Page 2 of An Empress of Air & Chaos

“Phew.” Callyn’s shoulders sagged as the door closed. “I thought I was done for there. She almost always knows when I am up to no good. It’s like she has super-powers.” She chuckled, placing the bag on the floor carefully.

Emara let out a hearty laugh. “She can see right through you, Cally.”

Cally.

A nickname she preferred. She always said Callyn was way too formal for her.

“However, what I do want to know is what sort of no good you were getting up to this time.” Emara eyed her best friend before making her way over to the fireplace to check the wood. “Because I know you were not working until this hour. The elite never have dress fittings at night.”

Cally’s light blue eyes twinkled. “I may or may not have met someone to trade some fabrics that they will not sell to me in Mossgrave.”

“Oh?” Emara popped an eyebrow. “And who exactly are you meeting to do a dodgy deal of forbidden fabrics with?”

A devilish smile formed on her face, highlighting her curved cheek bones. “Well, there is this guy—he’s very handsome and he works at the farm, up past the village centre. You will know it. Rosemill farm?” She bit into her pink lips as naughty look flashed in her eyes. “He has connections.”

A barking laugh escaped Emara’s throat, “What kind of connections? Do I even want to know?” she asked hesitantly as she poked the dead firewood with the pit shovel. The motion sent ashes flying up into the air and she stepped back to look at her best friend.

Cally’s hands flew up. “Okay, you start the fire, and I will get the alcohol prepared before I tell you.”

Emara rolled her eyes and snorted. Typical Cally!

Callyn Greymore was more like a sister to Emara than a friend. Having met when they were just ten years old outside the village bakers, it seemed even then that Cally had a knack for getting herself into situations she shouldn’t be in. Whenever trouble would be caught red-handed, Cally would be the one with the paint.

The day Emara first met Cally, she was being dragged out of a bakery shop by the hair, kicking and screaming like a wild animal.

She had been screaming, “I don’t want your shitty bread anyway, I don’t even like it. There are maggots in it. You heard it here, folks. MAGGOTS! Maggots in the baker’s bread. Don’t feed this to your children. They might die!”

Cally had bellowed and cursed at the shop owner for ten minutes as he emptied her pockets in the main street of the village. Five different kinds of confectionery had dropped out of her coat and fallen into the muddy road. The human traffic went by, gawking at the young girl with the face of an angel and the actions and mouth of a feral heathen.

In that very moment, Emara couldn’t help but feel drawn to her. Entertained by her. Something about Cally was freeing and alluring, even though she had just stolen from the only baker in the village and got herself branded a thief, she found her unique.

Emara, who had nipped ‘round to the baker’s from her grandmother’s art gallery, was compelled to strike up a conversation, just desperate to speak to another child her age, even if she was abrasive. In the village, you didn’t tend to have many kids your own age, let alone someone as thrilling as Callyn Greymore.

From that day, she and Cally were inseparable. However, the recollection of her first time speaking with Cally had been overshadowed with her thoughts on why Callyn would have to steal. How hungry had she been that she had to steal bread to eat? To survive?

Due to Theodora finding out about Cally’s turbulent family life at the orphanage, and the inseparable bond they had made so quickly, her grandmother had signed for her adoption papers a year after they had met and moved her into their home. It wasn’t in her grandmother’s nature to have maternal instincts, but Theodora took Cally in like she was her own child. And Cally had come willingly, with few belongings.

A smile almost broke past her lips at the memory of how their friendship had begun as Emara made her way over to the unit beside her bed for the matches that lit the fire.

Pushing her thoughts of the past aside, Emara plucked the matches from her favourite storage box that was encrusted with stones of bright jade, flushed pink, glowing-sun yellow, and sapphire that wove around an ancient mandala design on the pale wood. It always sat atop her bedside table, keeping a few things like notes, some coins, and hair pins inside.

It had been a gift from her grandmother on her ninth birthday and it was by far the most sentimental and valuable gift she had ever been given because it was once her mother’s.

Emara had gone to stay with her grandmother when her parents had been killed. She had just turned three years old when a fire ripped through her family home, devouring everything—including her parents. She didn’t remember them or even the fire. And her grandmother had, oddly, made sure to keep it that way. She never spoke of the day that took her only daughter to the other side, leaving behind her only grandchild. Information on her mother was something Emara never pushed for because she saw the pain it caused her grandmother to talk about. So, through the years, she welcomed any forthcoming stories that Theodora would offer on her own accord, but never asked for more.

Emara ran her fingertips along the pattern of the box.

“This box now belongs to you, keep it safe and always remember your mother when you open it.”

She had kept it safe; she had opened it a thousand times and always expected something to appear inside it—as if her mother could gift her something from the other side to remember her by. But nothing ever came.

Just before she could feel that usual pang in her chest when she thought of her parents or even the longing to know them, Cally dragged a bristle brush through her hair, giving her a decent tug back to reality.

“Remember before you start giving me all sorts of horrible looks, you promised that I could give you a makeover tonight.” She said it with a flat confidence like, that was a good thing. “A Cally-style makeover. Which fits in perfectly with the new garments I need modelled.”

With a groan of disapproval, Emara heaved herself away from Cally’s evil bristle brush and threw a lit match into the fire before she made her way over to her four-poster bed. “Do we really need to do this tonight?”

Cally heaved the leather bag, stacked full of all sorts of trickery, onto the bed and then unbuttoned it. “Yes. What else are we going to do now that we are stuck in here for a few nights?”

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