The Mark of the Dragonfly

by Jaleigh Johnson

  Anna shrugged. “I don’t know where they came from,” she said. “Is it because of the dragonfly tattoo that I have them, do you think?”

  “I … maybe. I don’t know.” Piper was having trouble concentrating. She couldn’t take her eyes off the coins. “You’d better hide them someplace safe. You don’t want anyone to steal them.” Goddess, it would be like stealing a new life.

  “Oh, well then, you have them. You’ll keep them safer than I could.” Anna held the money belt out to her. Piper swallowed hard and reached to take it. “Are you all right?” Anna asked. She touched Piper’s hands. “Your palms are sweating, and your body is shaking. Are you cold? You might have a fever. Are you hot, Piper?”

  Piper shook her head. “No, I’m fine,” she answered, but all she could think was, who was this girl? How could she be so calm, just hand over a small fortune in gold coins as if it were nothing? Did she not understand what something like this meant to a scrapper who had to worry about starving or freezing to death in her house because she didn’t have the coin for food and firewood? Did she not care? Maybe, where she was from, money in these amounts was common, or was it that she just trusted Piper to take care of it for her, as she trusted her for everything else?

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Piper?” Anna gripped Piper’s hand worriedly. “Doesn’t this solve our problem about the clothes?”

  Piper laughed finally, though still uneasy. “It solves the clothing problem and a few others,” she said. With this kind of money, we would never have needed to sneak onto the train. We could have marched on like queens. “We’ll get clothes from Ms. Varvol, and we’ll easily get an appointment with Raenoll once we get to Tevshal.”

  As long as they avoided the slave market, she added to herself. Even if the slavers gathered far outside the city limits, there was still a significant danger for two girls walking alone on the streets. Large crowds were the places to be, and they needed to stay as close to the train station as possible. Knowing that they carried such a large sum of coin didn’t make things any easier, but as long as they didn’t flash the gold around, she thought they would be relatively safe.

  Piper sat on the sofa for a long time, holding the money belt, staring at the rows of gleaming gold.

  At lunch, Piper went to the dining car to look for Ms. Varvol. She wasn’t hard to spot—her long, straight black hair was tucked beneath a flamboyant purple hat with hipa bird feathers on the brim, and she wore an expensive-looking jade gown. When Piper walked up to her, she was sorting through a thick book of fabric samples, using a magnifying glass to inspect each fiber of the cloth closely.

  She looked up when Piper stopped at her table. “Yes?”

  “Ms. Varvol?” Piper asked, feeling suddenly nervous standing next to the elegant woman.

  The woman eyed her up and down, from the tangled spirals of her hair to her oversized coat to her muddy boots, which Piper thought she’d cleaned up fairly well, but from the woman’s wrinkled nose, she guessed she was wrong. “I have no coin to spare, little one,” Ms. Varvol said, and made a shooing motion with her hand. Her fingers were large and thick, the rolls of flesh almost burying a small square emerald on her left index finger.

  “I’m not here to beg,” Piper said, forcing herself to be polite. “The porter told me you sell clothing. I need to buy a dress, a warm coat, and some shoes.” She hesitated. “Also a pair of trousers and a shirt.” She couldn’t part with her dad’s coat. She didn’t want to replace any of her old clothes, actually—she felt at home in them—but if she was going to be traveling with Anna, she needed to look like she belonged in the girl’s company. They’d draw less attention if they looked like they came from the same social class.

  Ms. Varvol went back to looking at her fabric samples. “Show me your coin, and then you can have some of my time,” she said. “As you can see, I’m extremely busy.”

  “Oh, I can see that,” Piper said sarcastically. She reached into her innermost jacket pocket, where she’d stowed Anna’s money belt. She took two gold coins off the belt—not enough to raise suspicions, but enough to get the woman’s attention—and held them under Ms. Varvol’s magnifying glass.

  The woman glanced up sharply. Her expression of impatience melted into a sugary smile. “My dear! Come and sit down. I’ll order us a glass of kelpra juice, and we’ll talk measurements. I have just the dress to complement your skin tone. You’ll be lovely.”

