by Jay Lake
______
My next run with the Dancing Mistress set the tone for the work we did through the winter. That night she took me over the wall for the first time, to venture inside one of the Factor’s empty houses. We slowly climbed dusty stairs, pausing every two or three to sweep behind us and spread the dust again. That was something of a revelation for me—under Mistress Tirelle, I had learned at great pain that dust was an enemy. Yet here it was a friend to conceal our trail.
Even at that pace, we gained the roof in less than ten minutes. Spread before me was a landscape of sloping tiles, chimney pots, small peaks with inset windows, pipes topped by little rain caps and vents. In short, terrain. Like the groves of home, except these trees were metal, wood, and brick.
“This is a rooftop,” the Dancing Mistress said. “When we run here, there are many ways to be unlucky.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Even on the ramparts of the Factor’s house, you are largely safe except from some accident of discovery. Here, a loose tile or a slick stone could easily send you to your death.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
She sighed. “At some point, when I judge you ready, we will begin jumping.”
“Thank you.” She seemed to be waiting for something, so I asked the question that hung in my mind. “If the danger is so great, why do we pursue this course?”
“So that you will be everything you can someday.”
“You do not dance so with your other students.”
“No, Girl. Almost never.”
Her smile was sad. I could see it even in the darkness.
We began to walk the roofs of that block with whispered warnings and brief lectures through the moonlit dark. How to stand or slide on a slope, the virtues of ridgepoles, which chimneys to avoid and what were the tells that warned one off. The street had been complex with faces and odors and dangers of a certain kind. This place higher up was complex with angles and textures and dangers of a different kind.
When the ice came, the rooftops were a whole new variety of danger. Even the street was hard to cross with snow betraying our steps. We worked the quiet darkness of the blocks around the Factor’s house all the winter, except for those weeks when the weather was too much to be out without catching some grippe that would betray me to Mistress Tirelle.
The duck woman noted the improvement in my spirits that season, though her response was to question me closely about whether one of the other Mistresses had been bringing in some forbidden material to my lessons. I would never tell the Dancing Mistress’ secret, so I led her to watch Mistress Leonie, Mistress Danae, and all the others with increasing suspicion. It amused me to see these mean and bitter women snipe at each other all the more. They sniped at me as well, but at least they were not conspiring at my humiliation.
True to his word, Federo did not come back for over a year. I continued to grow, unfolding into a coltishness that I was repeatedly told I would not lose until my womanhood came upon me. I became clumsy, which distressed both the Dancing Mistress and me at our daily lessons in the practice room, and far more so on those nights when we sought to climb and run the high air.
Mistress Ellera arrived to teach me the arts of paint and charcoal, and together we discovered a gift that none had suspected in me. Quite soon I was fit to draw a most pleasing portrait in blacks and grays on a pinned-up sheet of foolscap. I amused myself sketching each of my Mistresses, until Mistress Tirelle forced me to stop. She seemed to fear a descent into cartoonish mockery. Still, Mistress Ellera’s palette of colors and shades and brushes showed me a window into the world that I had never expected.
I nearly lost my privileges the week that all unthinking I produced a portrait of Endurance standing to his knees in a rice paddy. Mistress Tirelle somehow suspected the picture for what it was, but I lied convincingly enough to persuade her it was Prince Zahar’s divine cow from one of Mistress Danae’s storybooks.
Otherwise I endured the occasional beatings for forgotten lessons or talking out of turn. Life was as always.
Clumsy or not, the Dancing Mistress and I ran ever farther on the rooftops. We followed streets farther away from the Factor’s house before climbing a shadowed drainpipe or a vine-wrapped trellis. The presence of people no longer gave me such worry and distraction, but I still preferred the high silences.
We met a few others up there. They were fellow skulkers and travelers for whom silence seemed the best greeting and fondest farewell. All of us shared a secret under the stars, and I loved those nights in the open air.
My existence had settled into a rhythm that suited me when I did not think too hard about the terms of my confinement. I still kept my imaginary belled silk close every night, but my burning sense of injustice had faded beneath the combination of almost-comfortable habit and the continuing discovery my lessons had become.
______
That summer, as I began to look time and again toward the gate to see if Federo would return, the Dancing Mistress made another change in my training. Instead of running the roofs, she brought me two blocks from the Factor’s house and into a narrow court crowded with garbage and glint-eyed rats. Only a sliver of sky showed above. The odor was foul, and the refuse rustled strangely.
“We travel a different route tonight,” she announced. “Can you tell me where?”
“Not above, and not within.” I looked around, then at the metal grate beneath our feet. “Is there a below?”
“Below is the life of a city.” Her smile flexed toward the feral. “Now you will learn the truth that lies beneath.” She took up my hand. “Never stray away from me down there. Not for a step or a corner. You can always climb down off a roof if you become lost, and find the pavement and from there your way back. Below, there are no landmarks as you know them. Exits are rare and tend to be located in odd places.”
Going from a rooftop block to another rooftop block involved much climbing up and down, which in turn required a great deal of waiting for a quiet moment and good shadow. I could immediately see the value of traveling Below, if there was a place in which we could make the run. “How far does it go?”
