As Claire walked down her neighborhood’s dusty streets, she brooded over the package in her arms.
The Fair.
The Fair, a grand show of American ingenuity, of wonders the public had never even dreamed of. A fair that St. Cloud had won the rights to host against every other province in the First American Kingdom. A fair that had stood half completed, its great Ferris wheel still just bones and timber when the Governor was laid to rest in the mausoleum overlooking the Jefferson River, when his young son took the reins.
It would be years late, and the bane of Claire’s existence.
She mulled all this over as she walked the road back to her house, her lumpy package clutched to her chest. The sky was fading from its milky yellow to the milkier red of sunset, and all along Belmont Avenue, the streetlights were turning on. The suburb stretched out in all directions, a plan more than a place. So much of it was still just mud and churned-up dirt. It had been built to grow into. Here and there, a house stood like a tooth in an empty mouth.
If she walked more slowly than she usually did, if she let her mind wander, it was because she knew what waited for her at home. Her father in their too-expensive house, sequestered in his study. Their young maid slaving over the wood-burning stove, trying to turn out a dinner that would make Jeremiah Emerson smile. Nothing made him smile, and the maid resented it, resented that she alone was left to deal with the household while Claire was sent off on special errands. Genius girl, she called her, because when Claire returned home, she was ushered into her father’s study, and there she often stayed until dark.
The house came into view through the ever-present smog. It was pretty, she supposed, gabled and painted blue, though as she approached, she saw that the glass in their sitting-room window was cracked. She stopped for a moment to stare.
Who had done such a thing? A creditor, surely. Still, it had been expensive to buy a pane of glass so large, and it would be expensive too to replace it. She walked through the wooden door and right through the kitchen, where the maid, hair hidden under a kerchief, was frying up rashers of bacon.
“Have a good day?” Margarete asked. It wasn’t a friendly question.
“No,” Claire said, shortly, because she hadn’t, and though the other girl would never believe her, she would have traded their places in an instant. It wouldn’t be a problem if Jeremiah Emerson didn’t heap the work of three servants on his housekeeper’s small shoulders. “Any callers?”
Margarete correctly heard “callers” as “creditor thugs.”
“Only the one,” she said, her accent lingering at the edges of her words. “We hid. He went away. It wasn’t so bad.”
“After breaking the window to send a message.”
“As you saw.” Margarete turned back to the stove. For a girl fourteen years old, she had a surprising gravity to her manner. “He’s in his study, talking to someone from the Governor. Waiting for his genius girl, I’m sure.”
“Of course,” Claire said, staring up at the staircase, and then heard what she’d just said. “Margarete, you know that I’m not—you know that it’s a punishment, don’t you?”
“A punishment?” Slowly she held up her ash-blackened hands, her skin white beneath. “Let’s talk about punishments, then, the next time I’m to do the laundry. Maybe you can haul the water or work the press.”
Few maids would have spoken that way to their employer’s daughter. But few maids were girls adopted as a sister and then treated as a servant.
Claire set her jaw. It was fair for Margarete to say it, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. “I’ll be in his study.”
“Tell him I’ll have supper in thirty minutes!” Margarete called as Claire climbed the stairs.
Though their house was lavish looking from the outside, on the inside it was spare. The walls were unpainted, the floors unpolished. The Emerson house was one meant to be tended by an army of servants and decorated with an expert’s touch, but there wasn’t any gilt on the trim or paintings on the walls. It looked like what it was. A house purchased with the promise of wealth, left bare when that wealth never arrived.
Jeremiah Emerson wouldn’t be paid again for his Barrage until it exploded its terrifying fireworks across the Monticello sky.
Claire lingered in the empty hallway, outside her father’s study door. He would have spent his day down at Jefferson Park, in the pavilion that had been built to house his inventions. When Governor Duchamp had first ordered the pavilions built, they had been little more than wood painted to look like marble. Then the Fair was delayed again, and again, and eventually it was clear that the pavilions needed to be reinforced if they were to survive the harsh Monticellan winters. They became, in fact, the things they had been only meant to reference. Buildings of gleaming white marble, speckled and veined like something out of ancient Rome.
Jeremiah Emerson would have arrived with the dawn at the building that wore his name. He would have spent the day inside with his workmen, tearing down and rebuilding his mighty gun, the gun that only fired for its inventor on those days that his daughter had blessed him.
And on the days it failed, Emerson would come home and take those failures out on his daughter.
At least today she had a moment to compose herself out here on the landing. The housekeeper hadn’t said who was in with her father, but she knew who it was.
The General. He had a name, but no one ever used it. Why would they need to?
“—we can’t countenance another delay. We need a show, and an impressive one. That boy may very well think that this Fair is about our kingdom’s ingenuity. I suppose leaders need to have ideals.” His tone was acid when he spoke of his young Governor. “What I need is an assurance that our borders aren’t invaded while we’re congratulating ourselves on our smarts. The Livmonians need to be afraid of us. Properly afraid.”
“Then give me another day to get it right,” her father said. “Let the Barrage go on the second day, or the third. Or next month! If the Fair’s to run until fall, we can build anticipation—”
The General snorted. “You’ve had enough time. There were German firms that were offered your contract, as you well know. But all I heard from that boy was of your gargantuan gun. Well, your gargantuan gun still doesn’t damn well work. And you know the real reason for this show. Our neighbors to the west need to see some real might. They want to get a taste of us, take our lands? We’d blow them to smithereens. So much for that.” A thud, like he’d swung his boots down to the ground. Had he been sitting on her father’s desk? Claire felt a wash of annoyance and admiration.
“So much for my genius, you mean.” Her father’s voice was sour.
“As you said. I’ll expect you in the morning.” Claire scuttled back from the doorway as she heard him approach. “Tell your pretty daughter hello for me.”
A shot, expertly aimed. “Of course,” Jeremiah Emerson said, and Claire was almost proud at how he hid his despair.
She waited with her hands clasped at the top of the stairs for the General to leave. What she saw first was what she always did, what she was meant to see. His uniform. The fitted jacket, midnight blue, and the softer blue of the pants below, the half cape with its ermine trim, and everywhere, gold scrollwork, like an endless poem made of thread. That thought would be lost on the General, a man whose neat dark mustache looked like it was trimmed against a ruler.