The White Rose (6 page)

“Who do you live with?” I ask. “Are they nice?”

“Oh, they’re lovely,” she gushes. “Reed and Caliper Haberdash. Caliper’s a wonderful mistress—she’s quite old, almost thirty, and she and Reed have been saving up for ages to buy a surrogate. She can’t have babies of her own.” Lily’s face darkens. “Not like the way the royalty can’t—there’s something wrong with her body. She’s very sad about that.” Then she perks up. “I sold for nine thousand seven hundred diamantes. Can you imagine? How much were you?”

I shift uncomfortably. “I don’t remember.” I don’t want to talk about the price of my body. It doesn’t matter much whether I sold for six million or six hundred diamantes. There’s something more important that she needs to know.

“Lily,” I say, “you can’t get pregnant.”

She looks offended for a moment, then laughs. “Of course I can! What a silly thing to say. That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”

“No, I mean—” I grab her wrist and hold it tight. “Don’t let them get you pregnant.”

“Violet, you’re hurting me,” she says, wrenching her arm out of my grasp.

“Lily,” I begin again, alarmed that I didn’t think of this before, furious that my appetite and exhaustion overshadowed everything else. “If you get pregnant, you’ll die. That’s why surrogates never get to come home—childbirth kills us.”

She stares at me for a minute. “No,” she says, shaking
her head. “That’s not possible. Caliper wouldn’t do that. She cares about me. She’s already told me she wants me to stay with them after the baby is born.”

“She’s lying,” I snap.

Lily goes very still, and I can tell I’ve hurt her feelings.

“Caliper wouldn’t lie to me,” she says. “Not about something like that.”

“I—I’m sorry, but it’s true. I’ve seen the morgue where the dead surrogates go. I was told by someone who
knows
.”

Something settles in Lily’s expression, some strange mixture of acceptance and determination.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “I went to the doctor yesterday.”

“But you don’t know yet, right?” I say.

She tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. “You look exhausted. Sleep. I’ll come back tomorrow, when everyone’s left.”

“Tell me.”

She bites her lip and nods.

Lily is pregnant. Lily is dead.

“No,” I gasp. “No, no, no—”

“Shhhh,” she whispers. “It’s okay, Violet. It’s all right.”

“No!” I shout, then lower my voice before I wake anyone up. “No, it is definitely
not
all right. Nothing is all right about this. You can’t . . . you can’t . . .”

Lily takes both my hands in hers and holds them tight. “Listen to me. I
want
this. I’m happy.”

“You’ll die,” I snap.

“You don’t know that for certain. But . . .” She gestures
toward the ladder, to the house below. “I love it here. I love them. And they want this baby. And, contrary to what you and Raven might feel, I have
always
wanted to have a baby.”

“It’s not your baby,” I say.

Lily sighs. “No,” she says. “It’s not. But these people have become my family. You
know
. How it used to be for me. What my parents were like.” She squeezes my hand. “Weren’t you just telling me how important it is to be able to choose? How you chose to be with the companion, even when it was dangerous? How you helped Raven, at personal risk? Am I not allowed the same choice? Can I not have the same freedom you have? To choose what I want. Choice is freedom, Violet.”

I shake my head. “You’re twisting it all up. You don’t get to choose to
die
.”

But Lily smiles, as if we were back at Southgate getting ready for bed. “You should get some sleep. You’ve had a long day.”

I want to keep fighting, but the food in my stomach is pulling my eyelids down against my will. I climb back up onto the couch and rest my head against the threadbare cushion. “You won’t tell anyone I’m here, right?”

Lily kisses my temple, the way I kissed Annabelle’s before I left her for the last time. The loss of her, which has been overshadowed by the incinerator and the sewers and the marketplace, rears up, raw and aching. It tunnels through my chest and squeezes my lungs into my throat.

“No,” Lily murmurs. “I won’t tell. It’s so nice to see you again.”

The tears are close, brimming behind my lids. “Good night, Lily,” I croak.

She picks up the tray and leaves, the soft thud of the door in the floor telling me I’m alone.

I think I keep crying even after I fall asleep.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I
SPEND A GOOD PORTION OF THE NEXT DAY TRYING NOT
to pace back and forth across the attic.

