I find him pushing a wagon much like the ones we use to carry our belongings up the mountain. And not wanting to be seen by other deeplanders who have work assignments at the docks, I wait until he’s alone.
“Nerene!” he cries when I finally approach him, and after putting down the wagon handles, he crushes me into a hug. “We all thought you died in the factory fire!”
“I hid,” I say. “Then the arch house gate was locked, and I didn’t know what to do, so now I’m staying with some kind uppies.” It feels strange calling Parsita kind, but I suppose in many ways she is.
I ask Carnos if there’s a place we can speak privately. It’s so open and busy on the pier, and at any moment I could be recognized. Carnos nods, his eyes still gleaming happily, and after bringing his wagon to the gangway of a ship, he leads me down a narrow path behind a warehouse.
“Oh my dear bride,” he says as we stand in a small diamond of sunshine, the only warm spot between these large buildings. “I am overjoyed—overjoyed! Threegod be praised that you are alive.”
I let him hug me again, even though his arms feel like weighty, clinging guilt. “What’s happened since the riot?” I ask when his grip loosens, hoping he knows more than Parsita.
The joy on Carnos’s face shifts to sadness. His massive hands move to my shoulders, and he says, “I’m afraid things are bad, especially for your brother. Many young deeplanders were arrested—many. Some will be given longer work hours as a punishment, and some must labor in the city when the tide leaves. A few poor maidens will be forced to have the procedure early, and as for Sande…”
My whole body tenses.
“He’s to be banished with mutilation.”
I can’t form words, only a helpless cry. I was afraid of this. Being banished from the city is terrible, of course, I know that from my early years with Maam. But being banished with mutilation is a grisly death sentence. No one survives winter in the Teeterwood if they’re missing an arm or leg.
Carnos seems to think this is a good time to wrap his arms around me again, and he’s so big, I feel like my grief is suffocating me.
When he lets go, I show him Lord Osperacy’s callercard, and I tell him what it says—touching the raised, black letters as if I can read them.
Carnos frowns. “And this man is…”
“Maybe my father,” I say while thinking that Lord Osperacy could very well be horrible and evil too. Gren is a good judge of character.
To my disappointment, Carnos has never heard the name, and he also needs to return to work. But he promises to ask around and suggests I wait if possible. So risking Parsita’s anger, I stay where I am. I shiver and fret in that sunlit diamond, and I follow it as it slides across the rocky alley, stretching longer and climbing the far wall. I also watch it change from a pale afternoon yellow to a fiery sunset orange. As I wait, a terrible realization comes to me as well; the priests often banish criminals at the end of a sunedge, and the current sunedge ends tomorrow.
Carnos eventually returns with disappointing news. “Our foreman has heard of Lord Osperacy. Yet he also says Lord Osperacy’s ship usually doesn’t come into port until late in the tide.”
So I return to Parsita’s tea shop feeling defeated, and of course I also find her furious that I didn’t finish grating the cinniflower. She says I don’t deserve supper, although when I tell her that Sande will be banished with mutilation, she ladles soup into a bowl and hands it to me anyway.
“I also sent word to Gren,” she says. “I told her you were safe—for now anyway.”
“Thank you,” I say.
Early the next morning, when the sun has yet to rise but the sky is already a pale blue, I wake to a loud bang, bang, bang! Someone is pounding on the tea shop door.
I don’t risk peering over the brewer kettle cabinet to see who’s there because they might see me too. Instead I scurry into the cellar, terrified that the Gray Straps have found me. But Parsita soon comes huffing and creaking down the stairs to tell me, “It’s a big deeplander who says he knows you.”
Rushing back up, I find Carnos in the front of the shop, breathing heavily, his face both flushed from the cold and shiny with sweat. “The symbol on the cardpaper you have—the one with the three spikes? That same symbol is on a ship that arrived in the harbor last night.”
I put on warm clothing, and Carnos and I head back to the docks. The streets are cold and mostly empty.
As we walk, Carnos talks about what he thinks our life will be like once we’re married. He believes we’ll inherit his grandda’s hut, which is near a river. He tells me that the gardens need work, but the soil is good and drains well. He also tells me that he’d like to build a second room on the hut, but only if he finds the right rocks to use for the foundation.
It’s still probably unwise to be honest with him about my feelings, but as he continues to talk about our future, it becomes unbearable to listen—here he is still delighted about our betrothal when I nearly ran away with Sande.
So when the shadowy shapes of docked steamships prod their way through the fog, and Carnos tries to wrap an arm around me to “warm us up a bit,” I pull away and blurt, “We can’t get married.”
Carnos stares at me. “Why not?”
“Because you should have a wife who wants to marry you, and I don’t…” Oh this is hard, his face is bunching up like his favorite hunting spear just fell into a fire. “I don’t think I would be the sort of wife you want, either,” I add.
“Of course you are,” he says. “You’re hard-working and dutiful, and tall and strong.”
I don’t want to tell him that I care for someone else, but it also seems like the only way to make my feelings clear. “I love Sande, but we can never marry, so I decided to marry you. It wasn’t nice of me, and I’m sorry.” I say it all very quickly.
