by Cat Hellisen
These same work-torn hands held Ilven’s hairpin and marked my own brother for death. I fold them behind my back.
When she sees me, her expression doesn’t change. She is thin-lipped, frowning, her hand on the edge of the door, anchoring herself in her house, while I wash up like flotsam on her doorstep.
“Mother. It’s me,” I say, as if she has somehow forgotten that I exist. Perhaps she thinks that I am just another boggert risen from the deep, dragging Owen up behind me.
Her fingers tremble against the door, and the wind blows fine wisps of her dark gray hair loose, but except for those two things, she might as well be a wooden carving.
“I’m not dead.” So obvious, but what else do I say? “I ran away, made you think I took the Leap.” I have never felt so childish and selfish as at this moment, hearing aloud my own cruelty. “I’m so sorry.”
Finally she speaks. “Why are you here?”
Not at all what I expected. Somehow I thought she’d pull me to her bosom like a lost child, fold me up in her arms, and tell me that everything was going to be all right.
“I wanted you to know,” I say. “May I come in?”
She steps a little to the side, giving me just enough room to slip into my childhood home. She looks past me at the black carriage waiting outside. “House Sandwalker?”
“Yes.” It is impossible to explain.
She closes the door and click clicks her way through to the pristine formal lounge. The one where she receives guests.
Firell brings us tea and little cakes. She has set salt licorice in a small bowl in the center of the cake tray. She has remembered that it is my favorite.
This makes me feel stronger, and I offer her an uncertain smile as she puts the trays down. In answer I get the barest of nods, and this small acceptance does more for me than I believed possible. Light-headed, I cling to my seat.
Mother and I sit perched on the edges of the uncomfortable but beautiful chairs and stare at each other across the tea table.
“Please.” My mother gestures at the silver tray of tiny cakes.
I take a piece of licorice and set it down on my plate.
“Explain,” she says, once Firell has poured our tea and withdrawn, leaving us alone in the gauzy-curtained room.
So I do. I leave out the worst, about how I had a hand in the attack on Pelimburg, about the thing I did to condemn Owen. Instead, I make his death my reason for returning.
Through it, she remains expressionless, not even touching her tea.
When I’m done, I take a hasty gulp of my own drink to cover up my nervousness.
“You cannot come back.”
So she will side with honor. I expected it, true, but I had hoped … Ah well, if anything, it makes easier what I have to say next.
“I know.” I set my cup down and stare at the little spill of tea in the saucer, gathering my thoughts. “I have a proposition for you.”
“Go on.”
“I will leave Pelimburg.”
My mother nods in approval.
“I thought to MallenIve.” And now the part that gives us both an out. “It might be possible for me to take over the apartments there and oversee our business ventures in MallenIve.” It is a solution that allows my mother to save face and to blissfully continue her existence here without my presence spoiling her pleasures or shrinking her social circle. But it also gives her a chance to hold on to what little family she has left. It gives me a chance. “There may be some talk at first.” I know this, and I rush to convince her that it will not be all that dreadful. “But people will soon forget, once I am gone.”
“So they will.” She touches her cup as if she is about to raise it, to finally take a sip, but then she puts her hands flat on the table and shakes her head. “There will still be rumors, and our standing will fall.”
“You can tell them anything you want to save face,” I say. “Tell them that I was kidnapped, that Hobs made me do it, that I took up with some cult—whatever lie will put the best spin on your story.”
My mother grimaces. “Save our House face at the expense of yours?”
I bow my head. It’s what I expected.
She speaks again, her voice a steel whip. “All very well,” she says, deciding my fate as neatly as she would slice a tea-fork through a cake. “Only you’ve never shown any aptitude for business. How do you propose to make your way in MallenIve? Indeed, to secure our holdings there.”
“I plan to be the face of Pelim,” I say. “Making the contacts we need, cultivating the ones we already have.” I swallow some more tea and try to keep my voice airy. “My husband will be the one who deals with the financial aspects. He has rather a head for figures.”
