Competence

by Gail Carriger

  Quesnel said, “Is it safe for the ladies to go into market without escort?”

  “Nuns are forever safe,” interjected Rodrigo.

  He did not seem perturbed by the idea of Anitra alone in a foreign city. Percy felt he was the type of man to be protective, if it was warranted. And if his affection was genuine, of course.

  Rue nodded. “Very well. But take Spoo and Bork with you, Prim. If you like, you could even dress Spoo as a girl for a change and make her wear a veil too. What are the baby nuns called?”

  Everyone looked around at each other. Percy wished he’d brushed up on religious studies before their trip.

  Rodrigo said, “I know not the English. Neofita.”

  “Neophyte,” said Quesnel.

  Rue pursed her lips. “And Bork will act the part of manservant.”

  “What should I do?” wondered Percy, hoping they wouldn’t suggest he too dress up as a nun and go shopping. That seemed some sort of purgatorial punishment. Navigation had no resources to stock, and very little to do once they were safely in a port.

  “Go back to bed?” suggested his captain.

  Percy was relieved. “Keep an eye on Virgil for me? He’s pretty pale too. I’d rather my valet weren’t lynched, or staked through the heart, or burned. Or whatever it is they do to vampires in these parts.”

  Rue considered. “Good point. Thank heavens all the decklings are so tan. I’ll make certain he stays hidden along with the rest of the household staff.”

  “What about Footnote?” Percy asked. The tuxedo tomcat was currently occupying his lap. Footnote would have preferred Prim’s lap, but at meals she was always too busy - leaning over to pour tea, or passing the potatoes, or what have you.

  As Tasherit slept most days, Footnote felt the entire ship was his rightful domain during daylight. It was difficult, if not impossible, to keep the cat confined to quarters. Better to confine him to a picnic basket if they had to keep him safe.

  Rue looked at Rodrigo. “How do Catholics feel about cats?”

  Rodrigo shrugged and made a comme ci comme ca gesture with his hands.

  Quesnel grinned. “I don’t believe there is a particular religious inclination either in favour or against.”

  Considering both Footnote and Tasherit half expected to be worshipped at all times, this was oddly hilarious. Percy hid a chuckle and sipped his tea, mildly saddened by the lack of milk but hopeful for a restock in their near future. Not that he cared as much as his sister did about such things.

  Percy wondered if he had any books on the politics of the Catholic Church in his library, and thought he might take a little light reading to bed with him.

  Primrose donned her floating ensemble with full veil. She didn’t think of it as particularly nunlike, but she was sure she could modify it to appear more so.

  It was quite modern. Her mother would have been appalled - but then one’s mother was never meant to see one’s driving ensemble. Prim’s was composed of a long skirt and duster coat in chocolate brown over a high-necked cream muslin blouse. Chocolate had recently become one of Prim’s favourite colours. A fact that had everything to do with how well it flattered her complexion, and nothing to do with Tasherit’s eye colour. Nothing at all.

  The outfit also included matched goggles, a wide straw hat with cream-coloured veil, a pretty velvet belt, leather gloves, and a reticule.

  Thinking of nuns, Primrose left off the goggles, belt, and hat and buttoned the duster closed so it looked more robelike. It was meant to be left open except when floating, so she felt a little silly. She kept the gloves, of course, and Anitra helped her to arrange and pin the veil over her face in such a way that only her eyes were visible.

  She hoped it was enough to disguise her white skin.

  In deference to their collective limited information on nuns, Anitra coiled back her customary braids and wore all black in layers. Black was a very popular colour among lady Drifters but rarely worn head-to-toe. White, however, was the provenance of men, so she borrowed a cream scarf from Primrose and used that for her veil.

  Spoo agreed to dress as a girl because it meant she got to explore the city. She was a small wiry thing, so she didn’t fit Anitra’s or Prim’s clothing. They borrowed a long dark blue nightshirt from Percy, and improvised with various blue scarves for everything else. She looked slightly more like a pint-sized disenfranchised washerwoman than a religious neophyte, but it was close enough.

