Tess of the Road

by Rachel Hartman

One day a soggy messenger arrived with a letter. Josquin knew him, of course, and made the fellow stand before the hearth and have a cup of tea. They were still shooting the breeze when Tess came home from work, at which point the messenger handed her the missive.

  Tess knew the handwriting. Of all the courtly, ecclesiastical, and academic hands she’d learned, there was none quite like it. It was the script of someone who’d taught herself to write at an extraordinarily young age, when her hand was too small to hold a pen in anything but a fist. It spoke of deeply ingrained stubbornness as tutor after tutor tried to correct her penmanship, their pedagogy breaking over her like a storm over a mountain. They’d eroded the fist grip to a two-fingered half fist, but they got no further with Seraphina. Tess could almost hear her, cold as well water, telling those tutors, “It’s legible. You have nothing more to want.”

  Josquin knew the handwriting, too, and made as if to liberate the letter from her hands. “Fie, rascal, that’s my name,” Tess cried, dodging him and pointing to the T, which admittedly looked more like a J than it should have. She skittered past him into his room, opening the shutters with one hand and the letter with the other.

  Dear Tess:

  You’ll be wondering, perhaps, how I know where to find you. For this you may thank Josquin, in whom I hope you have found an otherwise trustworthy friend. Don’t be angry that he wrote me; if he hadn’t, I believe Jeanne would have worried herself right off a cliff. She misses you terribly, but is reassured by the thought that you are alive and in the care of friends.

  I don’t know what you’ve heard in Ninys, but I had my baby last midsummer—a girl, called Clotilde Rhademunde Zythia (these royals and their family names! Zythia was my choice, and she will be called that because it’s the nicest of the lot). Officially, she is Glisselda’s. People seem willing to believe that the Queen could have been so subtly pregnant that no one could tell. Such is the magic of queenship, I suppose.

  I’m presently in Segosh for several reasons, none of which can be put to paper except that I would like to see you at Palasho Pesavolta at your earliest convenience. I’m only here a week (a week longer than the count would like to host me), so do not procrastinate or dally or indulge in your usual contrarian stubbornness.

  Tess laughed so hard at this characterization that she had to lean her head against the window. Josquin clattered up behind her—he couldn’t sneak up on anyone in that contraption—and waited for her to finish. “Good news?” he said when Tess finally caught her breath. “Or is your sister merely being her witty self?”

  This only made Tess howl the more, because nothing was as unfunny as Seraphina’s writing. It was stiff as a board. He surely knew this. She handed him the letter and he read it, tutting lightly and saying, “Of course we’ve heard. We’re not such a backwater as that.”

  “In an effort not to succumb to my usual contrarian obstructificationism,” said Tess with a mocking curtsy, “I’ll need something court-worthy to wear, as quickly as possible.”

  When Gaida came home and heard the news, she went to her bedroom and flung open a trunk. “Unpaid alterations,” she explained, riffling through linens and satins. “Folks sometimes don’t collect their things. I hold ’em as long as I can, but after a certain point they’re fair game.”

  They settled on a fine, deep green merino that Gaida had altered for an amber merchant’s wife, unlikely to be claimed now that the merchant was in prison. It was nearly Tess’s size, a bit tight in the upper arms and narrow in the waist; the merchant’s wife apparently hadn’t pounded roadbed or been much for eating. Gaida let out the waist, which she’d previously taken in, but couldn’t do much for the shoulders.

  It had been so long since Tess had worn a gown that she felt unpleasantly exposed. The breeze sneaked up underneath and chilled her.

  “I wish I could let out your hair,” Gaida fussed, running her fingers through Tess’s wavelets. “A gabled cap would hide it. You don’t want to give the court conniptions.”

  “You don’t know what she wants,” said Josquin.

  Tess was surprised to find herself agreeing with Gaida in this case. The rules had rankled when she’d had no choice, but she was no longer a young, dependent lady-in-waiting, cowed by her elders. She’d walked the earth alone and helped them that needed it. She could deign to dress up or not, could face down courtly rules and say, Very well, I comply—this once.

  She didn’t want a gabled cap, though. “Where might I find a broad-brimmed hat, preferably with a plume?”

