“There are too many books on the floor,” I counter, which is true.
So Melily huffs and rolls away from me, taking all the blankets with her.
Even so, I’m sure I’ll sleep well. We have a plan now—travel to Ellevah—and I haven’t seen any sign of Douglen or Jeck either.
But before I drift off, Melily says, “So… what’s it like?”
“What’s what like?” I whisper.
She rolls to face me again, keeping the blankets bundled around her. “Sex.”
I don’t know the word, but I think I know what it means.
“You know, letting a boy lie with you,” she continues, quickly adding, “but you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I mean, it’s not like I don’t already know most everything.”
I think about her question, though. “It can be uncomfortable, but it can also feel good. And it’s wonderful—and exciting—to be that close to someone.”
“Did Cressit…” She trails off as if she’s not sure she wants to know. “I guess all boys do it the same.”
“There are differences,” I say. “Cressit had done it with a lot of girls, I think. It wasn’t like that night was special or anything.”
“And your sludge friend?”
“His name is Sande. And we didn’t really know what we were doing the first time. But I didn’t mind; it was still… wonderful.” I feel sad thinking about Sande. Maybe I’ll find him in Ellevah, but it seems unlikely that he’ll be able to travel there. Even if his barge reaches dry land, he surely hasn’t befriended a siren who can use wavurl to provide clothes, food, and places to stay. But looking for Sande in Ellevah still seems like the most likely way to find him. Searching for him on the vast tide would be an overwhelming, probably impossible task. Even if I had my own boat and crew, where would I start looking?
As I hoped, I sleep well that night, despite Melily kicking me, throwing a heavy arm across my face, and talking in her sleep about pickles—I think; she was mumbling. And the next morning, over a furtive meal in the back of a cookery where I think several people are shell gambling, Melily and I try to decide if anyone else should join us.
“I wish we could tell Shara our plans,” I whisper. “I’m sure Douglen treats her badly.”
Melily shakes her head. “She’ll never leave the Trident—trust me.”
“Maybe not, but I would have said the same thing about you a few days ago.”
“Well, that just proves you don’t know me,” Melily says, sipping her salted coffee. “Shara might stand up to Jeck, but she always does what Douglen tells her.”
I don’t have salted coffee; I have tea, and it’s surprisingly good. There must be some local plant in it that I’m not familiar with. I suppose there are probably lots of different herbs and spices Gren and I would discover if we explored the deeplands around other mountain cities. “I’d still love to give Shara a choice,” I say.
Melily shakes her head. “It’s too risky. If we return to the Trident, they won’t let us leave. Maybe we can send a secret message to Shara once we’re in Ellevah or something.”
“So what about Timsy and Dorla, then?” I ask, thinking about the youngest siren on the Trident and his little balance. “They were probably kidnapped from their families too.”
Melily shakes her head dramatically. “Threegod, absolutely not! You aren’t a siren, so I’d have to deal with Timsy’s tantrums, and napper changes, and all the crunchy stuff that comes out of his nose. Sorry, but no.”
I’m not surprised by her response, but I hate leaving children anywhere near the Osperacys. I suppose if we can find the other sirens, they can help rescue Timsy and Dorla as Cressit once suggested.
So we wait in Gatreijan for five more days, always afraid that we’ll be caught and hoping the Trident will set sail. We venture down to the lowest level of the city every afternoon to see if she’s still in port, and to our great frustration, the huge Trident stays in her berth.
I don’t like booking our passage to Ellevah with the Osperacys still in the city, but how long can we wait? The ocean keeps flowing past, and every day Douglen has more opportunities to find us. I feel as if we’re in a trap that’s slowly clamping shut. I want to run free while there’s still time.
“We should leave,” I tell Melily on the sixth day. “Ships are always coming and going. Douglen and Jeck can’t watch them all.”
“Finally!” she says. “Another day here, and I’ll catch some disease.”
