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

  “I’ve the right of a concerned citizen.”

  “Then perhaps you should write a letter to the press, signed ‘A Young Lady of Quality.’ ”

  “No one would take such a letter seriously.”

  Her eyes glinted at me in the moonlight. “Precisely.”

  I began to feel a little wild. My promise to Hunger drove me, but it was more than that. Catherine’s goads echoed in my ears, that a young lady had no voice without a husband. But she was wrong. I would have a voice.

  “Surely the archduke is entitled to his own decisions.”

  “Naturally. But you see, he is a very good son.”

  Prickles crept down my spine. I had a sudden vision of my future: long months of empty balls and shallow talk while everything important happened in rooms that were closed to me. My throat went dry. I could not endure that. “I beg you will let me come.”

  “You beg, do you? How gratifying.”

  Fear made me reckless. “I’m not an ordinary young woman. You don’t know what I have done. What I am capable of.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Or so you believe.”

  The conversation was slipping away from me. I had to be part of that Congress—to prove something to myself, to Catherine. To salvage what was left of Mátyás’s death. “If you do not let me into this Congress, you will regret it.”

  Catherine moaned. “Oh, Anna, the things you say.”

  The archduchess laughed. “A threat? How very unsubtle of you, my dear. Still, you intrigue me. I’m inclined to allow you to come. I shall look for you at the opening meeting on Wednesday. Perhaps you’ll even learn something.”

  Two days after the musicale, two days before the Congress was set to begin, Noémi called for me. To stroll along the ramparts of the city walls, she told Catherine, a common pastime for visitors and high society alike, as it offered spectacular vistas. My sister, who was “at home” that morning, receiving potential callers, merely waved us off with an injunction to enjoy ourselves.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as the door closed behind us and tied the ribbons of my bonnet. I had feared Catherine would offer to come with us, and that should have ruined everything.

  We made our way down the bustling streets of the inner city, Ginny trailing behind us.

  Kossuth Lajos lodged in a neat, unpretentious hotel near the Hungarian embassy, along with his secretary and a half dozen other Hungarian government officials.

  “Are you certain this is what you want, Anna?” Noémi asked. The wide brim of her straw bonnet cast the top of her face in shadow, and I could not read her expression behind her spectacles.

  “What, are you afraid we’re being improper?” I asked. “Nonsense. These are our countrymen. Besides, Ginny is with us.”

  Noémi laughed. “No doubt I shall regret taking advice on propriety from you. And as to being my countryman, well, Kossuth is in no great favor with the Hapsburgs. My uncle thinks Kossuth’s radical views are a danger to peace.”

  “But your uncle is minister of foreign affairs. In Kossuth’s own cabinet!”

  “Well then, he should know.”

  I made a face at Noémi and marched up to the door. A uniformed porter admitted us into a lobby redolent of lemon.

  “Would you notify Gábor Kovács that he has a visitor?”

  The man escorted us to a private parlor and disappeared. Noémi dropped into a striped bronze chair beside the window, and Ginny hovered near the door, but I could not rest. I stripped off my gloves and peered out the window at the courtyard, watching the last-minute bustle of a carriage under way. A dull sky threatened rain. I drew back and circled the room, inspecting the rather insipid paintings of Austrian pastoral scenes.

  A scratch at the door interrupted my perambulations, and I whirled.

  I had expected Gábor, but the expressions of delight died on my tongue. “Uncle Pál!”

  My uncle stood in the doorway, the unnaturally pale blue of his eyes blazing in the late-morning light. “I thought I saw you enter the building.”

  I eyed him as one might a snake, not certain if he would strike. The last time I had seen Pál had been at Eszterháza, as we confronted the members of the Austrian Circle that Pál had led to us. Grandmama had died that day, of injuries sustained fighting the Circle. Her blood was still on his hands.

  I fumbled for the proper thing to say—how did one address a family member one would rather never see again?

  Noémi stepped into my breach. “How do you do, Herr Zrínyi?”

  He nodded at her—“Miss Eszterházy”—before turning back to me. “I would speak with you, Anna.”

