The Deepest Night (5 page)

“No,” I said finally. “It can’t be done. I’m supposed to fly across the front? Across Europe, into the thick of the war, dodging zeppelins and bombs and aeroplanes and God knows what? I mean, we don’t even know where Aubrey’s being held.”

“East Prussia,” said Armand. “Schloss des Mondes. It’s a medieval ruin. Apparently they converted it into a prison camp.”

I stared at him, mute, and he lifted a shoulder.

“He’s a nobleman and an officer, a prisoner of war. Rules of the game say they have to tell us, just as we have to tell them about our prisoners.”

“They just—give you his address?”

“Something like that. So we can send him aid parcels. Extra clothing, food. Sweets. Cigarettes. Things to trade. Since he’s an officer, he’s likely to have some enlisted bloke as a servant, so you send things for him, too.”

I couldn’t help it; I let out a laugh. “Does he even
need
rescuing?”

Armand lifted his head. “I think he must,” he said, quiet. “If Jesse says so.”

And that was the end of my laughter.

“You should get back to Iverson.” He climbed to his feet. “Try to get some rest. We’ll work out a plan soon.”

Work
out
a
plan.
As if it was all going to be so, so simple.

Maybe it would be, for him. After all, Jesse hadn’t told the duke anything about Armand coming along, had he?

“I didn’t have a chance to sell your pinecone yet,” he said, walking a few steps away from me. His voice had taken on a flat, businesslike tone. “I’d meant to go up to London today, but then the wire came.”

“I understand. I couldn’t take the money now, anyway. I can’t carry it when I’m smoke.”

“No. Of course not.”

“Perhaps, if you’ve managed to sell it by graduation—”

“Fine.”

He turned in place, looking at me from across the room. I clutched my blanket to my chest with both hands and gazed back. I was suddenly, acutely aware of how attractive he was, and how very expressionless, and how only twenty-four hours ago he had asked me to marry him and I’d never bothered to answer.

“I hope there’s no trouble with it,” I said awkwardly.

“Don’t worry, Lora. No one ever gives me trouble about anything anymore.”

Except
you,
he might as well have finished.

The air felt heavy and sad. Even the fire seemed sad, the last, diminished tongues of flame beginning to flicker out. I opened my mouth to add something else, something encouraging or cheerful or even just a polite goodbye … but instead I Turned and flowed away.

Armand watched me go. He didn’t say goodbye, either.

Chapter 5

Before the war, I had never given a second thought to moonless nights.

But before the war, I’d never been given a reason to.

Now I had one.

For a few terrible nights a month, every month, England went dark. In London and Brighton and towns up and down the coast, windows were papered in black. Streetlights were extinguished. Carriages and automobiles combed the streets without the help of lanterns, and everyone hurried to get home before dusk. Just carrying a rushlight outside to check on the family dog was considered a foolish risk, not only for you but for all your neighbors as well.

Even at Iverson, we kept the oil lamps and chandeliers cold.

Because on the moonless nights, German airships slunk across the Channel. And they had bellies full of bombs.

With my dragon hearing I’d learned to recognize two new sounds since the war began:

Thup-thup-thup-thup
.

That was the sound made by the propellers of the airships.

And:
shoom-shoom-shoom
.

The engines of a U-boat.

I listened for them every night before falling asleep, but, oh, on those damned dark nights when the moon went away, it seemed I was either awake in my bed or else smoke above the Channel, drifting. Waiting.

Even after the stars would whisper reassurances
(safe, beast, tonight you’re safe)
, I kept my vigil. If I stopped paying attention, who would hear Death descending? Armand’s hearing wasn’t as keen as mine, not yet. So there was only me.

Smoke-thing, winged-thing. An injured monster who couldn’t even hold her shape half the time.

But still.

After leaving Tranquility that night, I didn’t return to my room. I floated with the wind out to sea, letting it thin me sheer, hoping it might ease the bittersweet ache that felt as real as anything solid above or below me.

Jesse was still here. Somehow, still here.

A boy in the stars.

Where
are
you?
I wondered, mist beneath their shimmer.
I
love
you, where are you?

safe, beast,
was all I got in response.
tonight
you
are
safe.

Chapter 6

The school was awash in the news of Aubrey’s survival, but even that could not usurp the bubbly, simmering excitement of this year’s upcoming graduation. I was in the tenth-year class, the second-to-final year before we were unchained and loosed like primped and powdered lionesses upon society. So although I personally wasn’t going to graduate from the esteemed Iverson School for Girls (or, as Sophia once put it, “this wretched pile of rocks”) in about a week’s time, I was still expected to contribute to the official celebration.

Every year but mine had a single, chosen girl perform some role at the ceremony to send off the graduating class. The younger pupils mostly presented bouquets or demonstrated their curtsies. But it was Iverson tradition for
all
the tenth-year students to do something showcasing their own particular talents. Even scholarship students.

I assumed that because the graduating girls had suffered through this the year before, all that was required of them now was to sit in the audience with their parents and make fun of us.

Lillian, Mittie, and Caroline were going to take turns reading a poem they had composed. Stella and Beatrice were going to sing a duet while Malinda accompanied them on the piano.

