Floodtide

by Heather Rose Jones

  Mesner Aukustin didn’t look back when he answered, “I wish to examine the chanulezes.”

  Liv laughed. “What, all of them? That’s more than a day’s work, mesner. Were you planning to hire me for the whole day?”

  Now Mesner Aukustin did turn and had an uncertain look like he didn’t want to admit he hadn’t known that. “As many as we can manage before dusk.”

  He gestured to Maistir Brandel, who pulled a small purse out of his pocket and held it out to Liv.

  “You take it for now, Roz,” she said as she pulled in the line and pushed away from the dock in a single motion.

  I don’t think Mesner Aukustin was used to explaining himself, but Maisetra Iulien said, “The council’s been talking about the canals drawing off water when the river’s so low.”

  Maistir Brandel added, “They’re mostly worried about the big canals out in the country, of course.”

  Mesner Aukustin seemed to relax a little and added, “My cousin Efriturik has been leading a crew of surveyors to examine the great canals. I wish to do my own survey of the chanulezes here in Rotenek.”

  I don’t pay much mind to palace affairs—why would I?—but anyone could see what was going on. The older Mesner Atilliet—Princess Anna’s son—was out and about with his regiment doing important things while Mesner Aukustin sat home with everyone thinking him nothing more than a schoolboy. He wanted to do something important too. Going out on the river with no one but Brandel looking after him wasn’t the way to look responsible, but there’d be no telling him that.

  Liv gave a little shrug that might have been simply the work of pulling out into the current. “If you want to know about the river, you should ask those as are on it every day.”

  “Who better to ask than you?” Maisetra Iulien said.

  Sometimes I could see how Maisetra Iulien got what she wanted. It was saying things like that, where she knew exactly how to make you feel important. She didn’t expect you to do things for her, she made you want to do them. I could see it in Liv’s face. She would have obeyed Mesner Aukustin’s orders, but for Maisetra Iulien she’d do a lot more. I was trying to study how Maisetra Iulien did that. I always seemed to do the opposite and said things that made people mad at me.

  For a while no one spoke in the little boat as Liv leaned into the oars and worked upstream, skirting along the edge of the river where the current was slower. After a bit, Mesner Aukustin asked, “Where are we going?”

  “You wanted to see the chanulezes,” Liv said with a grunt. “Easiest to start upriver, at the old town wall, and work our way down.”

  The Rotein came into the city from the east and flowed west until it took a broad sweep to the south right around the Nikuleplaiz. I knew it turned west again further on, but I’d never been that far, I’d only seen it on a map when Maisetra Iulien was showing me where the school was. The Vezenaf with its fine houses and private docks stretched along most of the north bank, up from the Pont Ruip nearly to the eastern city wall where the road went out through the Port Ausiz. That was where the fairgrounds were, where they held Carnival and where the soldiers marched and where Liv’s market was.

  The land sloped up steeply from the river along the Vezenaf and sometimes you could see rock sticking out where there weren’t buildings or gardens. You could see it by the Pont Vezzen where the tunnel from the palace came out. For the rest it was a parade of docks and gardens and brick-framed culverts where water trickled out. The slope kept the river in its bounds on that side. Floodtide mostly caused problems on the south bank, where the land was flatter, and farther to the west, around and past the Nikuleplaiz.

  Liv took us up to the last bridge by the old city wall and tied up for a bit at the landing underneath the arches. She pointed over toward the south bank.

  “You see there? Right past the blue house? That’s the first of the chanulezes, the Nofoss. It’s a new one—dug when they started building the factories and wanted to take things back and forth by barge. Rivermen don’t use it because there’s no room for anything to pass the barges when they’re coming through. They keep it well dredged, though. Have to.”

  “They dug the chanulezes for barges?” Maisetra Iulien asked. She must have been thinking of the small ones around the Nikuleplaiz.

