uncle.”
Grandmama added that the rather square-faced gentleman behind the emperor was Prince Metternich, the head of the Austrian Circle and the driving power behind the Hapsburg throne for nearly forty years. I shivered a little, resolving to do nothing to draw the prince’s attention to me. I had thus far escaped the notice of the Circle in Europe. I intended to keep it that way.
I turned my attention back to the young archduke. What must it be like, I wondered, to be so young and have your future written so clearly? The Austrian empire was perhaps the most powerful nation in Europe, stretching from the Illyrian coast to northern Italy, across Austria and Bohemia, and into Hungary and Poland, almost to Russia. This boy would someday rule all of it.
I knew a sharp, savage prick of envy. I wished my own future were so certain.
A pair of society matrons walked past us. A tall, thin woman in a silver gown said, “I cannot comprehend why Lady Isen allows such a thing in her home.”
“Shocking, indeed. Barrens should be kept away from decent society. We know they exist, of course, but no one wants to have their existence paraded before our eyes.” The second woman, in a pink taffeta gown much too young for her, fluttered a fan at the sausage curls by her ears.
My blood seemed to freeze, then flooded my face with a rush.
Grandmama squeezed my hand again. “The Austria-Hungary I remember was not like this.”
She was not alone in overhearing the insult. A young red-haired man approached us, his blue eyes blazing with indignation. Unlike the others, he spared no glance at my missing soul sign. He walked directly to me, caught my hand, and pulled me into the waltz just forming without waiting for a proper introduction.
“You!” I said.
“Me,” said William Skala, the Scottish radical from London. His tone was lightly mocking.
“What are you doing here?” I thought of the crowds kept back from the gala by Luminate guards. “How did you get in?”
“I’ve been trying to find you for weeks. I asked about you after our encounter in Hyde Park. I heard you broke your sister’s spells. And that day in Hyde Park, you broke mine.” He laughed at the surprise in my face. “Yes, for my sins, my father was a minor Polish count. I was Confirmed like the best of the Luminate, and I admit I find small magics useful purely for showmanship. As I am technically Luminate, I’m grudgingly allowed through the doors. But the Luminate world and I have no great love for one another.”
He had asked after me—and found me in the heart of Europe. If he could find me so easily, could the Circle? The ballroom, which had been mildly warm, closed around me. I tried to pull my hand free, but his fingers tightened on mine.
“Don’t go. I need to talk to you. We could use someone like you. Every revolution in the last two hundred years has failed, except Napoleon’s conquest of France. Do you know why?”
Of course I knew. “The Circle keep us safe,” I said. It was a prayer I’d learned in childhood. “The Binding preserve us.”
“The Circle doesn’t merit your prayers. There’s nothing divine about it.”
“What do you want from me?”
“You break spells. I want to see if you can break the Binding.”
I nearly stumbled. Only Mr. Skala’s grip kept me from crashing to the floor. “Even if I could do that, what could you possibly hope to achieve?” I said before remembering that Papa thought society would be better without the Binding too.
Mr. Skala curled his lip. “You’ve been brainwashed by the Circle like every other Luminate child. I’d hoped for better from you—I’ve heard your father is a man of sense.”
He swirled me past Herr Steinberg, who watched us with a slight frown. “Understand this: the Circle uses the Binding to restrict who has access to magic, and its members use that control to rule as despots everywhere. Even in England, though the Queen tempers them some. The Circle wants you to believe that magic belongs solely to noble bloodlines. But this is not true. If magic were strictly hereditary, it would have made its way beyond Luminate families by now, through marriage outside the class or infidelity. But we see magic just within Luminate ranks. Why? Magic doesn’t care who—or what—wields it.
“But the Circle does. Somehow, the Binding spell pulls magic from everyone who might have inherited a gift for it, Luminate and commoner alike. The Circle uses its power over the Binding to control even the Luminate, shunting them into Circle-approved orders, so no individual Luminate is powerful enough to challenge it.
“Think. Only the American colonists have won independence from a Circle-governed nation, and then only because the Circle never did figure out how to anchor the Binding spell across the ocean. In the colonies, magic is a matter of aptitude, not wealth.”
Mr. Skala spun me in an energetic whirl, and I struggled to keep up both mentally and physically. “But why does no one speak of this?”
“They do—in my crowd.” He grinned. “In Luminate society, the only ones who care are too cowed by the Circle to speak.”
He continued. “You must see the Binding is key. Without the Binding trapping magic, power could belong to anyone, irrespective of wealth or bloodline. If we break the Binding, we strike at the heart of the Circle’s power. That would be the very advantage we need to overthrow them: here, in Hungary, in Poland, in France, in England.”
I glanced sharply around. If anyone had overheard us, he risked imprisonment for treason. Or worse. “How do you know all of this?”