Papa was vocal in his relief when she stayed in the neighborhood. “You don’t belong in the city anyway. Those people are rough. They wish they could live in sight of the palace, you know.”
“Other girls go to the city,” Parsons said, although she knew it would make him get quiet and shuffle off.
But that day he said something even worse. “Someday you’ll get married and you can go to the city with your husband.”
Well. She’d show him, if that was what he thought.
Barred from adventure, Els and Parsons started smoking the cigarettes called ‘Swells’. Combining the nutty, relaxing tiralem nef leaves with the more potent kanda leaves, they made Parsons feel cheerful and careless. Smoking was the only drug a Fanarlem could indulge in and the sight of Fanarlem slaves lighting up was such a common sight in poor neighborhoods that jokes were made of it in novels and plays. Smoke permeated her stuffing and, by the grace of whatever mysterious magic had made her, she picked up the effects. She covered up the smell with a supposed newfound interest in perfume but it still didn’t take Papa long to notice.
“This is no way for a girl to behave if she wants to be considered for universities or get a job in the Wodrenarune’s palace,” he said. “Parsons, you’d better straighten this out fast. Even if it means ending your friendship with Els.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not as smart as Mother anyway,” Parsons said, bitter over slumping school marks.
He smiled faintly. “You don’t think your mother had some years like this when she was young? She liked to party. Why do you think the Peacock General likes us so much? It’s not thanks to me.” He laughed.
Parsons knew the Peacock General spoke well of her mother, but she had never heard this angle before. “She wasn’t scandalous, was she?” Rumors abounded of the Peacock General’s many lovers, male and female, old and young. Parsons had no idea how many were true.
He laughed a little harder. “No, no. Nothing scandalous. She used to drink more than I was comfortable with, and go to parties in the city. But that was all—and she pulled it together after a few too many hangovers at school.”
Parsons imagined her mother in the crowds of party girls at school. Sneaking out to dances in shadowed drinking halls in the city was the “thing” to do, for normal girls.
Papa was still talking. “Everyone used to ask her why she was taking up with me—I was so quiet and boring, in her friends’ opinion. But, young women were a little more wild back then in general.” He sighed. “Maybe I shouldn’t scold you for a little rebellion. It’s just that Lord Jherin’s standards have grown stricter. He has a vision for bringing us into the modern world and there’s no room for distraction. If you want to really accomplish something, you’ve got to keep up with the times.”
“I do understand,” Parsons said. “I won’t let you down.”
“It’s not about me. It’s about you. If your school marks don’t come up, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed in your future options.”
“I’m trying.”
He regarded her a moment. His expression, usually the picture of an absent-minded scholar with his head in the clouds, was focused. He kissed her forehead. “Parsons’ Turbinia. It was a swift little boat and the first of its kind. In hindsight, we probably shouldn’t have given you such a strange name. But, we wanted a strange child. Just remember that.”
In Nalim Ima, girls who planned to get married and boys who would apprentice graduated at the age of sixteen. Those who aspired to further intellectual or magical study could go on to a university, which offered four more levels of education. As a kid, Parsons had always imagined she would delve at least two levels in, as her mother had.
By the time she reached the end of her years at the Academy, Parsons realized with a quickly dawning horror that time had slipped out from under her, and she had turned out average, competing for slots in the two women’s universities in the country with hundreds of other girls who had more impressive credentials.
One morning, she came downstairs and saw the rejection slip to Mama’s university in Papa’s hand. He knew without opening it, and so did she. It was a plain little white envelope with a stamp. The acceptances were edged in gold and delivered by hand.
The look on his face showed that he wasn’t surprised. But disappointed? Well, he was trying to hide it.
“Don’t cry,” he said. “There’s more than one way to make something of yourself in this city, that’s the good thing about it.”
“Mm-mm…” She tried to look stoic, sinking into a chair.
“You’ve had a little more on your shoulders than other girls your age. You need to get your head on straight, that’s all.”
“Yeah…”
“I’m sure we can find you a good job. I’ll ask the Peacock General tomorrow, in fact. He wants to see you succeed as much as I do.”
And so he did. Calban wasted no time in finding Parsons a job. But whether it was a good job was debatable. Some jobs seemed to come with cobwebs already built in to the desk, and this was one of them. The daughter of Wodrana Belvray, known across the nation as one of the brightest women of her day, had a shiny new typewriter with her name on it.
Chapter Three
394th Year EW (Establishment of the Wodrenarune)
June 1917
Parsons was in no mood for the sight that greeted her when she approached her desk in the morning. Six months into this job, and she had “given it a chance” as her father suggested, ten times over.
It was a stupid job if there ever was one. The existence of the Fallen Lands remained a secret to the general populace, but as more and more of the elite of Nalim Ima found out, they demanded access to products from America and Europe. And as the demand grew, manufacturing and advertising followed.
By now, ripping off products from the Fallen Lands and passing them off as creations of Nalim Ima was big business. The wealthy merchants of Atlantis clamored for every new fashion.
