by D. K. Fields
‘You got more pennies in one of those pockets of yours?’ the barwoman asked.
‘Not today,’ he lied. He drained the glass, every last drop; beer was the cleanest way to slake a thirst in Bordair. He pulled his cloak tight, raised his hood and headed out into the pelting rain.
The rain brought the smell of rotting eggs to the boardwalks, but at least it didn’t burn or sting. He’d only once felt how the Painter hated the Tear, when they were at Erdan-har. He’d stood like an idiot, hand out, unbelieving of what he was feeling. The scars had since faded. Though it didn’t burn here, the rain did little to help what really plagued Bordair. The reason the parts of city near the water were full to bursting.
He pressed through the throng on the boardwalk, headed towards the quieter streets away from the water. The higher he went, the fewer people he saw, until eventually, he was largely alone. That’s when he started coughing. The air on the slopes of Bordair was bad – it had always been bad, the locals said, but this was something else. Now it was toxic. Worse than the floor of the Tear where a mask lined with leaves had been enough. No mask could help here. People abandoned their homes, taking what they could carry lower and lower into the city. Nicholas couldn’t sleep in those empty homes for the same reason. Instead, he and others like him had developed a sense of just how much bad air he could take. It was like a shifting line that couldn’t be seen, but on one side you coughed a few times in the night, and on the other you woke coughing blood. On one side it smelt of rotting eggs, on the other rotting corpses. One side your nose itched, on the other your eyes ran and wouldn’t stop.
‘Wave’s high tonight,’ a man said now, leaning out from an alleyway. That’s how people like Nicholas talked of the line – like it was a wave that washed onto the shores of Bordair. ‘You looking for a place?’ the man asked.
Nicholas hesitated. He didn’t know this man. That Nicholas didn’t have anything worth stealing was a given. But people did worse than steal in Bordair. He glanced to the alley beyond but only saw shadows.
Then two skinny children appeared, as if from thin air, and stood in front of the man.
‘Look, Father, that’s the pipe-playing man,’ the little girl said. Her cheeks were hollow and her skin had a yellowish hue.
‘What’s that?’
‘Do you have your pipe?’ the girl asked.
Nicholas reached into one of his many pockets for the instrument. The girl clapped her hands and smiled, though it wasn’t a pretty smile.
‘He plays for drunks down by the water,’ she said to her father. He nodded, seemingly unsurprised by his daughter’s sharp eye.
‘There’s plenty of beds through here,’ the man told Nicholas. ‘You’d be welcome.’
He was wary. But he was also tired of nights spent alone. He hadn’t said more than five words to another person in weeks.
‘Will you play for us?’ the girl asked.
‘I will,’ he said. He crossed the street and thanked the man, who could’ve just let a stranger walk on by.
The man introduced himself as Lukas, then his daughter Meena and son Peter.
‘You’ll have to forgive Peter, he doesn’t say so much. Not since… well, not since we left our home.’ Lukas emptied a slop bucket into the gutter of the street.
The four of them walked deeper into the alleyway, and the night closed in around them. The children hurried ahead, keen to be the bearers of news of company. The alley turned and turned again, which created a kind of separation from the rest of the city. A way to almost forget what was happening out there. As the alley came to an end, there was a little courtyard with doors opening onto it. A fire was burning in a low dug pit, with a pot bubbling away above, and a makeshift shelter to keep off the rain.
‘Mother, look, it’s the pipe player. The one who plays for the dr—’
‘That’s enough, Meena,’ Lukas said gently.
The woman at the pot, Georgia, looked up, her expression blank but just as tired as anyone in Bordair. It was something they all shared. Nicholas wondered if his own exhaustion would be enough to put the woman at ease.
An older couple came out from one of the shacks and made straight for the pot.
‘My mother and father,’ Lukas said. ‘We come here when the wave is high. So far, we haven’t had any trouble. We even made a small shrine to the Stowaway.’
‘I won’t tell anyone,’ Nicholas said.
‘Somehow I know you won’t.’ He dropped the slop bucket a distance away from the fire and gestured to one of the shacks. ‘Make yourself comfortable, and then join us.’