  “The dress isn’t for me,” Piper said. “It’s for a friend of mine. Listen, do you mind coming back to our suite? You can measure her there.” Piper had the satisfaction of seeing the woman’s eyes widen before she nodded vigorously.

  “But of course, my dear. Just let me gather my supplies.” The woman bundled up her fabrics, grabbed a large case sitting on the seat next to her, and stood to follow Piper back to their car.

  As Piper led the way back to the suite, she wondered, was this what it was like to have money—every conversation so easy, everyone so eager to please? The rich people in the cities must be absurdly spoiled. They never had to work at being polite or try to convince others to take them seriously. All they had to do to get what they wanted was flash some coin, and everyone jumped to serve them. One had to treat them that way, didn’t they, in order to get one’s own bit of coin? False civility and money changing hands—a show, that was all it was—but Piper had never been on the other side before.

  Now Piper was the stiff hip. Anna had put all that coin into her hands with nothing but the utmost trust that she would use it to help her. Piper felt the horrible burden of that trust roiling inside her.

  You can step off the train at Tevshal and disappear into the crowd, and no one will ever find you. The wolf isn’t looking for you; he’s looking for Anna. You could take those coins, get on an express train, and be halfway to Ardra before Anna even thinks to notice you’re missing. A new life, just waiting for you to take it. You will never go hungry again, and you will never have to go near a factory.

  Her heart raced at the thought. To be safe, to have the security of money wrapped around her like an impenetrable shield—then she imagined the look on Anna’s face when she realized that Piper had abandoned her, that she was truly alone. Shame washed away Piper’s excitement. Even at his lowest point, her father had never resorted to stealing coin to feed them, though he could have, easily. Bandit camps and sky raiders thrived by attacking trains and trade caravans, and they were always looking for men to replenish their numbers. Piper had seen them in town talking to Arno Weir more than once. She knew that the merchant would have pointed them to her father in a heartbeat if he’d thought her father would have been interested in joining up.

  Yet, choosing to stay honest had driven her father to the factory, to his death. What had honesty gotten him in the end? It had left Piper an orphan and forced her to care for herself any way she could.

  The thoughts nagged at her all during Anna’s fitting. Piper was still reluctant to replace her old clothes, but Anna insisted that she be fitted with new pairs of trousers and shirts. Piper tried to focus on picking out some clothes from Ms. Varvol’s case, but all the subtle shades of browns and blacks looked the same to her. In the end, Ms. Varvol selected two pairs of sandy-colored trousers and two white shirts of the softest material Piper had ever felt. She thought she hardly looked like herself in these new outfits. She’d never had creases down the front of her trousers, or a shirt tailored to fit the curves of her body. Anna was so excited to see the transformation she abandoned the idea of a dress and petticoats for herself and asked for outfits like Piper’s.

  A small skirmish erupted over her dad’s old coat and boots, but Piper flat-out refused to part with either of them. They compromised—Ms. Varvol took the coat and patched the torn places, all the while looking as if she was secretly planning to burn the garment. There was nothing to do about the boots. Ms. Varvol refused to look at them, so Piper wrapped them in one of her old shirts and stored them in her satchel along with her t
ools and the medicine and food packs. She let herself be fitted for brand-new leather boots, which she had to admit were far more comfortable than her father’s oversized ones, but still she felt like she was betraying her father somehow, discarding pieces of his memory.

  Piper blinked back sudden, unwelcome tears as Ms. Varvol tied the bootlaces and sat back on her heels to admire her work. “There, aren’t you pretty?” she said.

  Pretty? Piper supposed so. If Gee saw her now for the first time, he would never know she was a scrapper. Well, until she opened her mouth. Anyway, wasn’t this what she wanted? To shed all vestiges of the scrap town and her old life? She’d never felt more disconnected from them than she did at this moment.

  So why did it feel wrong?

  Two days later, just after dark, the train arrived at Tevshal. Thoughts of Anna’s money and what she could do with it hadn’t stopped running through Piper’s head, but thankfully, when they stepped off the train, the city itself distracted her.

