Tributary

by Vivien Leanne Saunders

  Guinn woke us up the next morning with a large smile and a larger plate full of bacon and eggs. The bacon was burned to a crisp, but we both wolfed it down. The man walked over to the table and studied the toy that we had been working on. It was a wooden bear about twelve inches tall. It had moveable arms and legs which we had made separately, and Jonas had been working on wiring them into their sockets when he had started yawning. The bear’s head was propped up in a vice. It looked like it had been decapitated! I had spent most of the night painting details onto it, making its snub nose and soft ears. I had used metal buttons to make its eyes look alive. Altogether it was a sweet little bear. Guinn fiddled with it for a moment and then looked at us.

  “It takes most people days to make something like this. You did it in hours.”

  “It’s not finished yet.” Jonas chewed the words with a mouthful of bacon. I winced and elbowed him.

  “True,” Said Guinn, “And there are a few rough edges that you should be ashamed of – but even so, this is fine craftsmanship. Did you work through the whole night?”

  “We fell asleep.” Jonas shrugged and lay back against my shoulder, completely at ease. I sighed and tried to navigate my way around lifting a fork when my arm was going numb. Guinn gave me a puzzled look, and I waved at him with the bacon I had managed to spear.

  “I’m free all day today. We can finish it by lunchtime, I think.”

  “Where did you learn to paint like that?” he asked. I shrugged.

  “It’s not much different from painting faces onto ladies. It just has bigger ears.”

  Jonas choked trying to laugh and swallow at the same time. I pounded him on the back, and he pretended to fall off the bench. I felt the space where he had been like a real loss, and wondered at it. Until he had moved, I had felt no difference between his body and a piece of furniture. I don’t mean that it wasn’t nice to be cuddled up to someone, only that it hadn’t occurred to me to think about it until then. Now I understood Guinn’s puzzlement.

  I caught up with the master as he was taking the plates back to the kitchen. “Guinn,” I felt an urgent need to explain myself. “We really did just fall asleep.”

  “Oh, I know that.” he tweaked my nose and nearly dropped the plates. “That bear wouldn’t have had one leg finished if you’d been distracted with anything else.”

  “Yes, but…” But what? How could I explain? “There’s nothing about it that was like… like…”

  Guinn put his free hand on my shoulder and leaned down to my height. “Harriet, I told you that I believe you – why don’t you trust me?”

  “I’m not used to people being truthful.” I muttered.

  “I know.” he winced and put the plates down on the ground, “You’re lucky to have such a good friend. Even if you just use each other as pillows, you’re lucky. I’m not about to get angry over it. Frankly, if I’d walked in on something else I would have been less surprised.”

  I felt inexplicably cross, “Just because I’m a Siren doesn’t mean…”

  “Oh, I wasn’t thinking of that!” he grinned mischievously, “If I’d been left alone all night with a handsome young man I wouldn’t have had the time to sleep.”

  “Much less build a toy?”

  “Exactly. I couldn’t believe it when I saw you’d actually been working!” he raised his eyebrows so high that I started laughing, “Don’t tell Jonas about my shocking work ethic, and I will not tell him how happy you looked when you woke up in his arms.”

  I blushed hotly and shoved the man away. “That’s not fair!”

  He bellowed out a laugh, scooped up the plates, and left me rather flustered in the yard.

  It’s the old, predictable story. I suppose I should draw out my story and eke out every detail of the next few months, but in all honesty there wasn’t a shining moment or a line that could be drawn from one tender word to the first timid embrace. One might as well watch a tree growing – all you can really tell is that tomorrow there will be more of it. That’s what falling in love felt like to me.

  Then, perhaps, I should talk about the first time we made love. What words can I use that thousands of people haven’t already said? I am sure it was not unique, better or worse than anyone else’s. Everyone remembers their first blossoming curiosity about their lover’s body. Every movement we made together was as easy and unremarkable as breathing in an out, and so utterly beautiful that even the air tasted sweet.

  I have heard people talk about their lives being changed, but the moment when we embraced each other meant nothing. It was the danger which frightened me, not my body’s fear of the unknown. Making love was simple. It was going to happen, and so one night we let it. I cherished the sweet release of certainty long before I surrendered to the languor that consumed every limb of my body.

  Afterwards, I was probably supposed to feel remorse. Perhaps Jonas should have said something to reassure me, or I should have asked him how he was feeling. We lay in each other’s arms, closing our eyes and letting silence drift between us.

  We made love twice more before the sun started to rise. Jonas kissed my forehead whenever I closed my eyes, and my lips whenever I bit them in pleasure. I opened up to him like a flower, trusting him more with each kiss to see every inch of me and cherish it. I echoed every grateful thought in my own adoration, of freckles and flaws and the laughter lines at his eyes, past the details to the parts of his body which were now a part of my own.

