Beneath Ceaseless Skies #21

by Phillips, Holly; Campion, Harry R.

  “I’ll go out again,” Zel said, feeling the prison walls already growing up around them.

  Gannet turned on her with a blank look, a stranger’s look, and then softened. “No, darling.” She softened further. “No, darling, not this time. For once, I am going to be the one to pull us out of trouble by the scruff of our necks. It’s too cold, and these people are too dangerous. Goodness knows what you’ll find in the next house you break into, there is probably a lot worse happening in this city than a dead bird or two. No, this time it’s for me to do.” She slid the bills aside and reached for a fresh sheet of paper and a pen.

  “Do what?” Zel tried to keep the desperation out of her voice. What could Gannet do? What had she ever done? But this time Zel was too far out of her native element, here in this cold land of bloody-handed witches, and she did not know herself what could be done. So if she asked in desperation, it was a desperation tinged with hope. “What can you do?”

  “My dear, I am writing Willam a love letter.”

  Zel said nothing. Feeling again the witch’s knife at her throat, the witch’s hand over her mouth, she could summon no voice for a reply. They were doomed.

  Gannet, bent at her writing desk, smiled over her pen.

  * * *

  Gannet wrote it, but of course it was Zel who delivered it, not knowing what it said.

  The Torrend butler took the letter but would not let her leave. He left her under the eyes of a footman and carried the letter off into the depths of the house. The footman, broad enough to be one of the captain’s soldiers, eyed her but said nothing. There was a fire crackling under a plain granite mantelpiece. On the mantel, two lamps. Above them, an enormous fan of polished swords.

  The Bodils had an owl over their fireplace. Zel, standing in the Inquisitor’s hall, felt that she had trapped herself—no, that Gannet had trapped her—between the witches and their enemies, like a mouse caught between the owl and the fox. Feeling the footman’s stare, she reminded herself that she was a servant, only a servant, of interest to no one. It didn’t help. Freedom and safety were calling her from the cold on the other side of the door.

  “I don’t think,” she said to the footman, “that my mistress was expecting an answer.”

  The footman made a scornful sound. “It’s not what your mistress expects, it’s what the captain wants.”

  “You don’t know he—”

  “You don’t know he doesn’t.” The scorn was now tinged with curiosity. “Don’t they train servants where you’re from?”

  Where Zel was from, servants were slaves, born, not trained. She said nothing, though her heart was beating in her throat. The butler returned with a magisterial tread.

  Captain Torrend was a tall man, as most of these northerners were. He had closely trimmed brown hair, a mustache, gray ice-chip eyes. Gannet called him handsome, but in Zel’s eyes he was too big, too raw, too cold. He stood by a window with Gannet’s letter in his hand, the white light harsh on the planes of his face. He didn’t seem to notice them enter the room.

  “The girl, sir,” the butler said.

  “All right, Gherd.”

  The butler bowed and faded away. Torrend’s pale gaze found her face.

  “What is your name?”

  “Zel, sir.”

  “That’s not a Pelwarsh name, is it?”

  Pelwar was where Gannet was claiming to be from. “No, sir.”

  “Southern, I suppose. I think I remember your mistress saying something to that effect.” He studied her, the letter restless in his hand. “Have you been with her long?”

  “For some time, sir.”

  “Did she find you in the south?”

  “No, sir.” The truth felt strange in her mouth. In this context it sounded like lies.

  “But you’ve traveled quite a distance with her. She said she is fond of travel. That must make a lot of work for you.”

  Zel didn’t answer the implied question. She didn’t want to answer any questions. When did the son of such a house ever take an interest in a maid’s work? Her heartbeat even faster. What did he really want to know? What had Gannet told him?

  He persisted. “Has she never had any other servants?”

  “Not since I’ve been with her, sir.”

  “Yet she strikes me as a woman who is accustomed to a larger establishment. A woman with a gracious past.” His eyes drifted to the letter in his hand, and she realized their color had deceived her: not cold, only pale. Caught in a slant of snow-light, they became transparent, undefended. The letter was, as Gannet had said, a love letter, and he was in love.

