“At least the Sisters of St. Loola had the good sense to give up on you,” said Jacomo dryly. “I also recall that your answer last time was to run away from everything.”
Last time she hadn’t been able to see her choices clearly, Tess now realized, only that they were being made for her by other people. She’d been dead wrong about nuns; she hadn’t understood where the countess was going, either. Maybe she still couldn’t see what it would have meant to stay home with her twin.
“You must have some way to contact Jeanne,” said Tess.
Jacomo pulled a chain out of his shirtfront; a plain square pendant dangled from it.
“Let me talk to her.”
Jacomo warily handed over the thnik. “If you don’t intend to go back, you don’t have to tell her yourself. I don’t mind being the bearer of bad news. In fact, I kind of assumed—”
“Don’t assume anything,” said Tess, a little waspishly. “I need to talk to her first. She’s my sister. I owe her that, at least.”
She went into the yard behind The Squids in hopes of finding privacy. At the far end was the privy house, stenchy even from a distance. Tess gravitated toward the woodpile instead and sat on the axe stump, sticky with resin and gritty with splinters. The sky had clouded over; a cold, halibut-tinged wind gusted from the harbor.
She turned the charm over in her fingers and switched it on. It hardly had a chance to chirp before Jeanne answered, “Yes?” The word brimmed over with hope.
Tess forced words through a tightening throat. “Hello, Nee. It’s me.”
And then they were both crying, two sisters, hundreds of miles apart, together in grief.
“I’m so sorry,” Tess said, her cheeks streaming. “I know I’ve caused you a lot of worry.”
“Oh, Sisi, don’t speak of it,” said Jeanne. “All is forgiven, if only you’ll come home!”
“Of course I will. I always meant to,” said Tess warmly, her heart burgeoning with generosity and affection. “It’s just a question of when.”
“How long it takes to get from there to here, you mean?” said Jeanne. “Where are you?”
“Mardou, on the Ninysh coast,” said Tess. “But distance isn’t the main—”
“How long does the journey take by fast coach?” said Jeanne. “Don’t worry about the cost, His Grace the duke will pay for all. Only you can’t imagine how miserable I am without you. Mama and the duchess are already eyeing each other jealously. I don’t know how I shall manage to raise a child with its grandmothers circling like vultures.”
Jeanne talked on and on, about her mother and mother-in-law, how each expected her loyalty, how she could never satisfy both at the same time. As she talked, she answered Tess’s unasked questions one by one. Tess couldn’t leave her in foolish hope.
“Jeanne,” she said gently, “my love, I’m so sorry. You’ve misunderstood. I will come back, but not yet. Not for the birth.”
“But I need you here,” said her sister.
Tess could hear every mile between them now.
“You want me there,” said Tess, “to deflect the ire of those two vultures, as you called them. The minute I crossed the threshold, they’d peck at me and leave you alone.”
“That’s not why I want you here!” cried Jeanne. “I’m scared, and I miss you.”
“I miss you, too,” said Tess quietly, “and I would love to be there, holding your hand, but I can’t go back to being everybody’s goat. You don’t have to go through it alone, though. Seraphina will be back soon. She’s had a baby more recently than I, and you know she’ll be an expert on the whole business.”
The joke fell flat; Tess’s heart wasn’t in it.
“Seriously, Nee, call upon her for any sisterly duty. We were wrong about her all those years. I think she wanted what we had so effortlessly in each other, but she didn’t know how to ask.”
“What we had in each other.” Jeanne sounded like she was being strangled. “Us against the world. What a mockery you’ve made of that.”
“It was always a mockery,” said Tess, flattening the quaver in her voice. “It was really Tess against the world, shielding you from Mama’s rage, hard decisions, and everything else.”
“You, shield me?” cried Jeanne. “I ran interference and cleaned up your messes for years. Who covered for you when you’d stay out all night at St. Bert’s, so sleepy you’d nod off during lessons the next day? It was me soothing Mama’s broken heart and trying to hold our entire family together, who had to be a perfect angel to make up for your relentless selfishness.”
