Tess of the Road

by Rachel Hartman

  And she couldn’t apologize. That much she felt sure of.

  The village, made up of fewer than a hundred households, was a two-church, four-tavern affair and, Tess quickly learned, bilingual. That explained the doubles. This close to the ebb and flow of the border, everyone would be jumbled together yet fiercely separate. Judging the inns by their names, Tess settled on Do Flaquette, a Ninysh establishment with pancakes painted on the sign. Her Belgioso aunties made glorious pancakes; Tess had hopes.

  The tapmaster hailed her, and she understood him perfectly—“What will it be, my bravo?”—but was hard-pressed to dredge up an answer from the reluctant sludge of memory.

  Mama spoke Ninysh with her aunties all the time, so Tess had considered herself decent at it. Understanding was simpler than finding the right words and stringing them together, however. “I, er…give at me the pancake and the cheese and the…not the beet. Not the bee. St. Daan in a pan, I know this!”

  She’d uttered that last phrase in frustrated Goreddi. The room fell silent; heads turned toward her. “That language, here?” somebody called. “Do you need me to punch you, Puco?”

  “Hush,” said the barkeep, glaring at this rude patron. “He’s clearly from the uncouth north and has no idea what he’s doing. Ferdono, lead him to one of the Goreddi bars.”

  “Aw,” said Ferdono, a freckled scullion, drying a glass. “Can’t I put him with the horses? His money’s still good.”

  “Make it quick,” cried someone else. “Every word is an ear-turd, stinking up the room.”

  Tess, who’d begun in embarrassment, now faced her detractors indignantly, hands on her hips. She could not have said where the words came from—maybe Aunt Mimi—but they’d clearly been stored up a long time, fermenting. “Foul-mouthed child!” she cried. “The devil’s in your eyes, but I’ll beat you till he comes out your nose. Think I won’t?”

  There was a shocked silence as thirty patrons tried to figure out where on earth Tess could have come from. “Eh, he’ll do,” said a big man beside her at the counter. “A little mad, perhaps. What do you call yourself, bravo?”

  Tess archly gave the Ninysh name Kenneth had bestowed upon her: “Tes’puco.”

  A titter went up, and then another, and then an avalanche of laughter swept the room clean of all resentments, and Tess was proclaimed a “child of Heaven.” She sensed that this wasn’t a compliment, but if they’d decided to let her be, she couldn’t complain.

  “Friend, what is it called, this drink?” asked Tess, plucking at the big man’s sleeve.

  “Beer,” he said, lifting his mug so she could see inside. “You’ve spent more time in deep Goredd than is good for you. We don’t make it with bees or beets here in Afale.”

  Tess, unexpectedly, felt like she’d been slapped. “Forgive me,” she said, fighting a tremor in her voice. “What did you call it, the name of this village?”

  “A-fa-le,” he said, enunciating exaggeratedly. The final vowel was a light schwa after a languid el, just enough to sound slightly different from the Goreddi version of the name.

  But not so different as all that.

  Tess had arrived in Affle, Will’s hometown.

  And then—the next thing she was aware of—she was outside Affle, beyond it, laboring up a hill. The last rays of daylight cut across her path, staining it orange.

  She paused, breathing hard, and looked back. Will’s village nestled into the valley. All was calm; nobody had followed her. Had she stormed out of the tavern? Slunk? Run, clutching her stomach?

  She sat heavily in the dirt, stunned. Broad leaves rustled beside her, and then Pathka crawled out of the underbrush. He let her finish crying—or let her face finish, anyway; it had begun without permission. Tess barely noticed until she had to blow her nose.

  Her body had been making decisions on its own, again.

  “What is it, Tethie?” Pathka was saying. His irritation seemed to have been swept away by concern for her. “Are you sad? Angry? Sick?”

  “Are you checking off a list?” said Tess, trying to joke but only managing to sound bitter.

  “Yes,” said Pathka. “You’re wearing a negative face I haven’t seen before, so I’m trying to narrow down what it might be.”

  Indeed, what was it? Something akin to panic. Realizing she was in Will’s village (she peeked again; it was still there) had rent her mind from body, right in two. All she’d done to put herself together—walking, swimming, hay turning—undone in a lightning strike of fear.

