The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine, Year One

by Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  Zel slipped from the room, and the house. Without thinking out the risks, she walked down to the harbor and then, in the teeth of a blue-sky gale, back up the hill to the streets of the rich, and finally, in the terrible arctic night, home to lay her finds on Gannet’s lap. Purses, wallets, a fine pocket watch with a sapphire on the lid. Her thief’s hands had been bit by the vicious wind and had gone red again, swollen with winter bees. Gannet, for once wordless, held Zel’s fingers to her mouth. But it was no good. The next day all the stolen coin went to the brandy merchant, the wine merchant, the pastry chef: the party would still take place.

  ~ ~ ~

  For all Gannet’s wild plans, Zel wore gray wool, not crimson satin, and moved invisibly through the crowd, a ghost with glasses on a tray.

  “. . . barely a season and already, I have it as gospel truth, Commun’s has had to send her two letters. . . .”

  “. . . one of the oldest families! My dear, can you imagine? As if the old terror would let any nephew of his. . . .”

  “She’s saucy enough, but do you think she’s as young as she pretends?”

  “Oh, age! What does number of years count for? Ask her how far she’s traveled with that desert creature of hers. It’s miles that count, not years!”

  Zel went to the kitchen to decant more sweet sherry, stood a moment with her hands empty on the table. She hated it, and didn’t know if she always had done, or if something had changed. What was different, except this wall of silence between them? A lie or two, and was the adventure finished? A lie or two, a love or two, a witch or three or four. . . .

  It was not the lies. It was seeing with the owl’s eyes.

  She rinsed the glasses, poured the wine, carried them back on her tray.

  Gannet wore candy pink, sheer enough to show the lace petticoats beneath. Her fine skin was flushed and dewed with sweat at her temples as she laughed and talked, four or five young men always within reach of her teasing hand. She loved to lay the tips of her fingers on one man’s sleeve while talking to another, while flirting her lashes at a third. Zel noticed her eyes searching for a fourth, but Torrend did not come.

  “My dear lady,” said one man with an affected drawl. Zel thought he might have been the one who’d asked if Gannet was as young as she seemed, but they all sounded the same. “My dear lady, however do you manage to entertain in such lavish, such sumptuous, such marvelously—and I do assure you, so very greatly appreciated—will someone tell me what the devil I was going to say?”

  “Style!” called three or four voices.

  “Style. Well, obviously. But my dear lady, how? What is your secret? Here, I know! Your little servant girl, she’s really a genie of the southern sands. Am I right? The moment before your guests appear, she is summoned—whoosh!” (A dangerous gesture with a full glass in one hand, a lighted cigar in the other.) “And there it is, yet another impossible feast. And then, the moment the last guest is gone—” (several people stepped back) “—whoosh! again, all put away and the genie back in her bottle, good genie, good-night.”

  There was laughter, some of it rather too loud. It was not in the best taste to make a joke of magic, particularly women’s magic. Gannet laughed as well, and put her hand on the man’s sleeve.

  “No, no, sir, I tell you it will not do!”

  “I say.” He blinked and peered about him. “I haven’t gone and made a silly blunder, have I? Haven’t, whatdoyoucallit, made the inadvertent insult?”

  “Not to me, sir, but my poor maid! All the work she does, reduced to a mere—” (it became a chorus) “—whoosh!”

  Laughter again. Only the young man abstained. He seemed focused on a train of thought.

  “But my dear lady, there must be some secret to your successes. Look at this little do tonight! I swear I haven’t had such a good time since, since— Algar, when was the last time I had such a good one?”

  “Never!”

  “Good answer! I believe that deserves a toast.”

  Brandy glasses emptied; no one notice them being refilled.

  “But we are left wondering, what is the lady’s secret?”

  “Royalty in exile!”

  “Royalty on her way home from exile!”

  “Queen Gannet!”

  “Huzzah!”

  Another toast. Gannet laughed, radiating too much delight. Zel felt her heart go cold. The man was not drunk. She could see his eyes as she filled his glass, and he was not drunk.

  “No, no. My friends, we are in the presence of a much more powerful and mysterious thing than that.”