  Fear kindled instantly into anger. Anger at the needless fright, anger at this fool for causing it, anger at Gannet—for what? For carrying on with the hunt when Zel could not provide? But this one was different, wasn’t it? That smile over the pen, the letter sealed before it could be read aloud and given into Zel’s hands, hands that still burned from that night that Gannet had already forgotten. She must have forgotten, because to send Zel , a thief and a witness to a crime she dared not report, to this guardsman’s house was to send her into the lion’s den. Had Gannet also forgotten what they did to thieves and witches here? Was it possible she had forgotten when she sent Zel to answer this man’s questions?

  Zel spoke now with a voice quiet as the fire in the hearth.

  “Yes, sir. She is a woman with a past.”

  Torrend looked up at her, shocked, then appalled, then bleak. “What do you mean?”

  “Only that I’m sure you are right, sir.” With a servant’s inflection, only the eyes carrying the deadly hint of derision. “I’m sure you understand her very well.”

  His pale skin flushed. He looked out the window and began to fold the letter in half, then in half again.

  “Will there be a reply, sir?”

  “No.” He didn’t look at her. As she turned to go, she saw him bow his head until his forehead touched the frosted glass.

  * * *

  She was hot, glad of the snow that touched her face. The brief day was ending, the white streets slipping into blue. The blue of heartache, the blue of longing, the tender blue of regret. Tears she would not let fall filled her mouth, bittersweet.

  In her mind, a dark girl, jewel-less, walked through a curtain of drifting down.

  A tall woman crowned in gold met her in a quiet space.

  “Little thief,” she said, “who have you been talking to?”

  Surprise leapt into Zel’s throat, died in silence there. The long, wide-browed face was Audey Bodil’s.

  “No one.” Zel realized she wasn’t really surprised. Startled, for an instant, but she had always known the witches would find her. “No one,” she said again, without hope of being believed.

  “Someone.” Audey gestured her closer. “Tell me.”

  “Captain Torrend,” Zel whispered. She could not look away from that hand, the hand that had held the knife. Some of the false peace of the cellar found its way into her pounding heart. Her feet brought her one step closer.

  “And what did the pretty thief tell the good captain?”

  “Nothing.”

  Another step. Two.

  “Come now. One does not call on such a distinguished gentleman and say nothing at all. Think what an awkward position that would place him in. Come. Tell me what you said.”

  Another step.

  The knife hand touched her face with a familiar caress of nails.

  Zel jerked away. “I told him nothing!”

  The walls of the quiet place shivered, became falling snow. The witch’s hand fell away. Zel turned to run.

  “Wait!”

  Caught again, but this time it was only by the break in the voice, the fear that ruffled through the snow. She looked back.

  “Please.” Audey Bodil, merely a blonde woman in white fur. “It means more than just my life, more than just my sisters’ lives.”

  “Yes,” Zel said. “It means my life as well.”

  She did run, the
n, but could not outpace the words that followed. Not in a witch’s voice, not in a fearful woman’s voice, but in a voice of soft, exultant wonder: “Oh, come back, come back and tell me what you are.”

  * * *

  “What did he say? How did he look? Tell me everything! Do you think we have him yet? Didn’t he send a reply?”

  * * *

  Come back and tell me what you are.

  The owl flew through all her dreams.

  Come back and tell me what you are.

  * * *

  Zel was the huntress, now. She lay in the cover of her silence, her usual quiet a camouflage for her secrets, and watched as Gannet hoped, fumed, and gradually despaired. Torrend had not sent a reply. Their creditors were pressing. More letters were written. Torrend still did not reply. Gannet tried to hide her tears. Zel might have triumphed, but she was caught in the same trap, unable to shake her sense of responsibility for Gannet, and for their debts. She prowled the galleries of the Old City warren, the open streets of the rich, but she had lost the daring of the careless thief. She was a huntress racked by guilt, crippled by fear.

