by Kate Milford
No, right now, Sorcha was placid, confident, even defiant. Whatever the others in the room were thinking or feeling or guessing, Sorcha knew, and Sorcha was not afraid. And with that realization, Maisie decided she needn’t be afraid either.
Now Sullivan’s changeable eyes flicked up at Captain Frost. “And you thought I was going to tell a seiche tale. Should we take that to mean you think there’s a seiche in Nagspeake who hasn’t found her sacrifice?” Sullivan smiled. His straight white teeth shone in the firelight. “If there is, you must hope she finds someone soon, or we shall all be washed away.” His grin faded. “I confess I would find that supremely unfair.”
“I don’t suppose it isn’t a she, but a he?” Frost asked harshly.
“He?” Sullivan grinned again. “What say you, Mr. Amalgam? What’s the lore tell about that?”
The old folklorist shrugged. “Can’t say I’ve encountered that variant in the tales I’ve come across, but logic says it must be possible.”
Despite Sullivan’s grin, a palpable tension had filled the space between the captain and the river-eyed man with the scar. “You came here looking for something, didn’t you?” the captain asked.
“Of course I did. Why else does anyone go anywhere?”
“Did you find it?”
Sullivan leaned his elbows on his knees, his whiskey glass clasped in both hands between them. “Landsman, what I came looking for isn’t here to find.”
“Landsman?” Frost glared at him. “Captain for twenty years, commodore for ten, and you call me a landsman?”
“I do.” The young man’s teeth flashed again in what was just barely a smile and not a snarl. “You are. And if you really believe what you’re hinting at, then you know that I, of anyone, have the right to say it.”
Captain Frost shoved out of his chair, crossed the parlor in two strides, and yanked Sullivan to his feet, sloshing whiskey onto the younger man’s battered leather shoes and his own old boots—otterskin boots, had anyone happened to looked closely at them. “Make it stop,” he snarled into the young man’s face. “You’ll make it stop now, if I have to throw you into the maw of the river myself!”
The hot water coils in their iron case above the sideboard gave a sudden thudding rattle, and the room broke into commotion, but with a strange, reluctant delay, as if somehow everyone present had to remind themselves that this lurch from charged words into the physical wasn’t just another bit of storytelling. The innkeeper was fastest. “Belay, there, Captain,” Mr. Haypotten said quickly, hurrying forward with his hands fluttering in rapid and distressed gestures.
But the young man merely shook his head, and something about the motion was enough to halt Mr. Haypotten in his tracks. Sullivan passed his empty glass to Petra, then took hold of Frost’s hands and pried his fingers from his lapels as easily as if he were peeling back the skin of an orange. “The water wants nothing from me, Captain,” he said softly. “Nor has it these twenty years.”
Ignoring the eyes staring at him, Sullivan turned and looked darkly out at the rain pelting the riverward windows. “My sacrifice was made.”
When he turned back to the room, it was not Captain Frost to whom he spoke, but to the upraised face of Petra, who was still seated at the other end of the sofa.
“Once upon a time, I stood before a girl,” he said, “and I told her, ‘I don’t want you to do that for me’ and ‘I can’t ask that of you’ and ‘I can’t let you.’ And she answered ‘But I want to do this for you’ and ‘You don’t have to ask,’ and then, finally, because we both knew I couldn’t stop her—or rather, because she thought I couldn’t stop her and I knew I wouldn’t really try—she walked into the river. And it took her the way the river does. And here I am. I am this.” He took a breath with a catch in it, and when he spoke again, though his eyes stayed on Petra, his voice was pitched to address the whole room. “No, Captain. That water is rising in the wake of some other, or perhaps for another reason entirely. And the river will not be fooled by a false sacrifice, so let’s have no one in this room start thinking of walking out into the flood. It would do no good.”
He turned to stare at Captain Frost, who glared back, clenching and unclenching his fists. Then Frost glanced at his half-hour glass, remembered that he had turned it but had not gone to check the weather, and stalked out of the room.
