Tess of the Road

by Rachel Hartman

  Spira, caught flat-footed, shuffled notecards on the lectern and said, “Um. What?”

  “I refer, of course, to the World Serpents,” said William.

  Tess sat up straighter, eyes wide. He’d…he’d taken her seriously.

  “I realize none of you know what I’m talking about,” said Will, holding up his hands to still the crescendo of baffled murmuring. “Goreddi scholars have never delved deeply into this, but I’ve had inklings. Last week, an observation by one of our keenest minds confirmed my suspicions and gave me courage to speak.”

  He meant Tess. Keenest mind was an exaggeration, ridiculously elevated, but Tess felt it profoundly anyway. She pressed a hand to her heart.

  He’d said he hadn’t heard of World Serpents, though he’d known the Pelaguese legend. Maybe she’d misunderstood. Maybe he just hadn’t put it all together.

  “It’s unfashionable to look to legends for truth,” he was saying, “but haven’t our own Saints proved literally real? The ancients knew a great deal about the natural world; there may be things to learn when old tales tell the same story.

  “Look to this mural.” He gestured broadly at the teeming mural behind him. “St. Fredricka included hints of a creature coiled under the ice, an animal the Pelaguese people once considered a god, who held the gift of prophecy and the key to eternal youth. Well, our pre-Saint pagans told of a similar monster under the earth, whose blood could heal wounds or cure disease. If either of these legends is even partially true, it would be the greatest discovery of our lifetimes. If they’re altogether true, the possibilities are unfathomable.”

  William paused dramatically. “Friends, this world may be riddled with great serpents of untold power, and the dragons don’t want us to know about them.”

  The hall erupted, and not with approval. The human instructors were shouting angrily, scandalized that Will would accuse their allies of such a thing. Laughter came in two flavors: mocking and highly amused. The saarantrai, as expected, stared in stony silence.

  “He can’t be serious.” Kenneth had to shout to be heard. “How could such creatures exist?”

  Lord Rynald shook his curly head in bewilderment.

  “And isn’t he asking for trouble, accusing the dragons of deceit?”

  “If the saar were prone to anger, maybe,” Lord Rynald shouted back. “They won’t even bother to dispute him. Well, no, Spira might write a paper. Spira’s kind of a pedant.”

  Tess, irked by their skepticism, cried, “World Serpents are real. He’s telling the truth.”

  Lord Rynald blinked his dark, pretty eyes. “If you say so.”

  Tess turned away in irritation, folding her hands on the balcony railing. She rather wished William would look up, but four of his friends had rushed the stage, and they were singing a rude song about Spira (complete with choreography) that they must have prepared in advance.

  O Spira, come near-a

  And lift up your skirt.

  Are you male or female

  Or fat, shameless flirt?

  It’s bad enough, Spira,

  Just being a saar;

  You mince like a maidy—

  Come prove what you are!

  Spira, speaking quietly to Professor the dragon Ondir, ignored them. Tess might’ve pitied him (her? It was hard to tell) if mockery could’ve hurt a dragon’s feelings. She ought to have been shocked by such a naughty song, at least, but once again she found herself wrestling a grin.

  He was incorrigible. Mischievous and bold and everything she’d been told time and again she shouldn’t be. Everything she’d ever admired about Dozerius.

  What would he do if he knew she was trapped in a dark tower? She hardly dared hope.

  William looked up exactly then, and met Tess’s eyes across the crowd. His smile deepened, and he winked at her. She felt warm all the way to her toes.

  The song had broken the back of the debates; there was no restoring dignity. Ondir said a few stern things about rules and order, but nobody minded him. The crowd, having gotten more scandal than it could have hoped for, began to disperse.

  Kenneth seemed in no hurry to leave. He laughed and chatted with Lord Rynald at the back of the nave, finding reasons to hang about and keep talking. Tess stood by, fidgeting, glancing at William, who was still at the front of the hall.

