Carousel Tides

by Sharon Lee

  So I shrugged. “It’s a public amusement,” I said, and pointedly didn’t ask him why he had come.

  It wasn’t much of a conversation starter, but he didn’t seem to be the sort who was bothered by silence. He stayed in his comfortable lean, cup in his left hand, right tucked into the pocket of his jacket, and considered me out of deep-set black eyes in a way that reminded me uncomfortably of the batwing horse.

  I sighed, shoved the sleeves of my sweatshirt down, and tucked my hands into my back pockets, meeting those deep ironic eyes square, determined to wait him out.

  Borgan’s mouth twitched, but the nod he gave me was as bland as a Mainer could want it. “You’re looking well,” he said, in that polite tone people use when they trot out a pleasantry that wasn’t exactly true.

  “You don’t look bad, yourself,” I replied in the same tone, which was downright niggardly. I don’t usually cotton to big men, but Borgan had an air of placid competence about him that was damned attractive. Not that I was about to tell him that. I pressed my lips together and waited.

  More silence, during which the racket Nancy had been orchestrating came to an abrupt, unharmonious end, followed by muttering, and approaching footsteps. I turned my head, breaking Borgan’s gaze, as my help came ’round the carousel, cap set at an irritable angle.

  She checked when she saw him, just a tiny hesitation between one step and the next, then picked up her stride again, giving him an off-handed nod. “Cap’n Borgan.”

  “Nancy,” he answered easily. “How are ya today?”

  “Doin’ well, sir. Thank you for askin’.” She moved her attention to me. “Need some solvent and a quarter-inch socket wrench,” she said. “I’ll go on up to the hardware and put ’em ’gainst the tab.”

  I nodded. “Anything else?”

  “Nothin’ apparent,” she said. “You want anything while I’m goin’?”

  “I’m good,” I told her, which was nowhere near the truth, and, give her credit, Nancy didn’t fall for it.

  “You’re looking a bit peckish, if you don’t mind my saying. It’s coming on to noon. Why don’t I fetch you along a sandwich?”

  Noon? My stomach bunched up again. I’d been inside the wards for four hours? That wasn’t—

  Nancy was waiting. So, unfortunately, was Borgan. I gave her a half-smile and a head shake. “I’ll step over to Tony’s in a few and get myself an egg roll,” I said. “You take some time for lunch while you’re out.”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “Right, then. Back in a shake.” She moved off, giving Borgan a glance and a nod. “Cap’n.”

  “Nancy,” he said again, and the two of us reposed in silence until her shadow was gone from the hatch.

  “Nancy’s sound,” Borgan commented. He gave me a grin. “Despite she doesn’t like me.”

  This was disturbing news. “Why not?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “I’m fishing her mother’s boat, like I said. Somebody’s got to do it since Hum went and got himself killed. Only thing he had to leave Mary and the girl was the boat.”

  “But Mary gets her piece, right?” I asked. He nodded.

  “So what’s Nancy’s beef?”

  “Mary’s piece is sixty-five percent, and I’ll tell you it took some clever tacking to settle it there with her believing the whole thing to be her idea. Nancy was a mite less distracted, though, and she’s not one to take charity.”

  “Oh.” I sighed. Charity was what you did for others, not, no never, what you took. And sixty-five percent of the haul, owner or not—

  “Maybe Nancy wonders how you can live on thirty-five percent of the take.”

  “I don’t have many expenses,” he said. “Own my own place, and all.”

  There wasn’t much to say to that, and I didn’t. Borgan was starting to wear out his welcome, and it was on the tip of my tongue to ask him why the hell he was—

  “Before I forget,” he said, straightening out of his lean with easy, boneless grace. He reached into his jacket, came two steps forward and held out a broad hand. “Nerazi sends these to you.”

  I started, barely sparing a glance at what he held, looking hard at his face, at the leather jacket, at the thin, beaded braid snaking over his shoulder . . .

  “You’re trenvay,” I managed, after a moment, and my voice sounded accusatory in my own ears.

