Page 111

BAZ

The great hall has been transformed in the way that only the Mortis can transform something. We don’t do anything warmly, nor festively, but with the cold precision of an institution that has been doing this for centuries and knows exactly what it is: the macabre.

There is black silk draped over the long tables and the candelabras are silver, dozens of them, their candles black-wicked and burning with a steady blue-white flame that gives the room a cold glow. Plum-and-grey florals run the length of every table, something with a dark waxy petal I don’t know the name of, arranged with bone-white seedpods and dried ash-colored heads. Even the cutlery has been fashioned from skeletons then covered with melted silver.

On the dais at the far end, Caranthis stands in formal crimson, surveying the room with the expression of a man who has presided over this event many times and expects this one to be no different.

Saturna walks in beside me and while I’m used to these displays every Mortalia, she isn’t. I watch her take it in, her eyes darting across the room, her mouth dropping open at the dark grandeur of it all. The emerald of her gown catches the silver candlelight and turns a deeper color, closer to the sea in winter than anything botanical, and the gold trim at her hem moves when she walks and because the room is mostly silver-and-black with that red Bleeding light coming in through the windows, she stands out as the only warm thing in it.

I’ve been looking at her in that dress since she put it on. I’m not about to tear my eyes away now, especially when I have cover.

We put our masks on at the door. The Mortalia tradition is the small fanciful plague doctor faces with feathered upper edges and short curved beaks, elaborate enough to signal occasion and small enough that anyone who knows you can still tell it’s you. Hers has dark green feathers fanning from the upper edge that match the gown exactly because of course she made them match. Mine is plain black. I put it on and find us a position near the appetizers, suddenly starving.

Saturna has found Avelene near the punch table and she’s laughing at something, her mask pushed up on her forehead, her head tipped back, and it’s the most relaxed I’ve seen her in weeks. I get myself a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and stand with it and watch the room fill with revelers.

Kelwyck arrives late, which is usual for a man whose gift means rooms rearrange themselves around him without his having to try. He moves through the crowd with that easy unconscious pull, the silver ring turning in his fingers, and he finds Saturna right away. I watch him ask her something and watch her accept and they move to the floor together and I must admit he’s good. He dances with the same lazy confidence he does everything, the kind that looks effortless because for him it is. I’ve always suspected he’s a witch the same as Saturna and Caranthis and that ring of his has some sort of magic. Regardless, I give it thirty seconds.

Then I set my glass down and cross the floor and step between them.

“I don’t think so,” I tell him.

Kelwyck looks at me in surprise, his expression quickly followed by amusement, and he makes a small bow that manages to be both gracious and faintly mocking and steps back into the crowd without a word.

Saturna looks up at me. “That was extremely not subtle.”

“No,” I agree, and take her hand. “Whoever said I was?”

She fits against me the way she always does now, which is to say naturally, like she’s meant to be in my arms. Her free hand rests at my shoulder, mine at her waist, the emerald satin smooth under my palm. The music is a string quartet in the corner, slow and minor-keyed, playing a waltz and we find the rhythm easily. She’s a good dancer, light on her feet in a way that surprises me every time given how much weight she carries everywhere else.

Also, the weight of her breasts, which the dress’s bodice does a fine job holding up.

“You’re staring,” she says.

“You made that dress,” I say, pulling her closer than what should seem appropriate to anyone watching.

“I’m aware I made it.”

“Then you know why I’m staring.”

She bites back a smile and looks away, and I keep looking at her. The tether hums between us, still something I can’t see with my eyes, but something I feel and it’s the steadiest it’s been in days, running from her to me like a thread pulled taut but not strained. Perhaps we’ve finally found our footing again, so to speak. Perhaps she finally forgives me. Or maybe it’s just like me to think too much about it.

I would like to say something honest to her. I won’t, though, not yet. I’m not sure I have the right and I’m not sure it would do me any good. But it’s there, pressing at the inside of my chest, and I think she can feel it too because she stops trying to read my expression and just lets me gawk at her as we move through the ballroom, spurred by the dreamy music and candlelight.

The song ends and another begins and we don’t separate. I realize now that it looks odd, that to anyone else a professor should only dance with a student for one dance and that’s it.

But her chin tips up slightly, the black in her blue eyes growing wider, and I’m about to lean in when a hand touches her shoulder from behind.

Professor Renata is standing there in formal black, her mask a severe thing with a long narrow beak and no ornamentation at all. She’s smiling at Saturna with the pleasant professional smile she uses in History class. Her eyes in the masks’ shadowed sockets don’t match the smile at all.

“Would you mind if I borrowed the professor for a dance?” she says to Saturna in her clipped voice. “I’ve been meaning to congratulate him on his recovery.”

Oh, god no.

There is no polite way to refuse this and we both know it. Saturna steps back and nods, even gives half a curtsey, then takes a fresh glass of champagne from a passing server and goes to find Avelene. I watch her go until the crowd closes around her, and then I turn to Renata and take her hand because there is nothing else to do.

She dances well. Of course she does, she’s had decades of practice. Still, she’s surprisingly spry.

The smell hits me in the first rotation, a wave of something sweet and floral, laid over something else underneath, something older and slightly oily that the floral is trying to cover. It makes me think, absurdly, of my grandmother’s closet and all the mink furs she had piled in there.