by Cat Rambo
Obedience flashed an indignant look sideways but held her tongue. She was well used to sisterly blaming. Perhaps her sibling knew what she was doing and was going to get both of them off.
But Grace’s next words made it plain she had no such idea. “And then she saw some things and thought them pretty. You understand, lady, she is but a little child and has no idea of right and wrong, led only by greed.”
That was, in Obedience’s opinion, overselling the idea to the point of betrayal.
“Not much of a haul,” the man commented wryly, kneeling to sort through it and setting the lantern upright. “And it is the law that, once a building has been examined and pronounced bankrupt, as you have pleaded for this one to be pronounced, it is the right of the city’s poor to take what they want from it.”
“But not yet,” the woman snapped.
He shrugged and let his gaze travel around. “Perhaps they were doing you a favor by helping dilapidate the place,” he said softly. “Indeed, I would hate to be unable to bend to your will because it seems repairable.” He set his foot down and trod on the floor experimentally. “Here, see, this whole section is unmarred and might prove a good place for a carpenter to start.”
“You blackmail me!” the woman snapped.
“I remind you that Diahmo is a dangerous God to invoke,” he said. “Will you do innocents harm so soon after speaking his name?”
“Not so innocent, with my goods in their bags!”
“Minor, meager goods,” he soothed. He looked to the girls. “I am sure they are willing to leave these things behind.”
Without speaking, the woman crossed her arms and turned away.
CHAPTER 7
The girls stood, paralyzed, until the man gestured at them, flapping a hand towards the door. Grace grabbed Obedience’s hand and they exited as quickly as possible.
Outside on the street, Grace cursed. “She took everything I had! Well, at least you have some left.” She snatched the bag from Obedience. Obedience knew that meant Grace intended to take full credit for the contents, but she didn’t mind. Grace had forgotten about the scraps of porcelain in her pockets, else she would have demanded them from pique.
But a block later, Grace paused, turning and pulling Obedience into a doorway, smelling of half-frozen piss. “Look back and see if they’ve gone,” she directed.
Obedience did. “They’re going now,” she said.
“Good. Go back and see if they left the things.”
“What?!”
“Did you see them carrying them? I bet they dropped them. They didn’t need them, they were just being mean.”
Indignation flared in her but she went back nonetheless, creeping in through the door. The place was empty now, everyone frightened away by the presence of the two official visitors.
The bag was nowhere to be found, even after she managed to scramble back up the staircase despite the lack of Grace’s help, a struggle that left her bruised and scratched, but triumphant. She decided that as long as she was there, she’d make it worth her while.
Grace wouldn’t come back; she’d think Obedience had been caught. More likely she’d leave without her, return home and claim she knew nothing about the absence. So Obedience picked through the rooms. What Grace didn’t know she had couldn’t be bullied away. She accumulated a few scraps of gilded wood, more for their prettiness than any value, and they joined the fragments of porcelain in her pockets. Then, in a corner, true treasure: a little cosmetic mirrored box of the sort Nobles carried, filled with scented powder.
She secreted that securely in her waistband and went back to the stairs.
As she reached the top, she paused. She heard nothing, but she sensed something. She sniffed the air. Musk and cinnamon. Some presence lurked below.
Just nerves, she told herself. She was good at scaring herself, Mamma said. She was doing that now. But she didn’t need to go back upstairs. She was hungry and tired. Grace couldn’t complain she hadn’t tried.
She made her way down, step by anxious step. The darkening sky outside—she must have taken longer than she’d thought in her search—cast odd shadows through the broken windows, the shapes of the glass shards like ghostly daggers on the uneven floor.
Inhaling as she set foot finally on the first floor, she smelled cinnamon and musk, an unfamiliar, heady odor, too sweet, too strong, and with an underlying bitterness that made her nose wrinkle.
Step. Pause to listen. Step. Listen again.
What was that? A stealthy creak? She clung to the walls, trying to make for the entryway.
Up ahead, a shadowed doorway that she must pass. Anything might lurk there; anything might be waiting to pounce.
Nonsense. More frightening herself, thinking thoughts from children’s stories—and if she was old enough to think of apprenticing, then she was no longer a child.
Nonetheless she resisted the urge to glance into the doorway as she passed, not wanting to see her imaginings there.
To her shock and regret they were not imaginings. As she took another step, a heavy weight gripped her shoulder. “Stop, Human child.”
Obedience shrieked and tried to pull away, but the weight knocked her down. She saw a flash of tawny fur. The smell was nearly overpowering, its bitter undernote more pronounced, rank, and stomach-turning.
“Spy.” A voice in her ear. “I have your scent now, little spy.”
She could hear someone shout in the street, alerted by her scream. She tried to inhale in order to scream again, but the inexorable weight only drove the air further from her lungs.
A clatter of footsteps from the direction of the entryway.
“I will remember you,” the voice hissed. Then the weight was gone, and she lay there shuddering on the cold and splintered floor.
Her rescuer proved a street sweeper, who tried to insist on walking her home, but she persisted on going alone. She discovered Grace, improbably still waiting.