  The circle of faces by the fire leaned closer, eyes brilliant with the anticipation of laughter.

  “We are in the presence of. . . patronage.”

  Confusion. Gannet’s smile tightened.

  “Yes, it’s the only explanation. When one stands so near to such wit and beauty, when one glows with the finest of food and drink, in the midst of such excellent company, the only real question one has to ask is, whose hand holds the purse?”

  There was a faint general movement away. The man went on pleasantly smiling, the brandy in his glass swirling as he toyed with the stem. Gannet’s face was white.

  “Or perhaps there are two questions after all. The other might be—as I see Captain Torrend has not seen fit to grace us with his presence—who will hold it next?”

  Gannet snatched the glass from his hand and threw it to the stones of the hearth. “Get out.” Zel saw her struggle for breath. She could not summon more than a strangled whisper. “Get out.” Another glass was snatched from a man’s hand, dashed to the hearth. The room quieted. Everyone turned to stare. And finally, the scream came. “Get out!”

  ~ ~ ~

  Gannet lay across the sofa as if washed ashore from the wreck of a ship, the detritus of the party like so much sea-trash littering the room. Zel sat on the floor by her feet. She’d unbuttoned her coat and put aside her tray. She did not touch Gannet as Gannet cried.

  “How could he say his name like that, so cruel? I never asked Willam for money, never, not once, he could never have said I did.” A gasp, a sob, hands clutching her unraveling hair. “He loved me! He did, he did, it was vicious cruel men like— Why are they so unkind? They must have told him, someone must have told him— And it’s all lies!”

  “Gannet,” Zel said, a protest she could not stifle.

  Gannet turned like a snake, her eyes swollen, her mouth red and distorted. “I am not a whore! That’s what he meant, you know. Patronage. The vile beast. I am not a whore!” She buried her face in the cushions, but it was not enough to muffle her cry: “He would have married me!”

  Zel sat and watched the fire. It was a long time before she could ask, “How do you know?”

  “He said. Oh, Zel.” Gannet sat and wiped her face, suddenly wistful. “No, he didn’t say, but he said so much else and I was sure. Zel, truly, you know I’ve been asked a dozen times, but this was different. He is so honest and true, Zel, I think he must be the truest man I’ve ever known, the truest man in the world, and someone—” the sobs returning “—someone told him lies.”

  Zel touched Gannet’s skirt, withdrew her hand. She knew that she had been cruel. She knew that she had probably doomed them. Yet that knowledge had not come home to her before now. “I told him.”

  “What?” Gannet wiped her face, bewildered.

  Zel stood and began to button her coat, knowing this was the end. The knowledge was painless, an ice-cold numbing of her soul. “I told him.”

  “What?” Still bewildered, her voice soft, her eyes swimming with tears. “I don’t understand, Zel. What did you tell to whom?”

  “The truth. I told the truth to Captain Torrend, and now I’m telling the truth to you.”

  “Zel,” Gannet whispered. “Zel, you’re so cold.” And then understanding finally shafted home.

  ~ ~ ~

  Zel had thought the snowstorm terrible, but this dry gale pouring like a river of ice from the north was crueler. The stars rage
d above the veils of snow torn from rich men’s roofs. Like wasps of light they stung her eyes. There was no cold, no shivering. She became transparent to the wind.

  Dark girl with wings of night, snow girl with eyes of gold.

  The Bodils’ door is a great slab of black wood in the shadow of gray stone. Are they birds carved into that oak? Or are they women with wings? Even the owl’s eyes cannot be sure. The wind whips the copper roof, thrashes the frozen rainspout owls, rattles the shutters on their pins. The dark girl stands on the bottom stair: come out! For I won’t come in.

  And they come. Four blonde women and one dark girl.

  Five wild things riding on the storm.

  ~ ~ ~

  The fire was dead, the candles sagging blobs of wax. Gannet, shivering in her pink dress, stood in the drawing room door.

  “Zel,” she said, “where have you been?”

  “Nowhere. Everywhere.” She started up the stairs.

