Wayward Read online

  She couldn’t talk about this any more; not the initiation, not Camden. She was suddenly very tired, and tears were building again alongside the lump in her throat. She wanted to bury her head back in her pillow and be alone. So she said the one thing she knew would send her mother rushing from the room. But she turned away as she did, so that she wouldn’t have to see Alana’s face.

  “He’s back. He pulled some… trick to be elected President of the Society. The bylaws mean he has to be allowed to live in the Witherward again. Grandfather was forced to approve it. I expect he’ll want his room back.”

  The door clicked shut before she had finished speaking. The silence was the loneliest Cassia had ever heard. And then she remembered.

  “Who’s back?” came the voice.

  Violet had fallen onto her side and was half-hidden beneath the pillow Cassia had used to scream into. Her little voice soothed the wound Alana had opened up. As foolish as it made Cassia feel, this was a face that hadn’t witnessed her humiliation this evening, that wouldn’t have averted its eyes even if it had. This was the face of a person – or thing – that did not even know that Ollivan Sims existed.

  “My brother,” Cassia told the doll. She picked her up and stood her on her lap. “My brother’s back.”

  There was a pause, and Cassia had almost put the doll back down when it replied, “And that makes you sad.”

  Was that what Cassia felt? She hardly knew her elder brother. Perhaps they had been close before she had been fostered with the Changelings, but Cassia had been too young to remember. Since then, Ollivan had never shown interest in her, though Cassia was sure that at some point in the distant past she had wanted him to. As they got older, and Ollivan’s interests narrowed to strictly things he should not have been doing, her visits home had mostly been in his absence, precisely because of the expectation that he be there.

  And then a year ago, he had shown everyone exactly who he was.

  “No. Not sad,” Cassia told the doll. “Angry.”

  “Angry?”

  “He’s… he’s the stars-damned President of the Society of Young Gifted Sorcerers! The President.”

  “And you wish it was you.”

  “No!” Cassia placed the doll back against the mountain of pillows, out of reach of her shaking, apoplectic hands. “That’s absurd. I would never be President. Even if I could get in in the first place. But you didn’t see his face. His arrogant, smirking, hateful face. He doesn’t even want to be President, he just wanted to show Grandfather up. He probably had a dozen other devious plans to get himself unbanished and he picked the one where he would get to make the biggest spectacle of himself.”

  In between her words of her tirade, Cassia wasn’t getting enough air. As she pulled in a lungful, the doll finally had a chance to get a word in.

  “Banished.”

  “Precisely. Three hours ago, the blackguard was a pariah, and now… it just goes to show. It doesn’t matter what he does. Because he’s Ollivan.” She snorted derisively. “Maybe I should get banished. Maybe then they’ll let me in too.”

  “You wish to belong to this… Society of Young Gifted Sorcerers?”

  “No. Maybe.” Cassia rubbed her eyes and sighed in defeat. “Yes. I want to belong.”

  “How does one accomplish that?”

  “You’re asking the wrong girl.”

  “Then let me help you.”

  She looked over at the doll, who had slipped slightly down the pillow and listed to the right. Her empty glass eyes looked straight ahead, not quite at Cassia, but rather past her shoulder to the end of the bed. She wasn’t really talking to a doll, she knew that. The doll was a vessel for a bit of magic. Granted, a particularly impressive bit. Her previous impression of enchanted dolls was that their conversational skills were limited to a few phrases and no real impression of sentience. This was the same thing, she reminded herself. This spell wasn’t offering to help her because it cared; it was offering because that was what it was designed to do.

  “I appreciate the offer,” she said anyway, “but I’m afraid I’m on my own. I’m never going to be like Ollivan. And thank the stars.”

  “Yes, thank the stars. You must be yourself, in all things.”

  Cassia laughed wryly. It was a solid sentiment to teach children. At the age of seventeen, the shine had worn off the simplicity of such words. “I would rather be brilliant, I think, than be myself.”

