Chapter Text
The four coins sat reproachfully in the guttering light of her last candle. They were battered and dulled from overuse. Like me, Kate thought grimly. For weeks now she had been living on a watery stew that consisted principally of onions, complemented recently by the scraps of bread she had rescued from a bag someone far better off than her had left for the ducks in the park. Her rumbling gut had protested at first but had been long since cowed into a hollow silence.
The temptation to take a coin, just one, down to the bakery and gorge herself on Mrs Mac's pies was so strong she could almost taste the capitulation. She knew exactly how the buttery pastry would flake under her teeth, how the salted meat would invade her mouth and sit comfortingly in her belly.
She swallowed down the excess of saliva that swarmed over her tongue at the fantasy. If she did that, if she gave in for a meal, she would be sent back another week from her goal. Five crowns, they'd said. Five crowns to pay for her license and then she could practice, earn money, live.
No, five crowns to sit the exam, she reminded herself fiercely. Though how exactly she was meant to pass the exam when she had no resources to practice her craft was entirely another matter. Just one more snag in a system designed to deter people like her. But she had to find a way, for Edwina.
Sliding the coins off the worn hunk of timber that served as her table, Kate wound them tightly in a length of dirty fabric and tucked the package deep inside the pocket she'd sewn under her skirts. Whispering softly, she recited the enchantment that made the pocket untraceable and pinched off the candle flame.
There had been a time when she could light a room without need of a candle, without even really trying, but in her starved state she found even the most essential of magic sapped her energy in a way it never had before. Two days earlier she'd muttered some calming words by instinct, wanting to settle a young child who had burned herself before the healer examined her. She wasn't supposed to, she knew that, but when it came to children she couldn't bear it, couldn't stand seeing them suffer when she had the power to stop it. The effort drained her so much that she had almost fainted when she rose from the bed, stumbling into the poor girl's mother and eliciting a sharp rebuke from the miserable healer.
The fading of her abilities scared her more than anything else. Well, more than most things. She hadn't always had them — or perhaps she had always had them but hadn't always been aware of them — but it had been long enough that the loss was like that of a limb. Each time she instinctively summoned the power and it didn't respond felt like a betrayal, like a lover giving her the cold shoulder.
She had always danced easily with whatever energy or spirit it was that endowed some and not others, had never understood her classmates' struggles to direct it where and how they wanted. She couldn't relate to the directions from tutors to 'visualise the flow' — that would be like visualising one's blood flowing, entirely unnecessary and kind of weird.
It took her less than six months in the woefully under-resourced classes provided for people like her to realise that if she wanted to learn anything useful she would need to teach herself. She simply couldn't sit for months watching the other kids wrestle futilely with magic she could do in her sleep.
It was that impatience that had triggered all of this. Her greed, her arrogant lust for more had set things in motion that she was, ironically, powerless to stop. The destruction of her family, the loss of her friends, her current impoverished existence, the entire mess all came back her possession of powers. If they now failed her, what had it all been for?
She pinched her thigh, twisting the shrunken flesh savagely to distract herself, to remind herself. There was no space for self-pity or regretful contemplation. Edwina needed to her to stay strong, to not just survive but to thrive so she could offer her a better life than the one Kate had. For now her baby sister was safe, but the day would come when her sister needed her and she needed to be ready.
The road ahead was all she could focus on now. The bloated butcher who called himself a healer had paid her despite her fainting episode and she was truly grateful. She'd put up with a lot worse than his sharp words to get that coin for each week's work.
They passed the Ditch several times a day as they visited patients and it had taken her only that first week to come to terms with the fact that she wasn't in fact living out her last resort. That would be to join the ranks of glassy-eyed girls, mouthy boys, and ribald women leaning from windows and lurking in doorways waiting on the promise of a cock that would feed them. She wasn't sure what was worse, the prospect of selling herself or knowing that she would do it gladly if it got her what she needed.
Just seven more days and she'd have that fifth coin.
Kate felt along the wall of the dilapidated shed in the pitch dark, seeking the bed she'd made herself atop the uneven surfaces of three old crates. Lying back with her knees bent so she could tuck her feet up, Kate imagined she was sinking into the soft, feathery mattress back home.
It was testament either to her powers of imagination or her weakened mental state that this hallucination worked so well. The pain of alarmingly exposed vertebrae pressed into scratchy, dried straw over hard timber faded to numbness as she drew the scrolls and floral swirls of the cornices in her bedroom on the back of her eyelids.
Kate woke at the crowing of the rooster, tears still fresh in her eyes. She lay still and chased the visceral, comforting scents and feelings of her dreams but they were like dry sand, slipping inexorably between her fingers.
The rolling giggles of her sister and the glow of plump baby skin under the soft drape of towel after a bath.
The first warm day in spring when blossoms burst into life and bees hummed lazily over optimistic flowers and she had nothing but time to admire it.
Lying in the long grass defrosting wet feet earned playing in the creek, a strong hand that fit perfectly in hers and two rich brown eyes, featuring sparkling flecks of hazel and a promise of mischief.
Sitting on her father's lap, her head against his chest, his voice a rumble that echoed inside her like her powers.
Not dreams, she realised. Memories.
When everything first fell apart Kate worried that if she took out these happy memories too often they'd become faded and disintegrate like a piece of parchment folded too many times. In fact, the constant summoning of the few uncomplicated moments of joy had only solidified them. In her stronger moments she picked carefully through the jagged debris of her life looking for those precious fragments, sea glass on the shore.
As soon as she had her strength back she would begin the process of tucking those coloured pebbles away deep inside her mind, protecting them from the ravages of time and the unwelcome intrusion of mind mappers.
Times had changed, even one's own mind was no longer a safe place.
