Quietly, so that Josine couldn’t hear me, I called out to my colleague, my ally, my friend. And Jenny came.
Jenny had lived with me and Sukey and the others at Madame’s for four years. She and Madame found out quickly enough that she was a failure as a whore—like me and Sukey—but unlike me and Sukey, she had no talents for diplomacy, administration, or much in the way of organized spellcasting.
What Jenny did have, we discovered one day, was a strong affinity for shapeshifters. For reasons none of us could understand and Jenny couldn’t articulate, she loved the skinwalkers, and they loved her. With the rest of us, they were aloof and wary. Jenny may as well have been one of their furry babies for all the caution they showed her.
Two years ago, one of their number, Lisette, fell in love with a mortal man. She decided that she would spend her days on land with him, but to give him her sealskin to hold her to the bargain seemed an unfair burden to them both. She gave it to Jenny instead, not forever but to keep for awhile. Jenny spent her days in the waters Underhill, frolicking with selkies who accepted her, if not as one of them, certainly as a dear friend and one who would help catch the strange fish who populated those waters.
What we all knew—what we never spoke a word of—was that every day Jenny lived Underhill changed her, made it harder for her to return home, and we didn’t know what she would do on the day when her selkie friend wanted her skin back. We had no earthly idea, nor an Underhill one. But as none of us, up to and including Madame, had any idea what Jenny would do in any case, no one tried to stop her.
The girl-seal nosed my leg playfully, and then her flippers flung her head back in one motion, and it was Jenny in a sealskin cloak, standing up in the water next to me.
“I wish you were here for love of me,” she said without preamble. “Hello, Lucy. What’s happened?”
I gave her a quick hug and explained as best I could.
Jenny sighed. “Can she swim?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said.
“Find out, will you? I’m not sure I can get you through to a point where you can find the thread to weave a door to Madame’s again without at least a bit of swimming.”
“What if she can’t?”
“Then I call some selkiekind to help her, and Madame is in debt to the skinwalkers for the sake of a little mortal client she’s never met.”
My heart sank. “I’ll ask her, but I can’t imagine where she’d have learned. I can’t imagine where she’d have been permitted to learn. It’s not the sort of thing her people—”
“I know,” said Jenny grimly.
I waded back to shore, feet slipping uncomfortably. I never quite lost my balance, but the hem of my dress got thoroughly soaked all the same. By then I was pretty sure the dress would be a complete loss, which was a shame. I was fond of that dress. But among the things I had learned from Madame was to set priorities.
I stripped my dress off, standing before them in my shift. Sukey winced and started to unbutton her own dress. “Can you swim?” I asked Josine.
“No,” she said.
Sukey looked at me.
“Madame will have to owe the selkiefolk a favor,” I said.
“Isn’t there another way?” asked Sukey.
I raised an eyebrow and let her think over the alternatives herself. Coming out of the Underhill ways at an unknown point might land us miles from the city, or universes from it, with no way of telling how to get back where we came from—if we even survived the trip. The most prominent tales of the children who are taken Underhill are the ones who simply live there, like Jenny, but no one talks of the ones who wander into another universe, and then another, and are never seen nor heard from after.
It is possible that the Fair Folk know how to track one of our own if she strays from this universe, but if so, they aren’t telling. Madame would have freed those ways to us if she could. Madame opens many paths. But that path is not open even to her.
And returning to Josine’s house, going out the way we came in, would put us in no better position with regard to the Rust Lords, and waiting for the sea to shift again might do us a deal more harm than good.
Sukey thought all this herself. “Well, then,” she said with a sigh. “Tell Jenny that our charge can’t swim, and let’s get on with it.”
Once again, Josine was more game than we had any business expecting of a young woman of her upbringing. She did not make any fuss about leaving her fine dress behind, nor about stepping forth in her shift to be bumped about by selkies. I suspected that the cave made her feel more as though she was indoors, somewhere private, but it may simply have been that she was uncommonly sensible.
Or uncommonly frightened by the Rust Lords.
I had not been swimming for quite some time, and Sukey was, I think, the same. The selkies were there to help Josine, but I was just as glad to have a nudge from time to time. I suppose we only swam for half an hour, perhaps less. It felt like much more. Then one of the selkies nudged me harder than their helpful bumps, and I hit bottom with my toes.
I stood up. The water was up past my waist, but calm. While Sukey and Josine waited, catching their breaths, I trod out the path for the gate that would take us back to Madame’s in safety. I have never seen something so welcoming as the closet on the landing of the back stairs that day. I made a mental note to send someone to sop up the extra water that spilled onto the second-best carpets as we crossed over, but for the moment I was content to sit on the soggy second-best carpet in my shift and laugh wearily and breathe with Sukey and Josine.
4. The Arts of Unearthly Pleasures
It would have been too much to ask that the Rust Lords avoid our establishment while we had Josine Valdecart within it. The Rust Lords, like all other lords of power who visit our city on the borderlands, know what they like. And like so many others, what they like best is exactly what we have.
It’s how we make our living.