  “And Ollivan is brilliant?”

  “Oh, yes. I once overheard my father calling him the most gifted Sorcerer he had ever known.” It was impossible to keep the bite out of her words. Her father had been distant when she was a child, increasingly absent as she’d grown, and had quietly resigned his role as a member of their family altogether around Cassia’s thirteenth year. When she had asked his whereabouts on a visit, Alana had told her quite calmly that Cassia wouldn’t see him again. She didn’t recall feeling much about it. That was their relationship, and still the man had paid enough attention to be impressed with Ollivan. “It’s easy for Ollivan. It always has been. We couldn’t be more different.”

  “No, you could not,” said Violet. “You are hard-working! You strive to do better. That is much more valuable, Cassia.”

  The doll had said her name. Cassia hadn’t been aware she knew it. But she was still wrong. “But being hard-working is worthless if nothing comes of it. No one will even know how hard you’ve worked if they don’t see results.”

  “And that matters to you?” The question was ponderous and earnest.

  “It matters to everyone. Anyone who tells you differently is lying. Lying while you disappoint them for not being as brilliant as your brother.”

  The doll was quiet a very long time.

  “You are talking about your mother.”

  “My mother. My father. My grandfather.” She let herself sink backwards onto the bed and stared at the underside of the canopy Alana had chosen: more pink. “The only parts of me they see are the ones that don’t measure up to Ollivan. I’m not charming. I’m not bold. I’m not a leader. And I’m not a gifted Sorcerer. There are some exceptional Sorcerers in our lineage, and some adequate ones. There are no failed ones. Except for me. Perhaps that’s why they sent me to Camden.”

  She added the last as a throwaway remark, and was disturbed to feel it tighten around her heart.

  “Your family sent you away?”

  “When I was five.”

  “Five?” Cassia startled at the tone in the doll’s voice; sharp, and louder than usual. “Your family expected an exceptional Sorcerer at five years old?”

  “Ollivan was three when he enchanted the music room to write and play symphonies all by itself,” Cassia said flatly, staring into the mess of lace above her head. “A theatre director bought the rights to the music from him for a play. The Pedlar of Dorberg. It’s still running.”

  “Earth and stars,” muttered the doll.

  “Precisely.”

  “It’s unfair.”

  “It was a generous sum for a three-year-old, actually.”

  “It’s unfair what they expected of you. You must be yourself, in all things.”

  It seemed she had extended the doll’s enchantment to its limits. “Yes, you mentioned,” she muttered, more to herself than the doll. She was surprised how sad she felt that the conversation was over; that the illusion of having someone to talk to had shattered.

  “You must be yourself, yet everyone wants you to be Ollivan.”

  Cassia pushed herself up onto her elbows. The doll had not moved, and yet she appeared to be looking at her. Perhaps Cassia had jostled the bed when she lay down. She sat up further, and though the doll’s eyes did not appear to move, she was still looking at her, like a portrait whose subject tracks you across a room.

  “I assume this Ollivan, this brother of yours, was banished for wrongdoing?”

  “For murder,” said Cassia tightly. “He killed a man in a fight.”

  “Then why should you be like him? He doesn’t deserve their respect. You deserve it instead.”

  Cassia couldn’t disagree. Somewhere in the Sims children’s stars had been an outrageous miscalculation. It had made Ollivan the President of the Society of Young Gifted Sorcerers the same night it refused Cassia initiation for a second time. It was a miscalculation that had been made again and again since the day her family had decided to train Ollivan up for the position of High Sorcerer and send her off to be some child ambassador for her faction. Out of the way. Dealt with, the way everyone had failed to deal with Ollivan. Even banishment hadn’t stopped him getting his way.

  Cassia knew all of this; it had been her lived reality for seventeen years. But never, in all that time, had someone else voiced the same thing.

  “Let me help you,” said Violet.

