Chapter 01

Bright leather shoes were beginning to pinch. It was a better pain than the Lady was having; knelt atop her bed and groaning like a heifer about to calf. Still, it pricked at Elmery’s attention and stirred the pool of resentment under her ribs.

Who gives birth in a library?

The room had the same dark polished shelves as her Father’s study, but the books had been chased out of their cubbies for the impending child. Sealed out of the room along with men, the lady’s husband, for the long days of her confinement.

As she surveyed the hollowed cases, Elmery reasoned it was to spare their pride. The couple’s home was more of a bloated cottage than a manor, no doubt their books were thin and ancient. But, this was their rightful place. They should never have been cast out.

The Lady screamed. Elmery watched the clutch of admirers sigh and sway with the braying woman, and tucked her arms closer to her chest. She could have been working. If they had only kept their books in their rightful place, she may have salvaged some of her time. But, no. Here she was, in the gloom of another woman’s birthing. Trying not to curse the unborn babe for its parents’ social climbing.

'You’re sighing,' Lyona looked up from the square of silk she was stitching.

‘Pardon?’

‘You’re breathing like a hog,’ she skewered Elmery with a glance, coiffed piles of tilting precariously. ‘I’m trying to concentrate.’

Elmery had hoped the sting would fade out of her voice in the days of tight silence since they’d arrived. It seemed not.

'I’m sorry.'

‘You’re the one who wanted to be here. Saints know why.’

The needle and thread paused between her hands, Lyona’s eyes scoured across the room of older noblewomen; stealing glimpses of the straining woman through the crowd.

Elmery studied her sister’s profile, watching the glower soften into craving. The needle pierced back through silk and Lyona fed her frustrations into another perfect row in another perfect flower.

'If you want to step out-'

'Some of us will be mothers one day, Elmery. This is a necessary education.'

'But, you don’t need it.’ Raising in a smile in the hope she was turn back to her, Elmery said, 'You have me.'

Lyona’s warm arpeggio disrupted the musty air around them. A few skirts twitched as the ladies remembered the looming sisters, but none dared turned to see Lyona smirk.

‘

and Lyona went stiff on the window ledge.

Though nobody met their eyes, Lyona’s lips pressed until they paled. Elmery

Elmery didn’t flinch at the rise in their shoulders, but Lyona went stiff on the window ledge. Her hands flattened on her dress and pressed her lips until they paled.

Slowly, Elmery walked in front of her and disrupted the ladies’ gaze. When she settled on the ledge beside Lyona, wool skirts grating against voluminous silk, they turned back to the bearing.

'I have a theory.'

Lyona whet her lips. 'El,' she warned.

'I’ve been thinking on it since I knew we would be coming here,' Elmery insisted. 'You’ve been curious about what Devin and I have been discussing, haven’t you?'

'I don’t dwell on your fits of interests. They pass soon enough.'

There was enough truth in the accusation to flare Elmery’s hands, 'I know you were surprised when I told father I would come-'

'If you can confuse embarrassment with surprise.'

Her words stuffed the narrow space between them until it was bursting.

Elmery ran her hands over her borrowed skirts and let her nails stubble over the rough grey. She knew now that the invitation didn’t extend to both daughters. Their father read the invitation over dinner but only his reaction told her it had been a courtesy and not a kindness.

But, some good might come of her lapse in attention.

'Happily…' Elmery rallied herself to persist, 'it has posed a new question. We could both consider it, to pass the time.'

It was Lyona’s turn to sigh.

Elmery turned her knees towards her sister’s and focused on the polished skin of her hands. She settled the words in her mind until they were sturdy enough to speak aloud.

'If nothing makes us into sorcerers we must be made that way,' she said.

'Well done.'

'That isn’t…' Elmery’s eyes flit up to Lyona’s face, but she was still intent on the swarming frock coats and carefully rigged curls of the women. 'I suppose my theory, in its entirety, is that the power comes at birth. Perhaps we take it with us from the place we’re first made.'

'You think sorcery lurks under every woman’s petticoat?'

'There’s something in us that creates. Something inexplicable and powerful enough to forge a body and a soul. A destiny.'

Lyona’s hooded eyes finally turned to her.

'And what part do men play in all of this?'

'Base material.' Elmery’s hands flared once more before they threaded together. 'Sorcery can’t affect what doesn’t exist. Women can’t forge life without that initial…source of life.'

Lyona raised that infuriating smile. Pink and full, close to hand ever since she had abandoned Elmery at the festival and crept in at dawn. Her hair loose; her new ribbons missing.

'Poor Devin.'

Elmery wasn’t sure how to respond. She waited until the humour wore out of Lyona’s face, gently nudging the floorboards with her heels. Soon, she was keeping a rhythm with the grunts and groaning from the bed.

As the woman sat back and roared, Elmery picked up her voice again.

'If I’m right, if all things were equal and we all had a choice to become…what I am,' she glanced back to her sister, 'it poses a question.'

'It poses several.'

'Well, my first question would be…what stopped you?'

'What stopped me?'

'If you could have taken that source of life and magic, why didn’t you? Why come out the way you are, instead of like me?'

Lyona set out her feet until the toes peeked out from her silks. She crossed her ankles and considered her answer; her smile brightening with every thought.

All at once she drew her feet back and turned to Elmery, their knees pressing together.

'It’s hot in here, don’t you think?'

'I suppose so,' Elmery agreed.

'Do you see that woman? The one who can’t keep her four-strand braids steady?' Elmery looked across the women until she saw the strips of uneven hair. 'I’m concerned about her. She seems pale.' When she looked back, Lyona’s eyes were ready to seize hers, 'I’d hate to see her fall and disrupt the midwife. Wouldn’t you?'

There was another screech from the bed and they winced at the sound.

The pale woman was withdrawing from the sudden scurry of activity. When she turned, Elmery saw fear staining through her jacket; sweat pinning navy blue wings to her back.

'Is she starting to sway-'

Lyona’s wondering was interrupted.

Like the hard snap of linen to shake out a crease, or the moment pressure became a sneeze, things changed.

The woman still stood before them, but in the space of a blink she was different. She turned, hair un-mussed, her clothes dry and pressed as the moment she’d bought them. The heat was out of her body but she flushed a deep red; a furious crimson at the sudden, all consuming, touch.

As a baby was gathered up into eager arms and its thin wail began to wind about them, all, Lyona joined the woman in staring at Elmery.

Her mouth twitched at the corners, 'In answer to your question…' she waited as the woman balled her anger into her fists and pushed her way through the crowd. 'See her reaction?'

Elmery turned so they were eye to eye, 'Yes?'

With a fresh smile, Lyona tipped her head until her braid swung down beside her cheek,

'That’s why.'