  Afterwards, when we walked through the sleeping city, I wondered why I did not feel uneasy. Everything that had happened felt like a dream. The pale blue dawn light washed away every soft memory and made me feel exposed. I knew that one of us could say it had been a mistake, or that we had drunk too much wine. We could tell each other that it would never happen again. Jonas was as unlikely to say those things as I was to believe them.

  We reached the palace gate. Jonas kissed me once, very sweetly, before we parted. I had closed the gate behind me before I realised that throughout the whole night we hadn’t said a single word.

  CHAPTER 14

  I had never been happier to be ignored and forgotten. I had no idea what I would do, or say, when one of the Siren caught me. It was too frightening to think about, and so I ignored it entirely. Jonas didn’t ask, and I wasn’t interested in anything that we couldn’t laugh about in each other’s arms. I certainly wasn’t going to think about Clay. Not when I was with him. Not now.

  My Mistress caught me sneaking back into my room one morning. She never appeared before dawn, and so I thought I had enough time to linger for a few extra moments in Jonas’s bed. The Siren must have had one of her nightmares, because she was waxen and dull-eyed. The heated floor had not been enough to chase the chill from her heart, and so she had sent one of the maids for a brazier. When she looked up at me I felt sick.

  “Harriet.” she said, and then shook her head and looked into the coals.

  “Mistress.” I replied in exactly the same tone, “Are you going to set yourself on fire this time?”

  “It would be pointless.” she smiled thinly, “I’m made of ice, remember? I’ll just melt.”

  I blushed, realizing that she had read me perfectly. Of course I had been thinking of the night she had swum in the stream. I must have looked at her in exactly the same way that night. Trying to read Clay in her few vulnerable moments was like trying to catch a snowflake.

  “Did you have a bad dream?”

  “Mm.” she hummed the note, “Not so bad. I wondered where you were. Mind you, you’re gone so often that I didn’t worry.”

  “Was that in your dream? I’m always here. I just…”

  “I don’t mind, Harriet.” she shook her head like an animal and searched for the right words, “No, that’s wrong. I mean that I don’t care.”

  “You don’t care.” I echoed, unable to stop myself from sounding incredulous, “If I broke curfew on the island you’d be racing to tell Sweetwater.”

  “We’re not on the island
.” she hunched back over the brazier. After a moment I copied her, holding my hand out to the heat and wishing my fingers weren’t trembling. Clay blew softly onto the coals, “We have to follow our laws, or everything will fall apart. We control every second of those men’s final days. To do that, we have to trust every single person to be where they’re supposed to be, and to do what they’re meant to do. Our rules aren’t supposed to be… vindictive. They just feel like that to us.” she pursed her lips and looked up at me, clearly trying to work out how to explain the twisted tangle of her thoughts.

  I sat in silence. I had never heard her speak like that before. She sounded sensible, and damned near sympathetic. I gestured for her to continue, and she sighed, “I became a Siren because I couldn’t go back to being a servant. I could never be subservient, let alone chaste! I like having my own way too much.” she smiled wickedly and I found myself smiling back.

  “I don’t know if I could give it up, either.” I said in the softest voice imaginable. Clay shook her head and sat back.

  “It’s not fair that you should. I’m sorry that you will not get to make that choice, yourself. But I suppose, after everything you’ve done, we could ask Sweetwater to make you a Siren.”

  “No.” I cut in sharply, “I don’t want that.”

  “But you said…”

  “I couldn’t go from what I have to… to wringing pleasure from corpses’ throats!” I burst out, “I’d rather be celibate than pretend that’s what love should be!”

  “Love?” Clay looked confused, and then laughed, “Oh, I was talking about something different.”

  “They can be the same thing.” I said stiffly, and saw her flinch. A dull feeling of satisfaction thrummed in my stomach. I knew that Clay kept all of her victims at arm’s length. Until Jonas had enclosed me in his arms, I hadn’t understood. Now I saw the pettiness of it. How many Siren spent their whole lives thinking the shuddering of passion was all there was to experience? The only connection Clay ever made with a lover was formed of flesh.

  I pitied her in that moment. I had admired her unabashed sensuality as one Siren does another, respecting it as a skill and an asset. If Clay had turned her wiles onto someone that she truly loved, then she would have been irresistible. I realized that Clay would never do that. She could not love and lust.

  “Do you think you love him, then?” she asked me.

  “How do you know it’s a man?” I was done being subtle. Clay pulled a face at me, and folded her arms until I nodded. Then her eyes narrowed, and she tapped her fingers against her elbows.

  “Who is it?”

  “I met him in the market.” I knew that she could smell a lie, so I used the truth as much as possible. I told her that he was a carpenter, and that I had been searching for Dahra’s supplies when our eyes met. I had made up a false name to visit the apothecaries, and so I told Clay that the man knew me as Losie.

