Song of the Current

by Sarah Tolcser

  I tapped the side of my nose with my finger. “And that’s a secret for you. So we’re even.”

  She pouted. “But it’s not very fun, is it? You just got here.”

  Every moment I stayed, I ran the risk of being nabbed by my mother. And Markos was waiting. I said my farewells and slipped down the hall, regret pulling at me. My cousins blithely assumed I’d be back this summer. They had no way of knowing that by then I might be dead at the hands of the Black Dogs.

  I turned. “Good-bye,” I whispered at the closed door.

  Back in my room, I had to contort myself to reach the laces of that stiff dress, but I dared not ring the bell for the maid. She would want to oil and braid my hair, help me wash up, and all manner of nonsense I didn’t have time for.

  A creak on the landing warned me of Ma’s approach.

  The maid had laid something on the bed that looked like a bolt of lace had gotten in a fight with another bolt of lace and lost. Mouth pulling to one side in disgust, I flung the gown over my head just as I heard footsteps outside the door. I blew out the candle and dove under the covers.

  The door banged open. “All right, Caro, what’s this business with the—” Ma’s strident voice trailed off.

  It was impossible that she couldn’t hear the hitch in my breath and the hammering of my heart. I let my lips part slightly, relaxing my fingers where they lay curled on the pillow.

  She stood there so long that after a while I thought I must be imagining it. Surely she had crept from the room and gone. I breathed steadily, willing my muscles to go slack. Finally I heard the soles of her boots brush the rug, followed by the whisper of the door hinges.

  What was the meaning of it—and why hadn’t she shaken me awake to question me? With Pa, I knew where I stood. But she was … different. Sometimes I wished she wasn’t so good at the bargaining table. I was never quite sure what she was feeling or thinking, and I was her daughter. Ma’s mind was constantly ticking, looking for angles and upsides and ways for Bollard Company to get ahead. To her, revolution in Akhaia meant potential business opportunities.

  One thing was certain. I couldn’t trust her with this secret.

  A change in the shadows made my eyes snap open. I sat straight up in bed, hand scrabbling on the bureau for my pistol.

  Markos squatted on the window ledge, blocking the moonlight. His long coat trailed behind him.

  I kicked aside the sheets. “How did you get in here?”

  He jumped lightly down. “I saw you cross in front of the window, before the light went out. So I climbed up the trellis.” I could tell he was very pleased with himself, despite the grass stain on his jacket. “What are you wearing?”

  I’d forgotten about the monstrosity of a nightgown. “Never mind,” I growled, crossing my arms over myself. “I thought I told you to wait for me in the garden.”

  “You said you were right behind me. That was half an hour ago. I got worried.”

  “I’m fine, but we must leave Siscema at once. Turn around.” I cast around the floor for my clothes. “Bother it. The maid’s taken my shirt. And my underthings.” My hand came to rest on a pile of bunched-up fabric. “Wait. She’s left the pants. Blessings in small things.”

  The ridiculous nightgown hung off my shoulders, its lacy yoke ruffling down my front. I grabbed the hem and twisted it into a thick bunch, shoving it down the back of my trousers. Taking the pistol from the bureau, I shrugged into my oilskin coat.

  “All right, you can turn around,” I said. “But know that if you laugh, I won’t hesitate to shoot you and give your body to the Black Dogs.”

  Markos’s profile was outlined by the faint light from the window. “Caro, are you sure we’re doing the right thing? The Bollards are a rich and powerful house. They can help us. Why are we running?”

  “The Bollards care about profit.” I raised my eyebrows. “How much is an Emparch worth to them, I wonder?”

  Uncle Bolaji seemed to disapprove of the Theucinians’ bloody coup, but Ma had been her usual pragmatic self. I didn’t think the Bollards cared who held the throne of Akhaia, as long as the Emparch was favorable to trade.

  “You don’t trust your own mother?” he asked.

  “She’s a Bollard first and a mother second.” I balanced on the end of the bed, shoving my right foot into my boot.

  “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”

  I smiled in the dark. “She wouldn’t agree.”

  The floorboards creaked as he walked to the window. “Do you think we might pass by the Akhaian Consulate on the way back to the docks? I have an idea.”