The shack had a bed-frame with no mattress, and a desk with no chair. That was it. But it was dry, and the smell was marginally better inside than out. Nicholas had definitely slept in worse. He pulled the door closed behind him and joined the family at the fire.
‘Look, Martha, a Wayward boy!’ the old man rasped, his eyes large. ‘You’re about as far from home as far can be.’
‘Don’t stare, Rupert.’
‘I’m not staring, I’m just looking at the boy.’
‘Hello,’ Nicholas said. ‘Thank you for sharing your fire.’
‘Would you listen to that accent? Straight from the Steppes, are you?’ Rupert said. The rest of the family appeared embarrassed by the old man, but Nicholas didn’t mind.
‘No, I’ve been travelling since spring.’ He held his hands out to the fire.
‘Alone?’
‘No, my w— Yes, alone since coming to Bordair.’
The family exchanged looks but didn’t press him any further.
‘You picked a rotten time to be here,’ Martha said. ‘That damn Wit and his sputtering mountains.’
‘Volcanoes, dear.’
‘Mountains, volcanoes, whatever you call them, the Wit can keep ’em all. Poisoning our air.’
‘Tell the Trumpeter,’ Lukas said, with a note of resignation. This was evidently an old argument. ‘It’s the earthquakes that are the cause of it.’
‘They’re causing the Tear to grow too,’ Nicholas said. ‘I saw it myself, from the Rusting Mountains and from Break Deep.’
A silence followed, and it wasn’t just the old man staring at him wide-eyed. Martha even went so far as to make the sign of the Tear.
Eventually, Georgia passed him a bowl of stew, and the spell was broken. They ate with a kind of determination, and as he chewed, Nicholas didn’t dwell on what exactly went into the pot. Swallowing the last of her food, Meena begged him to play. Her parents bought him enough time to finish his own bowl, but then there was no denying the little girl. He played soft melodies, not all sad, just the kind to match the glow of an alley fire. He played until Meena and her brother drifted off to sleep and their grandparents looked ready to join them.
‘That was nice, thank you,’ Georgia said. She and Lukas carried the children into one of the shacks.
In his own, he ignored the empty bed-frame and settled in the corner furthest from the door. He fell asleep thinking not once had Lukas or his family asked anything of him – excepting Meena’s request and her grandfather’s curiosity. He decided the pennies that tumbled into his hat tomorrow would go to this generous family.
*
But the wave was low the next day. He woke coughing and his eyes stinging. The alley was already deserted, the family gone. He hurried from the alley and down the sloping streets towards the waterfront.
Even as shrunken as it was due to the low wave, Bordair was still enormous. Gazing out across the water, he could just about see the far shore – a mirror of the shops, bars, docks and whorehouses that surrounded him now. When he’d first arrived, he made his way from one end to the other over the course of a few days. According to the Caskers, there was a great deal of difference between the quarters of Bordair. He didn’t see it. The city was one huge jumble of warped wooden boards and gap-toothed smiles and rouged faces. Huge arms and broad, inked shoulders. Bindle-smoke and spilled beer.
And somewhere in all t
hat mess was Odette.
When he drank, he missed her. He felt it from the pit of his stomach up to the top of his chest, so that it was hard to swallow sometimes. He’d had all the time under the Audience to think on why she left him, why she needed to be alone in Bordair, but he just couldn’t see what he’d done wrong. She’d asked him to remember she was sorry and he did. He did remember that. But he wasn’t sure he understood. As the days had flowed into weeks, into months, he started to think maybe he hadn’t done anything wrong. Maybe it wasn’t about him at all. Odette had to be alone because of something in Odette. How could he ever fully, truly understand such a thing? But perhaps knowing that much was enough.
When he drank, he missed her. So he drank every day.
The wave stayed low for so long he started to wonder if he’d ever really been up the slopes of the city. In the overcrowded alleys and hovels where he slept each night, he still wondered if he would meet the family that had once fed him. He also wondered if he’d recognise them at all.
