1ELARA
Elara knew better than to hope, yet there she stood within a crowd of other doe-eyed fools gawking at the same flyer. They’d been pasted around the Quarter this morning, and the crowds amassed because magie like this rarely made it south across the Joyaux.
Upon shiny white paper, an eerie likeness of the late Souverain of Arts Culinaires smiled and waved at her audience as if she hadn’t died last week. Like all Souverains in the Counseil des Sept, she was decked entirely in white: shimmering dress, dyed hair, long eyelashes, and manicured nails. When she wasn’t preening for the crowd, she recited the information at the bottom of the poster.
“The time has come to host the Objet d’Art Contest!” she called. Children in the front row squealed, clapping their hands at the rare magie that made the painting move. “With my unfortunate passing, a successor must be chosen, and it could beyou!”
Elara walked away. She’d heard it a dozen times already that morning. The posters wereeverywhere, and they droned on about the same bullshit that always ended in the same useless question:
Will you be one of the Favored?
No.
Elara would not be chosen to compete, and she knew better than to let the stubborn pang of disappointment break her focus. She had a more sensible task ahead of her.
Turning a street corner manned by an Anespérer officer dressed in black, she thumbed the three coins in her dress pocket. Four years andElara still couldn’t walk past them without hunching her shoulders or averting her gaze.
The narrow street stretched between leaning tenements and emptied out into what used to be the heart of the Restes neighborhood—The Market. There were stalls to represent most of the seven Sociétés that ran Anespérer, though the Restes didn’t see much Arts Spectacle yellow, Arts Littéraires purple, or Arts Humains red.
People who lived in the Restes Quarter south of the Joyaux River couldn’t break into a Société even despite some being magie-abled, leaving them for more undesirable work—sewage, laundry, garbage. Jobs the rich deemed “talentless,” which really meant work they knew the city needed but didn’t want to dirty their own hands doing.
Those jobs were noble and necessary, but they paid next to nothing.
Once upon a time, five years ago to be exact, The Market flourished. People shopped, gathered at crates to play cards, and bartered with homemade goods, and children played while the neighborhood kept watch.
Now it was flooded with more officers than customers.
Elara made her way past the market’s only artist from Arts Visuels, who poured molten metal along the edges of a broken wine bottle, fusing it with scraps of other shattered glass. With a breath, it cooled and the stained-glass bird flitted to life, alighting upon the artist’s shoulder.
The largest line was to the silver canopy of Arts Manufacturiers, where iron sang against steel. The blacksmith’s hammer rained sparks with every blow as he worked a wrench back into shape. Soot-stained workers in bleached coveralls waited for their tools so they could return to the factories in the adjacent Fumée Quarter.
Elara ducked beneath a canopy made of sickly-looking squash vines. Jeanine, the Arts Nécessaire farmer who tended these crops, shouted,“Squash grown with magie to fill the belly for hours. Onions that keep their flavor in any broth all season!”
As a duo of officers moved by, Elara ducked behind another customer and plucked a basket of strawberries from the shelf. They were too small, too green, too pathetic, and most certainly not worth a single som.
She had no choice. “I’ll take these.”
Jeanine’s voice answered, “Sure thing, dear. That’ll be…”
The customer moved away, taking Elara’s hiding place with him.
Jeanine’s wrinkled face tightened. “No.”
“Jeanine,” Elara muttered, eyes on the guards, “it’s just me.”
“And you bring trouble. Like your boyfriend.”
Jeanine didn’t even drop her voice. The police hadn’t noticed, but they would soon if she kept squawking. Elara’s last boyfriend, like some stains, couldn’t be removed with time and scrubbing alone. They had to be scorched out like gunk at the bottom of an oven. Unfortunately, Fernand was the most stubborn mess she’d ever had to try and burn out of her life.
“I haven’t seen him in months,” she argued.
“Spreading ideas like the fool he is, he went and got my Colin arrested.” Jeanine jabbed her finger in the air to an empty stall down the line. “Got it in his head he had the right to perform magie without Société approval.”
The guards had stopped to light a smoke.
Colin was every bit the opposite of Jeanine. He’d been bright-eyed and desperate for change, which made him an easy target for Fernand Travers. He made his schemes for a better world sound charming, easy. But rebellions took more than that. So much more.
“I’m sorry,” Elara said and meant it, “but I’m not with him anymore.”