  Borgan raised a lazy eyebrow. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  I glared at him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Didn’t come up,” he said, reasonably enough. “You want these or should I take ’em back to Nerazi with a no-thank-’ee?”

  “These” being a pair of old work gauntlets, stained, scored and battered; the wide cuffs were blue, badly faded, the palms and fingers a mottled pinkish-red. I blinked, then threw back my head and laughed. Gloves according to my station, indeed.

  Borgan waited, patiently, gloves extended, until I’d gotten it out of my system.

  Slightly out of breath, I did some fast calculations.

  Taking a gift from a trenvay is always a risky proposition. There’s no such thing as a free lunch in their worldview, where everything given requires a thing given in return, sooner or later, and usually at the worst possible time. It was just better all around not to go there, and while you were at it, to never invite one into your house or guarded space.

  All that being so, it wasn’t in me to refuse a gift from Nerazi—for one thing, it would offend her, and I couldn’t afford that. And for another, Nerazi was Gran’s oldest friend.

  I stepped forward and took the gloves out of Borgan’s hand.

  They were warm from their nestle inside his jacket. I took a steadying breath and retreated the two steps I’d advanced, hands dropping to my side, gloves fisted in the right.

  “So,” I said nastily. “You’re Nerazi’s errand boy?”

  He shrugged, taking no visible offense; coffee cup held negligently in his left hand. “Nerazi knew I’d be looking for you, and asked me to bear them along.”

  My chest tightened. “Why would you be looking for me?” I snapped.

  “Why not?” he returned, and lifted his empty hand, fingers spread wide. “Look, Kate. Why don’t you let me buy you a cup of coffee?”

  I gasped, startled into a laugh.

  “No, thanks,” I said, shortly. “I’ve got work to do.”

  His mouth tightened; then he gave me a brief nod. “Right. Dinner then. I’ll pick you up at eight.” With that, he was gone, moving quick and quiet, across the room and out the hatch, leaving me blinking stupidly at the place he’d been standing, the battered work gloves clenched warm and forgotten in my hand.

  EIGHT

  Thursday, April 20

  Low Tide 10:52 p.m.

  Sunset 7:31 p.m. EDT

  I held the bottle with both hands, so as not to spill wine on the counter; my hands were shaking that bad. Also, somebody had a jackhammer going inside my right temple, and my peripheral vision was filled with a haze of spangled pastels.

  Other than that, though, I was cool.

  A brief tussle got the cork back where it belonged and the bottle into the door of the fridge. I got a two-handed grip on the glass and had a healthy slug, wishing I’d thought to buy something with a higher alcohol content.

  Second shift inside the wards had been—nightmarish, even for somebody with a high threshold for horror. The batwing didn’t speak again, but as the afternoon wore on, the others wakened and begin to test their limits. Metaphorically speaking, I’d been pushed, pinched, slapped, cut, and burned all afternoon, to the increasingly cruel and raucous laughter of those who had no reason to love me or mine, and every reason to oppose us, heart and will.

  Well.

  I gulped some more wine, got my eyes open and my feet under me and went over to check the answering machine I’d gotten at Gregor’s yesterday. Henry still hadn’t returned my call. It was too late to catch him in the office, but I dialed the number anyway, and had another swallow o
f wine while his machine picked up and ran through its recorded message.

  At the tone, I cleared my throat. “Henry, it’s Kate,” I said, my voice a creaky whisper. “I’m wondering how it went with Nemeier’s lawyer. I’ll be at the carousel tomorrow, or you can call and leave a message on my machine. Bye.”

  That minor chore taken care of, I went to the fridge, topped off my glass, and wandered out into the great room. My laptop was sitting on the coffee table where I’d left it last night, lid up and ready-light glowing, cell phone charging beside it. My books—what few I still owned—were in the case, hobnobbing like old buds with Gran’s collection. My clothes were taking up about half the available space in the closet upstairs; my jacket and keys hung ready on the hook by the door, next to Gran’s old brown sweater.

  It was . . . a relief . . . to see how little impact I had on my surroundings. Pretty soon, the process would be complete and I wouldn’t take up any room at all. Before that, though, I had to get Gran back on the case, and clean out such stuff as I did have, so as not to leave a mess.

