by Lisa Daniels
She slurped the contents of her bowl, enjoying how he wrinkled his nose in distaste at the uncouth gesture. “Got to come from somewhere, I guess. Why not me?”
“You’re an orphan, aren’t you?” He drummed the fingers of his right hand against the wooden table. Alex noted with resentment how he hadn’t even bothered to thank her. And he accused her of being the bad one.
“Yeah. Lots of people is orphans down there.”
“Are,” Meridas corrected. “You’re a woman in your twenties. Try not to sound like one of those child street beggars.”
“Lots of people don’t got educated,” Alex said, sneering. “Too much money. Too much time. Always need to stay ahead to live.”
“I’ll soon change that,” Meridas said, his dark, gold-pooled eyes cold. “Because while you’re a part of my household, I intend to educate you so that your voice doesn’t grate on my ears. Anyway, back to the line of questioning—you never found out who your parents were, correct?”
Although Alex’s heart did a strange lurch at the thought that she might get this mysterious education, that she wasn’t being kicked out after healing Vash, her expression soured at the mention of lost parents. “No. Don’t intend to. Anyone who leaves a baby to strangers has lost their right to that child. Why should I want to know them?”
“Hmm.” He contemplated her words for a moment, staring absently into the depths of her bowl of stew. “I want to know who they are, even if you don’t. Your parents are most likely the reason you have this rare power in the first place. They might very well come from one of the sky towns.”
At these words, Alex almost choked on her stew. She managed to swallow down a malignant lump of meat and coughed lightly, glaring with watery eyes. “You think so?”
“It’s a high possibility.” Now his gaze lifted to hers. She met them with the icy coldness inside, the one she’d been building up for many years.
“I doubt it,” she said. “People from here won’t be found leaving their babies in streets like mine. It’s not something that will come to mind for them. Most likely they’re foreigners. Or how often do you see coloring like mine?”
His gaze flicked over her hair, streaked with that odd blonde lock, and her slightly darker than usual skin, heading more towards gray. “I suppose not,” he said slowly. “Still, I can’t ignore the possibility that you might be from important stock. It’s one thing if you were born to a poor family… but an orphan? One that doesn’t know their parents, but has access to life magic? No. There’s something different.” Again his eyes flicked to her blonde lock. The one the guards had accused of being a witch endowment. “Or maybe you’re something else entirely.” Now he leaned closer, and Alex forgot about eating. “I apologize in part for bringing you up here. Someone with your powers… you’ll need to be careful. You’ll be a target of my enemies and acquaintances. You’ll be the ultimate protection against the Creeping Rot, now that it’s started appearing again.”
Started appearing again? Clearly, there were a few extra things about her new world that she didn’t quite understand. She licked her lips nervously. “Started appearing again? So, you mean it disappeared?”
He nodded, a strange expression upon his face. Hate? “Yes. And yet now it comes back—and the first person it infects is my sister. Tell me—can you sense it?”
When she bobbed her head, he said, “Can you sense it in me? Is it there?”
“No,” she replied, confident. “Not a lick.”
“I never approached her,” he said softly. “Once I knew what it was. It targets those with magic. It would have taken me, just like it took Vash.”
The statement startled her. “Wait, magic? You and your sister both have it as well? You’re witches?” She knew the disease craved her magic, but not that… Vash was magical as well. How come she hadn’t detected that?
A snorting laugh followed her question. “Me, a witch? No. Nothing like that. I’m what you call a dragon. You must have seen us in the skies, we’re all over the place there.”
“Wait.” Alex failed to associate the almost ethereal creatures she’d seen with the grouchy-looking man in front of her now. “You’re a human. I don’t see any wings on you.”
“That’s because I haven’t transformed yet. You really think we spend all the time in our dragon forms? It can be awfully inconvenient at times.”
“Can I see?” Alex’s former reserved mood evaporated at the thought of seeing a dragon up close. Would they be terrifying or beautiful, or both?
He managed a smile in response. “Not now. Maybe later. Maybe you’ll even get to fly on one of us. Or like the skyboat that brought us up here.”
Skyboat. Now, if there was one thing about the journey Alex had loved, it was the skyboat. A simple passage from low altitude to high altitude. She had no idea how the thing flew, of course—only that the back of it with the strange, flipper-like appliance seemed to help keep them balanced, and that sailors (sky sailors?) hoisted the sails. Meridas had pointed to a woman who stood at the front of the boat, without any safety appliance, her hands out, fingers spread wide, clearly having the time of her life.
Air witch, he’d said. She was what helped them to move. Alongside a tiny rock made of the same stuff that kept the islands floating.
“I’d like that—riding a skyboat. Might be something nice to do instead of, you know, torturing myself pulling demons out of people.” The words came out harsher than intended, and she amended with, “Your sister was in torment. If I were you, I’d figure out how she got infected and do something about it. It’s not… pleasant to tackle.”
Meridas’ expression for the first time showed a glimmer of sympathy. “I’m sorry. And grateful all the same. Perhaps I did not show this earlier...” He paused, rubbing the underside of his jaw with one finger, contemplating what to say. “It’s just… this disease. I was… I was around when it appeared. Over two decades ago.”
