Selfday, 26 First Winter

2899 Tranquil Era

Malou waited two hours after the last headlights of a hansom had come and gone from the Valois Manor’s front doors before asking Laure to disable the entire wing’s security system, including Elodie’s mechanical cat. Then, as soon as Elodie shifted in her sleep, Malou rolled away from her to the edge of the bed.

The wood floors gave a groan as she crossed the room to her wardrobe. A soft glow from the desk lamp answered to her proximity in the color of burning tungsten—waning as she drew near, waxing as she passed—and cast into shadows the overly-elaborate details of the room’s walls. She’d never get used to this grandeur.

Inside her much-too-big wardrobe, a chandelier awoke in cascades of shimmering glass. Seeing that the kind attendant hadn’t hung the black ensemble Malou had packed next to the white funeral attire Leonore chose, her magic must’ve held up as she’d imagined.

She’d gone over the Rojagat game with Haddou in her head a hundred times to find whatever weakness the professor had exploited. If it’d just been that Haddou was more skilled, then Malou just needed to practice more—and bigger. Not simply hiding a letter or changing the face of a few cards. So, this time, she’d imagined her clothes and the letter as invisible and intangible. Unseeable and untouchable.

Her failure could’ve also been an issue of being too vague, of lacking foresight. She hadn’t imagined any of the other players’ hands, hadn’t imagined their losses, hadn’t even fully imagined herself winning. It could be that Haddou had thought of all of it and had seen her vision of a win all the way through. So, this time, Malou had imagined what someone would see and feel when they unpacked her clothes, imagined them staying undetectable until she unraveled the magic on them herself.

She located her valise under the tufted leather bench in the middle of the room and opened it with magic on her fingertips to reveal its contents. Black breeches, turtleneck, overcoat, gloves, and a simple headwrap. This was a definite improvement, but it wasn’t as if she could make her entire person invisible and intangible yet. Maybe soon.

Malou changed quickly, pocketing her headwrap for later. “Laure, how much time do I have until the attendants start their sweep of this wing?”

“Approximately five minutes," her secretary said, "give or take a six-second margin of error.”

Adrenaline was a spark of welcomed fire in her veins as she checked the pocket of her overcoat for Zeynel’s second letter after shrugging it on. Still there. A smirk stretched at her lips. She took a steadying breath, crouching to retie her laces. “Anyone else awake?”

“That cousin of yours is on his way from the attendants’ quarters. Looks like he’ll run into one of the attendants downstairs in about two minutes. Not so good at sneaking around, it seems. Not that you’re much better, but you have me. You have four minutes now.”

So perhaps the rumors of his promiscuity held a thread of truth. Malou stood, rolled her shoulders. Fingers buttoning the front of her coat, she moved back to her bed and sat on the edge. She couldn’t help it. She still didn’t quite possess the heart to leave without telling the girl something.

Elodie’s mechanical cat was curled into the nook behind her knees on top of the silk comforter, sleeping thanks to Laure.

Malou traced a finger along her cousin’s cheek. “Elodie.”

When the girl’s eyelids fluttered but didn’t open, Malou tried again a little louder over Laure’s three-minute warning.

“Can you wake up for a moment?” she asked.

Elodie moaned, then squinted at Malou in the dark. “You alright?” she asked, worry tangible in her voice. “Why’re you dressed?”

Malou tucked a curl behind the girl’s ear. “I’m fine. I just have to run a tiny errand.” The little lie would prevent Elodie from thinking she was missing and keep her from worrying more. “If I don’t make it before the attendants come in the morning, do you think you could cover for me?”

Elodie nodded as her eyes closed, her brow furrowed with sleep. Malou pressed their cheeks together, smiling against her cousin’s warmth until Laure gave a two-minute warning. Then she pulled away and stood with heaviness in her chest.

“Malou,” Elodie said, watching her from the bed. “Promise you’ll be safe?”

“I promise,” Malou said.

"I love you." Elodie offered a sleepy smile, one that passed between them an unspoken promise of another sort. That if Malou didn’t return, Elodie wouldn’t hesitate to tell someone she’d left in the middle of the night.

Elodie deserved to know where she was going and what she was doing as much as Gavriel, but she couldn’t tell either for the same reasons.

“I love you more," Malou said as Elodie's eyelids finally closed again. "Sweet dreams, my dear cousin.”

