There’s a knock. Short and short. Long and short.
I hold my breath, excited, but nervous, too. Is Elise awake still? Sometimes she cries at night, even though she smiles through the days. Though lately, there’s been less smiling and more arguing. Celestia and Elise think that Alina and I are too young to realize that they’re fighting. Or not fighting. Disagreeing and avoiding each other. It started after the gagargi left. No, maybe even before that. Can it have something to do with him claiming that Elise had plotted against Mama and funded the revolution? But Sibilia said it was all lies. She did say that.
I hear Elise’s door open, quiet words exchanged, the door closing. Plan. What if my sister has a better plan than Celestia? Irina and Olesia always caution us not to trust our older sisters. I’ve always told Alina not to believe everything the ghosts say. But what if they’re right! What if it’s not Celestia that’s hiding things from us, but Elise!
There’s no time to lose. I dash to the vanity desk’s cracked mirror. “Irina, Olesia.”
My heart pounds and my mouth turns dry. I need the ghosts now. They can go and eavesdrop on what happens in Elise’s room. I can’t.
“Quick.” I tap my fingers against the mirror’s surface. Rafa stirs from her sleep. She stares at me, her big eyes wide. I shake my head at her, lower my voice. “Quick.”
But though I knock on the mirror’s surface, the ghosts don’t appear. Do they tire as we do? They did stay with us longer today than they’ve done in weeks. Toward the end, they looked pale and weary, even more so than Alina.
“Come now.”
And still nothing, not even a whiff of their perfume. It’s agonizing. Do I spend more time trying to lure the ghosts in or… If I wait, I might miss something important. The ghosts might show up later or then not at all. Ah, this is such a difficult call!
I make up my mind and abandon the mirror. I take a spot next to the old armchair and press my cheek against the flaking wallpaper. The walls of this house aren’t particularly thick.
“Please tell me, tell me now”—Captain Janlav’s voice is unmistakable, especially since he’s raised it—“what is this nonsense about none of you going?”
There’s a lengthy pause. No doubt Elise considers what to say. She, too, must think how exactly did Captain Janlav learn of our plan? How did he? Surely no one has told him that it was Celestia who sent the gagargi away empty-handed, that she’ll do so again and again until he lets us walk free.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Elise finally replies. I’d have said the same thing.
Two hasty steps. “Don’t you take me for a fool! Oh, sweet woman, don’t you dare to take me for a complete and utter fool!”
Silence. With my ear pressed against the wall, I can keep an eye out for Alina and my companions. She sleeps still, but Rafa and Mufu are wide awake. They’ve managed to roll over onto their swollen, round bellies. If I were to summon them, they’d obey at once, though they might not move terribly fast.
“Elise,” said in a much softer voice. I shake my head at my companions. I’m not afraid. Elise is seventeen. She can take care of herself. “Do you think I have come to you now, in the middle of the night, to punish you? Do you really think so? Answer me, woman. Do you really think so?”
“No.”
Maybe I should feel guilty for eavesdropping on a conversation that might be meant to be private. But I don’t. I know what I’m told and nothing more—I deserve to know the rest. I shall listen with great glee.
“Good.” I imagine Captain Janlav as he must be, standing with his heels together, hands clasped behind his back, staring sternly at my sister. “I’m here to warn you as a friend. The game you and your sisters play is dangerous.”
“Dangerous,” Elise laughs. She’s upset. I’d be upset, too, if someone barged into my room and started blaming me for things. “What a funny thing to say! Tell me, has there been a moment since my sisters and I boarded the train, since we arrived in this house, that we haven’t been in danger?”
Silence. Thin and stretched, a very uncomfortable sort of silence.
“It’s true that you have been in a certain degree of danger, but I have been always there to protect you.”
“That you have,” Elise admits, but she’s not terribly pleased about it. Or she is, but she also sounds bitter.
Captain Janlav starts pacing the room, his steps taking him past the spot where I listen. He wouldn’t be happy if he learnt that I’m listening to them talking. Too bad for him, but I, if anyone, know what it feels like not to get everything I want. And yet, I hardly ever rant about that.
“If Celestia refuses to go, you will no longer be my responsibility.”
This is something I didn’t know. Elise mustn’t have known this either, because she asks, “Whose, then?”
Another annoying pause in their conversation. This one being of the foreboding sort.
“Captain Ansalov’s.”
My knees buckle, and if I weren’t leaning on the wall already, I’d do so now. Captain Ansalov is a cruel and ruthless man. He would have ordered me shot if Celestia hadn’t intervened that night when I followed the magpie. But since the gagargi left, my sister has been very tired. Though she’s the empress-to-be, I don’t know if she could save me, us again.
“Do you know what his commands are?” My sister’s voice is steady, though she, too, must be terrified.
“That’s the very thing I wanted to warn you about.”
“I see,” Elise says. I want her to say so much more. Celestia promised us that either we all go or all stay. But Captain Janlav’s words imply that neither option is really possible, that something really bad might happen to us if…
The realization rolls upon me like an imperial freight train, squeezing me under the clanking wheels and tons of iron. What if the ghosts were right all along? What if we really can’t trust Celestia? What if she brokered a secret deal with the gagargi, one that she’s too ashamed to admit aloud?
On the other side of the wall, Elise remains silent. Maybe she’s realized the same thing, and now she’s too frightened to do anything else. If I were in her shoes, I mightn’t be able to speak either without my voice wavering.
“Elise…” Captain Janlav sighs so deep the floor squeaks under his boots. “This isn’t only about you and your sisters.”
Elise is the most graceful of us. I can’t be sure if she really moves toward him, but I imagine her doing so. I also imagine her saying a very different thing than: “I know.”
First Celestia and then… No, Elise is just upset. That must be it.
“You say so,” Captain Janlav says, “but I’m not certain that you do. If Celestia doesn’t return to him, there will be no end to the civil war.”
I close my eyes because this is too much. Memories of the burning villages we passed on our way to Angefort return to haunt me. Ash. I can still smell the burning logs and ash, lost homes, lost lives, too. And then there is the news my seed brought to this house, the battles waged, people being shot or their souls ripped from their bodies. It feels to me Captain Janlav is blaming us for that, and it’s more than a bit unfair.
Yet Elise replies, “I know that, too.”
I stare at my companions, shocked. They look back at me, unshocked. It can’t be true. The gagargi is to blame for everything. My sisters and I have done nothing wrong! How could we when we’ve been trapped in this house for half a year?