“Perhaps there will be no letter to distract you next time?” he asked, and my eyes widened as I continued to stare down at him, trying to read beyond the steady composure of his face.
He could punish me for exchanging Francis’s and Sibylle’s letters. He could impart discipline, because I had broken a rule. And so I waited, waited to see what he would require of me.
But then the left corner of his lips moved, too subtle to be a genuine smile—although I liked to imagine it might have been—as he bestowed a curt bow of farewell. I watched him pass through the doors and melt into the storm, wondering if he was being merciful or playful, desiring that he would stay, relieved that he had departed.
I continued my way up the stairs, leaving a trail of rain, and wondered … wondered how Cartier always seemed to make me want two conflicting things at once.
The Art Studio was a chamber I had avoided since my first failed year at Magnalia. But as I tentatively entered it that rainy afternoon, my wet hair wound in a bun, I was reminded of the good memories that room had hosted for me. I remembered the mornings I spent sitting beside Oriana as we sketched beneath the careful instruction of Mistress Solene. I remembered the first time I tried to paint, the first time I tried to illuminate a page, the first time I attempted an etching. And then came the darker moments that still sat in my mind as a bruise, such as when I realized my art lay flat on the page while Oriana’s breathed and came to life. Or the day Mistress Solene had pulled me aside and said gently, Perhaps you should try music, Brienna.
“You’re here!”
I glanced across the room to see Oriana readying a place for me, a new streak of red paint on her cheek. This room had always been overwhelming with clutter and mess, but I knew it was because Oriana and Mistress Solene made their own paints. The longest table in the room was completely covered with jars of lead and pigments, crucibles and earthenware bowls, pitchers of water, chalkstone, stacks of vellum and parchment, a carton of eggs, a large bowl of ground chalk. It smelled of turpentine, rosemary, and of the green weed they boiled to mysteriously render pink paint.
Carefully, I wended my way around the paint table, around chairs and cartons and easels. Oriana had set a stool beside the wall of windows, a place for me to sit in the stormy light while she drew.
“Should I be concerned about these … props Abree is so excited about?” I asked.
Oriana was just about to respond when Ciri entered the chamber.
“I found it. This is what you wanted, right, Oriana?” Ciri asked, leafing through the pages of a book she held. She almost tripped over an easel as she walked to our corner, passing the book to Oriana as she looked at me. “You look tired, Brienna. Is Master Cartier pushing you too hard?”
But now I did not have time to respond, for Oriana let out a cry of delight, which drew my eyes to the page she was admiring.
“This is perfect, Ciri!”
“Wait a moment,” I said, reaching for the book. I plucked it from Oriana’s hands. “This is one of Master Cartier’s Maevan history books.” My eyes rushed over the illustration, my breath hanging in my chest. It was a gorgeous illustration of a Maevan queen. I recognized her because Cartier had taught us the history of Maevana. This was Liadan Kavanagh, the first queen of Maevana. Which also meant she had possessed magic.
She stood tall and proud, a crown of woven silver and budding diamonds resting on her brow as a wreath of stars, her long brown hair flowing loose and wild about her, blue dye that Maevans called “woad” streaked across her face. Hanging from her neck was a stone the size of a fist—the legendary Stone of Eventide. She wore armor fashioned like dragon scales—they gleamed with gold and blood—and a long sword was sheathed at her side as she stood with one hand on her hip, the other holding a spear.
“It makes you long for those days, doesn’t it?” Ciri asked with a sigh, peering over my shoulder. “The days when the queens ruled the north.”
“Now is not the time for a history lesson,” Oriana said, gently easing the book away from me.
“You don’t intend to draw me as that?” I asked, my heart beginning to pound. “Ori … that would be presumptuous.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Ciri retorted. She loved to argue. “You are part Maevan, Brienna. Who is to say you have not descended from queens?”
My mouth fell open to protest, but Abree walked in bearing an armload of props.
“Here they are,” she announced and dropped them at our feet.
I watched, stunned, as Ciri and Oriana sifted through pieces of cheap armor, a dull sword, a dark blue cloak the color of midnight. They were props from the theater, no doubt smuggled from Master Xavier’s stash in the dramatics wardrobe.
“All right, Brienna,” Oriana said, straightening with the breastplate in her hands. “Please let me draw you as a Maevan warrior.”
They all three waited, Oriana with the armor, Abree with the sword, Ciri with the cloak. They looked at me, expectant and hopeful. And I found that my heart had quieted, thrilled by the thought, my Maevan blood stirring.
“Very well. But this cannot take all day,” I insisted, and Abree victoriously whooped and Oriana smiled and Ciri rolled her eyes.
I stood still and patient as they dressed me. The portrait would only be from the waist up, so it did not matter that I still wore my arden dress. The breastplate enclosed about my chest, vambraces about my forearms. A blue cloak was draped about my shoulders, which made my stomach clench as I inevitably thought of my passion cloak, and Ciri must have read my mind.
She stood and liberated my hair from its bun, braided a small plait, and said, “I told Abree to choose a blue cloak. You should wear your color. Our color.” Ciri stepped back, pleased with how she had arranged my hair.
When an arden became impassioned, their master or mistress would present them with a cloak. The color of the cloak depended on the passion. Art received a red cloak, dramatics black, music purple, wit green, knowledge blue. But it wasn’t a mere marker of achievement and equality, that the arden was now on the same level as their master or mistress. It was a unique commemoration, a symbol of the relationship between the master and the arden.
But before my thoughts could become too entangled with cloaks, Sibylle rushed into the studio, drenched from the rain. A jubilant smile was on her face as she held up a crown of white flowers. “Here!” she cried, slinging water and attracting our attention. “This is the most starlike crown I could make before the rain came!”
Indeed, all five of my arden-sisters must have been in on this portrait ambush. But Merei, my roommate, was the only one missing, and I felt her absence like a shadow had fallen upon the chamber.
“Where is Merei?” I inquired as Sibylle brought her flower crown to me.
Sibylle, graceful, buxom, and coy, set the crown upon my brow. “You look like you could take off a man’s head,” she said, her rosebud lips opening with a wide, satisfied smile.
“Can’t you hear her?” Abree responded to my inquiry, and held up a finger. We all fell silent, and over the tickling of rain on the windowpanes, we could hear the faint, determined song of a violin. “Merei said she is furiously working on some new composition, but she’ll come as soon as she can.”
“Now,