Lost Crow Conspiracy (Blood Rose Rebellion, Book 2) Read online

  “It was Mátyás,” she said, her fingers biting into my arm. “He slept in the shadow of a great tree on the puszta, wearing the white linen trousers of a laborer. He looked just as he did before, but hair covered his chin now too.” She paused. “Usually, if I dream of Mátyás, it’s to see him buried alive and screaming, or to find his head served on a platter with my breakfast.”

  We both shuddered, thinking of it.

  “This was different. More real somehow. I’m nearly certain I could find that exact tree, if I were to go looking.”

  “Noémi…” Mátyás was dead. Hunger and I had driven the blade in together. “It was only a dream.”

  Her eyes were fierce. She brushed the cross necklace she wore—Mátyás’s cross—with two fingers. “Did you see him die? Did you bury his body?”

  No. The world had split apart instead. Had Mátyás survived somehow? Impossible. I could not bear her hope—I could not bear my own. I said, as gently as I could, “The Binding spell would not have broken without his death.”

  A man fell in step beside us. My heart stuttered. Had he heard me speak of the Binding? I turned to warn him off—no gentleman should accost a lady without invitation—but the words shriveled in my throat.

  Hunger tipped the glossy black top hat he wore, his golden eyes glinting. “You ought to be more careful. Your longings”—he glanced from me to Noémi—“called me from half a city away.”

  “It’s hardly decent,” Noémi said, “to speak of our longings. Like airing a bit of gossip before its victim.”

  “Hasn’t your cousin warned you? I’m not decent. But I thought Miss Arden should know that Austrian soldiers surprised a giantess and her children outside the city walls earlier today.”

  I swallowed something bitter. “And?”

  “And they killed them all, though the giants were doing nothing more threatening than digging for roots. For this act of butchery the soldiers congratulate themselves on keeping the city safe. Because of this, and because of Vasilisa’s prank at the lecture the other day, the city has established a new ordinance. All praetheria are to wear bells at their wrist, to warn humans of their presence. And any praetheria serving in a wealthy household are to wear enspelled silver shackles to prevent their casting spells.”

  “You wear no bells,” Noémi observed.

  “I can pass for human—and the soldiers have not stopped me yet.” His gold eyes caught mine, held them. “I don’t know how much room there is in this world for your kind and mine. Humans betrayed us once: we will not stand by to see it happen again.”

  Noémi shivered beside me.

  “I do not think anyone wants war,” I said.

  “Then help us.”

  “I’m doing what I can. I’ve an invitation to Congress,” I said.

  “Attending the Congress is not enough. We need human allies to reiterate our words.”

  “We?” I echoed. “You—and Vasilisa? The other praetheria? I confess, I don’t understand what part you play in this.”

  “Most of the praetheria in the city look to Vasilisa and me, as we can pass for human and have greater access to human society. But access is not enough. If your Congress knows we are praetheria, they will not listen to us. Even if they believe us to be human, they have no cause to heed us—yet. But you—the archduke has shown interest in you. Use that. Use your gift. I won’t beg, but you know that I honor my debts. Help me, and I will find a way to help you in return.”

  I did not answer. I would gladly speak for the praetheria if I could, but I would not resort to seduction, or to abuse of powers I could not bring myself to touch. My voice would have to be enough.

  “Mátyás,” Noémi whispered. “If Anna helps you, can you bring my brother back?”

  I flexed my fingers, cold with anxiety, and waited for Hunger to betray me. But Hunger only laughed. “You rate my powers very highly, my dear. Too highly, I am sorry to say. I cannot bring your brother back.”

  The last notes of the Beethoven sonata hung on the air. The young woman who had performed the piece bowed to a light smatter of applause. As she left the floor, an electric energy settled in the red-marbled ballroom of the Belvedere palace. Beside me, Catherine shifted in her seat, her green satin rustling.

  Then Franz Liszt walked in.