  Liv shook her head. “Not at first. The water was always there. The oldest ones were built to keep it in place. But when the city got bigger and more crowded, they connected them up. You can tell by the names. If the chanulez is named for the stream that comes in through the walls, it’s one of the first. The rest are named like streets. Some of the small ones don’t have names anymore if they’ve been covered over. You see there?” She pointed again, but it was hard to tell where she meant. “That one was too narrow for boats, so they bricked it over and put houses on top. You can see where it comes out, but people forgot where it ran. One year someone decides to build a cellar and whoosh! The hidden chanulez becomes a stream again. Mama Rota takes her own path.”

  Liv loosed the bow line and pushed out into the current, angling quickly across the river. Toward the outlet of the hidden chanulez. There weren’t any big barges to look out for at this end of the city, but I could tell if she didn’t cross quick we’d be swept down river. We didn’t go all the way to the other shore, because that’s where rivermen coming upstream were working, just far enough that we were drifting slowly with a dip of an oar now and then to keep us straight. Then without warning, Liv dragged an oar to turn the boat toward shore and we shot into a passage. It would have been wide enough for two boats like Liv’s to pass each other with oars out and not touch, except you could see it got shallow and muddy at the edges. When we passed another riverman going the other way, we both had to pull oars in and glide past.

  It felt like we were moving faster in the chanulez than on the river. Part of it was that the water was more still, but mostly it was because the houses were closer and I could see them sweep past. Chennek had pushed past the two boys into the tip of the bow to stand in the very front and he would bark if he saw another boat coming.

  Up by the river where we came in, the buildings were tall—three stories and more. But as we went further everything looked smaller and meaner with most only having one over-story. Brick mostly, with bright painted shutters and rusty ironwork. After Mesner Aukustin asked a few questions, Liv let loose a flood of comments about life on the river.

  “Most everything needs dredging like that,” she said with a jerk of her head toward the edge. “When you get a good flow at floodtide it will scour things out a bit. Not all the way, but enough to keep it manageable. The stinking mud is the worst. Some say that’s what breeds river fever. Flood’s going to be bad next time. We haven’t had a good floodtide for years now, and with the water so low…” She shrugged in that way the farmers back in Sain-Pol did when they talked about bad things you couldn’t help. “They’re not the same, you know,” Liv continued. “Can have a good flood and low water or high water when the flood’s real easy. But low water’s a chance for dredging. City hasn’t done that since—” She thought for a minute. “Since I can barely remember. My da says the French dredged deep when they were here, but that’s forever ago.”

  “Back during the wars?” Maisetra Iulien asked.

  Liv didn’t answer. How would any of us know about what happened during the French wars?

  “How many men does it take to do the dredging?” Mesner Aukustin interrupted. His voice was all important-like, as if he could order them up to do it if he wanted to.

  Liv shrugged again. “My da could tell you. He was one of them put to work on it. Him and my uncles.”

  We passed under a little bridge now and then, some low enough that a man standing in a boat might hit his head. The farther we went, the taller the land rose on either side. That left more room under the bridges. As we passed the fifth one, I heard a burst of voices ahead and Liv quietly said, “Students!” with an air of disgust.

  One of them leaned over the arch
as we came out from under and called down, “Hey, girl, give us a ride?”

  Liv didn’t answer them. She brought us to a stop at a little open space where a long tie-up stretched along the chanulez and there were steps along the opposite wall to climb up from the boats. You could see a larger plaiz out past the buildings. Not as big as the Nikuleplaiz, but just as old-looking with stone arcades and cobbles and the towers of a church peeking over the tops of the buildings.

  “The university!” Maistir Brandel exclaimed. “Cousin Barbara brings me here sometimes, but it looks so different from the water.”

  “I’ll enroll as a student next year,” Mesner Aukustin said. “I didn’t realize you could come all the way by boat.”

  “Not much point most of the time,” Liv said. “Most students live in the quarter here. Farther on the chanulez goes under the Chasintalle itself and comes out the other side. That’s mostly for cargo. Important folk like the dozzures ride in carriages. The students save the money and walk. Not much passenger traffic on the chanulezes themselves, mostly deliveries. Passengers on the river proper.”