“You’ve secured yourself a match in MallenIve already?” She’s aware that no House here will spit upon me, let alone tie me to its bosom.
“Yes,” I say. It takes all my courage to continue, knowing the rage my mother will unleash. “In a manner of speaking.”
* * *
IT SEEMS THAT after the city heard that my brother had been devoured by the sea-witch, my resurrection raises almost no questions. All I need for my wedding is two witnesses, and the official accepts the Pelim House lawyer and Jannik’s father, hollow cheeked, gray, and tired.
My mother does not attend even though I had half hoped she would find some measure of forgiveness for me.
It comes as a shock that I keep my House name, that Jannik becomes a Pelim. When I question this, the lawyer merely shakes his wizened head.
“You will understand someday,” Jannik’s father says before he takes his leave. He gives us the ghost of a smile, and it is surprisingly warm in such a pale, cold little man.
There will be no wedding feast. Our House is trying to keep the recent developments—my return from death and subsequent marriage to a bat—as quiet as they possibly can. I look down at the dress I’m wearing, yellow, for weddings, but the shade is not quite the right one, and it’s certainly no wedding gown. It’s a dress I wore last season, just once. There was no point in buying a dress for such an insignificant moment. Nor time to have one made. My mother wants us gone from the city as soon as possible. She’s even brought Owen’s widow into the old family home, in waiting for the new Pelim heir.
Understandable, really. As long as I am here, I remain a humiliation. The gossip has started, whispered no doubt by our army of servants. From our House to Malker—who will revel in this chance to sink their own scandal under ours—and so, like a disease, it will spread from one mouth to the next. Mother has sent word to her own family in MallenIve that we will be taking over the Pelim apartments, but I expect little welcome there. I can only guess what she wrote in her letters.
Jannik and I take our few belongings and make our way to the docks. The shambles of broken, burned-out warehouses is being slowly rebuilt. Hobs and Lammers together are hoisting wood and slate, and there are even a few vampires in the crowd, working with them. The dock is busy, the people industrious. Through the noise and bustle I see small moments of quiet community, people sharing tea or ’grits. Sometimes it is enough even that they greet each other, when before they would have not made the effort.
While my mother has made no move to see us off and Jannik’s family has withdrawn as carefully and quietly as wyrms, a company of familiar faces is waiting at the docks to wave goodbye: Nala and Lils, standing hand in hand holding their red kerchiefs high, Esta, still scowling, and Verrel, looming over them with Kirren yapping from his arms.
When Jannik and I brought Dash’s body back to Whelk Street, I felt the final door to their companionship shutting in my face. They took him back, and with that our partnership ended.
They no longer needed me, and I was a high-born Lammer, not one of them.
The separation seemed inevitable, so it lifts my spirits to see them now. Perhaps, after all, Dash did manage to change something.
* * *
THE JOURNEY BY BARGE is slow and tedious. Even with the extr
avagant berth paid for by Jannik’s family, we are hemmed in on all sides by large wooden crates of produce. The wherrymen hoist the sails, and the fresh wind coming off the ocean gives us a chance to coast upriver. We are the only passengers, and every Hob here knows our story it seems. No one says a word to us.
Jannik and I stand together on the Gray Moth’s deck and watch Pelimburg fall away as the Casabi curves through the vineyards that lie beyond the city. Then the vineyards of Samar slowly give way to other pastures. Little towns flick past, toy bright and small. The sun is dipping below the fields when Jannik puts his hand on my shoulder. His touch sends a shiver through me. Not disgust and not just the headiness of magic.
“Come to the cabin. You’ve still some packed food.”
I agree even though my stomach is too knotted up for me to eat. I don’t ask Jannik what he plans to do, although I’ve heard that there are butchers in MallenIve who specialize in the clean blooding of animals for bat purposes. In the dank little cabin, I try to sleep, try to remember what little I’ve learned of MallenIve, that city of scriv and palaces. I’ve left behind everyone I know, my family and my motley collection of friends, for something bigger. MallenIve is a monster, a city known for her vices and pleasures. And yet—and yet she is endlessly faceted and fascinating, a city full of magic, and when people speak of her there is a fire in their eyes and their voices are hooked with desire.
