by Cat Hellisen
Murderer. Destroyer. Rapist. A lord criminal who hides behind his power, his House. A villain untouchable.
Until now.
The wet ink smears, and my brother’s name is obliterated.
“What. Is. This?” I hiss at Charl, who merely shakes his head. I drop the paper back onto the crake’s table, and he pulls it closer to him, pressing it flat again. The mess where his hastily penned rhyme was written glints up at me, a slick black eye.
“Are you all writing this—this rubbish?” I ask, and my voice is oddly clear and loud. The crakes shuffle, do not answer. “And the brass. Who’s paying for your time?” But I know. I know.
I know someone who has the money to destroy Pelimburg. At least that’s what I was led to believe. Only now I wonder if perhaps it was never about destroying the city, but about bringing the ruling Houses to their knees. The Hobs know where power lies—it’s not in magic anymore. It’s in coin and property and secrets.
If I run, I can still catch up with Anja. She sent me to Dash; she knows. I don’t even bother going back to the scullery for my shawl or asking Mrs. Danningbread for permission to leave. Charl tries to block my way for a moment, then seems to think better of it and lets me out into the rising wind. The air is thick with fine white sand that grazes every piece of my exposed skin, cuts into my eyes. I squint, scanning the streets.
There.
Anja’s braids whip about her head. She’s already at the top of the road, about to turn the corner. I gather my skirts and run after her, my boots thudding and skidding on the cobble-stones. Most of the vendors have packed up because of the wind, and only a few stalls stand, desperate, against the stinging sand. Despite the wind and the closed shops, the streets themselves are far from empty.
Hordes of scruffy Hobling gangs are gathered, their thin clothes ragged around skinny legs and arms. Older Hobs stand with them, reading something out from papers. I want to stop, to find out what’s going on, but I don’t want to lose Anja. My feet fly over the black stones, my breath whistling in tune with the sea-wind.
When I reach the top of the road, Anja has disappeared into the crowd. For a moment I stand on the rise of the hill, looking down at the mingling Hobs and low-Lammers. There’s no sign of the thin braids among them.
I trudge back to work.
A few of the little Hobling packs have broken off to play skip rope, and the familiar rhymes pulse through the street. The words battle with the wind, with the rising stench coming from the Red Death.
New words about my brother, about our House, and about Malker, Eline, Evanist, Skellig—a host of Houses great and minor and all the blame Dash has laid upon them.
The Houses fall with falling girls, says one rhyme, in reference to Ilven and me. Another spins together her death and the red water on our shores, the magic of the meeting between sea and suicide. One chant laments the sailors on the whaling ships who never returned, their families compensated with a handful of coins.
There is accusation and judgment in every line.
You will not pay us off with silver,
You will not pay us off with brass.
Sailors lost rise from the river,
You will not pay the dead with glass.
The Hoblings are all chanting in time, whole packs of them, each taking up a new refrain and adding to the din.
I pause, and the wind slaps my skirts about my ankles, spits grit against my cheeks.
Pelim will fall and Pelim will fall.
The heir must answer the witch’s call.
My hands shake as I reach out for the Crake’s door handle. With all the force I can muster, I slam the door shut behind me, cutting off the rising chant.
Now that I think of the nonsense rhymes I’ve been half hearing over the last few days, I realize that there is a message: they’re warnings.
Mrs. Danningbread says nothing and I stand there, immobile. “Charl?”
The low-Lammer boy cocks his head, waits.
“What is it—what does Dash want?”
He puffs, as if he is considering what to tell me. “Ask him yerself.”
“Maybe I will.” But I don’t move. I don’t want to know. Swallowing hurts.
Charl opens the door again for me, and the wind brings in chanting and stink. The whole world smells like rotting fish.
It’s time to go.
* * *
THE HOUSE ON WHELK STREET is echo-empty. I slam my knuckles on Dash’s freshly built wall, but there’s no answer.
Bastard.
I’m alone here. With my hands shaking, I open the door to his realm and step inside. There are wads of bunched-up paper scattered over the floor, and an upturned ink-pot has left a virulent bluish-black stain. The ink has settled into the scarred wood and dried. A quill lies on the floor, the sharpened nib split where Dash ground it against the old floorboards. He was writing something.
Perhaps he was trying to explain to me. I pause only briefly before I grab the nearest ball of paper and carefully smooth it open.
Whatever he wrote there is obliterated, scratched through so hard that in some places the ink-heavy nib has torn through the paper. I drop it, pick up the next one. It is the same.
The salutation—just two words—scratched out and blotted.
A word that looks like it could have been please.
Another that asks why.
They are all variations on a theme, and if any of them were ever written to me, I cannot tell.
Finally, I throw the last letter down and walk out to the main room.
Anger makes me feel like my skin is too small, crushing me. That Dash could say such filth about my brother. We may never have been close, but Owen is a respectable member of House society, married to a woman from another House of reputation. There’s just no way that what Dash says is true.
