“Oh, no. Oh, shit. Milady. Miss? I don’t know what to call you —”
“Xenobia.”
“Did she see me? Did Evelyn see me naked?” The thought was more horrifying than Flora could put words to.
The lady laughed, and it was a dry sound, like a knife being sharpened. “Oh, child.” She wiped a tear from the laughter that would not cease. “If you could have seen her face.”
“Evelyn!” Flora called again, her voice desperate now. Evelyn had figured it out, of course, had seen Flora for what she truly was. Right? Or had Flora misunderstood entirely? They hadn’t exactly talked about it, hadn’t had a chance to talk about it, really. And there was so much to talk about.
But Xenobia leveled Flora with a sobering look. “She’s gone.”
“Where?”
“Off with her husband. Richest man on the Islands these days. Fitting story for a girl like that.”
“She didn’t . . . want me to join her?” It seemed impossible that Evelyn would abandon her now, and even more impossible that she’d wed some faceless, nameless man. But then, hadn’t Flora known that all along? That was what beautiful Imperial girls did. They wed rich men. Just because they had kissed, just because Flora had rescued her, just because they had escaped — together — did not mean that Evelyn wanted her for real, or forever.
And anyway, the man Flora had pretended to be was a lie. And Evelyn knew it, didn’t she? No wonder she’d left. To be with a real man.
Of course the Lady Hasegawa did not want her.
Flora was a liar. A liar, and a criminal, and, worst, a girl.
And Flora had abandoned Alfie for this Imperial. He could be dead by now, and it would have been Flora’s fault. She wanted to cry, could feel the need for release cresting like a wave. But no tears came. Instead she sat, her hands hanging stupidly at her sides. Confusion and self-loathing, hopelessness and self-pity, all battled in Flora’s heart. It was a cacophony. It was a tempest. It made no sense. Nothing made sense.
“You have a lot of feelings,” Xenobia said.
“It’s been a strange morning,” Flora said, then realized that she was not entirely sure that it was morning. She had so many questions, though the clues to some, at least, were coming into focus. She was in the Floating Islands, that much was clear from the walls of the room she was in — stone and windowless, carved directly into the side of the cliffs. From Xenobia’s accent, she could tell she was in Barilacha, the biggest of the Floating Islands and home to the marketplace where most imports and exports were made. And from the look of Xenobia, and her claim that she had healed Flora of a bullet wound, she could guess the woman was a witch.
“Lot of conclusions, too.” Xenobia smiled at Flora, and it wasn’t warm as much as it was an impression of warmth. Her eyes were not friendly, either. They were calculating. “You don’t trust me.”
It was unwise, Rake had told her, to trust anyone. But it was doubly unwise to trust a witch.
Flora did not argue. Witches, they said, could hear your thoughts, could listen to the words you did not say and learn your story. From the way Xenobia looked at her, she guessed this was likely true. The witch’s eyes stared straight into her, through the fortress of the many lies she told to keep herself safe, and alive.
There was a long pause, in which Flora tried to get a better sense of the witch but was unable.
“I want to know where Evelyn is,” Flora said finally.
“I told you: she’s with Mr. Callum. Her fiancé. Her betrothed.” Xenobia tilted her head and looked at Flora with mock quizzicality. “Surely, the story of a rich Imperial girl marrying a rich Imperial man is one you’ve heard before?”
“Yes,” Flora admitted. Of course it was.
“If you’d like, I could tell you a story,” Xenobia said. Her voice was all invitation, all entreaty, but Flora could still hear the knife’s edge in it. It was a voice for cutting.
Flora shook her head. She was in no mood for stories, no mood for nonsense. She wanted to curl back into a ball, but then what? She’d still be in Xenobia’s home, still stranded on the Floating Islands.
“Go ahead. Curl up, then.” Impatience rang loud in the witch’s voice. “Give up. Your story could end here, if you like. You could jump from my balcony, let your body come apart on the cliffs below. Or you could take that knife you have in your pocket and be done with it. You’d not be the first, nor the last, to go that way. In this house, even.”
