As she was coming back with the first basket—a wide, awkward one that took both hands to carry—there was a crash and a shriek from the kitchen. It was easy enough to guess what had happened. The new girl that Cook had been scolding had dropped a bowl and spilled something all over the floor. Lufise dropped the basket in the doorway to go help clean up and threw me a pleading look. “Roz, could you go get the rest? I’ll make it up to you.”
It wasn’t my job, but it never hurt to be owed a favor so I folded my work away and walked down the path beside the garden wall with the riverman’s little dog skipping around my feet. I must have stared a bit when I got to the water-steps. I’d never seen a girl in the boats before. She didn’t look much older than me. Her arms were all brown and thick with muscles—even more than I’d gotten wringing out laundry. I knew I’d been staring because she said, “Are you going to gape like a carp all day? I have other houses to do and I’m late already.”
That made me mad, because it wasn’t really even my job and there were three more baskets in the boat with the bit of blue ribbon that Cook tied on them to mark our things. It would take me two trips at least, maybe three, even though two of them were handbaskets. I had to step careful down the stairs because of the mud and weeds until I was close enough to grab the largest of the baskets. She wouldn’t even take the trouble to stand and reach it up to me. “If you want it done faster,” I said, “then lend me a hand.”
She scowled as if I’d asked her to scrub pots, but she had no call to look so high and mighty. I knew I should move all three baskets up to the top of the steps so she could go on, but I said, “If you’re too good to help carry, then you’ll have to wait till I’m done.”
I thought she was only angry at being asked to do extra work. She loosened the tie-up rope like she was going to take off with the rest of our things. But she moved the tie-up down to the next ring so that the boat swung down across where the steps entered the water and heaved the two handbaskets up onto the step, teetering right above the water line.
I yelled a warning, but she grabbed what looked like an extra oar and hoisted herself up on the edge of the boat to swing her legs over into the water. The boat dipped and bobbed. That was when I saw her crippled foot and realized the mistake I’d made. She tucked the crutch under one arm and grabbed the two basket handles in her other hand. I caught my breath as she stood unsteadily on the stone, balancing the baskets on the edge of the boat for a moment, then worked her way up the steps.
“I…I didn’t know,” I stammered.
“Shut your mouth,” she said and began tap-thumping her way up the garden path to the kitchen.
She meant to shame me, carrying more than I was like that. And it worked. All the way up the path her crutch would go tap and then she’d swing her good leg with a little grunt. I called out to warn her about the slippery spot where the moss grows, but she went straight through as if it weren’t there. By the time we got up to the kitchen I was breathing hard because I didn’t want her to show me up, gimpy leg and all.
They were still cleaning up in the mess so we put the baskets down in the common room where Lufise had left hers and I said, “Wait a minute,” and went in to ask Cook for a teneir to pay for the carrying. But when I came out again the girl was gone.
Lufise came up behind me. “What do you mean ‘for the carrying’? Who did you need the fee for?” She looked down at all the baskets and exclaimed, “You never made that poor child come all the way up here!”
“I didn’t know,” I protested. It didn’t seem right to call the boat girl a child when she was as old as me.
Lufise slipped me a second coin and said, “Well, run down and give her this. You’ll know better next time.”
I hurried to the water’s edge and caught her at the top of the water-stairs. She’d thrown the crutch in the boat already and was scooting down the steps on her rump, getting her skirts all wet and filthy. I didn’t say anything until she’d climbed over the side of the boat and settled herself.
“You forgot the carrying fee,” I said, holding up the coins.
“I don’t need—” she began.
She was crying. Maybe because she was angry, but I think she was hurting too.
“It’s the same fee any riverman gets for carrying stuff,” I said, though that was a lie because it was twice the regular. I went and crouched down on the edge of the steps and held it out.
She took the coins and slipped them into her pocket. She wouldn’t look up at me. I wanted to say something more—to make it right between us—but all I could think of was “What’s your name?”
