Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation

by Phoebe Wagner

  To Rosalie, mothering was what Daisy had done. Mere biological functions didn’t matter.

  Clouds rushed in to cover the sun. Rosalie raised her hood and gathered her cream-colored Omani duster close about her. Her brother’s Foreign Office helmet, made from the pith of the sola tree, would shield him from rain as well as the heat of the sun. But they arrived at the guesthouse before the shower burst.

  Imran waited in front to open the door and usher them to the table behind which his mother sat in stiff watchfulness. A nod, a swiftly made notation to the page of the registry book, and her gnarled hands removed an iron key from the bunch at her waist. Imran took the key and went ahead of them to the stairs.

  After the fourth flight Laurie flagged. He pretended to be astonished by the view between the bars covering the landing’s tiny window. “Very nice!” he declared. “That’s the mooring tower, I take it?”

  Rosalie didn’t bother looking. She already knew the tower was visible. “Yes.”

  Laurie’s stoutness stemmed not from greed or laziness. She no longer laughed, even internally, when his fatness discommoded him. She mounted the next set of steps more slowly. “The view from the rooftop garden is most astonishing. Imran, you will bring us tea there, please.”

  “Just the ticket.” Breathing heavily but still through his nose, Laurie followed her up the penultimate flight.

  “Miss’s room is to the west,” said Imran in his accentless British English. “Yours is opposite. Do you wish to see—”

  “No, no, I’m sure it’s fine. Will my valet be able to obtain entry? My luggage, when it’s brought, will that be properly taken care of?”

  “Most assuredly. I will see to it.”

  “Then let us proceed to the roof for our refreshment.” Stubbornness was a family trait.

  Exiting the shed at the top of the stairs, Rosalie felt without surprise the gentle patter of rain on her light curls. She made an apologetic face at her brother as he emerged behind her. “It won’t last long. Do you mind? There’s a pavilion where we can shelter till it stops.”

  Laurie removed his hat and swiped off the moisture collected on his forehead—probably a greater percentage of sweat than precipitation. “Capital. Cooling, isn’t it?”

  Imran assisted them in seating themselves, bestowing embroidered cushions so strategically that her brother actually looked at ease on the low benches. At Laurie’s nod of satisfaction he disappeared down the stairs without waiting for further instruction.

  “Kind of you to meet me here,” Laurie said again. He wanted her response so he could continue the conversation in a certain direction.

  “I had business on Pemba anyway,” she said, “with my coral suppliers and the family who collects shells for me. A trip thirty miles south was on the way.”

  “Nonetheless. I didn’t dare write to tell you why I wished to meet you here, in case some spy found me out. And I realize full well that leaving Everfair so soon after your return, with the government in an uproar, must have upset Mrs. Albin—”

  “Do you mean Maman or George’s wife?”

  “Daisy. Your ‘mother’—as you keep insisting.” From the age of three Laurie had been raised by their father’s second wife, Ellen, in England; unlike Rosalie, he refused to acknowledge Daisy Albin’s maternal relationship to him. “I imagine she was unhappy to see you go.”

  “She is a patriot and aware that Everfair’s best interests are served by promoting independence.” Not to mention the commission Maman’s wife Mam’selle had given Rosalie to support the Sheikhas’ clandestine extraction plans. “She understood.”

  “Did she.” Laurie heaved himself up for a better sightline over the garden pavilion’s short wall. “Will that boy be back up again with our tea soon? I have something to say. I don’t wish it overheard by servants.”

  “Mr. Imran and his mother own this house.”

  “Or by anyone, if it comes to that.”

  Secrets. Rosalie had them, too.

  To pass the awkward interval till Imran returned, she showed her brother the necklace she kept tucked beneath her smock top. It hung from a leather cord strung with carefully matched treasures: heavy silver beads from the braids of desert wanderers; two-sided rounds of shell, black and moon-bright; segments of blue-dyed coral, unpolished, their rough surfaces intricate with the patterns of growth. And suspended by a filigree finding the size of a baby’s hand, the medallion she’d made from the remains of the little oil-slicked Pemba Island tortoise she tried to save.