  She also kept grinning. Primrose had to repeatedly remind her that nuns were serious.

  Leaving the ship was an exercise in comedy regardless. It was remarkably hard to negotiate a dangling rope ladder in a veil, not to mention skirts.

  Bork went first, bless the man, carrying a large bucket-shaped basket across his back for immediate purchases. Prim intended to have most of their supplies delivered, or they’d have a lot of walking back and forth to do. Spoo also carried a few empty flour sacks to fill.

  It was rather cold for such a sunny day. This being the southern hemisphere at Christmastime, it was meant to be midsummer as well. Primrose supposed it had something to do with being up high in the mountains. She was very glad for her duster.

  They found the market simply by following other people with baskets. The fact that it was Christmas Day seemed more an excuse for shopping than a reason to close the stalls. As in other foreign lands they’d visited, custom leaned in favour of a vast open-air market.

  Cusco boasted a series of small mobile stalls, each specialising in only one or two products, like costermongers. Primrose half anticipated a hawker roasting chestnuts at every corner. Certainly there was a great deal of roasted meat, although there were only two kinds of meat: a cubed gamey-looking red meat, like mutton, and a very chubby rodent on a stick, roasted whole. The first proved, after inquiry, to be alpaca, the goatlike creature that supplied that soft wool. The second was something called cuy, and Primrose had to admit the look of it quite horrified her. Spoo, being Spoo, wanted instantly to eat one.

  “Simply think what the other decklings will say if I told them I ate something ratlike!”

  Because she was titillated by the horror of it, Prim purchased rodent-on-a-stick for Spoo. Copper coin seemed acceptable legal tender, regardless of what was stamped on it.

  Spoo crunched away happily and proclaimed it to taste like a cross between rabbit and pork. Primrose refused to try it on grounds of appearance alone, appearances being very important, after all, regardless of the very idea of walking and eating at the same time! Appalling. What she said to Spoo was that she couldn’t eat anything because of the veil.

  Anitra and Spoo had arranged their veils with face showing, given they were both so tan. Anitra tried a nibble and seemed fine with the taste. Bork held himself back with a shocked expression.

  Primrose purchased him some of the cubed alpaca instead. He pronounced it tasty but, being a taciturn individual, said nothing further on the subject.

  “Good,” said Prim. “If we find a butcher we can buy that for Cook. He won’t be too upset by it if we simply call it goat.”

  They were treated with universal deference, which was nice. People kept making the sign of the cross around them, with particular reverence to Prim - something about the full veil unnerved them. Prim developed a beneficent nod which sent them on their way starry-eyed and grateful.

  Anitra’s limited Spanish was sufficient to most of their shopping transaction needs, although some of the stall owners spoke a mountain tribal dialect that Anitra couldn’t understand at all. These mountain folk wore hats that bore a remarkable resemblance to a gentleman’s bowler of the kind preferred by Scotland Yard. It was disconcerting.

  Anitra asked one of the Spanish speakers what the language was called and got the response of Quechuan.

  “Perhaps,” said Prim, “we should ask them about the vampires. Wasn’t it the Quechua who were supposed to know where they are located?”

  Anitra said, �
�Is that wise? It seems whenever we bring up the pishtacos, a negative reaction is engendered.”

  The stall owner, with whom they were bartering for potatoes, baulked at the word pishtaco, proving her point.

  He rattled off something at Anitra. She turned to Prim. “He wants to know if we are nuns of the Inquisition. Sisters of Mercy.”

  Primrose gave one of her holier-than-thou regal nods.

  The man instantly turned to his bowler-hat-wearing neighbour and began conversing with her at a rate of knots. He spoke Quechuan, too, as it turned out.

  The lady came out from behind her stall and clasped Anitra’s hand, babbling at her.

  Anitra asked the man to explain. Then she translated for Prim.

  “Apparently they have been begging the papacy for hunters for decades. They have a pishtaco problem. Or are having problems getting the last of them. I think by hunters they mean someone like Rodrigo. They do not know quite what a preternatural can do, but they have an inkling. They seem to think we are his support staff.”

