She stared at Beatrice with an ever-growing perplexity. Beatrice knew what the young lady found so arresting—the crown of sorcery around Beatrice’s head, even brighter than the veil of shimmering light around the woman’s. Another sorceress attracted to the call of the grimoire Beatrice clutched to her chest.
“Ysbeta? What has your back like a rod?”
He spoke Llanandari, of course, and Beatrice’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She knew the language, but she had never spoken it to an actual Llanandari. Her accent would be atrocious; her grammar, clumsy. But she plastered a smile on her face and turned to face the newcomer.
Beatrice beheld the same features as the lady, but in a man’s face, and—oh, his eyes were so dark, his hair a tightly curled crown below the radiant aura of a sorcerer, his flawless skin darker than the girl’s—Ysbeta, her name was Ysbeta. He was clad in the same gleaming saffron Llanandari cotton, the needlework on his weskit a tribute to spring, a froth of matching lace at his throat. Now both these wealthy, glamorous Llanandari stared at her with the same puzzlement, until the young man’s brow cleared and he slapped the woman on the back with a laugh like a chuckling stream.
“Relax, Ysy,” he said. “She’s in the ingenue’s gallery at the chapterhouse. Miss . . .”
“Beatrice Clayborn. I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” Beatrice said, and hardly stumbled at all. This young man, achingly beautiful as he was, had seen her portrait hanging in the ingenue’s gallery at the Bendleton chapterhouse. Had studied it long enough to recognize her. He had looked at it long enough to know the angle of her nose, the shape and color of her eyes, the peculiar, perpetually autumn-red tint of her frowzy, unruly hair.
Ysbeta eyed the book in Beatrice’s grip, her stare as intense as a shout. “I’m Ysbeta Lavan. This is my brother, Ianthe. I see you admire the travelogues of J. E. Churchman.” She spoke carefully, a little slowly for the sake of Beatrice’s home-taught Llanandari.
“His telling of faraway places enchants me,” Beatrice said. “I am sorry for my Llanandari.”
“You’re doing fine. I’m homesick for Llanandras,” Ysbeta said. “That’s a rare account of Churchman’s, talking about the magical coast where Ianthe and I spent a happy childhood. It would do my understanding of your language some good to read books in your tongue.”
“You speak Chasand.”
She tilted her head. “A little. You are better at my language than I am at yours.”
Flattery, from a woman who knew exactly what Churchman’s book was. Beatrice’s middle trembled. Ysbeta and her brother walked in the highest circles in the world, accustomed to wealth and power. And Ysbeta’s simple statement betraying a feeling of loneliness or nostalgia confessed to an assumed peer were the opening steps of a courteous dance. The next step, the proper, graceful step would be for Beatrice to offer the book to soothe that longing.
Ysbeta expected Beatrice to hand over her salvation. The book carried her chance at freedom from the bargaining of fathers to bind her into matrimony and warding. To hand it over was giving her chance away. To keep it—
To keep it would be to cross one of the most powerful families in the trading world. If Beatrice’s father did not have the acquaintance of the Lavans, he surely wanted it. If she made an enemy of a powerful daughter of Llanandras, it would reflect on every association and partnership the Clayborn fortunes relied on. Weigh on them. Sever them. And without the good opinion of the families that mattered, the Clayborn name would tumble to the earth.
Beatrice couldn’t do that to her family. But the book! Her fingers squeezed down on the cover. She breathed its scent of good paper and old glue and the mossy stone note of magic hidden inside it. How could she just give it away?
“It hurts me to hear of your longing for your home. I have never seen the coast of Jy, but I have heard that it is a wonderful place. You are lucky to live in such a place as your childhood’s world. I wish I knew more about it.”
Her own desires presented as simple sentiment. A counterstep in the dance—proper, polite, passively resisting. She had found the book first. Let Ysbeta try to charm her way past that! Frustration shone in her rival’s night-dark eyes, but whatever she would say in reply was cut off by the intrusion of a shop clerk.
He bowed to Ysbeta and Ianthe, touching his forehead as he cast his gaze down. “Welcome to Harriman’s. May I be of assistance?”
His Llanandari was very good, probably supported by reading untranslated novels. He smiled at the important couple gracing his shop, then flicked a glance at Beatrice, his lips thin and his nostrils flared.
“Yes,” Ysbeta said. “I would like—”
“Thank you for your offer,” Ianthe cut in, smiling at the clerk. “Everyone here is so helpful. We are browsing, for the moment.”
The clerk clasped his hands in front of him. “Harriman’s is committed to quality service, sir. We do not wish you to be troubled by this—person, if she is causing you any discomfort.”
“Thank you for your offer,” Ianthe said, a little more firmly. “We are quite well, and the lady is not disturbing us.”
Ysbeta scowled at Ianthe, but she kept her silence. The clerk gave Beatrice one more forbidding look before moving away.
“I’m sorry about that,” Ianthe said, and his smile should not make her heart stutter. “It’s clear you both want this book. I propose a solution.”
“There is only one copy.” Ysbeta raised her delicately pointed chin. “What solution could there be?”
“You could read it together,” Ianthe said, clapping his hands together. “Ysbeta can tell you all about the tea-gardens on the mountains and the pearl bay.”
Beatrice fought the relieved drop of her shoulders. People would notice Beatrice’s friendship with such a powerful family. And to make friends with another sorceress, another woman like her? Beatrice smiled, grateful for Ianthe’s suggestion. “I would love to hear about that. Is it true that Jy is home to some of the most beautiful animals in the world?”
“It is true. Have you been away from Chasland, Miss Clayborn?” Ysbeta asked. “Or do you simply dream of travel?”
“I dream to—I dream of travel, but I haven’t left my country,” Beatrice said. “There are so many wonders—who would not long to float through the water city of Orbos for themselves, to stroll the ivory city of Masillia, or contemplate the garden city of An?”
“An is beautiful,” Ianthe said. “Sanchi is a long way from here. You must call on my sister. She was born in the middle of the sea. The horizon has captured her soul. You should be friends. Nothing else will do.”
On a ship, he meant, and that last bit made her blink before she realized it was poetic. Beatrice gazed at Ysbeta, who didn’t look like she wanted to be Beatrice’s friend. “I would like that.”
Ysbeta’s lips thinned, but her nod set her curls bouncing. “I would too.”
“Tomorrow!” Ianthe exclaimed. “Midday repast, and then an afternoon—it’s the ideal time for correspondence. Bring your copy book, Miss Clayborn, and we shall have the pleasure of your company.”
Access to the book. Friendship with the Lavans. All she had to do was extend her hands to let Ysbeta take the volume from her grasp and watch her grimoire walk away, tucked into the crook of a stranger’s elbow, taken from this unordered heap of insignificant novels, saccharine verse, and outdated texts.