And these were the individuals waiting now to speak with me.
I followed Papa back to his study, resigned to the inevitable. Mama and Catherine huddled together on the settee, Catherine glaring at me with reddened eyes. I guessed the other two individuals to be members of the Circle: an older gentleman with a forehead permanently grooved in a frown, and a dumpy middle-aged woman. Grandmama was not there—doubtless the drama had sent her to bed with a headache.
But where was Freddy? I wished I were back in the garden with him. I wished I’d never agreed to watch Catherine perform.
But I lacked the magic for even one small wish, and so there I stood.
My father hastened to introduce the two members of the Circle. “Lord Orwell, my daughter Anna. Anna, Lord Orwell leads the Coremancer Order.”
I curtsied. Lord Orwell cleared his rather phlegmy throat. His watery blue eyes traveled over my person, but clearly found no pleasure in the exercise.
“Lady Berri, my daughter. Anna, Lady Berri heads the Lucifera Order. Lord Eldon, head of the Elementalist Order, could not stay.” He did not need to add that Queen Victoria, who headed the Animanti Order, had not been present to begin with. My father’s cheeks were still flushed, but the light in his eyes had vanished. I tried, and failed, to read his expression. Was he angry? Afraid?
There were four orders of spell-casters among the Luminate: Coremancers, like Mama and Lord Orwell, capable of discerning and influencing thoughts and emotions. Elementalists, like Papa and Catherine, who manipulated light and nonliving elements. Animanti, who influenced living things and might, depending on their gifts, speak with animals or heal injured tissues. And the Lucifera, rarest and most powerful, who shaped forces: gravity, electricity, magnetism, sometimes even space, as Freddy had done earlier when crafting his portal. I studied Lady Berri with new interest.
“Charmed,” Lady Berri said, smiling at me, and then chuckling at her own mild pun. Her soul sign, a sleek leopard, prowled incongruously where her plump neck melted into her shoulder.
An answering smile tickled the corner of my mouth, but I suppressed it. That three of the most powerful Luminate had come to Catherine’s debut meant they suspected Catherine had great promise as a spell-caster. I didn’t doubt it: Catherine had studied magic with an intensity most young ladies reserved for their suitors. I glanced at my sister and guilt washed over me. I hoped I had not entirely ruined her chances.
Though in theory most Luminate had equal access to magic through the Binding spell, in practice it was not always so. Casting spells, particularly large ones, required a focus and attention to craft that many people lacked. Thus, Papa was a relatively gifted Elementalist, but Mama had never progressed beyond basic-level spells: her debut spell, her soul sign, common Coremancer charms.
Young men might demonstrate their power during their years at Oxford or Cambridge. But for a young woman, there was really only one opportunity to impress the Circle: at her debut.
Small wonder my sister wept. I squashed an impulse to comfort her; Catherine would not welcome my pity.
In any case, I had greater things to worry about at the moment. Namely, what two of the most powerful Luminate in England sought with me.
“What is this about?” I asked, summoning false confidence. “Of what am I accused?”
Lady Berri smiled at me. “No one has made any accusations yet.”
Returning her look but not her smile, I said, “Experience, my lady, has taught me that when I am summoned to my father’s study, it is because I am blamed for something.”
She laughed—a loud, jolly laugh that turned into a cough when Lord Orwell scowled at her.
“Someone in the ballroom tonight disrupted Catherine’s charms.” Lord Orwell looked at me when he spoke.
“It was not me.” But I remembered the shout that grew out of my terrible anger, and my blood ran cold.
“You were not supposed to be there at all. I told you—” The words burst from Catherine like starlings from a bush. “I told you to stay away, or you would ruin everything. And you did. My charms were destroyed, all my prospects of happiness…” She trailed off, blinking hard.
Mama put her arm around my sister’s shaking shoulders.
Lord Orwell spoke. “It is most unusual. I’ve never seen charms come unraveled quite so spectacularly. The casting was solid. There was no reason for the magic to come so…unbound.” His mouth pursed around the last word with distaste.
Spells were miscast, sometimes. I did not know much of the theoretics of Luminate magic: my magic lessons had been tacitly dropped after my disastrous Confirmation eight years earlier. But I did know that spell-casters drew power for their spells from the Binding, an enormous and ancient spell that held magic as a dam held floodwaters. The Binding existed in an ethereal dimension that lay over our world like a veil, so Luminates never had to reach too far to summon power. Spell-casters employed spells to draw out the magic, using their words and gestures and will to direct the shape of the charm, as a canal channels the route of water. A spell with insufficient will or inaccurate gestures might misfire, sometimes inconsequentially, sometimes tragically, depending on the size of the spell and the degree of the miscasting. Power, once summoned, had to go somewhere, and if the caster could not control it, the magic might take its own form. But Catherine would not be so common as to allow any degree of inexactness.
Something else had happened tonight.
Lord Orwell continued, turning his attention from me to my father. “I cast a survey spell, after the chaos from the broken spell settled. The point of disruption was clearly your younger daughter.”
Cold prickled up my arms.
“Impossible.” My mother’s voice was sharp, but I heard a darker note—fear?—behind the words.
Lord Orwell’s eyebrows rose again. Lady Berri pressed her lips together, but the look she cast at me was not unsympathetic.
I turned away, knowing what my mother would say and bracing against it.
“It is impossible,” my mother repeated, “because Anna has no magic.”
In the darkened glass of the window, the shadowy faces of the others scrutinized me. And there it was again, that doubled reflection of my face, as if I were divided against my own self.
“Has this been verified?” Lord Orwell asked.
Lady Berri said, “The girl’s diagnosis is written in our records. Her Confirmation did not take, and the Circle officiate certified the diagnosis of the girl as Barren.”