Maisie spoke up, tentatively. “She must have loved you so much, whoever she was.”
At that, Sullivan snapped to attention. “No,” he said sharply, pointing an emphatic finger at her. “Weren’t you listening, Maisie? If you ever do read the seiche tales, you should know that this is where the lie comes into the lore. The stories are full of romance, and they make the sacrifice seem noble, even beautiful. But it’s a seduction, and nothing more. What it isn’t is love.”
“I know why the seiche are conflated with otters,” Sorcha said, arms folded. “Because otters are sleek, handsome, playful creatures. You forget they’re predators. They have a nasty bite, and they crack open the bodies of the creatures they eat with rocks.”
Sullivan met her hard, black eyes, and a whole conversation passed rapidly between them.
Met one or two, have you?
Look at me. Look where I live. More than one, and I’m still standing.
Sullivan inclined his head. Touché. “You may be right. But seiche are worse than predators. True predators kill to live, and though it can be terrible to witness, every creature has the right to at least attempt to survive. But seiche demand their sacrifices simply out of a wish to change their own circumstances. They’re not predators. They’re monsters.”
“But they’ll die if they go back into the water,” Maisie protested.
“They know that when they come ashore,” Sullivan said shortly. “No seiche stumbles ashore and stays there until its gills fail by accident.” He crossed to the girl seated on the floor by the castle and crouched before her, sitting on his haunches with his head lowered an inch or two so that he could look her in the eye. “Love can hurt. Love can be one-sided. And sometimes love requires sacrifices, too. But love is not predatory. Wherever you go from here, please be wary of anyone who demands to be given your heart rather than asking to be invited into it. Please.”
The girl nodded, shivering, unable to look away from that river-colored gaze. “I will.”
He held her eyes a moment longer, then pushed himself awkwardly up to his feet—Petra, watchful, observed, That makes twice—retrieved his glass, and went to the sideboard to refill it. Somehow, though he moved as if he were slightly drunk, he managed to avoid knocking over the card castle.
He set his glass down beside the bottles with a soft thump, and it was as if a bit of sorcery that had lain over the room, perhaps the same spell that had kept everyone from moving faster in the moment when Frost had grabbed Sullivan, burst like a bubble.
Mr. Haypotten cleared his throat and rubbed his scalp again as if brushing cobwebs from it. “Let’s get these put back, then,” he said, reaching for the case clock that Sorcha had set on the floor beside the hearth. “How’s that coffee holding out, love?” he asked in a voice full of false blustery cheer. His wife checked the samovar, then clucked to herself and wheeled it out. “Perhaps some more biscuits, too,” he called after her as the door shut. “Blast,” he muttered, reaching for the tree music box, which Mrs. Haypotten had stowed on the corner table where Jessamy Butcher sat, half-hidden by shadow and tapping gloved fingers on the tabletop. “Don’t imagine she heard.” When the box was back in place, he went out after his wife.
Reever rose from his chair before the fire and stalked to the sideboard, where he gave Sullivan a brief, steadying clap on one shoulder. Then he filled two glasses with sherry and turned toward the table in the corner just as Jessamy got to her feet. “I believe I’ll just take a quick turn up the stairs and back to stretch,” she said quickly. “Sorcha, are there anything like lap blankets about?”
“I’ll find some,” the maid said, looking critic
ally at the fire. “I didn’t like to make it up too strong, not with the young lady and gentleman building their castle so near.”
“I completely agree.” Jessamy and Sorcha left the room together. Maisie muttered something about the water closet and darted after them.
Reever, still holding two glasses, watched them leave. Then he changed direction and went to join his brother, who sat in one of the chairs by the display case. Reever handed Negret a sherry and dropped into the empty chair Frost had temporarily taken over and then abandoned, along with the half-hour glass that still stood on the table between the chairs.
Madame Grisaille, who had been silent since finishing her tale, stood and reached out a long, thin hand to Sullivan. “I, too, could stand a bit of a stroll,” she said in that voice that was so like the turning of stone grinding wheels. “Would you be so kind?”
