Stella was reading Darwin when Violet came into the library. She took one step inside and stopped, her hands clenched in front of her. Stella slipped a bookmark in to keep her page and focused on Violet. She’d washed her face and she looked better, but she was trembling as if she was about to run.
Stella watched her carefully, waiting to see if Violet would say anything. It took a while, but eventually she did, staring at the floor the entire time. “Ma’am. I promised your mother that I would keep the house safe and look after you for her.” The words sounded stilted, the tone off, as if she had practised multiple times but still couldn’t quite manage it perfectly.
Stella frowned slightly. Violet thought she was looking after Stella? Well, that was adorable and misguided, although legally Stella did need an adult in the house. On the other hand, she was clearly the one protecting Violet.
When she didn’t say anything, Violet continued: “Ma’am. I-I don’t want… to leave. But… I will if-if I have to; even if I’ve nowhere… even if the Sabinis might… If… I have to l-leave, I will, but… I’d rather stay, ma’am.” Her eyes were still on the ground and she looked ready to run out of the room at any moment. Her speech had lost its stilted, performative cadence, as if she had only practised the first line and this was all new.
“I want you to stay, Violet.”
“Th-thank you, Lady Stella… I-I can only stay… if you’ll promise fi… n-never enter m-my bedroom again.”
The bad eggs were in her belly again, as if the physical memory sensation, triggered once, found it easier to come back a second time. She didn’t want Violet to leave, but she couldn’t accept such a rule. “No, I won’t promise that, Violet. I’m sorry.” Violet looked like she was going to start crying again, so Stella offered an explanation. “What if you break your leg and the house is on fire and I need to save you? I’m not going to leave you to die, Violet.”
Violet clearly liked the idea as little as Stella did. Judging by the maid’s expression, she had completely forgotten that there might be occurrences when Stella had to enter her room. It was far too dangerous to make promises that removed that option. “Okay…” Violet said slowly, as if she was building plans even as she spoke. “You can enter my room if… break my leg and di yaad…. eh… di house is on fire… and you afi save me… Other than that I afi ask you fi stay out of the room we yu gi mi please, Lady Stella.” Her voice at the end came out in a rush, as if she was trying to say every word at once.
Stella shook her head, slowly. Her mother was going to be annoyed at her. This was the shortest length of time they had ever had a maid. “It’s still a no, Violet. What if it’s your back you break? That’s not covered under the exception.” This was the longest time they had ever had a maid, too. She just had to present it to her mother in that sense, as an accomplishment instead of a failure. “Even if we list every condition we can think of, we will still miss some. No, I’m sorry, I can’t agree.”
Violet drew in a heavy breath and sighed. Her eyes still hadn’t left the floor, but she looked less like an animal ready to run. Her muscles weren’t quite as tense. She kept patting her right wrist with her left hand in a rhythmic pattern. It wasn’t Morse code, Stella had checked. “Lady Stella,” Violet began again, and Stella had to appreciate the effort. It was like Violet had said the night she arrived, when they stayed up for hours talking about the other women in the brothel. Violet truly never stopped fighting, trying, striving. “Unless there is… clear and immediate danger… to my life…” She kept pausing, as if she could only think up a few more words each time. That was alright, Stella was always patient, like a hunter should be. Although Violet could speak a little faster, that would be good. If she stayed at this pace, Stella might be distracted before the end, and that wouldn’t be good. “That you can… only prevent by enta… my bedroom… I require you to… stay a deh out a it, please?”
Stella considered that for a moment. It actually seemed to cover every eventuality. How novel! There was always the worry something had been missed, but it certainly seemed to get everything important, and this way she wouldn’t have to try to convince her mother that Violet leaving was somehow a victory. Besides, repeated eruptions of the bad egg physical memory symptoms aside, she didn’t think she wanted Violet to go. “Certainly. I’m glad you’re not leaving, Violet.”
“I-I’m glad I don’t n-need to leave too, ma’am. You have not had b-breakfast yet?”
Stella glanced at the desk. “I wasn’t hungry,” she said without lying. There was hunger, now that she thought of it, but she often became so absorbed in a task she didn’t notice she hadn’t eaten.
“I could bring you up some pancakes, ma’am?” Violet glanced at the books on the table as she asked. “Are you trying to understand evolution and your powers?”