Eventually, he had his answer, finding Lukas, Georgia and little Peter. Though he would tell the Beginner again and again how he wished himself back into ignorance.
*
They were in a back street not so far from the water, near the eastern most tip of the boardwalk. Someone had put up a few thin boards across the back walls of the buildings, affording a little shelter from the rain. There, lying on a bed of sodden wood and pennysheets, was Lukas and what was left of his family. Georgia and Peter clutched the man’s hands as he coughed and convulsed.
The people Nicholas passed all looked strained and worried, unable to leave such a shelter but unhappy about staying. Deep down, they knew something was very wrong with the man.
‘Hello, Georgia,’ Nicholas said.
She looked up at her name. ‘Oh, it’s you.’
‘Where’s Meena? Her grandparents?’
Georgia shook her head. ‘She liked your music. Maybe she’s sitting beside the Musician now.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. The words felt small and useless. He turned to go, as if he was trespassing on their sorrow.
Lukas coughed then made a sound that Nicholas would never forget. A long, brittle sigh that spoke of more than just air leaving the man. Georgia knew. She started to weep. Peter simply stared at his father, still holding his hand tightly in his own. She gathered her son in her arms and kissed his head, sharing what strength she had left.
Nicholas was forgotten, and he knew he should leave. He wanted to leave. But something compelled him to stay. He barely knew this man or his family, but they had been kind to him when kindness was so rare as to interest any one of the Audience.
Georgia clutched her son for some time. The boy didn’t say a word, didn’t even cry, he just stared at the still body of his father. Perhaps it was his silence, or because she herself felt the need to do something, anything, but Georgia stood and said, ‘He should be clean when he meets the lake.’
Those who could afford a proper burial in Bordair were set adrift on the lake, on a burning raft. Those who couldn’t afford the wood or the oil were simply consigned to the water.
Georgia took her husband’s shirt from him and held it under the rain. She used its once-white cloth to clean the grime and spittle from about his mouth, the dirt from his face and then his hands. More dirt fell away from his bare feet, but try as she might, they wouldn’t come clean. She scrubbed and scrubbed. Whatever frail solace she’d found in the practical task shattered then. She sobbed, but still she scrubbed.
‘Mother, no. It won’t go away,’ Peter said, his voice far too old for one so small. ‘Meena’s didn’t.’
She dropped the shirt and looked right at Nicholas. He flinched under that gaze, assuming he’d been forgotten. ‘Will you help carry him?’ she asked.
‘Of course.’
More men and women joined them as they left the shelter. Not even the Painter’s deluge could clear the black marks from Lukas’s feet or his ankles. Black marks that would come to plague those in Bordair even more than the poor air. But he met the water as beloved as anyone could hope for. Family and strangers alike carried him, told stories to the Widow as they weighed him down and then stayed at the waterside long after he’d gone.
‘Widow welcome him,’ Nicholas said, and others muttered the same. Slowly people drifted away, back to the shelter or wherever they’d find to sleep that night, until it was just him, Georgia and Peter.
Nicholas knelt in front of the boy. ‘I’d like to hear stories about your father. And about Meena. And your grandparents. I’d like to hear them all, and I’d like to share them with anyone who will listen. Do you think you could tell me?’
Peter glanced at his mother, as if seeking permission. She smiled.
‘Meena liked myrtleberries and sintas,’ he said. ‘She squished berries between her fingers, like this…’
*
‘… and then she licked her sticky fingers clean. When her mother told her off for doing so, she would giggle in a wicked way – a way to make the Liar sit up and listen. That was Meena, mischief through and through.’
‘Right,’ one of the dockhands said. ‘Fascinating.’ She stood and lifted the crate she’d been sitting on. Her friend did the same.
‘But I’ve only just started the story,’ he said.
‘And we’ve just started work,’ the woman called over her shoulder. ‘Come find us if you still want to book passage.’
Nicholas walked slowly back up the wharf. She would be there. She would. He didn’t need to keep hoping so hard.
