I can’t be principal flyer of a group that doesn’t exist.
A surge of panic. I should tell Katla. I have to tell Katla.
I wipe my palms, sweaty, on my thighs. “We’re not going on the fleet.”
A pause.
“What?” Katla says.
I shift my weight. Pause to let a guard into the kitchen. He gives us a suspicious look. “Adelaida said there wasn’t room. I should’ve told you right away, I know—but we had the festival, and then I was in auditions, and—I’m sorry.”
Her expression hardens. “You’re right. You should’ve told me right away.”
I flinch. No one takes honesty more seriously than Katla. “I’m really sorry.”
“Whatever,” she says.
“But I’m going to figure something out,” I say. “That’s what I do, right? That’s what I always do. I figure something out. Adelaida and I are—”
“Yeah,” Katla says bitterly, “I have a lot of faith that Adelaida is going to come up with a plan to keep us safe. What’s she going to do? Marry Nikolai?”
Katla must see something shift in my face.
“No,” she says. “Adelaida wants to get you to marry Nikolai. Doesn’t she?”
My mouth is dry. “She suggested it. But it’s a crazy idea. Right?”
“It’s ridiculous!” Katla says, too loudly. “Nikolai would never marry you!”
I’d be lying if I said that didn’t hurt a little. “Like I said. It’s a crazy idea.”
“I’m sure he and Gospodin are doing all sorts of negotiations with the most powerful families in Kostrov,” Katla says. “Probably brokering trades, or something. I bet the girl he marries is the one who can add the biggest ship to the fleet.”
“Right,” I say, feeling myself deflate. Seas. Was I actually starting to believe I stood a chance?
“I can’t believe Adelaida would keep this from us,” Katla says. “Actually, I can’t believe you would keep this from us, but I love you, so let’s move past that and get to the point. What are we going to do? I have half a mind to quit just to spite Adelaida.”
“No,” I say quickly. “Please. It’s not like our odds will get better if we leave the flyers.”
“Then what do you expect us to do?”
“What’s your family planning to do?” I ask.
Katla’s lips purse for a moment. “They’ve been stockpiling food since the day after Storm Ten, but do you have any idea how much food it takes to feed a family for a year? How big a ship you need for all that drinking water?”
I’m ashamed to say, “Um . . . No?”
“They were counting on me,” Katla says. “I was stupid enough to believe that I could get them onto the fleet too. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
I take her shoulders. “You’re not stupid. We all thought—well, never mind. But we’ll fix this. I’ll fix this.”
She tries to shake me away. I can tell she’s slipping into a dark place. When she starts to retreat from us—long silences, cold shoulders—sometimes it takes weeks to get her back. We need to do something. She needs hope. So do I.
“Let’s go to the harbor,” I say, feeling reckless.
“The harbor? Why?”
“We can’t fight this if we don’t know what we’re up against,” I say. “Let’s go look at the fleet. Let’s buy our own ship! Let’s do something.”
“I really don’t think—”
“Nope,” I say, pushing Katla down the hall. She’s not going to the dark, hopeless place, and neither am I. “Come on.”
* * *
~~~
Ten minutes later, we’re hunching against the ocean wind. I have to keep Adelaida’s cloak, which I stole, clenched in my fist so it doesn’t blow up to my hips.
When the masts of the royal fleet ships rise into view, Katla points. “Look at the gates,” she says.
Guards and iron gates surround the dock that leads to the royal fleet. Four huge ships bob there. One is still under construction. I can only make out the names of two: New Paradise and Rain Reckoning.
“Let’s go over,” I say.
“I’m pretty sure the message the gates are trying to send isn’t ‘Please do come say hello!’”
I wave her away and march to the dock. There, a pair of older guards—not the pliant young ones who are all too eager to cooperate with flyers—stand in a growing pile of cigarette butts.
“This dock isn’t open to the public,” one of the men says.
“We’re flyers,” I say.
They don’t look impressed.
“Royal flyers,” I add.
“Neat,” one of them says.
I stand on my toes to get a better view of the ships. They’re big. Very big. And we’re small. Surely we could tuck ourselves in a cozy cupboard somewhere?
“Can you tell us anything about the ships?” I ask.
“Classified,” one of the guards says. “We’re going to have to ask you to leave.”
Katla’s eyes narrow. “Classified? How can the ships be classified? Isn’t it a matter of public safety?”
The men just cross their arms and go back to smoking.
“Come on,” I mutter, grabbing Katla’s arm. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”
“Where are we going?” Katla asks.
“Finding someone more useful.”
We do find someone more useful. A man with sun lines in his dark skin climbing off a narrow boat stacked with fishing nets.
“Good evening,” I say, trying on a merchant’s firm but cordial tone. “We have some questions about the ship market.”
Katla mutters something about how embarrassing I am, and I ignore her.
The man raises his eyebrows. He takes a long time to respond, just in case his skepticism wasn’t clear from his eyebrows.
“The ship market,” the man says.
“Right. How hard is it to buy a ship these days?”