So with Melily’s wavurl to ease the way, we ride motorliners to the lowest city level. Once there, we hire a triwheel driver to bring us to the cave wharf where smaller steamships dock. Unfortunately no passenger boats travel directly to Ellevah because it’s not in the trade routes, so we settle for a ship that will take us to Leistelle, a mountain city slightly skytide and countertide of Ellevah. I convince Melily to use her saved paper shells to pay for our passage because I don’t want to risk drawing attention to ourselves in the crowded transport office. Douglen and Jeck might search for us there. Melily mutters that I’m wasting her money, but she still opens her purse and digs out her embroidered wallet.
We book passage on a ship named the Wanderlea. And after we carry our newly acquired travel cases through the maze-like cave harbor, we find a small, rusty steamer waiting for us. The shipsmen on deck look as if they’ve just emerged from cohol taverns, with scruffy beards, tattoos, and mismatched clothes, but they end up being very friendly. They are quick to carry our luggage, and they show us not only our cabin but all around the boat. A colorfully dressed, frizzy-haired man in the ship’s cookery even asks if we’d we like something to eat.
“Yes! I’m starving!” Melily says.
I’m not hungry, though, I’m exhausted. Now that we’re finally on a ship and hopefully will soon be much safer than we’ve been since the Laeros Light Festival, I long to rest. I also feel like I haven’t really let Sande’s situation soak in, and I’ve put off a lot of crying because I didn’t want Melily to see.
So leaving her chatting with the ship’s cook, who introduces himself as Pavoya, I return to our cabin and pull off my boots in the narrow space beside our bunk beds. Then I climb onto the top bed and fall asleep.
Melily wakes me hours later, or at least what I hope is hours later, while loudly arranging our belongings. “Next port, I’m buying better blankets,” she announces. “I’ll get a rash from these—they are so scratchy.”
I put my thin pillow on top of my head, hoping to muffle both her voice and block out the light she’s turned on. But I’m pleased to feel trembles and shudders—the Wanderlea is moving. If we’ve left Gatreijan, we’ve left the two older Osperacys, thank the Water Goddess. I soften in relief. Traveling also means I’m parting ways with Cressit Scale, which is for the best.
I try to roll over and hunch further away from the light, but I find it difficult on such a narrow cot beneath such a small blanket.
“Oh no, are you awake?” Melily whispers, even though she spoke out loud moments before.
“I am now,” I murmur.
“Well good because I have something to tell you.”
Her tone wakes me up. There’s worry in it, real worry, not scratchy-blanket-worry. I roll back to my original position and lift the pillow. “What is it?”
“Brindy.” Melily stands so that she can see me on the top bunk. “I saw him on the docks as we were leaving. I was on deck. He was really far away. But he did this tilty thing with his head, so I think he maybe saw me.”
It takes me a moment to remember that Brindy is the servemen who drove us to the museum in Beth. I try to sit up, but my bunk is too cramped.
“What do you think seeing Brindy means?” Melily asks.
It can only mean one thing; the Osperacys might know which ship we’re on. And with all my worrying and fretting, it never occurred to me that Douglen and Jeck might not be the only people searching for us. Since Gatreijan is such a large city, of course the Osperacys sent a lot of the T
rident’s crew members out to hunt for us as well. And it would make sense to have people watching all the harbors.
“Well, if he ran off to tell the Osperacys, there’s nothing we can do about it now,” I say, and I still feel sleepy. “We have that one stop before we get to Leistelle. I can’t remember the name of the city, but let’s switch boats there.”
“I’m pretty sure the next city is Tak Ceseren.” Melily’s eyebrows crumple with worry. “You know, you shouldn’t have made us wait so long. We could have left Gatreijan right away.”
“I will accept all the blame,” I say, rolling away from her, “as long as I can keep napping.”
But now I can’t sleep, because we didn’t really escape from the Osperacys—not yet. We’ll have to try again.