There is scriv in abundance, the tented irthe orchards are thick with windle grubs spinning the most expensive silk, the theaters and music halls host the richest of talent. As the seat of the ruling House Mata, she is the fount of all our fashions and art, our science and magic. The Bone University houses keen minds, men and women of power. I could hire the best tutor for myself and there would be no word to stop me.
MallenIve is my chance at a clean slate. All my misdeeds will be washed away by her vast indifference. And the urge to leave behind all that I have done is greater than any obligation I might feel to stay and face my guilt.
Lils and Nala at least understood. Standing on the dock and watching us leave, they had the look of people who would run too if they were given the chance.
I’m lucky.
The night is spent rocking fitfully in this flat-bellied monster. All through the long darkness I lie awake, expecting that any moment we will sink under the weight of the cargo or be attacked by one of the nixes that still make their home in the muddy water, or that the summer’s torrential inland storms will spring unannounced from a cloudless sky and we will all be swept to our deaths.
Across from me, on his own narrow bunk, I can see the shadow of Jannik as he sleeps, the regular rise and fall of his chest. I shake free from my covers and pad softly over to his bed. He shifts as I lie down next to him, stretched out body length to body length, but his dreams do not release him. The bunk is not meant for two, and he is warm, almost feverish. Breath held, I put my cold hands to his cheeks, and he murmurs.
The language is soft and lilting, and while I don’t know what he’s saying, something in its cadence comforts me.
I close my eyes and sleep.
Dawn comes cold and clean and I leave before Jannik wakes. I sit at the head of the barge, next to a Hob wherryman, and we pass the rising of the sun in a quiet salutation. The Casabi stretches around us, wide and pinkish in the early sunlight. The summer rains will soon be here, and the river will be swelling, flooding her banks, and for a while all river trade will slow to nothing. The Gray Moth is the last barge to leave Pelimburg this season, and she is heavy laden with more than just House cargo.
She carries the promise of something greater.
Acknowledgments
No book grows in a vacuum, and many people have given me their help, insight, and encouragement. Without them, this book would be a shriveled thing, and they deserve all my thanks.
My fantastic agent, Suzie Townsend, for everything she’s done for me. Her enthusiasm for the project kept me going, and her incredible feedback helped shape the book it became.
The team at FSG, most especially Beth Potter, who performed works of magic, guiding me and helping me knit together a stronger, better book. My thanks also to Jay Colvin, who designed a fantastic cover, and to the copy editors and proofreaders, Alicia R. Hudnett, Chandra Wohleber, and Judy Kiviat, who did their best to make me look literate.
My army of beta readers: Bee Retief, Amy Ross, April Castillo, Sophie Wereley, Brianna Privett, Andrew Carmichael, Elissa Hoole, Gary Couzens, Nerine Dorman, and Glynnis Rambaud. You suffered more for my art than I did, and you should all get medals.
The Musers: a circle of friends better than any I could have ever asked for.
And there’s one last person who I can’t thank enough, but I shall have to try. Brian, this one’s for you.
Copyright © 2012 by Cat Hellisen
All rights reserved
First hardcover edition, 2012
eBook edition, February 2012
macteenbooks.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Hellisen, Cat.
When the sea is rising red / Cat Hellisen. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Felicita fakes her own suicide to escape from the strict confines of her aristocratic family and an arranged marriage, only to be confronted with the harsh realities of living in the slums and the ultimate discovery that the boy she has fallen in love with is plotting a rebellion to destroy her family.
ISBN 978-0-374-36475-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4299-5101-2 (e-book)
[1. Fantasy. 2. Social classes—Fiction. 3. Magic—Fiction. 4. Vampires—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.H37444Wh 2012
[Fic]—dc23
2011012645
eISBN 9781429951012
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Acknowledgments
Copyright