Andrea Höst - The Towers, the Moon

D’Argent, face unveiled and alight with a kind of savage pleasure, leaned out from the engine of an elderly steam train and shot at an autocarriage crowded with people. He handed his empty pistol to a woman with short-cropped hair – perhaps a sister, from the strong resemblance – and took from her a loaded replacement.

Interesting, but not useful. As D’Argent sat down, Rian tried again.

Gustav of Sweden: big, blond and grand in furs, at the centre of a crowded hall. He faced a woman whose long brown hair was unbound, restrained only by one of the elaborate Swedish marriage crowns. Ceremoniously, he offered her a sword with a golden armlet balanced on the hilt. No joy or dissatisfaction disturbed an expression of perfect neutrality. Her dark eyes were steady.

Rian blinked away the scene and looked across at the person now settled in the chair opposite. No stranger to the art of cosmetics, she mentally darkened brows and lashes, and made comparisons to two very different visions.

Heloise. This was Princess Heloise.

Rian had met women who dressed as men to escape walls that kept them small, and she’d also known people who used clothing to express a true reflection of their heart. Either could be true for Heloise, and it helped Rian not at all in taking her next step. She had been given a clear illustration of two very different futures for the princess, but did not even know which choice would lead to which outcome. Or how much the Duke of Balance had guided what she saw.

Turning, Rian frowned at Alexandrine, waiting patiently by the room’s door. "It occurs to me that it’s always worth asking whether your clever gambit was someone else’s move all along."

Alexandrine didn’t respond. Princess Heloise said: "Now you’re being mysterious."

"I am being annoyed with myself. A short while ago someone very grand called me a power in the process of becoming , and I was pleased, and complimented, and did something he wanted. I liked the idea of being the one making the decisions, instead of a tool dragged this way and that by larger forces. But here I am, with a small decision to make, putting off making it because I don’t know what will happen next, or how much of this situation has been created. I feel out of my depth, and I’ve never liked that."

Heloise-D’Argent propped her chin on one hand in a show of boredom. "You make yourself sound most intriguing," she said, in a tone to suggest the opposite.

Rian gazed back at France’s Princess Royal, and found herself setting aside calculation in favour of simple fellow feeling.

"Your brother is a chrysalide."

A bald statement that left Princess Heloise utterly still, with not even a flicker of an eyelid to betray her reaction. Rian wondered if it was possible that the princess had already known – but, no, chrysalides were indistinguishable from humans until their wings began to develop.

While she watched, the ribbons and threads around the princess changed – some shrinking away, while others grew longer – and Rian’s extra sense brought her a shaft of piercing hurt. Whatever else she felt about the news, the revelation had wounded the Princess Royal. For the silence of her mother, or the loss of her brother?

Rian wondered whether any of it mattered. Was this even the small decision that would have large consequences for the women of France? And, even though she was the daughter of a Frenchman, did Rian truly have any business trying to change a whole country to better suit her own sensibilities?

To better suit Martine and Milo, on the other hand…

"I would like to see your face."

Rian glanced from the princess to Alexandrine, only to find the member of the Tower of Balance had turned her back. Her business was to arbitrate forfeits, not small-large choices.

With a faint shrug, Rian lifted off the white and gold snake mask, and then untied her veil. Princess Heloise tugged free her own, and they looked at each other.

"I do not thank you for this," the princess said. "Or ask how you know it. But I am…but I have heard it." She stood, replacing her veil, and crossed to Alexandrine. "Return me to the assembly hall, if you may." She looked back at Rian. "I will know you again, if I meet you."

And then she was gone. Rian looked at her hands, then carefully replaced veil and mask before finally returning her attention to the mask of a silver lion, almost forgotten on the table.

She picked it up, and lifted it briefly so she could look through its eyes. Martine’s future, clear of another threat. Until the next time Henri wanted something from her.

"Is there somewhere I can put this?" she asked, when Alexandrine returned. "I might have forfeits to pay, and I would hate to have come so far only to lose it again."

Alexandrine touched the mask, and it vanished. "Say my name within the Towers and it will return to you."

"Thank you." Rian stood. She thought of asking Alexandrine how much she had known about the Dauphin’s two children, and what choice the Court member would have made, if she had been allowed to interfere. Probably Alexandrine had seen it all before, and from the perspective of a century or so it seemed a minor dilemma.

Rian scooped up the remainder of Heloise-D’Argent’s Tears, and attached them to her veil.

"Perhaps I will see you again, if I return next century," she said, and was vaguely cheered by the reflection that she would not necessarily outlive everyone she had ever met.

If the current fashions lasted into winter, there would be considerable profit to be made in renting coats to the visitors to the Towers. Rian had recovered the rest of her dress, but tissue did little against a chill wind, and she shivered and winced as soon as she stepped from beneath the canopy of the Hall of Balance.

Holding the Mask of Léon firmly, she began to bounce-skip toward the station. It was a tired time of night, an hour or more before dawn, and the island far less crowded than it had been during her arrival mid-evening. A few drifts of weary revellers stumbled toward the entrance to the train station. Others would wait in sheltered seating areas for the return of normal gravity, which would be swiftly followed by the arrival of autocarriages.

Rian was being followed. She knew it even before her perception of the Great Forest strengthened, and she clicked her tongue in exasperation. Probably they hoped for exactly what she carried curled in her right hand: shell-like silvery disks that had been given to her when she left the Towers in exchange for her remaining Tears. She was not overly concerned about defending herself, but a snatch-and-grab might leave the Mask of Léon damaged.

Warmth dropped over her shoulders. Startled, Rian turned to find a black cat mask atop familiar brown curls.

"There was no need to wait out here in the chill, Étienne."

"You know Tante Sabet as well as I, and yet you say that," he said, fussing briefly with the set of his coat around her. "And they wouldn’t let me wait inside the train station. You have it, then."

Rian glanced down at the Mask of Léon, then said: "Let’s get out of the wind."

"I do not ask. Remark on that, for it is a feat of restraint."

Étienne swayed, reoriented himself, and managed a slow wallow toward the train station. The true feat was that he’d managed to stay upright with that much brandy in him.

Even so, Rian no longer felt she was being pursued, and reflected on the value of a visible escort as she steered him down the station ramp and watched him doze during the journey southwest. He roused a little to transfer to an autocarriage, and then slept on her shoulder until they arrived back at the Hotel Lourien.

The front door flew open as they pulled up, and Martine, two porters, and a highly unimpressed Tante Sabet – who was not technically supposed to even know about this expedition, but of course had found out – swarmed over them.