About sixty people travel on the Wanderlea: twelve crew members and the rest of us are passengers. One couple even journeyed all the way from Varasay, and I’m careful not to talk to them too much. Since most everyone has a tiny, airless closet of a cabin, we all spend our time either up on deck or in the gathery, where we read and play games like Slide ’n’ Pass or Pick-a-String. One of the crew members even has a wooden chorder, and although he’s no Cressit Scale, he often plays songs and passengers sing along. I spend a lot of my time mending people’s clothes in exchange for shell coins, and I feel good doing honest work after stealing in Gatreijan.
Since the Wanderlea isn’t a luxury steamship like the Trident, none of the passengers are wealthy. Most of them seem to be from mid city levels, and I think a few are from lower city levels too. Because of that, we have an unspoken agreement that we should all help out. And although the ship has a cook, Pavoya, a rotating group of people help him in the cookery, including myself. Another group of travelers do laundry, while a third group cleans the washing closets, the gathery floors, and our cabin floors if needed. Melily doesn’t help with anything and anyone who suggests she should is wavurled away. She spends most of her time sulkily pacing the deck, and although I saw her with a book once, it lay closed in her lap.
“When we change ships in Tak Ceseren,” she tells me one evening. “I want to ride on a proper steamship. I think this one sank and was salvaged from the deeplands. People do that, you know. And don’t you think our cabin has a weird, moldy smell?”
But during our third day on the Wanderlea, her attitude suddenly changes. Her mood shift happens at dinner. At first, Melily is complaining about how there’s no space at the gathery table and how she doesn't want to eat her meal sitting on a window bench. But then the ship’s first mate passes us, stops to listen, and says, “I have a table in my cabin. Why don’t you ladies dine with me?”
“No thanks, we’re fine,” I say quickly, for I don’t want anyone paying too much attention to us.
But Melily leaps up with her plate of fish and peak potatoes. “Yes! We’d love to dine with you. If I’d known you had a table, I would have insisted on it.” And she gives him a bright smile despite her siren threat.
Leading us through the ship, the first mate introduces himself as Sharles Grunner, and although his cabin is not much larger than ours, it does have a small table with benches on either side. I think the benches are meant for one person each, but Melily and I squeeze onto one while Sharles sits on the other.
He’s older than us by at least ten tides, and unlike the rest of the scruffy crew, he wears a fine canvas jacket with a swordfish embroidered on the sleeve. He also has a neatly trimmed mustache, and he’s talkative, which I don’t like.
“Someone told me you two were sisters,” he says as we eat. “But you don’t look like you are, so why are you traveling together? And where are you going?”
And oh no, even though Melily and I agreed to use the false names Mollifae and Novie, we haven’t thought of an imaginary history for ourselves.
“We’re dear friends from Beth,” I blurt, since that city is often in my thoughts. “And we’re traveling to Leistelle.”
“Leistelle? Ugh,” Sharles groans. “Why go there? That city’s nothing but port taxes, trust me.”
“Oh, it’s not our final destination,” Melily says. “We’re actually going to—”
“—continue to traveling for a while,” I interrupt, giving her a firm look. We promised each other that we wouldn’t tell anyone we were heading to Ellevah. Has she forgotten already?
Sharles smooths his mustache. “Well, if you need any ideas, I know all the good cities to visit. I’ve ridden the tide loop so many times I’ve gotten dizzy.” He chuckles.
“I’m an experienced tide traveler too,” Melily says proudly. “I’ve visited a lot of cities, and then of course, I always return to Beth where my family lives. I have five older brothers—five… and one is blind!” She grins at me as if confirming that she too can lie about who we are.
I frown back, hopefully letting her know that she’s being a bit too creative.
“Blind. Tough luck, huh?” Sharles leans over the table, toward Melily. “If you could live anywhere on the tide, where would it be?”
“Lellev!” she says. “I just adore the garden fountains, and the hot springs in the royal palace are just the crab’s claw.”
“You’re not wrong,” Sharles agrees, taking a bite of peak potato. “But have you ever been to the hot springs in Fathra? It’s outside of the trade routes, so a lot of people haven’t heard of it. Those springs aren’t as pretty as Lellev’s, with that big waterfall, but they’re less… how do I put it? Formal. It’s like a party in the water. Anything can happen.”