Sullivan chuckled humorlessly. He finished the liquor in his glass, then crossed the room and took her hand. “Certainly, madam. Let’s go make sure old Frost hasn’t gone to try to stop the flood by main force.”
As she swept from the room, both Colophon brothers touched their knuckles to their foreheads in a gesture Frost would’ve recognized as the same obeisance sailors made to captains aboard a ship. Madame acknowledged this with a small, amused twist of her mouth as she swept out in a rustle of skirt and shawl, leaving Reever and Negret, Antony Masseter, Tesserian, Sangwin, Phineas Amalgam, and Petra still in the parlor.
Tesserian got to his feet, muttering, “Stay,” as he extricated himself from the card-built landscape on the floor. He looked around at the others. “Who’s for a smoke, while there’s a break?” The twins shook their heads, but Amalgam rose from his seat and Sangwin retrieved his glass from the windowsill. “Masseter?” Sangwin asked as he crossed the parlor. “I owe you for the cigar earlier.”
The peddler nodded. “I’ll meet you in there.” As the others left for the public bar, Masseter strolled over to Petra, who had not moved from her corner of the sofa all night. “Have you decided on a tale, then?” he asked, his one green eye glittering in the light of the tall floor lamp just behind the sofa.
She smiled up at him. “Just deciding on the ending. I think I’ll hold out to be last, if I can. What about you?”
He nodded. “I’ll tell one, though I’m still deciding which. A traveling chapman gathers tales, but we’ve had so many peddler tales already. Peddlers, tricksters, gamblers, and lovers.” He reached into his pocket and took out a small cigar and a folding knife. “I rather wish I could think of something completely different.” Masseter opened the knife and cut a notch in the end of his cigar. “Any requests?” He raised his voice and turned to include the twins in the question.
Reever said nothing. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something,” Negret replied, flashing a grin with too many teeth in it and somehow still managing to keep the expression friendly. Masseter acknowledged this with a careless nod of his head and looked down at Petra again.
“Oh, ask Maisie,” she said breezily. “I already had my story requests honored.”
“Yes, you did, didn’t you?” Masseter eyed her curiously. “Both of them. What made you ask for those, I wonder? The first one especially. And where did you hear it? Amalgam says it wasn’t one of his.”
Petra got to her feet. “He’s mistaken. That, or he isn’t actually responsible for every single piece of lore in Nagspeake. Excuse me.”
As she walked out of the parlor, she paused beside the chair where Reever Colophon sat staring moodily at Frost’s half-hour glass. A sympathetic glance passed between them.
“What is there to say?” Reever asked quietly.
“Nothing that would make a difference, perhaps,” Petra said.
Negret spoke up. “But you’re here, and so is she.”
“For now,” Reever said, his voice bleak.
“For now,” Petra agreed. “It’s not nothing.” She crouched to watch the last few grains of sand fall from the top bulb of the glass, reached out, and turned it.
Masseter had strolled to the French doors during this exchange, the better to light his cigar near a window and politely ignore the conversation. When Petra had gone, he also departed, heading for the public bar, to which the other smokers had decamped, and leaving only a faint wisp of sweet smoke in his wake. The parlor fell quiet around the tattooed brothers, who were accustomed to silence and did not feel obligated to break it.
NINE
The Tavern at Night
Jessamy and Sorcha went up to the attic, where Sorcha thought she’d most recently seen the collection of small blankets she’d made the year Mrs. Haypotten had taught her to knit. She could’ve gone to the linen cabinet for everyday quilts instead, but the attic had other useful things in it as well.
The maid pointed Jessamy toward the corner where she knew the chest of blankets full of uneven edges and slipped stitches to be, then took herself off to a different corner to rifle through a trunk that had been up there since before even the Haypottens had bought the tavern. She emerged a few minutes later and went to Jessamy on the far side of the attic with three pairs of antique but pristine gloves in her hand.
“Will these fit you, miss?” Sorcha asked. “See if they might, and I’ll see what I can do about the stains on yours, if you like.” She considered mentioning the bloodstained blond lock currently tucked behind Jessamy’s ear and decided to wait until they were downstairs again and closer to a washbasin.