  He was tall and slim, with jutting cheekbones and hair that brushed his collar. Not handsome, precisely, but he drew the eye anyway, and held it. Nearby, a young woman slithered to the ground, while her mama began frantically waving a fan over the girl’s flushed cheeks. I knew the stories they told of him: how women would mob him after his public performances and fight over his silk handkerchiefs and velvet gloves, tearing them into scraps for souvenirs.

  Liszt sat at the gleaming grand piano at the front of the room and began to play one of his études, his hands flying across the keyboard with furious energy. There was no buzzing along my bones, as there often was with true magic, but it felt like magic all the same: the lilt and fall of the music, the curious ache around my heart as a minor chord sounded and died away, the rush in my head when the keys trembled together.

  With a smile tickling the corners of his lips, Liszt launched into the “Rákóczy March,” the very music Petőfi and his soldiers had sung that October morning, marching to the Buda hills to change the world. Someone shouted, “Hajrá,” and Richard leaned toward Catherine. “He might have chosen a less provocative piece!”

  But I liked it. That small act of rebellious defiance seemed a sign to me, a reminder that, trapped as I might sometimes feel, I was not yet out of options.

  After the march, Liszt launched into less fraught pieces. When the music finished and he stood to bow, the audience surged to their feet, the noise of their cheering sweeping through me, vibrating in my toes and ears. Most of the company pressed toward Liszt. I felt the pull of his presence, but I would not follow the crowd.

  As I sought to extricate myself from my chair and Catherine’s scrutiny, my sister caught my arm. “Be gracious,” she reminded me. “You know the rules: smile, answer nicely, pretend you’re a degree or two less intelligent than you really are.”

  I rolled my eyes and sought out the refreshment table. Sugar truly was the only appropriate response to my sister’s nonsense. I was debating the merits of two different cakes when Franz Joseph found me.

  “I’d take the chocolate,” he said. “When in doubt, always choose chocolate.”

  I smiled and took the porcelain plate Franz Joseph held out to me. It would be much easier to be polite and distant if he were not so charming.

  We spoke idly for a moment of the music and the company. He pointed out one or two dignitaries I did not yet know, including the dark-haired Russian tsar, Nikolai Pavlovich Romanov. He stood apart from the crowd milling around Liszt, his chin lifted a trifle disdainfully, his mouth stern beneath a curling mustache. Beside him stood a small knot of people, including a lovely red-haired woman and a man with golden hair—quite possibly the most beautiful man I had ever seen. I wondered who he was. Archduke Franz Joseph had not named him, so either he deemed him beneath my notice or he did not know him. I didn’t ask.

  “I am looking forward to the Congress,” I said, a subtle reminder of his invitation.

  “Does it mean so much to you to attend?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I want to see history being made—I want to be in the room where it all happens. I want to hear and be heard. And I care about the praetheria.”

  “Why do the praetheria move you so?” he asked.

  I could not tell him the whole truth, that if the praetheria were to be confined again, it would cheapen Mátyás’s death. So I gave him a partial truth. “Because I know how it feels to be dismissed for a trick of birth. I did not ask to be born a woman; they did not ask to be born praetheria—but we judge them for it all the same.” I had said too much. Blood ran like ice beneath my skin.

  “I did not ask to be born a royal,” the archduke murmured, so soft I was not s
ure I heard him right. The archduke’s valet, Count Grünne, had joined us as I spoke, and he watched me now with cold, flat eyes. Other courtiers followed, claiming the archduke’s attention. Under the cover of their conversation, I took my plate of cake and slipped away. I found an unoccupied chair at a safe distance and watched the archduke laughing easily with his company—some of the most powerful men and women in the world. What would it be like to assume such power?

  I caught myself before my imagination wandered too far. I could not believe that the archduke was serious in his intentions—and I loved Gábor. Likely he was merely being kind. Even if he did, for some unfathomable reason, find himself drawn to me, I doubted I made his mother’s short list of eligible wives.

  I mashed my cake with my fork.

  “Did the cake somehow offend you?” a voice asked in English.

  I sprang up, handing the cake to a passing server before grasping William’s hands. “I did not know you would be here! I thought you despised this sort of thing.”