“You were?” Alex gaped at him. How old was he? He spoke of his age so casually.
“Yes,” Meridas said. He sighed, lowering his head. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-four,” Alex replied promptly.
“Then you never saw it. The Serpent Island falling. Did you?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” She gave him an apologetic shrug. “Sorry.”
“No matter,” he said, though his gaze remained fixed at the ground. “Perhaps when you’re better educated, I’ll talk about it. But for now… you must keep yourself safe.” He regarded her now with a quite alien expression. “And thank you for saving her.”
“No problem,” Alex said automatically, though it was, in fact, a problem. Especially if they expected her to subject herself to more of that torture. At least it was nice that this Meridas actually treated her more like a human being now, rather than some disposable rag. There weren’t a whole lot of times she could remember people being so nice.
Except if they wanted something. But even then, the niceness was… something.
It might make it easier to settle into her new world of sky and wealthy people.
If this disease didn’t kill her off first.
* * *
Turned out, Alex hated education. It involved a lot of sitting down and enduring the snotty tutor who came over, making her feel dumb for not knowing even a tenth of the things he talked about. Within ten minutes of hearing her tutor, Narl, talk, she wanted to throw herself out of the window and just dodge the lessons altogether. But when Meridas passed her, asking how she was doing with her lessons, and she replied, “Fine,” he seemed to act pleased. If anything, he was far friendlier to her. Smiles and waves, and the occasional pat on her shoulder, a question if she was okay, if she was settling in.
And for some sky-cursed reason, she didn’t mind seeing him… pleased about that. Asking questions like he cared. Because it meant someone smiling at her, rather than accusing her of robbing someone, or treating her with suspicion. Now that she’d proven her abilities
to be true, and saved the lord of the house’s sister, people actually seemed to treat her better. Even Elicia, who sometimes helped to cook her a little extra when it came to dinner time, to “Fatten you up, because you’re as thin as a rake, you wretched thing.”
Well, she couldn’t complain about that. As for lady Vash—it seemed she didn’t live with her brother. She had some other property. So Alex didn’t see so much of her over the weeks, aside from an occasional dinner—but usually, the servants weren’t allowed to tend the lord and lady during their dinner times, due to potential confidential information.
But cursing Narl, however, didn’t seem to have the faintest clue of how to actually teach someone who knew nothing.
Five weeks of education, and nothing but a big headache to show for it. Now him and his stupid, flattened face stood in front of her. He wore these pompous black robes which presumably was an attempt to make him look more important, and he liked to make some sort of effort to his graying beard, keeping it trimmed perfectly, so it resembled a ball of fuzz framing his cheeks and chin.
“You should at least be able to tell me the names of the six floating islands now, at least, girl?”
“Dasen,” she said, reciting Meridas’ own island. Apparently, the lords and ladies loved taking a variant of their island’s letters into their names. “Ruthen, Mastride, Karibos, Feylok, and Azarus.”
“Good. And which one is the king’s island?”
“Azarus,” she said, feeling bored. She also had to pronounce her words a certain way, and Narl had snapped and spat at her incessantly until she did say things in the way he wanted. Correct seemed a misnomer—she didn’t think there was such a thing as correct. Everyone had accents in the Undercity, denoting which district they came from. Or even if they came from far away, or above.
“And which was the island that fell twenty-four years ago?”
“Serpent Isle.” One year before she was born. The one Meridas said he’d talk to her about, once she “had enough education.” It seemed to be some kind of sore spot with him. “Is this all education is?” she asked then. “Just making me remember names?”
“It’s making sure you don’t look like a fool when anyone who visits your master also speaks to you,” Narl said in his nasal way of irritating her. “So you don’t sound like something he scraped off the side of a street, and that you can understand half of what anyone talks about. Society on the islands is very, very different from society in the Undercity.”
“You’re not very good at teaching people,” Alex said. Boredom and a headache made her stupid. “Instead of helping me with my lack of knowledge, you sneer at me for not knowing it, and insult me with everything I am supposed to learn. How in skies do you expect me to know something I was never taught?”
“You live here now. Not down there,” he said, as if this was somehow a reasonable explanation. Like she’d just magically know everything because she lived in a different place. “Now if you’re going to keep interrupting me, then I’ll report you to your master. Are you going to interrupt again?”
“No,” she replied, sullen. She didn’t feel particularly interested in causing a problem for Meridas, as much as she wanted to snap more at this man as he continued to stuff her head with nonsense.
She didn’t think she could fit in here, though. No matter how many words she could learn, they couldn’t exactly turn a pig into a swan. Maybe that was why, she thought, those who made it to the skies from below tended to only land themselves in servant positions, or focused on the trading sectors, with bringing supplies in and out, as well as shipping people in and out. How many of them truly got houses, or were just pushed into one already owned?
There wasn’t much room for anyone who couldn’t work, Alex realized. So those older people in the Undercity, who still dreamed of living a life of retirement in the sky towns, would never be able to do it. She wondered if there was an island for these older people.