  “Pretty,” said Laurie, setting it on the lacquered table before them. What had she expected? Not even Maman, sympathetic and familiar with Rosalie’s work from years of intimacy, thought it important. Wordlessly she slipped the necklace back on. Thank heaven she’d met Amrita. Amrita understood.

  “Jolly prospect up here,” Laurie remarked. Streams of water poured off of the pavilion’s canopy. Further away the individual chains of raindrops blended into greyness and obscurity.

  The door to the stairway down opened, a subtle change in the sound of the monsoon’s drumming, an almost-echo. Imran appeared, holding an umbrella over a woman carrying a tea tray. They hadn’t taken two steps in Rosalie’s direction before she recognized that woman as Amrita. Who ought to have been thirty, forty, fifty miles away, safe among Pemba’s green hills.

  Amrita smiled as she lowered the tray. “Miss will like to prepare the drink herself?”

  Rosalie was momentarily too outraged at her appearance there to speak.

  “That’s right,” Laurie said. “And is there any milk?” He began lifting the covers of the various bowls and ewers. “Ah, good! And what’s this?” He indicated a pink-and-white cube on an enameled saucer.

  “A confection of rosewater, a Shirazan delicacy my mother thought you might enjoy,” said Imran. He bowed and turned to leave. Amrita did the same.

  “Pardon me for just a moment, Laurie.” Rosalie leapt up and chased her friends across the garden. She caught up as Imran grasped the handle of the still-open door.

  “What are you doing here?” She realized she clutched Amrita’s gold-trimmed sleeve. She made herself release it.

  Amrita’s flower-like face lost a bit of bloom. “Let us get out of the rain and your brother’s regard, and I’ll tell you.” She took Rosalie by her elbow and guided her to the stairs and a few steps down. Imran stayed with them.

  Impatiently she asked again, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m spying on your brother.”

  “No, I’m the one doing that! You are simply interfering in what is none of your concern!”

  A pitying look. “Imran, tell her.”

  “Yes, tell me.” She rounded on her host. “Am I not intelligent enough for this work? Am I judged incapacitated by emotional attachment to our target? Am I to be withdrawn? Replaced?”

  Imran raised his hands, tan palms outward. “No. Please, calm yourself, Miss.” He called her “Miss” at all times to avoid addressing her erroneously in front of those who mustn’t know of their true status: equals.

  The kaskazi entered as the door behind her opened. Her brother stood without, his expression annoyed. “Is the help proving recalcitrant about something, Rosalie? Do you need any assistance?”

  “All is well,” Imran assured him. “Your sister merely inquired whether little Rita will assume the duties of her personal attendant now she is promoted from the kitchen.”

  “Doesn’t seem so urgent you need to leave the tea to stew, Rosie.”

  How Rosalie abhorred that diminutive. “As you say.” She forced hauteur into her voice. “Girl, you may bathe and dress me for dinner. Come to my room betimes.” She went back to the pavilion with Laurie.

  Already the rain tapered gently off. Drops fell more slowly from the new leaves of Imran’s beloved stripling oil palms or hung motionless till she brushed against them as she passed. In the wet distance, other rooftops shimmered as the sun broke cover.

  The tea was passable. Perhaps Rosalie
had been spoiled by the freshness of the produce of Maman’s plantation. Laurie stirred a spoon of honey into his cup in lieu of sugar. “I believe I will try a morsel of this as well,” he said, using a butter knife to slice a sliver from one side of the Shirazan rosewater preparation.

  “Now. You know I have been tasked with representing certain British interests in the cause of exploiting oil and mineral rights in the Levant.”

  Rosalie nodded. He had admitted as much over Christmas of last year, when she reasoned with him for the last time about his avoidance of Everfair. Attending to his work, as he explained it then, prohibited long visits such as she wanted him to make.

  “In the brief months since we parted, the assignment has expanded. Word reached my employers of oil deposits here, in their newly won possessions.”

  “Here?”

  “Nearby. This very archipelago; in fact, Pemba.” His face took on a look of self-congratulation. “So you see why I suggested that we make this place our rendezvous.”