  Primrose blinked. Never in her life had she been taken for staff! “I suppose it’s no surprise that the preternatural are conflated with the Inquisition here, unless there is a Templar branch in South America that Mr Tarabotti neglected to tell us about.”

  Anitra leapt to the defence of her Italian. “He may not know the answer to that, even if there were. It’s not like they told him much. Just used him as a weapon.”

  Primrose didn’t want to argue about it. “Please ask them if they know where the pishtacos are. Hive location, or the vicinity? Even a feeding ground. Are they here, inside the city?”

  Anitra asked and they got more than Prim expected. Apparently, being a nun loosened tongues. It seemed the locals genuinely believed the Spotted Custard had come expressly to exterminate monsters.

  The pishtacos were reputed to be south of the city in a rural part of the valley.

  For the rest of their market jaunt, Anitra freely asked questions about the pishtaco threat. By degrees they gathered more information on the location of the hive. That it was near a lake and on a hillside. There were Inca ruins and something called a hacienda involved.

  On a more practical level, the ladies also managed to convince those from whom they purchased in bulk to wheel their carts back to the ship and deliver the goods. It was easy to relay the address, given the Spotted Custard was tied to the city’s central cathedral. This fact only lent credence to their status as nuns and vampire hunters.

  By the end of their trek, Primrose had sent a veritable parade of costermongers back towards the Spotted Custard. These individuals pushed carts laden down with meat, fruit, grain, and vegetables. Still, her options were severely limited. Prim ended up settling on a great deal of corn and potatoes. Potatoes in the Andes came in a startlingly large variety, including a brown-fleshed one that was highly prized. She’d sampled a bit and found it to be the consistency of a turnip but sweet. There was also freshwater trout. Prim figured they would have to salt the fish for preservation themselves. Curing, smoking, potting, and canning seemed entirely absent from local cuisine. Fortunately for Cook’s sanity, there were eggs. He was as reliant on eggs as any other chef under Victoria’s rule. Unfortunately, there was no flour, sugar, or dairy to be found. Rue would be without her maintenance puff pastry. And worse, they would all have to continue with milkless tea. Poor Tasherit would not have her beloved cheese or cream.

  Anitra asked for alpaca milk. But apparently alpacas, and their cousins the longer-necked and bigger-eyed llamas, were not so goatlike as Primrose hoped. No milk.

  There was a small seedlike grain, various nuts, and some leafy greens that looked akin to cauliflower leaves. Prim purchased samples of each. There was also, it being high summer, fruit from the lowlands. Primrose purchased every pineapple she could find. They were ridiculously inexpensive, and she knew quite as acidic as oranges or lemons. They could have pineapple with their tea, to aid with digestion and prevent scurvy.

  Primrose also acquired a few more exotic fruits in which the market vendors took communal pride - a black bevel-skinned almond-shaped thing that proved to have green flesh, a single large pit, and a savoury buttery texture that was not unpleasant if one thought about it as a spread for toast rather than an actual fruit. There was a similarly shaped yellow creature with orange flesh and many tiny black seeds in a hollow centre that looked exactly like caviar. That one was very sweet, with a burnt perfume flavour, which Primrose found off-putting but she thought Rue might enjoy. Prim’s favourite was a small spherical fruit with a very thick purple skin, like bark, which opened to reveal yet more caviar-like seeds encased in an orange and green jelly. In this case one ate the seed jelly, which tasted quite tangy and only a little flowery. She thought with such a thick hard shell they would likely keep well, so she bought almost as many of those as she did pineapples.

  They walked back to the ship, triumphant. Primrose always found shopping local the most exciting aspect of being the airship’s purser. Determining what they might stock of the native produce, trying to balance supplies against health and taste. She was charged with managing personalities via comestibles by a captain who had strong opinions on eating food and a cook who had strong opinions about preparing food. It was a lovely challenge.

