arrest? She was a guest of the Rykers the way Nutall was a guest of his Sylvestri family. Was she going to do what he had done? Was she going to find a corner and hide there?
Thalia failed to Trade. Miss Carey-Thomas withdrew discreetly. Mrs. Kipling and Madame Gillyflower remained, but by now, Thalia was so close to frustrated tears, she didn’t dare to look at them.
Even Nutall’s unsatisfactory solution was beyond Thalia. How could she be a Trader without the ability to Trade? How could she live on charity? How could she continue as a figure of fun, a sport of nature, a danger to others as a Trader stuck in her first shape?
Thalia became aware at last that these hard hot thoughts had a voice of their own, a thread of anger wrapped in disgust. What kind of life is that?
Thalia felt her face burning. Shame and guilt and anger built within her. How far away was fear?
The thread of anger and disgust asked, What do you care? It answered, You’re worthless.
Thalia’s inmost voice countered, Shut up, you. To her surprise, it was the voice she’d thought of as the swan within. Now it had gained such strength it was like another person inside her. It said, I am here. It said, You know who I am.
Finally fear rose up in Thalia. She did know. This voice within was as strong as she was, stronger than her sense of herself as human.
Human? No. I’m no Solitaire. No simple swan. I am a Trader. I am you. The voice fell silent, yet Thalia could feel it ringing within her still. She was angry, so angry, but now fear locked her every muscle. Her hands and feet were pins and needles. Her whole body had gone cold.
“High time,” said Mrs. Kipling.
Thalia turned on her, head down, hissing. Thalia had to raise her arms to keep her balance and only then saw she was spreading her wings. She had Traded.
Mrs. Kipling took a hasty step back, well out of range. From the doorway, a safe distance away, Miss Carey-Thomas said, “Passable.”
Thalia paused, poised to strike. She guessed that her exact state of mind was evident in every line of her swan body.
Madame Gillyflower only smiled. “Talking to yourself, are you?”
If Thalia had possessed the power of speech, she would have said, “How did you know?” But even as the words sank in, she knew the answer. How many times had Madame Gillyflower witnessed the moment when both sides of a Trader’s nature worked in unison?
That voice hadn’t been some unreliable figment of her imagination. That voice had been herself. Madame Gillyflower might have been joking, but her words were true.
Thalia spread her wings and hissed. Madame Gillyflower wasn’t afraid of her, but Mrs. Kipling and Miss Carey-Thomas were. At least for a moment, Thalia could intimidate the Board of Trade. Well, two-thirds of the Board of Trade. She suspected there was very little on earth that could intimidate Madame Gillyflower.
Miss Carey-Thomas held open the door to the Palace of Mystery. “Stand clear. Hold that outside door open. Miss Cutler needs to leave.”
It was a muddle, getting out of the room, out of the building, and leaving the Ostrova Magic Company behind. Hissing and waddling had almost lost their charm by the time Thalia made it to the pavement outside. There, she had better ways to move. She sprang up and did not come down.
The world was intoxicating. Thalia’s wings were strong. Her vision was even better than her human sight. Her swan self had skills she put to work while her human self simply marveled.
Thalia cleared the rooftops of Sixth Avenue and kept rising, moving westward until she found the river waiting for her, the dear Hudson River, half salt at the top of the tide.
The wind told Thalia things she’d never known before. She could see it moving as it rippled the surface of the water and smoothed it again. Beneath the brown and green gloss of the water’s surface, she could see the currents twisting by the way the air met the water. She could read the water as easily as she rode the eddying currents of the air.
As Thalia flew north, following the Hudson upstream, she watched the sky. It was going to rain. She could feel it in the wind. The bluffs across the Hudson on the New Jersey side were already blurred slightly by the moisture in the air. The sense of the sky above her,