  How had the far-off English discovered this? Who had told them? Was there a traitor at court spying on the Sheikhas? They wanted the oil developed independently to fund humanitarian projects, as did Mam’selle. Unlike the Sultan. Or could Laurie’s source of information live in one of the fishing villages, hidden among partisans of the oil palm, the faction supported by Everfair’s Princess Mwadi? Somehow the fiction of a bombed and sunken freighter full of crude had obviously been pierced. She must get away, must warn—was there anyone trustworthy?

  Like an automaton, Rosalie lifted the teapot to Laurie’s raised cup. “What will you have to do? Is there any way for me to assist you?” Hinder you, she meant.

  “Well, I’ll want to inspect the site and map out its boundaries. . . .”

  She relaxed a tiny bit. He knew there was oil, but not exactly where. The Sheikhas could still make their claim.

  “And then I’ll need to approach the owner—”

  “If there is one.”

  “How not? Oh, you mean that the deposits may lie within lands owned directly by Sheikh Khalifa.”

  “And his dependents.”

  “Yes. You have contacts there, I take it, because of your—” He waved his hand as if at a negligible object. “—hobbyhorse, that crafting of jewelry you care so much about. Fellow riders, eh? Nothing but time on their hands in that harem.” A suggestive leer was banished as he remembered she was a lady—at least in his estimate.

  The rest of their conversation consisted of plans for an excursion to Pemba. Rosalie suggested chartering a private boat, an idea her brother seized upon as if it had been his own. She would count on Imran to make the arrangements and to make sure that whatever they were they fell through till a means of dealing with Laurie had been found.

  An hour of this until she was able to escape to her rooms. Ostensibly to nap. She took a chance on Laurie overhearing and rang the bell.

  Amrita answered it, opening the suite’s door and bowing gracefully as she shut it, as if she’d been in service all her days. “Miss.”

  Rosalie jerked her head toward the balcony. When Amrita joined her there she related her findings.

  “So.” Amrita, like Imran and much of Pemba’s population itself, favored investing in oil palm production and leaving whatever petroleum deposits they sat on unexploited. “If your brother has his way, you’ll be happy.”

  “No! The money ought to benefit us! Everfair and Zanzibar!”

  “Then I suppose you’d better inform the Sheikhas that their charity fund is about to be plundered. And soon.”

  Next day, under the flimsy pretense of obtaining permission to access the ruins of a temple of no real interest, Rosalie was able to present herself at the palace.

  Amrita accompanied her. Laurie, to his chagrin, did not.

  “There will be a very special reception given in your honor on a fortuitous date,” she consoled him. “Till then, it’s best if you allow the court to act as if you haven’t yet arrived. Officially, you know, you haven’t.”

  In Rosalie’s own case, all ceremony had long since been set aside. She went to the palace on foot, accompanied only by Amrita and one of Imran’s kitchen boys, Kafeel. The boy was big enough to serve as an escort across the city but young enough that the guards admitted him to the harem’s outer chamber with only a little hesitation. He awaited their return seated in apparent contentment on one of the narrow room’s many benches.

  Traversing polished marble floors to the source of an enticing scent of lemons, Rosalie and Amrita entered the harem’s main courtyard. In patterns like a zebra’s, palm shadows fell on white stone. The aroma of lemons intensified so that Rosalie could almost taste their cooling fragrance. Flowers and fruit together thronged the branches of the grove of trees sheltering Sheikha Ghuza and her four sisters.

  At Ghuza’s nod Rosalie and Amrita knelt to sit on the cushions provided. She made a gift of her tortoise pendant, but didn’t follow it up with any Pemba-related conversational gambit as she’d half thought to do. Indeed, the discussion was pointedly desultory till a pitcher of sherbet had been poured and sampled. Then the youngest, named Salme, picked up a guitar and began to strum noisily to prevent them being overheard, and they talked more seriously.

  Ghuza at least seemed unperturbed by Rosalie’s description of Laurie’s mission. “Perhaps it’s best we fund our efforts another way. Fortune checks us in this scheme; it may be we should heed her guidance and forsake what we took to be the easiest path.”

