Seven for a Secret by Elizabeth Bear

near. Have you ladies settled on what you’d like for tea?”
    Abby Irene made a left-handed, irritable gesture. “Whatever it is, I shan’t taste it. What did Mr. MacGregor say?”
    Sebastien came across the threshold and settled like a windblown leaf into the chair just inside. It was a narrow-legged Queen Anne, embroidered yellow chrysanthemums on pale Chinese brocade and dark wood carved to elegant curves. Abby Irene kept it—and kept it beside the door—
because it was extraordinarily uncomfortable. The wampyr never seemed to notice.
    “He’ll contact the human resistance with your information,” Sebastien said. “He’s obtained a list of the girls in the Bund. There are twenty-one. Six in the oldest group, the rest younger. We will suggest local cells be instructed to contact their families and learn what they can about the young women—”
    The wampyr stopped abruptly, hands resting on his knees as he leaned forward. “Hmm.”
    “Sebastien?” Phoebe asked, perhaps a little too much the ingénue for a woman of her age.
    He smiled, an expression not calculated to express happiness. “I infer from your expressions that you’ve uncovered some further evidence of catastrophe in my absence. Out with it, my loves.”
    Phoebe glanced at Abby Irene, who shrugged. So Phoebe said, “Why would a Prussian militia recruit English girls? Collaborators? Why trust them?”
    “If we still like Abby Irene’s theory, many royal guards are traditionally mercenary organizations,” Sebastien said. “And yet, I gather that’s not what you’re driving at.”
    Abby Irene gummed her lower lip while Phoebe explained. “I think you’ll find, when that information comes from the families, that these girls do not have a great deal of choice in their assignment. But if they’re allowed to walk the streets without supervision, then they are granted privileges as a means of controlling them and winning them over. Which means that whatever means of control their commanders have over them is not physical.”
    “The families?”
    Phoebe nodded. “What else?”
    “That seems a very fragile strand by which to rope someone you hope to forge into a bulletproof killing machine. But if they are taking the girls at a young age—”
    “Eleven or younger,” Phoebe said.
    Sebastien winced. “Early enough to remake their philosophies, I imagine.”
    Abby Irene stroked her hands over the book before her. She had marked the relevant page in her leatherbound book with a ribbon. It took her both hands to lift it, and before she could try to extend it Phoebe had lurched out of her chair and was beside her, lifting it off her hands. Abby Irene would have growled, but she was out of breath, and she didn’t recover it until after Phoebe had delivered the book into Sebastien’s hands and returned to her own chair. He found the ribbon—really, Abby Irene could have marked the page with nothing more than the scent of her hand, and he would have found it, but it was nice to observe the social prevarications—and parted the covers.
    As he bent to read, Abby Irene said, “Binding oaths. A Wyrd.”
    “That’s forbidden magic,” Sebastien said, his gaze traveling down the center of the page. “It’s mind control. Outlawed in every civilized nation.” He shook his head.
    “Because the Chancellor is so concerned with laws, except the ones he has a hand in writing. Laws for deportation, detention, eugenics, medical experimentation, final solutions to invented problems—”
    “Phoebe,” Sebastien said, raising his gaze. “I am sympathetic to your disgust, and, as it happens, in complete agreement.”
    She’d been building up to a fine tear and now she stopped, hands on her hips, and breathed out sharply under a glower. She shook her head and let her arms go limp, palms pressed to her thighs. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. But you understand—”
    “Yes,” he said, and closed the book upon his finger. “Abby