  Despairing Gannet took fire. “A party! A real candlelit soirée. We’ll invite everyone, douse them with the finest brandy and set them alight, and warm ourselves at the flames. I’ll wear nothing but sheer silk, and you, forget the wretched servant’s coat, we’ll hire servants, you’ll wear crimson satin and marry a duke, and I’ll marry a count, and we’ll be the merriest widows in the city!”

  Zel, unnerved, said, “The brandy merchant won’t give you any more credit.”

  “To hell with the brandy merchant! I’ll invite the brandy merchant and roll him into the fire when he’s drunk on his own wares. He’ll make a fine blaze. And while we’re at it, the seamstress will make a good wick, such a skinny woman, she should appreciate a chance to flaunt her skirts at a few men. And why not make it fair? She’ll be the only woman we invite! Poor men, we’ll eat them like pralines and spit out their bones.”

  Zel slipped from the room, and the house. Without thinking out the risks, she walked down to the harbor and then, in the teeth of a blue-sky gale, back up the hill to the streets of the rich, and finally, in the terrible arctic night, home to lay her finds on Gannet’s lap. Purses, wallets, a fine pocket watch with a sapphire on the lid. Her thief’s hands had been bit by the vicious wind and had gone red again, swollen with winter bees. Gannet, for once wordless, held Zel’s fingers to her mouth. But it was no good. The next day all the stolen coin went to the brandy merchant, the wine merchant, the pastry chef: the party would still take place.

  * * *

  For all Gannet’s wild plans, Zel wore gray wool, not crimson satin, and moved invisibly through the crowd, a ghost with glasses on a tray.

  “...barely a season and already, I have it as gospel truth, Commun’s has had to send her two letters...”

  “...one of the oldest families! My dear, can you imagine? As if the old terror would let any nephew of his...”

  “She’s saucy enough, but do you think she’s as young as she pretends?”

  “Oh, age! What does number of years count for? Ask her how far she’s traveled with that desert creature of hers. It’s miles that count, not years!”

  Zel went to the kitchen to decant more sweet sherry, stood a moment with her hands empty on the table. She hated it, and didn’t know if she always had done, or if something had changed. What was different, except this wall of silence between them? A lie or two, and was the adventure finished? A lie or two, a love or two, a witch or three or four....

  It was not the lies. It was seeing with the owl’s eyes.

  She rinsed the glasses, poured the wine, carried them back on her tray.

  Gannet wore candy pink, sheer enough to show the lace petticoats beneath. Her fine skin was flushed and dewed with sweat at her temples as she laughed and talked, four or five young men always within reach of her teasing hand. She loved to lay the tips of her fingers on one man’s sleeve while talking to another, while flirting her lashes at a third. Zel noticed her eyes searching for a fourth, but Torrend did not come.

  “My dear lady,” said one man with an affected drawl. Zel thought he might have been the one who’d asked if Gannet was as young as she seemed, but they all sounded the same. “My dear lady, however do you manage to entertain in such lavish, such sumptuous, such marvelously—and I do assure you, so very greatly appreciated—will someone tell me what the devil I was going to say?”

  “Style!” called three or four voices.

  “Style. Well, obviously. But my dear lady, how? What is your secret? Here, I know! Your little servant girl, she’s really a genie of the southern sands. Am I right? The moment before your guests appear, she is summoned—whoosh!” (A dangerous gesture with a full glass in one hand, a lighted cigar in the other.) “And there it is, yet another impossible feast. And then, the moment the last guest is gone—” (several people stepped back) “—whoosh! again, all put away and the genie back in her bottle, good genie, good-night.”

  There was laughter, some of it rather too loud. It was not in the best taste to make a joke of magic, particularly women’s magic. Gannet laughed as well, and put her hand on the man’s sleeve.

  “No, no, sir, I tell you it will not do!”

  “I say.” He blinked and peered about him. “I haven’t gone and made a silly blunder, have I? Haven’t, whatdoyoucallit, made the inadvertent insult?”

  “Not to me, sir, but my poor maid! All the work she does, reduced to a mere—” (it became a chorus) “—whoosh!”

