Many of the other deeplanders murmur in agreement, but not me because I see a foreman near the door pull out a shiny, black gunnerife.
“This is completely just and fair,” Giron splutters. “You deeplanders take advantage of us. We save your life every tide and for what? You owe us.”
“For all your priests and prayers, you don’t know what fair means.” Sande keeps moving forward, and he doesn’t have to push his way through workers anymore. The deeplanders clear a path for him and offer him encouraging nods and grim smiles. “Besides, we don’t owe you anything,” Sande continues. “We already give you our landrunner meat and two-thirds of our harvest. We already give our souls to your Threegod not our Water Goddess.”
The other deeplanders agree with angry shouts.
Another foreman nearer to me pulls out a gunnerife too. Does Sande see their weapons? Does he realize how much danger he’s in?
I wrench Gren’s snapper out of my boot and hold it tight in my hand, but I still don’t know what to do. The snapper can only put one person to sleep.
Giron shifts to the other side of his voice enhancer as if the thin metal pole will shield him from Sande. “You’d have a different perspective if you were an uplander.”
“Yeah, I like to think I’d act differently than you.” Sande walks up the stairs as if accepting punishment, but there’s nothing about him that looks submissive. At the top of the stairs, he turns to Giron and speaks loudly enough for us all to hear. “My pa just died in the desalination plant. He was only there because of you and your work assignments.”
Giron swallows, then stutters while saying, “A-all right, all right, just calm down. I’ll let the girl go and you’ll have her lashes instead.”
The foremen free Amista, and she skitters to the back of the balcony, but Sande doesn’t crouch over the stool. Instead he says, “You’re running out of room in your city, but you make our women have a procedure that’s painful and dangerous. What about the women who live here?”
“Well, there’s actually a proposal…” Giron starts timidly, but his words are lost in a roar of agreement and rage from the workers. And now I’m terrified because there’s no way this can end well. Even if Sande is whipped, he’s been publicly defiant to Giron, and he’s admitted he planned to buy an illegal passbook and travel the tide. I wish I could stop this, unravel this. Sande will be banished for sure now—maybe even banished with mutilation, which is a punishment for more severe crimes. I squeeze the snapper. It’s hard enough to survive the winter on the thin strip of dry land outside the city walls, but it’s nearly impossible if you’re missing a hand or foot.
“Whip him,” Giron squeaks at the nearest foreman, throwing the length of leather toward the man. “Do it! Now!”
The foreman is twice as broad as Sande, but although he picks up the whip, he looks unsure. Sande isn’t exactly being cooperative. He’s staring at both of them with his arms crossed. And then with one of his smooth, easy movements, and one of those chilly, emotionless looks that so enrages Bessel, Sande pulls out a shiny gunnerife of his own and points it at Giron. “I didn’t just steal from your medicry.”
“No! Sande!” I shout.
“My father’s dead,” Sande yells into the sound-enhancer, tears glinting on his face. “I don’t owe you, you owe me, and you owe me a life!”
The Sande I know would never hurt anyone. He’d try to strike a deal and maybe demand that Giron give him money and safe passage to the wharf. But it’s almost as if pain and anger have reshaped him. I know he hates Giron, and I know he likes to deal with problems in brash, bold ways, and what’s brasher or bolder than killing someone?
But murder is something he can’t come back from. It’s a black shell necklace that will be forever lost in the tide.
So I raise the snapper because I finally know what to do with it.
I’ve always had good aim. It’s one of the reasons Gren and I have the biggest variety of herbs at the barracks market—we travel further into the kelp forest than other deeplanders would ever dare. We often spend several sunedges wandering through the swaying, curved trunks, using snappers on anything too big to run from.
And so even though I’m on the other side of the storage hall, when I pull the resin back in the snapper tube and let the poisoned dart fly, it strikes Sande neatly in the side of his neck. He has just enough time to look at me and realize I’ve betrayed him before collapsing.
The storage hall erupts with noise and movement. There’s me, frightened and fighting to reach Sande, then there are the other deeplanders surging toward the foremen, and most alarming of all, there’s a sharp popping sound as foremen fire gunnerifes into the crowd. Deeplanders fall, but foremen fall too, struck by snapper darts. It seems Sande and I weren’t the only ones hiding forbidden deeplander weapons.