Jessamy took the proffered gloves wordlessly. Her pink-clad fingers roved over the offering as she searched for words. “I think they’ll fit perfectly,” she said at last. “But I’ll wait to try them on until I’m certain the bleeding won’t start again.” She tucked the gloves very carefully into the pocket of her dress. “Thank you.”
* * *
Outside, where the road met the river, Captain Frost stood with the toes of his sea boots at the water’s edge. His eyes were closed under his tarpaulin hat, and he hummed an old shanty under his breath as the rain pounded down on him.
Sullivan, hands in his pockets and head unprotected from the weather, went to stand at his side. “Sometimes the rain is just the rain,” the younger man said.
“Tell yourself that, do you?” There was still bite in the captain’s tone, but it lacked the conviction it had carried before.
“Every day.”
“And do you believe it?”
Sullivan shook his head. “No.”
“At sea,” the captain said after a moment, “weather always means something. To believe anything less is to put an entire ship at risk.”
Sullivan said nothing. He sat on a rock beside the road, propped his elbows on his knees in the darkness and the downpour, and watched the captain with eyes that had no trouble finding enough light, even on a sodden and moonless night, to see the shifting expressions on the old mariner’s face. And he waited.
“What did you come here looking for, if your sacrifice was made so long ago?” Frost asked at last.
“The same things I always look for,” Sullivan said, blinking back the rain. “A way to live in the world after what I’ve done. A way to live among them. A way to pay. Atonement.”
“I thought you might say ‘forgiveness.’”
He shook his head. “The only person who could give that can’t do it, and if she could, I wouldn’t ask it. It isn’t for her to make me feel better about what I did.”
“They say all you need is to repent.” The captain spoke bitterly.
Sullivan shook his head slowly. “That’s for whatever lies beyond.” He watched the old man carefully. “I looked it up, you know, ‘repentance.’ Trying to find out what I ought to do with the pain and the regret. And I kept finding the words ‘turn’ and ‘return.’ Turn from evil, return to the good. But the only way I could find to apply it all to me—the only things I could turn from and turn to—was to turn away from the banks and return to the river. And you see I haven’t done that.”
“Would i
t bring her back?”
Sullivan shook his head. “No more than it would stop this flood. If I thought it could, I would try. I wish there was a grand gesture to make that would mean something, but I think perhaps that would be too easy.” The captain said nothing, but his stony face was damp despite the tarpaulin hat. Sullivan hesitated, then asked gently, “How many souls, Commodore?”
Frost’s chin rose a fraction of an inch. “Two hundred, between the battle and the storm.”
“How long ago?”
The captain looked at the young man at last. “Should that matter?” he asked curiously.
Sullivan tilted his head indifferently. “Some would say yes, but I imagine only the ones who’ve never been responsible for the death of another.”
* * *
In the doorway of the tavern, Madame Grisaille stood under the cover of the inn’s porch roof, watching the backs of the two men. She considered calling, debated going back to the kitchens for mugs of warm coffee or chocolate, and decided at last that time and solitude were what was wanted. She slid one thin, patchy hand from the white fur muff, then reached out and touched the twisted old iron lamppost beside the porch for a moment. A shivery vibration thrummed through the iron and into the ground. Then Grisaille watched as, down beside the road, camouflaged by night and rain and the old, old pain of the two men at the edge of the floodwater, stems of dark iron reached up out of the soil and stretched skyward into the torrent.
Unnoticed—or ignored—by Sullivan and Frost, the iron stems grew and branched and arched over their heads, fronds reaching for each other from either side of the lane and twining themselves together into a canopy wrought of irregular braided and knotted metal tendrils. Here and there broad iron leaves sprouted like roof tiles, diverting most of the rain away from the men below.
Madame Grisaille nodded, satisfied, and went back inside, where she found Maisie returning from the water closet. “A dance before bed,” Madame said. “The telling is finished for tonight, I believe.”