We all know when the Rust Lords come through the door. We can hear them and feel them and smell them; we could even without Madame’s training. In less highly skilled atmospheres, a room will go quiet when one of the Rust Lords walks in. Here, we are too mannerly for that, and they appreciate it, though they themselves have no manners to speak of.
Their feet fall heavily on the carpet, and around them comes the smell of rust and of moldering leaves, which does not readily dissipate no matter how many jars of potpourri are/we set out and no matter how thoroughly /we launder the things they touch are laundered. Their voices are not loud, but the creak of them carries. They are less vivid than the ordinary fairies, more veined and mottled than the likes of us, and they shine like a slick of oil on water.
The Rust Lords ought to be very popular among our local fairy population: anything that saps the power of cold iron is well-liked, even loved, in our trade. Nearly anything.
But the Rust Lords are not. Part of the problem, of course, is that they can’t completely destroy cold iron. Iron is an element. Binding it to other elements, in rust, does not make it disappear, and while smudging fairies with rusty dust is a great deal less dramatic than smiting them with swords, it turns out to be threatening all the same. And it turns out that raw destruction makes the deathless uncomfortable. I gather it hits too close to home.
In any case, we are as discreet as we can manage at segregating the Rust Lords from the ordinary clientele, and they visit but rarely and not in great numbers. Keeping them away from Josine would not, in theory, be difficult.
It was therefore with a sense of inevitability, though not a pleasant one, that I realized that unless we stayed in the landing closet forever, the door I’d opened from the Underhill ways took us directly past their section; and that, of course, some of them were in attendance.
“I smell them,” Josine whispered, shrinking back a
gainst the cream-and-straw wallpaper in her wet petticoat. Her hair had draggled down the back of her neck, and for the first time she looked like the fainting noble daisy I had expected her to be.
“We won’t let them get you,” I said. “We won’t, and Madame won’t. And this is Madame’s place.”
“Madame won’t like it if there’s trouble, though,” said Sukey.
“Shall we go back and get Jenny’s sealskin?” I asked.
Sukey frowned at me. “If she would give it. And if it wouldn’t make them suspicious, a seal flopping and flapping along the corridors. Even the born-selkies have more manners at Madame’s than that.”
I sighed. “Why is it that those without manners feel they can presume upon those with them? If we protested that they were rude, they would laugh and not pay us the least attention.”
It was fortunate then, or possibly a sign of a well-run house, that one of our girls, Therese, chose that moment to ascend the back stairs. Even among our girls, Therese is uncommonly sensible. She did not say a word at our half-clad, bedraggled state, merely blinked, and then greeted us in very cautious tones.
“We’re just out of the Underhill ways and avoiding the Rust Lords,” I said, also quietly. “This is Miss Valdecart, a client we are protecting.”
“From the Rust Lords.”
“Yes.”
Therese looked us over carefully. “You’ll want something dry.”
“Ideally.”
“We can get you.…” Therese hesitated.
“Do you work in the Rust Lords’ section?”
“She does,” said Sukey.
“When I’m called on,” said Therese. “Not always. But I have rooms. I have space.”
“Is there anywhere we can go from here that won’t be near their—”
Therese shook her head. “But I’ll run point.”
“They don’t want Lucy and me,” said Sukey. “It’s Josine they’re after. They might not even know we’re the ones protecting her.”
Therese winced. “I wouldn’t underestimate what the Rust Lords know.”
“All the same, if you have a choice between throwing her to them or us—”
“I understand,” said Therese. “Come on, then.”
She crept down the stairs and peered around the banister. I sighed, not sure what use this was going to be. The air was full of the smell of the Rust Lords. They were near. I would not be able to tell how near. Holding our sopping shifts out so as to avoid squelching, Sukey and Josine and I followed Therese down the stairs. Therese slipped down the hall, looking about her, and then motioned us to follow her into her room.
Happily for all of us, Therese was a bigger girl than any of us, though not as tall; we would never become ladies of fashion borrowing her clothes, but they would cover us decently enough for in Madame’s house, decently enough until we could get to our own things—or, in Josine’s case, to mine. In the quiet of Therese’s room, I started trying to think which of my dresses I liked least, which stockings I could part with. Generosity is a virtue, but in this house we try never to take virtue to extremes.
“The things you do,” said Therese, shaking her head at me. I looked a sight in her third-best dressing gown, with my hair in a long, wet braid, but I held myself proudly.
“Madame serves her customers. You know that.”
“I do know that,” Therese said, “and I’m only glad I serve them my way instead of yours. Now that you’re not dripping all over the carpets and leaving a trail behind you, how do we get you to safety?”
I froze. Of course we’d left a wet trail. “Tell one of the servants I asked for them to steam all the carpets in this wing,” I said, trying to sound calm.
Josine was the only one who did not look at me as though I’d lost my wits. The steam cleaners are hand-cranked and extremely loud. They can’t be operated with fewer than four people, and six is more useful. With the smell and the noise and all the people involved, they could only be more conspicuous if we installed flashing lights on them, and possibly some kind of tracer that penetrated into the Underhill. Some of our girls have claimed, when we have run the steam cleaners on their days off, that you can already hear the things all the way into the Underhill.
