“Why?”
“You like lovely things, don’t you?” he shrugged towards the bejewelled walls, “There’s more to the Altissi than their palaces.”
Clay frowned, and picked up a felted toy cat, “Coluber has been talking about taking us on a triumph.”
“Coluber said that, did he?” Jonas leaned on the man’s name, and Clay blushed as she realized she had spoken so informally about him. Her chin rose stubbornly.
“He’s a good man. He’s helping us do exactly what you wanted – show ourselves off as goddesses.”
“I’m sure he is. I’m sure he’s getting plenty in return!” The man’s voice grew heated, and he knocked the toys violently away. Just like that, they were fighting again. “For god’s sake, Clay! You should be doing this without his help! How much do you think you’ll see with that stuck-up prig telling you where to look? What’s going to happen when he gets bored? I’m damn sure you won’t look like a goddess when he kicks you out into the street!”
“You know best.” she replied stiffly, “You knew what I was before you started this. You lost the right to interfere the second we left the island. I’m going on the triumph. If the poor people want to see me, they’ll have their chance.”
“I don’t want them to see you! I want you to see them!” he shouted, and then caught his breath and shook his head. It was agonizing to watch the man searching for words. Clay was panting too, and my heart thudded in my chest. They looked like they were about to claw at each other. I ran to the entryway and shouted for a guard. The man must have heard the argument, but his face was studiously blank.
“Is anything wrong, your grace?”
“Don’t worry.” Jonas growled, “I’m leaving.”
CHAPTER 10
The craftsman brought me a new hand two weeks later. It was made of wood polished to a bright red sheen. He spent so much time fussing over the straps that I wondered if he was going senile. Miette watched him for a while, tutting every time he matched a buckle and dropped it. Finally, she grew bored. She swiped me around the ear as she stormed out, as if the whole thing was my fault.
I glared after her, and felt my arm trembling. The craftsman was smothering his laughter against my creaking wooden palm. Two merry blue eyes looked up, and all of the bumbling artiface fell away.
“Does that woman have a bee trapped in her skirts?”
I did not dare reply, but his soft, friendly teasing made me happy to tell him my own name. He repeated it back to me, and then nodded as if I had passed a test.
“I met a young man last week.” Guinn watched me carefully. “He said he’s from Yanget, like you. He was very interested in my work. Apparently he has a friend with a copper hand.”
I smiled, “You’re talking about Jonas.”
The man grinned at me, “I offered to teach him some of my craft while he’s here. It would amuse me to see my wretched methods being taken over to your country. I told your friend that while he studies, he might as well stay in my workshop. Nobody here seems to want him.”
“He’s a peasant.” I said automatically, and winced. “I mean, that’s what they say about him. They’re only interested in the Siren.”
“Quite right. The whole kingdom should be blinded by such beauty!” he raised his eyes to the heavens, and then winked. “Not to mention that of their attaché.”
I stared at the floor, remembering what Jonas had told me about being a slave. The craftsman tapped me under the chin, surprising me into looking up. “You smiled more the last time I was here. You’ve gotten thinner, girl. I don’t think you’re well.”
I shrugged, feeling awkward but a little pleased. “I’m not ill. But thank you for caring.”
“I wasn’t the only one. My new apprentice tells me that you’re trapped in here like a little caged starling. I volunteered to save the day.” he brushed off his hands – a grand gesture – and then stood up. “Next time, come for your fitting in town. Tell that nosy busybody that I need to reshape the cast as I measure, or whatever she will believe.”
I gaped at him, and then nodded. The man bowed a formal farewell, and then added, “Bring a good pair of boots and a cloak. We want to show you our city, princess.”
I laughed. “I’m not a princess. Why do you keep calling me that?”
“Kings and princes have disappeared into your island for generations untold. Who can tell who sired a Siren?”
“The gods.” I reminded him, and now it was his turn to laugh.
“Yes, the gods! But perhaps the Siren take their servants from the loins of lower glories.”
For the next few days I glowed with excitement. I had wanted to run down into the town straight away, but I couldn’t risk it. We lived such erratic lives. On some days I was needed every five minutes, and on other days nobody even breathed my name. I was constantly on edge expecting somebody to give me a command, and then bored when they did not.
Finally, after five nail-biting days, I loosened the ties on my arm and, when I was sliding amethyst pins into Clay’s hair, made sure it fell off. It struck her knee quite hard, and then clattered to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. The woman flew at me and pulled my hair so sharply that I was jolted forwards.
“If that happens again, I’ll throw that thing into the fire.” She growled, shaking me, “Go and get that useless jeweller to nail it to your arm.”
I felt my blood chill. It had only taken one bruise to shatter the bitch’s pleasant mask. She would force me to be a cripple again just out of spite. She probably thought she owned my hand, since her prince had paid for it. My stomach lurched. I realized that if I was ordered to burn it, I wouldn’t have the nerve to argue.