  She thought about walking up to the dais but couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. Six-year-old Tessie would have, half a lifetime ago, before the ungovernable wildness had been spanked out of her. Before she understood what manners were for, and that you can’t make a good impression by acting like a silly, bossy little girl.

  She bit her lip, struggling. Keeping a lid on her impulsiveness wasn’t trivial.

  Then Will was crossing the room toward them. She did not boldly meet his eye but looked away demurely, as she’d been taught.

  She risked a glance to see if she’d made a good impression.

  He smiled at her, as warmly as the sun after storms. Tess had never been the recipient of such a smile. She’d behaved like she was supposed to, and had been rewarded.

  She could do this. She had the tools. The possibilities were unfathomable.

  “I’m so pleased you came, Therese,” William said, drawing near. “You recognized the object of my little paean to encouragement, I trust.”

  “Indeed, thank you,” said Tess, striving to keep her voice steady and dignified. “I’m astonished I could be of any help to someone like you.”

  That was laying it on a little thick. She cringed, worrying that she’d misstepped, but he seemed not to mind.

  “You may yet be more help,” he said. His fair hair flopped endearingly. “The faculty library has been of some use, but I’m sure your quigutl friend told you more useful tales than anything I’ve uncovered there. I’d love to compare notes sometime.”

  Tess’s heart fluttered. Actually fluttered. She’d always thought that a silly metaphor, but now she felt it. “I’d like that, too.”

  “What are you doing next?” he said. “We could go to the Mallet and Mullet.”

  Tess cast a lightly panicked glance at Kenneth, who was engrossed with Lord Rynald. William caught on and said cordially, “Of course, your young man must come along, too.”

  “He’s just my cousin,” said Tess hastily.

  “All the better,” said William, his voice regaining its warmth at once. There was nothing suggestive in it, and yet Tess found herself pleasantly flustered.

  “Will!” cried Lord Rynald, finally noticing they’d been approached by the hero of the evening. He held out a slim hand, which William clasped in his larger one.

  They were all taller than Tess. She felt like a mouse.

  “Very amusing,” Rynald said. “Ondir will make you pay for humiliating his pet toad.”

  Will shrugged. “Spira humiliates itself just by existing. The truth had to be told. Come to the Mullet, you and your friend. I’m gathering a posse.”

  Minutes later, William, Tess, Kenneth, Lord Rynald, and a gaggle of friends and hangers-on were in the street laughing raucously. Someone threw a shoe at them from a window, which only made them laugh harder. Tess was the only girl in the group, but she wasn’t frightened. Kenneth wouldn’t let anything happen—if he could pull himself out of Rynald’s eyes—but anyway, what was going to happen? They were delightful, these lads; they spoke to her like an adult and not a recalcitrant child. She felt every year of the sixteen she was pretending to be.

  She felt like queen of the world.

  Will ordered everyone cakes and ale. Tess, who’d never drunk anything but small beer and well-watered wine, found the ale appallingly bitter. She struggled not to gag. It was strong and likely to make her tipsy in any case, so she paced herself and made sure she ate enough cake.

  The students of St. Bert’s
quaffed freely, growing more hilarious by the hour. Stories were told of pranks played on professors and other students, of the foibles of Spira (who seemed a genuinely eccentric and uncouth person). When the stories veered toward amorous conquests and the suspected proclivities of one female dragon professor, Tess grew uncomfortable, crumbling her cake and avoiding everyone’s eyes. William, bless him, noticed and swatted the tale-teller on the back of his head, saying, “There are gentle ears present, villain.”

  He was considerate; that went straight to her heart’s tally. She flashed him a grateful smile, and he reflected it back tenfold, like a magic mirror.

  It was late. Tess was going to be a wreck in the morning, she could already tell. Several lads pushed back from the table, complaining about early laboratory hours. Anything before noon was early, Tess gleaned; they didn’t often see the hour when she woke up, unless they came at it from the other direction.

  Tess waited for Kenneth, who was whispering with William and Rynald. Finally her cousin approached and said, “Listen, ah, Tes’puco—”

  “Therese,” she hissed, flicking an anxious glance back at William.