  Her father used to call Tevshal the Silver City or the Night Eye. Human town houses and sarnun vaults weaved together along the narrow streets, lit by the night eye flowers that spilled from baskets hung on wrought-iron posts. Unique to the city, the white blossoms only opened at night and gave off a silver glow brighter than any lantern. With the vaults and townhomes all bundled together in the light, the city reminded Piper of a tightly knotted metal star.

  Absorbed by the twinkling glows, the flowers swaying in the night breeze, Piper didn’t realize that Anna was tugging on her coat sleeve. She turned to look at the girl. “Sorry, what?”

  “I said did you see their bell shapes?” Anna asked excitedly. “Like a little candle turned upside down. The flowers only grow here. It’s the combination of uniquely enriched soil, temperate climate, and the large population of sarnuns in the city.”

  “What are you talking about?” Piper asked in surprise. “Do you remember being here before?”

  Anna shook her head. “I found a book on rare flowers in the train’s library. There’s a fascinating section on the night eye’s bioluminescence and its connection to sarnun physiology.”

  Biolu—what? Piper thought, glancing at Anna in confusion. How did the girl remember all that? She steered them onto one of the main streets. “All right. Er, I don’t know what any of that means,” she said. “Maybe you could tell me about it later, after we find Raenoll.”

  Anna didn’t seem to hear her and simply continued chattering away. “Apparently, their vision is poor when compared to a human’s, but a sarnun’s feelers have twenty times the number of olfactory receptors we do,” she said. “Because of that, they value unique fragrances. The market for perfume in Tevshal is the largest in the Merrow Kingdom. The sarnuns make it and sell it not just among their own kind but also to the humans, even though we can’t appreciate all the subtleties they put into it.”

  She knows an awful lot about sarnuns too, Piper thought, surprised. She guided Anna by the shoulder, half afraid the girl was going to step out in front of a carriage, so absorbed was she in her recitation. How many books had Anna managed to read in the last two days, Piper wondered, and how was she remembering everything in them?

  “Most of the merchants near the train station are sarnun,” Piper remarked, trying to get Anna’s attention onto something else. “Looks like business is good.”

  “Chemicals from the sarnun perfumeries seeped into the soil over time,” Anna droned on, “and modified several species of existing flora to produce the bioluminescence, but the reaction was most evident in the night-blooming flora, obviously. Isn’t that fascinating, Piper?”

  “Sure, almost as impressive as your ability to soak up all that information and yet completely ignore me when I tell you to save it for later,” Piper said. “Anna, you need to focus. Why don’t you fix that amazing brain on helping me find Raenoll’s place?”

  Piper figured the most likely place to start looking would be in the merchant district, near the sarnun perfumeries. Tevshal was very different from Scrap Town Sixteen, Piper realized as they walked. It was much bigger and cleaner, with sturdy, beautiful buildings, and the people—an equal mix of humans and sarnuns—seemed happier, more prosperous. Probably because Tevshal’s major business was perfume, so they’d been much less affected by the iron shortage than other places in the Merrow Kingdom.

  As they pressed further into the knot of buildings, the sarnun influence in the city became more apparent. The sarnun shops were stone tunnel vaults with copper pipes running along the outside. More silver flowers grew in arches over the doorways. According to signs on the doors, the merchants and their families lived beneath the shops in underground tunnels snaking throughout the city. Sarnuns preferred the cool, damp dark of the underground and shied away from the sun because it was hard on their skin. Aboveground, it was impossible to tell where one shop ended and another began. They all spilled together in the long, narrow vaults. Evidently, the sarnuns didn’t believe in walls the way humans did. Of course, since the sarnuns communicated mind to mind, they probably didn’t see the need for physical barriers either.

  Piper glanced uneasily behind them. It was after dark and they were deep in the city, out of sight of the train station. This was the best time for the slavers to be out looking for targets. The only bit of good luck was that the streets were still bustling with foot traffic and sintee-drawn carriages, and it seemed the shops were in no danger of closing anytime soon. It was a safe bet slavers wouldn’t try to snatch them while there were so many potential witnesses around.