  We didn’t actually go under the university, though Mesner Aukustin wanted to. Liv said the landing was the last place it was easy to turn around. “Unless you don’t care to see anything but this one today, mesner,” she added.

  Heading back toward the river, the two of them talked about dredging engines and other things I didn’t understand. Maistir Brandel asked about who paid for the dredging and how that worked. It seemed an odd thing for an armin to be interested in, but Maisetra Iulien had said he was learning accounts too. She wanted to know more about when the different chanulezes had been built and whether you could tell how old they were from the bricks and stone, until Liv started sounding hoarse and said, “I can talk or I can row!” and they let be for a while.

  * * *

  Looking at the Vezenaf from across the river was like looking at layers in a pastry, with the gardens right by the water, then the great houses side-by-side nearly touching each other and behind that a row of trees and bare rock slope that climbed up the other side to the upper town. The upper town wasn’t any higher than the tops of the great houses, but it was safe from anything the river might do.

  Looking further downriver toward the Pont Vezzen where we’d started, the houses got smaller and even more crowded until you got to the broad street that led from the bridge up to the Plaiz. A public landing stood right above the bridge and the palace dock with stairs zigzagging up to the street, but without the gates and guards of the other one. I hadn’t noticed when we passed it before, but the brick river-wall behind it was built in broad low arches, like a bridge seen sideways. Most of them were filled in, but one at the end of the landing was darker, like it was open.

  I’d mostly kept my mouth shut since we got into the boat, but when there was a space between the questions, I pointed across and asked Liv, “What’s that? That thing behind the dock. Is it a covered chanulez or is it like the rain culverts that run between the houses?”

  She followed my gesture and laughed. “You might say! Some folks call it ‘the Main Drain.’ It runs from under the Plaiz. Most years you can’t even see it, at least not more than a sliver, but when it rains hard you have to look out for the currents there.”

  Even the parts of the city I knew well were different from a boat. The chanulezes were easy to overlook if you didn’t travel on them all the time. It was a matter of knowing the streets where you had to go the long way to cross a bridge. I only really had to worry about that down near the Nikuleplaiz. But for Celeste it would be the same as knowing the streets and alleyways.

  Thinking about Celeste, I wished she were with us today. I said so, when there was a question Liv couldn’t answer about Rotenek’s past. Celeste was always telling me about that sort of thing.

  “The fortune-teller?” Mesner Aukustin asked.

  I knew he was thinking about that day at the Strangers’ Market, but I couldn’t bear for him to sneer at her.

  “No, mesner. Celeste doesn’t do that sort of thing. Not regular. She’s a…a…” I didn’t want to say charmwife because everyone thought a charmwife had to be a wrinkled old woman, though Celeste never minded the name. “She makes charms and healing miracles.” Wouldn’t Celeste stare if she heard me say she does miracles! But living in Tiporsel House where people talked about mysteries and miracles all the time, it felt natural to call them that.

  “You never told me that!” Maisetra Iulien said.

  She sounded hurt but playful-like, as if I’d had a treat and hadn’t shared with her. When I thought about it, it was true. She only knew that Celeste and I were ’prentice-sisters. Maybe I figured she didn’t need to know everything about my life when I wasn’t doing for her.

  There was enough of doubt in Maisetra Iulien’s voice that I insisted, “It’s true. The maisetra’s foreign friend—the black lady—she comes down to Mefro Dominique’s sometimes to talk to Celeste about mysteries. And she took her to the cathedral for Saint Mauriz’s day last year.”

  “But then, why…?”

  I could see Maisetra Iulien hesitate as if she were trying to think to the answer to her own question.

  “Why doesn’t she come to the academy to study? Cousin Margerit wants to teach everyone who’s interested in mysteries.”

  “Go to the maisetra’s school?” It was hard for me not to laugh, thinking of Celeste among all the fancy girls from the upper town. Wouldn’t she have a thing or two to say about that! I shook my head. “That’s not for the likes of us, maisetra.”