  “All grown up, are we?” said Kenneth, not sarcastically, but amused. He hadn’t stopped grinning all evening. “Well, listen, I want to talk to Rynald a bit more—”

  “About astronomy? Maybe he’ll show you his telescope,” said Tess before she could stop herself. She was tipsier than she’d thought.

  Kenneth gaped incredulously. “Cheeky! But what I mean to say is, would you mind very much if I didn’t walk you home?”

  She felt a lightning bolt of panic—she couldn’t cross town alone in the middle of the night!—but Kenneth continued hastily: “Will offered to walk you. Would that work?”

  Tess felt a different jolt then, but she put a lid on it immediately. Kenneth would see no trace of eagerness in her face. “I suppose,” she said, with carefully measured reluctance.

  And so Kenneth went off with Rynald—stargazing, moon-gazing, gazing into each other’s eyes—and Tess and William went the other direction. “May I offer you my arm?” William asked her.

  She longed to take it, but would that be too forward, too soon? She couldn’t risk it.

  He didn’t insist, but walked at her side, leaving a decent gap between them.

  “Do you really think the World Serpents exist, or were you trying to make Spira look stupid?” Tess burst out before they’d gone two blocks. “Lord Rynald said you’re full of beans.”

  So much for keeping her boisterousness under wraps. Stupid ale. He would surely be horrified by her unladylike forthrightness.

  To her astonishment, William laughed. “I’ve found no proof that World Serpents exist—yet. But it’s worth looking into. You saw how nettled the dragons were.” Tess wondered how he could tell. “Even in this time of peace, they’re still our rivals. We should seize any opportunity to get one up on them. Including,” he said, drawing nearer, “gleaning what we can from nontraditional sources—folklore, quigutl testimonials, and the sprightly, unexpected intelligence of young women.”

  He meant her. Tess shivered pleasantly.

  The stars glittered; it was like a night out of a story. Tess would have liked to spin in exuberant circles, to skip or whoop, but she couldn’t let herself.

  She also couldn’t let him see her house, where the doorplate read Dombegh, or he’d know she’d lied about her name—and her age. It was easy enough to learn how many children her father had and how old they were. Tess led William up the street to the shrine of St. Siucre.

  “That’s a rather small shrine for a warren of Belgiosos,” he said mock-seriously.

  “There’s a tunnel to my house,” she said, pointing up the wrong side of the street in the wrong direction. “Sneaking through the cellar is quieter than climbing through a window.”

  Provided no one had barred the door to the kitchen. She said a little prayer.

  “I’ve kept you out too late,” said William solemnly. “I hope you won’t be in trouble.”

  “Never,” said Tess optimistically. “Thank you for walking me home, William.”

  “Will, to friends,” he said. He reached boldly for her hand and pressed it between his. “Will I see you again? You still owe me some quigutl myths, but more than that, I’d love to show you St. Bert’s. Whatever your curiosity demands, let me know and I can guide you. I live upstairs at the Mullet, easy to find.”

  “Then I will find you,” said Tess with what she hoped was an arch smile.

  He pressed her fingers to his lips, lightly, like a butterfly landing.

  Tess felt her insides effervesce.

  “Forgive me,” he said, releasing her.

  “Nothing to forgive,” said Tess.

  She flitted into the shrine and leaned against the door to catch her breath.

  Sprightly intelligence. She still wasn’t over it.

  She raised her gaze to the wooden statue before her. St. Siucre was always depicted as a wizened old woman, with bent back and bright eyes. She was a quiet kind of Saint, the sort nobody much thought about, and she was Tess’s patroness, to her infinite embarrassment. She’d much rather have had someone witty and gregarious, like St. Willibald, or mighty like St. Masha; even Jeanne’s stolid St. Gobnait would have been preferable to this ancient, grandmotherly, forgotten Saint, whose great claim to fame was that she’d help you find things you’d lost.