“Look,” he says, glancing around the harbor. “You can’t go around asking to buy a ship. It raises eyebrows these days. We’re all supposed to be doing our parts, you know? Keeping fish and peat and rye coming in to build stockpiles for the Flood. It’s not illegal to buy a ship, but to supply it with enough provisions? You’d have to be awfully familiar with the black market. And have Heather Hill–deep pockets.”
“So you don’t have your own provisions for the Flood?” I say.
“I don’t have my own provisions for next week,” he says.
I point at the massive ships bobbing behind their guarded gate. “So, when the Flood hits, do you think you’ll be able to get on the royal fleet?”
Katla grabs my wrist. I realize, after it’s out of my mouth, that it was probably a stupid question. I really have been too naïve about the Flood.
But the man doesn’t look annoyed. “Rumor is, they’re only taking a hundred and fifty people per ship.”
“But they’re huge!”
He shrugs. “Takes up a lot of space, storing that much food and water. And livestock. And clothing, jewelry, fine art—”
“Fine art!” I say. “Don’t bring fine art, bring me!”
The man barks a laugh. “Fine art doesn’t need ten barrels of drinking water for a year at sea. But I take your point.”
“Surely the ships need crew, though,” Katla says.
“Sure. Any of us would love to get hired. Failing that, plenty of folks are stockpiling their food as best they can, but it’s hard to scrape together much after the tithes take their chunk. But idealists are always going to try. They might last a season. Or maybe they think they’ll find some unsinkable island somewhere.” He sighs. “But I’m more of a realist.”
“So what are you going to do?” I ask.
“Drown, probably.”
“Hey,” Katla says.
“Us too!”
And that’s that.
We’re mostly silent on the way back to the palace. It’s late enough that I should fall into bed, but I don’t think either of us will sleep well.
“I’m going to figure something out,” I say when we reach the door.
Katla shrugs against the wind. “Seems pretty hopeless to me.”
I close my hand into a fist and rest my head against it. Adelaida thinks I can be queen. Is she right?
Do I have any other options?
“We’ll all have a meeting,” I say. “Not—not tomorrow morning. The day after tomorrow. I just need some time to think. Figure out a plan. And then we can get everyone together and tell them the news.”
“Of our inevitable death?”
“Right,” I say. “Of our seemingly inevitable death.”
Katla gives me a long, pained look. “Don’t lie to me again,” she says. Then she goes inside.
I wait by the door a moment longer. Shut my eyes.
The ocean howls.
16
ELLA
I arrive at the blue door with the dawn. A guard lets me inside, but when I reach the studio, it’s empty. I fight the urge to run through the palace until I find Nikolai. Instead, I do a slow lap around the studio, touching each fine silk in turn.
The door opens. I drop the silk and spring back like I’m about to get in trouble.
“Oh!” a light voice says. “New friend.”
I expect it to be Madam Adelaida or Natasha, but instead, a pale, unfamiliar face hovers in the doorway. Her thin hair is cut razor-straight, a mouse-brown sheet that just brushes her collarbones. I try to place her from the festival, but my eyes must’ve slid over her without committing her to memory.
She decides I’m not poisonous and whisks across the room on slippered feet. When she smiles, her fair cheeks dimple. She sticks out her hand. “Sofie.”
When I shake it, I find my palm grasping a web of sturdy calluses. “Ella.”
She’s wearing a silver Sacred Breath necklace—two overlapping squares, meant to represent the sails of Kos’s ship. The manual Maret gave me was very firm about the no-jewelry-on-the-silks rule. I wonder if she has to take off her necklace to practice. “Welcome to the flyers,” she says. “Natasha’s hardly told us anything about you.”
“There’s not much to know,” I say. “I was born on a rugged hillside and raised by ibexes. I can speak seven languages, but tragically, all are derivations of mountain goat.”
Sofie claps her hands. “Oh, I like you! I’m not clever enough to think of a colorful backstory on the spot, so maybe by the time you feel like telling me the truth, I’ll have come up with an invented history of my own.”
“What’s your real history?”
“Nothing so fun as ibexes. My father owns a few apartment buildings in Eel Shore. He’s an ass. But he did always pay for flying lessons, thank the seas, and I joined the Royal Flyers two years ago.”
Two years. I run through the numbers in my head. Cassia died four months ago. I met her three months before that. And how long before that did she flee Kostrov?
This girl might have met Cassia. Might have known her.
“What’s the longest a flyer has been here?” I say, trying to sound like I’m not starving for the answer.
“Oh, Natasha has that record. She’s been a flyer since she was nine.” Sofie pauses. “Though Gretta has been in the palace her whole life, and she’s fourteen, so I guess that’s longer. And if you count Adelaida, definitely her, because she’s been in the palace forever. But don’t tell her I said that, because she’ll think I’m calling her old.”
My heart pounds in my throat. So many people who could’ve known Cassia. Did Cassia ever mention any of these names to me? I wish I would’ve listened better. I wish I would’ve written down everything she ever said.
The door opens again. This time, it’s Natasha, and I feel my heart hit the inside of my ribs.
She almost certainly knew Cassia. Cassia definitely saw her perform.
She’s dressed in a tight black full-suit and a lumpy maroon sweater that swallows her hands to the knuckles. Her hair is ponytailed and pulled over her shoulder.