It’s hard to keep still. I can hear muffled voices, and at one point, the soft strains of a violin.

So these people allow Lily to play music. That’s nice. But no matter how nice they are or how well they treat my friend, they have sentenced her to death.

Sometime in the late afternoon, the voices stop. The house becomes silent. I get up and look out the half-moon window. I see a couple, a tall man in a long coat and a woman with a white hat walking away from 34 Baker Street. The rest of the street is quiet, except for a harried young man walking about six dogs. They yelp and bark,
tangling their leashes together. I watch them until they disappear around a corner.

I go back to the couch and fiddle with the arcana, making sure it’s still secure in my hair. I think back to our conversation last night. What did Lucien mean about a key? And who exactly is going to be showing me this power I’m supposed to have? I rub my eyes with the heels of my hands. I’m sick of Lucien’s doublespeak, of knowing only fragments of what’s to come. I have trusted him. It’s time for him to trust me.

The doorbell rings and I sit up. My heart pounds in my ears. I think I hear the door open, and Lily’s voice. Then nothing but silence. It seems to go on and on.

The door to my attic opens and I freeze, gripping the couch cushions.

“197?” The voice is not Lily’s. It’s a man’s. I cringe at the use of my Lot number.

I walk to the opening in the floor and look down. The man standing at the foot of the ladder has graying hair and wears gold-rimmed spectacles. He peers up at me curiously.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“I have been sent for you,” he says.

Lucien’s voice enters my head.
Remember the key.
“Show me the key,” I demand, glad that I sound more confident than I feel, since I have no idea what to expect.

I feel even less confident when he opens his tweed coat and begins to unbutton his shirt. He opens the shirt collar wide. At the place where his collarbone meets his shoulder, there is a tattoo of a small black skeleton key.

“I work for the Society of the Black Key,” he says.

“What’s the Black Key?”

“He is not a what. The Black Key is our leader.”

Of course Lucien would use a code name.

“Come with me, 197,” the man says. “We don’t have much time.”

I climb down the ladder as he buttons up his coat.

“Don’t call me that again,” I say as we walk down the stairs to the front door. “I have a name. It’s Violet Lasting.” I’m done with being called anything but who I am. “What’s your name?”

The man purses his lips. “You may call me the Cobbler.”

“How long have you—oh!”

Lily’s body lies crumpled at foot of the stairs. “What have you done?!” I run to her, tilt her head back, and nearly cry with relief when I feel her breath on my cheek.

“She is fine,” the Cobbler says. “She will be awake in a few minutes. We have to go.”

“What did you do to her?” I demand. “She was helping me.”

The Cobbler shrugs. “A necessary precaution.”

I stand up, my blood boiling.

“This is not the time to be crying over a simple dose of sleep serum,” the Cobbler says. “There is work to be done.” He picks up a large brown parcel from where it sits by the door. “Carry this. Walk two steps behind me and keep your head down.”

“Wait.” I am so tired of being told what to do, and I don’t even know this man, and he certainly doesn’t know me. So I’m going to do one thing before I leave with him. I bend down and adjust Lily’s body so that she’s in a more
comfortable position. I take her hand and squeeze it. “Thank you,” I say to her. Then I stand, take the parcel, and look the Cobbler straight in the eye. “All right. Let’s go.”

We walk out the door, and I make sure to follow his instructions and stay a few paces behind him. The air is colder than it was yesterday and I clench my teeth together to keep them from chattering. I wish I had thought to borrow a coat from Lily.

We make our way back through Landing’s Market, which is quieter today than it was yesterday. There are still some remnants of the search for Ash scattered about, a broken basket, a trampled cabbage. Half-torn signs hang from lampposts, with Ash’s face and the words
WANTED. FUGITIVE.
Two little girls are playing while their mother haggles over the price of potatoes. As we pass, I hear one girl say to the other, “I was the surrogate yesterday! Let me play the royalty this time.”

My throat goes dry. Are these the sort of games children play in the Bank?

I’m so distracted, I almost lose sight of the Cobbler as he turns onto a different street. I hurry to catch up.