  If Clay knew that I was talking about Jonas all of her sweetness would have vanished. She wouldn’t be liberal about the rules then. Her fury would be astounding. I would be reminded of my oaths under the tails of a whip. The thought of her realizing it was Jonas terrified me.

  Clay’s face transformed into smug, grotesque beauty, “You don’t love this man. He doesn’t even know who you are.”

  “He knows enough.”

  “That’s love, is it?” she raised an eyebrow and then hauled herself to her feet. She looked satisfied. I wondered what mental acrobatics she had put herself through to convince herself that she had won. It did not matter; as long as she told herself that my trysts were cheap and sordid, she wouldn’t pry into them. She was too arrogant to think me capable of anything more profound than she – the great Siren! – had managed.

  One thing I did not expect was that Clay was delighted by my secret. Most Siren thought it was beneath them to gossip about their lovemaking. After all, it was a duty and not a pleasure. But Clay coaxed me to whisper to her, and told me some of her own ridiculous adventures in exchange. The woman was far more creative than I had imagined. The Mistresses praised her for it, but she didn’t care about them. She simply loved opening her legs. If she had been a glutton she would have been fat.

  Prince Coluber, Clay told me, was a boring lover. He had spent a lifetime being told he was a prince among men, so he had never realized he was terrible between the sheets. The young lord had never bothered to do much more than order women around until he spent himself and fell asleep. The man would happily let Clay exhaust herself while he lay back and grunted like a pig. Did not he realise, Clay demanded, what he was missing out on? Because she certainly did!

  Her outrage made me laugh, and I covered my mouth in shame until I realized that she was laughing too.

  I started telling her about my own delicious nights. It was liberating to be able to talk to someone. Even though I had to lie about names and places, I could be honest about how it felt. There aren’t enough words in the world to describe the first weeks in a woman’s life when her body learns how to starve. Clay described it as a heat, or a pain, but to me it felt as though my whole body was completely open. I could fling my arms and legs as wide as they would go, open my mouth and eyes and breathe in until I burst, and still I wouldn’t feel as exposed as I did whenever a warm breeze made my skirt brush against my skin. Falling into Jonas’s arms was like sheltering from the storm, letting him take away the delicate caress of the wind and then shaping it into something far richer.

  It was like falling into darkness, Clay said. No, I told her. For me, it’s light. All light.

  I spent whole days with Jonas because Clay told Dahra that I was running her errands. Her smirks and meaningful looks made me want to slap her, but I was grateful to the woman for every second it gave me with the man I loved. After several weeks her snide comments became more genuine, and we shared the secret like true sisters.

  But I could not love her.

  Clay had cast a shadow into Jonas’s heart which I could not touch. I was too animal to share him with another woman. I wanted to tear that darkness away with my teeth and throw it into Clay’s shrewish face. When they were together they were the same as always – arguing, and laughing, and pretending that I didn’t exist. I accepted the pain, but I could not bear it. Her cruelty tore Jonas apart. I was the one who had to heal the wounds she left behind.

  “Why do you love her?” I demanded after her cool indifference had left him wretched. “She’s a monster.”

  “No, she is not.” he caught my hand and ran his broken knuckles over my nails. “But everyone told her that she was. It only takes a few years of that before anyone would start to believe it. It’s not her fault.”

  “It’s not your fault, either.” I snapped, and pulled my hand away. “She expects us to run around cleaning up her mess. If there’s anything worth loving in there, she’s too lazy to show it to us. Caring about her is making you sick.”

  He kissed away the angry line on my forehead. “You love her too.” he reminded me softly, “You know it’s not the kind of love that will make you happy. It just… is.”

  “I hate her.”

  Jonas smiled, “So do I! We share the same awful, selfish sister. She makes our lives a living hell when she wants to. Then she loves us, and we see the sun shining out of her eyes. She’s a terrible person, and neither of us can shake the bitch out of our hearts.”

  I sat stunned at the outpouring. Jonas grinned weakly and ruffled my hair. “Don’t be cross, Har. We’re not going to let her spoil our happiness. We cannot keep acting like she’s hiding behind the woodpile. This has nothing to do with her.”

  I chewed my lip anxiously. “What do you think she would do if she found out about us?”

  “Probably climb into bed with her prince and tell herself we’re jealous.” Jonas raised his eyebrows. “It’s what she did last time. The idiot thought I’d care about her screwing some toothless sailor after our last fight.”

  I stared at him for a moment, and then buried my
head in my hand and started laughing. I had thought that my Mistress had played her games on the ship because she was bored. I had no idea she was trying to be petty. The thought of Jonas being completely indifferent while Clay got more and more frustrated was hilarious.

  When the days got warmer, swarms of hatchling flies filled the air like grit. The ground stank when the soil thawed, and yellow mud eked into the city streets. The prince took both Siren out of Crozier, ostensibly on another of his hunting trips, but chiefly to escape from the stench. I was packing my own bag when Miette told me I was to stay behind.