Sophia was going to recite a passage from one of the headmistress’s favorite books,
A
Young
Woman’s Guide to the Veneration of Modesty and Decorum
, a choice so ironical that even Mrs. Westcliffe raised a brow.

And I … well, it was clear to everyone that I had but one talent. It was also the piano. But no one could sing to any of my songs, because I made them up as I went.

Despite the best efforts of Monsieur Vachon, our music instructor, I wasn’t any good at doing it any other way. I couldn’t understand the pages and pages of music he compelled me to study. It all still looked like dots and dashes to me. I couldn’t seem to remember which piano pedal did what; my wrists were never straight enough, my posture never regal enough. And I couldn’t keep perfect time, no matter how hard he smacked me on the shoulder with his wand.

I could only invent songs, not copy them.

Or so they all thought.

The truth was, I was far from the creative idiot they all believed. I’d actually copied every single song I ever played … but only Armand knew about that.

One of the most interesting aspects of living in a real castle was that it had real castle parts to it—that is, an authentic dungeon and solar and great room, things like that. Music class always took place in the ballroom. With its high vaulted ceiling and limestone walls and bouncy wooden floors, Monsieur claimed the acoustics were superb, although to me it always seemed we were battered by echoes.

No matter.

Hanging from that distant ceiling was a series of rock crystal chandeliers, massive and covered in sheets. I’d never seen them lit before, and likely I never would. Perhaps they were nothing more than giant skeletons of pendants and beads, but in my imagination, they sparkled like snowflakes in the sun.

And they never stopped giving me songs. Not even when I wanted them to.

“Once again, Miss Jones,” commanded Vachon, looming behind me in his usual spot as I sat facing the grand piano.

I set my teeth. I closed my eyes, opened them, and glared harder at the sheet music before me. “Bumblebee Garden” was the title of the piece he wanted me to perform. It might well have been “The Simplest Melody We Could Find for You” or “Just Play These Five Notes Over and Over,” but it was no good. My head was filled with the concerto floating down from the chandeliers.

My fingers fumbled across the keys, getting them all wrong. I could’ve played the chandelier song without a second thought, but trying to plink out bloody “Bumblebee Garden” was like pushing a boulder up a mountain.

A boulder the size of this bloody island.

Up the side of bloody Mount Everest.

I began to break into a sweat. Monsieur’s eyeballs burned an itchy hole in the center of my back.

“No, no, no!
Mon
Dieu
, what was that? Do you not see the score before you, Miss Jones? Do you not see what is inscribed right there before you?”

“No,” I mumbled. “I mean, yes, I see it.”

“Seems her
garden
is scorched earth,” jeered Beatrice in a whisper, but everyone heard her.

“Again!” barked Vachon.

Fumble. Fumble. I was awful at this, I really was.

My classmates began, one by one, to snicker.

Vachon moved to my side. I saw the wand in his fist and switched instantly to the ripple of sound falling down around me like droplets from a waterfall, lovely and soft and intricate. It made him pause, as I’d hoped. The hand holding his wand gradually lowered to his side.

Ah, this—
this
was easy for me. Easy to let the rock crystal music sink into me, lap through me like the ocean’s tide, bones, blood, cells, my fingers dancing faster and faster now, everything beautiful, everything effortless. My soul lifting free.

It ended, though. I let it end, and before some new song could take me, I tucked my hands in my lap and gazed up at my professor, trying for Armand’s trademark stoic expression.

Vachon removed his spectacles. He wiped the glass lenses on a corner of his coat and then carefully put them back on, wrapping the wires behind each ear before speaking.

“You have made your point, Miss Jones. I hardly wish to embarrass myself by presenting you to the faculty and parents of Iverson with your practical skills in such a state. You may play what you wish for the graduation.”

“But,
sir
,” protested Mittie, either because she hated me the most or loved whining the most (probably both), “is that
fair
? All the rest of us have to show what we’ve learned—”

“Do you desire to sit through a ten-minute cacophony of sharps and flats, Miss Bashier? I do not. I assume your parents do not. Let us accept with grace what we cannot change in a week, ladies.”

“Or in a lifetime,” muttered Caroline, provoking a fresh round of snickering.

After class, as everyone was crowding through the ballroom doors, Sophia swung into step beside me and sent me a slanting look.

“Are you really that poor a player? Or is it on purpose?”

“No,” I answered grimly. “I really am that poor.”

“That’s too bad. I was rather hoping you were doing it deliberately. To put a tweak in Vachon’s nose.”

“Vachon carries a stick with him, in case you didn’t notice, and he’s very glad to use it. I have no interest in tweaking any part of him.”

“How disappointing,” she sighed. “And all this time, I thought you such the rebel.”

I was surprised into a laugh, and her pale eyes grew just a tad too wide.

“Well, after all, there was that business of you getting shot. Certainly no other girl here would ever have done such a thing.”

“Yes. It was so rebellious of me to have put myself in front of a bullet I never saw coming.”