  I crossed my arms. “Then speak. Though you might have called at my sister’s.”

  “Here suffices, and my time is limited. This Congress is but the start of a great upheaval. The world as we know it is about to be rewritten, and you have a choice: side with those who hold the pens or be written over.”

  A touch melodramatic, I thought. “The Congress is meant to be peaceful.”

  “I do not believe it will end so.”

  “And you have chosen Russia as the winning power in this theoretical war of yours?” I knew Russia—or, more accurately, her tsar—harbored imperialist leanings, but I could not believe it would come to that.

  “I have chosen myself,” Pál said. My uncle had a lamentably underdeveloped sense of humor. “My alliance with Russia is a means to an end. But I would welcome your assistance. Your skills could be useful.”

  My skills. A stone slab shattering, light fading from my cousin’s eyes. There was always a cost—what price would Pál ask me to pay to build his world? Or destroy mine?

  I shook my head. “Thank you for your offer.” I had not lost all sense of social decorum, whatever Catherine might think. “But I must refuse.”

  Pál seemed unperturbed. “Think on it. You may find that I am not the worst of your choices.”

  “Well,” Noémi said after he had left the room. “That was sinister.”

  I rubbed my bare hands across my arms, chilled despite the warmth of the room.

  Gábor entered the parlor almost as soon as my uncle had exited. “What was Zrínyi Pál doing here? I thought he had gone.”

  “Why was he here at all?” I asked.

  “He wants Hungary to support Russia in the Congress—Russia means to offer sanctuary to the praetheria, if the Congress will give them the rest of Poland, all of Galicia. But Kossuth refused.”

  “Sanctuary does not sound so bad,” Noémi said.

  “I am not sure the tsar’s version of sanctuary is the same as yours, Miss Eszterházy. In any case, we don’t want to increase Russia’s power. Galicia sits on our borders, and Russia might view its acquisition as an invitation to expand further.”

  I had not come to talk politics, and Pál’s vague threats had only added to the uncertainty roiling in my stomach. It did not help that the mere sound of Gábor’s voice sent all my ordered thoughts scattering awry like an autumn breeze through leaves. “Gábor, I must apologize. Catherine should never have sent you away like that. Had I been there, I would have stopped her.”

  His eyes caught mine, brown and warm. I tried to ignore the thump of my heart. Even after all this time, meeting his gaze seemed more intimate than the brush of bare hands, as though I’d peeled back the veils that shrouded my soul and he could see right into me.

  “I don’t blame your sister for sending me away,” Gábor said. “She’s only trying to protect you.”

  “I don’t need protection from you,” I said.

  “Do you not?” The light in his eyes shifted, and the fluttering in my stomach increased.

  I regretted my concessions to propriety and wished that I had not brought my maid and my cousin. It was difficult to flirt—or better yet, kiss—with an audience.

  Perhaps Noémi sensed as much, because she drew Ginny away to the window and began talking to her about the city, and where the finest milliners were found.

  �
�Are you feeling better?” Gábor asked me.

  Warmth rising in my cheeks, I nodded. I was both charmed at his concern and chagrined that he remembered me weeping in his arms. “I am, thank you. And you? Does Kossuth keep you very busy?”

  “Not so busy now as I shall be when the Congress starts. And even then I will have some hours off, to see the city.” His eyes dropped to the floor, then flashed up to mine. “I might like company.”

  “I should love to see Vienna with you,” I said, my heart already racing at the thought of a stolen kiss—or two—in some of the quieter paths in Prater Park.

  “Kossuth wants me to speak with Dr. Helmholz about his findings on the praetheria, and I should like to talk with some praetheria myself. We need to know as much as we can before the Congress starts. You are friends with some, are you not? Would you ask them to meet me?”

  I could not let Gábor speak with Hunger alone—Hunger knew too much about me, things I had not told Gábor yet. How Mátyás had died, and the bargain I had struck with the praetherian army. That I was chimera. I did not think it would matter to Gábor that I had two souls, but I had not yet found a way or time to tell him.