Did she and Cassia ever speak? How could they have ignored each other? They’re probably the two most unreasonably lovely people I’ve ever met.
Natasha’s eyes run down my body and up again. “You’ll need to change. I’ll get you a spare full-suit from the closet. The one you’re wearing looks liable to fall apart. We’ll do a proper fitting this weekend.” Natasha walks back out the door. It’s not until Sofie gives me a reassuring smile that I realize I’m meant to follow.
I adjust my bag over my shoulder. It’s heavy from the weight of the barometer. Other than that, I only brought a few spare pairs of stockings and the dress I wore on the voyage from Terrazza. I wish I had something of Cassia’s.
In the hallway, I see six doorways, including the studio door we just came from. Natasha waves her hand indiscriminately. “My bedroom, flyer bedroom, Adelaida’s bedroom, washroom.” She stops in front of one of the doors and opens it. “Closet.”
“I didn’t get any of that.”
“You’ll learn.”
The closet is heaped with silks and costumes. Natasha grabs a bundle of black fabric and tosses it at my stomach.
I catch it and try not to be too surreptitious about checking for long sleeves. I exhale with relief when I see them. “Where am I meant to change?”
Natasha shrugs. “I don’t care. The flyer bedroom?” Her eyes flick to my wrist. It’s so quick I’m sure I’ve imagined it. I’m just looking for her to be suspicious, that’s all. “That’s the washroom, if you’re more comfortable.” This time, she points to the door slowly enough that I can actually tell which one she means.
“Do they let you eat here?” I ask.
“Breakfast is at nine, after we’ve warmed up. Meals are in the kitchen with the servants.”
“Servants?” I say. “So I won’t get the chance to steal any solid gold flatware?”
“If you’re asking whether we ever dine with the royals,” Natasha says, “we do. But only on special occasions. Which today is not. I hope you like porridge.”
“I adore porridge,” I say.
She pauses. “I can’t tell if you’re kidding.”
“I would never kid about porridge.”
Natasha leans against the wall, crossing her arms. The way she moves her body is languid, serpent smooth. “So,” she says, “your name’s Ella Neves and you have strong feelings about porridge. Anything else we get to know about you?”
“I prefer to cultivate an air of mystery.”
She stares at me. I stare back. “Why are you here?” she says.
“In the grand scheme? That’s a very philosophical question before I’ve eaten my porridge.”
“I mean,” she says loudly, starting to sound exasperated, “why did you want to join the Royal Flyers? Did you hear it would get you a spot on the fleet? Or are you just here for the sheer passion of flying?”
“What can I say? I’m a girl who pursues my passions.” Like murder! Best not mention that part.
Natasha tugs her ponytail. It’s so tight already, I’m surprised she doesn’t rip any hair out. “We’re not going to practice any less just because the Flood is coming. So I hope you’re serious.”
“Oh,” I say, “deadly.”
I drape the full-suit over my shoulder and slip inside the washroom. I flick the latch on the door.
The washroom is cold and tiled. A pair of basins sit on opposite walls. And on one counter, a comically lovely Roenese sauce boat. Comically, because it’s meant for urine, and it feels silly to pee in floral porcelain. It really does look a bit like something you’d see on a dinner table holding a fancy salad dressing. I grew up
using outdoor privies, but Kostrovians seem to fancy themselves too good for the smell of month-old sewage. Shame. It’s very character building.
I change out of the full-suit Edvin got for me, happy to put it and its too-short sleeves out of sight. The new one is too big, but the material is sturdy and soft.
I hate looking at my siren. I hate it when she’s out, exposed. I hate when I look down at my arm and catch her staring back at me. When I pull my sleeve over my wrist, I imagine that I’m suffocating her.
When I enter the studio again, everyone has arrived. All eyes cling to me as I step inside. It’s as quiet as only an abrupt quiet can be.
Madam Adelaida has a gray cloud of fur on her shoulder. At first, I think it’s some sort of shawl, but when she turns, golden eyes stare back at me. It’s a cat. It’s a cat that looks like it has just gone to war and is still reeling from the experience.
Natasha tilts her head to the side, watching me but speaking to the others. “This,” she says, “is Ella Neves. Ella, these are the flyers.”
“Say your hellos,” Madam Adelaida says. The cat clutches her shoulders. “Then start stretching.”
They each say hello in turn. I feel like the Ella I’ve been is drifting out behind me. As I become a flyer, I stop being who I was before. A farmer’s daughter; a big sister; a Terrazzan. All that is left of my identity are the vengeful parts. The Ella who saw Cassia die. The parts that would do anything to make all that pain worth something.
“Welcome to the Royal Flyers,” one of the girls says. She gives me a big, neat smile.
My mouth is too dry to say anything back.
Hello, Ella, they say, one after another after another.
Goodbye, Ella, I say, and I shove her back outside so she doesn’t see who I’ve become.
17
NATASHA
I lead the girls through stretches.
I’m uneasy about our trip to the harbor last night, uneasy about telling the girls we’re not on the fleet, so having a new flyer here is a welcome distraction.
Girls at the Edge of the World Page 8