“Did you get it?” was Grace’s first question. At Obedience’s headshake, her face fell. This was what had kept her there, not sisterly concern, Obedience thought.
“Someone grabbed me,” she said. “That man came and chased them away.”
Grace scoffed. “You’re just trying to make excuses.”
Obedience bit her lip but said nothing more as she trailed her sister home.
On the doorstep, she stopped, hand reaching for the door.
“What’s going on?” Grace snapped.
“Something’s going on,” Obedience whispered. “I can hear lots of people talking.”
She felt uneasy at the sound of all those voices. What could it mean?
But not so with Grace. Her face glowed with sudden joy. “Hurry up! Open it!” she said.
Obedience did, but before she could step in, Grace rushed past her towards the tall figure in the center of the room, his duffel at his feet.
Their brother was home.
“WHERE DID YE GO?” Mamma said after the first rush of conversation. Grace gave her a cross-eyed look, as though to say they all knew Mamma had told them to go down and find what they could.
But Mamma just stared back, because they also knew that their brother wouldn’t have approved. Activities like that were not exactly counter to Temple teachings, but you were supposed to go to the Temple if you needed anything. They would provide the basics, from the sacks of dried mushrooms used to make daily gruel, to lengths of plain brown linen, which wore well, for the Summer, and reed-cloth, which did not, for the Winter, and even the simple lessons that would teach a child how to read and write and do their trade sums.
The thing about it all was, as their Mamma had told them all, more than once, the Temples didn’t allow for people wanting a bit of something extra, a ribbon on their dress or a hyacinth cookie. “We be poor enough as is,” she’d growled, “without making ourselves seem poorer.”
And so she’d started talking to Canumbra and Legio, who Eloquence would not have approved of at all, because they were not Moon Temple
followers, not even to the point of wearing a coin to show what Moon they were born under. Mamma liked them because they always seemed to know where one of her daughters could pick up a little extra money, sometimes scrupulously, sometimes less. Before she’d been prenticed out, Grace had served as a lookout a few times, whistling to let her fellows know that the Duke’s Peacekeepers were coming in the middle of them committing what they called “requisitioning” down at the docks.
Eloquence was different from Canumbra and Legio.
Eloquence knew his letters better than anyone, and that was because of his name. Every Moon Temple worshipper had a name that was their trait, the thing they were supposed to pursue in life. If they became Priests, that name fell away and they were something else, and that was interesting, but there really wasn’t that much interesting about the Temples other than that. The Temples were about rules and how to live your life. It seemed to Obedience that those outside the Temples might have an easier time of it without those rules constraining them. But it was better not to say such things because then everyone would pick on you.
Still, there were rules for everything: how much you should eat at a meal, depending on who you were with and how many; the song that greets the morning and chases night ghosts away; the proper subjects of conversation, and so much more, like ugly ropes running everywhere till you couldn’t move.
But she’d been born into that life and there really wasn’t any way of getting out of that without becoming an apostate and renouncing all her family and way of life. There were members of her family—every single one of her sisters, for instance—that Obedience could have done without, but she wouldn’t have given Eloquence up for anything.
The youngest, she had little claim to his attention, and simply worshipped him from afar.
Now Eloquence was back, and even standing in the same room with Canumbra and Legio (and Mamma looking nervously between the trio every once in a while), because everyone from the neighborhood was there, or at least what seemed to be everyone, a press of people in the room to congratulate Eloquence on having returned from yet another voyage as a River Pilot. Another trip meant he would have come back with money, which was a happy thought, because there were all sorts of wonderful things that the Temples did not provide, and maybe Obedience would even get something new, all hers, that had never belonged to anyone else.
She shouldered her way in through the crowd, looking at the corners of the room, to see what other children were there. Everyone was wide-eyed and listening to Eloquence, who was talking about river pirates. But he broke off when he saw Obedience, and held his arms out to her.
She didn’t care that everyone was looking at her as she stepped forward and let herself be swept up. He was twice her thirteen years and twice as tall as well—had he grown even larger while he was on the boat?—and he had gone away last Autumn, and been gone all this time. She savored the smell of him, apples and coal smoke and a little bit of sweat, a good solid smell.
Then Silence was at their side as well, pulling on Eloquence’s vest, and all of the other girls pushed forward, clamoring for attention. Eloquence set Obedience down and she landed on the floor with a thump of her heels. He gave her a quick grin and a wink before he began digging through his pockets for the presents he’d brought.
Everyone that was visiting had brought some food or drink, sometimes even both. Someone brought out pat-drums, and someone else a whistle, and then Accord ran home to fetch her guitar, and before long everyone was singing, with only a few people still eating or drinking or talking, but mostly listening to the music, which was wonderful, because you didn’t often hear that many people singing together, all at once. It had a way of erasing all the bad voices, or at least of finding places where they seemed to fit, and to do the least harm to the overall song.
Mamma unexpectedly let all of them stay up, until the very last visitor had stepped away out the door. Silence and Compassion were yawning and Grace was actually asleep in the corner, curled up next to Eloquence’s duffel, but Obedience remained awake, drinking in each new thing and all the stories that Eloquence told, wonderful stories of what a day on the river was like, and how in the morning you could see the little dragons flitting back and forth among the cattails, trying to catch frogs.