I had thought of all that.
I had also thought that Miss Josine Valdecart is the very last person who would be expected by her friends or relations—or, more to the point, her implacable and obsessive enemies—to be seen running a steam cleaner in the halls of a whorehouse. Even a very high-quality whorehouse such as our own.
Therese reported back: “They’ll be in the hall with the steam cleaner in half an hour.”
I nodded. “Good. We’ll go out and join them, and that’ll get us out of this wing at least. Therese, get someone to distract the Rust Lords as much as you can, please. Dance for them. Something. Try to keep your head down, Josine.”
“Will I break it?”
Sukey laughed. “My dear girl, it is a steam cleaner meant to be run by the newest and lowliest of maids. We design them to be sturdy. All you have to do is turn the crank and hope your arms don’t fall off.”
“That sounds… I can do that,” said Josine.
She almost couldn’t. Of course there is no spell on the steam cleaner to make people’s arms actually pop off, but she was not used to that kind of exertion. Nor, to be fair, were Sukey and I any more; and certainly not after half an hour of unaccustomed swimming. The servants who were with us had to do the lion’s share of the work, poor dears.
As we came nearest to the Rust Lords, clanking and swearing, I could smell them. I had the belated realization that Sukey and I could simply have walked off to our own rooms and let Josine and the servants handle the steam cleaner. But as well as she’d kept her head, I didn’t trust that it would be permanent.
We didn’t have time for a bath, when we were safely into our own wing, but a quick wash-up was not beyond us. We settled our hair back into place, and I loaned Josine the green silk that made me look muddy. (I have, in my time, managed to be earthy. Muddy, no, never when I can help it.) I expected it would be a permanent loan. We settled into the parlor and drank large cups of tea and tried to pretend we had some idea of what to do next.
“There’s always the…,” said Sukey.
“I could try a spell that…,” I said.
Josine said, “.…”
I had really intended to have another biscuit or something, because I was ravenous. Apparently I was more tired than hungry, because I shut my eyes for just a moment, and my mouth tasted woolly when I heard, “Aren’t the three of you a pretty tableau! I should see if that painter fellow wants to use you as models. You look likely to stay still for him, at least.”
We all jumped and turned as one.
Madame was there.
5. Stain Removal and Other Laundry Services
Madame is old, or would be old if she could be bothered to let time infringe on her borders with impunity. As she cannot she is merely a bit shiny around the edges from where time has bounced off her and left her herself. She always wears a white dress with white or iridescent embroidery, white stockings and white slippers, and her charm bag is white-on-white as well. Under gaslight, starlight, or candlelight, Madame sparkles.
No one knows what she does in sunlight.
She offered Josine her hand graciously, turned as though Josine might kiss it. Josine shook it instead, and Madame smiled. “Miss Valdecart,” she said. “You seem to have gotten yourself into a considerable amount of trouble.”
“Yes, Madame,” said Josine. Her voice remained steady, and I was proud of her in her gently reared inexperience. Very few young ladies of her background would do so well in the face of the most notorious brothel-keeper in the city, after an Underhill flight and soaking, attired in the borrowed
bathrobe and underthings of a whore.
“Josine was going to tell us what, exactly, happened at that masquerade, that drew the attention of the Rust Lords to her,” I said. “But things keep interfering.”
Josine looked at Madame shamefacedly. “I had never been to a party like that, you see.”
“Gently reared,” said Madame, with a touch of sadness.
“Quite so, Madame, and not much out in the world. One hears of the Rust Lords mentioned, almost as bogeymen for children. One does not appreciate the social reality of being introduced to them at a party.”
“And were you introduced.”
“Not—per se,” said Josine, flushing further. “There was an ice sculpture. It was in the shape of a rabbit—”
“This was for the equinox?” Madame interrupted.
“Yes, the spring equinox. It was not so long ago, I suppose.” Josine played with the fringe of her borrowed robe, then collected herself. “The air was chill enough yet that the rabbit melted but slowly, a few drips from nose and ears was all. And then they came, and one of them pointed at the rabbit and laughed, and it collapsed with a splash into a puddle of water that soaked the table and passersby.”
“And then?” Madame prompted, when Josine seemed to want to go no further.
“And I—I was—upset,” said Josine.
“You were angry,” said Madame.
“Madame, I was.”
“What happened when you got angry?”
“Other girls get angry and break things,” said Josine in a rush. “Hairbrushes or porcelain plates or glass vases. I get angry and things…fix themselves. And the sculpture fixed itself. There was once again an ice rabbit. It surged out of the puddle. From the look they got, I think they thought they might have angered an undine, who was now coming after them. But no, it was just me, they saw soon enough that it was just someone. And they had to find out who would dare cross them, and who had the strength.”
The Witch and Warlock MEGAPACK ®: 25 Tales of Magic-Users Page 58