I thudded through the palace gates. It was the first time I had ever been outside. Clay had scrawled an order onto her handkerchief to let me out of the gates, but the guards still stopped me so they could stare. I shoved past them into the guard tower and tore a woollen cloak off of its peg. If Clay wanted to treat me like a slave, I might as well look like one. If anyone recognised me they would know the Siren were ugly, but that was Clay’s fault.
“Hey, that’s mine!” a guard burst out. I glared at him as I dragged the itchy fabric over my satin dress. I had never worn anything so crude before. It made my mood worse, in a satisfying way.
I barely made it fifty meters into the city before my knees started to tremble. I ducked back against a wall and dug my fingers into the bricks, fighting for air. The last time I had been close to the townsfolk Dahra had murdered a man for throwing an egg. I heard them shouting obscenities every night.
I was terrified. I had never been alone before. I had learned the faces of the islanders and I thought that made me worldly. More people passed me in ten minutes than I could have memorized in a lifetime.
The stink of them was overpowering. I raised my sleeve to my nose and almost choked because my perfume was so strong. I had not noticed it inside the palace, where everyone competed to be the sweetest creature in the room. Some of the Altissi looked as though their shirts had moulded onto their skin.
I had never smelled stale sweat before, but there was something even worse. The streets were plastered in human and animal filth. The citizens walked through it as if it did not exist. I clung to the walls and picked my way along the clean bricks at the base. I soon found out why they were clean. Women threw pails of rotting food and bedpans full of urine from their windows. The balconies and shop canopies protected me from the deluge, but the sound of it slapping into the street made me retch.
Guinn had told me how to get to his house. It was only a mile from the palace, yet it took me an hour to walk there. I was so slow and timorous that people stopped and offered to help me. I flinched away from their friendly smiles and saw only their pock-marked skin.
I forced myself to calm down. Houses started to replace the bustling shops, and the streets became cleaner. I could smell green pine and fresh snow, and knew that there were gardens hidden behi
nd the soot-streaked bricks. I took no pleasure in seeing Guinn’s name beside a wrought iron gate. I had suffered enough. Between Clay’s cruel words and the city’s sickening miasma, all I wanted to do was curl up and sleep.
I peeked into the craft-master’s complex. Small brick buildings erupted from the a dreary paved garden like pimples. They had wide chimneys to let smoke belch from the kilns and forges within. There was so much space that a hundred people could have worked there, but it was empty. The courtyard was overrun with moss, and slush pooled in the blocked drains.
There were no servants. When I rang the bell the old man barrelled out of one of the forges. His hands were streaked with grime. He prattled an enthusiastic greeting and trailed to a halt when I stared at him. My head spun, and his friendliness seemed as alien to me as the filth in the street.
Guinn cleared his throat and suggested, rather awkwardly, that I should say hello to my own friend first. He directed me towards the largest outbuilding. The scent of fresh sawdust made my mood lift. A soft film of wood shavings lay on the paving slabs beside the door, and I could hear someone sawing inside.
As soon as I saw Jonas every bit of my horrid day turned into anger. I was furious. Clay sharpened her claws on him. When they fought I was always the one who suffered. Why was he so weak? He was the only person who could have changed her heart, but he always gave up. If he kept fighting she would have been forced to take him seriously. She wouldn’t be so selfish. She wouldn’t think that I was a slave. She wouldn’t steal the things that mattered to me.
Before I knew it, I was sobbing and blurting out bitter word. I knew that Jonas loved Clay too much to believe me. Fear made me sniffle myself into silence. When he looked up I felt as though I was standing on thin ice.
“Clay has done things like this before.” he said. His voice was curious, not critical. “I’ve seen her. She was foul to you on the voyage. Why are you upset now? Why not then?”
I felt my cheeks warming. “She’s taunting me. She was never any prettier or smarter than me. Now she has everything, and I have to listen to her complain about it.”
“Complaining? About her handsome prince?”
My anger faded as I admitted, “No… I don’t blame her for that. Even if she hated him, or if he was ugly or cruel, she’d still be doing what she’s doing. It’s why Sweetwater sent her here.”
“Hm.” The man made a noncommittal sound. I hastened to fill the gap.
“But she’s miserable, and she has no right to be.”
“Apart from having to whore herself out for your Sweetwater?”
“I don’t think she cares about that.”
“Even so, I bet it upsets her more than breaking a nail.” he corrected me diffidently. I blushed and looked away. I had convinced myself that Clay really did think less about sex than she did about her next meal.
“I want to be able to talk to her.” I admitted. “I tried, but it’s like talking to a piece of glass. I’m afraid that if I say one wrong word she will shatter. You should do it. She’d listen to you.”
Jonas shook his head. “I can’t work her out, either. I almost wish she would pretend around me so I could work out what other people see in her.”
I was struck dumb by that. I had thought that they knew each other completely. Why else would they still talk to each other? They were too cruel to each other to still be friends if they felt nothing.
