Shadow Road

by A. E. Pennymaker

  We had arrived.

  ~~~

  Floubeste: (flaw.best) [Tettian.] n. a mythical creature that feeds on the nightmares of children and the anger of men. More information in the Endnotes.

  38. Upon Arrival

  11th of Nima, Continued

  There was quite a stir at the docks when the Angpixen came limping into port followed by a Coalition warship – and not merely any old warship, but the famous Stryka herself. The moment the great, terrifying pirate-hunting Captain Arramy stepped off the gangway, I swear there was a change in the wind, a collective intake of air by hundreds and hundreds of women.

  Because there were. Hundreds and hundreds of women, that is. Everywhere. Crowding the pier, lining the streets, even leaning out of upper story windows.

  I suppose it was understandable. NaVarre had been liberating women for the last several years. He had to put them somewhere.

  That wasn't to say there were no men. I saw a few. Possibly those map makers who disappeared without a trace; tradesmen; merchants; farmers; fishermen; all the poor blighters who were unfortunate enough to be on the ships that wandered into the Rimrocks and were driven aground by storms or pirates. There were also the crews of the Angpixen, and the two other ships NaVarre ran in his piracy conglomerate, the Faballe and the Velda, as well as the very respectable looking crew of a very respectable looking skoune-dreisen called the Coralynne, NaVarre's safe ship.

  There were a great many children, too, ducking and weaving through the crush on the dock. Some of them were undoubtedly girls, but they weren't the ones eyeing the Stryka with a certain air of hunger.

  It was such a complete reversal of the situation aboard the Stryka that it was almost comical.

  Yesterday, Arramy declared that his men could have a day ashore when we reached the island. That announcement was met with little enthusiasm, given the expectation of cannibals and floubestes, but then we came in sight of Aethscaul, the sailors took one look at what was waiting for them on the boardwalks, and began whooping and hollering, swinging from the shrouds, all their reluctance forgotten.

  I'm not entirely sure who was more interested in meeting whom. It was like throwing fresh meat to wolves, but the line between meat and wolf was exceedingly blurry. There was a great deal of mutual hunting going on. When the gangways were put down and everyone began debarking, every pirate, sailor and refugee who wanted a female companion wound up with one. Or several.

  NaVarre was met on the pier by not one, not two, but three very eager, very lightly dressed blondes who all seemed happy to see him, giggling and laughing as he kissed them each one after the other.

  I rolled my eyes. Surprise, surprise.

  True to form, the captain didn't appear to notice that there were women everywhere. I had to hide a grin when a few girls bravely chose him for a target in spite of his history, beckoning and winking and grinning at him. He walked right on by, absolutely oblivious, a scowl firmly etched on his face as he went striding after NaVarre and the blondes, following them up the pier to a large, whitewashed building.

  I stepped off the gangway, my bundle of belongings clutched under my arm, my father's satchel slung from my shoulder. For several seconds I stood on the dock, letting my sea-legs adjust to solid ground as I took in this place that Father had pinned all his hopes on.

  The wharf ran along the edge of a small marina which, in turn, became a boardwalk with a row of shops and offices facing the harbor. A cantina, a public meeting hall, a milliner, a dressmaker, and a cobbler. There was even a Post and a savings bank and a pleasant park with manicured lawns and a fountain. It was all very civilized for the home of pirates. I was expecting dirt streets lined with run-down, ramshackle drinking establishments and crowded brothels, but the streets were paved, and the buildings were well-built and clean. Higher up the hill, the spire of a chapel rose from a group of palm trees.

  Once, I wanted nothing more than to be like Aunt Sapphine, exploring the world, sketching and drawing and studying cultures and languages; but now that an adventure was looming right in front of me, I had discovered instead just how frightening it was to face a life full of nothing but new things alone. My throat ached as I soaked it all in.

  I hadn't thought I would like this Aethscaul Island, but I did. Worse, Father would have. In spite of the charm and the warmth, the only thing I could think was that whatever new life I made for myself, wherever I made it, whatever adventure I was on, Father wouldn't be in it.

  "Are you alright, Miss Westerby?"

  I looked up. Lieutenant Penweather was standing at the end of the gangway behind me. "Yes. Thank you."

  "Glad to hear it." Lieutenant Penweather stepped onto the dock. A boyishly appealing grin lit his face and he held out his arm, hazel eyes sparkling. "Now. Might I have the honor of escorting you to... wherever it is you're going?"

  I hesitated. If I refused it might have seemed strange, though, so I let my hand slide into the crook of his elbow. "You may. Although I have no idea where that is, so this might be a bigger commitment than you think."

  Lieutenant Penweather's grin twisted into a mischievous smirk. "There are worse things I can think of than following a beautiful woman around a tropical island." He reached out and slid the strap of my father's satchel off my shoulder and onto his own. "That's better. Now. Shall we proceed?"

  My gaze snagged on the satchel. Arramy had all the papers with him in that metal lockbox, and NaVarre had taken the solutions to my father's code. There was nothing left for me to do or hang onto, nothing to protect or keep hidden. I took a breath and let go, falling into step beside the lieutenant as we set out in search of the Young Women's Dormitory.

