“How do you know?” I said, which I was sorry for a moment later, for of course she would know her own nature.
She only rolled her fine eyes a little. “Be sweet, and do not keep me,” she said. “My mama waits up for me.”
So I stepped aside and watched her walk down the alley toward Rue Marquette; but I looked away quickly, because though I could pay a soldat to watch her unrobed, it felt wrong to stare now that she was in everyday dress.
•
Mr. Karinen called me over one morning as I finished training. I toweled sweat from my face and hair and came to lean on the bar, unwinding my wraps.
“Hanno Jalmarinen, the charm-master, he’s been taken,” he said.
“Taken?”
“By the Provosts, for breaking their Law.”
I thought of the Provosts I’d seen: like vultures with their black uniforms and bald heads, all the hair shaven right off, even the eyebrows. They were supposed to be able to suck your strength away with the touch of a fingertip. “What will they do to him?”
“Hang him, most like,” Mr. Karinen said, shrugging. “The question is what will they do to us.”
“But we didn’t—” I stopped, seeing the glint of my copper ring as I unwound the stained length of my wrap.
“He wouldn’t give up his customers a’purpose,” Mr. Karinen said. “But they have ways and ways.”
“Can we get him out?” I said.
Mr. Karinen shook his head. “Which there’s no escaping from under the Provosts’ eye. But we can be careful not to draw that eye our way. You keep that ring on night and day, Valma…Valmo, I mean to say. You’re a lad now, your fight records show it. No going back.”
He didn’t seem to mind much about the hanging, but I did. The day of it, in early Frimaire, I borrowed Benno’s finest jacket and queued up my hair and went early to get a spot.
There was a chilly mist, and the crowds were sparse. I came up close enough to see Hanno Jalmarinen’s face, thinner and pouchier than I remembered.
His eyes found mine. I wasn’t sure if he recognized me, or if his own work called out to him somehow. He did not speak, but his mouth twisted to one side.
Then they put the black hood over his head, and then the noose.
I stayed for the drop, but once the crowd began clamoring for locks of the dead man’s hair—they thought it lucky, in Savaurac—I turned away.
A girl in the crowd saw me as I slipped by, and caught at my sleeve. “Care to share some chestnuts?”
I jerked my coat from her grasp, and I went to get drunk.
•
I took a few dizzy wrong turns on my way back to the Quarter and found myself standing before the notice. It was a different drawing by now, but still Amandine’s face, eyes alight with wonderful secrets.
Her act was nearly over but I paid my soldat, pushed right up to the front, and watched her from there, so close I could smell her hyssop scent. I laid my cheek against the scrollwork at the foot of the stage. My eyes were only a foot away from Amandine’s slippers, emerald velvet. At the end of her dance she slid one foot forward so that it nearly touched my lips.
I did not move. Men applauded Amandine and threw soldats onto the stage, and the two gin-girls began herding them out and I kept still, only reaching my hand to trace where she had stepped.
She came out from backstage, after a while, when there were only a few drunkards lolling in their seats and me there entranced.
She wore a dressing-gown now, and plainer slippers that crossed the stage and stopped before me.
“Someone’s going to come in a moment to chuck you out,” she said.
I rolled my head to see her face, far up high and haloed by the chandelier. “Can you stay here until they do?”
She laughed and extended her foot to nudge my shoulder.
“No, lad, I’m trying to save you from a rough exit.”
“Not a lad,” I said.
“Oh—” laughing harder “—you’re a full-grown man, then? All the same—”
I let go of the scrollwork and groped around to pull off the copper ring.
Amandine’s face changed entirely: all the sparkling tease dropped away and her brows went up sharply. She opened her mouth and took a breath.
I did not hear what she said, though—I had to bend down below the scrollwork to vomit up a few hours’ worth of gin. When I raised up my head again she was gone. I felt my empty stomach twist. I said her name, and the sound echoed in the empty theatre.
But she came down the steps at the side of the stage and wrapped her slim arms around my shoulders and helped me to stand.