“Selfishness lived in your closet for two years, sewed your clothes, and found you your husband,” Tess snapped back. “Selfishness took spankings for you, lied for you, held her breath so she wouldn’t tarnish your reputation by association.”
“Oh, poor you. After fourteen years of doing whatever you wanted, like an impulsive animal, you did two years’ soft labor in penance. Now, when I really need you, in this terrible house with these terrible people, you punch Jacomo and run away. Yes, you are selfish, and irresponsible, and—”
Tess had never heard such raw hurt in Jeanne’s voice, and she found herself sitting back and marveling at this litany of crimes. Jeanne had always been so quiet and good—who knew what rancor had been accumulating inside her? Maybe Jeanne herself hadn’t known.
Tess had taken Jeanne’s goodness for granted, assumed she was naturally angelic and loved being so. That had been the story their entire lives, and it was deeply unfair.
Jeanne’s rage combusted into heaving sobs. Tess said gently, “When did you mean to tell me, Nee? If I’d leaped to your bidding and come straight home, would you have stewed forever?”
Jeanne sobbed louder. Tess’s eyes prickled sympathetically; she’d been there, full of futile rage, trapped.
“I’ll call you on this thnik while I’m traveling,” said Tess. “You can bite me—in the quigutl sense—as needed, and maybe we’ll work out how to be sisters aga—”
“I hope you drown!” cried Jeanne, and the thnik went dead.
Tess stared at the device in her cold hands. She felt sliced up, cut upon cut upon cut. She breathed slowly and deliberately, the way Chessey had instructed so long ago. Saints’ bones, it hurt. She curled up, resting her head on her knees, but she didn’t split, didn’t absent herself. She stayed and felt everything.
And when the pain had abated somewhat, she uncurled.
Jacomo loomed in the doorway of the tavern, rubbing the back of his neck and looking embarrassed. “I wasn’t trying to listen in,” he began.
“Yes, you were, Lord Dirt-on-Everyone,” said Tess, but not angrily.
“That sounded bad,” said Jacomo, leaning against the doorframe and folding his arms.
Tess stood and brushed sawdust off her behind with numb fingers. “Oh, I don’t know. You’ve witnessed the first known instance of Jeanne yelling—a historic event. Maybe even a small miracle.” She rubbed her nose, considering. “You know that feeling when someone punches you and you don’t completely deserve it, but you also suspect you do, a bit?”
“Believe it or not,” said Jacomo with a wry half-smile.
Tess sighed shakily and held out the thnik to Jacomo, to return it.
He waved his refusal. “Keep it. Call her whenever you want.”
Tess jiggled the chain impatiently. “You heard the lady. I’m impulsive and irresponsible. I want you to carry it for safekeeping, so I don’t throw it into the ocean.”
“But I’m going home,” said Jacomo weakly, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. He was pointing south toward the sea, in fact, and seemed not to realize it. “The game is up. I found you, and now I’ve got to face the…”
The sentence fizzled; he didn’t mean it.
“You could go home,” said Tess mischievously, a strange fe
eling rising in her chest. It might have been the tiniest hint of anarchic joy. It had been such a long time, she wasn’t completely sure. “Or you could walk on. By which I mean, come on a ship. With me.”
In the half-light of the overcast afternoon, his eyes gleamed like a fox’s. “What would I do on a ship?”
“That would be up to you,” said Tess, “but I’ve heard these Ninysh expeditions are always looking for priests. You’d lend some credibility to my petition to the countess.”
“Your petition? You haven’t secured a place on the expedition yet?”
“I wanted something more compelling than ‘Please, please, please forget I insulted you and let me tag along,’ ” said Tess. “Thanks to you, and a piece of luck I had earlier, I think I have it. But will you come? You’re not ready to go back to seminary yet.”
“I’m not,” Jacomo admitted. He worried his lip with his teeth.
Tess ushered him toward the door. “Let’s discuss this where it’s not freezing, brother.”
They went back into The Squids and finished their beers.
* * *
Tess fetched her belongings from The Gull and put on her rakish hat; the long pheasant feather had gotten bent, to her dismay, but she trimmed it down. It stood straight up and made her look like a walking exclamation.
