by Cat Hellisen
“Nothing.”
“Truly?” I can’t hide the trembling of my voice.
He looks at me queerly, then shakes his head. “A business deal gone sour,” he says, but his face twists, and I don’t need to be a Reader high on scriv to catch the lie in his voice. “It’s really nothing to worry about.” The thin package turns out to be a book, and he slips it casually into the bookshelf.
I watch while he unrolls some winter-weight blankets onto the floor. He leaves the room to change and comes back wearing a nightshirt almost as white as he is. I smile because it looks so normal, so utterly mundane. And then I remember the boggert-soft caress of his strange magic. Jannik is not a Lammer, and he is nothing like me.
I lean forward and pull out the book he returned, as if this will somehow distract me. Or perhaps I just want to see if he will stop me. “You like Prines?” I’m not familiar with it beyond the most superficial level even though it’s his most famous work. Indeed, I mostly ignored it because the only people I met who ever liked this particular slim volume seemed to be about one hundred years old. The cover has long since faded from its original red. I flick through the pages. Mapping the Dream. I shake my head. Dash has a copy of this. A copy so very similar I could almost mistake it for the same book. I flick through it, looking for a telltale letter.
Jannik winces. “If you’d just be a little more careful,” he says softly. “That’s a first edition.”
I pause with my finger against a page browning with age. The script is ornate, and I realize that this must have been printed on the original House Mallen press. “Oh.” I suck in a deep breath. “I’m so sorry.” Carefully, I shut it and run my palm ever so gently across the fraying material of the cover.
“I shouldn’t have it anyway,” he says. “It belongs to my mother.”
“So why did you loan it to someone else?”
“I needed to show him something.” He laughs at himself.
“You could have used a copy.”
“I could have, at that.” His face goes calm, and he smiles ruefully. “There’s a dedication on the first page.”
I open the book, and there, in an elegant sloping hand, is a dedication, a date. It’s in a strange language, although as I trace the words, I note a slight similarity to High Old Lammic.
“My father gave that to my mother as a wedding gift.”
There’s some significance here that I’m not getting.
Jannik sighs and holds out his hand. I pass the book back. “It’s priceless,” he says. “My father bought it himself.”
I shake my head. “I don’t get it.”
“He was the first wray in his family to buy something with money he’d earned for himself,” he says. “It’s symbolic.”
“So why give it to her?”
He cocks his head. “You don’t understand much about people. You just think you do.”
“And if you’re just going to be insulting, then I’m going to sleep.” I huff and drop down, pulling the covers tighter about me.
There’s a lengthy pause while I wait for him to say something back, to draw me out, but instead all I hear is the rustling of the leaves outside.
“Good night,” he says as I’m about to apologize, and he blows the fatcandles out. The room plunges into an inky blackness.
After a while, when I’m safe under the blankets and the room is filled only with the very faint sound of his breathing, I ask him: “That couple that we saw…?” I hope he knows who I mean, I’ve no wish to spell out the details. “Is that common? Does that always happen?”
“Are you asking me if I fuck my food?” The words sound overly harsh in the darkness.
“I suppose I am.”
The night feels blacker and emptier and he says nothing. The bat is not going to answer me. I turn on my side and pull the pillows into a more comfortable position. The nightshirt and the linens smell like him—it’s not unpleasant.
“If I do,” Jannik says, “it’s only when he asks.”
“How reassuring.” I’m tired and I speak without thinking. “I hope you pay him extra for it.”
There is only silence.
14
THE HARSH CAWS of a passing flock of ibis break the morning stillness. I kneel on the bed to get a better look out of Jannik’s wide window. In the dawn light I can see over the slate roofs of the houses, all the way to the Levelling Bridge and the wide brown smear of the Casabi. The sky is gray and cool, and there are no clouds. Last night would have been a good night on the boats, and Lils will already be dockside, unloading the day’s catch and taking it to market.
“It’s early still,” Jannik says from the floor. “If you want I can have a servant draw you a bath and find you some suitable clothing.”