  Three haberdashers and a chunk of winter savings later, she had what she wanted: a hat reminiscent of the one Countess Margarethe had worn to Jeanne’s wedding nearly a year ago. Tess could only afford a long, sharp pheasant’s tail feather, not an ostrich plume, and a crown of felt, not velvet, but it pleased her. The hat and boots (which took polish gratefully, like Tess once took wine) gave off such an air of competent decisiveness that one might easily ascribe the same qualities to the person bookended between them.

  She rose early, leaving Josquin tangled in the bedsheets, and dressed with keen awareness of his eye upon her. Before she left, she perched gently on the edge of the bed and rubbed his leg. “Do you want to come along and see her?” Tess asked quietly.

  “What?” said Josquin with a start, trying to look as if he’d just woken up and hadn’t been brooding on anything. “No, no. This is a sisterly reunion. I’d be in the way.”

  Tess quirked a tiny smile, her heart contracting sympathetically, because she understood in that moment that he was not, in fact, over her sister, and that she couldn’t really blame him. “Can I help you get dressed, at least?”

  “No,” he said, grumpy with her now. “Go. Stop worrying about me.”

  She kissed his cheek and was off, up the hill toward the palasho. The rising sun crowned the buildings in gold. Tess hummed as she walked, enjoying the street beneath her feet. Its face had been hidden by snow and mud all winter, but now, with the blue arcing overhead and the cobbles dry and clean, seeing the Road was like seeing an old friend after many months apart.

  She was expected at the palasho; a guard escorted her through the gate and handed her off to a footman at the palace proper. The footman led Tess to the count’s library, where Seraphina waited in a window seat, reading.

  Tess almost laughed. She’d been away long enough to find her sister owlishly adorable.

  To Seraphina’s credit (because it wasn’t a given), she closed her book, looked at Tess, and smiled before she spoke. “You’re looking well.”

  “I am well,” said Tess, choosing a chair upholstered in prickly embroidered silk. The arms were gilded curlicues, ribbons, and bunches of grapes, high Ninysh baroque. Tess sat with her legs crossed at the knee, one boot swinging, hat tilted just rakishly enough, and grinned.

  Here she was. Here they both were. It was delightful.

  “How’ve you been?” said Tess.

  “Fine,” said Seraphina.

  “Still keeping the small talk extra small,” said Tess, chuckling.

  Seraphina ignored this. She could be such a dragon sometimes. “I hear you’ve had some success as a naturalist,” she said. “Word of the great serpent reached St. Bert’s by thnik. The Ninysh Academy was quick to boast, our Collegium quick to envy—and to judge. It’s unfortunate that they killed it.”

  More unfortunate than Seraphina could know. Tess felt a shadow cross her heart.

  “I know you’re the one who found it,” said Seraphina, setting her book on the seat beside her. “Kenneth brought me the report, saying, ‘Who else would purposely go by the name Tes’puco?’ We had a chuckle, remembering you as a small child, the whole house a stage for some drama, directing us hither and thither. We imagined you bossing around masters and World Serpents alike, until we heard that it had died.”

  Tess’s hands fidgeted in her lap, the on
ly outward indication of the guilt roiling through her innards. “I never imagined they’d hunt it down and kill it.”

  Seraphina pierced her with a glance. “What did you think would happen, exactly?”

  Tess squirmed. It wasn’t an accusation, but it felt like one. “I thought that when they saw it, they’d be moved. They’d…understand,” she said. That sounded feeble, even to Tess.

  “Understand what?” Seraphina’s sternness did not waver.

  How could Tess explain what had happened in that cavern? Telling Seraphina was more intimidating than telling the Academy—there was history and precedent to overcome. One did not simply tell Seraphina personal things. She wouldn’t care; she would logic you to death.

  But Tess hadn’t walked this far to be cowed again. She would tell the truth, and Seraphina could understand, or not.

  “Have you ever experienced something so far beyond words that you couldn’t explain it?” said Tess. “And the more you tried to tell people, the more frustrated you felt, because nobody understands unless they’ve been through it themselves?”