  ~~~

  The Dormitory was a lovely two-story villa built in the old Ronyran coastal style, with separate rooms that opened from a broad veranda overlooking a central courtyard and garden. The front door of the establishment was actually a large wrought iron gate set in the wall of the courtyard, with an open-air foyer directly inside.

  The lieutenant caught sight of the 'No Men Allowed' sign and pulled a wry face. "I guess this is goodbye, then."

  I smiled. "Thank you for all your help."

  Penweather took a step back and inclined his head. "My pleasure." He took another step, seeming reluctant to leave, but unsure what else to do.

  "Lieutenant," I murmured, "My satchel?"

  He sighed, then held out my father's bag. "I was hoping you wouldn't notice so I'd have a reason to come back." That easy smile returned.

  I realized what he was implying, and a blush stole over my cheeks as I took the satchel again. My blush deepened when Penweather reached out, caught my free hand and bent to press a light kiss to my knuckles.

  "Good day, Miss Westerby," he said quietly. Then he started back the way we had come. Halfway to the corner he wheeled around and began walking backwards, a grin breaking over his face when he saw that I was watching him leave. He bowed low, flourishing his hat like a gallant courtier, then laughed when he nearly collided with a fruit vendor's cart.

  I shook my head. The lieutenant was handsome, charming, and from a well-established and respected family, but all I felt was... tired. My feet hurt from traipsing up the hill in my boots, and I was too hot in my heavy winter skirt, even without the petticoats under it. Hoping for a cool drink and somewhere to sit down, I opened the gate and stepped into the foyer.

  There was an al-fresco office, with a desk and a chair and everything, set up right there between the foyer and the courtyard, shaded by a sun-bleached canvas awning. A tall, strikingly beautiful woman dressed in an orange and gold Ronyran tirna was sitting behind the desk, breezing herself with a large woven-reed fan. Her gaze followed me with interest, and as I approached, she studied me over the tops of half-lensed spectacles, a knowing grin tugging at her mouth. "Was that your beau, then?"

  I grimaced. "Goodness, no." Then I pulled NaVarre's note from my pocket and held it out to her. "I was told to report to the Dormitory for a room."


  "Uh-huh," the woman said, that knowing grin getting a little wider. She took the note and read it. Then she pushed a large ledger across the desk. "Here. Sign this thing while I get you a key."

  There were scars at her wrists, thick ones that went all the way around, as if they had been made by shackles. They were pale and long-healed, and she wasn't bothering to hide them, either, which I found oddly reassuring. If she could survive something that left marks like that, then I could most definitely survive this.

  I looked around, trying to find something to write with among the piles of papers and random objects that littered her desk – seashells, feathers, pretty rocks, bits of driftwood. Finally, I spied a charcoal stick poking out of a flowerpot full of sea glass. With a shrug I plucked the charcoal from the pot and began filling out the information the ledger asked for, grimly providing the false details I was still hiding behind.