“Not everywhere,” she admitted, “but more places than you might think. There are layers beneath this city.”
“The water flows deeper?”
“The sewers are channeled to the harbor, for the most part. But mine galleries run beneath them, and warrens from some other age of history when people here felt a need to build below the surface.”
I was fascinated.
We pried open the grate and looked down a mossy hole that smelled of mold. Rungs were set in the wall, just as slimed over as the bricks around them. “I will always go first,” she told me. “Unless I instruct you different in the moment.”
She slipped down the rungs. I followed. Having no way to pull the grate after me, I left it standing open.
At the bottom of the climb, there was a drop of eight or nine feet. The Dancing Mistress helped me land. I looked back up to see a circle of stars, as if the new moon had inverted itself to cover the entire night sky and left only a single disc of stars behind.
Water trickled. The mold smell had given way to damp stone and old rot. I could see nothing at all when I looked around me.
“You can step into a pit and never know it.” Her voice was not where I had expected it to be, and I jumped in startlement.
“There are things that live down here. Most of them are nasty.” The Dancing Mistress had moved again, again without my knowing. She walked in absolute silence. Her unpleasant little game made me realize how much I depended on my eyes.
“There is no light except that which you bring.” This time I thought I heard her feet pad on stone.
“Close your eyes and spin round.” Her hands touched my shoulders and moved me. I spun. Strangely, closing my eyes made it worse, as if my balance were partly anchored in what I saw even within the impenetrable dark.
She spun me around time and again, then eventually slipp
ed me to a halt. “Take a step.”
I tried, and collapsed. I bit back a cry of surprise and pain. The stone was slimed beneath my touch, and my knee felt as if I had wrenched it.
Something writhed beneath my hand. The squeak that left me was no more in my control than was my heartbeat.
“Do you want to be here?” the Dancing Mistress asked from close above me. Her breath was hot, and I thought I could see the faintest spots of gleam where her eyes were.
“Y-yes.” I held on to my fear, clutching it close as I clutched my anger and sadness when I stood inside the Pomegranate Court. This was freedom, too—free as the starry skies over the roofs, and more so, for I could find direction and distance here. Mistress Tirelle would cut me and cast me out, if she did not kill me in the moment, for being down in this place.
Going underground was the greatest rebellion I knew. I needed the Dancing Mistress’ hand in mine to pursue this. There were no walls Below except the bounds of tunnels. A cage the size of the city lay beneath the feet of my captors.
“Yes,” I repeated. “I want to be here.”
“Good,” she said. “Never forget the fear, though. It will keep you alive down Below.”
Fear doesn’t keep me alive, I thought. The account that I must repay keeps me alive.
“Take this.” The Dancing Mistress handed me a length of dark cloth.
We were out in the courtyard on a chilly night nine days after she’d taken me down beneath the grating. I was eager to run in the underworld again.
“What is this for?”
“Draw it over your eyes.”
That was an old game. I had done the same with Mistress Tirelle often enough, when we worked on my seeing. I triple-folded the blind, then tied it around my head so that my eyes were fully obscured. Though I did not realize it, one of my most valuable lessons was about to begin.
“Now slowly walk from here to the horse box.” Her grip tightened on my arm, until the claws caught at my skin. “Slowly.”
She turned me toward the far wall of the courtyard and released me. I took a confident step and slammed my shin into the low wall around the pomegranate tree. I stumbled at that, and fell hands-first into the bark. Pain erupted in my forearms to match the throbbing ache in my shin. I swallowed back a shout, then stammered, “Y-you t-turned me!”
I could not keep the sense of betrayal from my voice.
“No,” she said. “You turned yourself. All I did was point you wrong.”
“That’s not fair.”
Her voice hissed close to my ear, just as it had down Below. “Is the world fair?”
“N-no.”
“Then why should I be fair? You’ve lived here more than three years. You know every cobble of this court. How is it that you need my help here?”
I shook her off and stood still.
Her breathing dropped to near silence, just the faint passage of air. I extended my arms without moving, and looked with my ears.
It was silent, as always in the Factor’s house. But the silence of a city is not an absence of noise, any more than there is silence wherever people live.
At home, when I was very small, the fire had crackled, even well after it died to coals and the eye-watering odor of ash. Endurance whuffled in his pen, his gut rumbling all night long. Animals yipped in the stands of trees. Night-hunting birds sang their prey songs.
Aboard Fortune’s Flight, the sea had constantly slapped the hull. The boiler’s kettle burbled below the deck, while someone always must run to orders or coil a line or call out a log reading, even in the deepest hours of the night.
Here the silence was eased by the faint snap of a fire within the house. The streets away from our walls echoed their noises. The wind eddied differently around the high, blank inner wall than it did rattling through the pomegranate branches or sliding along the copper-clad roof.
Now, concentrating, even the Dancing Mistress’ breathing seemed loud.