Owen was ten when I was born, and not many years later, our father died from a common Hob disease. It’s almost unheard of for House Lammers to catch the Lung, let alone die from it, but there it is. And there lay the seeds of my mother’s eventual mania. I was a lonely child: my mother was in mourning, and my brother was thirteen. I barely remember those years, but I have a faint memory of being older, six perhaps, and trying to follow Owen as he raced off over the downs that sweep out to the forest, riding his shaggy gray nilly with dragon-dogs at his side.
Mostly, I don’t think he even meant to be cruel to me. Just that for him I barely existed. In the grand scheme of things, his cruelty was meaningless.
I hate this life.
The sky is gray and a veil of drizzle falls around me when I leave. Tears prick at my eyes. I feel betrayed. More so than when I found the letter in Dash’s room.
Everywhere I go, I hear snatches of rhyme, skip-rope slander. And now it’s more than the rhymes; they were merely a catalyst. People stand on street corners or by market barrows and talk. With each telling, Dash’s lies take on more flame, fanning the crowd to a slow seething anger.
Other people add the fuel of their stories, their rumors and mean-minded gossip, and the fire grows.
The street theaters are all showing bizarre tales. Gone are the stories of old heroes, of Mallen Gris and Ives Verrel, of the fall of House Mallen. Instead, there are a bare handful of scenes repeated.
A girl in white with kelp knotted into her hair who presses her palm against a man’s chest. Her face is painted silver, and she has a fey look. Her red underskirts trail far behind her, almost off the stage. She is death come as a sea-witch. The man is dressed as my brother, in an imitation of Pelim finery.
I watch Owen fall again and again.
When I see a familiar street-theater wagon, I race up to it and corner Verrel.
“Tell me about this,” I demand, one hand sweeping in the damning scene.
Verrel looks surprised to see me.
“What is the truth?” I can hear the edge in my voice, the razor-glass anger.
“All of it,” he says.
“What about the shit he
’s spreading about Pelim Owen?” Murders, cruelties small and large. They’re saying he killed Hob girls, servants unfortunate enough to swell with bastard Pelims, that he had a rival suitor drowned, that he ordered the burning of a section of Stilt City to flush out a thief. Accusation on accusation. If even half of it were true then my brother would be a monster beyond all imagining.
“True. Everyone knows that.”
“Not everyone.” A deep breath. “I know it’s all lies.”
Verrel frowns and turns away so he can crank a lever up; curtains fall, and the opening scene is prepared again. A Hob mummer with a pillow stuffed under her dress waddles onto the stage, taking her place opposite Owen. “You’re not one of us,” Verrel says. “Not really. You don’t understand.”
“So explain it to me!”
He pulls out his bag of tobacco and his rolling papers. “When I first moved into Whelk Street, Dash’s sister used to come visit us on her occasional day off.” He half smiles, his eyes far away as he lights the ’grit. “I used to have something of a crush on her, though she was older than me. She was a pretty girl, and bright. Then she fell pregnant, and no amount of Rake’s parsley was going to make that go away. She was strangled.”
“Strangled.” Even the word chokes if you say it hard enough.
On the makeshift stage, my brother’s fingers are on the girl’s neck. As if my brother would have sullied his hands when he could have used scriv. The thought makes me ill—it’s a lie and here I am almost believing it. He used nothing. Owen did not kill this girl. He did not kill the others. I look away.
Verrel’s expression goes hard and he blows smoke. “There’s your answer.”
“You’re telling me that my—that Pelim Owen killed Dash’s sister because, what, because she was some easy little Hob lay?”
“You may want to watch where you’re going with that thought,” Verrel says. “And because I like you, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear it neither.”
I feel suddenly small and empty. I don’t know what is true anymore. If I ask Dash, ask him right out, I’ll know if he’s lying. I’ll see it in his eyes. “Where’s Dash?”
“Off organizing something or other.”
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
Verrel shakes his head.
“Fine. I’ll find him myself.”
The wind has finally dropped, and night is falling with the rain. Everything is drawn in shades of gray and charcoal dust. Rather aimlessly, I head back toward the Crake, where Dash seemed to know the nighttime crowd.
I hear the music before I turn down the familiar road. There are people standing in the shadows, and buttery light spills from the Crake’s open door. As I walk, I stare at the figures around me, wondering if any of them is going to be Dash. It’s mostly couples, hands under shirts, skirts and dresses raised around hips, mouths locked. I look away quickly until I spot someone I recognize, her back to the wall.
Anja looks at me blankly. Her eyes are the wide black pits of an ’ink-high, and her mouth moves, whispering secrets. It has been only a few hours since she last saw me, and yet she is so far gone into her ’ink-trance that she does not know me. I’d be surprised if she remembers her own name, the musty smell of poisonink is so strong. Her cheeks shine under the lights, tears like gold leaf on her skin. I remember her naked and moaning as the bat fed off her. Now she has her red-dyed arms around someone else, her stained hands resting loosely on his shoulders. She’s sobbing, her body lurching, as her partner offers her what comfort he can.
She sent me to Dash.
Anja turns her head toward me and her eyes narrow. “Clear off,” she says. “Fucking Lammer. You take everything from us.”
Her partner turns to face me, and I feel my heart stop. My ribs still rise and fall as I try to draw breath, but I am certain that I am already dead.