  An avenue of glowing silver flowers led them to an open, cobblestoned square lined with shops and restaurants. Cheerful organ music flowed from a garden in the center of the square. Following the music, they entered an area of sculpted hedges surrounding a large carousel where a myriad of animals cavorted in frozen poses. Charging horses, sintees, grapa hounds, and grizzly bears turned in a circle, their metallic skins reflecting the night eye flowers and lighting up the square with dazzling copper and silver glows. Piper’s mouth fell open. She’d never seen a carousel in real life, only in pictures or miniatures. This one was ten times as impressive as any of those.

  “Look at that!” Anna cried, poised to bolt to the carousel.

  “Wait.” Piper grabbed the girl’s arm. “I don’t want us to lose each other in the crowd. I told you, this place is dangerous.”

  “I know, but it’s a system of simultaneous moving parts—rotating platform, supporting sweeps, and suspended, posed figures, all of it powered by the steam engine in the center. Look, you can see the smoke.” She pointed to the carousel’s domed top, where the steam and smoke escaped like a whistling teapot. “And look! The animals can blink and turn their heads. I wonder how they’re accomplishing that. Really, it’s a beautiful set of integrated systems that—”

  Piper held up a hand. “You’re doing it again.”

  Anna blinked. “Doing what?”

  “Talking like a book, like you—” Piper stopped herself, realizing what must be going on. “Did you read a book on rare carousels too?”

  “No, I just … I know it, somehow.” Anna stared at the carousel, transfixed and confused. She tugged on Piper’s arm. “Can I ride it? Please, Piper, can I?”

  Piper sighed. “At least that sounded normal. It’s your money; you can ride on it if you want, just don’t wander off afterward. Come right back here.”

  She gave Anna a couple of coins and went to wait beside the hedges while the girl bought a ticket. The ticket taker opened the gate, and Anna climbed on the back of one of the big grapa hounds. Piper would have chosen a horse herself. They looked much nobler and more beautiful, with their curlicued copper manes flying in an imaginary wind—not that she was interested in riding on carousels. The grapas were just too fat, and their lumpy tusks always made them look a little silly. But Anna clung happily to the metal beast’s back and grinned at Piper as the platform started to turn.

  All dressed up and sparkly, yet Anna wa
s right: at its heart, the carousel was an impressive machine. Piper strolled around the fence to get a better view. She paused when she noticed the engineer standing near the ticket booth.

  “How are you making the heads and eyes move?” she asked him by way of introduction. “Individual mainsprings?”

  The engineer looked surprised, but then he nodded. “I wind ’em all up before every other ride, same time I check the pressure on the engine—got an eighty-seven-key Alcastra organ up there too to take care of.”

  Piper let out a whistle—that was a lot to keep an eye on at once. “Impressive.” She watched a thick-bodied bear with a jeweled saddle pass by and narrowed her eyes at it. “You might want to check Mr. Grizzly there when the ride’s done. Something’s off with his hanger—it’s wobbling. Might be a problem with the crank.”

  “How do you—” Blinking, the engineer looked where she pointed. Slowly, he nodded. “Good eye you’ve got. I’ll check it out.”

  “Lot of systems to manage for one carousel ride,” Piper said, but she thought it would make for an enjoyable challenge.

  He grunted. “Don’t I know it. Something’s always busting on this thing.”

  Piper’s gaze roamed over the carousel again. “Other than the bear, it looks like it’s running pretty good to me.”

  “First time ever,” the engineer said, scratching at the beard stubble on his chin. “Can’t figure out what I did right this time.”

  Piper understood his confusion. I’ve had my own experience with touchy machines, she thought, feeling the weight of the pocket watch she wore around her neck. “Well, good job anyway,” she said. “I’d better be going.”

  She waved goodbye to the engineer, who tipped his hat to her. She wandered among the hedges, past a small fountain with a stone mermaid reclining on a rock, and she sat down on a bench to rest, making sure she still had a clear view of Anna on the carousel.

  Across the square, a man and a woman came out of a candy shop carrying four caramel apples on sticks. Two little boys younger than Micah waited eagerly on a bench outside the shop. They jumped up and ran to their parents, hands reaching for the caramel treats.