“Come quick,” she said. “No, leave the ring off, I can’t have a lad in my dressing room.”
Her dressing room held a wash-stand and a little table covered with pots of rouge and things I didn’t recognize, and a posy of hothouse violets. She sat me down on a sturdy chair and took a more delicate one for herself. I leaned my elbows on my knees and held my head.
“I will dine with you at Travere’s,” she said, “if the offer still stands.”
“Why?” I said, wishing I could make my eyes fix upon her face.
“I didn’t know then you were a girl,” she said. “You didn’t mention that.”
She reached out to push my hair from my face. Her fingernails were painted poison-green.
And that’s all I know of the night. The morning, I remember better—waking on the floor beside the chair, covered in Amandine’s wrap. Tucked in my pocket, a note I could barely read, as it was in Savaurin and Amandine’s script was terrible.
I got Benno to read me the note. It said Amandine would come and see me, and it asked me whether I liked myself better with the ring, or without.
“You took it off for her?” Benno said, brows up. “You know you’re to wear it always.”
“I was drunk,” I said. “It fell off while I was casting up my accounts.”
“Mind it doesn’t happen again,” Benno said. “The Provosts are over-strict about such things.”
“Over-strict,” I echoed, and I thought of the sound of Hanno Jalmarinen’s voice, gurgling in his throat, stopped by the rope.
•
I, Valmo Topponen, took the Quarter Amateur Welterweight Belt on Ash-day at the end of Ventôse. To do it, I beat ten other lads in three days. Some of those fights were easy enough, some weren’t, and one left me so done-up I vomited into the blood-bucket as soon as the referee let go my hand—but that was the last one.
I stood under the hot galvanic lights while a gentleman from the Fight Board buckled the belt about my waist, and I tried not to cast up my accounts again. An artist from the Daily Clarion scribbled my likeness and asked me how to spell my patronym, which I had to tell him I did not know what he meant. Mr. Karinen set him straight, and shook hands with a great many people, and accepted the winner’s purse on my behalf.
And then there was Da, smiling wide as wide, giving me water to rinse my mouth and pulling over my head a stained old jumper that had been his for this same purpose.
And there was Amandine, and I forgot everyone else. She had brought me an armful of ivy-leaves and hothouse lilies. I crushed them between us as I kissed her, lily-pollen sticking to the trails of blood over my breastbone, her fingers winding in the sweaty queue of my hair.
When I had washed up, I took a handful of soldats from my winner’s purse and took Amandine to Travere’s, as promised. The seats were high-backed booths with finials shaped like pineapples. The other patrons were artists and poets in extravagant hats. We had mussels and sopped up their broth with bread, and drank dry white wine from the southern estates.
My hands had swelled with all the work they’d been doing; the ring was chafing my finger, and I was tired of standing to piss. I went out to the privy a lad and came back a lass in the same clothing. Amandine smiled broad when she saw me and stood up to kiss me on both cheeks and then the mouth, and poured me another glass of wine.
I did not see if
anyone else noticed, because I had eyes for nothing but the flush on Amandine’s cheeks and the way her hair was coming down on one side, and the prim collar of her everyday frock brushing the corner of her jaw.
I brought her back to my room that night and we stayed awake until very late, trying to be quiet in the hush of the Quarter’s curfew.
•
I wasn’t at the club when the Provosts arrived. Benno was the one who had to let them in, and he said he forgot everything he knew: offered to pull them a pint even though they never take ale, nearly touched one of their hands when he set out their cups of water. They left behind a summons for me to come to the question room at the nearest Watchtower.
I couldn’t read all of the summons, but I saw my name. I put my finger on the paper to hold it still while I spelled out the rest.
Benno made a sound. Too late. The summons caught me right away. My hand left the paper and my feet began walking toward the door. “Grab my jacket!” I called over my shoulder to Benno, but I couldn’t stop walking—he had to walk along beside me and help put my arms in the sleeves, because the summons wouldn’t let me stop swinging them either.
“I don’t want to go by myself!” I said.