“That sounds plausible,” Stella agreed, thankful Violet had only noticed Darwin’s name and not the title, thankful that most assumed Darwin had only written one book, and that Violet hadn’t noticed the other psychology books that were out.
“I can fetch the pancakes now, ma’am? Unless… I was wondering… if you might like… to go to a tea shop, ma’am?”
Stella’s mouth almost dropped open in shock. It was so obvious and she had missed it. When Violet was upset she drank tea. But when Violet was very upset, house tea apparently wouldn’t do. She clearly needed external tea. Stella hadn’t been wrong about the solution, she’d been wrong about the scale. “I would love to go to a tea shop, Violet,” she replied, honestly, even though she really didn’t want more tea.
They left the house shortly after that and walked slowly towards Highgate High Street. It was a warm day, with a clear blue sky overhead. Stella couldn’t remember the last time it had rained.
“Did you read the newspaper today, ma’am?”
“No, I was reading… other things. Were there any exciting headlines in the paper?”
“Drama in global politics, mostly, milady,” Violet said. “That and yesterday’s robbery… I think those will be the only things people speak about, today, perhaps.”
“There was a robbery?”
“Yes, ma’am. It seems the Forty Elephants stole two… two and a half thousand pounds… of gold, from Hatton Garden. It has been suggested in the newspaper that the Sabinis didn’t have enough guards, after their recent incidents. Also, the global drama is that Walther Rathenau, the Weimar Republic’s foreign minister, claimed Prussia’s debts belong to Prussia, and that the Weimar Republic is debt-free. He told Zenith to sod off, milady.”
“He did not?”
“The paper says he did, ma’am.”
That was the kind of global politics anyone could understand. Zenith was the corporate arm of Zenasia, or Zenasia was the country the Zenith corporation had founded, stretching from Persia in the west all the way to the Empire of Japan on the eastern coast of the Asian continent. Zenith was the world bank, an aetherium magi-tech fuelled world power, and a sometimes enemy to Great Britain. They’d clashed a few times in the Second Aetherium War, when Britain decided it needed the Malaysian islands. Zenasia used to stretch all the way down to just north of Australia and Alcheringa, but now they were locked to the mainland.
Zenith employed more sorcerers than most countries had. There were rumours of assassinations, demon summoning, and just about every other illicit trade there was. Zenith had taken the Zulu lands away from Great Britain at one point, although Stella thought they might be independent now.
Zenith was big. Huge. Even Britain and the Western Federation didn’t push Zenith too far, and they were arguably the most powerful alliance in the world.
No one told Zenith to sod off.
The Weimar Republic was Prussia. They’d tried to depose their kaiser, but he’d taken over East Prussia, and Prussia had changed its name to the Weimar Republic. The newspapers loved getting quotes from the kaiser and then quotes from the Weimar Republic that were always some form of “he’s not our kaiser.” Prussia absolutely was the Weimar Republic though, it was the same country with a different name. There was no way they didn’t have the same debts.
“How long do you think he’s got?” Stella asked.
“I think it would not be appropriate to speculate, ma’am.”
“I give him until Friday.” Zenith was not going to just accept this. Everyone said they used assassins, even if no one had ever proven it.
“Lady Stella!” Violet sounded both horrified and amused. Or maybe just amused, and the outburst was because she imagined she should be horrified? It was hard to tell sometimes.
The tea shop, when they reached it, was crowded. There were far more people in there than she had ever seen in a tea shop before, especially not one this small. Stella was going to suggest they go somewhere else, but Violet was looking incredibly excited.
“What’s going on, Violet?”
“I didn’t think it would be so busy? It was in the paper, ma’am. There’s going to be a reading? Look, there’s two seats… can you grab those, please, Lady Stella? I will get us tea and maybe a scone? You’ve still not had any breakfast or lunch, ma’am.”
Violet was off before Stella could say anything, so Stella headed to the two seats that had been pointed out. A man reached them before she did, but when she looked at him, he held the chair out for her, then smiled and backed off.
It was so hard to tell when people were scared. That nice man had seemed sweaty, which meant fear, but there was nothing here to be afraid of. The symptoms were just not clear. Still, it had been a polite interaction.
Oh, maybe she could define a new phobia. Tea shop phobia.
She glanced around as she sat down, wondering why there were so many people here. Shouldn’t they all be at work; it was a Monday? The crowd was mostly male. They were almost all wearing high-end clothes and looked like the kind of people who could take a Monday afternoon off work, or just didn’t work at all. Generational wealth.