“It’s not what you think,” Dash says, and lets go of Anja. “Firell!” he yells after me, but I am already running into the night.
* * *
DON’T LOSE YOUR HEAD or worse over him, Lils said. Because she knew. I race through the streets, my boots slamming against the stone. Mud and grime spray up and soak my dress. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Why didn’t I listen to her?
I’m blinded by the rain, by something that feels almost like anger, only rawer and bloodier. I run so hard that every breath is bloodied, that the muscles in my legs ache and still I push myself on. Perhaps this is how the little hares felt when Owen used to set the dragon-dogs on them.
Owen. Owen makes me think of Dash, and I bow my head, grit my teeth, and push myself harder.
I don’t even know where I’m running, and when I am finally brought to a halt by a stitch under my ribs, I realize that I’ve crossed the Levelling Bridge and am in New Town. The only places here that I am familiar with are House apartments and offices. Somehow, I don’t think any of those will be viable options to go crawling to for help. I stand bent as I gasp for breath. My side feels like someone has struck it with an iron ax, and I press one hand to my ribs, digging the fingers between the bones to tear the pain out. The heat in my cheeks fades, and the rasp of my harsh breathing subsides, giving way to the drumming of the rain against the slate and ceramic roofs.
It’s coming down harder now, and the wind is back, blowing in off the sea. A sure warning that another storm is building up out over the waves. It won’t take long for it to come into Pelimburg and I don’t want to be caught outside when it does.
There’s only one place I can think of where I might possibly be welcome now: House Sandwalker. I try to orient myself. The bat House was one of the hillside villas. I stare up through the misted rain wondering if I can spot the building from here. The only one that really stands out is the massive marble rectangle of the university.
Another symbol of how far my House has fallen. That was ours once.
I bow my head and trudge up the street, hoping to spot something familiar soon.
Jannik and I traveled through here by coach, and on foot and in the rain everything appears different, so I’m slightly startled when I recognize the white façade with its moonvines and marble steps. My feet are aching in my boots, I’m soaked through, and now that I’m finally at his door, I wonder if this is such a good idea.
What do I say to him? And worse, what if I have to try to explain myself to his mother or some other family member.
It’s useless. And I feel like an even bigger fool for having come here like a beggar.
I’m turning to leave when the door above me swings open and a familiar voice calls out. “Felicita?” He sounds uncertain, like he thinks I’m just a boggert haunting the steps.
Maybe I am. I don’t even have the energy to correct him. Who cares what he calls me now. I nod. Jannik takes the stairs two by two. “I thought it was you,” he says. “I saw you from my window.”
The rain is almost horizontal now, and my wet petticoats and dress slap against my legs, whipping me toward him.
“Get in out of the cold,” Jannik says. “I’ll find you something dry to wear.”
The door shuts. In the sudden quiet, I can hear my teeth chattering. My tears are warmer than the rain, and now I can feel the difference and I hate knowing that I’m crying over Dash.
“Your lips are blue.”
I’m not really surprised. By now I’m certain that every extremity is blue. Hugging myself for warmth, I follow Jannik up to his rooms, where he gives me a thick warm towel to dry myself and a long cotton nightshirt. The nightshirt is soft as a kitten’s fur and faded to a dull gray. It must be his, a favorite. The kind of sleepwear you keep because it feels safe.
He leads me to a washroom and gestures for me to change.
When I’m alone, I peer into the oval mirror above the porcelain basin. The rain has plastered my hair against my head, and my eyes are puffy and red. It’s obvious that I’ve been crying. With a sniff, I rub the towel over my face and hair, as if I could scrub all the misery away with the rainwater
. Then I strip out of my wet clothes and dry myself with a numb ferocity. I want to punish my skin.
Finally dressed, I glare at the mirror. Now I look like a child with my face pinked and the old nightshirt softening my body. And I want that—I want to go back to childish things and start over again.
Jannik is waiting for me outside. “Better?” he whispers.
I nod.
We go to his bedroom, padding as quietly as we can on the thick-carpeted floors.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
We’re sitting on his bed, me cross-legged and him with his legs stretched out. His feet are bare, and his shirt is buttoned askew. He must have been in his nightshirt when he saw me, and dressed quickly. His feet are chalk white and narrow. Elegant. He notices me looking at them and shifts so that he’s mirroring me, cross-legged, his feet tucked under his knees.
“Nothing happened,” I say.
He stares down at his lap, at his interlaced hands. “So what are you running from?”
“I’m not running from anything,” I snap back. I can feel the burn of tears threatening to spill over. I will not cry over that useless manipulative shit.
“From who then?”
“Oh Gris.” I bury my face in my hands and take a shuddering breath, trying to stop the tears from falling. It works, mostly, and I wipe the moisture from my face and blink. “Nothing happened. I thought I was … well … involved with someone. Turns out that I’m not.” Anja was crying too, I remember, and guilt threads through my belly, stitching the ache deep. Dash said it wasn’t what I thought.
I snap the silk thread. Dash hates me, hates my family. I can’t trust what he says.