  I had another sip of wine and thought about going to bed, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep with the echo of the batwing’s voice still caught inside my head.

  Instead, I moved over to the fireplace. Wood was laid in, newspaper and matches to hand, the grate swept clean. The winter I came to live with Gran, the fireplace had been my best friend. I spent hours kneeling on the brick hearth, watching stories unfold in the flames, telling them out loud, not once looking over at Gran, or at Mr. Ignatious, who’d been there more often than not, where they sat quiet over book or handwork, and never let on that they were paying any mind.

  The stories I told the flames were hardly happy. I told how my grandfather had contested with Ramendysis of the Storm and fallen, his power and his property forfeit. I told how Ramendysis drank my father’s power, and that of all our House, until they were but dust blowing upon the scented breeze. All gone, except my mother and myself. I whispered to the flames the story of my shame, and how my mother had bargained for my freedom with her soul.

  It must’ve been beyond creepy, the hoarse little-girl voice reciting the atrocities of another time and place. I remember thinking at the time—believing—that the fire took the stories as I said them, and unmade them, so the histories I recited had never . . . really . . . happened.

  It’s a wonderful thing to be a child, and to believe in fairy tales.

  I moved my gaze from the cold firestones—up to the crowded mantelpiece.

  On the far left, wedged between a clam shell full of sand dollars and a smooth gray beach stone, framed in shiny red plastic, was a group shot—the end-of-Season blow-out at Bob’s, when all the townies get together and drink to the absence of tourists. Front and center was Gran, tidy and cool in canvas slacks and a flowered shirt, hair wrapped ’round her head in that complicated knot she favors, a beer in one square, capable hand and the other on the shoulder of a gremlin, dark hair hanging in witches’ locks, eyes as giving as peridot in a surly pointed face, oversized Black Sabbath T-shirt emphasizing her thinness. Nerazi stood on the other side of the gremlin, elegant in a yellow sun dress.

  Behind Gran was Mr. Ignatious, smiling his sweet, absent smile; then Brand Carver, who owned Summer’s Wheel, Jelly Lee of the Oriental Funhouse, Millie Bouchard of Dodge City, and Skip Davies, who ran the games of skill and chance spotted around Fun Country. Back behind was Bob, his arm around a washed-out looking woman—Lillian, that would have been, right before she died—and various of the street artists, bit players, roadies, and hangers-on who appeared at need every May and faded away again in September, like the shoemaker’s elves, only with a longer term contract.

  I sipped some more wine, moving on to the next picture—slim and lithe, light brown curls tossed by the breeze, a smile on her face to melt stone—Gran’s daughter, Nessa. My mother.

  Next came another picture of the same girl, dressed in drifty white lace, one hand up, pinning the wide-brimmed hat to her head, the other held in a death-grip by a black-haired gremlin of a fellow, wild hair tamed by a liberal application of pomade, dark eyes feral in a pale, pointed face—my father, Nathan Archer.

  Not for the first time I wondered how Gran could tolerate that picture, considering everything that happened, later. Gran, though—Gran never spoke a word of anger or criticism of my father, not in my hearing, not ever. And if she held it against me that I’d survived while her Nessa had not, she’d kept that to herself, too.

  Turning away from the mantle, I wandered across the room to the French doors, and stood watching the smooth, glassy roll of the waves.

  “I am,” I confided to the room at large, “so cooked.”

  If I took a lesson from today’s adventures it was that I was long past the point of being able to bind the prisoners.

  Trenvay who are separated from their land waste and die. That’s what happened to Lillian, dead of the toxins that had leached into her pond.

  I wasn’t trenvay, but I’d given myself and all that I was to the land. Cutting that bond had wounded me. It had taken some while, given who and what I was, but I was dying of it. I no longer had access to the land’s—oh, hell, call it magic. Everybody else does. And while I could still draw on my inborn power—witness the death of Joe Nemeier’s pretty grass—the cost was . . . steep.

  Problem being that there’s magic—and magic. The trees up on Heath Hill, aware, awake, and interested—that’s magic, all right. Mouse magic. Homey magic.

