The Pass Phrase ch 6

CHAPTER 6

charity

The library was an open, airy room, with a scattering of chairs. A cart with an assortment of strangely shaped bottles rested to the right of where Mr. Pine was seated. He didn’t look at her when she entered the room.

Mrs. Winter made an approving sound and lifted her glass of a pitch black liquid. “Much better,” she said, eyeing Nova up and down. “Brother, doesn’t she look halfway to a member of society?”

Mr. Pine sighed. He deigned to cast a glance over at her. “Halfway, yes,” he said. He sounded bored. “She’s hardly fit company for Estella.”

‘...isn’t that the daughter’s name? The young lady of the house?’

Nova resisted the urge to lift an eyebrow. “Thank you,” she said, pretending it has been wholly complimentary commentary. “I feel refreshed.”

The white witch cast a smug look at the creepy man who was apparently her brother. “Nova, darling, please have a seat.”

“Thank you,” she said. Primly, she swept her skirts out and sank down onto the indicated chair. Her back was to the open window. The sunlight was warm on her shoulders.

She lifted her chin and looked at the other two. They each had a glass in hand. A third crystal glass was waiting to be filled, sat upside down on a rose colored tray.

No one offered her a drink.

Mr. Pine tapped the bottom of his glass against the side table. He was leaning back, legs crossed, arms splayed wide. “So this is the girl who was so hard to find.” His tone was flat.

Nova straightened her spine further. “I didn’t know I was such an inconvenience.” She deliberately did not apologize.

‘They were looking for me. Why? Why me specifically?’

The thought made her feel secretly pleased. Smug. She was special? She had been outmaneuvering these people without even trying.

“Don’t feel too badly,” Mrs. Winter said slyly to her brother. She covered her mouth behind the glass. “Little Nova here has real talent. With a little training and education, she could be quite something.”

And this, Nova felt, was the point of her being here.

‘It’s some kind of bribe. They’ve given me nice clothes, are making promises for my future- and then they’re going to ask me for something to earn it.’

What they wanted was obvious. She felt steel in her spine. She remembered who she was. She felt a vicious little thrill that she had apparently been a thorn to rich people who she didn’t even know existed.

“Rocks can be polished,” Mr. Pine said noncommittally. “They remain rocks.”

“Have you ever been hit over the head by a rock?” Mrs. Winters asked archly. “I assure you, it is respectively effective as a tactic.”

Nova let out a little laugh.

The look this got her from Mr. Pine was furious. She merely blinked back at him.

‘I’m almost certainly dead. The things they’re promising won’t happen. They just want information from me. It’s more reliable to get someone to talk willingly. When they realize I won’t tell them information, they’ll torture me and kill me.’

There was certainly going to be something horrible in her future. But she had been risking bloody, violent death for years. She had come to peace with the risk.

And there was something delicious about how angry they’d be when they realized the truth. She felt contempt for them. They felt she was beneath them. They thought she was going to be easily manipulated with a carrot and criticism she’d want to prove wrong.

“Four years, I believe she said.” Mrs. Winters seemed impressed. “What are you, 16? You must have been very small when you began. It’s very impressive. I’ve seen plenty of the coyotes…. None who worked for so long,” she acknowledged after a pause. “I always wondered how they were recruited. Who passes the information? The organization is impressive.”

“I’m not going to tell you anything,” Little said calmly. She curled her hand up into a fist at her side. “I won’t tell you who I know or how we do it. I don’t care what you want.”

Mrs. Winters went very, very still. Her face was eerily white. A wave of gibbering terror washed over Little. It choked her. It felt like she was breathing in ice. It burnt her throat.

Clink. Pine had set down his glass.

The moment subsided. She could breathe again.

‘That was a mistake. I shouldn’t have said anything.’

“I mean this in the kindest way possible,” Pine drawled. “No one cares about people like you.” The disgusted way he looked down at her added credence to what he was saying. “You are not a player in these games.”

Winters let out a shocked laugh. “That’s not the kindest thing that one could say,” she scolded slyly. She leaned back in her recliner.

Little felt herself shrink even further.

Pine waved a hand dismissively. “It’s a constructive truth. Child, you are currently worth nothing, as are those you are trying to advocate for. That means that your opinion is worth nothing. It also means that no one cares if those peasants live or die.” He stood and poured another tiny glass of the amber liquid. “Do you understand what I mean?”

Her heart stopped.

‘It means you could kill me now and no one would know, except the servants who cleaned me up. And nothing would ever happen to you.’

The fear the staff had shown… it made more sense now.

“Well?” His lip curled. He cast a glance at Winters. “Potential, you said.”

“Perhaps more magical than intellectual,” she murmured back. Her gaze was just as hard. “Speak, Nova. He has told you good news. What is it?”

She swallowed. Good news? Then- it wasn’t a threat. It was… “Mr. Pine means that you are not asking about my contacts,” she said slowly. “You are only interested in whoever is responsible for the sanctuary, not the coyotes.”

“Sanctuary,” Pine muttered contemptuously. “That’s how it’s being sold?”

Little glanced between the two nobles, trying to find her feet. “Yes,” she said, not sure if it was defiance or just an explanation. “That’s how people see it. No one is happy here.”

“But they are safe,” Mrs. Winters broke in. Her eyes glinted. “No one is eaten or torn to shreds within these walls.”

It was a struggle not to shrug. “I don’t think that happens in the sanctuary, either.”

Pine snorted and raised his glass in her direction. “So you feel it charity?”