I listened to the tree a moment, let its damp bark smell tell me where it was. I turned from there toward the faint echo of the breeze worrying at the inner wall. One slow step, to find the slight slope of the cobbles away from the pomegranate tree’s little circle of stone-bounded soil. Another slow step to the flattening out. Vague echo of street noise behind me. Wall before me. I began to walk with deliberation, keeping my hands loose and ready for a fall should there be an unstable cobble or some trap left by my Mistress to teach me further wariness.
After twenty-two of my paces, I reached up to touch the inner wall. I’d known it was there. The horse box should be a few steps to my left. I listened for a while. The box made no noises, for it was fairly compact and had sat there through many seasons. It was too small to trap the slight breeze that blew. Memory would be my guide.
I turned, took a step, and slammed into it. The stones caught me hard as I fell flat.
She was above me a moment later. I heard the last of her footfalls, while her breath huffed close. “You know this place as well as you know the fingers of your own hand. Yet mark where you are right now. How will you fare below ground?”
“By following you, Mistress.”
“By following me.” She knelt—I could tell by the faint creak of her joints, the rustle of her tunic, and the change in the sense of warmth as the Dancing Mistress came closer to where I lay flat. “I see differently from you, Girl. Heat is almost a color to me. Underground tends to be very wet, and the water is not at all like dry stone in that view.”
“I do not see heat, Mistress.”
“No, you do not.” She touched my shoulder. “There are other ways. It is always dangerous to show a light down there. Fire mixes poorly with bad airs in some tunnels. Other people and . . . things . . . will see you from an unfortunate distance. But there are small lights, coldfire scraped from a certain mold on the walls, that can aid you without substantial risk of betrayal.”
“I understand the danger,” I said.
“Good. Now run the courtyard with your blind.”
I fell six or seven more times, but I ran the courtyard around the outer edge. I feared she would make me climb the wall, but she did not.
The next day, I wore an ankle-length skirt to hide the bruises. Mistress Tirelle said nothing, but I feared stripping it off for a beating, so I took care to be especially pleasant and tractable.
______
Federo came again shortly thereafter, somewhat beyond the conclusion of his promised year. Snow had not yet reached us, but frost was on the cobbles in the mornings. The pomegranate tree had shed the last of its leaves, while the wispy clouds that painted the highest part of the sky in winter had begun to make their appearance. I detested the cold, but the smell of the season always lent me energy.
When my captor appeared at the entrance to the upstairs sitting room, I threw myself into an embrace.
He caught me, staggered back, then pushed me to arm’s length so that he might give me a good look. I was able to do the same for him.
I knew he saw a girl longer in leg and arm, but still far from a woman. They had never cut my hair here, except to trim the ends, so it reached below my waist. My clothes were better—I had made them myself, of course.
As for him, Federo looked worn. The year of his travel had added five to his face. I did not remember him with lines in his skin before. The bones of his cheeks were visible.
“Have you been ill?” I asked.
Behind me, Mistress Tirelle cleared her throat with a hard-edged rattle. I had spoken out of turn, though I knew she lacked the nerve to discipline me in front of Federo.
“A bit.” He smiled, and I saw his teeth were yellow. “Sometimes foreign food does not agree with my digestion. I have heard good reports of you, Girl.”
It took great restraint for me not to look at Mistress Tirelle. Her eyes bored into my back fiercely enough, I was certain.
“I shouldn’t know, sir. I follow my lessons diligently and always mind the Mistresses.” He saw my face, and kn
ew that I meant more than Mistress Tirelle heard. I added, “I may never use these arts again.”
“You are meant to be exquisite, not bent to labor. Even the labor of great ladies.”
Mistress Tirelle cleared her throat once more. Federo had said too much.
“I will speak to your Mistress now,” he said. “Go and play some instrument, should you have one.”
My bone flute sat on a stand downstairs, though both Mistress Maglia and I despaired of me ever wringing more than the most vapid melody from it. “Yes, sir.” Curtsying as I was being taught lately, I raced away.
______
The years unfolded. Federo passed in and out of my life on a schedule only he understood. Mistresses came and went, teaching me etiquette, lapidary, manners, fencing—that with the man’s blade so I would know what I saw before me—as well as architecture, joinery, the management of funds, and the true secrets of how goods were made and sold into markets and great houses.
At the same time, the Dancing Mistress worked me on jumping and tumbling and stranger things—running in place on the back of a teetering chair, or swinging from a curtain rod, for example. We danced as well, for the benefit of Mistress Tirelle and any other listeners: the bright pavane and the lesser pavane, the women’s sarabande and the season-wheel, the prince’s step and the Graustown bend.
One night every week or two, we ran the rooftops, the underground, and occasionally the streets. As I grew taller, she coached me in changing my climbing technique, forcing me to continually relearn my falls. In the darkness Below, we practiced some of the throws and blocks she had used on me the night I had tried in earnest to fight her.
That was an education all over again. Meeting a sparring partner in the deepest dark, moving only by sound and breath and marking the placement of her feet. The bruises on my face we explained as we always had to Mistress Tirelle—from hard work in the practice room. The lie had become notably threadbare, but whatever fear the Dancing Mistress held for Mistress Tirelle had not lessened over the years.