  Tess had meant these as rhetorical questions, but Seraphina answered: “I have. Twice.”

  “W-wait, what? When?” asked Tess.

  “During the war, when I turned my mind inside out and called St. Pandowdy from the swamp,” said Seraphina. “And again, to a somewhat lesser extent, when I gave birth.”

  Tess’s breath caught in her throat. Could they really both have had encounters with the numinous? She could never have imagined this.

  “I found my vocation in that cave,” said Tess at last. “Side by side with a monk.”

  “Tell me,” said Seraphina, in almost a whisper.

  “I feel called,” said Tess, feeling it again, groping around for words to clothe it in. “To walk into the world, to see what’s needed, and do it. To uncurl myself and respond.”

  Tess held her breath, afraid Seraphina would scorn the very idea—what reasonable person wouldn’t?—but her sister nodded solemnly. She was taking this seriously.

  “Well, then, I may just have a need for you to respond to,” said Seraphina. “Word of all this has reached the Tanamoot. The dragons, who denied the very existence of World Serpents, are now quick to point talons of blame. They condemn the killing and mean to find the other serpents themselves, ostensibly to protect them.”

  Tess raised an eyebrow at ostensibly. Seraphina nodded minutely.

  “It’s unclear what they intend. Dragons aren’t usually gentle with things they don’t understand or can’t control. It’s possible they don’t so much object to the killing as to the fact that they had no access to the corpse. Or that they’d hoped to kill the World Serpents themselves, quietly, before humankind found them.

  “In any case, Queen and Ardmagar agree on one thing: this can’t happen again. And here is where your Queen has an assignment for you.”

  Tess sat up straighter, as if the Queen herself had entered the room and not just her name.

  “Goredd can’t permit another serpent to be slaughtered,” said Seraphina. “For the creatures’ own sakes, yes, but also because the dragons are roaring. Our treaty shelters Ninys, to some extent, but it certainly doesn’t apply to the Archipelagos or the Southern Ocean.”

  Tess’s heart leaped. “You want me to find another one.”

  “Countess Margarethe has new funding and means to sail after the Antarctic serpent again,” said Seraphina. “Selda wants you on that boat.”

  Tess laughed, a short, bitter bark. “The Queen does understand that I was horrible and the countess hates me? She won’t want me along.”

  “I’ve been sounding her out about Tes’puco. Marga is intrigued by this mysterious adventurer—all the more since learning he’s a woman. She admires such mischievous gall. Besides, you’re one of the few who’ve seen a serpent, which makes you an expert. She’d be a fool not to take you.

  “And there’s more to it than I’ve yet revealed. Lucian thinks the Ninysh are up to no good in the south, making a power grab and expanding their influence. Could Ninys harness this serpent to their bidding, or use the threat of its demise to subdue the pelagic peoples, who purportedly revere it?

  “Make no mistake, friend that she is, Marga is nevertheless in this as deeply as any of her countrymen, and she’s taking along a Goreddi baronet, Lord Morney, whom Selda doesn’t trust.

  “We need eyes on that boat, but they mustn’t see the Queen’s hand in it. You—estranged from your family, an experienced traveler—might plausibly seek to go along. They embark from the port of Mardou in three weeks. Selda won’t be able to get you aboard; you’ll have to talk to the countess yourself.”

  There would be payment, and a thnimi—which sent images as well as voice—in the shape of a cloak clasp. Seraphina had the device on her; she showed Tess which curlicues did what, and Tess, with no cloak to clasp just now, pinned it to her bodice like an ungainly brooch.

  “If they’re acting against Goreddi interests—particularly Lord Morney—you are to record it and report,” said Seraphina. “Do not interfere or intervene, or put yourself at risk in any way. If you meet trouble, disembark on an island and call home with the thnimi. The Queen will send someone for you, though I suspect you could find your own way back.”

  Back, to Tess, didn’t mean back to Goredd, not anymore. It meant back to Josquin. The reality of leaving him behind hit her in the stomach. “Oh,” she said.

  Seraphina raised her brows, awaiting an explanation. Tess stared past her, out the window, at red tulips in the courtyard. “Josquin told you I was here,” she said cautiously, “but he, ah, didn’t tell you anything else?”