“You’ve seen her pretend.” I muttered sullenly. Everyone knew Sweetwater had made him look through the peepholes. It did not seem so funny when he was standing in front of me.
“Sometimes I wish I had just left her in the river.” His voice was almost inaudible. He changed the subject before I had a chance to apologise. “How’s the new hand holding up?”
“It’s better than nothing,” I said, surprised into being guarded. Jonas pulled a face at me, and I smiled. “I’m making more mistakes with two hands than I did with one.”
He asked me to show him what I meant. I carried chipped cups and rags around the room, play-acting the obedient servant. One slipped and shattered when it hit the flagstones. While Jonas was scolding me for ‘looking like a kicked puppy’ he seized my arm and untied the hand. There was none of the gentleness he had used the last time he had studied it; he was suffused such vigour that I shivered. Being so close to his energy warmed my skin.
“It must be like trying to catch raindrops on a twig.” he muttered, turning the prosthetic over and over in his broken fingers. “There’s no way for you to grip.”
“The thumb moves.” I pointed out. He flashed a strained smile at me.
“Can I try to fix it?”
“It’s not broken!” I snatched the thing back before he ruined it. Jonas’ face fell. I fought to keep my face severe as I tied it back on. He looked so tragic!
“Ask Guinn what he thinks.”
“You trust him more than me? Your friend?”
I ignored the pitifully trembling lip and flapped my hand towards the door. Jonas huffed out a heartbroken sigh and left. To my surprise, two minutes Guinn appeared,
“I’m glad you’re still here! I wondered why my idiot apprentice was being so polite.”
My eyebrows flew up, “Where has he gone?”
“He’s setting the table. I refuse to listen to his blathering on my own. Between the two of us, we outnumber him.” The man pulled a face which was far less convincing than Jonas’s, but far more pathetic, “Don’t let him bully me, princess.”
“Are you inviting me to eat with you?”
“I doubt either of us could face down Jonas on an empty stomach.”
I stumbled over my words. “No, it’s just that… I was so rude to you, and I’ve never…”
“There are a lot of things you’ve never done, aren’t there? But I promise this is one of the good things.” he waved away my apology and patted my shoulder. “Having said that, if you expect the food to be as good as the meals at the palace you’re in for a shock. Jonas says it’s better than pig food, which I assume is a good thing, but I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
Guinn hired a woman to come in once a week and cook up everything she could lay her hands on. He ate them in whatever combination he fancied. That night the table was laid with a hock of ham, another of mutton, jars of chutney and – inexplicably – a whole savoy cabbage wedged into a ceramic bowl. It looked as if Guinn had dumped the whole vegetable into a pot and then fished it out when the water had boiled away. I poked at it suspiciously with the long tines on my fork. Water fizzled out from between two leaves.
“It’s a vegetable! You have to eat your greens!” Guinn objected to my incredulous look. He carved off a chunk of leaves. They came off in a slice, like meat. The slice wobbled rather disconcertingly when he put it onto the side of my plate.
“I’m not eating that.” Jonas said flatly, “I’d rather eat the plate.”
“I slaved over this meal.”
“You eat it, then. We’ll have the meat.” Jonas sheared off two delicious-looking slices of ham. I held my plate out to claim mine, and Jonas winked at me as he slid the cabbage cutlet onto Guinn’s plate. The man looked dolefully at the green lump.
“What’s this I hear about my hand?” he asked, snatching back the ham, “You want to ruin it, is that it?”
“I want to fix Harriet’s hand, not yours.” Jonas opened a jar of chutney when I glanced at it. I wouldn’t have been able to open it, and I wondered if he knew that. He moved so casually that it could have just been politeness. I blushed, realizing that I was overthinking every little thing he did. Guinn listened to Jonas’s rambling idea, his grey eyebrows raised, and then turned back to his food. He belched thoughtfully.
“You’ve learned enough to puzzle out a little girl’s toy, I think. Take your time and do it properly. If I’m pleased with your work I’ll give you your journeyman’s papers.”
Jonas glowed with delight, but even his pride could not eclipse his pert tongue, “She’s not a l
ittle girl, sir.”
“And it’s not a toy.” I added, and waggled the clumsy thumb joint at Guinn. The mechanism creaked, and I sighed. “At the moment, it’s more like a weapon.”
“Fine! Fine!” The man threw his hands up in the air and the meat he had picked up on his fork went flying. “You were supposed to be on my side, Harriet!”
I shyly touched his shoulder, “Don’t be cross.”
He laughed and patted my arm, “You asked me to make you something for the woman in the mirror, little princess. I’m not offended that Jonas wants to change that. He’s interested in the woman on the other side of the glass.”
I blushed and glanced at Jonas without meaning to. He pulled a face at Guinn, and drained his cup of cider without looking at me, “Make all the jokes you want, Guinn. It won’t hide your shoddy workmanship.”
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