She went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “And the fact that you’ve captured Armand’s attention, if not his heart. The mudlark and the aristocrat! If that’s not the out-and-out definition of rebellion, I don’t know what is.”

“Lord Armand and I are friends, Sophia. That’s all.”

“Oh, come! We’ve been chums for
weeks
! I thought we were beyond all these silly lies. He practically salivates whenever he sees you.”

Ahead of us Stella and Mittie were strolling arm in arm, whispering and tittering.

“Friends,” I said again, firm.

“Is that why he was driving you back from wherever you went yesterday? Just to be friendly?”

“He was driving me
and
Westcliffe,” I pointed out.

“Hmm. Where
did
you go yesterday, by the way?”

To
see
the
mad
duke. To hear a mad idea.

“Nowhere,” I said. “Just to the village, to see the doctor.”

“I say, Eleanore.” Mittie broke off the whispering to throw me a glance from over her shoulder. “Stella and I have had the most marvelous notion.”

“Yes!” Stella gave me a big grin. “We’re all so concerned about how you have nowhere to land soon. Summer and all that. So why not go stay with Sophia for the holiday? She could always use—” She paused, brimming with glee; I braced myself.”Another
maid
!”

This sent them both into peals of laughter. Lady Sophia shook her head. She walked up between them and put her arms around their waists.

“I have all the maids I need, thank you. But perhaps the scullery? I can check with the cook, I suppose.”

More laughter, and I watched the three of them saunter away down the corridor, rich and happy and secure in their world.

I confess, sometimes I daydreamed about Turning into a dragon and biting their heads off.

But they were probably poisonous, anyway.

The conversation I’d been dreading came two days later.

Again, in Westcliffe’s office.

“Miss Jones. You will be pleased to know I’ve received notification regarding your new residence for the summer.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll not draw out the suspense. You’ve been assigned to the Sisters of the Splintered Cross Orphanage. It is in Callander. In Scotland.”

“Oh.”

“Southern Scotland, I believe. Have you ever been?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Ah. Well, I’m certain it’s a fine place. Scotland is, by all accounts … quite interesting. I have your schedule here, your train tickets and such. You are to depart the day after graduation. A fortuitous bit of timing, I think! I suggest you begin packing soon. It’s never wise to leave matters to the last minute, is it?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I shall be candid with you, Miss Jones. It may not be practical to plan for your return to Iverson next fall. The war has forced many unfortunate changes upon us. Shipping you all the way back from Callander a few months from now might not be in anyone’s best interest.”

“But it will, of course, be up to the duke to decide my fate?”

“Er—of course. The scholarship is entirely in His Grace’s control. In his current state, however …”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You are a sensible girl, Eleanore. I will not encourage you to cling to false hopes; they will not serve you well.”

“No, ma’am.”

“We understand each other. Excellent. I know I may count on you to make the most of your final days here at Iverson, the better to shape your years to come.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good afternoon, then.”

“Good afternoon, ma’am.”

That night before dinner I visited the library. It was mostly deserted, only a trio of ninth-years at a table poring over a fashion magazine stuffed with drawings of coy, smiling debutantes in viciously expensive gowns.

I sent them a look; they returned it. None of us spoke, and they all went back to cooing over the gowns.

I had no interest in magazines, at least not in any of the ones Mrs. Westcliffe deemed suitable for proper young ladies. I’d come for a book I’d noticed in passing not long ago, one of the few books here that wasn’t about housekeeping or sewing or the care of husbands:
Charts
of
the
Principal
Cities
of
the
World, Including Railroad and Telegraph Lines.

It was large and heavy, with a jolly thick layer of dust along the top. I hefted it from the shelf and dropped it onto the nearest table, earning me another look from the trio, which I ignored.

I flipped through the pages. Buenos Aires, La Paz, Havana, New York. Cairo, Dakar, Cape Town, Riyadh, Angora, Budapest … Rome, Paris. London. Glasgow.

I squinted at the Glasgow page, which was indeed cobwebbed with lines representing every railroad and telegraph line imaginable. I turned to the previous page, which showed the city as a dot in the big, flat map that was Scotland.

Callander was inked in there, a speck on the page. It wasn’t even in southern Scotland, as the headmistress had claimed. From what I could tell, it was much nearer to the middle. Far from Wessex. Far from the impeccable Iverson School for Girls and the eligible youngest son of a duke.

I studied it a while longer, trying to measure the distance with my fingers, but all I could figure was that it was hundreds of miles north of where I was sitting.

Hundreds.

I rifled through the pages again until I found Prussia (principal cities: Berlin, Königsberg). I didn’t know exactly where Aubrey’s medieval prison-ruin would be, but honestly, it hardly mattered. Prussia was huge and impossibly remote. Past England and the Channel, past all of France and Belgium, too. It made the distance to Callander look like a jaunt to a neighbor’s house.

I slapped the book shut, sending motes of dust aloft and forcing the trio to coo even louder over the absolutely dreamy smocking on a plaid taffeta dinner frock.

You’re waiting for the moment I Turn into something more than just smoke. You’re waiting for Lora the dragon.

Lora-of-the-moon,
Jesse used to call me.

It’s not yet. But soon.