The door closed on the last visitor’s heels, and Mamma turned to Eloquence.
“Well, my boy, I suppose you’ve earned a bit of a rest, but knowing you, you aren’t ready to take it. What’s next?”
“I need to visit the Moon Temples before anything else,” Eloquence said, his cheerful voice taking on a somber note.
“Why, is something wrong?”
“While I was coming down, a Priest asked me to undertake a mission, to bring a boy down to the Temples.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was promised to them, as a thankee for his sister being saved from illness. The Priest—Grave—entrusted him to me, because he was too ill to travel, caught by a Fairy bite. The boy didn’t know what he wanted, but it wasn’t the Temples. When he got the chance at the docks, away he ran into the crowd, and no one saw another sign of him. The Mage cast a spell and learned he’d died already, though not how. So I must go and tell the Temples all this.”
Obedience thought about what being promised to the Temples would have meant for a boy. It would mean you couldn’t go out of the Temple without permission, and that would be true for all your life, even after you were an adult. It meant all your work was dedicated to the Temple, so you could have no coins of your own, only what the Priests gave you to spend when you asked for it.
In theory any worshipper of the Moon Temples could ask for money if they thought they needed it. But that wasn’t really how it worked. The Priest or Priestess would ask you questions and find out what you needed the money for and how you intended to spend it and whether or not you intended to pay the Temples back eventually (the answer implied by the discussions was always yes) and if so, how soon and at what terms.
Obedience knew this because after Eloquence had gone away, that was how Mamma had tried to make sure that the rent was paid. But the Priest had scowled and then argued with her, saying she could sell some of the furniture, and so Mamma had given up on that. She had sold some of the furniture, but before more than a few pieces were gone, Granny Beeswax had introduced her to Canumbra and Legio.
The pair had frightened Obedience at first, the way they looked, but there Mamma had stood up to them as she had done nowhere else, had snapped that they could keep their own eyeballs in their heads or else see them slapped out, and it had stopped the surreptitious pinches and worse, fondlings, that had preceded the showdown.
Now they had become second nature, the way they came round to find whichever sisters were available, which was always at least whoever had their purple blessing, the day off that came after seven days of work, by Temple law, and the youngest and unapprenticed, Obedience. They didn’t make her do anything she didn’t like, but there was a lot of taking messages from one place to another and sometimes she wondered why they didn’t just hire a regular courier, rather than come all the way to their house in order to fetch one of the girls.
They felt off, that was the thing about them, and for a long time, Obedience had thought to herself that it would all change when Eloquence was home.
Would it? She’d asked Mamma once if she’d promised one of them to Granny and Mamma laughed and said why would she think she would ever do such a thing.
But as Obedience had turned away, it seemed to her that she could feel her mother’s eyes resting on her shoulders, their pale blue depths gone deeper with speculation.
CHAPTER 8
Thoughts of Teo bedeviled Eloquence all night, biting at him like worrisome gnats. The boy was straight from the country. City complications had done him in, sure as sunrise. He’d fallen afoul of criminals or slavenappers, or one of the many other predators that made Tabat their home.
He opened his eyes as sunlight glimmered
at the edges of the shutters. Mamma was up and making breakfast already.
He wanted to stay in bed himself. All through the long days of the steamboat journey, he’d dreamed of clean sheets, a mattress a thousand times softer than the narrow plank in the Pilot’s cabin that was his bed throughout the journey, a spot to half-sleep while monitoring the sound of the engines, listening for a shudder or falter indicating some problem: fatigued metal giving way or a spell designed to coax them into shore and waiting bandits.
It wasn’t until that last bump of landing that he’d relaxed, and even then he worried about the temporary Pilot that would take the Swan to the moorage where she’d be cleaned and refitted for journeying. He’d sailed aboard seven different steamboats in the dozen years he’d spent making his living on the river, but the Swan was one of the best, clean and well-kept.
He turned over and buried his nose against the pillow. It smelled of pressed cotton, with the faintest scent of … elderflower, he thought. It had been a long time since he’d spent a morning in a bed in his grandmother’s household, but the smell was the same. He tried to will himself back to sleep, but the sunlight pouring in through the east-facing window, the cooing of pigeons on the windowsill, and those thoughts of Teo all took it in turn to keep him awake.
Whenever he was away on the river, it seemed like all Eloquence dreamed about was being back in Tabat, in the narrow little room that his age and gender allotted him alone, with his writing desk set beneath the window, looking out over green and purple tiled roofs and then the great factories that produced those tiles, the Slumpers, and then the sea’s distant smolder.
But here and now, he couldn’t enjoy it with all those thoughts about what the Temples would say about the boy’s loss.
And even more than that, he’d have to figure out what to do about what had been happening while he was gone. He’d told Mamma to rely on the Temples, but she’d been doing more than that, he could tell, by the well-stocked wood basket and the furniture, much newer than when he’d been here last. It didn’t show in the girls’ dress, but it did in the skin stretched over a layer of fat rather than bone.