  Seraphina grew preternaturally still. “Are you sleeping with him?”

  “Ha,” said Tess, not sure if she was alarmed or amused. “Can I answer by not answering?”

  “Josquin is one of my favorite people, so I congratulate you on having chosen well this time.” Seraphina’s expression grew serious as she considered the implications. “But that complicates matters. It never occurred to me that you wouldn’t want to go—”

  “No, no,” said Tess quickly. “Don’t misunderstand. I do want to go.” She put a hand to her heart. “And, also, I’ll be gutted to leave Josquin behind. So runs my entire life.”

  “We’ll send someone else,” said Seraphina. “I don’t mind breaking your heart, but Josquin’s—”

  “Shut your smug mouth,” said Tess, but she was smiling.

  The door flew open, and a petite blond woman burst in carrying a wailing baby. A chagrined nursemaid trailed in her wake, arms extended, trying to argue.

  “No, thank you,” Queen Glisselda said imperiously. “Only her auntie can calm her when she’s like this. Dismissed!”

  The nursemaid turned pink and left the room. Glisselda bounced the baby in her arms, chanting, “Doo-doo-duties! Cu-cu-customs!” as she crossed the room toward Seraphina and Tess.

  The baby flailed hysterically.

  “Darling, I’m so sorry,” said the Queen to Seraphina. “I wouldn’t have interrupted your time with your sister, but as you can see, she’s having quite a day. It’s the trade treaties. She’s such a little protectionist.”

  “It’s fine,” said Seraphina, her voice low and calm. She reached up and took the child from Glisselda. The Queen looked unsubtly relieved; her golden curls were askew and, if you looked carefully, there were beads missing on her bodice.

  The Queen smiled wanly at Tess, who stood and gave full courtesy. “I’ll leave you to it, then,” Glisselda said. “I’ve got to go arm-wrestle Pesavolta for that egg.”

  “Anathuthia’s egg?” cried Tess, appalled. Pathka didn’t know; he’d be devastated.

  “The serpent had a name?” asked the Queen, narrowing her eyes shrewdly. “That may be useful. But don’t trouble yourself; this is between me
and Pesavolta. Seraphina will tell you how you may help.”

  She slipped from the room without further goodbyes.

  Seraphina had set Princess Zythia upon her lap and they were gazing seriously at each other. Zythia’s face was still red, but the tears and squalling had stopped. She smacked Seraphina on the chest with her tiny fat hand.

  “If you need to give her the breast, don’t hesitate on my account,” said Tess, folding her arms over her own, remembering how they’d ached, how Chessey had stuffed cabbage leaves down her bodice to relieve the swelling.

  Seraphina flicked her a mournful glance. “Alas, that part didn’t work for me.” She ran a hand over Zythia’s downy head. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you she was here. I wasn’t sure…I’m never sure what’s going to hurt you.”

  Tess sat beside Seraphina on the window seat, never taking her eyes off the little face. Zythia shoved a fist into her mouth and gnawed on it, tears welling in her big dark eyes again.

  Tess held out a hand, and Zythia grabbed her finger.

  Something terrible and wonderful and painful swelled inside Tess, but she could bear it. Tentatively she laid her head upon her sister’s shoulder. “You never meant to hurt me.”

  “We sisters have a particular talent for hurting each other without meaning to,” said Seraphina. She hesitated a moment and then leaned her cheek against the crown of Tess’s head.

  They sat that way for some time, watching the baby, talking quietly. They spoke of childbirth like they were veterans of the same war, comparing wounds, and Tess felt some of the scars on her heart loosen and dissolve.

  Phina kissed her cheeks when she left. Tess marveled that she could feel so hurt and comforted at once, so empty and full. Hers was a life lived in joy-utl, and she was capable and capacious enough to endure it.

  Tess turned her steps toward home, and the additional heartbreak awaiting her there.

  * * *

  She didn’t know quite what to expect when she told Josquin she’d be leaving for the Archipelagos sooner rather than later. Josquin had been insisting all along that she would leave him—and that she should—but she hadn’t quite believed he meant it.