  Vasilisa? She would eat him alive.

  And yet. Hunger said they needed allies, and I had promised I would help. Gábor had access to Kossuth in a way I never should. Perhaps I could arrange to be present at those meetings.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said, and turned the topic to other things.

  *

  Catherine stood waiting in the entrance to the flat, magnificent in a cherry satin evening gown, her hair tumbled around her shoulders. Clearly, she’d interrupted preparations for a night at the opera to confront us.

  “How was your walk?”

  “Uneventful,” I said, which was true enough of the walk to and from the hotel.

  Catherine brushed at a nonexistent speck on her skirt. “You were seen, if you must know. Imagine my surprise when one of my callers asked me what business my sister has at the hotel where Kossuth and the Hungarian delegation are staying.”

  “He is a countryman,” I said.

  Catherine nodded. “So I told my guest. But I remembered that the Kovács boy works for Kossuth. So I ask you: where did you go? Do not lie to me, Anna.”

  There was a note in her voice I had never heard before, a sweetness that called an answering note from me. A sweetness that reminded me of the Compulsion spells my mother used. But Catherine was Elementalist, not Coremancer as Mama was. Unless the broken Binding had changed that too.

  I swallowed against the Compulsion and stiffened my spine. I would give Catherine honesty because she asked it, not because she tried to compel it. “I went to see Gábor. I owed him an apology. And I spoke with my uncle—would you forbid that as well?”

  “Of course not.” Catherine sighed. “I’m not a tyrant, Anna. I understand how heavy societal expectations can weigh. But you must see how impossible this is. You cannot simply consult your own will—you must be mindful of appearances. The least hint of scandal and I shall have to send you back to England, to Mama.”

  My corset seemed to constrict, until I could not draw a full breath. I could not go back to England, not now. Not when so much was riding on this Congress. Catherine swung away from me, her long train susurrating across the rug.

  But neither could I give up Gábor, not when he and Noémi were the only parts of my life in Vienna that were my own.

  I should simply have to be more careful.

  The day of the first Congress meeting dawned sharp and clear. Richard had not believed me when I’d first told him the archduchess herself had invited me to attend.

  “You?” he’d sputtered. “Ridiculous. No, it’s impossible.”

  But then a thick cream card had arrived sealed with the crowned double-headed eagle of the Hapsburg crest, carried by a servant in the royal yellow-and-black livery. The card read simply: Miss Anna Arden is cordially invited to attend the Congress on Praetheria, as a guest of Her Imperial Highness, Sophie Friederike Dorothea Wilhelmine, Archduchess of Austria.

  Richard’s face, when I handed him the card in silence, was gratifyingly thunderstruck. He said nothing more about it, only adjuring me not to be late, as he would not wait for me.

  As Ginny helped me dress that morning, in a sober brown walking dress with silver trim, I was conscious of a delicious tingling along my arms, like a child awaiting some promised treat. But it was more than just anticipation. I felt, deep in my bones, that today’s meeting and those to come would cement my future as breaking the Binding had not. Though I did not (much) miss the rush of power I’d felt as the Binding shattered around me, I missed the clear sense of mission that had driven me through the streets of Buda-Pest toward the prison where my friends were held. In those terrible, triumphant hours, I had played a pivotal role in the unfolding of events.

  I had not known then how easy it was for a girl to slip unnoticed back into the obscurity of society.

  Everyone else who had fought that day had risen on the wave of revolution to prominence. Kossuth led the government in Hungary. Petőfi Sándor might have taken an office himself, had he not preferred his poetry (and disapproved of Kossuth). Even Gábor had found a place in Kossuth’s retinue.

  My role alone was unchanged. I danced at parties and mouthed polite nothings, ostensibly in search of a husband whose career I might further, never mind my own aspirations. I might be popular, as Noémi had said, but it was the popularity of a mascot—a symbol—not the thing itself.

  I was done with that.

  Today at the Congress, I would find my voice. Mine alone, not that given me by someone else. I would forge my own place in the world.

