The Glittering Court Read Free

survive. I fell in step with them, unsure of where I was going.
    Some crazy part of me thought maybe I should go make an appeal to Donald Crosby. He’d seemed to like me well enough in our minutes-long conversation. Or maybe I could seek passage somewhere. Go off to the continent and charm some Belsian noble. Or maybe I could just lose myself in the crowd, one more anonymous face to blend into the city’s masses.
    â€œCan I help you, my lady? Did you get separated from your servants?”
    Apparently not so anonymous.
    I’d ended up on the edge of one of the city’s many commercialdistricts. The speaker was an older man who carried parcels on his back that looked far too heavy for his slight frame.
    â€œHow do you know I’m a lady?” I blurted out.
    He grinned, showing a few missing teeth. “Ain’t too many out alone dressed like you.”
    I glanced around and saw he was right. The violet jacquard dress I wore was a casual one for me, but it made me stand out in the sea of otherwise drab attire. There were a few others of higher classes out shopping, but they were surrounded by dutiful servants ready to shield them from any unsavory elements.
    â€œI’m fine,” I said, pushing past him. But I didn’t get very far before someone else stopped me: a ruddy-faced young boy, the kind who made his living delivering messages.
    â€œNeed me to escort you home, m’lady?” he asked. “Three coppers, and I’ll get you out of all this.”
    â€œNo, I . . .” I let my words drop as something occurred to me. “I don’t have any money. Not on me.” He started to leave, and I called, “Wait. Here.” I pulled off my pearl bracelet and offered it to him. “Can you take me to the Church of Glorious Vaiel?”
    His eyes widened at the sight of the pearls, but he hesitated. “That’s too much, m’lady. The church is only over on Cunningham Street.”
    I pushed the bracelet into his hand. “I have no idea where that is. Take me.”
    It turned out to be only about three blocks away. I knew all the major areas of Osfro but little about how to travel between them. There’d never been any need to know.
    There were no services today, but the main doors were propped slightly open, welcoming any souls in need of counsel. I walked past the elegant church, out to the graveyard. I moved through the common section, through the nicer section, and finally to the noble section. It had a wrought-iron gate surrounding it and was filled with monuments and mausoleums, rather than ordinary gravestones.
    I might not know my way around Osfro streets, but I knew exactly where my family’s mausoleum was in this graveyard. My guide waited near the iron gate as I walked over to the handsome stone building labeled WITMORE . It wasn’t the biggest one on the property, but I thought it was one of the most beautiful. My father had loved art of all kinds, and we’d commissioned exquisite carvings of the six glorious angels on all the exterior walls.
    I had no way to enter, not without prior arrangements with the church, and simply sat on the steps. I ran my fingers over the names carved amid those listed on the stone placard: L ORD R OGER W ITM ORE, S IXTEENTH E ARL O F R OTHFORD, AND L ADY A MELIA R OTHFORD. Above them, my grandfather’s name was listed alone: L ORD A UGUSTU S W ITMORE, F IFTEENTH E ARL OF R OTHFORD. My grandmother’s name would join his one day, and then the mausoleum would be full. “You’ll have to find your own place,” Grandmama had told me at my father’s funeral.
    My mother had died first, catching one of the many illnesses that ran rampant in the poorer parts of the city. My parents had been greatly interested in investing in charitable establishments among the less fortunate, and it had cost them their lives, my mother getting sick one summer, my father the next. Their charities