When the Sea is Rising Red

by Cat Hellisen

  “Tea?” says Dash.

  Lils mutters something I don’t catch.

  “It’ll all be gone by afternoon. Charl and his lads are coming to collect it.”

  I ease my legs and body through the hole and then let go to land lightly on the passage floor. Verrel grins and holds out two jars. “It doesn’t happen that often,” he says. “It’s all part of Dash’s grand plan, he needs the money.”

  “What grand plan?” I mutter as I brush dust and cobwebs and shreds of poisonink leaves off my dress, then grab the jars out of his hands.

  “His plan to destroy Pelimburg, of course.”

  Of course.

  10

  AFTER MY UNFORTUNATE ENCOUNTER with Dash and the wrong side of the law, I’ve been wandering through the market on what’s left of my day off, keeping an eye open for a vendor who will neither look twice nor ask questions about my old hair clips and jewelry. Even though it’s rather quiet, there is a crowd under the vast tree that shades the center of the market, and the air is thick with nervous excitement.

  I follow the people toward the center, to the old tumbled stone stage where they used to stake and burn bats, before the Houses gave them citizenship. Public punishments are still a spectacle, with people gathering to watch the condemned suffer for their crimes. Usually it’s a thief, bound in place while the sharif use an iron ax to relieve him of a finger. There’s a punishment to suit every crime, and the sharif seem to take no small pleasure in putting out an eye or slitting a tongue.

  The crowd is made up mostly of gawkers, bystanders, and the kind of old women who revel in the suffering of others. There’s a girl on the stone stage, held in place with iron manacles. I can smell how they burn the skin at her wrists.

  “What did she do?” I ask the man standing next to me, and he grunts, then shrugs. Another Hob overhears my question.

  “Spoke out agin House Pelim—her lad was washed over. One of the Silver Dancer’s crew. Said it weren’t right that all they get is a few brass bits. She’s got little ones to care for—”

  “Oh hush,” says the older man. “’Less you feel like getting up there with her.”

  I stare at the girl. So she’s spoken out against my House. She’s not all that many years older than me, but her poverty and the children she’s borne have sucked her dry, left her withered. Only her eyes are bright and fierce.

  A sharif steps up to her, an iron blade in one gloved hand. In his other hand is a contraption for holding the jaw open.

  She stands straighter. “Fuck you, an all,” she says. “House dog.”

  One of the sharif holding her clouts her jaw, and she laughs. It’s a manic sound. “I stand by it. Everyone knows it’s true. What’s a life to a House, handful of brass and thank you very much—” She doesn’t get to finish what she’s saying. They force the mouthpiece in and pull her tongue straight with iron pliers. She shrieks, a ululating sound, the howling of a struggling cat.

  Angry mutters sweep through the crowd, and I force myself to watch while they split her tongue in two like a viper’s.

  Before they are done, I’m pushing through the crowd, desperate to be away. I’ve only ever heard of these punishments, never before witnessed them. The way Owen spoke, he made it sound like they deserved it.

  They don’t.

  Gris. No one does.

  * * *

  ONCE I’VE EXCHANGED MY FEW TRINKETS for a handful of brass, and bought new comfortable boots for working in and a dark blue summer dress that won’t show tea spills and dirt, I decide to treat myself to an ice-cone.

  The day has turned hot and muggy, and midges are swarming in clouds about the fruit stands, a sure sign that the last of spring will soon give way to summer and we’ll have days of clear skies if we’re lucky. My face is flushed from walking and haggling. There is still a feeling of sticky anger and resentment in the air even though the blood has been washed from the stones. With my cone in hand, I sit on a rough-hewn bench near the center stage and listen to the news criers read from the Courant. They call out the day’s weather predictions, gossip, and news from the surrounding towns. Even news from as far upriver as MallenIve.

  I find out that I’m dead while eating spoonfuls of shaved ice from a paper cone. My official death notice. Lemon flavored.