  For the first time, this struck Tess as apropos. She was the patroness of memory. Tess lit a candle and stuck it in the box of sand; there were only two others there. “Sweet St. Siucre,” Tess began, using the traditional epithet. It was aspirational: all memories should be sweet ones. “Never let me forget this night,” she prayed, getting down on one knee. “How he kissed my fingers, how he took me seriously, how I’m feeling right now.”

  She paused, heart beating hopefully. “I think…I might love him. I hope so. I want to.”

  She fidgeted, her knee sore against the flagstones. She wasn’t sure how to end the prayer; she’d never been a great one for listening in church. “Bless us all forever and ever, let it be, thank you. Um. Good night?”

  Then she lit a second taper in the shrine and used it to light her way home.

  “Awake, awake!” Pathka was in her face again. It was no earlier than she usually woke; it only felt earlier, since she’d been up half the night, remembering.

  “I’ve had an idea,” said the quigutl as Tess rolled away from his breath. “I saw a big house yesterday while foraging. They’ll have the metals I need to make the thniks I mentioned.”

  Tess packed up groggily, too sleepy to argue. The morning fog made it hard to follow Pathka; he had to keep circling back so she could see him.

  He was like a perpetual-motion machine. Some of Will’s friends had been trying to build one, but the spoilsport dragons kept giving away the punch line: it would never work. Nobody had thought to harness a quigutl.

  She liked fog. In the city, she’d always found it cozy, filling the spaces between known objects and making the world feel closer and smaller. It was like a veil over a familiar face.

  Now she had no notion what might lie behind the gray. Maybe wonders and dangers yet unimagined; maybe nothing at all. She imagined the world didn’t exist, that the fog congealed as she walked into it and created everything on the fly—a logical blocky barn, the fanciful fingers of trees. The mists imagined objects into being as she passed.

  What a wonder, to walk into the unseen unknown. Nothing was set in stone.

  After all her rage and grief last night, that was a profound relief.

  The fog thinned enough that she could tell Pathka was leading her off the main road, down an eastern spur. It was well maintained, covered in pea gravel, like the carriage drive to a manor house.

  He’d said something about a big house, she recal
led now that she was more awake. Her steps slowed. “We’re going where, exactly?”

  “Don’t worry. Nobody’s home,” said Pathka. “There’s an old caretaker, but—”

  “I’m not breaking into a manor.” The slope steepened; gravel skittered beneath her boots.

  “It’s more of a hunting lodge,” said Pathka, as if that were better.

  They reached the bank of a large, sluggish river, mists dancing on its dark face. The road ended there, and it looked like they could go no farther. A stout rope, tied to a post, stretched over the water and disappeared into the fog, presumably tied to something on the other side.

  “Ferry crossing,” said Pathka, explaining the rope. “You can haul yourself across with the rope if the ferryman’s not here to row you—and he’s not here, don’t fret. Too bad the boat’s on the far bank.”

  This seemed like a natural place to balk. Tess went stiff-legged like Faffy when it rained.

  “Pathka, I’m a terrible thief. You’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve had dogs set on me a dozen times. I’ll trip on a rake or almost fall into the well. Remember the time I scared up a field of crows and the farmer chased me with an axe?”

  “I was beside you, befuddling the dogs and tripping the farmer,” said Pathka, curling around her ankles. “And I want you here, Teth, in case anything goes wrong. We are nest to each other.”

  “I—I’m honored that you’d say that,” she said. “But stealing to eat is one thing.”

  “I’ll do all the stealing,” said Pathka. “It will be just this once, I promise.”

  “But how do we get there?” She kicked the water with her boot. “I don’t swim.”

  “Hold the ferry rope,” said Pathka. “Anything that can’t get wet, I’ll carry on my back.”

  The offer didn’t extend to Tess’s person, alas. She handed Pathka her pack and, somewhat reluctantly, her boots. He might as well have her stockings, while she was at it, and Florian’s jacket, and then, since she’d gone that far, she decided to strip down completely and have a bit of a bath. She hadn’t had a bath since Ranleigh Cottage.