  Laughter again. Only the young man abstained. He seemed focused on a train of thought.

  “But my dear lady, there must be some secret to your successes. Look at this little do tonight! I swear I haven’t had such a good time since, since— Algar, when was the last time I had such a good one?”

  “Never!”

  “Good answer! I believe that deserves a toast.”

  Brandy glasses emptied; no one notice them being refilled.

  “But we are left wondering, what is the lady’s secret?”

  “Royalty in exile!”

  “Royalty on her way home from exile!”

  “Queen Gannet!”

  “Huzzah!”

  Another toast. Gannet laughed, radiating too much delight. Zel felt her heart go cold. The man was not drunk. She could see his eyes as she filled his glass, and he was not drunk.

  “No, no. My friends, we are in the presence of a much more powerful and mysterious thing than that.”

  The circle of faces by the fire leaned closer, eyes brilliant with the anticipation of laughter.

  “We are in the presence of... patronage.”

  Confusion. Gannet’s smile tightened.

  “Yes, it’s the only explanation. When one stands so near to such wit and beauty, when one glows with the finest of food and drink, in the midst of such excellent company, the only real question one has to ask is, whose hand holds the purse?”

  There was a faint general movement away. The man went on pleasantly smiling, the brandy in his glass swirling as he toyed with the stem. Gannet’s face was white.

  “Or perhaps there are two questions after all. The other might be—as I see Captain Torrend has not seen fit to grace us with his presence—who will hold it next?”

  Gannet snatched the glass from his hand and threw it to the stones of the hearth. “Get out.” Zel saw her struggle for breath. She could not summon more than a strangled whisper. “Get out.” Another glass was snatched from a man’s hand, dashed to the hearth. The room quieted. Everyone turned to stare. And finally, the scream came. “Get out!”

  * * *

  Gannet lay across the sofa as if washed ashore from the wreck of a ship, the detritus of the party like so much sea-trash littering the room. Zel sat on the floor by her feet. She’d unbuttoned her coat and put aside her tray. She did not touch Gannet as Gannet cried.

  “How could he say his name like that, so cruel? I never
asked Willam for money, never, not once, he could never have said I did.” A gasp, a sob, hands clutching her unraveling hair. “He loved me! He did, he did, it was vicious cruel men like— Why are they so unkind? They must have told him, someone must have told him— And it’s all lies!”

  “Gannet,” Zel said, a protest she could not stifle.

  Gannet turned like a snake, her eyes swollen, her mouth red and distorted. “I am not a whore! That’s what he meant, you know. Patronage. The vile beast. I am not a whore!” She buried her face in the cushions, but it was not enough to muffle her cry: “He would have married me!”

  Zel sat and watched the fire. It was a long time before she could ask, “How do you know?”

  “He said. Oh, Zel.” Gannet sat and wiped her face, suddenly wistful. “No, he didn’t say, but he said so much else and I was sure. Zel, truly, you know I’ve been asked a dozen times, but this was different. He is so honest and true, Zel, I think he must be the truest man I’ve ever known, the truest man in the world, and someone—” the sobs returning “—someone told him lies.”

  Zel touched Gannet’s skirt, withdrew her hand. She knew that she had been cruel. She knew that she had probably doomed them. Yet that knowledge had not come home to her before now. “I told him.”

  “What?” Gannet wiped her face, bewildered.

  Zel stood and began to button her coat, knowing this was the end. The knowledge was painless, an ice-cold numbing of her soul. “I told him.”

  “What?” Still bewildered, her voice soft, her eyes swimming with tears. “I don’t understand, Zel. What did you tell to whom?”

  “The truth. I told the truth to Captain Torrend, and now I’m telling the truth to you.”

  “Zel,” Gannet whispered. “Zel, you’re so cold.” And then understanding finally shafted home.

  * * *

  Zel had thought the snowstorm terrible, but this dry gale pouring like a river of ice from the north was crueler. The stars raged above the veils of snow torn from rich men’s roofs. Like wasps of light they stung her eyes. There was no cold, no shivering. She became transparent to the wind.