  She owed Pathka an explanation. “That’s Will’s village. I— It took me by surprise.”

  It had reminded her that Will still existed. He was somewhere in the world. He was real.

  It was a frightening thought.

  “You never talk about him,” said Pathka. It wasn’t a question (Quootla made questions clear with an interrogative particle), but Tess felt a dozen questions pressing behind it.

  “I don’t want to talk about him,” said Tess. “I don’t want to remember those days.”

  She’d crammed every memory into darkness, the oubliette of her mind’s dungeon. It did no good. The past was never really past if being in Affle could bring it all rushing back.

  Pathka laid his head on her lap, and they sat like a parody of a unicorn tapestry. “Did you thluff him?” asked Pathka, using the Goreddi word love. “You humans prefer to thluff your mates.”

  “As opposed to what?” asked Tess.

  “Answering the call of the pheromones,” said Pathka breezily, as if it were nothing. “They call, we pile on. It’s fairly uncomplicated.”

  “No,” said Tess, appalled. “It’s not like that at all.”

  She was lying, though, a little bit. She swatted that thought away as if it stung her.

  And then she told Pathka a story.

  * * *

  Her most vivid, shining, Will-ful memory was the evening they’d tried to steal Spira’s notes.

  Tess had been sneaking out of the house for about a month at that point. Kenneth had quickly gotten serious about Lord Rynald, so it was Will who met her at the shrine of St. Siucre, and Will who walked her back again at the end of the night. He sneaked her into lectures and the faculty library, introduced her to scholarly luminaries, and let her participate (over some grumbling) in the raucous debating around his table at the Mullet.

  It was more like a scholarly drinking game than a proper debate. Tess loved it, and not just because she often won. It made her feel like one of the lads, bold and adventurous.

  It had emboldened Will, too: he’d kissed her beside the fountain in the old cloister courtyard, the stars dancing overhead. It had been a perfect jewel of a moment, and she had felt in her heart that all her hopes were coming to fruition.

  If she couldn’t be Dozerius—she’d accepted this at some point—there was still adventure and some semblance of freedom to be had at his side, as his ladylove.

  The night in question—the adventure of Spira’s notes—she and Will had been coming out of a geology lecture. Will was doing an impression of Saar Fikar, the female dragon geologist, saying naphtha hungrily, like it was something to put on toast. Tess took his arm and laughingly called him naughty.

  Roger Ivy was waiting for them in the corridor, pamphlet in hand.

  “Roger, favored nest-comrade of my youth,” cried Will, continuing his impersonation. “Won’t you accompany us to the Mullet for a flaming jar of naphtha?”

  Tess smiled at Roger and leaned her head against Will’s shoulder.

  “You need to see this,” said Roger unhappily, pressing the pamphlet into Will’s hands.

  It was called Part 3 of 4: On the Folly of Relying upon Quigutl Falsehoods and Children’s Imaginings, by Scholar Spira.

  “Damnation,” said Will. “Not another one.”

  Roger took off. Will drifted
up the corridor, skimming Spira’s treatise; Tess at his elbow read as much as she could before he turned each page, feeling increasingly alarmed and humiliated on his behalf.

  Will noticed her reading. “Don’t bother, Therese,” he said, tugging her braid in gentle admonishment. “It’s rubbish. Spira’s out of arguments and now resorts to ad hominem attacks, publishing as quickly as possible in order to bury me while I’m still rebutting the first one.”

  Will rolled up the pamphlet and smacked it against his palm, mouth flattened in frustration. “There’s a fourth part coming. I need to stop it.”

  Tess read his tense jaw, his distant gaze; these pamphlets hurt him deeply, though he feigned bravado. She said, “Could you anticipate Spira and have a rebuttal ready to go?”

  Will’s blue eyes darted toward her; he wagged a finger slowly, like the tail of a cat about to pounce. “That is not a bad idea. ‘Children’s imaginings,’ indeed. Spira can go pound sand.”