Her job was one tiny piece of the cycle. She was supposed to skim all the magazines from the Fallen Lands, looking for new products and ways to advertise them. Except, usually anything good had already been discovered. She was more like the last person in a long trail of explorers, the one who found a few scraps of pottery in an ancient tomb after the gold and jewels had already been removed.
And when she did make a note of something interesting? It was usually ignored.
The latest stack of magazines from the Fallen Lands waited on her desk, with Good Housekeeping on top and a note that said: Hey doll eyes—I put ‘em in order for you.
All of sappiest ladies magazines were at the forefront, the ones that were nothing but fashion and cooking tips and advertisements for Cream of Wheat, and buried at the bottom was Popular Mechanics with a sailing ship on the front, Scientific American and Electric Vehicles and the movie star magazines that were her secret favorite.
Who wrote this? She had her suspicions. Unfortunately, her suspicions encompassed half the men in the office, which made them hard to narrow down.
Her fellows workers were bustling around her, eight men and one other girl: the secretary, Lu. It was early yet and the men were still working on their first cup of coffee and chatting about what they had done on their day off.
Parsons looked at the note again, crumpling it in her hand. She had already made a fuss about this treatment to her boss in the past. Mr. Denordin always shrugged it off.
She tossed it in the trash, and then she couldn’t resist throwing Good Housekeeping in the trash too.
I shouldn’t even be here, she thought, turning the pages of Life without seeing them. It was my own fault for missing out on university, but surely I could do more than this.
Young Mr. Bules stopped at her desk and pointed to the Good Housekeeping. “Can I—”
“Was it you?” she snapped, on top of his words.
“Was—what me?”
“The note. I’m so sick of it. I’m so sick of trying to pr
etend I’m not offended.”
He looked flustered. “I just—I thought we weren’t supposed to throw the magazines out.”
“What’s that?” Mr. Denordin called from all the way across the office. He immediately took a few steps their way.
She caught Mr. Samaron glancing over and she felt a cloud of dread, just seeing him around. He was tall, handsome, jovial in an arrogant way. He was the manager of all the departments in the building, and he looked at her in a way that made her skin crawl.
“We aren’t supposed to throw away magazines, are we?” Mr. Bules asked.
“They go in the archives.” Mr. Denordin grabbed Good Housekeeping.
“Crying curses. I was making a point,” Parsons said. “And we don’t need Good Housekeeping. It’s the same damn thing every month.”
Mr. Dengar whistled. “Watch out, gentlemen, she’s getting her angry face.”
Mr. Samaron looked at her. “But one must admit, she is beautiful when she’s angry.”
“Skarnwen,” Dengar joked, accusing him of having a fetish for artificial girls.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t a joke at all, because Parsons suspected him of the same thing.
She reached in her pocket, running her fingers over one of the defense spells she kept in her pocket. If she popped the cylinder open in front of his face, a spray of potion would burn his eyes. She liked imagining that.
Mr. Denordin rolled his eyes almost imperceptibly. “Miss Belvray, can I speak to you in my office a moment?”
“If you insist.” I’m going to quit, Parsons thought, walking ahead of him, keeping her head high. Yes. I should quit.
As Mr. Denordin shut the door of his office behind them, Parsons heard Mr. Bules murmuring something to Lu, which was probably about her. Just by the tone, she guessed it was along the lines of, She thinks she owns the place just because her father is rich and she’s invited to the Peacock General’s parties.
And then, Samaron’s voice, confident and strong as a steel beam, entering the conversation. She just needs a husband, poor girl. Must be hard to be a Fanarlem in this world.
Oh yes, even without hearing the exact words, she’d bet money on what they were saying. She’d heard it often enough lately.
“Miss Belvray.” Her boss looked at her almost gently, with a small sigh, as he put his hand on the back of his chair. “You’ve always been—shall we say—feisty. But lately it seems like every little thing sets you off. Is there something you need to talk about?”
There was, actually, if Parsons had someone better to talk to than Mr. Denordin, he of the gray imported suit and fatherly airs that always came off a little affected. She held his eyes, trying to remain calm. “Someone in this office continues to leave insulting little notes on my desk. I can’t prove the culprit. Considering that every man in this office treats me like a mascot, it hardly matters.”
“I think you’re being a little bit sensitive.”
“I’m not a doll.” She clenched the arms of the chair. She knew Mr. Denordin wouldn’t care. That had become abundantly clear. But Parsons had been taught to speak her mind.
“It’s a term of endearment. No one thinks you are a literal doll.”
She knew he would say that.
“Your job is to read publications and type summaries of the trends,” he said. “Nothing more, nothing less. Simple enough, isn’t it? If the men rag on you here and there, well, that’s how they are. They like you.”
“Please.” Parsons rolled her eyes. “No one here likes me.”
“Do you think there might be a reason?” He spoke more gently. “Let’s be honest. Calban got you this job, but maybe you ought to think about your future.”
“I’m not getting married.”
“Plenty of men in this office would be interested if you didn’t shove them away. Take Mr. Samaron, he has a very good position. Very sharp man, came up from nothing, you know. And I don’t think he minds a challenge.” He laughed a little.