  I eyed the trellis below the window. It had supported Markos’s weight, so I guessed it was sturdy enough. I would hate to escape from the Black Dogs only to fall to my death from a fourth-story window. “It better be something useful.”

  The light from the gate lamp made his eyes shine. “Are guns and blades useful?”

  I didn’t know what to make of this Markos. He seemed to be savoring this adventure. Even more surprisingly, he wasn’t bad at it.

  As I swung my leg over the windowsill, I said something I would never in a thousand years have anticipated. “Lead the way.”

  A damp mist still hovered low over the city. The Akhaian Consulate was dark except for a light in one upstairs window. Under the peak of the roof, a giant stone cat’s head jutted out. Lamplight fell through its carved fangs to cast gruesome shadows on the wall.

  “Are you going to be Tarquin Meridios again?” I whispered.

  “No, of course not. Anyone who really works here will recognize me immediately.” Markos glanced at the cat’s head, then swept his gaze down. He looked as if he was measuring something. “Every consulate is supposed to have a safe house. There’ll be a secret door somewhere. With the Emparch’s seal on it.”

  I nodded toward the front entrance. A guard was posted there, musket strapped to his back. “Careful.”

  Markos ducked into the narrow alley. He examined the cornerstone, running his hand across the surface. Feeling along the wall, we crept toward the back of the building.

  He stopped. “It’s here.”

  It looked like scratching on a brick to me. He pushed, and the wall descended inward with the creak of rusted gears. I held my breath, hoping the guard wouldn’t come around the corner to investigate the noise.

  Markos fumbled inside the opening. “Oh, excellent,” he said. I heard a snap and the smell of sulphur—an alchemical match. He held a candle lantern aloft, beckoning to me.

  I swallowed at the sight of those stairs leading into a mouth of blackness, but followed him down. The flickering light illuminated a tiny round room.

  Swords and axes hung from hooks on the walls, along with one wicked-looking curved weapon I could not identify. A number of boxes rested on tables around the edges of the room. At least one had coins stuffed into it. More weapons were scattered on the tabletops, and bundles of fabric too. A ghostly gray layer of dust covered all.

  Markos went straight for a pair of short swords. “A cache of weapons and other useful things,” he explained, sliding one of the blades out of its sheath to examine it. Seemingly satisfied, he hooked the sheath to a broad leather belt. “Placed here for just this contingency.” He buckled the other sword to the left side of the belt. “It doesn’t look like any of this has been touched for a hundred years.”

  I spun, taking in the wealth around us. “It’s wonderful.”

  “Do you see anything you want?”

  “I’ll stick with Pa’s pistol, thanks. I know how to use it.”

  “I think you should take a sword,” he said. “In case.”

  “I’d rather take a dagger. I can throw a knife. Pa has me practice.”

  He flipped a dagger over in his hands. “How good are you?” he asked, tossing it to me. “Could you kill a man with a knife?”

  I caught it. The scabbard had a pretty pattern of vines and scrollwork. “I’ve never tried.”

  Could I? I pride
d myself on my accuracy with a knife, but there had never been a flesh-and-blood person at the other end. Pulling the blade out a few inches, I traced the curlicues along the handle. I wouldn’t dare throw something this fine, when I mightn’t get it back. I buckled the knife to my belt, but knew I would never use it except as a last resort.

  Markos dropped three coins into my hand with a lopsided grin. “For your father. To repay him for the coat.”

  Rifling through a small chest, he tugged out a scarf. He draped it around his shoulders in the old-fashioned style and fastened it with a gold pin in the shape of a wreath.

  I eyed it dubiously. “Isn’t that going to get in your way if we end up in a fight?”

  He glanced down at himself, lips tightening. “You’re right.” He unwound it.

  “Wait, what’s that?” A glint of gold had caught the light. I shoved the rest of the clothes aside. At the bottom of the chest was a set of gold pistols with engraved bone handles. They were nestled in a velvet case, one pointing left and the other pointing right.

