Ormeshadow
Page 11
“Have you ever seen a hiring fair? No? It’s where herds of young men have their teeth and hands inspected before their labours are purchased. They should not treat men so.” Hipps put his pen down on the inkstand and folded his hands across his middle. “This has been a great tragedy. So much has been lost. Things riches can’t buy back. If only one good has come from it, it is that you are alive. I can think of no finer man to wield a fortune.”
“The fortune’s cost is too high.”
“You didn’t ask for this. You have no interest in money for its own sake. You’ve been given the chance to make a difference in the world. A chance to help others. Don’t be so hasty to dismiss that. Think of yourself as its guardian.”
Gideon pondered the word “guardian,” turning it over in his mind.
Mr. Hipps laced and unlaced his fingers. “You’ll need to finish your education if you’re to manage a fortune.”
Gideon moved on to the next tray that needed sorting. He raked through piles of golden trinkets with searching fingers as though they were no more than tin toys or glass marbles. As he tipped up a goblet, something rattled around inside and then fell out. He held it up, between his forefinger and thumb. The sceptres and swords were forgotten, pushed aside, along with other gaudy baubles.
“Mr. Hipps, may I keep one thing?”
“You may keep it all, if you wish! It all belongs to you.”
“This.”
Mr. Hipps blinked. Gideon was full of surprises. “Are you sure? Not a Persian dagger or a crown?”
“No, sir. This is what I want,” Gideon replied shyly, palming the scratched and dented wedding ring, as though he’d found the greatest gem in all the kingdom. It was an oath, a pledge made in metal. A blessing and a sign.
* * *
“Stop the coach!”
Gideon had been staring from the window, the countryside sliding by. His face was suddenly animated, looking outward to the world instead of inward. He leaned forward, a hand gripping the window ledge.
Gideon climbed out and Henry Hipps followed. This was the last place on the high road from where they would see the whole of the bay. There were uninterrupted fields, falling away to cliffs and sky.
Gideon stared out to sea, searching. He put his hand to his eyes to shield them from the bright autumn sun as he scanned the empty horizon. There was sootiness in the sky over Ormeshadow that the sunshine couldn’t dissolve.
The pale water between the ochre sandbars glinted. Boats bobbed on choppy waves, acclimatising to a coastline without the Orme. Ambrose would be out there. Not even Gideon’s gifts of gold could keep him from the sea. No offers of a new boat would make him give up Cathy.
A wind picked up, making Gideon’s shirt billow like a sail. It fluttered against his chest, but he didn’t feel the cold. He looked out to sea once more. Then he decided he couldn’t wait any longer.
Back in the carriage, Henry Hipps cleared his throat.
“Gideon, I’m not sure of your intentions. You’ll come into your inheritance when you come of age, which isn’t very long.” He hesitated. “We agreed, out of respect for your parents, you would stay with me until arrangements could be made. But I’m of a different mind now. I’d like to offer you a place with me. A permanent place.”
Gideon’s silence made him hurry on.
“I live alone. I am unlikely to ever have a wife. It will be a bachelor’s house. I would like to guide your education as I think your father would have wished. I would act as your legal guardian. And your friend.”
Silence, still.
“I can give you a home, of sorts. A home.”
“And what can I give you in return?”
There was no impertinence in the question.
“You will give me a future. I will throw open the windows of my dusty house. My heart will not be all withered parchment and memories after all. My life will have a new purpose.”
“Mr. Hipps, I mean this with greatest respect. You will never replace my father.”
“That’s just as it should be.”
Gideon allowed Henry Hipps his cherished myths of Clare Belman. He liked the man who’d come, postponing all his business, to be at the side of a boy he thought was a displaced, orphaned pauper. The son of the woman who had spurned him.
They shook hands, an agreement between gentlemen, talking of the future over the persuasive sound of wheels and beating of hooves, as the carriage bore them on. They were a good twenty miles from Ormeshadow when they passed the old gallows and Gideon Belman turned to Henry Hipps and said, “There is a legend that a great dragon flew over the bay and then swooped down to cool herself in the sea . . .”
Acknowledgments
A huge thanks to Ellen Datlow, who took a chance on Ormeshadow. It’s an immense privilege to work with her. She’s forgotten more about short stories than I have ever known.
Thanks to the team at Tor.com Publishing, including Ruoxi Chen, Lee Harris, Irene Gallo, Caroline Perny, Mordicai Knode, Amanda Melfi, Melanie Sanders, and Liana Kristoff. Thanks to Henry Sene Yee for his elegant cover design.
Thanks also to the editors who have believed in me, especially Paula Guran, Andy Cox of TTA Press, and Michael Kelly of Undertow Publications. It was Mike’s encouragement that made me believe I was ready to publish a collection.
Michelle Noble has been my friend since the age of four. It was she who suggested that my scrap of a short story should be longer. Cait Taylor and Natalie Tsang read the early versions of “Gideon’s Orme.” Thank you.
Thanks to the Sharmas, Greenwoods, Kleiner-Manns, Kershaws, and Flannigans.
Meeting other writers, online and in the flesh, has been a revelation. Thank you all for being so welcoming and kind. British Fantasy Con and Edgelit are my annual highlights. I want to say a particular thank you to Cate Gardner, Simon Bestwick, Julie Travis, Georgina Bruce, Carole Johnstone, Alison Littlewood, Penny Jones, Laura Mauro, Nina Allan, and Tracy Fahey.
And most of all, thanks to Mark Greenwood. Always Mark Greenwood.
About the Author
PRIYA SHARMA’s fiction has appeared in Interzone, Black Static, Nightmare, The Dark, and Tor.com. She’s been anthologized in many Best-Ofs by editors such as Ellen Datlow, Paula Guran, and Jonathan Strahan. She’s also been on many Locus Recommended Reading Lists. She is a Grand Judge for the Aeon Award, the annual writing competition run by Ireland’s Albedo One magazine. “Fabulous Beasts” was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and won a British Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. A collection of some of Priya’s work, All the Fabulous Beasts, was released in 2018 from Undertow Publications, for which she was a Locus Award finalist and Shirley Jackson Award winner.
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Also by Priya Sharma
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Begin Reading
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Priya Sharma
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ORMESHADOW
Copyright © 2019 by Priya Sharma
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Henry Sene Yee
Edited by Ellen Datlow
A Tor.com Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10271
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
ISBN 978-1-250-24143-6 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-250-24144-3 (trade paperback)
First Edition: October 2019
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