The confused expression Carnos wears most of the time intensifies “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I say, and I keep walking. The sooner we reach the ship with that strange symbol the better. And as we move quietly down the steep roads, which are less icy today, I feel sick and sad. Sande will probably die, now I certainly won’t marry Carnos, and I might not be allowed to return to the barracks to see Gren again either.
“Thank you for being honest,” Carnos says after a long while.
“Thank you for not being angrier,” I reply. He is a good person, and I wish I had even the smallest amount of romantic feelings for him. Life would be simpler.
The ship he brings me to does have the weapon-like symbol on it that matches the cardpaper—a trident, I suppose. The hull also has letters painted on it that I suspect proclaim the boat’s name. It’s a massive steamship too, with many layers of windows, decks, and railings, and there are three huge smokestacks on top that stand taller than any of the nearby warehouses.
No one has lowered a gangway yet, and Carnos has to report for work, so he leaves me waiting alone.
“I hope your father is a kind man,” he says.
“I hope so too,” I say. “And thank you for helping me.” I want to apologize further, but before I can figure out how to put my words in the right order, Carnos gives me a nod and walks away.
Shipsmen in crisp, light blue uniforms lower the gangway roughly an hour later, just as the rising sun chases away the remaining fog. Since I’ve been waiting huddled on a concrete bollard, my legs don’t want to unfold and they are very uncooperative as I limp toward the gangway. I also feel painfully aware of how simple and ragged I look in my shaggy wildwool jacket.
“May I speak to Lord Osperacy?” I ask.
All three shipsmen frown at me as if I’m most definitely a beggar or liar. “What business do you have with our employer?” one asks as if he’s already certain I have none.
“You’re not welcome here,” another shipsman quickly adds.
“Lord Osperacy came looking for me once, and I want to know why,” I tell them, feeling frustrated already. I remember Sande saying that uppies who travel
the tide are more arrogant than the ones who stay put in mountain cities. The true reason I’m here, of course, is to beg for help, and I sense that will get a swift dismissal from these men, so instead I say, “Lord Osperacy might be my father, and I just learned about it. He gave my grandmaam this.” I hold up the cardpaper.
Now the shipsmen look annoyed. The one that first spoke sighs. “I don’t know where you got that, but you won’t fool us.” He tries to grab the callercard, but I take a fumbling step back and hold it close to my chest.
“Get out of here,” he says, “or I’ll call for your city guard.”
I try to swallow my fear. If these men call for the Gray Straps, I’ll be in big trouble, but I can’t give up now. “Fine, call them,” I say. “Abandoning your children is against Varasay law.”
The shipsmen exchange glances and mutter to each other, and I hear the name “Douglen” said a few times. Finally one of them says, “Very well then, I’m going to fetch someone who’ll expose your scam far faster than you’d like.”
And now I’m even more frightened, but I still stay where I am. Two of the shipsmen stand with me, and as we wait, I keep my head up and try to look confident as if I have every right to make demands of a wealthy uppy.
The third shipsman doesn’t return, instead a strong looking, square-shaped man of about thirty tides walks down the gangway. He’s not wearing a uniform, but rather a dark gray, well-tailored uppy suit. When he reaches the pier, he examines me with half-lidded eyes. “Are you here to steal from my family? Tell the truth.”
His family. Is this man related to me? We don’t look alike. But as I’m thinking all that through, I feel a strange pressure in my stomach as if I must answer him—as if words are something bitter I need to spit out. “I’m not here to steal,” I say.
“Then why are you here?” he asks, and again he adds, “Tell the truth.”
Once more, I feel that strange pressure forcing me to answer. I also notice that both shipsmen look amused as if they know I’ve bumbled my way into a dangerous situation, and they can’t wait to watch me suffer the consequences. Horribly, the truth spills out of me in a clumsy, unhelpful way. “The boy I love is about to die, and I think Lord Osperacy is my father—he came looking for me once. So because he’s rich, I want him to save my friend.”
The thick, short man in the suit inspects me from my knit hat to my muddy boots, grimacing as if he’s never seen something so revolting, and when I’m done talking, he looks into my eyes in a way that makes me want to run. “How self-serving of you. Well, my father is not your father, I’ll tell you that right now. But if he came looking for you, he must have had a good reason…” The man hesitates, apparently mulling something over, and then he frowns. “How old are you?”
This time I don’t feel a sickening pressure to answer, but it’s also a simple question. “Eighteen tides.”
He nods. “When exactly were you born?”
“I don’t know for sure. I don’t think it was recorded.”
“Well… it’s unlikely, but I suppose there’s a chance. There’s no point bothering my father so early in the morning, but I can deal with you. Follow me.”
Deal with me. Those words are fairly frightening. And when he tells me to follow him, I feel as if something has grabbed my spine and is forcing me to walk like a puppet. My legs march up the wood and steel gangway whether I want them to or not. I’m also deeply confused. “There’s a chance?” I say. “What do you mean? A chance of what?”
But the man doesn’t answer.
We’re soon up on one of the decks, and even though it’s not the highest deck, it’s still dizzying. I’ve never been on a steamship before, other than standing on the wrecked hull of the dead boat—but that hardly counts. The dead boat is tiny compared to this monstrous vessel.