  She had said this many times. It was the core tenet of what an enchanted doll was made for; so that young Sorcerers could practise wielding their magic. But this doll. It was a brilliant piece of magic. She almost had Cassia believing she could help.

  “And why is it you want to help me?”

  She saw it this time. Not a trick of the light or expert craftsmanship. The doll’s eyes slid to face her, her green irises flashing in the lamplight, as if there were mechanical parts – or stronger magic – hidden inside. A thrill shot through her. She wasn’t sure if it was unease or delight.

  “Because you gave me magic,” said the doll. “You brought me to life in that cold, dusty room, remember?”

  Cassia shook her head. “It wasn’t me. I only found you.”

  “You found me, and you made me what I am,” said the doll more insistently. “Everything before was dull and undefined. And then we became friends, and I feel as if we could do anything together.”

/>   Cassia gave in. What was the harm of having a doll to pour her heart out to if it made her feel better? It was like having a journal, or screaming into a pillow, or composing letters to Gedeon or Hester or Fyfe before feeding them into the fire.

  She smiled at Violet, knowing that by whatever magic she possessed, the doll could see her.

  “Friends, then.”

  9

  The celebration was inconveniently long.

  To Ollivan’s recollection, there was a Society soiree for every week of the year, so why the Successors felt the need to drink and dance and chatter well into the morning over an arbitrary election was beyond him. He needed to slip away, and he couldn’t manage it while being expected to chat with every single member who approached him.

  And that was all of them – all who were present, at least. He answered seventy-something questions about how in the heavens he had pulled off such a coup with some variant on “wouldn’t you like to know” and a coy wink. He couldn’t really blame any of them. The whole plan had been sheer genius.

  It was several hours before he managed to slip from the grand parlour up to the President’s Sanctuary on the floor above. The Sanctuary was a privilege of his new title, protected by a door that would only open to him and his chosen Secretary. Ollivan could feel the deep magic of the ward as he touched the doorhandle, the spell shivering in acquiescence as he stepped inside.

  The Sanctuary was not much smaller than the grand parlour below. It was a long space with a desk at either end; the one near the door bore a wooden plaque reading Jan Lenniker, Society Secretary, which Ollivan tossed into the fire. Between the office spaces was a large sitting area, exquisitely finished in colourful silks and dotted with exotic plants. A potted orange tree was in bloom, filling the Sanctuary with its sweet aroma. Ollivan held one of the blossoms to his nose and breathed in perfume and magic. He could sink into a chair and linger here, soaking in his glory and relief – in everything he had worked for in the last year – but it wasn’t time for that yet. He had come looking for a key.

  The key cabinet was behind the Secretary’s desk, but the hook with the key he needed was empty.

  “Stars damn him,” he muttered to himself as he rifled around, in case it was on another hook. But of course it wasn’t. It could have been slipped from its hook permanently months ago and no one would ever have noticed it was missing. It was just like the deeply unwitting Jan Lenniker to forego warding the cabinet; or even, stars forbid, locking it.

  But it was no great matter. He would simply have to try the unravelling spell scrawled on Mr Holt’s sales ledger and tucked inside his jacket pocket. The chances were, he had remembered the ward correctly and would not be sucked into an unknown dimension…

  He turned on his heel to leave the Sanctuary and his good ear finally picked up the sound of footsteps just as they reached the door.

  “Ollivan?” came the call, accompanied by a knock.

  With a sweeping flourish, Ollivan opened the door and welcomed Lev Mallory inside. Lev smiled, and Ollivan smiled back. For once, he thought his grin might be the wider of the two.

  “Congratulations,” said Lev. His eyes disappeared when he was smiling, which was always. “How are you?”

  “Astonished. I can’t believe you pulled this off.”

  “We pulled it off,” said Lev, striding to Ollivan and throwing his arms around him. “Welcome home.”

  Home. Even as Ollivan warmed at the word, it reminded him of the obstacles he still needed to clear before everything was made right again.