  I touched the barrel of one of the guns. The metalwork was exquisite. I could pick out flowers and flourishes and a lounging mountain cat, its tail curved around the handle. The cat was set into a circle with words running around the outside in a script I could not read. Its eyes were tiny gems.

  “That’s the royal crest of Akhaia,” Markos said.

  I wished he hadn’t told me. I didn’t feel fit to carry a set of pistols like that. “These weren’t meant for me.”

  And yet there was something familiar about them. Something I’d seen before. Shock running through me, I remembered my dream—walking the deck of the cutter Victorianos as she raced the waves. My hand had trailed down the rail, the wood smooth under my fingers. Seagulls circled and dove around me. On my head I wore a three-cornered hat and at my waist—a set of matched gold pistols.

  Exactly like these.

  I stumbled back, my breath tight in my chest.

  Markos, busy examining the pistols, hadn’t noticed. “Well? Aren’t you going to take them?” He looked expectantly at me. “You’re a much better shot than me.”

  “It’s not—not right.” I wetted my lips. “They’re so much fancier than your swords.”

  Coincidence. That’s all it was. Only oracles dreamed true dreams. I’d been thinking of the Black Dogs when I fell asleep two nights ago. Letters of marque. Privateers. It had all gotten jumbled up in my dream somehow. Surely lots of people had gold pistols. Well, lots of rich people anyway.

  “Caro.” He tilted his head. “I’m the Emparch. All these things belong to me. I’m giving them to you.”

  Another compartment in the chest held a crisscrossing leather harness, meant to be worn under a man’s jacket. Strapping it on, I adjusted the buckles down to the smallest hole. I lifted the pistols from their box, still feeling strange about it.

  Oblivious to my hesitation, Markos moved on. He brushed the dust away from a glass on the wall, leaning in close.

  “This is the first decent mirror I’ve seen in ages,” he said. “My hair is a dreadful mess. I don’t know how people manage without a valet.” He sighed. “You’re going to make fun of me for that, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  There was nothing the matter with his hair. It looked exactly as it always did. All at once my fingers got a strange twitch, as if they might reach up and touch it.

  I jerked away. “Your hair is fine.” I picked a string of beads, pretending to admire it. “Don’t fish for compliments. It’s not becoming.”

  “A man who fished for compliments from you would find himself with an empty hook and no dinner,” he grumbled.

  I clapped my hands. “Markos! You sound like a wherryman.”

  “Oh, shut up.” I saw him trying to hide his smile.

  I turned from side to side to see my image in the glass, admiring the way the lamplight sparkled on my new pistols. Free of the net, my hair bounced around my shoulders, a mass of reddish-brown corkscrew curls. I leaned closer to examine my face.

  Markos noticed. “You know, the girls in Akhaia put juice from the orangeflower on their freckles to fade them.”

  It was just like him to pick the one thing I was self-conscious about. Some girls had a dusting of dainty freckles, but mine were big and blotchy.

  “Ayah? Do they be wearing fine hats too, and sitting all day indoors?” I rolled my eyes. “I work on a wherry. In the sun. Orangeflower won’t do anything.”

  “I didn’t mean you don’t look nice,” he muttered.

  A shadow blocked the arched doorway.

  A man in sailors’ clothes stood on the stairs. He grinned, revealing a rotted tooth. Light from the sputtering lantern shone on his long, curved blade. He certainly didn’t look like he worked for the Akhaian Consulate.

  “So it is you. Philemon did be thinking it was.” Boots scraping heavily, he stepped down. “You have the Andela look about you, to be sure.”

  Markos’s face froze. “I don’t know what you’d know about it,” he snapped with scorn, drawing both swords in one sweeping motion.

  The man laughed. Markos’s snobbish remark had only confirmed he was exactly who the Black Dogs suspected. He truly was an idiot sometimes.

  My new pistols weren’t loaded. I slowly snuck my hand around my belt, reaching for the dagger.

  The man gestured with his blade. “Try it and I’ll gut you like a trout.”

  Time seemed to slow as I calculated—the length of his sword, the number of steps to cross the small room, how long it might conceivably take to gut someone like a trout.