She glared at me and twitched the tie rope to pull it loose from the ring, then gave a whistle for her dog. As he jumped down into the boat, she dipped her fingers into the river, then tasted them or kissed them or something. That seemed a filthy thing to do, even here where the water didn’t smell as much. I wondered if she meant it as an insult, like making horns against me. She pushed away from the dock and as the current pulled the boat away from the bank, she worked the oars and spun it around. With a few strong pulls, she shot away into mid-river. On the water it was like she wasn’t crippled at all.
I kept thinking about her all that day. Not the way she struggled with the baskets, but the way she’d spun the boat like it was a part of her. Was that why she’d ended up on the water? I’d seen a few women in the boats before, but mostly it was men for their strong arms. And because you never knew what sort of passengers you might get. The rivermen were a clannish sort and mostly you had to be born to it. So maybe she would have taken it up even without her twisted foot.
I asked Lufise about her later.
“Oliva Hald,” she told me. “Liv does the market now and again. I don’t know much more than that.”
I decided I wanted to know more and make up to her for starting off wrong. Mama always said my besetting sin was wanting everyone to like me. I don’t know how it could be a sin, but the look Liv gave me as she left the dock ate at me.
* * *
Celeste and I were starting to run out of washing charms to try—at least the common ones. Mefro Dominique would strip our hides if we dirtied up any of the fine fabrics just to be able to clean them again. I showed Celeste how I’d learned to make up my own washing balls and the powders for grease and how to make bluing and all the rest. But a lot of it wasn’t what you used but how and for that she said we needed clothing that had real dirt so you could tell what worked better. I don’t know why she needed that because Celeste never much cared about what the cloth looked like afterward. She’d mutter about how something worked or didn’t work and write down things on a slate. Sometimes I could see the difference on the cloth, but it was like she was seeing visions or something.
I was learning some new house-charms from the other girls at Tiporsel House, but mostly Celeste knew those already. She showed me a book she kept where she wrote them all down.
“Do all charmwives have a book?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Lots can’t write. And they keep their secrets close. I write them down because I don’t want to forget the ones I’ve tried that don’t work. I’ll learn it well enough to try, then write it in my book. You can’t tell anyone about the book! Someone would steal it.”
I wondered if all charmwives learned their trade that way, gathering things up higgledy-piggledy. Sometimes when Mefro Dominique sent us out to the market for thread or buttons or to match ribbons, Celeste would sweet-talk the charmwives. She was careful around them, never asking straight out about things. She’d have me pretend I had a problem to solve or that one of the other girls at Tiporsel House had asked for a charm. I suppose it was lying and I always confessed it, but it wasn’t a big lie.
Visiting the charmwives in the Nikuleplaiz wasn’t only about wheedling new charms to try. They traded bits and bobs: herbs and things, special inks, bits of cloth that were supposed to be relics but Celeste said they weren’t really.
Sometimes they traded secrets t
oo. Both the made-up charms and how you did them. What sort of signs and names to draw on a paper or what sort of herbs to mix in a candle. Celeste was always proud when she’d made a trade like that. “Women like Nana Rossel don’t give their secrets away for free,” she said. “They have a living to make. They’ll curse you if they think you’re taking advantage, and you don’t always know whose curses might stick.”
Aunt Gaita had been a little like that, teaching me things that worked for her that she wouldn’t tell the other girls, whether it was receipts or charms. I don’t remember her ever cursing anyone, though. At least she never taught me any. Celeste said that was a good thing, because curses got you in trouble the way charms never would. I wondered if she’d had trouble fall on her because of a curse. I was starting to understand why Mefro Dominique wasn’t always happy about Celeste’s charmwork.
* * *
Getting to know Liv wasn’t as easy as deciding to. It wasn’t always her delivering the market baskets in the morning, and on dressmaking days I usually left before the delivery. So it was a week or more before I was sitting in the common room mending and recognized the sharp bark of Liv’s dog up the path. When Cook called out for someone to go fetch the baskets, I jumped up and offered to help.
