“She’s not even Magyar!”
“They’re only Gypsies!” a student cried. “It’s not our fight.”
“My girl, you shouldn’t be worrying your pretty head about our politics. I’ve got a much better idea of how you can occupy your time!” This last comment was accompanied by pursed lips and a very vulgar gesture.
I continued to stand for a moment, my chin held high and my cheeks burning. My stomach boiled with frustration. How could these men accept my help with the Binding—and then reject my plea? Because I was a girl did not mean I was witless.
I clambered down. “Mátyás, you must come with me. Gábor might be there.”
“There’s nothing we can do. What’s happening in Tabán has already begun.”
A scream burned in my throat. “How can you claim to be willing to sacrifice everything for a revolution—for an idea of justice—and be so unwilling to sacrifice anything for a friend. Are you afraid?”
He shook his head, though a shadow passed through his eyes. “If we act now, we’ll draw the Circle’s attention too early. That will spoil any advantage we have of surprise. Sometimes you have to sacrifice small things to win great ones.”
“Gábor is not a thing, and you cannot win a revolution on cowardice,” I said. As soon as the hurt registered in his eyes, I hated myself a bit. But only a little, because under the cover of my fury, the river of my fear ran deep, deep, deep. I had to find Gábor before the Circle retribution against the Romanies swept him up too.
Mátyás tightened his lips as if he would protest, but said only, “I’m taking you home. The streets may not be safe.”
Then, flanking me, Mátyás and Noémi marched me home like a prisoner.
They deposited me in the drawing room with Grandmama, very much as if I were an unwanted parcel. I knew they escorted me into the room solely to make it more difficult for me to slip away and find Gábor. I sent Mátyás a black look as he left, but he only grinned.
“Did you have a nice time with your friends?” Grandmama asked.
“Yes.” I choked down a half-hysterical laugh. A nice time. We plotted revolution while the Circle rounded up Romanies in Tabán. What would they do to the Romanies they found? Confiscate their talismans, certainly. Execute them? The idea made my heart cold.
Noémi took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders, as if gathering her resolve.
“Irína néni,” she began, crossing the Turkish carpet toward Grandmama. “You must reason with Anna.”
No. Grandmama couldn’t know. She would only worry—and forbid me to act. “Noémi, don’t.”
Noémi paused to look back at me, her eyebrows pinched together, her eyes troubled. “Anna, I must speak. You live by your conscience. I must live by mine.” She swung back to Grandmama. “Anna and Mátyás’s ridiculous student friends are determined on a revolution. They think they can take down the Circle on the strength of a broken Binding.”
Grandmama turned concerned eyes on me. “Is this true?”
I lifted my chin, fury burning hard and hot in my chest. “It’s true.” The reproach in her eyes was hard to bear, but I bore it. “Without the Circle controlling magic, anyone might cast spells. It won’t matter so much if I can’t use magic, if James can’t, because magic won’t be the only thing determining one’s worth. Beyond that, without the Circle bolstering the Hapsburgs in Vienna, Hungary might finally be free. I know you love this country. Can’t you see that this is the right thing to do? Papa believes it; so does Lady Berri. And so do I.”
Grandmama’s face softened a fraction. “When?”
I did not answer, so Noémi spoke for me. “Tomorrow night.”
Grandmama set her cane against the floor and tried to push herself upright. Her hand trembled, so she could not maintain a firm grip. Noémi and I both started for her, but Noémi reached her first, helping her to stand. I was only a few paces away when Grandmama said, “Anna, I understand why your heart is in this—but you cannot do it. I forbid it. I will not betray your mother’s trust this way.”
I set my teeth against the pain in her eyes. I did not like to disappoint Grandmama, but I had given my word.
“I will stop you,” Grandmama continued. “I will set wards around your room.”
I could break a ward, if I must.
Grandmama added, “And if the wards fail, I’ll set a footman to watch you.”
I swallowed my words of protest and turned on my heel. I marched down the hallway toward my bedchamber, seeing neither the patterned wallpaper nor the ornately framed pictures. I saw instead Gábor’s face, and James’s. I knew Noémi and Grandmama only acted out of concern for me, but that knowledge did nothing to stem the hot anger coursing through me.
Once in my room, I paced the floor. I threw myself onto my bed and screamed into my pillow. And then I looked at the bedclothes beneath my hand.
It only took moments to strip the bedclothes from the bed and fashion knots between them—heaven knew knots were the one thing for which my embroidery skills prepared me. I eased open the window. I had never escaped this way, but heroines did it all the time in books.
Someone tapped at my door, and my heart leapt into my throat.
“Anna? May I come in?” Noémi.
“I’ve no wish to speak to you.” Let her think I was sulking.
A deep sigh. “I want to help.”
“You don’t want to help. You want a world where things go on the same. I don’t.”
“I do want change. But not your way.”
I had to send her away. It was not hard to let bitterness infuse my voice, to craft an edge sharp enough to draw blood. “I liked you, Noémi. I trusted you. But now I wish I’d never met you.”
A long pause. A faint shuffling, then silence.
She was gone.
I steeled my heart against guilt and threw my makeshift rope out the window.
In books, the heroine never has any difficulty escaping through her window. I ran into trouble almost immediately: between my corset and my petticoats, I could not fit. I stripped off some of the petticoats, but I could do nothing about the corset or the narrow sleeves of my gown without summoning Ginny to help me undress, and she would feel duty-bound to tell Grandmama.
After much maneuvering, I managed to get out of the window, skirt and lower limbs first. The stitching beneath my sleeves tore, and the rope itself gave way when I was still a good six feet above the ground. I landed with a bone-jarring thud in the garden courtyard at the center of Grandmama’s rented palace and limped through the back gates toward the mews behind.