Parsons stood up and slapped his desk. “Tell me, Mr. Denordin, if you had a daughter in my position, is that what you’d want for her? Someone who prefers Fanarlem girls?”
Another flesh-born Fanarlem girl had moved into the palace complex recently. Parsons encountered her for the first time at a party in the palace. Velsa was a nobody—a pretty little thing, married to a sorcerer.
Even though she was flesh-born, Velsa still looked like a concubine. She probably didn’t have much of a choice, of course. Customization required money. But still, Parsons’ skin crawled when she saw Velsa with her husband. She looked so small and sweet next to him; he was a little protective of her. He probably preferred Fanarlem girls; he probably worshipped her, but did he see her as a real woman? Did he see her as strong, as a match for him?
No one would marry a Fanarlem girl unless they had fantasies about what they’d do to her. Parsons’ innocence had been slowly and quietly destroyed by a whisper here and a stereotypical doll prostitute in a novel there. Lord Jherin said that it was the duty of every Daramon man to treat his wife well so she could have many healthy babies. A man who wanted to marry her had no interest in this duty. Thus, he had no obligation to treat her well either.
“Everyone prefers certain types of girls,” he said. A smidgen more sympathetically, he added, “I do understand your point, Miss Belvray, but…well, men tease girls. If I told them to stop, it wouldn’t be any better.”
She shook her head, giving up again. “Last week, I wrote you a note about talking motion pictures and you haven’t had any time to talk to me about that, but you had time for this lecture.”
“I don’t have time to talk to every employee about every idea. And—you’re in the wrong place. Our job in Product Development isn’t to develop new products. It’s just to market products that already exist in the Fallen Lands. I don’t want talking pictures, I want to know how I can make people down on Factory Row buy toothpaste.”
“But why not? If we can improve on ideas?”
“It’s a waste of time. Why should we spend time inventing things when the humans are inventing things for us? More things than we can keep up with! What do we need talking motion pictures for? They’re going to figure it out before long and our films are imported from them anyway.”
The telephone on his desk rang. He looked a little startled—the telephone had only just been installed. “Just—try to relax,” he said. “Have a smoke.”
She sat at her desk, disregarding his advice—she had stopped smoking because of the smell—and opened Popular Mechanics, skimming through the ads in the front. “Send For This Book Today—Free For All Ambitious Men!” “We Want to Train More Men!” She remembered a time when she used to laugh at the magazines from the Fallen Lands that Papa brought home. All the men had very short hair and dull, uniform clothes, and everything was worded in such a jaunty way.
Now, she realized, they didn’t look that strange anymore because all the men in her office were starting to look like humans. Half of them had cut their hair short and they talked like the magazines. A side effect, she supposed, of spending all their days surrounded by foreign products. One of the men spent half the day listening to records, searching for new songs that would be translated into the Daramon common tongue and performed by their own singers.
Parsons sometimes heard older people talk about how fast the world was changing. For the first time, she had an inkling of what they meant.
One of the small satisfactions of her father’s wealth was that Parsons was one of the only people in the entire building who owned her own automobile.
The automobile had given her a small smidgen of freedom. It protected her from having to walk on the city streets. She could drive to the theater or a dress shop without being accosted. Still, the only places that were safe for her were ones patronized by her own class. It wasn’t really an escape. She was likely to see her former classmates pop up, newly married, sometimes even pregnant.
When she drove home, Calban
’s carriage was parked outside. He had an automobile as well, and yet he still used a carriage just as often, probably because his team of horses was one of the most beautiful in the city.
She wondered if Mr. Denordin had complained to him about her behavior today.
Maybe it was for the best if he had. It might prompt Calban to find some other place for her.
“Parsons!” He almost sang out her name as she let herself in and wiped her boots on the mat. He was waiting for her in the parlor; Papa must not be home and the servants had shown him in.
The Peacock General was, as usual, dressed to match his name, in a tight blue velvet jacket with a silver necklace and matching rings, and red leather boots. His hair was a fiery red which couldn’t possibly have been natural, but no one could ever recall a time when he had hair of another color. Daramon men might be flashier than human men, but occasionally, Calban made even Daramon men sniff and say it was just too much.
As a little girl, she loved seeing him, because he was colorful and delightfully odd and always jovial—but not in a way that insulted her. She had also heard some of the most wonderful music at his house, and every year on the anniversary of her mother’s death, he quietly sent her a package of records and some flowers.
Now she was an adult, and in no mood.
“Hello, Calban,” she said primly. “I guess someone’s been complaining to you about me.”
“Complaining? About you? Little ray of sunshine that you are?” He put a hand around her shoulders and urged her along to the door. “Let’s sit on the veranda. Such a nice day.” Outside, a few wicker chairs and potted plants were arranged along the expanse of wooden flooring. The back porch—or veranda, apparently—was painted white, overlooking a small and tidy garden. A bronze girl holding a spear stood guard over the flowers.
“Doesn’t she remind you of Irik?” Calban said, waving a hand at the statue. “Did you know, I gave your parents that statue when they got married. And now I have a girl who looks just like her.”
The Vampire's Doll (The Heiress and the Vampire Book 1) Page 4