  NaVarre had warned me that, for many of the girls, the last glimpse they had gotten of the continent was the big, blue-lettered sign marching down the ridgepole of the Warring Oceanic shipping office right before they were herded into cargo bins like livestock. In an effort to keep things as secure as possible, he hadn't told anyone what my father had really been doing. All things considered, he decided things would probably be easier if I stayed not me for a while longer.

  The woman fished a key out of a jumbled assortment in a drawer and held it up. "You will be in number...eighty-six," she said, reading the tag tied to the key. "The house rules are simple: don't get caught with your man in your room. This isn't that sort of establishment, and I hate drama. There's always Couple's Housing if you're so desperate for his company. Second, keep your room clean, or you'll be responsible for killing the rats. Rats brings snakes, and I hate snakes. Third, your name will be on a rotational calendar of chores because I am only one woman, and I am neither your slave nor your nanny. Breakfast is at seven, lunch is at noon, dinner at o-seventeen."

  I nodded and took the offered key, feeling decidedly like I was back at Kingsbridge.

  The woman flashed a smile that sent laugh-lines crinkling around her dark eyes. "My name is Ydara. Welcome to the Island."

  "Thank you," I said, smiling in response. It was impossible not to. She reminded me very much of my Aunt.

  ~~~

  Skoune-dreisen: (scoon.dry.zen) [Altyran] n. a large ocean-going all-steam-driven vessel designed primarily for civilian leisure and comfort.

  39. The School

  11th of Nima, Continued

  Eighty-six was quite small for an apartment, but after four weeks stuck in Penweather's cabin, it seemed spacious and airy. I stepped all the way inside and took a look around. There was a good-sized window in the far wall, with a quaint rope bed beneath it. I made note of that immediately. The breeze would be lovely. There was also a corner bureau and a proper closet, with enough space left over for a pair of padded chairs and a writing desk. Best of all, there was enough room that I could move about freely without immediately running into anything. It was clean, too, and it was mine.

  I set my belongings down on one of the chairs and made the bed with the simple linens Ydara had given me.

  I unpacked my things.

  Opened the shutters.

  Dusted off the bureau and the writing desk.

  Moved the chairs around.

  Put the chairs back.

  Then I gave in, flung myself down on the bed, and stared up at the beam-and-cane plaster ceiling. It was too quiet. I wasn't going to sit around waiting for someone else's garden to sprout before I found something to fill my time. I'd go mad. Barely half an hour into being a free woman, and already I couldn't stomach the idea of being alone with myself. The stillness in the apartment was thick and sneaky, creeping in on me, squeezing closer with no noise or people or distractions to keep it at bay. There weren't any off-duty sailors singing a shanty as they swabbed the decks, no tread of booted feet overhead, no snap of sailcloth in the wind...

  I shoved myself up off the bed, strode for the door, and snatched it open. NaVarre might still be in that white building down on the docks. I'd just have to beg for something to keep me busy.

  ~~~

  When I got to the dock office, the doors were locked, and no one seemed to be inside.

  An old man sitting on a bench outside said NaVarre had gone to the saloon, so that was where I went next. There wasn't any sign of him in the saloon, either, although one of the waitresses thought he might have gone up to the school, since the Director had come looking for him while he was eating, and the two had left together.