  He grabbed Tess’s hand and, with customary quickness, ducked upstairs to the faculty wing. Tess bumped along, trying to keep up, like a kite on a string. “Spira’s notes are in a locked cabinet,” Will was saying. “I can’t say I’ve ever picked a lock, but how hard can it—”

  He stopped short as they turned a corner. Ahead, a patch of light stretched across the darkened hallway; Spira was up late working.

  “Saints’ flippers!” muttered Will. “But no, this could be good. I might not have to pick a lock after all. I’ll need your help, though, little bird.”

  “Anything,” said Tess stoutly.

  His smile in the semidarkness grew sly. “Even sit on Spira’s lap and flirt with him?”

  Tess’s face fell. She’d said “anything” without considering that he might ask something so repugnant of her. She hated to break her word, hated to disappoint him, but how could she…

  Will chuckled lightly, as if her inner tug-of-war was transparent to him. “I know you’re not that kind of girl. But I won’t think less of you—it was my idea, after all—and you couldn’t be safer. A sexless organism like Spira won’t take liberties. He’ll be mortified and, more importantly, distracted while I rifle through his cabinet.”

  “Isn’t there something else I could do?” Tess began weakly. “This seems mean.”

  Will circled his arms around her waist; his jerkin was perfumed with some Zibou scent full of spices Tess couldn’t name. “You’re right, it would be mean,” he said, warm breath in her ear, “if Spira could feel it, and if he didn’t abundantly deserve it. You are such a sweet, sensitive little bird, correcting me and being my conscience. Of course you should never have to do anything you don’t feel comfortable with. It’s all right. I’ll break his lock tomorrow.”

  He still held the rolled-up pamphlet. Its title was obscured, but Tess remembered it—an insult not only to her but to Pathka and all quigutl. Dragons were always kicking their smaller cousins around, killing them, using them. Saar contempt for quigutl was far worse than Will’s contempt for saar; dragons had corresponding power to hurt. It wouldn’t hurt Spira in the least to be taken down a peg while Tess stood up for quigutl in a small way.

  And it would mean so much to Will.

  “Fine, I’ll do it,” she said reluctantly. “But I’m no good at flirting.”

  “That’s patently untrue,” said Will, kissing her ear. Tess pushed him playfully away.

  Spira, slumped at the desk like a bagged pudding, was solving equations as they entered. “Ah, you’ve seen it,” said the scholar, noting the rolled pamphlet. “Now, William, you mustn’t take these things so personally. Professor Ondir requested me to explore the practicalities of such enormous creatures existing, how they might be hidden, even from us. And even you have to admit that most of your sources are rubbish.”

  He meant the quigutl, and this helped Tess feel a little less sick about what she meant to do next. She steeled herself and valiantly sat upon Spira’s lap. It was soft, as were the shoulders Tess snaked an arm around. The scholar’s guano-colored bowl cut smelled of goose grease close-up. Spira’s eyes bulged like two eggs.

  “Remove yourself from my person,” said the saar.

  Tess pretended not to understand by telling herself she’d sat upon a bagpipe, which had squeaked in protest.

  Will had crossed swiftly to the cabinet; Tess didn’t dare watch him, lest Spira turn to look. She gazed into the scholar’s myopic gray eyes, feeling ridiculous. Flirting with Will had been hard enough, given her upbringing, but this felt downright unnatural.

  “I admire your treatises,” she said hopelessly.

  Spira, clearly startled, said, “Thank you. They’re a bit pedantic for some tastes, but it’s important to be thorough.”

  Tess had inadvertently stumbled on the way to keep Spira’s attention. She continued: “I’m not sure you’ve been thorough enough, in fact.”

  “What are you suggesting?” said Spira, brow furrowing.

  Tess shifted her weight; it was like sitting on dough, and she was in danger of sinking in. “You claim a World Serpent couldn’t get enough energy to move, even if it ate coal or tar, but what if it delved down to the mantle of the earth?”

  Will paused in ransacking the cabinet to look at her; Spira’s expression sharpened.

  “We were just at a geology lecture,” Tess explained, “which made me wonder whether such a creature might bask upon the earth’s hot core like a snake in the sun, and take strength from that.”

  Spira stared into the middle distance, cogitating. “You raise a point I hadn’t considered. It would be worth calculating, to be sure.”