  The carousel, the geas set upon the prisoners, and that which I had been born into—that was magic of a very different order.

  The High Magic, if you like it that way—that’s predicated on jikinap, which is—roughly—personal power. The more jikinap a particular mage possesses, the greater her ability to manipulate High Magic. Every magical encounter has the potential of leaving the winning magic-worker higher on the food chain. Given that High Magic is intoxicating and addictive, this leads to a certain competitiveness, not to say the wholesale destruction of entire Houses. The more power a mage acquires, the more dangerous it—and they—are. It’s unfortunately not uncommon to learn that a particularly ambitious mage’s power has eaten him.

  Ozali. That’s what you call a master mage. Aeronymous, my grandfather, had been Ozali, much good it’d done him.

  There are a few who’ve managed to stay sensible and not accumulate so much jikinap that it turns on them. Those beings are called the Wise, and in council they stand as the ultimate magical authority across the Six Worlds.

  Those who don’t care for the acquiring of jikinap, or who, for one reason or another, choose not to exercise their power—they’re nobody.

  Like me.

  I leaned my forehead against the window, the glass cold against my skin. Outside, the sea rolled, pastel pink beneath the setting sun, keeping its counsel close.

  * * *

  I towel-dried my hair, pulled on my oldest pair of jeans and a denim shirt, and mooched sock-footed down the hall, headed for a grilled cheese sandwich, and yet another glass of wine, on the admittedly shaky theory that if I drank enough, I’d be able to sleep.

  Not bothering with the light, I put my hand on the fridge—and jumped a foot straight up when the doorbell gave tongue.

  Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiinnnnnnnnnng!

  I hate that damn’ doorbell. Always have. The first time I heard it, I thought it sounded like a hunting Hound, and the years haven’t altered my opinion any, or the ice-creep down my spine.

  Grounded again, I turned—and the bell gave tongue a second time. I leapt into the hall and yanked the door open before the third offense, ready to gut whoever’d—

  “Good evening, Kate,” Borgan said. “We made a date for dinner.”

  He’d dressed for it, too—black jeans, open-collar white shirt under the leather jacket, and a nacre stud in his right ear. He looked clean, calm, competent, and—beautiful.

  Of course, he was also trenvay and could make himse
lf seem any damn’ way he cared to.

  I took a hard breath. “You made a date for dinner,” I snapped. “I didn’t agree to go anywhere with you. And I hate that doorbell!”

  He tipped his head, and settled into a half-sit against the railing, hands in his pockets.

  “Didn’t know that,” he said. “Now that I do, I won’t use it again.”

  Like he was going to be stopping by as a regular thing. The cool assumption left me momentarily speechless.

  “You like Italian?” Borgan asked. “There’s a new place up on Two that might—”

  “I’m not going to dinner with you,” I said, as clearly and calmly as I could manage. “I am not going to let you give me a cup of coffee—or anything else. I am not inviting you into this house, or into any other place that’s mine. I might look like a blind, blithering idiot, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to make it easy for you.”

  His mouth twitched; not quite a smile. “Believe me, I never once thought you were gonna make it easy for me,” he said, a shade too seriously. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and turned them up, showing me broad palms calloused with work and weather, and empty of any overt threat.

  “Kate. I want to talk, that’s all.” He turned his head to look out over the sand and the sea, then back to me. “Take a walk with me.”

  “Am I not getting through to you, here? I said—”

  “Just down the beach a way,” he interrupted, and shook his head, rueful, as I read it. “I’m not such a fool as to mischief Bonny Pepperidge’s granddaughter, y’know. For one thing, Nerazi’d gut me, and for another your Gran’d break a board over my head.”

  I stared at him. He waited.

  I broke first.

  “What do you want to talk about?” I asked, with scant grace.

  “Things in town you might not know about, being gone so long.”

  Well, that certainly sounded innocent enough; light years better than being alone with my thoughts. And the beach was neutral territory.

  More or less.

  “All right,” I said, stepping back inside. “I’ll be out in a minute.” I closed the door.