The Once and Future Queen

Chapter Six

There was no sign of Devyn at the forum the next day or the one after that. He had tried three times to get the tech from me now. Had he given up?

Maybe he was already gone. I didn’t care. Or rather, I was an addict insisting to myself I didn’t need a fix but I did. Badly. It was like nagging tooth pain – Devyn in the background of my life was a presence of which I had been ignorant until the cavity of his absence became a fact which was impossible to ignore. I turned our last conversation over and over in my mind. What did it mean? Who had he thought I might be?

He had waited years for what? Some sign, some evidence… why? Round and round it went in my brain. He had been watching me for years – this fact alone should have thrown me way more than it did. What was special about me? But then… apparently nothing. He had concluded I was nothing more than the spoiled daughter of an elite merchant. But he had hoped I was someone else; his disappointment that I wasn’t had been a tangible thing.

That connection, his pain… I had never felt that before. It had wholly blindsided me. He was looking for someone. I had never really known who I was – that’s all it was. I had been promised that soon I would have all the connection I would ever need in my partner, not some freak moment with someone I barely knew.

On Saturday, I pulled myself together to go shopping with Ginevra to buy my graduation dress. My mother had made clear that I needed something spectacular, a stipulation that would previously have lit up my world with its underlying licence to consider money no object in satisfying this single criterion.

I had hoped that having Ginevra along would help me focus on my task, but I found her light-hearted chatter impossible to hold on to, so made do with offering up what so far had clearly managed to be the appropriate noises as she had yet to complain at my inattention.

“Maybe if you left your hair down, this one would do?” Ginevra mused as we watched my avatar twirl in front of us in the latest unsatisfactory outfit. Barely had she spoken and the elaborate updo dissolved and my long multi-hued tresses flowed down across my shoulders covering the awkward way the straps lay on my pale bare shoulders.

I stilled. My hair colour was unusual – the gold, red, and caramel strands shouted my adopted status to anyone paying attention. It wasn’t a secret, but it wasn’t public knowledge either. In fact, my mother went to some lengths to ensure it was not questioned, even going so far as to dye her own hair a lighter brown to discourage any potential raised eyebrows. I had never given it much thought before, but was this something I shared with the girl Devyn sought?

Who was she and why was he looking for her? I eyed the avatar speculatively. Was she everything I wasn’t? Was she worthy of the years he had spent looking for her?

Not a foolish girl who would never be anything more than an ornament on the arm of a more important male. Not just a pretty bauble to be displayed to best effect before being put back in its box.

“Ginevra, what was the name of that apprentice at the Mete?” I asked.

“What apprentice?” Ginevra was confused at my apparently random question. “We don’t know any apprentices.”

She stopped, her eyes lighting in sudden understanding. “You wouldn’t.”

“I would,” I returned, shaking off the despondency towards which my thoughts had been dragging me. Getting the disgraced apprentice to make my dress would be a stroke of genius. It would indeed be spectacular, as directed, while also annoying my mother because of its less than salubrious origin. It didn’t hurt that it also soothed my conscience, which had niggled at me ever since I had voted him guilty for my own selfish reasons.

We quickly looked up the address of Apprentice Oban, finding it amongst the reams of attention he had received in the feeds following the Mete. His home was buried in the stews, making Ginevra a little less supportive of my plan.

We wound our way out of the shopping district and through the West End. Our destination lay eastwards beyond the plazas and concrete and glass buildings of the financial district. It was a part of the city I didn’t really spend a great deal of time in. The weekend atmosphere was eerie, all those buildings filled with thousands and thousands of empty rooms now that everyone had gone home for a day of rest.

Ginevra and I grew quiet as we continued past streets that were becoming less and less familiar. We were scanned and waved through the old wall at Aldgate. My father would not approve of my being in the outer eastern part of the city. We were quite a distance from the outer walls, but still… I was a little nervous about my plan by this stage but refused to turn around. I was not just a pretty girl in a pretty life. Not two streets from the gate, Ginevra baulked and turned back, unhappy that I couldn’t be talked out of my course of action.

As I wound my way through the warren of narrower, older streets, I looked around, fascinated. It was so different to the western neighbourhood where I lived with its wide spaces between the buildings and unhurried green walkways. The homes here pressed tightly together, a legacy from the era when the Empire had been at its weakest. Londinium had struggled to cope with the numbers cowering inside the walls back when the border had stretched all the way to the gates of the city itself. Before we had the engineering skills to go higher, the poor had squeezed into every space offered between the original inner-city wall and the newer reinforced ones. Nothing but those great outer walls, built deep and high, separated us from the hordes of Britons who waited outside ready to burn us to the ground.

The stews held people of every shape and size, all exotic to my eyes. Grubby little hands grabbed at my skirts as we whisked by.

“Please, donna, spare a copper.”

I snatched my skirts closer, looking nervously around. Even if I had physical currency to give them, begging was strictly forbidden. These children were risking the stocks by approaching me.

I shook my head at the children and they melted away into the warren of streets. I paused every now and then to discreetly peek at my device to check I was still going the right way.