She stood and walked to the door, leaving Flora sitting on the bed, still miserable and confused.
“Or,” Xenobia said. She was clearly trying her hardest to keep her calm. “You could be greater than your misery. And if you pull yourself together, I can show you how.” She gave Flora a hard look with her steely black eyes. From the pocket of her dress, Xenobia pulled a shard of looking glass. She put it down on the rickety bedside table.
“This is yours,” she told Flora. “See that you earn it.”
Then she shut the door so that Flora was alone with her thoughts.
It was night when Flora finally extricated herself from her room, from her misery.
The only way Flora could tell it was night was that Xenobia wore a nightgown now, a brown, scratchy-looking, ratty thing that hung just past her knees. Her kitchen, a small room with a hearth, was uncomfortably warm. Xenobia sat at a carved wooden table, which boasted many cracks and only two chairs. Before her on the table, a lopsided clay cup steamed, filling the room with a strange, herbaceous scent.
Without invitation, Flora took the other seat at the table. She did not want to trust the witch — better judgment told her this was a grave mistake. But she could not bear to be alone with the truth. That Evelyn had left her. For a real man, a man who could provide. These things made sense, but still they beat against the ramparts of Flora’s heart mercilessly.
And so Flora, in her desperation, in her sadness and her disappointment, turned, as so many had done before her, to the witch.
Witches, Rake had said, could give you respite.
But the cost, he’d said. You must always mind the cost.
Xenobia named no price. Instead, she pushed the mug to Flora, as though she had been expecting her.
“You have already been doing magic of a sort, haven’t you? But accidentally. Do you wish to learn to control it?”
Flora had no idea what she meant, but nodded. Anything to feel less useless. Less alone.
“We’ll start with a story, then,” Xenobia said. “It can be a salve for your pain. But you must build a house for this story in your heart, and keep it. It will be yours then. If you listen. Will you do this?”
“Yes,” said Flora.
And so Xenobia shared her tale.
Long ago, there lived a queen whose love died, suddenly and in the night.
They had only just been wed, and the queen’s wife had been a good and kind woman. The queen’s grief was a terrible thing, black and enormous, and it loomed in the sky of her land for all to see. This saddened her people, and from the peasants to the nobility, all tried to alleviate their queen’s suffering to no avail. Her sadness was too great. The night would not break into day.
In her desperation — to be whole, and to be happy once more — the queen went to the witch.
“Help me,” she begged, “and mend my broken heart.”
The witch said that she would do this thing that the queen asked, but in order for her to cast the spell, there was something the queen needed to do.
“I, too, have loved and lost,” the witch said. “And so I will help you. But in order for me to do so, you must fetch me what I need and you must pay me a fair price.”
“Of course,” the queen said.
And so the witch gave the queen her task: collect a thousand mustard seeds and return to the witch with them in a glass jar.
Her people loved her, and they would be more than willing to share their meager seeds with her. The queen knew this, and so she smiled.
“But,” the witch added,
“know this: A thousand mustard seeds are easy to find. However, should a single one of them come from the hands of a person who has known heartbreak, the spell will fail.”
“And your price?”
“We will arrange upon your return.”
Reluctantly, the queen agreed. Off she went, into the countryside to gather the seeds. It had been so long since she had walked the roads of her own land, and she was surprised to find that the walking was difficult, the roads uneven and cold.
At long last, she came to a farm owned by an old man. He did not recognize his queen, but he offered her respite from the cold anyway, with a warm bed and a cup of hot steaming tea.
“Please,” she asked him, “can you spare me any mustard seeds?”
“Of course,” the man said, “of course.” And he went to his kitchen to gather them. He returned with far more than the queen needed and handed them to her with a kind smile. “Take them all,” he said, for he was generous and took pity on the bedraggled woman before him.