There were three of us going down the steps to the dock, so we could carry everything in one trip and I scrambled in my mind for what to say in that one chance. In all the bustle of handing the baskets up, Liv never even looked at me, as if that last time never happened. When we were ready to go and Liv was loosing the ropes, I blurted out, “Hello, Liv.” That was a silly thing to say at the end rather than the beginning.
She gave me a sharp look. Not like one of Celeste’s looks where you can tell she’s figuring you out. This was a look that said that she hadn’t forgotten any of our last meeting. But she didn’t say anything. She whistled her dog to jump into the boat and did that thing where she dipped her fingers in the water and tasted it, then pushed off into the current.
Her not speaking to me only made me more determined. There was one thing she couldn’t ignore, though it would cost me.
On dressmaking days, I started finding something I needed to do in the common room before leaving for Mefro Dominique’s, so I could wait until the market delivery was made. I knew Mefro Charsintek suspected I was dawdling, but I always had work in my hands. I’d wait as long as I dared and if I heard a different riverman’s whistle then I’d finish up quick and then run all the way down the Vezenaf and past the bridges to the dress shop. I was never late, I made sure of that.
All it took was patience to get a day when I heard Liv’s dog instead of a whistle. I hurried to put my mending away and grabbed my coat to follow the kitchen girls down to the dock. When the baskets were handed up and before she had a chance to cast off the ropes, I bent down and asked, “How much to row down to the Nikuleplaiz?”
Liv looked at me suspiciously and jerked her head in the direction of the house. “They know the fare.”
“How much to take me?” I said.
“Half a teneir, same as anyone else.”
I nodded and she said, “Come down the steps. Watch your feet.”
She untied the rope from the dock ring and let it out a little so it slipped down closer to where the marble steps went into to the water. The place where she’d had to climb out before. I stepped carefully down to the last dry one, then took the hand she reached out to steady me into the boat. She had a strong grip and didn’t let go until I was settled on the bench by the last baskets, facing her where she sat backward to row. The dog stood on the little bit of seat in the front like a figurehead I’d seen in pictures of big ships.
Liv let go the rope and pulled it into the boat as she pushed away. I learned all the right names for things later, but right then all I could do was stare at how smooth and easy she made everything look. Right before she rowed out into the moving water, she dipped her hand over the side and tasted the water. I didn’t think it was an insult or anything now and wanted to ask about it, but Aunt Gaita would say that was starting the journey on the wrong foot.
And thinking that, I tried as hard as I could not to stare at her twisted foot where it peeked out from under her skirt. But of course she saw me not looking because she said, “I don’t see why you’re wasting your coin to ride to the Nikuleplaiz rather than walking. You don’t have anything to carry and you aren’t crippled like I am.”
That threw all my ideas of what to say to her overboard. All I could come out with was “My name’s Roz.”
Liv looked over her shoulder and pulled one oar more strongly to bring us in to another dock. She whistled and sent her dog up to the house. I waited quietly while the baskets were handed off and then we were back out in the current.
I tried again. “How long have you been working in boats?”
Her mouth twitched as if I’d said something funny. I probably had. Every job has its own way of saying things. I was learning all the right words for sewing from Mefro Dominique, but I didn’t know the words for working boats.
“Been on the river all my life,” she answered. “Got my own boat two years this floodtide.”
She spat over the side into the water. But it didn’t seem like an angry spitting. More like what the farmers did back in Sain-Pol when they talked about the weather and didn’t want to turn their luck.
Then there was quiet again. I could see the curve of the riverbank coming up and the statue of Saint Nikule coming toward us in the distance and scrambled for something more to say.
“What’s your dog’s name?”
Liv shrugged. “Chennek.”