  Tess batted her eyes and patted his pasty cheek. “Are you sure you should do that, Spira? I read somewhere that it’s folly to take such childish imaginings seriously.”

  Spira paled. Will didn’t dare laugh, but grinned, brandishing a flat leather case. He had what he’d been looking for. Tess had merely to hold Spira’s attention until Will could duck out.

  Will puckered his lips, clearly suggesting that she kiss Spira. Tess balked—that was beyond the pale. Spira must have noticed the disgusted look on her face. “What’s he doing back there?” the scholar cried, trying to turn and see.

  Tess, in desperation, grasped Spira’s head and planted a kiss upon those thick, clammy lips. It was like kissing a trout. Spira squirmed, but Tess held on.

  “What is this, Saar Spira?” boomed a terrible voice. Tess pulled away from Spira and leaped to her feet. Professor the dragon Fikar stood in the doorway, glaring icily.

  Will was already twisting the story. “Spira just grabbed her. He’s a maniac. He needs his brain pruned.”

  Tess was so shocked and ashamed that she didn’t hear half of Saar Fikar’s scolding. Before she knew what was happening, Will had taken her hand and they were running down the hallway. He pulled her around a corner and through a door, which he slammed behind them.

  Will leaned against the door, laughing so hard he almost couldn’t stand, and then Tess started laughing, too, the stress and anxiety of the last minutes pouring out in one long torrent.

  Will grabbed her face and began kissing her warmly, fiercely.

  “You are extraordinary,” he said breathlessly between kisses. “My little bird.”

  Tess forced herself to pull away, holding his hands so they wouldn’t wander further. She dared not lose herself or let him go too far; whatever little rebellion she might be waging against her family, she had not simply abandoned her morals. She was not that kind of girl. Even kissing him was questionable, but she’d rationalized it to herself: it was not the Final Thing, as her mother ominously put it, and the Final Thing was what she had to avoid, according to the letter of the law. Tess was half lawyer; she knew what a loophole was.

  “Is Spira going to be in trouble?” she asked, trying to bring them both back to earth.

  “T
errible trouble. Old Fikar was writing up a reprimand as we left,” he said gleefully.

  Tess must have looked as sick as she felt. Will caressed her cheek, his brows bowed in overstated sadness. “Of course you feel bad for him, love. I’d expect no less. You’d pity a slug squished underfoot, or a fish flopping in the net, so capacious is your heart.

  “Still, this went better than I could have hoped.” He untucked the leather case from under his arm. “Spira carries this everywhere. It contains either his notes or something horrifyingly personal. Either way, we’ve got him.”

  Tess followed him toward a moonlit window. They were in the museum, her favorite place, a former monastic dormitory now lined with taxidermied animals—badgers, stoats, lions, swans—and shelves of amber jars where stranger things bobbed. The smell of dried rose petals covered a darker waft of decay; the moonlight brought feral shadows spookily to life.

  Will threw open the casement to the chilly night and sat on the window seat; Tess sat across from him, watching his elegant hands unbuckle the straps. He winked at her and said, “Now, at last, we reveal the ugly heart of Spira’s—”

  There were no notes. Will froze in apparent confusion.

  The case was full of little glass vials, wrapped in cloth so they wouldn’t clink together. Tess picked up one of the vials and rattled the dried herbs inside.

  “Spira’s tea-smuggling operation?” asked Tess. “Spira’s oregano addiction?”

  Will, in an unexpected burst of anger, threw a vial out the window. It shattered upon the bricks of the old cloister walk. He threw another, then tipped the rest out.

  “Will!” Tess cried, appalled.

  “I’m sure he can get more,” Will said, shrugging it off.

  It wasn’t the scattered herbs that had alarmed her, though, but Will’s blaze of anger. She’d never seen him act so impulsively. It was almost violent.

  But surely it was understandable—she, of all people, knew him and could see the good in him. He was frustrated not to have found the notes. Spira’s intellectual attacks must also be taking a toll. His moonlit profile looked like a statue of a tragic king, betrayed and bitter. What was rage but a cover for some secret fragility, some sorrow?