  I thanked her and ducked back out. Then ducked straight back in to get directions.

  ~~~

  The edge of the seat rasped my palms raw, but I ground my teeth and hung on as the repurposed military Gopher crashed into and then out of another pothole. The corresponding bounce of the suspension threatened to send me flying into the wooden high-sides one second, and through the open top of the cargo bin the next. Then the bottom of the bin came up in a rush and I landed back in my seat with a bone-jarring thump, only to brace myself for the next joggle. Once again, I mentally kicked myself for not walking. It would have been safer. I would have had a spleen when I got there.

  The driver shouted something, her words drowned out by the racket of the engine. Then the ancient machine slowed with a squeal of braking clamps.

  At last. I pried my stiff fingers from the seat as I sagged against the rough slats behind me.

  When I opened my eyes again, a reflecting pond was rolling by outside the cargo bin, prim and civilized. Bright yellow and pink lochi lilies spangled the surface. A bronze fountain came next – a great, coiling angpixxe rearing from the water in wild plumes of spray.

  I raised an eyebrow. Appropriate.

  The gopher followed the drive around the reflecting pond and came to a clumsy, jerking halt. There were two quick bangs on the side of the bin, and then the tailgate released by itself, falling open with a sharp clap of wood. That was my signal to get out, I assumed. I lurched unsteadily to my feet and hobbled to the back end of the gopher. I didn't wait for the driver to come help me. I doubted she would, anyway, and I was desperate to reach solid ground. There was a sort of ladder built onto the inside of the tailgate, which was now conveniently on the outside, so down I went.

  My boots met the ground in a crunch of crushed oyster shell, and I took a few quick steps to the right as the gopher belched a plume of smokey exhaust directly in my face. Then the gearbox let out an awful, grinding rasp and the driver pulled away, continuing around the fountain without a backward glance.

  Right then.

  I dusted myself off and turned to get my first good look at what the reflecting pond was meant to reflect.

  My hands went still on my skirt.

  The waitress at the saloon had made it sound so normal. "He's gone up to the school, Miss," she had said. Not, "Our illustrious leader hath ascended the hill unto the glistening edifice that he has transported in all its wondrous glory from somewhere in West Lodes," which would have been more fitting.

  My mouth fell open, and I gawked up at a replica of the Capitol Building in Arritagne, complete with an Antecolonial-style luxglass dome glittering over a central rotunda. A broad veranda met a graceful, double curving stair leading up to the main entrance, and all of it, every wall, window-case and banister, was clad in gleaming white marble that NaVarre must have brought in from the continent.

  The only thing that offered any hint that I wasn't standing on the Gerre-Pardesse in the Capitol were the mature baraboe trees growing from the veranda, with their dark-green heart-shaped leaves casting heavy shade, their rusty-orange branches trailing tropical moss, and their thick, glossy trunks surrounded by marble benches. There were flowers everywhere, also, where the Capitol had trimmed evergreen hedges and a spear-topped wall.

  Still gawking, I started up the steps.

  The front doors were great slabs of iron-bound copper-wood, struck through with turquoise st
reaks of the metal the tree was famous for drawing out of the ground. Carvings of lochi flowers and stylized animals twined over it. I wrinkled my brow, perplexed, although it shouldn't have been surprising, really. NaVarre had brought in vast quantities of non-native stone. Why couldn't he also have brought in thousand-year-old doors from a castle in Altyr?

  I took hold of the bell pull and gave it a yank, fully expecting a liveried door boy to come popping out of a disguised servant's passage.

  Chimes tinkled inside the building.

  I waited.

  No door boy.

  Two more rings produced the same result, but on the fourth a peek-panel slid open where a stag's antlers had been, and a pair of eyes peered out at me. Then a well-hidden wicket-gate came swinging out of the right half-door. "What are ya doing out here?"

  I blinked at the young woman standing in the doorway. She couldn't have been older than sixteen, far too young to be answering the door alone. She wasn't dressed as a servant, either, but she was doing a servant's job. Poorly. Any good maid would have curtsied and stayed out of the way so I could come in. This girl shook her head in annoyance and rolled her eyes as she stepped all the way outside to hold the door open. "Never mind. Just get in. You'll have ta wait in the office, though. There's a bit of a thing goin' on with one of the new lot."

  As she said that, a girl's high-pitched scream rose from farther inside, and then a door slammed, and there were footsteps – lots of footsteps, moving swiftly – accompanied by an assortment of voices:

  "Char, you're safe, you don't have to run! Please come back!" That was a rather breathless woman with a Panesian accent.

  A younger, cultured female voice: "Watch out, Doctor, she bites!"

  "Well, we can't very well have her running off into the jungle like a — oh dear, the door!"

  NaVarre's voice broke in then with a hoarse, "Rhaina, catch her!"

  I was shoved roughly aside by the girl who had just answered the door (Rhaina, it would seem) who planted herself in the doorway again, this time facing in, bracing herself like a bagarrow defender just before another girl came flying through a pair of double doors on the other side of the front entry, apparently dead set on getting out.