It was almost like calling him Dog, but I saw him turn his head as if she’d called him, so I guess it was his real name.
Then we were at the Nikuleplaiz and I found out Chennek had more tricks than just barking at doors. As soon as we were snugged up to one of the floating docks, Chennek grabbed the end of the rope in his teeth and jumped up on the dock to run the rope around one of the cleats there. He jumped back down into Liv’s lap and she grabbed the rope, drew it in, and tied it off on the ring the oar went through. It wasn’t the usual way you tied boats up—even I knew that. But it meant she could untie without having to climb out or ask for help.
When I got up, Liv reached her hand out. I thought she meant to steady me out on the step up, but she pulled it back and snapped her fingers. I remembered the payment and reached under my coat to my pocket. The coin disappeared into a little purse at her waist and the next time she reached out it really was to help me out.
Half a teneir was what I’d spend for a whole afternoon at the market when I got my holiday. I didn’t feel like I’d bought much time for it, but it was a start. Maybe next time I could get her to say hello back when I helped with the baskets.
When I turned to say goodbye, she asked, “And will my fine lady be needing a ride home tonight?”
My tongue went all confused again and I said, “No, I can walk.”
“Well, good for you,” she snapped. And with a few quick movements she was untied and gone.
It was a start. Maybe a stumbling one, but I determined I’d make it right between us.
Chapter Six
April 1824—Mending
After more than a month, I knew most of the downstairs folk at Tiporsel House. You pick up on who’s who over meals even if you don’t work together, and the girls I shared a room with were starting to include me when they talked at night. The family was still confusing, but I had no business upstairs and only sometimes saw them coming and going. Once I asked—being curious-like—why the house belonged to Maisetra Sovitre and not to Maistir Pertinek. Charsintek told me that girls who gossiped about family found themselves back out on the street. She didn’t have to say “back.” Anyone who overheard knew I’d done something before to get let go. I didn’t dare ask questions after that. So I had to stitch it together from scraps and pieces.
I knew that the maisetra—Maisetra Sovitre—was ri
ch and she’d inherited Tiporsel House from a relative and that was why she didn’t need to get married. And besides that she was the royal thaumaturgist, which means she made up mysteries and miracles for the folk in the palace. I asked Celeste if that meant she was sort of a charmwife for Princess Anna, and Celeste gave me one of her sharp scornful looks, but then said it was more true than not. I couldn’t really think of the maisetra as a charmwife because she was so young and pretty. Instead I thought of her like in one of Mama’s old tales about kings and knights, where she was a sorceress in a tall stone tower. Tiporsel House was tall if you looked at it from the back, and a few times when I’d been out in the garden I could look up and see her staring out one of the windows, like she was thinking of magic to do.
I knew the Pertineks were something like poor relations and Maisetra Pertinek was the maisetra’s aunt. I knew that the baroness was the maisetra’s closest friend. I almost never saw the baroness. She was even more like someone out of an old story than the maisetra was. The first time I saw her going off riding, wearing a coat and breeches with a sword at her side, I wanted to ride off with her to the ends of the earth. She traveled a lot and even when she was in Rotenek she was usually out and about. That meant I didn’t see much of her armin, Tavit, either which was fine with me because I was a bit frightened of him.
I didn’t know much about armins when I came to Tiporsel House—not about what they really did, just the old stories. The Fillerts hadn’t had an armin. Mostly folks didn’t. Just the titled folks, or maybe unmarried ladies if they were really rich like Maisetra Sovitre was and wanted an armin to protect them from the wrong sort of men. The wrong sort weren’t only rough men from the south side of the river. Sometimes they were men you weren’t supposed to marry or men who wanted your father’s money more than they wanted you. You heard stories about that sort of thing and they weren’t the sort with happy endings. It’s funny how everyone says an armin’s duty is to protect your honor, but if you’re a girl that means not letting you marry the wrong man and if you’re a man it means fighting duels for silly reasons.
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