“Awe, how endearing,” Laure cooed in her ear. Sometimes Malou wished she knew where Laure learned to behave like this. “I’m disabling the rest of the house’s cameras now. You have approximately one minute left to dawdle.”

She was sure to close the door quietly behind her for Elodie’s sake, and Laure locked it without her asking. Then she stole down the east wing toward a flight of hidden stairs the attendants used during the day.

“And Dorian?” she asked, pulling on her gloves.

“Preoccupied with bribing the attendant who caught him before I disabled the cameras. Fifty seconds.”

As she hurried beneath on quiet feet, the chandeliers in the hall brightene. Sheer curtains framed a view of a gray, nearly moonless night. Her gloved fingers twisted at her overcoat.

“Also, I need a town car—”

“Oh,” Laure interrupted, “another request? I’m beginning to think you like me or something.”

She almost rolled her eyes, but Laure wouldn’t be able to see her face since all of the cams were disabled. “Pick a company the Valois have never used.” And preferably a driver she could pay off afterward, but that was the majority of them. “Request it anonymously and have them wait for me at the service entrance.”

Laure giggled, though it was too perfect to sound real. “Easy. Anything else?”

“Make sure they speed.”

“Way ahead of you. Fifteen seconds.”

“I don’t need a countdown.” At the end of the hall, a panel slid away at her touch and slid back behind her. Two steps down, a bright light shined in her face. She winced and threw up a hand to shadow her eyes, but she was far from surprised. Apparently, her older cousin was adept in the fine art of bribery.

“Malou?” Dorian lowered his rodona light enough for her to see his disheveled robe and a slight shadow of stubble growing along his jaw. He must’ve been climbing the stairs in darkness but turned on the light when he’d heard her footsteps. “Where are you going?”

“Not where you were, that’s for sure.” She wanted to laugh. What right did he have to ask her where she was going when he’d clearly been spending time with a few choice attendants? Though she was unfortunate enough to encounter him on her way out, she had something with which to blackmail him. He was exactly like the pretentious lot they’d once condemned together.

He gave her a mocking smile. “Maybe I’m just concerned. My honor’s university student cousin is sneaking out in the middle of the night past curfew.”

“And my celebrity lawyer cousin caught me after sharing a bed with attendants who’d fear losing their position if they refused you.” Perhaps she was wrong, but the rumors coupled with her accusation would be powerful enough. “So let’s just pretend we didn’t see each other. Sound good?”

Patting his cheek, she shoved past his rigid form down the stairs without waiting for his answer. He didn’t try to stop her. If he dared to tell anyone he’d seen her leave, he knew she’d pay him right back in kind. This time it wouldn’t be by spamming his secretary with inappropriate sexual content.

Still, she had to clench her jaw against the tremor of her nerves. While Laure had warned her this could happen, she reminded herself that following her secretary's advice would've meant not being able to give Elodie a proper goodbye. That could've had far larger consequences when she returned than simply running into Dorian now. It wasn't always possible to follow the best course of action because the best course of action often didn't account for being human.

Which meant this only could’ve been avoided if she were better at using magic. Or if her dad had trained her more. Or if he were still alive to teach her now.

The stairs creaked under her boots down to the first floor, evidently not as well kept as the main staircases. Of course. At the bottom, she pushed into the hall enough to check for any flittering shadows, then hurried to the laundry room. Her pulse skittered in her fingertips as she eased the door open and shut.

Even though the attendants weren’t here to supervise the automated laundry system, a basket of dirty linens tipped onto a conveyer belt, gears turning soundlessly to deliver the load into the washing machine. The dryer dinged while she moved past it to the door, and another hulk of laundry toppled onto another belt to be shaken out, steamed out, and either folded or placed on a wooden hanger by several automated arms.

Outside, the night was frigid on the tip of her nose as she jogged through one of the smaller gardens. The attendant in the guardhouse was sleeping when she checked, so she stole one of the spare keys to the old-fashioned attendants’ gate and clipped it to the end of one of her chatelaine’s metal chains.

The town car was waiting for her, and as she drew near, the driver stepped out to open the backdoor. Her destination was already mapped translucently against the windshield when the town car’s electric engine started with a low hum. After hiding her hair in the headwrap, Malou sank into the plush seats and held her arms close as the town car pulled from the gates.