“Then you should’ve left the bloody paper alone! Valma—I can’t leave the bar untended, I have to—”
“Go, go,” I said. “Send my Da, if you can!”
My feet took me up the street at a fair clip, never letting me swerve for a horse-pat or a loose cobble.
I arrived at the Watchtower with a stubbed toe and a temper, and my feet marched me right up to a desk where a Watch recruit wrote in a ledger and my mouth said, “Valmo Topponen of Karinen’s, welterweight, reporting as summoned.”
Then the summons let go of my tongue and I added, “Which you could have waited until I had my lunch!”
The recruit rolled his eyes and wrote laboriously. I stood. I tried to turn about and walk out, but apparently the magic was still on me to prevent that happening.
After a few minutes the recruit sighed loudly and stood up and beckoned me to follow. He took me into a room and sat me on a single chair facing a line of nicer chairs.
Ten or fifteen minutes wore by. I heard the half-hour bells ring, up in the tower. Then I forgot to be bored and furious, because the Provosts came in. I’d never seen them up close before. It seemed to be true they shaved all their hair, even their eyebrows; it made them look as if they were glaring. A man and a woman, both in their high-collared black coats. The woman sat in one of the nice chairs and looked at me, and the man came and stood behind me and laid his fingertips on the side of my neck.
I flinched. Couldn’t help it. His hand was cold.
“Remove your ring,” he said.
“What? No—it’s a, it’s a birthright, sir, I’m not supposed to —”
“You may address me as Provost. Remove your ring.”
This time it came with a push, just like the summons. My one hand went to the other hand and started tugging, and it wasn’t gentle either.
I felt the charm come off. I’d never felt it so before: my skin prickling uncomfortably where it stretched or shrank, my balance shifting as my weight settled lower.
The Provost across from me watched. I wanted to ask her to look away, but I could feel my throat changing and I did not know which voice would come out.
When I was all lass again, the Provost rose and came to me and took the ring. “We can’t let you keep this, Valmo,” she said.
“Or Valma, I suppose. The Law states that no one not of Savaurin descent may use the arts within Savaurac.”
“That means all magic,” said the other Provost, still with his fingertips on my neck. “Copper or otherwise.”
“But how will I fight?” I said.
“The Law states you can’t do that either,” said the woman Provost. “Though we’re willing to let you off with just a fine for that one. For the charm, you’ll have to spend a decadi in Mazonval Gaol.”
“She is not quite of age,” said the man Provost.
“Ah,” said the woman. “Then we shall summon her patron to take the penalty. Excuse me.”
“Wait—” I moved to follow her, but the other Provost laid his hand on my shoulder, and without my will, my legs folded again and I fell back onto the chair.
•
They kept Mr. Karinen. Ten days in the Gaol, they said. They gave me a slip of paper stating this, and told me I could come back tomorrow to pay my fine.
I watched Mr. Karinen shackled and marched out between a pair of Provost cadets. He looked furious and baffled and not very large. They led him out through a side gate and would not let me follow.
When I took the paper back to Benno, he tried to tear it in half, but it was some kind of charmed paper and it held firm. “This is on you,” he said, holding it up and fluttering it before my eyes. “This is all on you.” And he struck my face.
I did not fight him. I ran away.
•
The theatre was just opening. Carlette, the gin-girl, gave me a bit of steak from her dinner to hold to my swelling cheek. She was used to me by then, so I did not think she would think it odd of me to show up bruised, but she must have noticed something different, for she said I could go through to Amandine’s dressing room to wait.
Amandine caught up with me at the backstage door, though. She was wearing a corset trimmed with jet beads, and her hair was pomaded into a smooth helmet with a single curl loose at her cheek. She saw from my face that something was wrong, and she pulled me behind a scrim painted with topiary, set her palms to my shoulders, and looked into my face.
“I’m going on in two minutes,” she said. “Tell me quick.”
“I have to leave Savaurac,” I blurted.
She took a breath through parted lips, and her brow furrowed.
“My patron’s in gaol, my charm’s confiscated and I can’t fight as a girl. Was that quick enough?”
