Andrea Höst - The Towers, the Moon

Tante Sabet took one look at the little collection of masks resting on Rian’s lap, sniffed, and then told the porters: "Put him in fifteen."

"Good morning, Tante Sabet," Rian said, demurely, but although she earned a second sniff, there was no sharp-tongued lecture. Rian, after all, was a paying guest.

No, this time Tante Sabet would reserve her lectures for Martine, and Martine would accept that as just, and not mind very much. Perhaps she would not even notice.

"You look worn to the bone," Rian said, accepting Martine’s hand out of the autocarriage. "A night of worry costs more than a thousand dances."

"I should never have let you go," Martine said, looking Rian up and down as if expecting to discover some great wound from an evening of veiled revelry.

"You know I quite like dancing," Rian reminded her.

Tante Sabet had taken care of paying the driver, and Rian smiled her thanks, since Tante Sabet’s disapproval of the Gilded Court was genuine and deeply ingrained. The cost would appear on Rian’s bill later, of course, but it was still a large concession.

"We might, I think, need to postpone the review of the twins' birthday arrangements," she said. "Perhaps this evening?"

"Bah. You think I need your advice? Even Prytennian chits are no great mystery."

"You were a girl once, after all," Étienne put in brightly, then lapsed wisely back into unconsciousness as the porters carried him away.

Rian followed their lead, and let Martine help her up the stairs, although she was feeling well enough. Even her feet had stopped hurting.

"You had best get this back where it belongs," she said, pressing the Mask of Léon into Martine’s hands as soon as they were in the privacy of her room.

"When you have told me everything," Martine said, firmly, following Rian to her bathroom.

"Everything would take a long time," Rian said, "and you were worried about your supervisor’s early arrival at the museum. Besides, all I am going to do is sleep – after I wake whoever is in the pipes room." Ruthlessly she twisted taps and heard, distantly, the banging that had been the bane of many of her nights.

"Did he return it willingly?"

Rian wished she could ignore the small, unhappy question, but she had learned long ago that lying about Henri did not help Martine in the least.

"He had lost it in a game, but I won it back," she said. "Perhaps he would have simply given it up, if he’d still had it. But knowing Henri, I doubt it."

She stripped off her four layers of expensive tissue and draped them over a rail, knowing she couldn’t hold back another important detail.

"I extracted a promise from him, under the rules of Forfeit," she said at last, as she stepped into steaming water. "To stay out of Milo’s career."

"What?" Martine’s face became blank with astonishment. "But…he could do so much for Milo."

"And has made clear, over and again, that he won’t help him," Rian said briskly. "If nothing else, this way Milo can stand proudly on his own accomplishments."

One thing Martine had never been was stupid. Nor was she truly blind where Henri was concerned, no matter how many chances she gave him to stand apart from his own history. The bones of her face stood briefly stark, then she bowed her head, and a wing of black hair hid her expression.

"Go put the mask back," Rian said softly.

Martine leaned forward and hugged Rian, tight and fierce, before leaving without another word.

Sighing, Rian slid down in the bath. It always ended with Martine hurt. Nothing Rian had ever done could prevent a devoted heart from eating itself away. And Martine was not even the first person to walk away from Rian that night, concealing wounds with a straight back and set face.

Through rising steam, Rian contemplated her increasing capacity for causing people damage while trying to help them. A power in the process of becoming . Was that even a thing she wanted, when she stepped back from her pride and looked with clear eyes?

She had gained so much in such a short time: godly allegiance, money, position, youth. Great good fortune, or cruel snare? She was undoubtedly being used.

But that did not make her a puppet. Whatever decisions she faced as a result of her new advantages , it was still Rian who would make them. Her choices, made wisely or clumsily, guided by her own heart. If there were strings, she would cut them, or grasp them, or simply find her way through them, just as she had the whole of her life.

Rian had always been in the process of becoming. She would grow into power.

Eluned Tenning had not expected the trip to France to cure her sister of heart-sickness, but she’d hoped it would buoy her spirits. And that first night in Lutèce – when they had revelled in the wonders of the Towers, and then had a dawn adventure – Eleri had sparked up as any person would.

But it never lasted. Even though they had gone to a dozen museums and galleries full of things that Eleri usually found fascinating, Eluned’s sister had barely seemed to be attending. She had dealt with their mass of cousins with distracted politeness, and had not cared about the sudden rearrangement of their plans so their Aunt could visit the Gilded Court. Not even the news of the disappearance of the Princess Royal had caught her interest.

Eluned had tried not to be impatient. It wasn’t Eleri’s fault she had fallen in love, or that her heart had decided on someone they’d be lucky to meet again, even at the same school. But it was hard not to wish that her sister would just get over it.

On the evening before they were due to return to Prytennia, Eleri settled down after dinner to stare out their hotel room window, and rather than show her frustration, Eluned escaped downstairs to look for a more interesting way to spend the last little bit of the visit to France. In the family-run Hotel Lourien, she almost inevitably would encounter a cousin, and she rather hoped it would be cousin Lotti, who was the most bouncing, cheerful girl Eluned had ever met.

If she had not been so determined to hide her impatience, Eluned would probably not have gone downstairs alone. She had met more than one cousin who was not so enjoyable to talk to as Lotti, and if she happened across cousin Emile, she could not be certain cousin Antoine would arrive a second time to rescue her from that too-friendly arm around her waist.

Thankfully, in the storeroom staff used to take breaks she found one of the younger cousins, Milo, memorising lines for an Aquitanian play, and happily agreed to help him rehearse for the Latin performances.

Eluned had only known Milo a few days, and thought him obliging, hard-working and kind, but he had not stolen all her thoughts, and did not make her want to blush whenever he was around, let alone spend all her time morosely staring at nothing. Even so, she did not move away when Milo’s demonstration of how actors faked kisses on stage somehow turned into a not at all pretend kiss.

It tingled to touch someone’s tongue with your own. No-one had ever mentioned that. Surprise made Eluned go still.

Milo immediately lifted his head, gave her a concerned look, and said: "Too far?"

"It’s all right." Eluned’s voice was satisfactorily calm. "It was just different to what I expected."

"You didn’t expect me to be so rude as to not ask properly first," Milo said, but then offered her a smile that lit up his odd, angular face. "But me, I am not sorry I was rude, if you are not."

"I’m not," Eluned said, which was true, then added daringly: "At my last school it was such a big thing, to know what kissing was like. I always felt stupid."

"And so you plan to enact a transformation sequence? You shall return to your Prytennia a sophisticate."