A. Hartley - Will Power

Before half of this had sunk in, she was gone. Garnet faltered for a second. His eyes met mine and there was uncertainty in them, but he looked to his sister as she stepped through the door, and a hardness came into his face. “Good-bye, Will,” he said, stiffly. And with that, he followed her out the door.

This was a bit of a setback. I had toyed with the idea of abandoning the party from the first day I had met them, but it was usually an empty threat. I needed them in this strange land and, though they could all get on my last nerve, I had grown to like them. Laughable though this now seemed, I had once thought that Renthrette might turn into something more than a friend. Garnet was a tougher nut, perhaps, but I had never really considered the possibility that they might just dump me on the side of the road. I had always assumed that I was just valuable enough to them to make them put up with my idiosyncrasies as I put up with theirs. Apparently this was not so.

Yet, however much Renthrette fancied herself party leader, she did not speak for Lisha and the others. I had briefly flirted with the idea of brandishing my secret knowledge about Lisha as a way of derailing their righteousness, a way of showing that the person they respected most thought me useful, may think me somehow more trustworthy than them in ways I couldn’t quite explain. But I didn’t. I had promised Lisha, and that meant something. So did the sense that there was something more important than whether or not Renthrette liked me.

Lisha had left me with a task, and whatever else it might achieve I figured that my one chance of staying with the party was by completing my assignment. I slept for one more hour and then dragged myself out of bed, washed, dressed in my new suit (its collar and vest front sponged as best I could), and stumbled out into the frosty morning.

Oh, and I stole Renthrette’s dress. The one she had worn the previous night. She wouldn’t be happy about it, but I couldn’t slip any further in her esteem, so I just concentrated on not getting caught. I rolled the thing up as best I could and shoved it under my arm as I went outside. I did it because I needed it, though I’d be lying if I said that the fact that it would seriously piss her off didn’t add to the appeal.

The cold air skewered my lungs like one of the elegant rapiers which had surely been aimed in my direction last night, and my head swam. For a moment I thought I would faint, which led me to sit with hurried clumsiness in the street. After a few minutes I struggled gingerly to my feet and walked to a small piazza where I found a pump, splashed the icy water on my face, and took a tentative drink. A gaggle of courtiers who were exchanging amused recollections about the evening’s frivolities caught sight of me and stared in hostile silence. I returned to my drinking, ignoring them as they turned pointedly from me and walked away. I drank a little more while they got out of the way, then set off again, miserable but determined.

My stomach sloshed about as I walked, but my light-headedness passed and I felt no urge to vomit what I had just drunk. I begged a stale crust from a bakers’ shop, and, though I felt no desire to eat any more, I managed to keep it down. I sat for a while in the square by the library, feeling better apart from a pulsing ache in my temples. Now all I had to do was get into the library one last time. Then I could run, my tail firmly between my legs, from the city to Lisha, the one person on the planet who might still be pleased to see me. Of course, if I couldn’t get into the library-particularly if Lisha had gotten word of my evening’s activities-even her patience with me might reach its limit.

I found my way to the exclusive little gallery of shops adjacent to the marketplace where I had sampled the chocolate bird. A quick glance at the wares in the overstuffed windows and my mission was clear. I took a long breath and tried to screen out the pain in my head. Then, selecting the most ludicrously sumptuous of a number of establishments dealing in cosmetics, I barged in as if I had sprinted across town.

“Is it ready?” I demanded in a loud, impatient tone. “Is it ready? Come on, I don’t have all day.”

“Is what ready?” said a venerable old lady behind the counter. She was absurdly made up with cheeks of a uniform flamingo-pink and a blue-green shadow in the sockets above her eyeballs. She was sixty-five if she was a day.

“The package my mistress ordered!” I screamed back. “She wants it immediately.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said the shopkeeper, with a glance at one of the serving girls who was ministering to another customer. “A package?”

“Yes, a package!” I spluttered. “Two complete wigs, face powder, lip tint, and colored spectacles.”

“And this was ordered when?”

“Last week. Maybe earlier. You must have it. She needs it now and she said she’d never employ you again if it wasn’t. .”

“Now, let’s not be hasty,” the old woman cut in. “Your mistress’s name is. .?”

I glanced pointedly around the store. Several ladies paused in their perusal of false eyelashes and hairpieces and regarded this little scene with interest.

“My dear lady,” I began, as if offended, “surely you do not expect me to utter the name of so venerable a court lady as my mistress before common ears.” I leaned close to her. “She is a little. . sensitive. . about what time is doing to her beauteous features. Surely you would not have me. .”

“Certainly not!” exclaimed the shopkeeper. “But it would help if I knew. . You say she has employed our services before?”

“On a regular basis.”

“As a personal dresser as well as supplier?”

“Indeed,” I confirmed.

“And she is more advanced in years than say, myself?”

This seemed tough to imagine, but I nodded knowingly.

“Would I be correct in saying that her name began with-” Here she leaned close to my ear. As I struggled not to keel over at the stench of her perfume, she breathed the letter “W.”

“The very same,” I smiled, remarking to myself how easy this had turned out to be.

“Then I am scheduled to meet with her this afternoon.”

“Err. . yes,” I said, “or, rather, you were. She wants you to send this package to her today, though it seems my fellow the valet did not relay this information to you.”

“I think not.”

“It would not be the first time,” I said, sighing at the fallibility of servants. “But that is no matter. If you can compose the package now, then she will meet with you tomorrow instead of today and will pay you then.”

“At the usual time?” asked the shopkeeper.

“Half an hour earlier, please,” I said, for no particular reason.

I left the store with a parcel of brown paper, which I opened as soon as I got to a side street. Despite having to time my actions around the motions of passersby, it took me no more than five minutes to slip on Renthrette’s dress, powder my face after the courtly fashion, rub a little of the red grease on my lips, and don the ringlet wig. This last item was perhaps the most risky, but it was also the most essential. It was an odd sensation, returning to my days playing ladies on the stage, doubly so because I wasn’t actually on stage at all, was actually in an alley where being discovered could get me into real trouble, and it took me a few minutes to steel myself for my return to the main street. As soon as I slipped the tortoiseshell spectacles with their bluish lenses (such as I had been assured were “absolutely the first choice of all the right courtiers this season”) onto my nose, Will Hawthorne effectively vanished. My disguise wouldn’t stand careful scrutiny, particularly from someone who knew me, but I had spent the bulk of my theatrical apprenticeship playing women and had often been told that I did it well; better, in fact, than some actual women. I was never sure what that meant, but I took it as a compliment. And now, moving back through the elegant streets of Phasdreille, I clung to the idea like it was the banister of a steep and narrow staircase.