Eventually, a beep outside a peeling doorway indicated I had arrived. I knocked and, finally, an elderly man opened the door. Taking in the quality of my clothes, he winked at me and pointed to a door at the top of the stairs. Apparently I wasn’t the first elite to deign to cross this threshold since Apprentice Oban’s skills had come to light, too impatient to wait until he opened a shop in the inner districts.

I hesitated outside the door. This was a crazy idea. My mother would kill me and Devyn wouldn’t even know, much less care, that I had got a tailor from the stews to make my dress. Make my dress. Ha, even my small act of defiance and social conscience was related to the role he had identified as mine: pretty little rich girl.

My shoulders slumped. I felt as if I had lost a battle I didn’t even know had been engaged. I had stepped outside the safe borders of my world momentarily and, having skirted the edge for a while, I was now ready to scuttle back to the safety of my pampered life.

Only Devyn remained as a lure on the border, nagging at me to take another step, even though he had advised me to stay in my sheltered world. The other world, the one he inhabited, was no place for me. He had no place for me. I felt hollow at the thought. He was an insufferable enigma; the mask he put on made my fingers curl into claws in my desire to rip it off and reveal someone else. The man I had glimpsed. Dark curls, sharply defined features, intensity and determination blazing out of him. How did he hide that side of himself, and why? Would I ever know?

He had said he would be moving on, and so must I. Only, what direction to take? My mind went in circles as I stood there in the dimly lit, dirty hallway. Home to my parents and friends, pretty dresses, and inane parties? Or should I push at the boundaries of my world to know something more? Something that tingled at the fringes of my sensibilities.

“Hello.” The door had opened and I looked down to discover a dishevelled girl surveying me through dark, tangled hair. A shimmer of something ran through me, a shiver of something… like a hand held out over a threshold, drawing me in. I couldn’t resist taking another tiny step. Just a little more, maybe.

“Hello,” I responded, smiling slightly so she would know I meant no harm.

She eyed me warily, her survey comprehensive. No chance of this one being cowed by anything, I realised. Her gaze was bold and aware beyond her years, her head tilting to the side as if something about me had struck her as different. On closer examination, she was older than she looked, the tired slump of her shoulders making her appear young while a cough wracked her small frame.

“You looking for Oban?” she asked once the fit had subsided.

I nodded. She led me into the small, sparsely furnished apartment, vaguely recognisable from its moment of fame at the arena.

There was an older lady sewing in the light of the window who barely glanced up from her activity. A few more children huddled in another corner of the room.

The slight young man from the Mete was bent over some material, standing when his sister called out to him, alerting him to my presence.

“Donna,” he addressed me formally as the street urchins had done.

“I was hoping you might make me a dress,” I announced haltingly.

He smiled shyly, nodding, his survey of me less bold than his sister’s but no less comprehensive for all that.

“I have no funds for the material, but if you buy it, I can do the rest,” he offered.

“Deal,” I said quickly. Standing here in this room with his family I felt deeply uncomfortable, my guilt at voting against him at the Mete gnawing at me, an unsettling anxiety crawling over my skin at the squalor of the room. I glanced over at the woman in the corner who sat sullenly watching – their mother, I supposed. As I submitted to Oban’s measuring in the second room, the girl who had greeted me at the door left after confirmation that Oban would be able to manage both attending to me and the care of the two small ones on the floor, but not before her grey eyes settled on me once more. It wasn’t a warning exactly but there was something about her that told me that should I do anything in her absence to hurt her family it would not be the last I saw of her. She was a slip of a thing yet I believed that silent promise.

“Have you had much business since the Mete?” I queried lightly as Oban continued to take my measurements, jotting down quick notes in a little book on the table.

He inclined his head in what I took for a soft yes. I made a few more attempts to start a conversation with him but they elicited little more in the way of response. Not a talker then.

A hacking cough in the other room indicated that his sister had returned, though I had not heard the door closing.

“Is she okay?” I asked softly to the kneeling Oban as he measured the inside of my leg.

He looked up, his eyes flashing with concern, before he again gave a small nod. I frowned at the conflicting signals.

“Has she been ill for long?” I tried again.

Another nod.

“Marina’s not contagious,” he said finally after another pause, clearly taking my question as worry for my own health.

I tsked in frustration. He looked up at me, startled.

“I wasn’t asking for myself,” I admonished. “I can bring medicine.”

His face lost the inexpressive look that those in service so often used to hide all feelings and, more importantly, opinions from their customers.

He looked concerned again and then shook his head. “No cure.”

“What do you mean, no cure?” I asked, baffled. Our society had little illness – most having been defeated by science and technology generations ago – and what remained was quickly remedied.

He shook his head and refused to answer any more questions, hustling me out of the house with a slip of paper containing the instructions regarding what material he wanted me to buy.

I made my way back to Aldgate deeply distracted by Oban’s behaviour. Why would he not want his sister to get help? It was ridiculous. Was it the cost?