  *

  Richard waited for me in the entrance hall. “Mind you hold your tongue. If anyone wants your opinion, they will ask.”

  Catherine pressed my hand and kissed my cheek. “I hope this lives up to your expectations.”

  A short drive brought us to the Hofburg Palace, where the opening session of the Congress was to be held. Already, the streets were thronged with carriages trying to reach the palace, onlookers vying for views of arriving royalty and ambassadors, and entrepreneurs selling pastries and small commemorative prints.

  I followed Richard up a long red-carpeted stairway to a vaulted antechamber, and then into a massive room with rows of chairs facing a central dais and podium. Elaborately carved pillars supported the walls, meeting overhead in a frenzy of gilt and scrollwork. I recognized a few of the already assembled guests: Lord Ponsonby, the British ambassador. Count Medem, the Russian ambassador. Kossuth Lajos and the Hungarian delegation were seated beside William and the Polish delegation on the far side of the room. Most of the high nobility wore soul signs, just as they might at a social event. Even here it represented a play for power, marking those who still bore magic from those who did not.

  I couldn’t see Gábor. Perhaps Kossuth had sent him on some other errand. Or worse, perhaps he was kept from the assembly because he was Romani. That thought made me, briefly and intensely, hate everyone in the room.

  Lord Ponsonby raised his bushy eyebrows as Richard and I sat beside him. “This is hardly the venue for young ladies.”

  Richard sighed. “The archduchess invited her. I scarcely felt I was in a position to refuse.”

  When the room was full and humming with mostly masculine voices, the royal family arrived. Everyone stood, and they took their seats on the podium: the emperor Ferdinand; the archduchess Sophie and her husband, Franz Karl; the archduke Franz Joseph. Their soul signs, variations on the Hapsburg double-headed eagle, glimmered even in the brilliant light of the room. Franz Joseph saw me and smiled.

  A blush burned up my throat at his public attention.

  The meeting opened with a long speech in German from the emperor, welcoming each delegation by name, so many that I lost count: all the major and minor states of Europe, the Ottoman Empire, a confederation of Jewish businessmen, even a hand
ful of Americans. It seemed everyone who could claim interest, however minuscule, was there.

  Everyone—excepting of course the praetheria whose fate we were to decide.

  As the emperor finished, he invited Dr. Helmholz to take the floor. The doctor argued that the creatures should be kept on a wildlife preserve. “Their glamour is reckless, dangerous, and unseemly,” he said, his voice rising in fury. I remembered him blushing as the vila wound languid fingers in his hair. I heard he had been found some six miles outside Vienna’s gates, half-naked and wild-looking.

  A murmur of agreement swept the Congress, and members of various delegations began to rise, each proposing their own solution for the creatures, most droning on considerably longer than their proposal warranted. And then, of course, time had to be given for each proposal to be translated; Richard, who spoke multiple languages, translated for Lord Ponsonby. I wished the meeting could have been more like the debates at Café Pilvax—excitable students talking over one another, gesticulating enthusiastically and scribbling down fragments of ideas, or standing on the tables to shout down others.

  Austria offered to house the creatures on a preserve within Austrian borders, provided the other countries offered monetary support and arms to patrol the preserve.

  “Generous,” Lord Ponsonby murmured, “did I not suspect they seek to strengthen their own standing in Europe by offering such.”

  Britain, with the support of the Polish delegation, proposed establishing a similar preserve in Poland, with the caveat that Poland be given the independence denied her in 1815. “We’re looking to create a buffer between Europe and Russian aggression,” Richard explained to me. William must be pleased, I thought, to see all of British might thrown behind his own plan. And indeed, when I looked across the room, I caught his smile blazing.

  The archduchess, however, looked rather grim at this, as an independent Poland would require Austria to relinquish her territory in Galicia. And the Russian tsar was furious.

  He sprang to his feet, waving down his ambassador, who had also started to rise. It was uncommon for royalty to speak their own mind at a Congress like this, though not unheard of: Nikolai’s brother Alexander had wrought havoc in the 1814–15 Congress by insisting on presenting Russia’s claims himself.