  “Zel, damn you, don’t do this to me. You cannot do this to me! How can you do this to me after everything we’ve been through?”

  Zel closed the bedroom door and fell across the bed, asleep before her eyes were closed.

  ~ ~ ~

  She woke, cold, stiff, and aching, just as the day began its early turn into evening’s blue. The storm ride was a dream, the party and its ending something she could only look at in glances. She rolled out of bed, in dread of seeing Gannet, yet when she went down and found the drawing room still a mess and Gannet gone, she felt no relief. Just an aching body and an exhausted soul. She scraped together a few pennies, gathered clean linen into a bag, and dragged herself off to the public baths. Hot steam was the only solace she dared to seek.

  The sauna was deserted at this time of day and so dense with steam the walls were scarcely visible. The heat wrung her out, left her strengthless, thoughtless. Dozing with open eyes, she watched the halo around the sole lamp shift and sway, a gold veil of gauze so fine it moved at a breath, or a word.

  Zel.

  The halo became a crown of braids, the lamp a blue-eyed face. Zel observed this transformation almost lazily, lying on the bench, the cedar’d air heavy in her lungs. The steam gathered from the corners of the room like furling wings of white.

  “Zel.”

  “So soon?” Zel murmured. She yawned.

  “Zel, your friend came to speak with us today.”

  “My friend?”

  “Gannet.”

  Zel slowly pushed herself erect. “What did she say?”

  The lamp face smiled a wry and tender smile. “My heart, I believed you when you said you had not reported us to Captain Torrend. You were wise not to. Less wise when you told your friend. She appears to think that we should be eager to pay for her silence. Zel, I know you did not send her.”

  “No.” Gannet. Gannet!

  “You have become precious to us. If she is precious to you, we would suffer your pain if she were harmed. But Zel, bright flame, I must warn you. We are also thieves, thieves of silence, for we have found that silence paid for is never as pure as the silence taken with a knife.”

  Zel’s fingers curled into fists. “There are other ways.”

  “We trust you. We do not trust her. However.” The lamp’s blue eyes studied her. “She is precious to you, isn’t she? My heart, acquire her silence, by what manner I leave to your choosing. If you promise us she will not speak, we will believe you. But be sure, my heart, be sure the promise is true.”

  The steam wings furled more tightly, drawing all the heat from the air. The glowing face became a mask, a hard shield of gold. Then the lamp went out with a hiss, and the column of steam fell to the floor in soundless feathers of frost.

  ~ ~ ~

  Gannet was in the bedroom sorting through her gowns. Zel stood in the doorway, watching. Gannet’s skin was chapped by tears and cold, yet she was still beautiful, sitting on a cloud of silk and lace. Her hands shook as she inspected a weakened seam. She did not look up, though Zel knew that she knew Zel was there.

  “Gannet, I understand why. But you must undo what you’ve done.”

  “What I have done!” It was a cry of pain, but Gannet still did not look up. Her trembling fingers found a lace collar with a raveling thread.

  “Gannet, haven’t we paid each other enough?”

  “Paid.” An explosion of breath, soon spent.

  “I know you would have married him, but—”

  “But you would never have allowed me!” Finally Gannet met her eyes. “Tell me that you would!”

  “Allowed you?” Abruptly Zel, too, was shaking. “When did I ever have the allowing of you, or of anything? Of myself! Zel, play the servant. Zel, play the thief. Zel, deliver the letter to the man I want to marry. Where was the allowing in that?”

  Gannet gaped. It was probably more than she’d ever heard Zel say at one time. And Zel was not done.

  “For once, you said. For once you would be the one to haul us out of trouble, but there was no us, was there? From the moment you decided he was no game— But maybe there was never an us, maybe there was only ever you.”

  “That isn’t true.” Gannet’s voice trembled like her hands.

  “No? I nearly died, Gannet. Did you ever understand that? Did you even try to understand? They nearly killed me, and they may as well have done, their magic like a knife in my heart—” air like a sob in her throat “—and now all you can think to do is offer yourself on a platter to them, and for what? For what?”