She turned that over, unsure of how to answer. “I don’t know about the motivations of the person who set it up,” Little said slowly. “But people seem to be happy there. People pay a lot-”

She cut herself off, but she’d already shared information. Neither of the nobles looked surprised.

“Yes,” Mrs. Winters said slowly. “I’m sure they do.” She exchanged a glance with her brother. “It must be quite the burden indeed.”

Little didn’t understand where this was going. She waited, eyes darting between the two threats.

“Of course.” Pine nodded his agreement. “If it wasn’t, the length of servitude to gain space wouldn’t be so long.” He fixed his uncompromising gaze on Little. “Most of you die, don’t they?”

She felt pinned in place. She didn’t move.

“That’s right,” Mrs. Winters said. Little remembered a snow-white face and knew in the pit of her stomach exactly why the older woman was so confident of that. “That’s hardly charitable or even just, is it?” She addressed the question to both Little and Mr. Pine. “If the people being escorted pay a high rate to enter, then surely the service of the escort is valuable. It seems that successfully escorting even a handful of refugees ought to pay that debt.” She looked at Little. “He couldn’t do this without you.”

“No, he could,” Mr. Pine said contemplatively. He poured another drink. Little hadn’t noticed him drink the last one. “He quite easily could. Even if he didn’t have his personal army, he has the king’s ear. If he really, truly just wanted to help, he could.”

“Oh, but he’d be expending his own resources,” Mrs. Winters said with a hand wave. “He’d be paying soldiers to escort, and losing some. He’d have to pay widow’s compensation. Or he’d have to show his hand and lose political capital.”

Pine hummed. “Much cheaper,” he said, “to have the poor do it. Their pay of promised residence costs him nothing, and most of them die before they can collect.” He threw back the drink whole. It moved oddly in his throat, in one lump.

Her lips felt heavy, numb. Little drew back into herself.

The thing was, she didn’t doubt for a moment that this was true.

‘Almost every guide I’ve known for more than a year or two is dead. Almost no one does enough trips to earn their stay.’

That seemed worse, now, than it had this morning. She’d known the fact, she’d felt it was bitterly unfair. But she had never considered that this pattern was somebody’s conscious design, and not one more way for the universe to spit on her.

There was a heavy knot in her stomach. She had lost the righteous anger from earlier.

“Stand, girl.” Pine barked it out. He set his glass down. “Show me what you were taught. I’m told that you manifested fire.”

Little was already on her feet before she had a chance to decide to obey or not. She turned her palms to face the ceiling and felt something rising within her.

The odd thing was that it felt natural. It felt just like when she would sink out of sight in the darkness of the forest. There was just a moment of peaceful contemplation. She closed her eyes, opened them, and she saw fire rising from her hands.

Mrs. Winter let out a sharp sound and learned forward.

“Silently?” Mr. Pine said. He glanced incredulously at his sister. “You taught her to do that without speaking?”

The witch slowly shook her head. “I did not.” She fixed her blue gaze on Nova. “How did you know to do that?”

She flexed her fingers and let the fire die. She shrugged. “I remembered how it felt,” Nova said honestly. “It didn’t occur to me that I might need to use the words.”

….not that she remembered what she’d been told to say, anyway.

Mrs. Winters put her hand to her face. She tilted her head to the side. “Her gift has primarily manifested in stealth,” she said quietly. “Perhaps this is natural for her. Or merely how her gift has been directed to grow, given that she had no way to channel it.”

Mr. Pine looked at her, really looked at her for the first time. He made a humph sound in the back of his throat. She watched his hand move as he flipped over the clean glass and selected a bottle with a clear liquid.

She leaned forward to accept it when he poured and held it out to her.

“You were right,” he said. Pine shook his head. “It would have been a terrible waste.”

It occurred to her, distantly, that he probably meant that killing her would have been a waste of a resource. She didn’t have the time to feel fearful or offended.

“Nova, darling.” Mrs. Winters’ lips stretched into a dangerous smile. “I’m going to send you to finishing school.”

“School?” She echoed. “I- when?”

The witch waved a hand. “Oh, from tonight, I should think. Brother darling, lend me a carriage.”

“Of course,” he murmured. He stood. “You must excuse me. I have an appointment.”

“I’ll need your wife’s closet,” Mrs. Winters said sharply, eyes narrowing slightly on Little. “I can’t send a girl to school with one dress. She’d get laughed out onto the street.”

“They will laugh regardless,” he said dryly. But he made an ambivalent little hand gesture. “Take what you will. The mouse won’t protest.”

She felt scandalized for a moment, in between the confusion. That was a horrible way to talk about his wife.

‘Hardly my biggest problem,’ she reminded herself. ‘School? Finishing school? Isn’t that something only the richest girls do? They’ll know I don’t belong.’

She nearly wanted to turn to Pine for help, to use his obvious disdain for her to argue that she simply could not go to finishing school. Not only was she working class, she was 3rd from the bottom in the servant hierarchy in the house. It was the absolute bottom position afforded to an adult- both a tweenie and a hall boy were children. She was one of the lowest of the low.

But as he left the room, she knew that there was no way to interest him enough to help her. She was left with a sinking feeling and trepidation.

“Cheer up,” Mrs. Winters said mercilessly. “You’re about to move up in the world. Wait here and finish your drink. I’ll have luggage arranged for you. Everyone will know what you are when you speak, of course, but I can dress you so that they forget after you find some footing.” She stood in a bustle of skirts. “They won’t truly forget, of course, but even the dullest socialite can be taught to recognize power when it burns her hands. And you, darling girl, will have that.”