‘Cockles, clams, oysters! Fresh from Break Deep,’ a man shouted from beside a cart. ‘Ten marks a bushel, three marks a peck, pennies for a dozen!’
Nicholas drifted over to the cart. The oysters in the buckets looked small to him and sounded expensive. But then he’d never bought oysters, only eaten them when nothing else was offered.
‘Help you, sir?’ the cart owner said. ‘You won’t find any better this side of Fenest.’
‘I used to work an oyster farm,’ Nicholas said.
‘That so.’
‘It was run by a Lowlander called Mr Samuels. He was a big man with sweaty hands and eyes that watered all the time. We’d pull oysters by the handful right out of the water—’
‘You don’t say.’
‘—and take them up the shore in buckets – a bit bigger than these ones – to be shucked. Whole big operation it was.’
The cart owner wasn’t really listening. He started picking over his wares, moving the shellfish around, hoping Nicholas would take the hint. But Nicholas didn’t mind.
‘Have you ever felt salt water on your hands? Really felt it, after hours and hours of it on your skin? Let me tell you, cracks the size of the Tear all across your knuckles. Salt, you see, it’s like nothing el—’
‘Hello there, madam, half a dozen oysters perhaps?’ the owner said loudly.
‘Hello, Nicholas.’
And there she was. Standing in front of him as plain as day. A face he’d looked for the whole winter long. A face he recognised, but also recognised how much it had changed. Gone was the roundness in her cheeks. Her skin was sallow, and there were dark rings about her eyes. She had tried, and failed, to hide a bruise near her ear. Her dress was spotted and stained in so many places it was hard to tell its true colour.
‘Do I look as bad as that?’ she said.
He stopped his staring. ‘The season hasn’t been kind to me either.’
‘Then let’s leave this place and never come back,’ she said.
He held out his arm, but she didn’t take it. So instead, he walked a little way from the cart and said, ‘I’ve asked around for passage to Perlanse. The barge up ahead there seems sound and the price is fair.’
‘Not Perlanse, Nicholas. I just want to go home.’
‘Home,’ he said. It was strange to hear, and strange to say. ‘What happened to you, Odette?’
She wouldn’t meet his eye. ‘I sa
w… I did… I can’t tell you.’
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’s a long journey.’
‘No. There are no words, Nicholas. None that could manage what we’ve both been through. I’m done with words.’
‘But you came to the Union to find your stories.’
‘What good are stories now?’ she said. ‘A story can’t stop a ground-shake, or stop a stream of Wit’s Blood, or stop the Tear growing.’
‘You’re right, it can’t. But it can tell people of these things. I met a family, right here in Bordair, who knew nothing of the Tear expanding. A story can reach people much further away, people who need to know.’
‘And you’re going to tell this story?’
‘If you won’t, then I’ll try.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Then, more softly, ‘I know I hurt you.’
‘I remembered you being sorry. I remembered that.’
‘Can you forgive me?’ she asked.
‘For what?’
She stepped closer, taking his hands in hers. Hands she’d bandaged and lathered in ointment. Hands she’d pressed up against herself. ‘I saw you, playing your pipe on the boardwalks. More than once I saw you.’
‘But you didn’t speak to me. I looked for you, every day.’
‘Can you forgive me for that?’
He glanced down at her hands. Her nails were bitten to the quick and there was a long scab just below her wrist. ‘There’s nothing to forgive,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘Then will you come back to the Steppes with me?’
One of the deckhands from the barge approached them and said, ‘This your wife? You still want passage for two?’
Nicholas kissed Odette’s hand. ‘This is my good friend,’ he said. ‘And we’ll sail as far up the Stave as you’ll take us.’
This time, Odette did take his offered arm. ‘You don’t have a bag,’ he said.
‘Neither do you.’
‘No. But I have stories, Odette. So many stories.’
‘I’d like to hear them,’ she said.
*
That was my son’s story. Until it became our story; each and every one of us, no matter what realm we call home. It is a story of suffering, of grief and of lives irrevocably changed. You have listened here, now, but this isn’t the end. Not for you, nor the person next to you.