Tonight, all she needed to do was hand Professor Brosch the letter. His butler would probably answer the door and invite her to wait in the tearoom while the professor pulled himself away from his research on the Teir. They’d exchange formalities, then she’d pass him the note. She’d keep the town car idling in the driveway for her quick departure back to the Valois Manor. She drew in a long, steady breath and relaxed her arms.

Professor Anselm Brosch had been one of her father’s top graduate students, then his friend and colleague. Now Brosch was a member of the Blind Collective, a group of engineers dedicated to protecting the Teir, as was Malou’s father before his death and Professor Haddou before her retirement. Her dad had said he didn’t know how to use magic, though. Most of the Blind Collective couldn’t, he’d said.

Brosch's addition to the growing list of people to whom Malou delivered messages from Zeynel and his Onzena Nit fed into her idea that the vice-premier was affiliated with the Blind Collective in some way. She just didn’t have enough information yet to say for certain what business the two groups shared except secrecy, but she still had some hope left that Zeynel would tell her someday.

The town car merged onto the busy motorway, but traffic thinned as they headed into the outskirts of the province of Nuyere’s capitol Dorenheim to the Brosch House. The last time Malou had seen Professor Anselm Brosch was at her father’s funeral. He’d been sitting in front, staring into the forest that hosted Tousieux’s evergreen graveyard. Until that day, she’d never seen anything but a smile on his face.

Although she didn’t know the exact number of the Blind Collective, eight professors she could link to the group had left campus since her father’s death—two within the last six months. Brosch was the latest of them. They left without notice, without explanation. She couldn’t imagine the Blind Collective could afford such a loss of members, so perhaps that was where the Onzena Nit fit into the puzzle. Zeynel could be allowing the Collective’s messages to pass through his vast network to lend a sense of anonymous enormity to use against those who wished to steal the Teir.

When she’d asked Zeynel if he knew where the professors had all gone, he hadn’t answered. Not directly at least, since no answer always meant something with him. Instead, he’d attempted to persuade her that she was wasting time looking into their affairs, and so she hid her search within moments stolen between classes, studying, and passing along his Onzena Nit messages.

Malou clasped her black-gloved hands together in her lap. Until now, not once had she been asked to deliver a message to one of the professors who’d disappeared. Some part of her had always assumed they’d left the Collective, either by desire or death. The former had been pure optimism while the latter had been pure cynicism. She doubted both alike.

A fifteen-minute drive south and the town car moved back to the deserted streets. After a few turns, the driver pulled up to the front gates of the Brosch House. She dialed the guardhouse from a menu of options displayed against the windshield and announced an anonymous visitor as per Laure's instructions.

Malou expected she’d be asked to show her face at the very least, but the gates opened to the gabled roof and tall chimneys that she remembered of the stone house. She’d never forget the place where her father had set the Teir’s box in her palm and told her to open it. Her ears filled with the memory of the sharp snap of the silver box opening on old hinges, with her father’s chuckle mixing with Brosch’s laughter.

The driver stepped out of the car, and Malou pulled her turtleneck up to her nose.

“Do you have access to the Brosch House system?” Malou asked. Malou had programmed her secretary into the Valois Manor herself three years ago, but her father had coded her into several systems before he’d died—one being Tousieux University.

“Yes,” Laure said, “your father programmed me into the system here twelve years ago. Such nice, clean code. Yours looks like the drawings of a three-year-old in comparison.”

“Yes, you’ve said.” Malou wasn’t sure why her father would’ve gone to the trouble of giving Laure access to Brosch’s house, but it was useful. Otherwise, she would’ve had to hack into it herself before Laure could do anything of value. “Disable the cams.”

The driver opened the door for her. Here there were no porters to welcome her. Instead, when she stepped onto the cobbled driveway, Professor Anselm Brosch was standing in the doorway. Where were the house’s staff? There’d been several.

“They’re already disabled. Have been all day.”

Why would he do that? If he was expecting a message today, he could've done it to lend a cover of privacy for the messenger. That wasn't protocol, though, so that seemed unlikely.

“All day?" That was especially strange. The other explanation was that someone else had disabled them without Brosch's knowledge, which would mean someone else was looking to be discreet inside the house tonight. "Find out who did it.”

“Demanding today, aren’t you?”

“You’re used to it,” Malou said.