With the lesson finished, and her head pounding from the unwelcome headache, she finally left the study of the bungalow, usually Meridas’ reserved area, to go and sit within the servant canteen. She noticed that the other servants didn’t want to look at her. Aside from Elicia, the master servant, there were about six other people in Meridas’ employ—three women, three men. None of them looked like they’d come from below, so Alex wondered if they’d somehow been born into servitude. She suspected those type of people would take enormous pride in their roles. Maybe they all disliked her and saw her as a foreigner encroaching on their lands.
Inside the servants’ dining room, she saw Meridas there, with his sister, and immediately felt a strange lurch in her stomach. Partly from surprise, partly from how well dressed they looked. Or was it the way they stood, so regal and full of confidence? Few people stood like that in the Undercity. Very few people had that much pride.
Mistress Sue, perhaps. Maybe money was at the heart of it, but still, she was better than those who would have left them to die without anything. At least in her house, they had a chance.
“Ah, yes,” Meridas said, turning to face her with a faint smile upon his lips. He did have a nice smile, come to think of it. And she liked the way his eyes looked. Shame she hadn’t seen him in his dragon form yet, like he’d promised to show her at one point. “We were just talking about you.”
Alex felt a little self-conscious in her servant’s robes, which were simple, practical, and made of a thick fabric that scratched at her skin. Gray clothes, with the symbol of Meridas’ family. A family that came from many generations down the line. It must feel nice, Alex thought, to have that sense of importance. To feel as if you were linked to your past.
“You were?” She gave a curtsy, which was considered proper, and Vash smiled as well. Now that she wasn’t on her death bed, being attacked by some strange green disease, she looked positively radiant, with glossy black hair, recovering the plumpness in her cheeks, and with a wonderful, tight outfit that spiraled in a long blue skirt to her ankles. In that same outfit, Alex didn’t really see her scrawny body pulling off the same elegant image.
“Yes. We were talking about your unusual powers, and potentially the parents that might be linked with them. Vash, here, thinks you might just be from one of the exiled families.”
Exiled? “You actually send people away from the islands?”
“If they break important laws here, yes. Laws such as robbery, murder… and not paying their island tax. It’s possible you might be from exiles, because Vash, who is better at socializing than I ever am, seems to feel that it’s an impossibility for you to belong to any of the noblewomen in the courts. Wouldn’t that be interesting to find your parents?”
“Like I told you,” Alex said, keeping her voice as calm as possible, again using the careful way of pronunciation that Narl yelled about to her, “I don’t care about them. They forfeited their rights to being parents the moment they gave me up. And they never came looking since. Do you think I want to know people like that?”
Vash fluttered her eyelashes in a rather confused way. “Forgive me,” she said. “But I thought you would at least be interested in your heritage. Where these powers of yours come from.”
“No.” Well, that was a lie, but she didn’t want to fall back on the truth now. “I am what I am. Though I don’t see why my power has to come from the sky towns. Surely anyone can have the power, with luck?”
“Technically, this is true,” Meridas agreed. “But the higher concentration of magic comes from the sky towns. I think it’s because of the way the islands work. They function by magic. And maybe that magic seeps into the children that are born up here.” He gave her a clear, curious look. “As you know, I intend to find your parents. Say that I succeed. Will you at least look at the information about them?”
“I...” Alex hesitated. Would she? It seemed strange how curious they were. “Maybe. It depends what you find out about them.”
Curse it. The more they talked about her parents, the more sh
e actually wondered about them. Now that she wasn’t struggling to live, now that she actually had time to herself, it also meant having more time to think.
Maybe that was the secret to a true education. Having enough time and stability in life to be able to sift through problems. Although from what she was beginning to gather from her lessons, life in the sky towns wasn’t nearly as idyllic as people below thought it to be. She hated that on a level—feeling that crushing disappointment.
“You know, brother,” Vash said, now examining Alex in a way she wasn’t much sure she liked, “you do need to think about settling down again for real. Maybe instead of marrying into the families, you could consider marrying a witch. It’s a healthy union, and they bring great prestige.”
Both Meridas and Alex stared at her as if she was crazy. “Say, what?” Alex said, at the same time as Meridas’, “You must be joking.”
“You don’t agree?” Vash said, one eyebrow arched, faint amusement tainting her lips. Alex had noticed that Vash seemed to be inclined to be friendly to her—but that most likely stemmed from the fact that Alex had saved her life.
“Father would never accept it,” Meridas said, folding his gray-suited arms. “He barely agreed with the last two women I was with. I can’t very well go and start courting a servant of my own household—and one from the Undercity, no less.”
Wait. They’re talking about me?
“Father doesn’t agree because you refused to marry Larazar—and she was the one he wanted you hitched to. A direct link to the king’s line. So anyone you choose is not enough,” Vash pointed out. “Plus, your taste is questionable. Natalie was alright, but she’s way too headstrong. The last one, though… I don’t know what you saw in her.”
And… he had wives. Of course he did. “Lady Vash,” Alex said, plastering a bright smile onto her face, “if you’re talking about Meridas pairing up with me, we’re worlds apart. It would be like a dragon marrying a pig.”