  “Money!” Lace tore in Gannet’s hands. She threw the pieces aside. “What don’t you understand? We’re in debt to our ears, we’re trapped in this city until the harbor thaws, and we have no money! What do expect to live on? Zel, they throw debtors in prison here!”

  “Prison! Dear gods, do you know what they do to thieves?”

  “That’s why!” Gannet leapt to her feet, gowns falling about her feet. “Of course I know what they do to thieves. Did you really imagine I would forget you?” She palmed tears off her cheeks. “I would never have abandoned you, I would never.”

  “No.” Zel swallowed, but the words still came out savage and hoarse: “No, you would take me to his house. Lady Torrend’s foreign maid. What did you think, that it would be a game I could play for the rest of my life? I was wrong, I should have let you marry him. I should have helped you marry him. Then at least I would be free.”

  Gannet looked away.

  After a long silence, Zel took in a deep breath and said with great care, “I cannot undo what I did, and I am sorry for it. But Gannet, this madness, this blackmailing the Bodils, it will get you killed.”

  Without looking up, Gannet said sullenly, “I know you’ve always thought me a fool, but I’m not so great a fool as all that. I wrote down everything you told me and gave it to a letter writer in the galleries. If I die, the letter goes to the Inquisitor.”

  “My gods, you would do that to me?”

  “I never mentioned you!”

  “And you think they would not investigate? You think they would not question the letter writer, and you, and me?”

  Gannet raised her eyes to mirror Zel’s appalled stare. “They wouldn’t.”

  “Oh, Gannet, of course they would. They would have less mercy even than the Bodils. Now listen, please listen. The Bodils have held their hand this long for my sake, but they require a guarantee of your silence.”

  “For your sake?”

  “Yes, for my sake! Do you think they let me go because they trusted me? I wouldn’t be hanged as a thief or a conspirator, I’d be burned as a witch! Now, will you listen? You must retrieve that letter—”

  “Zel,” Gannet breathed.

  “Listen! You must retrieve that letter, and you must promise me—”

  “It was them. They stole you from me.” Gannet suddenly blazed with rage. “They stole you from me! I would be glad to watch them burn!”

  “And me with them?”

  Gannet stared, hands over her mouth.

 
“They stole me no more than Torrend stole you. And like most thieves, they take what they value and throw away the rest. Me, they might choose to keep. You, Gannet, they will kill. You must retrieve that letter!”

  Gannet slowly lowered her hands. “If they killed me, would you still go to them?”

  This time it was Zel who could not answer.

  “You would, wouldn’t you? Yes, thieves keep what they value. Well, you listen, then. You can have them. I wish you joy of their cold hearts and bloody hands, and they can have you, but I will have Willam, too. That is my bargain. Tell them, you tell those bitches, I will burn that letter and carry their secret in silence to my grave, but they must give me Willam Torrend.”

  “Gannet.” Zel’s voice shook with tears. “Gannet, please. They could do more than kill you.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t care!” Her voice soared. “I will not be left alone!”

  ~ ~ ~

  The Bodils were having a dinner party. Zel stood across the way as sleighs drawn by bell-harnessed ponies deposited guests at their steps. The sky was still clear and it was so cold the ponies’ breath hung in a cloud the whole length of the street. Zel hesitated, thinking that she should wait, or go and come again—thinking she should not dare to be seen. But the cold cut like a flensing knife, the cold and Gannet’s words. Zel’s words. If only she had held her tongue! If only, if only, cutting more deeply even than the wind. In a pause between two sleighs she crossed the trampled snow and climbed up to the door.

  “Messengers to the servants’ door,” the butler said. He was round, balding, serene. How much did he know of what happened in the Bodils’ cellar? Where did his master keep his wine?

  “I am here to speak with Audey Bodil.”

  “Servants’ door.” He was about to shut the door in her face when he paused. Bells could be heard singing down the street.

  “I am not a servant,” Zel said quietly. “I am here to speak with Audey Bodil.”

  The butler looked again, his serenity ever so slightly disturbed. Then he stepped back and swung the door wide enough for her to enter. “Come in, madam. I will see if Mistress Audey is available.”