The queen took the jar, but before she tucked it into her skirts, she asked if the man had ever had his heart broken. The man’s smile dissolved, and he took a seat next to the queen.
“Do I seem like it?” he asked.
“No,” the queen said. “No, but all the same I need to know. Have you?”
The man sighed heavily. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.” He had been married once, long ago, and though he and his wife were perhaps not the greatest love story of their generation, they had borne a child into the world, a daughter. The man loved his daughter fiercely, and she was in turn a good child, sweet and earnest, with kindness in her heart.
But then one winter, the cold came. And with it, terrible snowstorms that battered the windows and froze the doors shut. The family hunkered down as best they could, keeping the fire alive in the hearth. But while the fire lived, the girl did not. In the night, sickness came and stole the daughter from under the loving care of her parents. She was gone, irrevocably and forever.
“I’m sorry,” the queen said, and she meant it. She could recognize the pain in the man’s face as if it were her own. She knew what it was to dwell in sadness, to be swallowed by it. And she could see the man trapped in it, just as she was, like a room with no doors.
She did not take his mustard seeds, but she did stay the night. In the morning, she left a large gold coin in her wake, more money, she knew, than a man like him had likely seen in his life. It would not assuage his sadness, but it would keep him warm.
Next, the queen visited a tavern. It was empty, save for the proprietor, who was as impatient as she was cold. She did not recognize the queen, but she served her cider regardless.
“Please,” the queen asked, “do you have any mustard seeds?”
The woman looked at her suspiciously but bade her wait as she retrieved them.
“Here,” the woman said as she thrust a small woven bag at the queen. She was eager to be rid of her, and the queen knew it. Still, she had to know.
“Have you ever had your heart broken?” the queen asked.
The woman did not like the question. Annoyed, she said no, she was never so foolish as to give her heart away. Love did not last, the woman said, and so she protected her heart jealously. The queen could not understand what she meant. And so, in her anger the woman showed the queen her heart — which she kept, locked and hidden and safe, in a steel box.
It was cold. And it did not beat.
“It is broken,” the queen said. She had never seen a heart so pink with life yet cold with death. “I am sorry,” she said, because she meant it.
But the woman did not want to be told that her unbeating heart was broken, so she cast the queen out, into the night and into the cold.
The queen traveled her land, from the north to the south, from the east to the west. And though her people were generous and were willing, none could share the mustard seeds she needed. The queen’s feet were callused and sore from walking, her heart heavy with the tales of grief she heard.
“He left me,” they said.
Or “She did not love me back.”
And “We grew distant, even as we lay side by side in our bed.”
After a year, the queen returned to the witch empty-handed.
“You lied,” the queen said. “You gave me an impossible task and told me you could take my grief away. Why did you tell me you could fix my heart when all hearts are broken? Why?”
And the queen wept and wept. She wept for herself and her love who was stolen by death. She wept for the farmer and his lost daughter. She wept for the woman who had broken her own heart. She wept for all her people, destined for heartbreak and with heartbreak in their wake.
And all the while, the witch crooned, and she sang: “Cry, my lady, cry, cry, cry.”
Soon the queen’s weeping was so great, so full of all the pain in the world, that it fell from the ceiling of the witch’s hut. It fell on their heads, wetting the hair of the queen and the witch both. And outside, it rained, too — and the plants that had shriveled in the perpetual night, once brown and withering, stiffened, green with vibrancy once more.
Several days later, when the queen was done crying, the witch smiled. She refilled the queen’s teacup.
“Your tears,” she said, “were the price of my spell. Pain begets life, Your Majesty, and life begets pain.”
The queen left then and saw her land anew.
Everywhere flowers bloomed and crops thrived.
And still, the queen’s heart beat.
The men had come in the night.
Evelyn was brushing the edges of sleep when she heard the sound of boots on the wooden floors. The low murmur of men’s voices, then the knock at her door. It was a strangely polite gesture given what was to follow.
