“You don’t believe me, do you? I’ve studied for a very long time.” A lurking smile lit his eyes. “Also, I’ve spoken with your father, and others like him.”
“My father?” The kernel of doubt he’d planted in Hyde Park was growing now, swelling in discomfiting ways. If I had been lied to about Luminate magic, what other lies did I unwittingly believe? And why had Papa spoken so frankly with Mr. Skala but hid the truth from his own children? Was he, as Mr. Skala charged, afraid of the Circle’s repercussions? Or perhaps his silence was Mama’s doing. “Even if you were right, the Binding can’t be broken—least of all by someone without magic. If you’ve asked about me, surely you know that too.”
“I heard the rumors. But I don’t believe them. Whatever you are, you’re not without magic. Not as they would have you believe.”
“You know nothing about me.” I met his gaze with a challenge in my own. “I heard your speech, you know. But no matter how thrilling the idea of an egalitarian society, I don’t believe you can do it, not without more destruction than your cause is worth. Even if I could help you, I wouldn’t. I don’t wish to overset Luminate society—I want to be part of it.”
He glanced around the ballroom, at the men and women who had shunned me because I bore no soul sign. He lifted one eyebrow, and I flushed.
“Not society like this, perhaps, but there might be others….” I trailed off, feeling suddenly ridiculous.
“They won’t make you one of them, you know. No matter what you sacrifice.”
The fact that he was likely right infuriated me. “I don’t want to discuss this.”
Mr. Skala twirled me out with a flourish. “As you wish,” he said, turning the conversation to unexceptionable things until the waltz finished.
Mr. Skala returned me to Grandmama with gentlemanly correctness, but any pleasure I had in the ball was ruined. When I asked to leave early, Grandmama did not demur.
As our carriage rattled away through the darkened streets, Herr Steinberg said, “You ought to be more careful, Miss Arden, whom you associate with before a roomful of Luminate. Radicals like William Skala could ruin you more surely than any lack of magic.”
Our route from Vienna into Hungary wandered through wooded hills before skirting Lake Fert? and emerging onto a marsh known as the Hanság. As the road threaded through spindly thickets, I watched a goshawk circle over the rushes before plunging toward its prey. A mile or two farther, and a purple heron moseyed long-legged among the reeds. My heart sank. Besides the birds, there was nothing here.
No society.
I was to be immured at the edge of nowhere. Somehow, such isolation seemed all the more painful coming on the heels of my failure at the ball in Vienna. I had not given up my hope of finding a way into society, but such an event seemed increasingly unlikely.
I fell asleep to Grandmama pointing out sights to Herr Steinberg and woke to the sound of our carriage wheels bumping down a poplar-lined road. My eyelids felt made of fine grit.
Eszterháza is not an estate one approaches by slow degrees, winding down a long driveway before bursting through the trees and beholding the house in all its glory. Instead, our carriage rattled directly to huge iron gates covered with a flourish of leaves.
Beyond the gates, two great semicircular wings curved around either side of the courtyard, leading to an immense, four-storied fa?ade. Two flights of marble stairs swept up to a balcony. A large clock was set into a triangular wall above the third floor, beneath a profusion of figures and flags and weapons. I tried to count the windows blinking at us in the setting sun, but gave up well before one hundred.
I turned an astonished face on Grandmama. She had called it the Hungarian Versailles, but I had discounted that as the kind of benign exaggeration Grandmama often applied to things she loved.
“Prince Miklós—János’s great-uncle—expanded his father’s hunting lodge eighty years ago to rival the palaces of the French princes. People believed he was unwise, pouring his money into a swampland. But he built this.”
The carriage skirted an empty fountain and drew to a stop before the double staircases. Herr Steinberg leapt out to help us exit. As I emerged, it became clear this estate was not what it at first appeared. Pale gold plaster flaked from the walls, and the trim around the windows needed paint. Weeds pushed their way through cracks in the stonework around the courtyard, and a goat munched a particularly large bush near the steps. My first awed impression faded.
Herr Steinberg led us to double doors set between the stairs and knocked.
For a long moment, we waited. Herr Steinberg knocked again. I watched Grandmama with concern, seeing how tightly her hand gripped her cane, how deep the grooves in her cheeks were. I linked my arm through hers. Why was no one answering? Surely they knew to expect us.
At last, a scuffling sounded behind the door, then it creaked open. A young maid stood in the doorway, not the butler or footman I had expected for such a large estate. Though the girl was pretty, with fair hair and blue eyes, her clothes were extremely untidy. Large streaks of dust marred her once-white apron, and the black dress she wore beneath the apron was tattered at the hem. I could not help thinking Mama would never have tolerated such slovenliness, and was surprised when such a prosaic thought hurt. After a month away, I missed even Mama’s sharpness.
“Ach, Himmel!” the girl said in German to Grandmama, and I remembered that most of the Hungarian Luminate were bilingual, governed as they were by Austria. This close to the Austrian border, no doubt their servants were bilingual too. The maid continued in German, “You must be Lady Zrínyi.” I watched a blush rise in the fair cheeks. At least the girl had some sense of appropriateness. “Come in, please.”
We stepped into a large, shadowy room with high, rounding walls and delicate floral reliefs. An arched glass door led into another, larger room beyond. From a nearby corridor came ecstatic barking, followed by the sharp click of canine nails on parquet floor. Then a rusty streak barreled directly into me, and I fell to the floor in a tangle of skirts.
An exuberant canine stood over me, his forelegs on my shoulders and his hind legs on my skirts, preventing me from rising. The animal breathed gustily into my face. It seemed scarcely possible to feel any lower than I did then, buried underneath a small mountain of dog. I wondered which of my rustic cousins owned him.
The maid squeaked an appalled “Oroszlán! Nem!” She clapped her hands, and the dog retreated. I sat up cautiously, rubbing my stinging elbow.