Divine Rivals: Part 1: Letters Through the Wardrobe: Chapter 5

“If any of you receive an offer like this, I want to know about it immediately,” Zeb said the following morning, waving a piece of paper around the office. “It’s sleazy, and I won’t see any of you lost to some dangerous, feckless endeavor.”

“What endeavor, sir?” Roman asked.

“Read it yourself and then pass it around,” Zeb said, handing the sheet to him.

It took a minute for whatever it was to reach Iris at her desk. The paper was crinkled by then, and she felt Zeb hovering as she read:

Fifty bills? That was twice the amount she made in a month here at the Gazette.

Iris must have taken too long to read it, because Zeb cleared his throat. She passed the paper to the desk behind her.

“Inkridden Tribune wants to sell more papers than us by scaring our readers,” Zeb said. “This war is a problem for Western Borough and their chancellor to settle. They buried Dacre; let them deal with him and his anger accordingly, rather than drain us of our soldiers and resources.”

“What of Enva, Mr. Autry?” Sarah asked.

Zeb looked stunned for a moment, that Sarah would voice such a thing. Iris was pleased by her friend’s bravery, even as Sarah instantly hunched under the scrutiny, pushing her glasses farther up her nose as if she wanted to vanish.

“Yes, what of Enva?” Zeb continued, his face beet red. “She was ours to keep buried and tamed in the east, and we have done a poor job of it, haven’t we?” He was quiet for a moment, and Iris braced herself. “While Enva and her music have convinced a few weak-minded individuals to enlist, most of us here want to focus on other matters. So don’t let this war talk fool you. It’ll all blow over soon. Keep up the good work and come to me at once if someone from the Inkridden Tribune approaches you about this.”

Iris curled her hand into a fist under her desk until she could feel the bite of her fingernails.

Forest was the furthest thing from a weak-minded individual.

When Dacre had started attacking town after town last summer, the chancellor and residents of Western Borough had sent out a call for help. He is overtaking us! they had cried, the words traveling through crackling telephone wires. He is killing us if we don’t agree to bow to him, to fight for him. We need aid!

Sometimes Iris still felt shame when she thought of how slow people in the east had been to answer that cry. But the ugly truth was the denizens of Oath hadn’t believed it when the news broke of Dacre’s return. Not until Enva’s music began to trickle through the streets, woven with the revelation. It had been the Southern and Central Boroughs to respond first, assuming if they sent a few auxiliary forces, Dacre could be overcome before he razed the west to the ground.

They underestimated him. They underestimated the number of devout people who would choose to fight for Dacre.

That was the beginning of the war. It unfolded rapidly, ruthlessly. While Oath was sleeping, the west was burning. And yet despite the countless dark kilometers that stretched between the east and the west, Forest was one of the first to enlist.

Iris wondered where he was at that very moment. Sleeping in a cave, hiding in a trench, wounded in a hospital, shackled in the enemy’s camp. All while she sat safely at her desk, typing up classifieds, obituaries, and articles.

She wondered if he was still breathing.

Zeb called her into his office an hour later.

“I’ll give you three days, Winnow,” he said, fingers steepled over his desk. “Three days to write an essay, topic of your choosing. If it’s better than Kitt’s, I’ll publish it and seriously consider you for the column.”

She could hardly believe him. An open assignment. He rarely gave those out. But then she remembered what he had said earlier, and she nearly spoke her mind.

I plan to write about those weak-minded individuals.

“Winnow?”

Iris realized she was frowning; her jaw was clenched. “Yes, thank you, sir.”

She forced a smile and returned to her desk.

She couldn’t afford to lose this promotion. Which meant she couldn’t afford to upset Zeb with her essay. She needed to write something he would want to publish.

This open assignment suddenly felt very narrow indeed.

“There you are.”

Roman’s voice caught her on the way out of the lobby, just as dusk fell. Iris startled when he seamlessly fell into stride beside her.

“What do you want, Kitt?” she asked with a sigh.

“Are you hurt?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You’ve been limping all day.”

She resisted the urge to glance down at her feet, at her mother’s terrible pointed boots. “No, I’m fine. What do you want?” she repeated.

“To talk with you about Autry. He’s giving you an open assignment, isn’t he?” Roman asked, forging a path for them on the crowded pavement.

Iris thought it was only fair to let him know. “Yes. And it’s not due to special favors.”

“Oh, isn’t it?”

She halted, which inspired a flurry of curses as people had to walk around her and Roman. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” she asked in a sharp tone.

“It means exactly as it sounds,” Roman said. The streetlamps were beginning to flicker to life, illuminating his face with amber light. She hated how handsome he was. She hated how her heart softened when he looked at her. “Autry is giving you a special favor so he can promote you instead of me.”

And that softness fled, leaving behind a bruise.

“What?” The word burst from her; it tasted like copper, and she realized the cut on her lip had reopened. “How dare you say that to me!”

Roman was frowning now. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets. “I was under the impression that this position would be fairly earned, and I don’t—”

“What do you mean by this ‘favor’?”

“He pities you!” Roman cried, exasperated.

Iris froze. His words struck her, deeply. She felt the frost in her chest, spreading outward to her hands. She was trembling, and she hoped he didn’t notice.

“Autry pities me,” she echoed. “Why? Because I’m a low-class girl who’s out of her depth working for the press?”

“Winnow, I—”

“In your opinion, I should be washing dishes in a restaurant kitchen, shouldn’t I? Or I should be cleaning houses, on my hands and knees, polishing floors for people like you to walk over.”

His eyes flashed. “I never said you didn’t deserve to be at the Gazette. You’re a bloody good writer. But you dropped out of school in your final year and—”

“Why does that even matter?” she exclaimed. “Are you someone who likes to judge a person by their past? By what school they attended? Is that all you can look at?”

Roman was so still, so quiet that Iris thought she had charmed him into stone. “No,” he finally said, but his voice sounded odd. “But you’re becoming unreliable. You’ve been running late, missing assignments, and you’re sloppy.”

She took a step back. She didn’t want him to sense how badly his words wounded her. “I see. Well, it’s reassuring to know that if I get the position, it will only be due to pity. And if you get columnist, it will only be due to how much your rich father can bribe Autry to give it to you.”

She spun and strode away, against the flow of traffic. The world blurred for a moment; she realized her eyes were burning with tears.

I hate him.

Over the noise of conversation and the bell of the tram and the jostle of strangers’ shoulders, she could hear him calling to her.

“Now wait a minute, Winnow. Don’t run from me!”

She melted into the crowd before Roman could catch up to her.