The thought of the dark-haired girl’s illness niggled at me. When I returned two days later with the cloth, I made sure I had some medicine anyway, purchased from one of the few pharmacies in the city.

Oban was pleased with the cloth, as was I – the rich material glimmered as it caught the light that came through the grimy window, my signature colour turquoise shot through with indigo. He practically hummed with excitement as he felt it, showing me a couple of sketches he had done already that made my own eyes gleam in anticipation. We grinned at each other, appreciating the mutual pleasure caused by his vision.

His sister was bustling about in the main living area and when she popped her head in to ask Oban a question, I pulled the bottle out of my bag.

Marina stilled, the colour draining from her already pale face. There was an odd feeling in the room, almost a physical charge that raised the hair on my body. I rubbed at my arms to dispel the fanciful notion. I pulled my eyes from the girl to her brother to find he looked equally as upset.

“What did you do?” Oban whispered from bloodless lips.

“I–I…” I stammered, confused by the atmosphere that had descended so suddenly on the room, their reaction to the bottle of cough medicine as though I had taken out a bottle of poison. “I thought it might help.”

Oban looked behind him at the top corner of the room where the ubiquitous state camera resided. They were supposed to be in every home but became increasingly rare in the higher echelons of society. He followed the trajectory of the camera and realised that the bottle was currently blocked by his own frame. He shot me a quelling look as he covered the bottle with the cloth and turned again to his notebook without looking at his sister who remained frozen in the doorway.

“Perhaps, donna, you would like something a little higher around the neckline in the fashion of the orient?” he asked, indicating his book. Rather than an adjustment to the sketch he had been happily showing me moments before, there was a hastily scribbled message.

PLEASE. NO HELP. NO ILLNESS. THEY TAKE HER.

I was deeply confused but, responding to the desperate pleading contorting the two faces turned to me, I nodded. What was going on?

Troubled, I took my leave with smiling promises to return a week later for a fitting, my skin still tingling from the strange atmosphere that hadn’t quite dissipated from their home.

They were hiding Marina’s illness, but why? Because they would take her… but who were they?

The pharmacist had been slightly off when I bought the medicine, I now recalled, asking me who it was for and why I needed it. I had been vaguely annoyed at her questioning, having been already irritated at Devyn’s elusiveness. I had assumed he would be back, cap in hand, to get his sodding tech but I had assumed wrong. I caught glimpses of him now and then but always at a distance, slipping away like a snake in the grass when I attempted to cross paths with him. It was infuriating.

“Aarghh.” I released my frustration audibly, earning a startled look from the man in front of me in the queue to get back through Aldgate. I smiled guilelessly up at him. A Shadower from the look of his dirt-stained clothes, come to the city to sell whatever it was he grew in the lands beyond the outer wall. He looked prosperous, as he would have to be to have a permit to pass through the inner walls. Taking in my fine dress, he dropped his eyes and quickly turned away.

My mind churned over the conversation I had shared with the pharmacist. I had been haughtily brief in my answers but she had been noticeably insistent. Why had she wanted to know what I was purchasing medicine for? It hadn’t been just the idle curiosity of one bored for lack of customers. She had been actively trying to discover where the medicine was bound.

I had, out of sheer ignorance, been vague about the symptoms, for I had seen little more than the cough, but the keen-eyed pharmacist had asked some questions that had been unnervingly accurate. Flushed cheeks, slightly jerky movements? I had agreed under her soft interrogation, my memory of Marina remarkably clear for someone I had only met for a few moments.

As I walked up to the platform to take a transport across the city, I also recalled my father asking after my health that evening at dinner. He too had been oddly persistent, checking I was taking my vertigo meds, but I had laughed it off, teasing him for his excessive care of me. Had he known about the cough bottle? Had he thought it was for me? I couldn’t imagine why as I was clearly quite well.

I felt unsettled as I took my seat to head west and home. Had my action been watched and observed? Was that why my father was asking about my health for no apparent reason? Why had Oban and Marina been hiding her illness? Who was it they were so scared of?

I stared out of the window, my mind racing. Usually the journey across the city was one of my greatest pleasures, whizzing through the teeming galleried warren of Londinium, millions of citizens busily going about their day, toiling at the lower levels, ascending into homes in the great scrapers. So many lives full of unknown joys and unknown dramas. Now all I could think of was one single citizen whose life I might have unwittingly made harder.

I had been trying to help. Had I blindly done the opposite? I cursed my ignorance, reproach washing through me. Had my blithe dance through life meant that I had hurt someone else? Devyn was right, I was a fool. Stupid, stupid, I berated myself.

Devyn.

Perhaps I could repair the damage I had done. Cover the tracks I had left to their door. If anyone could help it would be him. I still had his device, but I couldn’t afford to wait until he broke and approached me. I would have to swallow my pride and ask him for help.

At the forum over the next few days, I kept my eyes peeled but went from distant sightings to none at all. Didn’t he plan to complete civics? Without a pass, it was not possible to graduate and become a full citizen. Or to travel around the Empire, as I assumed was his plan.