If only I’d known that a moment ago.
With a scraped knee and torn skirt, I reach Sande but can’t carry him to safety. He’s not burly like Carnos, and I’m fairly tall, yet there’s still no way I can haul him down the balcony stairs and through the churning crowd. I can help someone else though. Amista’s huddled near the doorway of the foreman’s office, her dress red with blood. Abandoning Sande feels like I’m leaving my heart pinned to the floor, but I grab Amista’s arm and push, struggle, and elbow us down the stairs and out of the factory.
It’s only then, in the shadowy, cold alley outside, pressing my hair kerchief to Amista’s still bleeding back, that I realize Giron was no longer on the balcony and neither was the gunnerife that Sande stole. I imagine the Chancellor’s son huddled somewhere in his factory, angry and wanting revenge.
“Run back to the barracks,” I tell Amista. “Go to your grandmaam’s.”
She clings to my arm. “Aren’t you coming with me? You have to come with me!”
I try to shake her off, but she hangs on tight. “Amista, no. I can’t leave Sande.”
“You can’t help him if you’re caught by the Gray Straps. They’re coming now, listen…”
And fathoms, she’s right. I hear the distant whine of the alarm attached to the Gray Strap’s autohaulers. Someone, maybe Giron, must have used a relayphone to call for help.
This is awful. I’m awful. I’ve just knocked Sande unconscious and left him to the mercy of the uppies.
“Run back to the barracks,” I tell Amista. “Go. Now! I’ll follow as soon as I can.”
She looks at me with frightened, uncertain eyes, then quick as a ridge cat, she skitters down the alley and vanishes around a corner.
As the wailing sound of alarms grows louder, my panic seems to get louder too. It’s like a terrified shouting in my mind and chest as I shove my way back through the double doors, back into the factory. Even though I was only in the alley for a few moments, the situation inside has changed. All the foremen have either fallen or fled, and I’m horrified to see a couple of dead deeplanders too. Some young workers are helping injured friends, but most of them are tearing open crates of what we’ve made—steamship components maybe—and spilling them onto the ground. A few other workers are smashing windows by throwing wrenches, bricks, and whatever else they can find. Smoke fills the air, and I notice a dancing ribbon of flame near the head foreman’s office. And thank goodness, there’s Leej and a few other Saltpool boys carrying unconscious Sande down the balcony steps.
I rush over to them. “What can I do? What do you need?”
“A better way to move him would be good,” Leej says. “There are barrows near the first floor conveyance belt. Can you get us one?”
I nod, and fighting to ignore the fear pulsing through me, I dash out of the storage hall to where Sande and the other boys worked on the lower level of the factory. It looks a lot like the production floor where I worked, and I spot a few deeplanders sabotaging this area too. Two boy pry open the control panel of a machine and then smash the gears and levers inside. I also see a girl about my age slicing conveyance belt leather with heavy shears.
“W
here are the barrows?” I cry. “I need one.”
The boys point me to a group of one-wheeled, sturdy-looking carts. I snatch up the metal handles of a barrow, and rolling it clumsily, I hurry back the way I came.
But as I rush down the long passage leading from the factory floor to the storage hall, I hear men’s voices in the distance, and my thoughts catch up with me. The Gray Straps must have arrived. It’s probably too late to help Sande, and as Amista said, I can’t help him if I’m arrested too. With sinking regret and feeling like I’m wasting time and making mistakes at every turn, I abandon the barrow. I need to leave the factory. It’s not safe here.
Breathing hard, I change directions and head for the factory cookery instead. There’s a door there that leads outside. I know because we always ate our midday meal shivering beside the factory in the alley.
I smell smoke as I hurry outside, and I think about the fire that was blooming near the head foreman’s office. Hoping Sande is safe, I dash up the muddy, icy pathway that runs between Giron’s factory and a neighboring textile factory, and then I head for the barracks.