  Everything happened at once. The man lunged, light flashing on steel. The gilt and lace trim on Markos’s coattails darted out into the dark like twin serpents striking. He jumped between me and the pirate. Before I had time to be afraid for him, the man was down on the floor, clutching his throat.

  Blood spurted from his neck, pooling in a widening circle on the stones. His slick red hand twitched and fell away, limp. I didn’t know where to look. It was so messy.

  Markos straightened, a dark-stained blade in each hand. A metallic smell filled the room.

  “You know,” I said, my voice sounding high and disconnected, “I much prefer pistols.”

  The rushing in my ears grew louder, and I stumbled. The floor lurched alarmingly toward me. Something clattered on the stones.

  A warm, painful grip encircled my arm. Markos dragged me up so hard my jacket bit into my underarms.

  “Ow,” I said vaguely from what seemed like ten miles away. My ears roared.

  “You were going to faint.” His fingers twisted into my coat sleeve. “Why didn’t you tell me you aren’t good around blood?”

  “How am I supposed to know that? I’ve never seen so much blood in my life.” I swallowed, letting my eyes go unfocused so I wouldn’t have to see the blood spray on his shirt. The hot buzzing in my head began to fade.

  “Better?” He loosened his hold.

  I pulled away, fixing my jacket. “It just seems to me you might’ve killed him in a less disgusting way.”

  I refused to look at the dead man as I stepped over his leg. Bracing myself against the wall of the staircase, I gulped in cool river air. I was not feeling dizzy. I wasn’t. That kind of thing only happened to town girls. Behind me I heard a swishing sound. Markos, wiping his swords on the dead pirate’s clothes.

  “I didn’t expect you would faint,” he said. “You’re not afraid of anything.”

  “I didn’t faint.” My cheeks burned. “I’m not afraid.”

  “Many men get sick after they kill for the first time,” he said. “Many warriors.”

  “Did you?”

  “I’ve never killed anyone.” His voice shook. “Till now.” The fabric of his jacket stirred. I knew he was glancing over his shoulder at the dead man.

  “I did not need to know that,” I muttered.

  Markos brushed at the cuffs of Pa’s shirt, which only smeared the blood specks. “I d
on’t feel ill,” he said, a look of distaste crossing his face. “Just … dirty.”

  The fear I didn’t have time for earlier came rushing in, making my heart flutter. “What are we going to do with the—with him?”

  Inhaling, he turned his back on the dead man. “Leave him here, I suppose. With the door closed, it’s not likely they’ll ever find him.”

  When someone next opened the secret room, there might be only a dusty skeleton left. I shivered, and not from the night air. It seemed a gruesome fate.

  On the way back to the wherry, we kept to the shadows. If Philemon had thought to send someone to the consulate, he likely had men all over the city looking for us. The scent of the river was potent at night and somehow still wild in spite of the urban surroundings. We followed it to the harbor, finally rounding the corner of the last warehouse.

  My throat almost closing in panic, I frantically sought Cormorant. She lay at rest in the Bollard docks, the familiar curve of her bulk rising out of the dark water, exactly where I’d left her. One lantern winked high up in her stays.

  I exhaled in relief. “Fee!” I called softly as we boarded.

  In the dark, we loosed and raised the mainsail. Markos helped, with Fee tapping his hand to give him wordless directions. Not fifty feet away from us lay Alektor. I was too scared to breathe.

  “Caro!”

  Ma jogged down the dock, followed by her two bodyguards. Was this why she hadn’t woken me up—because she intended to search Cormorant herself, behind my back? All I knew was I couldn’t let her stop us. I undid the last mooring warp.

  “Caro, what’s all this about a stolen cargo? How did you get mixed up with the Black Dogs? Wait!”

  I cast off. Cormorant slipped out of her berth, moving sluggishly.

  Ma strode along the dock in her tall boots, keeping pace with us. She lifted her head, and her eyes seized on Markos. “Who are you, really?” she demanded.

  I knew he thought I was making a mistake. Yet he stood back and said nothing, deliberately leaving the choice to me. For one desperate moment, I hesitated. It wasn’t too late to throw her a rope. To turn back. The Bollards had schooners and barks and brigs—large seagoing ships, armed with long nines. I only had a wherry.