  William made a face, his freckled nose wrinkling. “As a point of fact, listening to music—even that of the esteemed Herr Liszt—is not my favorite pastime. And there are too damned many Luminate in this room. But if Poland hopes to use the Congress to win back some of the rights lost her in 1815, when she was carved up among Napoleon’s victors, I must at least pretend to like the people and the entertainment. They say at the last Congress, deals were made and broken on the dance floor—perforce, I must learn to dance and to deal.”

  I smiled at him. “Well, I am glad to see you in any case. At least this time I know your friendship is sincere—you can’t possibly ask more of me than you already have.” It had been William who had first tried to convince me to break the Binding spell to spur on a revolution in Hungary.

  William laughed. “That is true. Though I was your friend then, you know.”

  “You incite all your friends to rebellion?” I asked.

  “Well, naturally. Don’t you?”

  I laughed at the roguish expression on his face. “I should not have very many friends left if I did so.” I found myself scanning the crowd as I spoke, looking for the Hungarian delegation, knowing that Gábor was not likely to be here. Still I could not stop myself from searching. I spotted Kossuth waiting to greet Liszt, but Gábor was not with him.

  “While we are talking of friends,” William said, abruptly sober. “I thought I might offer you a warning. I know the archduke has called on you. But you must know you cannot trust that family.”

  “Franz—the archduke has been very kind to me,” I said.

  “Then he must want something from you. Or his mother drives him to it. It is widely known that Archduchess Sophie heads a camarilla in Vienna of those who wish to see Hungary back under Austria’s thumb. She’s as charming as a snake, and as trustworthy.”

  “You make her sound a veritable ogre,” I said, remembering only as the word left my mouth that there were real ogres in the world now, and perhaps I ought not compare the archduchess to one. It was disrespectful to the ogres.

  “Would that she were. She’d not be half as dangerous.”

  “I shall be suitably wary,” I promised, and after a few more minutes of light conversation, William left me for more promising political quarries.

  I took a deep breath, the rising heat of the room surging around me. There were too many people, too many faces I could not place. Before Catherine or anyone else could corner me, I slipped away, aiming for the French doors that led to the garden.

  Just before I reached the doors, I caught a murmur of voices from a nearby alcove.

  “And you are quite certain, Your Imperial Highness?” I was nearly positive the low voice belonged to Dragović.

  “I am certain. Though naturally you must be seen to be acting alone.” Archduchess Sophie. “I could have borne the loss of one of my children more easily than I can the ignominy of submitting to a mess of students.”

  “I will make things right, Imperial Highness.”

  “I know. You have been a good and faithful friend.”

  I moved out of earshot, through the doors into the garden, puzzling over what I’d heard. What was it that Dragović was to make right?

  The gravel beneath my feet crunched, and a cool wind slid around my bare shoulders, an invisible lover’s touch. Overhead, a sliver of moon nestled in a black velvet sky. The air was full of the fragrance of flowers. The garden stretched, long and orderly, down a slope to a second, smaller palace belonging to the same estate. I began walking toward the far palace, glimpsing other figures in the garden. Mostly couples, but a few solitary individuals rambled through the geometric paths.

  Gravel rattled behind me, and I glanced back to see Catherine gaining on me, a tall, sallow man with round eyeglasses just behind her. “I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “The Russian ambassador wants to speak with you.”

  My sister made the introductions, and I curtsied. We stood for a moment, eyeing one another warily. Why had he requested my introduction if he had nothing to say to me?

  “I wish you would tell me of Pál Zrínyi,” Count Medem said in accented German.

  A chill spread through me like an ice floe, a slow, steady creep from the base of my neck to my toes.

  “He accompanied our delegation from St. Petersburg. He has been making himself indispensable to my tsar, but no one knows much of him, or of his friend Svarog, who has already been made count.”

  Pál is here. In Vienna.

  “Oh?” I raised my eyebrows in insipid inquiry. Catherine frowned at me. Really, there was no pleasing her. If I looked grumpy, she frowned. If I looked sweet, she was equally displeased.