Yet when I near the twelve identical buildings where we deeplanders spend our winter, my quick steps slow to an uncertain shuffle. A Gray Strap autohauler stands near the arch house and at least a dozen city guards mill around it. Worse, the arch house gate is shut—which is something I’ve never seen before.
Huddling near a shabby, lower city housing tower, I’m not sure what to do.
The Gray Straps might let me return to the barracks, although maybe I should lie about where I work. My long wildwool jacket covers my uniform, but do any other factory shifts end right now? I don’t think so. It would be too early.
And if I do enter the barracks and the Gray Straps keep the arch house gate shut, I’ll be trapped in there and unable to help Sande if he’s been arrested.
And yet, out here in the lower city, I have no shelter and no safe place to go.
If Gren were here, I bet she’d tell me to visit one of our lower city herb customers because she always says people make wiser decisions when they are warm and safe. I don’t know where any of our uppy customers’ homes are, but a few of them run cookery houses and there’s always Parsita with her tea shop. I think her shop is near the old K’Gar temple, and although she’s not the friendliest woman, she did bring Gren that medicated tea the other day.
I feel numb as I walk toward the old temple, and I worry about Sande. He stole a gunnerife—that alone is reason for the city to banish him. But then he also threatened to kill Giron, which is even worse. I worry about myself too. If I don’t return to the barracks now, I might never be allowed to return.
Thankfully Parsita’s shop is where I thought it was. I once brought her moss sage a few tides ago, back when we deeplanders ran our market all sunedge long. Her shop is on the lowest floor of a narrow three-story building, wedged between a cobbler’s workshop and a carpentry store that mostly seems to sell tide-traveling chests.
There are no customers inside the tea shop, which is a relief, only Parsita and a bearded man who must be her husband. I find them busy cleaning three large brewer kettles.
Parsita looks up as I enter, for the bells attached to the doorknob jingle, and she frowns. “Has Gren died then?”
“Oh no, she’s still alive…” and then I trail off because why have I come here? I’m not just here to warm up so that I can make wise decisions—I need help, and deeplanders don’t usually ask uppies for help.
But my awful morning at the factory must somehow show in my eyes or maybe Parsita heard the autohauler sirens because she walks around the low cabinet where the brewer kettles sit and says, “You’ve brought trouble, and I don’t want it.”
I take a deep, frustrated breath as she moves closer. Gren certainly befriended kinder uppy customers, but I don’t know where to find them. “I’m sorry, I’ll go.”
I turn, but Parsita catches my arm. “I may not want trouble, but we don’t always get what we want. You look like you need something hot to drink, that’s plain enough. And I think you should drink it where no one can see you, maybe in my storage closet. Gorven, watch the shop.”
She leads me into a small room full of shelves, each crowded with jars, tins, and packets. For a moment, I’m afraid she might lock me in and call for Gray Straps. But when she leaves, she doesn’t shut the door behind her, and when she returns, she hands me a ceramic mug of steaming tea. Her husband brings us both chairs from the tea shop too.
“So why are you here?” Parsita asks. “And if you think you can lie to me, you may as well leave.”
Goodness I thought Bessel was intimidating, but in some ways, I’m glad Parsita is making me feel defensive. I’m fragile and close to tears, but because talking to her is a bit like being prodded with a stick, I have enough rising anger to tell her what happened at the factory with dry eyes.
Once I’ve finished telling my story, Parsita harrumphs and says, “So what do you expect me to do about it?”
I bristle, but I can also tell she wants an honest answer.
“I need a place to stay and food to eat, just until I know what to do next,” I say. “I’ll be sure to cook and clean and do any chores that need doing while I’m here. I also need your help finding out where Sande is now.”
Parsita’s mouth pinches at the corners. “I can help you for three days, and then you must leave. Does that sound fair?”
I nod.
Three days may be fair, but it’s not that long.
Parsita has me work hard in her tea shop for the rest of the day. First though, she gives me old clothing to wear so no one will recognize my factory uniform. She also tells me to unravel my loose braids and then she winds my hair up into a severe city style instead.