  Blind Matuka, sightless eyes covered in a silken scarf, wondered whether they ought to wait a season—or two—or more—to ensure needed equipment and systems were installed, then force the interests Laurie represented to sell their stake in the business.

  Rosalie struggled to conceal the impatience the Sheikhas’ mysticism and indecision caused her. “But we are ready to help you now! And if you let the English in, they’ll bring more than mining equipment! There will be military conflicts—which you may well lose!” She must find a way forward.

  Amrita understood. “Is there any way to learn what Fate intends? At home we divide piles of rice grains or listen to crows singing.”

  “Yes.” Ghuza consulted Matuka and her other sisters in Arabic too swift to follow. Then she declared, in Kee-Swah-Hee-Lee: “I will journey to the Green Island to perform geomancy upon its sands. You may join us. Let this be done tomorrow.”

  §

  Fortunately, the foundations of Imran’s gambit to thwart Laurie long-term had by now been laid. He and his mother packed several hampers full of provisions and sent them to the royal dock in the care of Kafeel and two of his small cousins. Chattering happily, the young boys led a procession comprised of Rosalie, Amrita (again in the guise of a servant), and a grumbling Laurie.

  “Pesky valet had no cause to fall ill like that,” he complained. Rosalie thought he had rather sufficient cause: Imran’s mother had poisoned him. Though only enough to put him hors de combat so that Kafeel rendered services in his place. Despite Kafeel’s tender years—twelve—the kitchen boy was a member in good standing of his employer’s conspiracy.

  They paraded down the rising and falling dock, their hollow footsteps echoing off the steel plates of the vessel moored beside it. Nyanza was a converted paddlewheeler, a steamer purchased by the previous sultan and devolving with time to the harem.

  Up the gangway. Folding chairs had been arranged for them toward the yacht’s bow. Once they cleared Prison Island the wisdom of this was obvious. Though she was equipped with sails, these were next to useless when heading northeast this time of year. Nyanza’s engines vented smoke and cinders as they pushed her almost directly into the kaskazi. The stern would be more sheltered, but the air there would be full of dirt.

  Kafeel procured a blanket for Laurie and tucked it around him. Amrita held Rosalie’s parasol so that it protected them both. Her skin was not much darker than Rosalie’s own. Another variety of shell. One of Amrita’s plump hands fussed unnecessarily with
Rosalie’s hair ribbon. She shut her eyes against the glare of the waves. The hand moved lower, to her neck and shoulders, to separate the chain of the locket Lily had bequeathed her from the elephant hair braid she wore because of Mr. Mkoi.

  About to ask for—no, to order—this fiddling to stop, Rosalie opened her eyes on the unexpected sight of a harem servant throwing herself face-first on the deck.

  A long moment passed before she remembered she must give the poor girl permission to do anything more. “Rise to your feet and speak,” she commanded.

  “Her Most Serene Highness Sheikha Ghuza wishes to welcome you into her private accommodations for the duration of her voyage.” Rosalie stood, warning Laurie to keep his seat with a frown and a shake of her head. He subsided, muttering.

  The servant led her below, Amrita following, to a spacious cabin, its walls swathed in some heavy cloth winking with tiny mirrors. On a divan covered in more comfortable-looking fabrics sat their hostess. Beside her sat her sister Matuka, eyes unbound.

  Terrible scars twisted outward from the eyes’ ends like frozen lightning bolts. Like stormclouds they were swollen, black, their lashless lids thick with bumps and ridges and—

  Rosalie looked away. Then forced herself to look back.

  Whatever damage had been done, it had healed a good while since. No blood. No—oozing. The blackness was that of the too-wide pupils.

  She felt again the touch of Amrita’s hand. Now it squeezed hers tight. “I’m so sorry,” said Rosalie’s friend.

  “Yes. But of course this is the fault of neither of you, nor of anyone with whom you’re associated.”

  “It was our father who did this to me,” Matuka explained. “Seeking to cure me. He subjected me to dozens of operations meant to rid me of the deficiency which makes me unmarriageable.”

  “As for my singleness,” Ghuza said, “it’s mostly the result of the timing of attractive offers. Either there have been too many at once, making the decision of how to bestow me difficult or, lately, as I age, none at all.”