Which, technically, was what Stella had. Stolen generational wealth, except it wasn’t actually stolen. People had just given everything they owned to the man who might be her grandfather. There was some uncertainty about whether or not he was, but Stella had never quite found out why. Her grandmother, Harmony, had joined his cult and her mother had been born there, and when they all killed themselves, all his money went to the only surviving member, her mother.
It hadn’t happened right away. There had been a few years where her mother had nothing. Then, after a bit, she suddenly had an entire cult’s worth of money. Then they went to live in the woods and never spent any until they came back to London when Stella was fourteen.
She was still entertaining the idea of tea shop phobia, too. Pōleion meant shop, so the first word was all she needed. Ancient Greece didn’t have tea, and she wasn’t actually fluent in the language. She needed books to consult, and an idea of where to start. Herb shop phobia. Flower shop phobia? Did they have a word for beverage? Ancient Greece wouldn’t have had tea, hot chocolate, or coffee. How had they ever managed to get so many philosophers when all they had was water and wine? Wait! Pin… pino? Pinōpōleionphobia, the fear of drinking shops?
Now, how to get that recognised and published without a case study? Her bibi-daj had taught her science, and she was resolute that theories must always be proven, as Stella had proven Violet’s arachnidphobia.
Stella dismissed the thought, determined to revisit it later, and returned her attention to the crowd. There was an atmosphere that sat over and through the babble of conversations, an unmistakeable atmosphere of not-quite excitement. Anticipation, for something exciting about to occur.
A man rose from his seat at one side of the room and a hush fell across every table. Stella focused on him, but he didn’t stand out. He was old, in his fifties at least, and had a small moustache. His hair was thin, his forehead rather large as it chased his fringe ever higher, and his eyebrows were incredibly bushy. He had stunningly blue eyes, like two chips of ice, and a slim build for a man of his age. A bit of fat around the middle, but not much of it. He clearly wasn’t into heavy exercise, but he still looked average in weight.
“I know it was announced in the paper,” he said, in a deep, clear voice, like he was familiar with addressing crowds, “but if there are any here who don’t know, my name is H. G. Wells, and today I am going to be doing a reading from my novel, The First Men in the Moon.” He lifted a book, opened it at a page, and removed a leather bookmark. His eyes flickered over the words, then returned to the crowd, and he read in a strong, clear voice: “Over me, about me, closing in on me, embracing me ever nearer, was the Eternal, that which was before the beginning and that which triumphs over the end; that enormous void in which all light and life and being is but the thin and vanishing splendour of a falling star, the cold, the stillness, the silence, – the infinite and final Night of space.”
Stella froze, transfixed.
She didn’t notice when Violet returned to the table. She didn’t notice the cup of tea which Violet set in front of her, and which slowly grew colder. She didn’t notice the scone Violet placed in her hands, or the little smiles the maid kept directing her way. She didn’t notice as she mechanically lifted the scone to her mouth, or the butter that smeared across her upper lip, as she chewed without thinking about what she was doing.
All four of her thought processes were focused on the man in front of her. One, simply listening to the words he was saying in wonder. One, taking every piece of him apart and analysing all the visual information she could. One, taking the audio information apart and analysing every word he said.
Okay, three were dedicated to the man in front of her. The fourth kept intermittently screaming and repeating things he was saying.
It was amazing.
Incredible.
Amedible. Incrazing.
So, so, so impossibly good and all too soon over.
Stella was bouncing when they finally left the tea shop. She had so much energy. She wanted to scream and run about and flap her hands over her head. “That was amazing.”
“I’m glad you liked it, ma’am. He’s my favourite, too.”
“I didn’t know we’d been to the moon. Why did no one ever tell me?”
“What?”
“Oh, do you think I could get some of that anti-gravity rock he mentioned? It would be so useful when fighting criminals. I could swing so far, and jump further between swings.”
“You… you know th-that it was… fictional, right, Lady Stella?”
Stella was still trying not to bounce. “What do you mean?”
“Fiction, my lady? It’s a story…? Meant to entertain? It’s not real?”
Stella froze, every muscle seizing up simultaneously as Violet’s words hit. She gasped like someone had thrown cold water in her face. Her expression grew hard. Violet took a step back instinctively.
“HE WAS LYING!?” Stella screamed.
She didn’t say another word the entire walk home.
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