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“Oh yes,” said Madeleine with the ghost of a laugh. “I’m meeting with Harlo to discuss my wedding vows.”
It might have been a week later, sometime around midnight, that Jayla was jerked awake by a percussive boom followed by a sinister sizzle. She leapt from her bed and flung herself across Aussen’s small form before another, slightly softer detonation sounded in the distance. Aussen curled up beneath her, clutching her Keshalosha fish in one hand and clinging to Jayla with the other. She asked an urgent question in words Jayla didn’t understand, but it wasn’t hard to interpret.
“I don’t know,” Jayla said. “Something exploded.”
She stayed where she was, making her body a shelter for Aussen’s, but listening intently for any clues as to what had happened. In a few moments, she started hearing sounds from the house—voices raised, calling from room to room—and even softer and farther away, the noises of neighbors opening their doors and shouting to each other across their lawns. Jayla lifted her head so she could hear better, and that was when she realized the world was in total darkness. The windows of her room usually received faint illumination from lights in the street; a small artificial lamp was always set near Aussen’s bed in case she woke up and was afraid. Sconces stayed lit around the clock in the atrium and along the stairwell, providing a faint ghostlight that spilled in under the door. All of these were powered by the same great engine that fed the gridway—and all of these had been extinguished.
Jayla didn’t know what catastrophe could have knocked out the engine or how difficult it might be to restart, but that wasn’t her concern at the moment. The sounds hadn’t come from someone breaking into the house to harm Madeleine or steal Aussen, so she could relax.
“Everything will be fine,” she said, repeating the phrase in halting Zessin. “Go back to sleep. I’m going downstairs to look around.”
In the perfect darkness, Jayla glided through the room, pulling on yesterday’s discarded clothes and tucking a knife into her waistband. Just in case.
She stepped through the door and paused to get her bearings. A three-quarter moon dripped a gauzy, mostly useless phosphorescence through the overhead skylight, but it was enough to suggest where the bannister and the stairwell lay. Jayla could see shapes outside some of the servants’ doors as the maids and footmen clustered in the hallway, wondering what to do next. She felt her way carefully down to the second level and arrived at Madeleine’s door just as it opened.
“What do—” Jayla started, and Madeleine responded with a little shriek. “Sorry, I thought you could see me.”
“Jayla? Oh, I’m glad you’re awake. I was just going to come get you.”
“What do you think happened? It looks like the power was knocked out.”
“Yes, that’s my guess. It’s happened a couple of times before, but it usually only lasts an hour or so.”
“Is it safe?”
“Do you mean will the city catch fire or something? I don’tthinkso, but since I don’t really understand how it works—”
“Or looters might take advantage of the darkness and try to break into houses and businesses.”
“Of course that’s the first thing you’d think of!”
“I just might sit downstairs and wait until sunrise.”
Their voices attracted attention, and a few more shapes drifted down the stairwell.
“What would you like us to do, dona?” asked the junior footman.
“Do we have candles? Jayla’s right, it wouldn’t hurt for a few of us to keep watch in the atrium.”
“There are candles in the kitchen,” Norrah said. “If I can find my way there.”
“I can walk the house blindfolded,” said the footman. He was young and a bit of a braggart, but Jayla had always thought he was sharp and capable. “Hold on to me.”
They led the way, and Jayla and Madeleine followed them down the stairs. “You don’t have to sit up with us,” Jayla said to Madeleine once they reached the ground level.
“I can’t sleep, so I might as well.”
Jayla glanced around as if she could see through the shadows piled under the archways and behind the broad pillars. The distant moonlight gleamed like frost along the polished floor and created feathered halos around the decorative plants in their heavy stone vases. “Where’s your father? Didn’t the noise wake him?”
“He’s not home.”
Jayla nodded, knowing the movement was invisible. Every few weeks, Alastair Alayne would be absent from the house overnight. No one specified where he spent his time, but Jayla had always assumed he had a lover or at least a temporary paid companion. At the back of her mind she tucked away the thought that his next absence would provide a perfect time for her to spirit Madeline out of the house. If Madeleine decided she wanted to go.
“Is Aussen all right? Is she afraid?”
“She woke up but I told her everything was fine. I’ll check on her in a bit.”
They stood in silence for a moment before Madeleine exclaimed, “You just never realize howdarkit can be. I’m so used to the sconces always being on.”