I spend the next few hours scrubbing all the floors in her shop as well as the small housing unit upstairs that she shares with Gorven. And then, with my knees still smarting from working on all fours, Parsita has me clean piles of dishes, including plenty of tea mugs. After that, I wash clothes and bed linens in the cellar, and as evening falls, I mend a stack of clothing too, hunched beside an electric lantern. Parsita often walks by to criticize my work, but since she also keeps saying that it’s wonderful to get so many chores done, I think she’s pleased.
I’m a bit frustrated doing all this work, though, because I wish I knew where Sande was and if he’s safe. But I try to be patient because there’s probably not much I can do to help him just yet.
It doesn’t snow that night, but freezing rain taps and pings against the shop windows, and the countless, icy pellets striking the road outside makes a soft hissing noise that helps me sleep. Parsita has given me enough blankets to stay warm on a floor mat in the back of the tea shop, and as I lie there curled up, I hope Sande isn’t outside in this horrible weather. What if he’s been banished already?
When I wake up the next morning, it’s as if my mind was working while I slept, for I’ve remembered there’s another uppy who might be willing to help me. After filling the big, electric brewer kettles for Parsita, I ask her, “Can you read?”
“Of course I can read,” she says with a snort that might be a laugh.
I hurry to the storage room, where my wildwool jacket hangs, and I dig the small rectangle of cardpaper out of my pocket—the one Gren said belonged to the strange tide merchant. I show it to Parsita. “What is this, and what does it say?”
“It’s a callercard for someone named Lord Almen Osperacy,” she tells me. “He looks to be in the shipping business.”
“Do you know him?”
She snort-laughs again. “Why would I know him? Wealthy travelers don’t visit lower city tea shops.”
Lord Almen Osperacy. Lord Almen Osperacy. I run the name through my thoughts a few times to make sure I don’t forget it. Lord Osperacy could be my father, I suppose.
Parsita has plenty of early morning customers, and a few linger at the two small tables near the door. By mid-morning though, the shop is
quiet. Parsita leaves to visit a lower city market, and she gives me a patched blanket to mend while she’s gone. It takes me a few hours to repair the fabric, and as I rip out old stitching and replace it with new loops of thread, I feel the constant, anxious tug of wasted time. Parsita says I can only stay for one more day. How can I help Sande if I’m stuck here?
Thankfully though, Parsita takes our bargain seriously, and she returns from the market not only with brined cheese, fresh fish, and savorpears but also with information.
“Several young deeplanders were arrested after the riot, but I don’t know their names,” she tells me in the privacy of the storage room. “And that Noble boy’s factory ended up burning to the ground. He’s alive but seriously injured. Apparently he had to jump out of a window to survive.”
Well, at least that’s satisfying. Not that I’m one to celebrate suffering, but Giron was far too eager to punish Amista so I’m glad he was punished in a sense too. “What about Sande?” I ask. “Did you hear anything about him?”
“I said I don’t know any names,” Parsita says, dumping the basket of food into my arms. “Put all this away, will you?”
We eat a plain midday meal of cheese and kelp leaf crackers, then Parsita gives me more work grating cinniflower sticks. “Gorven gets swollen joints these days, so while you’re here, you may’s well do it.”
I grate the sticks for a while, but there is a huge, fernflax bag of them, and I’m sure it will take me the rest of the day to finish. So pretending to use the scrubhouse out behind the shop, I hurry to the wharf with Lord Osperacy’s cardpaper.
Ships don’t always pass the same mountain cities as they travel the tide. As far as I understand, in many places along the trade routes, there are mountain cities in both starways and skytide directions. Therefore, if steamers must either move with the ocean or run aground and there is only one city far skytide of Varasay, I’m pretty sure there is a good chance that Lord Osperacy’s ship is either in port now or soon will be. As much as I want to race to the docks, I move carefully because the roads are steep and slippery with ice. It’s windy too. A fitful patchwork of silver, violet, and blue clouds drift across the sky while salty and fishy smells blow up from the shore. The wharf is the only place in Varasay where there aren’t city walls and the Teeterwood Forest standing between us and the tide. It’s crowded with ships though, some as big as floating cities, and unlike the night we said goodbye to Trennet, there are people everywhere. I don’t know where to begin looking for Lord Osperacy, so I head to the warehouse where Carnos works.
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