  “But it is, if they have the talent. Cousin Margerit says that all the time. And if Maisetra Talarico knows about your friend Celeste, I don’t know why she hasn’t talked to her. If…if it’s about the tuition…”

  It wasn’t my place to tell Maisetra Iulien what Celeste would think of taking charity like that, so I said, “Yes, maisetra,” and looked away.

  Chapter Thirteen

  January 1825—Healing

  I asked Celeste about the school a few days later. I’d traded Ailis the sewing on a new Sunday dress for her to do for Maisetra Iulien for two days and not tell Charsintek. That was a lot of work and mostly for the not telling. But for two days it was like the summer, with Celeste and me working side by side until well on to supper time.

  I tried to think how to bring it up. Celeste could get prickly. Sometimes we seemed close as sisters, laughing and gossiping over people in the neighborhood or something the girls at Tiporsel House had said. Sometimes she’d get all sharp and moody. I was getting better at figuring out if I’d said or done something careless. Then I could tell her I was sorry. But sometimes it wasn’t me, and all I could do was keep my mouth shut so she wouldn’t have an excuse to snap at me.

  Maisetra Iulien had sounded so sure that the maisetra’s school wanted girls like Celeste, but I couldn’t guess how Celeste would feel.

  “Is it true that your friend Maisetra Talarico—” I stumbled over the name a little. “—teaches down in Urmai at Maisetra Sovitre’s school?”

  She gave a little smile before she answered, so I figured it had been a good way to bring it up.

  “Yes, she teaches mysteries. That is, she teaches people how to think about mysteries. She asks me sometimes—” Now her voice turned shy, which didn’t happen very often. “—about what it is I see. How I learned my work and how it is that charmwives trade their secrets.”

  “Does she teach you?”

  Now the smile faded a little, and Celeste gave a little shake of her head. “No, we just talk. I think…she said once—not to me, but I overheard it—that there isn’t anything she can teach me. I think it’s because I learned wrong. Not out of books.”

  “But isn’t that teaching?” I asked. “When she talks to you about how you do things?”

  Celeste looked a little confused, and I took a breath and plunged on.

  “Maisetra Iulien says that they want all kinds of girls at the school. Rich girls and p
oor ones too, if they have the talent to learn mysteries. She says they have students from the Poor Scholars there.” The Poor Scholars hadn’t done me any good back when Father Mazzu took me there, but if they were studying at Maisetra Sovitre’s school, then it was true that anyone could. “Iulien says you should ask Maisetra Talarico about it.”

  I hesitated because Celeste’s eyes flashed when I’d said “poor girls.”

  “You think we’re poor? When we have a good house here? And hot food every day? And I have three dresses, not even counting my church clothes?”

  “I didn’t mean poor like that,” I protested. “But she said you needn’t worry about the school fees.”

  Celeste kept on. “Do you know how we have all that? Because we work hard, Maman and me. And what would Maman do if I were off all day at Maisetra Sovitre’s school? Who would get all this sewing done? You? All by yourself? In half-days? Who would mind the shop when she takes her samples and measuring tapes off to a grand lady who’s too busy to come here? You think we could ask the baker’s girl to stand behind the counter? What would Maman do if she had to hire an assistant for the sewing I do? For wages! That’s not piecework she can send out like we did before you came. Maman is counting on me to take over the trade and help put money away so she won’t have to keep sewing when she gets old and her fingers get knotted and her eyes get dim. School!” she scoffed. “It doesn’t matter if the lessons are free or if they cost the price of Princess Anna’s gowns. Your Maisetra Sovitre isn’t going to pay for someone to take my place here in the shop.”

  I hadn’t thought that far, and I don’t think Maisetra Iulien had either. But every time I saw Celeste puzzling out how to make a charm work better or how to take one type of charm and turn it into another—like making over a dress into a new style—my heart swelled with pride in how clever she was. I couldn’t imagine going to anyone else if I needed serious charmwork done. I knew how lucky I was to be learning from Mefro Dominique. It wasn’t fair that Celeste couldn’t have a teacher for what she loved best.