She met Jacomo and his baggage in the street. Tess summoned Pathka, who’d managed to find Kikiu, who now wore a pair of buggy goggles in addition to horns and bite enhancer.
Tess glanced over her entourage—the enormous, mournful not-quite-priest; the small-for-his-age quigutl; and the quigutl who looked like she’d fallen into a bucket of sharp objects.
They were perfect.
She set the pace around the harbor’s edge, chin up, not glancing back to make sure they were following. It would look better if they were scrambling a little to catch up. Tess walked like she owned the earth, indomitable, feather tickling the chin of the sky.
The sun, through a crack in the gray, lit up the underside of the clouds a transcendent salmon pink. She took it as her fanfare.
The gangplank of the Avodendron was still down while stevedores hauled up the last of the supplies. The countess was already aboard, Tess could tell, because her laugh carried on the wind. Tess knew full well that she ought to send up a message with one of the stevedores and wait for the countess to come to her. Yelling for the countess’s attention would be rude. She’d never been specifically educated on ship’s etiquette, but she felt instinctively that walking aboard the countess’s ship uninvited would be rudest of all. It would be like climbing aboard someone’s carriage, or walking into their house as if you owned the place. It simply wasn’t done.
So that was what she did, her anarchic heart thrilling with every step up the bobbing ramp.
The ship, which had been full of merry chatter in Ninysh and Porphyrian, went silent. Dozens of eyes stared at Tess from all directions—sailors, stevedores, an elderly bearded gentleman, and the keen-eyed countess herself. The noblewoman was dressed in black, with white slashes in her sleeves; her copper curls were cut off severely at chin length, which made her silhouette look a little like a mushroom.
She pulled a cutlass from her belt and held it at arm’s length, pointed directly at Tess’s face. Tess couldn’t tell whether this meant she’d been recognized. She guessed not.
“Countess Margarethe,” said Tess, giving eleven-sixteenths courtesy—odd enough to keep everyone on their toes. “I have come with my entourage to join your expedition.”
She spread an arm to indicate the demi-priest and two quigutl. Jacomo, at least, strove to look stoutly loyal. Kikiu bristled; she’d just climbed out of the storm sewers, and she smelled like it.
The countess narrowed her eyes as if she knew Tess’s face and voice but couldn’t place them. She did not lower her weapon. Tess noted sailors shifting position, readying themselves to spring at her should the countess give the word.
“I’m Tess Dombegh. We’ve met,” said Tess, posing with hands on her hips and feet apart, drawing upon her inner Dozerius.
The countess’s sword arm drooped in confusion. Tess took this as an encouraging sign and plowed ahead. “Allow me to present the quigutl Pathka and Kikiu, and Father Jacomo, who—”
“Not…Lord Jacomo Pfanzlig?” said the countess, sheathing her cutlass. She apparently hadn’t quite recognized him, either, with his dusty cloak and his dense hair nearly to his shoulders.
To Tess’s surprise and delight, Jacomo stepped up, gave a foppish bow, and kissed the countess’s jeweled fingers.
Margarethe’s brows drew together, as though she were trying to solve a riddle. Tess hoped they’d begun to capture her curiosity at last.
“You may not have heard: it was I who found Anathuthia, the great World Serpent, coiled beneath Santi Prudia,” said Tess.
“Never,” said Margarethe, retrieving her hand from Jacomo and reviving her scornful expression. “It was some charlatan, they said.”
“Right. Me,” said Tess modestly. “The Academy killed it—those bastards.” It was a calculated risk, insulting the masters, but the countess’s smirk told her she’d figured rightly. “I know you’re going after the great Antarctic serpent, milady; I can’t let the same thing happen to it. I’m going to be there, by hook or by crook. I’d prefer to sail with you on this lovely ship, but if need be I’ll sail with the dragons or hop over the ice like a puffin.”
“Dragons?” sputtered Kikiu, behind her. “Never!”
Pathka took pains to calm his daughter; to the countess and her crew, they must have looked like two snarling monsters.
