As if my prayer had conjured it, there was, indeed, a vehicle in the street. But it was a farmer’s cart, worn and slow moving. The farmer in question was unloading jugs of milk.
“We need a ride,” Noémi said without preamble. She released Ginny, who wavered a bit but did not fall, and unclasped the fine gold chain she wore. She marched to the farmer. “Here. Take this for payment.”
The farmer set down the jug he carried and promptly helped us into the back of his wagon. “Where to, miss?”
I sat beside Grandmama, her head pillowed in my lap. Noémi and Ginny crowded next to us, the bare planks of wood hard beneath us.
“Anywhere,” Noémi said. “Please, just drive!”
He clucked at his horses and they shuffled forward. I groaned. At this rate, the men behind us could outrun our wagon on foot.
Noémi closed her eyes and began whispering. I recognized a spell from her hand motions, and edged sideways, my arms pulling beneath Grandmama’s weight. Calm, I whispered to my fluttering heart, to my shadow self stirring beneath it. Please be calm. I could not afford to break another spell.
Noémi’s eyes flew open. “That should buy us some time.”
“What did you do?”
“The only thing I could think to do. I set a plague of boils on them—in, um, a location that should ensure they do not walk, run, or ride horseback easily for the next short while.” Her cheeks were pink, but a suggestion of a smile played about her lips.
I sagged back against the side of the wagon. “That is the best news I have heard all week.”
At my direction, the farmer drove us toward Café Pilvax, where we hoped to find word of Mátyás—and of Gábor, though I did not voice that wish. Ginny waited in the wagon with Grandmama while Noémi and I went in.
The interior was unusually empty—a single patron in the back, a stout man rubbing a cloth over the glass display cases near the front. He looked up at our entrance.
“Ladies. You should not be here.”
“We’re looking for someone,” I said. “Eszterházy Mátyás? A student, middling height, curling brown hair.”
“The students who were here are all gone. Rounded up by the Austrian police for treason.” He plucked a paper from a nearby table and held it out.
“What?” I gasped, snatching at the circular. Beside me, Noémi dug her fingers into my arm.
The paper smelled of ink, fresh from the printer. I unfolded it and stared at the German headline, my entire body tensing.
The Circle Restores Order to Troubled City.
I scanned onward. Last evening, devastating plans were set in motion to raze the city and bring down the Hapsburg government. Thanks to an informer, Luminate spell-binders and armed Austrian soldiers were prepared for just such action and were able to thwart the rebellion shortly after its onset, with only minimal damage to property in Pest.
I thought of Grandmama’s house, and the blistered and peeling front of the Pázmandy mansion, which we’d passed in our circuitous route through Pest. What had happened when I failed to give the signal for the Binding that evening? Such destruction had never been part of our plan. Of my plan, I realized: I did not truly know what Pet?fi and William had planned.
I had been as willfully ignorant of their plot as I had been to the Binding, choosing to acknowledge only what I wanted to see.
No citizens were killed, though some Luminate were unfortunately driven from their homes. It is now believed safe for their return.
The fracas was not without bloodshed, however. Some rebels were slain. And it has been confirmed that Lady Berri, erstwhile head of the Lucifera order in England, was shockingly found supporting revolutionary measures and was killed while fighting against the very Circle she purported to sustain.
Lady Berri. Images flashed across my mind: her eyes alight with secret amusement, the strangely imposing fashion with which she moved her stout body through rooms, the grim set to her mouth when she told me to flee.
She had died saving my life.
Noémi took the paper from my nerveless fingers and skimmed through it. One hand flew to her mouth.
I snatched the paper away, my heart thudding. The following have been apprehended as traitors. Executions are set to begin in two days’ time, a fittingly swift and just end for all such rabble.
With trembling fingers, I turned the circular over. A list of names was appended. My eyes flew down them, dread thick and bitter in my mouth. The letters swam before me, making it difficult to sort out the names. There were dozens of them. I recognized two as young men I’d met at Café Pilvax, one I had conversed with at Karolina’s, several I had danced with.
And there—William Skala. I pictured William as I had seen him last, his face radiant with the possibilities of revolution. In all his plans for the future, had he seen this?
Let there be no more, I prayed, guilty with the relief I’d feel if it were only William’s name. Or Pet?fi’s.
But no. There it was, the name I’d been fearing to see from the moment I spied the list. Gábor Kovács.
And a few lines later: Mátyás Eszterházy.
The sensation was like the moment when ice across a winter pond no longer holds your weight: only a second’s warning and then you are falling, gripped by a cold so deep and enveloping you cannot breathe.
I choked. How could a list—a string of letters on paper—be so deadly?
Noémi turned a tear-streaked face to me. “This! This is why I pleaded with you not to fight.”
My stomach flipped over. “Did you tell the Circle? You said you would stop us if you could.”
“You think I would betray my own brother?”
A voice cut across us, “But someone told them. Was it you?” Pet?fi staggered toward me, waggling his finger in my face. I had not recognized him in the gloom of the café. His rollicking gait made one thing quite clear: he was drunk. He began reciting in a singsong voice:
Why should I love my homeland?
Or care for her travails?
Her troubles will pass…eventually—
I’m a Magyar noblewoman!
His voice dropped to a normal register. “Your cousin had let me hope Luminate could be selfless—could be patriots. He was wrong. You’re self-serving wretches, and you women are worst of all. So concerned for your gowns and your society you can’t even follow through on a promise. Where was your broken spell? Where was your signal?”
Spittle flicked my cheek, and I flinched away. “I couldn’t break the Binding. I won’t loose the monsters it holds.”
A flash of remembered touch, ghostly against my cheek. The Lady was bound too. I grieved for her—but I could not let the others free.
“Selfish,” the poet sneered. “Weak. Frightened.”
“You cannot simply blame me,” I said. “If the signal didn’t come, why did you fight?”
“Because we were surrounded. Because someone betrayed us.” His eyes were flint. “And now my friends will die.”
“No,” Noémi said. “We can’t let them.”
“We have to do something,” I said. “Fight back.”