This street is wide and airy, much nicer than Lily’s, so I begin to understand why her area might be called the Cheap Streets. Though it’s ridiculous to think anything in the Bank is cheap. The houses have space between them, separated by hedges or high brick walls, but not like the ones that surround the palaces in the Jewel. These are clean and pretty and friendly, not topped with vicious spikes. Many of the houses are three or four storied, with wide porches and balconies, and some even have miniature turrets, like they’re
trying to impersonate a royal home.

The people on the streets are fancier, too—the men wear bowler hats and long overcoats and carry silver-topped canes. The women are in colorful dresses made of velvet or silk, with fur stoles around their necks and sleek leather gloves. Servant girls dressed in brown trail behind them. One carries a birdcage with a brilliant green parrot inside. Her mistress sees the Cobbler and stops.

“I was on my way to your store,” she says. “I need a new pair of shoes to match the gown I bought for the Magistrate’s Gala.”

“Of course, Mrs. Firestone,” the Cobbler says. “I am making a delivery. Then I will be happy to attend to you.”

“Come to the house,” Mrs. Firestone says. “This is a special order. And don’t send your apprentice like last time. That boy was all thumbs.”

The Cobbler’s shoulders tense, but he nods. “As you wish.”

The woman breezes past us, her servant hurrying along in her wake.

“She seems lovely,” I mutter.

The Cobbler fixes me with a cold stare. “She is better than most.”

“Is that why you’re working for—” I stop myself from saying Lucien’s name just in time. “Him?”

“Now is not the time for questions,” the Cobbler says. I grip the box so hard my knuckles whiten. I am tired of hearing that.

He walks away and I have no choice but to follow.

Eventually, we leave the wide boulevard of upscale houses
and turn onto smaller streets. We pass a theater with a gold marquee proclaiming,
THE LONG WAY BACK: A NEW PLAY BY FORREST VALE. ONLY TWO PERFORMANCES LEFT
! and a restaurant with large glass windows and linen-covered tables.

We reach a street made of rough cobblestone. The buildings here are big and boxy, with metal awnings and dirty windows with iron bars on them. A wagon sits under one of the awnings as two men haul large slabs of meat off it under the watchful gaze of a butcher in a stained white apron. He glances down at the clipboard in his hands.

“Four diamantes more per pound than last month,” he says to himself. “What is the Exetor playing at with all these new taxes?”

Then he seems to realize he’s speaking out loud and glances worriedly at the men, but they are too busy lifting a long cut of ribs onto the loading dock to notice.

The Cobbler stops in front of a small warehouse with chipped green paint and a sliding iron door. “This is where I leave you,” he says, taking the package from my arms. “I do hope the Black Key was right about you.”

“Why are you doing this?” I blurt out. “Why are you helping me, helping . . . him?”

The Cobbler looks away. “They took my son,” he says. “Because he was large and strong. He liked making shoes, but they wanted him as a Regimental. He is theirs now.” His eyes meet mine and I see years of anger in them, of loss, and of the desperate need for hope. “But their time is over.”

I never thought about how the Regimentals came to be Regimentals. Did I think it was voluntary? Is anything in this city voluntary?

“I’m sorry,” I say.

He huffs. “Don’t be sorry. I don’t need your pity. I need my son back.” He yanks the door open. “Someone will come for you. Do not trust them until you see the key.”

Without another word, he turns and walks back the way we came.

“Violet?” Raven’s voice pulls me away from the Cobbler’s retreating back. I step inside the warehouse and slide the door shut.

Raven throws herself into my arms, and I can feel the sharp points of her shoulder blades as I hold her. The small mound of her stomach presses softly against me.

“You’re real, right?” she whispers in my ear.

“I’m real,” I whisper back.

She pulls away and looks at me. “He said you were real, that you were here and coming back to us, but I didn’t believe him. They lied to me so many times; I don’t want to be lied to anymore.”

I look behind her to where Ash is standing, healthy and alive and smiling at me. I don’t want to let go of Raven, so I hold out my hand to him. He takes it.

“You made it,” he says with relief.

“You didn’t trust Lucien?” I ask wryly.