A mutter went up as the sailors shifted uncomfortably.
“What dragons?” said Margarethe, fingering the hilt of her sword, her eye on the squabbling quigutl.
Tess gazed at her coolly. “You have competition, or did you not know? Scholar Spira, my old comrade from St. Bert’s, will embark tomorrow with a boatload of saar. I hear they’re outraged in the Tanamoot that Ninys killed Anathuthia. If the saar find this Southern Serpent first, you’ll never get near it.” Tess examined her nails. “I’d prefer that didn’t happen; I’d like humanity to have a chance to see and study this living marvel. But, if I can’t sail with you, I’ll have no choice but to lend my talents to—”
“And what talents are these, precisely?” said the countess, clearly irritated by the news of Spira’s expedition. Tess had hoped for as much.
“I understand Quootla, and I’ve brought two deep fonts of lore with me,” said Tess. “The quigutl know more about the World Serpents than anyone. Pathka led me to Anathuthia and taught me to approach respectfully.”
She gestured toward mother and daughter, who were scrapping on the deck like feral cats.
Kikiu screeched, “We’ll never tell the dragons anything! Never!”
Pathka pounced on her head, knocking off one of her steel horns.
The countess pointedly ignored them. “Lord Morney has read everything there is to—”
“Books aren’t enough,” said Tess, flicking a glance at the bearded old gentleman standing beside the countess. “The texts are all conjecture. Even Santi Prudia’s library”—here she made a conjecture of her own—“had nothing of use, and those monks had seen the serpent with their own eyes. A creature of that magnitude and majesty is hard to commit to paper. The quigutl approach it obliquely, through myths, and get nearer to the heart of the matter for all that.”
Tess nodded to the old man beside the countess, who’d been observing her with an expression of detached amusement. “Your pardon, milord, but these quigutl know things you don’t, and I’m the only human I know of who’s bothered learning how to talk to them.”
The old man cracked an enormous grin, and Countess Margarethe snapped, “That’s not Lord Morney! That’s my napou, captain of this ship.”
“Mestor Abaxia Claado,” said the countess’s Porphyrian uncle, his eyes crinkling merrily. “I am amused to be mistaken for his lordship, but we are of distinctly different complexions, as you’ll see when you meet him.”
His niece gave him a sidelong look. “If she meets him. I’ve yet to—”
“You’ve decided,” said Claado. “Admit it: she reminds you of an irrepressible eight-year-old who sneaked aboard my ship and wasn’t discovered until we were three days out of harbor. The Regent of Samsam’s fine furniture got delayed while we sailed that naughty child home. By the time we got back to Mardou, she knew her knots and lines, had got the hang of the sextant, and could dance a ripping hornpipe. The worst of it, though—”
“Is that she did it again when she was ten,” snapped the countess. She seemed deeply displeased by this story.
“You know your sister trickster when you see her, Marga,” said the old captain, sticking his thumbs in his belt.
“What I know,” said Countess Margarethe, folding her arms across her bosom and narrowing her eyes poisonously at Tess, “is that the last time I saw this miscreant, she insulted not only me but every man on this ship.”
Her uncle rolled his eyes at this, but some muttering went up among the men.
“I am shocked, Tess Dombegh, that you have the gall to stand and face me. How are you not on your knees, begging my forgiveness?”
And Tess saw clearly then that this wasn’t so much about the insults as about the story her uncle had told. There had been a sweet, mischievous girl in that tale, but here was a grown countess who expected to be obeyed. She did not want anyone mistaking her for that girl, and yet (Tess knew from experience) that girl was always there, threatening to bring past humiliations crashing down around her ears again.
That girl didn’t have to be a liability.
“I am sorry for insulting you,” Tess began, measuring her words carefully. “I was drunk and deeply unhappy, and if I could erase that day from history, I would. But I hope you wouldn’t forgive me simply because I begged on my knees or fulfilled whatever conditions you set. I can earn your forgiveness without also earning your contempt. In fact, there’s no other way to do it.”
Tess of the Road Page 43