  “All I can find of him are rumors. That he worked formerly for the Austrian Circle. That he broke the Binding spell. But I cannot find support for these stories. They tell me Herr Steinberg might know, but when I ask, I learn that Herr Steinberg is dead, and the men who were with him when he died do not know. Or have been instructed not to say.”

  I met his blue-eyed stare with a vapid gaze. Let him think me stupid, and he might not ask so many questions. The chill spreading through me deepened. If someone accused Pál of breaking the Binding, he might betray the truth.

  “Imagine my surprise, then, when I find that Pál Zrínyi had family. A mother, sadly deceased. A sister, living in England. And two nieces, right here in Vienna.”

  I glanced at Catherine, but her face told me nothing.

  “Your sister says she did not know of his existence until a few months ago. She says you met him. What do you know of him?”

  “I believe he is approximately forty years of age. He was born in Hungary. I think he likes dogs.” He is a Coremancer with unprecedented gifts. A man who deceived the Circle that raised him in order to help me break the Binding; a man who betrayed us in turn to the Circle to force a confrontation with Herr Steinberg, whom he hated. Whom he killed.

  But also a man who left a portal for me to return to Buda-Pest after the Binding was destroyed, allowing me to save my friends.

  How could I describe the mix of betrayal, fear, and gratitude that filled me when I thought of my uncle? And why should I give that information to a stranger? Digging into Pál’s secrets might expose mine.

  The ambassador all but gnashed his teeth. “I meant,” he said, speaking slowly, “what do you know of his personality? Is he powerful? Dangerous?”

  “How should I gauge his power? I’m only a girl, and Barren, you know. He gave me a ring once. It was quite ugly.”

  A pained expression flashed across Catherine’s face. The count, however, took me at face value. With a short nod, he thanked me for my time and stalked off, clearly wishing his job did not force him to waste time on silly debutantes. Had he but known it, I had answered his question: the ring Pál had given me was supposed to prevent me from entering the Binding spell. It had not done so—part of Pál’s private plot against the Circle—but it had allowed the Circle to thwart and imp
rison my friends when they rose up against the Austrians. It had made me accessory to their betrayal, and was part of the reason I had fought so hard to see them freed.

  “When I said act a degree or two less intelligent”—Catherine’s voice was excessively dry—“I meant only a degree or two. There’s nothing attractive in witlessness.”

  A gust of lemon and bergamot was the only warning I had before Archduchess Sophie was standing beside me, a measured smile on her face. “I wonder if I have perhaps underestimated you.”

  “Me?” I hoped my trick of camouflaging fear with feigned innocence worked as well on the archduchess as it had on the ambassador. Catherine dropped a deep curtsy, and a heartbeat later, I followed suit.

  “Oh yes. You do that quite nicely, my dear. The open eyes, the rounded lips. Only, I’m not a man, and I see very well the intelligence you were at such pains to hide from our dear count. I wonder why.” She tapped a fan against her lips.

  The spot between my shoulder blades began to itch. I tried to smile. “I’m afraid you flatter me.”

  “Do I? After our first encounter I’d written you off as a charming young lady, but too impulsive to be much danger to me or anyone I care for. But now, I begin to question.” She studied my face, and I wondered uneasily what she saw. “My son tells me you have an interest in politics. How very enterprising. So few young ladies care.”

  “I—” Some instinct prompted me to tread warily. “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “Imperial Highness,” Catherine hissed.

  “And no doubt you think it an honorable thing to defend the praetheria. All creatures, you believe, deserve self-governance. Even if they are dangerous. Even if their freedom threatens the security of those around you. Those you love.”

  Was she mocking me? “I believe all sentient creatures ought to be able to govern themselves,” I said carefully. “But I don’t espouse wanton destruction.”

  “Ah, to be young and idealistic.” She folded her hands together at her waist. “My son tells me he has promised you an invitation to the Congress. Tell me why I ought to let him grant it. You hold no great position in society; you are no ambassador, though your brother-in-law is attached to one. What right have you to be present?”