The walls of the ballroom were draped with great swags of Hungarian colors: red, green, and white knots everywhere. Even the dances reflected the nationalist theme: the orchestra played circle dances, like the quadrille and a csárdás much like the one I’d danced with Mátyás at Whitsun night. The entire evening I did not once hear the strains of an Austrian waltz. The guests spoke Hungarian almost defiantly, and the few conversations I heard begun in German were quickly hushed.
There was no overt magic here, not like the wild phoenix at the Viennese ball. Only minor charms to keep the air circulating and cool, to keep the flowers from wilting and to heighten their scent. The women wore gowns, like mine, covered in exquisite Hungarian handwork; the men were resplendent in traditional embroidered dolmans and satin-lined mentes.
Thanks to Mátyás’s student friends, I did not lack for partners. I danced with a banker and a doctor, an apothecary and an aspiring valet. I even, daringly, danced with a young Jewish man. After supper, I whirled across the floor with the poet Pet?fi Sándor, who apologized for doubting me at Café Pilvax. I told him how much I enjoyed his poetry, and we ended our dance very well pleased with one another. Mama would certainly not approve of the egalitarian mix, but I liked it. No one marked my missing soul sign. Here I was like any other young lady, dancing with a string of charming suitors.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” Karolina asked me halfway through the night, sliding her arm through mine. Her tousled chestnut curls bore witness that she too was enjoying the dancing.
“Very much.”
“I am glad,” Karolina said, smiling. A golden falcon necklace, wings spread wide and diamond crusted, sparkled around her throat. Pet?fi had worn a similarly shaped pin in his neckcloth.
My gaze swept the room, workingmen and workingwomen swirling through the dances in company with poets, artists, and Luminate. I had dreamed of something like this once. As the dancers flashed past, I noticed what I had not before: how very common the falcon motif was, nearly every third gentleman sporting it on his coat.
“The falcon?” I asked, nodding at Karolina’s necklace.
“The turul bird. He led our first parents to the Carpathian valleys and a new empire—and, God willing, he will lead us to victory and independence again. Here.” She unfastened the chain and held it out to me. “I want you to have it.”
I stepped back. “I could not take it from you.”
“I think it belongs with you—as you belong with us. A true Magyar patriot.”
William had told me in Vienna I would never be accepted by Luminate society. Perhaps he was right. But this night had shown me there were other societies, better societies, that might welcome me and others like me, and James, and Gábor. A ballroom was not the real world, I knew, but it reflected real possibilities.
Something kindled in my heart, stirred by the memory of a starving girl on the streets in Vienna repulsed by magic, a Luminate squire willing to use magic to kill a Romani boy, a woman dying in poverty, a serf boy whipped in a field. Something gallant, perhaps reckless.
This time, when Karolina held out the necklace, I took it, fastening it about my neck and letting the still-warm gold settle against my skin.
These people—my people—wanted to remake the world into something better, something more egalitarian and open. And I could help them do it, without violence or bloodshed. You are something else entirely, Herr Steinberg had said. He was right.
I was different.
But that difference did not mean I was weak or helpless. I had learned to fear my ability to break spells, but it did not have to be a curse. I could choose to see it as a gift. I could embrace my own power.
I could change the world.
The weights in my head shifted, then settled.
Approaching Lady Berri’s hotel the following afternoon with Ginny, I felt rather more like the faltering hero of an epic poem—Byron’s Childe Harold in the shadows of the Alps—than a young lady paying a call on her countrywoman. My courage of the night before had evaporated. And though the Hunter’s Horn was a staid, neoclassical hotel located in a mew off Váci Street and the afternoon was warm and bright, darkness seemed to cling to the cornices of the building.
I took a deep breath and entered. A red-uniformed porter led me up to Lady Berri’s room, on the second floor of the building. Ginny waited in the lobby below, fortified with a dog-eared copy of one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels.
The room where Lady Berri received me was almost overpoweringly opulent. Gold leaf bloomed across the carved ceiling above my head, and the gold was echoed in the vivid yellows and browns of the Turkish carpet beneath our feet. Plush red velvet covered the chairs and couches, and crimson-and-gold brocade curtains hung by the windows.
“Tea?” Lady Berri asked, holding up a white porcelain teacup with a delicate pattern of forget-me-nots. The subtlety of the design appeared out of place in the bold room.
“Thank you.” I doubted my ability to swallow anything, given my suddenly tight throat, but the prosaic activity of holding a teacup might help me stay grounded. That is, if I did not spill it all over myself.
When I had seated myself on a high-backed chair, Lady Berri said, “How may I help you, my dear?” Her small, catlike smile suggested she already knew why I had come. The words were only a formality. “Have you decided?”
“Nearly.” I began ticking off concerns on my fingers. “Papa says spell-binders used to die because they burned up too much of their own magic. If magic returns to individuals, how will you stop that?”
“Better training,” she said promptly. “And your Papa and others have begun to theorize alternative ways to hold magic so it is not as dangerous.”
“What happens to the Circle if we break the Binding? To Luminates?”
“Nothing so very dreadful. I imagine the Circle shall have to relinquish some of their authority, but I cannot see that as a bad thing, though I am one of them. And the Luminates shall go on as they always have—only they shall have to share magic with others, which may force them to open their ranks. Also a good thing, in my opinion.”
Lady Berri must have read my doubt in my face, for she laughed. “Come now. What else?”
Well, then. “If I help you, do you swear you can keep me safe?”
The humor vanished from her round face, and she leaned forward, her gaze sharp. “I swear it. I am powerful enough to face anyone the Austrian Circle might choose to send against me.”
I released a long breath. “Very well. Show me the Binding.”
Her eyes grew round. “Show you?”
“I know the Binding exists in a realm other than ours, but there must be dimension to it, if it holds magic.” And monsters. “I need to see what it is you want me to break, and what I shall release in breaking it.”
“There’s nothing to release,” she began, “only magic…”
“Herr Steinberg swears there are monsters. And I…I spoke with them inside the spell at Sárvár. I want to be certain I am not unleashing something terrible on the world.”
Her mouth creased with vexation. “If you saw something in that spell, they were only illusions, meant to deter people from the spell. The stories of monsters were only ever that—stories.”