She sat, wiping her face on the dirtiest of her skirt, stretched her long arms overhead and repeated her mantra. Today I will find food.
Filled with an unusual optimism, Kate brushed herself clean and retied the laces of her worn boots. She should thank the heavens it was late spring and not the dead of winter. By winter she would have new boots, she was certain. Kate peeked through a gap in the boards to check the coast was clear. She wasn't trespassing, not technically. This shed had obviously been abandoned for years, barely standing at all and filled with cobwebs and overgrown ivy.
The land it stood on was also abandoned, having belonged to a family that had fled over the seas three years earlier. There were many such properties, although the new regulations had stemmed the exodus. Now, if families wanted to leave they had to take their chances with a complex, risky and expensive chain of bribery, or go undercover of dark and hope for the best.
Kate wondered where the family was now, if they were regretting their move or if they had found themselves in a much better position on foreign soil. It was a gamble her own father had been unwilling to take, despite the increasingly urgent persuasive attempts of his friends. They'd all gone, the Parkers, the Khans and even the Waterlands, whom father had said would never change their bedsheets, let alone their citizenship.
She knew that he and her step-mother had argued about it extensively. Even if she hadn't overheard the whisper-shouting through the door of the bedroom, she could never forget the devastated wail Mary let out when the news came, 'Why didn't you leave? I begged you to leave!'
But today wasn't a day for considering what could have been. It was the day she would fill her stomach. The world was full of opportunity, the city was large and the many people who weren't desperate were careless. The bread had been her most recent haul but she'd also stumbled across a bag of discarded apples and cake that had been left after a picnic. And just after she'd arrived she had run into an old school friend and been invited to tea. Aside from the anxiety of stuffing her face with biscuits and cake without appearing gluttonous, that had been a most pleasant afternoon. Definitely her culinary highlight since leaving home.
Why shouldn't today be just as fruitful?
By the time the sun had travelled to the western sky, Kate's optimism was flagging. She had walked the three miles into the city centre, dodging filthy puddles and horse muck and covertly inspecting alleyways for the chance of food at every opportunity. She had done three laps of the immaculately landscaped Beldon Park, eyes lighting up at the sight of a paper-wrapped morsel lying abandoned on a park bench. Unfortunately a stray dog had had the same idea and his long legs were no match for Kate's hunger-weakened ones.
She needed to make her way home before night fell. The city wasn't safe after dark, she had learned that the hard way on night one. Determined not to turn back before she needed to, she let feet wander aimlessly until she found herself standing in front of a sandwich shop. Expensive fabrics and well-tailored suits wafted past her on their way in and out of the entrance, but all she could do was inhale the smells, hoping that somehow they would give her strength.
Cheese, she could smell a cheddar cheese. Was that normal, to discern a famously mild cheese at fifty paces? Fresh tomato, that too. She watched a girl of about twelve demolish a lemon ice though the polished window, her spoon held in the delicate and deliberate manner of a novice. Remember that strawberry ice that cook made last year? Kate turned to ask her sister when a sharp voice interrupted her reminiscing.
'Oi, get off!' She turned to see a sharp nosed woman with hard blue eyes scowling at her, the red and white checked tea towel in her hand flapping towards Kate's face. 'Go on, get lost!'
Kate looked down at herself in bewilderment, was this woman really objecting to her mere presence?
'Me?' She murmured to herself, incredulous at the rudeness until a shock of realisation sliced through her.
She'd known she wasn't doing well, obviously was aware that she wasn't the best-dressed person around town. But this was the first time she had been taken as someone fallen so far down in society that they were unsuited to merely stand in front of a place of business.
Kate's gaze travelled down the front of her forest green dress, her best one, the one she had worked so hard to keep clean. She saw the smudges, frayed fabric and dirty hem with new eyes, the eyes of the store owner who was now threatening to bodily remove her. Blinking back tears because she could never let anyone see them and especially not this awful woman, Kate stumbled back and turned, too humiliated even to argue that a person could stop wherever they liked in a public road.
'Yes, you, you dirty rat, keep away from my shop. Don't think I don't know what you're planning.'
The woman kept on, warming up into a royal rant as passers-by paused to see what the commotion was. She seemed to enjoy the spectacle, raising her voice louder as if Kate had argued with her.
'Five cakes we lost last week to these thieving beggars! Five! I wish they'd stay where they belong and not come creeping into the decent side of town.'
Kate let the tears roll down her cheeks now that no one could see. The embarrassment stung like a wasp. If she truly looked that disheveled in her best dress would the guild even let her sit for her license? Fresh realisation of how close she was to permanent ruin sent waves of panic rushing through her, tightening like a band around her chest.
'Excuse me? Wait!'
Letting out a panicked gasp at the idea of being pursued and further berated, Kate sped up. She ran to the nearest corner and turned, weaving between shoppers fast enough that she left an even longer trail of outrage behind her. It was only a few paces after the corner that she had to stop running, her breath was coming in jagged puffs and there was a pain in her side she recognised from the days of running too fast and too far to be the first across a flower-filled meadow.
She'd lost so much condition she couldn't even outrun her humiliation. Turning and fighting was the only defence she had left now. Luckily, that was an instinct that came naturally to her.
Stepping to the side of the street she turned to face her pursuer, summoning every scrap of the intimidating energy she had always been told she served. Adrenalin pumped harshly, making her hands shake and deafening her ears to anything but the blood rushing inside her head. Whatever this was, she wasn't about to go down without a fight.
She bit the inside of her cheek sharply to remind herself not to lose control completely. She simply couldn't afford to waste her energy by loosing magic on this. Keeping her power in check under stress had never been her strong suit.
In the end it hadn't mattered because all her coiled aggression flipped into confusion when she saw the oddly gentle face peering curiously at her.