Amandine hushed me with a finger to my lips. “Wait. Wait for me. Right here. Promise you’ll wait.”
I promised. She touched my split cheek, a velvet-light touch like a moth landing and flying away again, and she went onstage.
I watched her from there, from the wings, carpet-bag at my feet. The music sounded tinny at this angle, muffled, but Amandine looked sharper and brighter than ever. Now and again when her face was hidden from the audience by one of her great feather fans, she would turn her eyes to me, and I would move a little so she might see me in the shadows, still waiting.
The dance ended. She received her applause and collected her gifts. And as soon as ever she could, she found me again behind the scrim painted with topiary, and she embraced me, careless now of the paint on her face.
“I will come with you,” she whispered into my neck. “I will come with you wherever you go.”
So I kissed her and crumpled her pomaded hair in my hands and kissed her more.
•
I spent the night on Amandine’s mama’s settee, and in the morning I went to the Provosts and used what was left of my winner’s purse to pay the fine.
I went back to Karinen’s to find my Da. Benno shouted when he saw me, and chased me out.
But Da came running after me, up the street, his fist closed tight around something. “Valma,” he said. “Valma.” And he opened his fist and pressed into my hands one of the gilt rosettes off the Quarter Amateur Welterweight Belt. “Show this to my old sparring partner in Kervostad,” he said. “Tell him how you won it. He’ll set you up.”
I threw my arms around him. He huffed out a labored breath.
“You won’t think of coming with me?” I said.
“It will take Benno and me to keep the place running while Mr. Karinen’s locked up,” he said; and I knew he was thinking of the year he’d spent looking for work at home, the shame of it and the boredom. “But you,” he said. “You need to go where you can fight.”
So I stowed the rosette in the innermost pocket of my jacket, kissed
my Da’s cheek, and went to meet Amandine.
“Kervostad,” she said, when I told her. “I hope they like Savaurin burlesque-girls.”
“I don’t think they’ve ever seen one.” I took the heavier of her cases and we began walking together toward the Quai.
“Will they let you fight as a lad?”
“Better: they’ll let me fight as a lass,” I said. “I did already, a little, before we left.”
Amandine’s mouth pursed; even without her crimson stage-paint, her lips were dark and fresh-looking, and I wanted to kiss her, only she looked as if she was thinking about something serious.
“I will miss Valmo,” she said, “if I never see him again.”
“I’ll miss him, too,” I said. “But I don’t have the charm.”
“Let’s get another. There must be magicians in Kervostad.”
“It will cost us—”
Amandine fluttered a violet-nailed hand like an ostrich fan. “I’m a very good dancer.”
I did stop and kiss her, then. It wasn’t until we began walking again that I realized we were crossing the square where Hanno Jalmarinen had been hanged. And I was sorry to leave my Da, and my patron, and even Benno, but I was not sorry to leave Savaurac.
Kervostad, as it turned out, liked Savaurin burlesque-girls very much.
•
Blood, Stone, Water
A.J. Fitzwater
Tau bit deeper with her paddle, and green water hushed beneath the oka hull. Nhia sat in the bow, as serene as when they had pushed off from Ia that sunrise to a farewell ululation. Her fingertips trailed in the smooth ocean, eyes unfocused on the fins that kept time beneath the oka or searching further forward to their destination five sunrises hence.
Tau fell into a paddling cadence, and Nhia’s sweet harmony twined thoughtlessly around her bark-rough voice.
Nhia’s easy joy sang at odds with the impending rise of the Stone Moon.
Death awaited them at the end of their journey.
Tau risked glances at Nhia’s bared breasts. Like many Stone Maidens, Nhia gathered sun to her as she did eyes. Tau reasoned her hands would fit Nhia’s small and pert breasts, though her gourd remained empty when it came to touching a Stone Maiden. She had to be content with looking. Nhia was unashamedly content to let her look, needing little prompting to show off her kiho-nut brown skin, unusual light grey eyes, and virility; she was the only one in a generation born on Ia under a Stone Moon.
Heiresses of Russ 2014 Page 17