I can hardly arrive at the Crake to wash dishes in Nala’s borrowed dress. “That would be kind of you.” The awkwardness from last night is gone. I feel like Jannik is an extension of me, the part of me that stayed home and just dreamed about running away. I peer over the edge of the bed and smile down at him. Amazing what sleeping in a decent bed does for my mood.
“You’re entirely too happy in the morning,” he says. “I’m afraid it would never work between us. I’m just going to have to deny you your dream.”
He’s joking, of course, and I lean on my elbows and stare at him. “Heartbreaker.”
Jannik closes his eyes. “I know. I’m terrible for it. I do hope you can find it in yourself to one day forgive me.”
“Forgive you! Please, I’ve already moved on. I’m seeing someone.”
At that he blinks and sits up. In the early light his eyes are a gray violet, the color of the sea under the moon. “Are you really? Callous little flick.”
* * *
I GET HIM TO STOP HIS CARRIAGE a few blocks from the Crake. It’s not that I’m embarrassed to be seen with him, more that I don’t need people asking me uncomfortable questions. Despite that, I get more than a few raised eyebrows when I walk into work.
“Bats, eh?” Charl shakes his head, laughing.
I draw up and begin to answer him stiffly. “It’s not what you think—”
But he waves my protests down. “Leave it,” he says. “You’re not the first to need extra coin, and you won’t be the last neither.”
None of them will believe me. I drop any attempt to explain myself and just gracefully accept that people are going to make assumptions and that the more I argue, the more it’ll look like I’m trying to hide something. It’s annoying, but I picture myself in their places—seeing me leave last night in a bat’s carriage—and think about what conclusions they would have drawn. It makes me want to laugh at how stupid I am. Instead, I grit my teeth and head through to the scullery, my joints already aching at the thought of spending all day with my hands in sudsy water.
Gris, this dress. It’s stiff against my skin and scratches at the seams. Nala’s gown is folded up and stashed away in my bag. There’s no way I would have worn it here.
I’m itchy and it takes me a while to realize that it’s probably from the starch. This dress must belong to some maid who has long since outworn it. The red dye has faded to brown, and the hem has been let down till it’s nothing more than the narrowest seam of material. The bodice is tight and uncomfortable but I’d rather be wearing this than one of Jannik’s original offers. Better to wear a maid’s tat than to be squeezed into one of Roisin’s castoffs and not only look out of place but be reminded of everything I have thrown away.
After lunch, Charl heads through the scullery to stand at the back door and smoke a ’grit in peace, away from the eyes of customers. “You hear about the tide?”
The heel of my hand is rough against my eyebrow as I rub at an annoying itch. There’s always tide talk in Old Town, where fortunes and lives depend on the sea. Mostly I barely listen. It was Owen who paid attention to tide talk, who lived his life by the rise and fall of the ocean. “What’s it this time?” I ask, only half interested.
“Red Dea
th.”
The teabowl shatters against the edge of the stone sink as I jerk back. It’s the Red Death that almost wiped out my family’s fortunes not that many decades ago. Red Death could bring Pelimburg to its knees. Fish will die, seabirds will die, the tiny creatures that fill the rock pools will die. Everywhere there will be the stink of rot unless the tide moves quickly past. “How bad does it look?”
Charl puffs on his hand-rolled ’grit and frowns. “Not good. It’s a big one, and it’s set to be a sitter.”
Gris damn it all. What use are our few Saints if their Visions can’t warn people long before the Red Death comes?
“It’s because of those idiot House girls,” Charl says. “Suicides and boggerts sucking bodies dry. Red Death means a sea-witch is coming, and all the magic in Pelimburg’s not gonna stop that.”
“Rubbish,” I snap. “Magic is what keeps Pelimburg running.”
He laughs. “No one but a high-Lammer would say that. It’s fish and copper and tea. Magic just makes things easier.”
Carefully, I run my fingers across the bottom of the sink, searching for the broken shards in the gray water. “Without magic, Pelimburg would be nothing but a beach where seals come to pup.”
