Rosamund Hodge: Gilded Ashes

“On whose behalf?” The footman looms closer; he’s almost as young as I am but a head taller, with broad shoulders, greased-back hair, and the smug confidence of a man with both muscles and a white waistcoat.

I smile brightly. “Lord Anax sent for me.”

He laughs. “Do you expect me to believe—”

“Ah, Maia, there you are. Finally.”

Lord Anax stands on the landing above, leaning against the banister. He’s facing one of the great portraits on the wall; he looks down at us from the corner of his eye. His waistcoat is cut from golden brocade, and a golden watch chain glints from his pocket. Everything about him proclaims lordly unconcern.

“Well, bring her up,” he says, fixing his gaze again on the portrait. “I haven’t got all day.”

“My lord?” says the footman. “Is this suspicious character—”

Lord Anax favors him with a glance that says the entire universe is too wearisomely stupid for words but the footman most of all.

“This suspicious character has come to visit me on behalf of our friends in the library,” he says with haughty boredom. “Kindly do not interfere with these matters again. Maia, come with me.”

I walk past the red-faced footman to Lord Anax’s side. He straightens up, says, “This way,” and strides swiftly down the corridor. A few minutes later, we are back in his study.

“Well,” he says, turning to me, and his face is suddenly washed clean of the boredom it had before. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”

“And now you’ve assigned me a new job.” I wrinkle my forehead. “‘Our friends in the library’?”

He laughs. “The Resurgandi, of course. Everyone’s got a silly nickname for them, and that’s my father’s.”

“That footman can’t have believed it,” I say. “He’s gossiping with the other servants right now.”

“Oh, but I think he will believe it. There’s talk of inducting me, since I did so well at university, and you know how they cloak all their goings-on in secretive mummery. Oaths and hand signs and the like. Keeps them occupied, I suppose.”

Of course I know about the Resurgandi: they have their headquarters at the university here in Sardis, where they research the Hermetic techniques that create streetlamps and grow silkworms despite the climate. Stepmother sometimes mutters that they dabble in demonic arts as well, but I know that’s a lie, because I know what it looks like when people meet with demons.

Or when they’re foolish enough to bargain with one.

“I have another letter for you,” I say, pulling the slightly creased paper out of my pocket.

“I read the other one last night,” he says. “Verified all the quotations, too. Give me another day and I could track down all of the ancient sources from which your mistress drew her rhetorical figures, because—well, imitating six authors in two pages may be a good exercise, but with that many pieces stitched together, it’s impossible to hide the seams, let alone express an original thought.”

I remember Koré’s pale face when she handed me the letter this morning, her ink-stained fingers.

“She’s a very stupid person,” I say. “But it is neither lordly nor kind to sneer at her efforts.”

“You have an odd kind of loyalty.”

“You have an odd kind of tact. Or is that beneath the notice of a duke’s heir?”

It’s like standing in front of a house with open windows and watching all the shutters fly shut at once. He only moves a fraction—a slight lift of the chin and tightening of the shoulders, a minuscule lowering of the eyelids—but the bored young aristocrat is suddenly back.

“You’d be surprised what I’m expected not to notice.” He plucks the letter from my hand. “So. Tell me why.”

“Why you’re expected not to notice things?”

“No.” He looks away, plucks Alcibiades off the table. “Why I should respect your lady, when you call her stupid?”

Again I feel the strange, heady rush of chains uncurling from around my tongue.

“Well,” I say, “she’s stupid because she wants her mother to love her, and she thinks her mother will if she obeys her perfectly. But she’s clever enough, at least, to realize she can’t love or be kind to everyone. And she’s honest enough that she doesn’t pretend. She’s cruel to me, not out of spite, but because she thinks it will please her mother, and she makes no bones about it.”

Lord Anax looks at me. “You think I should respect her because she’s cruel to you.”

“Because she’s practical, despite her foolishness.” He’s still staring at me, and I add hastily, “You don’t need to worry she’ll ever be unkind to you, because she knows how you can help her mother and sister.”

He shakes his head and laughs. “I can’t tell if you’re the maddest girl in the world, or the most noble.”

“I’m not mad,” I say. “I’m the only one who’s not, because I don’t want to be loved.”

Lord Anax looks away at Alcibiades, as if the skull’s empty eye sockets contain all the secrets of the world. “What’s so terrible about being loved?”

I think of how Thea is always glancing at Stepmother, her body gently leaning toward her like a sunflower seeking the sun. Of how Koré stands in marble perfection and never looks at Stepmother once, because that is the way that she believes a perfect daughter would behave.

I remember laughing beneath the apple tree, delighted by my mother’s love, and I remember the day I learned the price of that love.

“Love is madness,” I say. “Doesn’t everyone agree that you’d do anything, endure anything, to be with the ones you love? So either you’re willing to let them use you with any sort of cruelty, so long as they keep you—which makes you a fool—or you’re willing to commit any cruelty, so long as you get to keep them—which makes you a monster. Either way, it’s madness.”

“Alcibiades, I think we’ve found the maddest girl and the only sane girl in one,” he says, and then looks back at me. “You’re not making a very good argument for marriage, you know.”

“I told you,” I say. “My lady won’t ever love you.”

“You’re very devoted to her cause,” he says. “Are you sure you aren’t doing this for love of her?”

“No,” I say quietly. “I just need her out of the way.”

The next day, I’m so tired that I have to walk to the palace double-quick, or I’ll sit down and fall asleep on the street. Thea said she wouldn’t have anyone but me modify her green silk dress for the ball—I think she meant to make Stepmother feel I was valuable, but Stepmother’s hatred for me is matched only by her belief in my speed. I had to sew all night to meet her demands. Now my eyes itch and ache with weariness, and all I can think is that maybe Lord Anax will let me sit down in his chair a moment, or even just curl up in a corner.

I’m so busy dreaming about that corner that I walk straight into a footman. It’s the same one who tried to throw me out yesterday.

“Lord Anax is in the second-best drawing room,” he says after a short, stiff pause.

“Take me to him,” I say, trying to sound authoritative. The drawing room may have a sofa.

The drawing room has gilt mirrors on the walls, a statue of Persephone in the center, and two sofas with plump purple cushions.

It also has a piano. When the footman eases the door open, Lord Anax is sitting at the piano with his back to us, pounding out a rollicking dance tune as if his life depends on it. The footman opens his mouth to announce me, but I shake my head and slip inside silently.

The sofa is soft as newly risen bread dough. I sink into it. Lord Anax is slamming out the notes of the song as loud and as fast as he can, but I’m asleep in moments.