  “Do you want to know what you’ve promised your voters?” said Lev as he stepped away, freeing Ollivan’s face from his fluffy black hair. Ollivan was not tall, but Lev was still half a head shorter than him.

  “Fair warning,” said a deep voice from behind Lev. “The list is long.”

  Hesitation clawed at Ollivan as he looked up. Virgil Pike’s smile was as absent as Lev’s was out of control. It was a sight so bittersweet it threw Ollivan helplessly back to the first time they met, eight years old and brought together by parents who hoped their precocious sons would be good for one another. But Virgil had not wanted his influence at all.

  “I know who you are,” he had hissed when Ollivan had dared interrupt his reading to introduce himself. The scowl he would grow so familiar with tugged the other boy’s brows low over his eyes. “You’ll be the High Sorcerer someday.”

  Ollivan had wanted to bat the book out of his hands, but his nanny was watching from a corner of the room. “Says who?”

  “Everyone,” said Virgil. “But my grandmother says leaders should be elected by everyone, not just the people with the most power.”

  Ollivan shot a glance at the nanny, stirred by the vague feeling that it wasn’t the type of thing one was supposed to say, though he didn’t yet fully understand why.

  “Well I don’t want to be High Sorcerer,” he replied in a whisper, “so they can have an election for all I care.”

  That had been enough to convince Virgil’s young mind they could be friends, and their bond had developed along much the same lines; Virgil railing against the ways of the world and Ollivan offering increasingly creative modes of protest. Virgil’s parents’ parties ran too late and too loud? Enchant their house to broadcast their gossiping to the entire neighbourhood. Too many of his sisters’ ribbons and baubles scattered throughout the playroom? Turn the rings and earrings into beetles, the handkerchiefs and bonnets into bats.

  Virgil had made Ollivan a radical, and Ollivan had made him a terror. Disrupting the farcical, self-satisfied traditions of the Society they had both been pressed to join by their families should have been the perfect reunion.

  But a year ago, Ollivan had taken disobedience too far, and left Virgil behind. He seemed intent on reminding him of that, as he did so now; leaned in the doorway, his arms folded across his chest and that achingly familiar sullen expression marring his brow.

  Ollivan did not want reminders. He wanted celebration, and he wanted his victory to be complete. The junk room called on him to make an excuse and duck out, but he owed his childhood friends everything, including his attention. The junk room would have to wait.

  He leaned against the edge of Jan’s former desk, which he was now relinquishing to a candidate of Ollivan’s choosing. “Wait. Start from the beginning. I want to hear every glorious detail so I can tell you how brilliant you both are. I’m amazed that you even managed to split the vote evenly between Pella, Elric, and August.”

  Ollivan’s coup had been an exercise in politicking that Jupitus Fisk himself could not snort at. There were seventy-seven members of the Society of Young Gifted Sorcerers, not including himself, and three candidates on the ballot. Splitting the vote between them meant Ollivan could scrape a victory with only twenty votes. With Lev and Virgil as a given, that meant persuading eighteen Successors to vote for him.

  “Stars, that was the easy part,” said Lev through his laughter. “We were lucky they were equally good candidates or it never would have worked.”

  “You’re underselling us,” Virgil said to Lev, though his disgruntled stare remained on Ollivan. “We’ve worked at this for months. Do you know how difficult it is to quietly campaign for three different candidates and make sure no one knows?”

  “I can only imagine,” Ollivan said, meeting Virgil’s eyes straight on so he could see his gratitude. “How many did you have to sway?”

  “When we canvassed everyone, it looked like August had a strong lead,” said Lev. “Elric was the straggler. But a dozen members were undecided, and most weren’t that much trouble to lead to one candidate or another. Then we targeted the least resolute handful of those who had picked a candidate and changed their minds. We had to persuade two of Pella’s voters and seven of August’s over to Elric. Then another eight for me.” His smile widened. “But that was easy.”

  “Stars bless your natural charm, Lev,” said Ollivan with a hand on his heart.