The Laurentine Spy Read Free Page A

The woman’s busy fingers tugged and pulled and twisted.
    If she slid her eyes sideways she could see the window. The summer fields, below on the plain, were distorted by the tiny panes of glass. The window was open and if she shifted on the stool—a movement that made the maid huff slightly through her nose—she could see through the narrow opening. The patchwork of green-gold fields was unblurred. Wind rippled the wheat in a sinuous movement, as if muscles flexed beneath the pelt of a giant beast.
    Above the fields, faint in a pale morning sky, hung the moon. Its rings were visible, thin and glinting. A witch day , the old women in the Ninth Ward would say, and make gestures to protect themselves from the Eye. But those slums, those women, were half a world away, and the Corhonase had no name for mornings like today.
    Saliel bowed her head and looked down at her clasped hands, and the maid huffed faintly through her nose again. A witch day. A day when witchcraft was strong, even such tiny magic as she possessed, little more than sleight of hand and fierce concentration.
    She unclasped her fingers and opened her hands, turning them out to see the palms. A lady’s hands, soft.
    A pickpocket’s hands. It was a long time since she’d used that skill. She had left thieving behind when she’d left the Ninth Ward—and left behind fear of being caught and punished: a finger thief’s punishment, or worse, a witch’s punishment.
    Saliel closed her hands, remembering the undercurrent of excitement in the ballroom last night and the almost feverish flush on the Admiral’s face as he danced. Things were happening in the Citadel, things she didn’t understand. I’d be a fool to ignore the only advantage I have.
    Her fingers clenched around each other. She couldn’t bend people to her will, but she’d still be called a witch and punished as witches were: with burning, with a high pyre and hungry flames.
    But the punishment would be even worse if she was found to be a spy, not swift, but slow and drawn-out, unendurable. She’d be broken long before they allowed her to die. Unless the slight magic she possessed saved her life or sped her dying: a key filched from a jailer’s belt, a knife stolen.
    Saliel raised her eyes. The moon’s rings gleamed faintly. A witch day. The safest day to practice her skill.
    She waited, sitting on the stool, encased in her day gown—stiff petticoats and tight bodice and starched lace ruff—while the maid finished pinning the braids around her head . Be calm. It’s merely a matter of holding her eyes. You’ve done it before; you can do it again. But fear was tight in her chest as she stood and turned to face the woman.
    She caught the maid’s eyes easily. Brown eyes, as dark as leaf mold on a forest floor, slightly protuberant.
    Calm , Saliel told herself, staring into the woman’s eyes. Be fast. The maid stood motionless, caught and unaware, unblinking, as Saliel reached out and touched her. She saw her hands move, dimly, at the edge of her vision. Slow. Clumsy. She straightened the woman’s white collar with fumbling fingers, undid one of the buttons on her apron and did it up again, pulled the cuffs further down the plump wrists, holding the woman’s gaze while a sharp ache grew behind her eyes.
    When she’d used this tiny magic as a child—picking pockets and taking coins from well-filled purses—she’d barely needed to think what her hands were doing. Now she strained to concentrate. The pain in her head intensified. It took effort not to glance down and watch her fingers pluck the woman’s handkerchief from the pocket at her waist and drop it on the floor.
    Saliel let her eyelids close in a long blink. When she opened them the maid had come out of her trance.
    “You have dropped your kerchief,” she told the woman.
    “Oh.” The maid bent, flustered, to pick it up. ‘‘I beg your pardon, noble lady.” There was no hint of suspicion in her face or voice, no awareness