The man leads me through a doorway and then along several beautiful passages, all of them decorated with dark, brinewood panels, seaweed colored rugs, and golden light fixtures.
“You’re a deeplander, aren’t you?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
He gives a short, harsh laugh. “Oh she’ll hate that.”
She? I have no idea what he’s talking about. He soon stops and pounds on a door much the same way Carnos banged on the tea shop door this morning.
“Wake up,” the man shouts. “I have a present for you.”
A muffled female voice answers, “Go away, Douglen! I’m sleeping!”
He pounds again. “Get up or I keep knocking.”
I felt strangely compelled to do whatever this man said, but the girl behind the door doesn’t seem to be affected the same way. Now I’m even more confused.
The man—Douglen, I suppose his name is—keeps smashing his fist against the door, and a few sleepy faces even peer out of other cabins. Seeing him, though, those people meekly vanish again. I keep waiting for the door to break off its hinges, but it eventually opens, revealing an angry-looking girl with pale skin and black curls. She’s also wearing a lacy, luxurious nightdress. “Why are you always so impossible? I’m telling father, you know, and he’ll—” But then her eyes flick over to me and she looks wary. “Who is that, and why is she with you? Part of a task?”
“No,” Douglen says. “She’s for you… maybe. You need a new balance, don’t you?”
The girl makes a face. “Not one like that. Make her go away.”
“Why don’t you make her go away?” A menacing smile cracks across Douglen’s teeth, and as confused as I am, I sense that he’s challenging her somehow.
“Fine.” The girl glares at me and shouts, “Get off the ship, you disgusting sludge.”
“I’m sorry you’re upset,” I say softly, wishing this was going better. “I just want to talk to Lord Osperacy, and then I promise I’ll leave. Please.”
“You have no power over her—none.” Douglen laughs again, although it’s more like an angry bark, and the girl’s face turns red as if she’s a toddling about to throw a temper-tantrum.
“No. NO! This can’t be! Don’t you tell Father.” She whirls on Douglen. “I won’t have some backward sludge for my balance. I refuse. That would be…”
Douglen’s laughter ends with a satisfied sigh. “Hasn’t this been a wonderful morning? She didn’t even know her birth date. It was such a long shot.” He looks at me as if I’m a fabulous cut of meat he can’t wait to devour. “I’m so glad you paid us a visit. What’s your name?”
“Nerene,” I whisper, deeply confused about what just happened and wishing I’d never come.
“Well, Nerene,” he says. “I think my father, Lord Osperacy, would indeed like to meet you.”
Douglen brings me to a dimly lit, spacious cabin that smells of spiced fin tea—the kind Gren Tya and I make whenever we find rare sinker leaves.
The floor is covered with overlapping wildwool rugs that seem far too pretty to step on, plush chairs surround a small table, and a large desk stands near a row of windows. Through those windows I see Varasay’s cramped lower city with its ugly factories and many housing towers. I can also see an orderly ring of bright, square windows above the lower city, surely the mid city I’ve heard about but never visited.
Now that I’m alone, I wonder if I should try to leave the ship. Douglen seems dangerous, and I remember Gren saying she had felt afraid of Lord Osperacy too.
But I’ve come this far, and I don’t know of any other way to help Sande, so I wait.
A short while later, probably about as long as it would take for someone to wake up and put their clothes on, the door opens and a man enters. He’s about fifty tides old, wearing a delicately striped uplander suit with a cream-colored ruff that’s held in place with a gold, squid-shaped pin. His smooth steps make me think of the silent players in the lower city market, part dance, part theatrics, and all grace.
“Child,” he says, holding out a hand. “My name is Lord Almen Osperacy, and I believe I’m about to offer you a job.”
“A job,” I echo, stunned
because that’s certainly not why I came.
Lord Osperacy sits behind a polished desk and invites me to take a seat in one of the fabric-covered chairs. “I hear you have a callercard of mine.”
I nod, and the chair I sit on is so soft it’s like an embroidered bog. I grip the arms tightly and try not to sink too far in. “My grandmaam had it. She said you came looking for me once.”
“It’s hard to recall everyone I meet,” Lord Osperacy says. And I silently agree with Douglen. This man can’t be my father. His skin is too pale, his eyes are a strange, watery blue, and his body is too small and fragile. “How old are you?” he asks.
“Eighteen tides.”
“Of course you are.” He folds his hands, lacing one set of long fingers into the other. “Although I thought even deeplanders in Varasay had to record births and deaths, and I’ve checked the records here many times and never found you.”
“They do record those things, it’s just… my birth wasn’t written down,” I say. “My mother gave birth alone in the kelp jungle. She’d been banished.”
“Ah, now I remember.” Lord Osperacy smiles. “You’re the criminal’s daughter. When I heard about you, I thought you might be a match, but then I was told you were dead. I suppose I could have tried harder to track you down, but it seemed like such a shadow on the horizon that you’d be a good fit anyway. Yet surprise, surprise, you are Melily’s balance. And she badly needs one.”
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