Beneath Ceaseless Skies #135
Page 4
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.
Copyright © 2013 Claire Humphrey
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Claire Humphrey lives in Toronto, where she works in the book business, and writes short fiction and novels. Her stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Interzone, Crossed Genres, PodCastle, Fantasy Magazine, and several anthologies. She is also the reviews editor at Ideomancer. She can be found online at www.clairehumphrey.ca.
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COVER ART
“The Rickety Tower,” by Jeremiah Morelli
Jeremiah Morelli lives in southern Germany and currently works as
a middle school teacher for English and Art. He sees his painting mainly as a hobby, though he has been selling prints for several years. Colorful, whimsical scenes are what he likes most, and he hopes to publish a children’s book one day.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1076
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Copyright © 2013 Firkin Press
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