She’d gone to bed in her own kimono, though it was sticky and dirty and too formal for sleep. But she barely had time to wrap it more tightly about her own body before the men came pouring through the door, bent at the neck under the low ceilings.
They were Imperial soldiers, that much Evelyn could see right away from their neat uniforms, their shaved faces. Each carried a blade in an ornate scabbard on his back, a pistol strapped to his side.
“Lady Hasegawa?” the commanding officer asked. He was a young man, just older than Evelyn herself. But he had the straight back of discipline and training, the eagle pin of a lieutenant on his chest.
Evelyn’s mind whirred. How did they know she was there? She hardly knew where she was.
Evelyn confirmed her identity with a curt nod. “What is this about?” she asked. What could she have done wrong? She had done nothing wrong, not by Imperial law, that she could even dimly imagine. But none of the men replied.
Instead, they spilled forth and took her — rather roughly — by her arms. Her memory flashed to the moment Fawkes had pulled her from her cabin, and it set her heart racing. Her knees were still stiff and raw from being thrown to the ground, her arms still tender from being grabbed and led.
“You will come with us,” the lieutenant said.
In the doorway, the witch watched, impassive.
And though she protested, howling and crying out, Evelyn was taken. She called out to Florian, but there came no reply. Florian was likely still passed out, only just healed from the bullet wound so his — her? — their? — silence was reasonable. She pleaded to Xenobia, but the witch kept her mouth closed, her lips pressed into a line. Florian did not rescue her, and, overpowered by the soldiers, she was unable to save herself.
“What did I do?” Evelyn asked, but no reply came.
As they passed Xenobia, the young lieutenant pressed a thick gold coin into her hand.
The soldiers escorted Evelyn to one of the rickety platform elevators, the wood creaking under their weight as they were pulled, slowly and inexorably, to the top of the cliffs. The cold night air nipped at her skin, for her kimono was not nearly enough to guard against the fog that rendered all but what was directly in front
of her invisible. She’d not even had time to properly bind it.
No one spoke. Evelyn, because she did not dare.
As the elevator slowly rose, so did Evelyn’s fear. She had never broken the law. She had been raised — as all Imperials of good breeding are — with an utter disdain for criminality and an utmost respect for Imperial soldiers. Their laws were ironclad. That was what made the Empire function. Reason. Law. Order. Justice. And those who did not obey paid dearly.
She could not bear to look at the lieutenant, who stood closest to her, though she could feel his eyes on her. She had been betrayed by Xenobia, and now she had been arrested. A waking nightmare — a week in the stocks — rose in her mind, and she shuddered against it, against the cold. Imperial punishment was so public, so humiliating.
“I will speak to your commanding officer,” she hissed. But he did not respond to this.
“Are you warm enough, my lady?” the lieutenant asked. When Evelyn did not reply, he shook his own jacket from his shoulders and wrapped it loosely around her. The jacket was warming, but it hung uncomfortably around Evelyn’s body. “The fog is thick,” he said, as if this explained everything.
The soldiers led Evelyn through the dark streets, past an open-air market whose stalls were closed with cloths of all different colors. The night was cold, but at least as they walked some of the warmth came back to Evelyn and her shivering ceased. Still, the silence of the soldiers unnerved her, the sound of their boots hitting the streets in concert frightening in its uniformity.
She was led past an enormous white church built in the Imperial style, but with enormous stones the likes of which did not exist in Crandon. From the parapets, the First Emperor looked down on them, his frowning face full of disdain. Despite his perpetual marble judgment, the angels who flocked around him looked to him lovingly, and stone lions were frozen forever in midroar beneath him.
Evelyn had always hated church, but she especially despised it now, as the soldiers marched her past it. The First Emperor was a cruel god, prone to punishment. Evelyn did not worship him, not in her heart, not ever and not truly. And frankly, the notion that the Emperors were each a god in their own right was a preposterous idea. If that was true, then why did they die?
The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea Page 13