“And mayhap it would have been better that way.”
And maybe he’s right.
“Do you really think that this means a sea-witch is rising?” I hate believing Hob superstition, but I find myself infected anyway.
“’Course,” he says.
“And if magic can’t stop a sea-witch, then what can?”
Charl stares at me queerly. “Ah, everyone knows that, girl.”
Everyone except me, apparently. “Humor me,” I say as I carefully wrap the shattered pieces of bowl in some old Courants I find stuffed behind a crate.
“Well, they go as soon as they get what was promised to them. And to do that, you need to speak to the boggert and get it to give you a sign.”
I pause, my fingers pressed on the sharp edge of a piece of pottery. “What do you mean?” My breath whistles.
“Sea-witches need sacrifices. That’s why they follow boggerts around. They feed on the bodies the boggerts leave behind. But you can get a sea-witch to do what you want provided you give it something in return. Whatever it is you offer has to be marked by a boggert-sign.”
“Something—what kind of something?” The words are hard to get out. In the old days, before the Hobs were brought to heel, they used to give the sea a girl and a boy every decade. Maybe they knew something we didn’t.
A corpse for a corpse.
Charl stubs out the last little twist of his ’grit. “Tell Dash we’re ready,” he says. “And all of the Fourth, and Jaxon’s pack too. He just has to give the word.” He stands and heads past me, back to work.
“I’m not a bloody messenger service,” I mumble as he leaves.
Ready for what? I push aside the slow creep of nervous sickness in my stomach. It’s probably another episode like the ’ink—sorting and bottling the herb to sell it.
His plan to destroy Pelimburg, of course.
Something’s far from right, and it has to do with my House, with Dash, and with magic the high-Lammers cannot control. Fear crackles through me. I shake my head. I’m grabbing at shadows and fancies. Dash is no destroyer of cities. He’s a street Hob who sells himself to bats.
* * *
I LEAVE WORK LONGING to somehow find an excuse to go back to Jannik’s bed. Of all the things I miss, why is a warm, soft mattress so high on the list? After everything that’s changed in me, am I still so selfish and so utterly House Lammer that I would sell my honor for a chance to return home to my pampered little cage? Guilt floods me, and I try to sublimate the shadowed vision of my mother’s face gone gaunt with worry. It stays, so I force myself to think of Dash instead. A thrill of excitement twines itself with suspicions and guilt. My face flushes and sweat dampens my palms. I no longer know what I’m feeling. His Hob smirk fades, is replaced by Jannik’s smile, Dash’s sallow skin painted over with boggert-white, his gray-green eyes turned indigo and darker than ink.
I laugh bitterly at myself and kick the dry circles of sand on the promenade so that dust puffs up around me.
Go home, Felicita. Stop playing this stupid childish game where you pretend to be something you’re not. My family needs me. Surely they will forgive me, erase my disgrace? Things have changed now. If the Red Death is coming, it will cripple House Pelim again, and what will my little blot of dishonor be against that dark mark? They will need me, to sell me off for whatever they can to recoup their losses. The turning of the tide brings a change in all our fortunes, and it’s too big a thought for me to face.
I dare a glance at the sea, and sure enough, it’s a strange dull color, coppery as blood spilled in a water bowl. The beaches are black with dead fish, and despite my revulsion, I hop down over the wall and onto the flats.
Oh Gris. Already this bad? The air stinks, and the huge sand flies are thick on the fish corpses.
More than a few people are standing about staring at the carnage. The Red Death seems to have caught a shoal of the little spiny puffer fish; they lie on the mud in ranks, like a deflated army.
The mass of the Red Death is coming along the warm Beren current, and it hasn’t reached Lambs’ Island yet. Maybe it’ll break up before it hits the really good fishing grounds out past the island. It’s not moving fast, after all.
And perhaps instead the Red Death will poison the city and my family will fall and I will return to them like a portent of change, of good fortune.
And perhaps scriven dust will fall like rain, and we will no longer be at the heel of MallenIve and its mines. I snort and shake my head at my own foolishness.