“To save you? Absolutely. To bring you here? Not a chance.”

“Who’s Lucien?” Raven asks. Her face crinkles with concentration. “Was he . . . is he . . .” She glances at Ash.

“I’m Ash,” he reminds her gently. I get the impression this isn’t the first time she’s asked.

“Lucien is a lady-in-waiting. You met him at—” I’m
about the say morgue but think that might be the wrong word to use. “In the room with the fire,” I finish.

Raven blinks. “Yes. I remember the fire. We put it out together.” Then her face goes pale. “But it burned him. It burned him alive.” She holds her head in her hands. “No, no, no . . .”

“Raven,” I say, reaching for her again but she scuttles away from me and curls up against the far wall. She holds her knees and starts muttering the same thing I heard her say in the morgue, but I can understand the words now.

“I am Raven Stirling,” she says. “I am sitting against a wall. I am real. I am stronger than this.” She taps the knuckle of her right thumb against her forehead three times and repeats the mantra.

I move toward her, but Ash’s arm wraps around my waist. “It’s okay,” he murmurs. “She does this sometimes. It’s better to leave her be for a moment.”

My body melts against his and I tear my eyes away from my friend to look him full in the face. I reach out and run my fingertips over the smooth skin where his bruises used to be.

“Garnet fixed me up,” he says. He touches the corner of my lip with his thumb. “Looks like someone fixed you up, too.”

I nod. “Where is Garnet now?”

Ash shrugs. “Back in the Jewel, I imagine. I’m surprised we saw him again at all.”

“How did you escape? There were so many Regimentals . . .”

He glances at Raven. “She saved us. I don’t know how.
It was like when we were in the sewers and she found the exit. She. . . knows sometimes. She senses things. Right as the whistle blew she pulled me into this alley, and there was a door in the ground. It led to this underground tunnel that connected to a bunch of different stores. There was a lot of junk in it. And she knew exactly where to go, and when to stop, and where to hide. We stayed down there until it got dark, then she found an exit that let us out about fifty yards from Landing’s Market. And then I found our way here, to the address Garnet gave us. I guess it ended up being lucky that I knew the area.” He smiles. “Garnet was pretty impressed we made it at all. Not that he was any help.”

“What did that awful woman do to her?” I mutter. In my mind, I can see the Countess of the Stone’s fleshy arms and cruel eyes.

“I don’t know, but whatever it was . . .” Ash’s jaw hardens. “She goes places sometimes. She thinks she’s somewhere else. Bad things happen to her there. There’s someone named Crow—I think he’s her brother or something—he burns alive a lot. And you lose your eyes—that was the worst for me to hear. And I think her mother gets skinned.” He shudders. “It’s so real for her.”

I don’t know what Lucien’s plans are, but I am going to make sure they involve making the Countess of the Stone pay for what she’s done.

The iron door slides open. I freeze at the sight of the Regimental looming in the doorway, but relax when I see that it’s Garnet.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” he says to me, closing the door behind him. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Doesn’t that make for a nice change,” Ash says.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Nothing,” Garnet says. He hands me a canteen and I drink from it greedily before passing it to Ash. “All the trains are still canceled. Every inch of the Bank is being searched by Regimentals. I think this might be the first time in Lucien’s life where he actually doesn’t know what to do.”

“So what, we have to stay here? Wait it out in this warehouse?”

Garnet shrugs. “I don’t see another option.”

“But it’s not safe. If they’re searching
every inch
of the Bank, they’ll find us, eventually.”

“I’m not Lucien,” he says. “I don’t have backup plans upon backup plans.”

“What are you doing here then?” I snap. “If you don’t really want to help, then go!”

I didn’t mean to yell, to take my frustration out on Garnet. But I want to get wherever it is we’re going and I want to get there now. His pale face flushes dark red.

“You don’t think I want to help?” he says. “What do you think I’ve been doing this whole time? Getting you out. Getting your
boyfriend
out. Lying to my mother. Dealing with Carnelian. For the Exetor’s sake, I let one of Lucien’s followers tattoo me!” He opens his shirt to reveal a skeleton key tattoo, like the one the Cobbler had, on his chest, just above his heart.