Melily giggles. “You mean like people not wearing clothes?”
“That and more.” He raises an eyebrow.
And right then I know Sharles is trouble. I can’t seem to get us out of his cabin before he tells a crude story about a traveler vomiting in the gathery. However I do manage to pull Melily away when he offers us some of his secret cohol stash. “This one’s real spicy,” he says, pulling out a dark green bottle with a silver label. “Apparently it’s banned in Kyrani.”
“I like spicy things.” She holds out her empty water glass.
I give her arm a squeeze. “Cohol makes you sick, remember?”
Melily sighs and says to Sharles, “Nerene—Novie, I mean. She’s never any fun.”
But at least she leaves the cabin with me.
However after that meal, Sharles is the shadow we can’t shake. He’s constantly either sitting with us in the gathery, joining us up on deck, or inviting us to dine in his cabin again. Melily always accepts his invitations too, and since it doesn’t seem right to let her eat with him alone, we both see a lot of Sharles. At least my concern about Melily saying too much about who we truly are melts away because Sharles would rather talk than listen. Most of his stories are about him cleverly breaking rules, or tricking someone he thought stupid enough to deserve it, or women he charmed away from other men.
And since we won’t reach Tak Ceseren for another eight days, nearly a sunpeak, it’s going to be a long trip.
Talking to Melily doesn’t help either. “Perhaps we could spend less time with First Mate Grunner,” I try one evening as we’re changing into our seacotton nightgowns. “I find him a bit… tiring.”
“I can’t believe you’d say that!” Melily sounds scandalized beneath the underdress she’s pulling over her head. “He’s so funny! I mean, his story about accidentally knocking that ridge cat off the ship was hilarious.” Her head pops out from beneath the fabric. “I was laughing so hard I spilled my coffee.”
“The cat probably drowned.”
She rolls her eyes. “You just don’t have a sense of humor.”
Two days later, after I help Pavoya make scallop rolls in the cookery, I can’t find Melily. I search all three decks for her, worried that she’s sick since a couple of passengers have been fighting a cough. But no—I find her in the stern of the ship, wound up in Sharles’s long arms, her mouth pressed against his mustache.
“Don’t fall for him,” I tell her that night. “I’
m your balance, remember? Please trust me. He is not a good person.”
“Well, he’s good at kissing.” Melily flops onto her bed and smiles to herself. “And you know what he said? He said my mouth feels like pearlsilk.”
Eagh, gross, and I can see where this is going. I feel like I’m watching a snapper dart fly toward her, and it’s moving too quickly for me to stop.
Not ready to give up though, I climb down from my bunk and crouch beside hers. The floor is so narrow, I have to turn sideways to be able to bend my knees that deeply. “Melily, you also need to protect yourself. We aren’t going to keep traveling with Sharles; we’re changing ships in only five days. I don’t want you to have your heart broken.”
Her face hardens as she props herself up on an elbow. “I knew you’d be like this. Just because all of your boy stuff has turned out awful, doesn’t mean it will for me.”
“That’s not it. I’m worried.”
Melily reaches up and clicks off the single electric light in our cabin. “Or you’re jealous.”
The next day she won’t speak to me, so I try a different approach and corner Sharles. “You should know that Mollifae hasn’t had a lot of male friends, and she has a powerful and protective father.”
“This isn’t any of your business.” He tries to walk past me.
I block his way, which is easy because I’m as tall as he is and the passage is small. “Maybe not, but I’ve been in trouble before, and I don’t want that for Melily.”
Sharles looks at me with half-closed eyes. “There are ways to avoid that sort of trouble, and trust me, I know all the tricks. You worry about yourself, all right?” And then he has the nerve to pat my head.
To my deep horror, although I’m not surprised, Melily doesn’t sleep in our cabin that night.
And the next morning I find her curled against Sharles in the gathery with his hand on her thigh a little too close to her hip.
She flashes me a proud smile.
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