A group of Hobs are huddled together, whispering. A snatch of their conversation blows to me on the wind that whips about us.
“—sea-witch.”
Of course they’d blame all this on a sea-witch.
“—found another body, caught it in one of the nets—”
Oh. I pick my way past the puffers and the occasional rubbery splat of a dead jellyfish and try to hear more.
“Was clear as glass,” says the tallest Hob, her hair ripped out of its bun by the rising wind. Dark curls hide her face. “Some Hobling what got lost in the marshes. Poor mite.”
“It’s a bad business,” says another. He’s old, world-weary.
“Damn those stupid Lammer bitches and their fucking Leap.” This one’s young and fiery, snappy as Dash, as Jaxon, as Charl. “Bringing all their bad luck down on us like a storm.”
“True enough,” the woman says.
“They’ll get as they deserve, you’ll see,” the young man says, with a harsh fervor that makes the others laugh.
“Oh, what, you’ve had yourself a Vision have you?” the woman says. “Leave that mucking guesswork to the House Lammers.”
The Hob shakes his head. “No guesses,” he says. “I know.”
I take a deep breath, turn away from the mass of dead fish, and head back home.
* * *
THREE DAYS HAVE PASSED since I spent the night at Jannik’s house. There’s been no sign of Dash, although I passed Charl’s message on to Lils, who took it with a grim-faced nod.
I pass my time working. The shop is quiet as the city holds its breath, watching the Red Death crawl up Pelimburg’s beaches.
Whispers are everywhere, passing among the Hobs and low-Lammers and spreading a net of rumors. Sea-witches and sacrifices. The skip-rope chants around the city grow more menacing, more superstitious. If I see Hoblings at play, jumping in time to their songs, I detour to not hear what fresh insult they’ve added to their list against my House.
I’ve heard nothing from Jannik, and he and Dash war in my mind, their faces overlapping. Which of them can I trust? Both? Neither? As I dawdle home from the Crake I think of the bat feeding on the Hob, of her legs splayed, and of my late-night conversation with Jannik.
It’s hard t
o picture him doing that. He seems so … controlled, studious. I have an easier time imagining him filling in account ledgers than giving in to any kind of passion. Maybe he was just trying to shock me. Testing our boundaries. I shake my head. No, Jannik doesn’t … do that with his food. He can’t. I will it not to be.
A wind comes off the ocean, heavy with the smell of decay. The heat is rising, and it isn’t long before the beached fish and dolphins go off. Some ill-dressed Hobs are trying to scavenge what’s washed up—they’re desperate.
I walk faster and keep my eyes down, not wanting to look at the miasma of sand flies cloaking the carcasses down on the flats.
Quickly, I turn onto Whelk Street, and relief sweeps through me as I enter the familiar front door. From the bottom of the steps, I can hear raised voices and a strange, repetitive thumping. Frowning, I put one hand to the rickety banister and make my way up.
My heart skips. It’s his voice. A flush of terrified excitement fills me, even though I try to tamp it down with my anger. I can’t. What about the letter-writer, Felicita? Stop this, stop acting like a lovesick nilly. I want to see him, and only now do I realize just how worried I’ve been. I bound up the last few steps, trying to stop the stupid smile that I’m certain must be plastered all over my face.
Dash is lying on the floor of the common room, giving orders to the rest of the Whelk Street crew, Kirren curled against his chest and licking his face.
The floor is covered with planks of wood, smelling of sawdust and sweet sap. It’s a fortune in building supplies, and Lils, Esta, and Verrel are building partitions across the rooms to replace the makeshift curtains. Verrel is working with a speedy assurance, hammering joins together with hardened wooden pegs. The other two are holding what they’re told to hold and generally just being the dogsbodies.
“What’s going on?” I hiss at Lils as I dump my shoulder bag in a mostly clear corner.
“Dash wants the building fixed before it falls down on our heads,” she says with a shrug. “Wants to protect us or some rubbish like that.”