  This moment, walking home (before either personality weighed in on Prim’s choices and found them wanting), was suffused with a sense of profound accomplishment. She basked in the glow of it. Of course, she was doomed to disappoint, as both her friend and her subordinate would rail against her selections, but for now all was glory and success. She was the heroic conqueror of the marketplace dragon.

  Thus, Primrose could not be faulted for wishing to delay matters. After having been trapped aboard for almost two weeks, she took her time strolling back. She and Anitra examined the colourful woven cloth, Bork looked at tools and weapons, and Spoo investigated the various trinkets that made up life’s joys rather than its necessities.

  Primrose found a shawl of knitted alpaca wool that was so soft and warm it was practically cashmere, and she simply had to buy it. The next stall over displayed little baby booties of the same material.

  That gave her the opening she’d been looking for. “Anitra, forgive me if this is intrusive.” She thought better of it. “Of course, we are in public, although speaking English…”

  “You wish to ask me something personal?” Anitra’s bright dark eyes were welcoming.

  “Yes.”

  “About Rodrigo?” guessed the interpreter.

  “In a way.”

  Anitra seemed to wish to encourage the confidence. “I never thought to earn such a man’s attention. I understand if you… that is, if you are offended that he chose me instead of…”

  “Oh, goodness no. How, um, kind, but I believe he is, and prefer that he be, most firmly attached to you.”

  “Yes.” Anitra blinked and she looked more amazed than happy. “It is a surprise.”

  “Because of your troubles?” Primrose felt saying the word barren out loud was too harsh.

  Anitra dipped her head. “Yes.”

  “That is rather what I thought to ask about.”

  Anitra winced.

  “Oh, not the details, I shouldn’t intrude. It’s more, how do you reconcile yourself to it? To not having children?”

  “Oh, I’ve always known that if I did, they would not be mine.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “A woman like me, she marries a widower and raises his children by a previous wife. If she marries at all. It is not the same as Ay.”

  “Ay?”

  “You remember from the meeting in the skies with my people, where Footnote saved the barter and Ay tried to buy you for a wife?”

  Primrose did remember. She’d not been part of the negotiations, but she had made an appearance, and one of the Drifters had tried to bid for her hand in marriage as part of the trade.

  “Ay was
the man who wished to marry me?”

  “Yes. He surprised Rue with this request. And Rue was wearing the wrong colour.”

  “I’m sorry, Anitra, I don’t understand. What has this to do with children?”

  Anitra puffed out her cheeks. “Ay would marry widows, much as I would marry a widower - those who already have children - because that is the only choice.”

  Primrose thought she followed. There were rumours of male impotence, of course, but male doctors always denied it was possible, blaming barrenness on the wife. It was very forward thinking of Drifter culture to realise the flaw might lie with either party.

  Anitra continued. “Ay is a male in the eyes of my people. Powerful. Head of his household. I am not. Mr Tarabotti does me great honour.”

  Primrose remembered then what Rue had said about Ay. Prim had dismissed it at the time as one of Rue’s more eccentric moments. But had Rue been telling the truth? Primrose had thought Ay a dandy, clean shaven and a touch effeminate. But a man. Rue had said Ay was actually a woman, breasts and everything. That she had taken on the role of a man, and fellow Drifters simply accepted this.

  “Anitra, are you…? That is, do you have…” Primrose could not believe she was about to ask, but it was too amazing. “Do you have gentleman parts?” She waved an expressive hand down low.

  Anitra nodded. “Of course.”

  Well, that would explain why she can’t have children, Prim’s brain supplied. “I never would have known.”

  Anitra grinned, clearly taking that as a compliment. “I am a woman in truth, if not in body.”

  Primrose nodded. Anitra certainly looked and behaved as a woman. It was difficult to think on the details of her genitalia, but Primrose preferred not to think on male genitalia if at all possible anyway. She found that she could, therefore, understand why someone who had them wouldn’t want to either.

  She tried to say the polite thing. “I have occasionally thought how nice it would be to be a man.”