  I hear my name and realize that the crier is talking about my suicide. About the slipper they found in a trawler’s net. About the remnants of a golden-brown shawl that snagged on the rocks below Pelim’s Leap.

  My body is yet to be recovered.

  Naturally.

  I’m sure my mother tried to keep my supposed death as quiet as possible, but she can’t control all of Pelimburg, and tongues will wag. The rumors have been building since I disappeared, and now we have the truth of it. Or at least the truth as far as Pelimburg knows.

  The sour lemon ice melts and turns the paper cone soggy, runs down my hand in sticky drips. A bee, sensing opportunity, hovers near my face, and I wave it away and get up to throw my cone in a nearby gutter. It’s time to head back home.

  There’s nothing more that I want to hear.

  I leave the market with my new boots already laced on and my dress packed in my shoulder bag. One of the street theaters is in full swing, and a large crowd has gathered around the makeshift set. I’m not one for the tunes and overacted dramas that the theaters put on, but this way is the shortest route back to the promenade.

  The crowd is singing along jovially. I know the song now—Verrel practically sings it in his sleep. It’s the lament from Merriweather’s Fortune. From what I can tell, Merriweather, a rather rough-cut stand-in for Mata Blaise, newly crowned monarch of MallenIve, has lost everything in a fire that has burned MallenIve to the ground. I think at this point in the story he’s standing over the crushed and lifeless form of his wife, one of the countless vapid blondes of House Eline, raging against the ill winds.

  It’s supposed to be full of pathos, but the Hob and low-Lam crowd bawl in off-key happiness at the House’s misfortune.

  Verrel is standing behind the hastily built stage. He sees me and beckons me over.

  “You need to run down to the flats,” he says as I approach.

  “Why? What’s happening?” I have a vision of the sharif climbing all over the hidden poisonink, of Dash caught, of Esta setting fire to my brother’s ships. “They haven’t—”

  “Dash is calling all the Whelk Streeters who can make it to join him there.” He pauses to drop a lever. A new backdrop unrolls with a solid thump, sending sand gusting across the floorboards. He tugs on a rope and slowly winds up the old drop. “Seems someone found Rin’s body washed up while they were out clam digging.”

  So the faceless boy will have a face. I don’t really want to go, but nor do I want to give Dash a reason to turn his attention back to me.

  “Right,” I say. A burst of applause drowns me out. “I better get going then.” The last thing I want to see is this dead boy, a reminder of Ilven.

  Verrel wipes a dirty hand across his brow and leans back on his rope. “Tell Dash I’ll come along as soon as the late show is done,” he says.

  I trudge down the main road toward the Levelling Bridge and then turn off to the promenade. The tide is out and the mudflats stretch slick and stinking away from the stone wall. Sea mews pick at washed-up fish and long branches of rotting kelp, and sandpipers run along the mud, probing here and there for mollusks.

  The promenade curves, and in the distance a crowd has gathered near the water’s edge. The figures are dark and tiny as flies, but I catch a glimpse of the white uniforms of the sharif.

  My stomach twists, and fear makes my insides cold. I pull my brown shawl out of my bag and knot it over my head. Why are the sharif there? Isn’t Rin just another half-breed lost to a storm? I pick up my pace, running along the low wall, looking for a safe place to jump down to the gray sludge. If I keep my head lowered and stay near the back of the crowd, hopefully they won’t pay me any attention.

 
The crowd is bunched together, and I slip behind the sharif. Lils isn’t here, but Nala is, with her fists holding tight to the leashes of the huge hunchbacked dogs that the Houses once used to hunt river-drakes. She sees me and nods grimly. Esta is talking to a sharif, and Dash is at her side watching the proceedings. He keeps a hand low on her back, propping her up and offering silent comfort. Kirren presses his blunt face against Esta’s legs, tail wagging low.

  I edge closer. It’s not that I want to see the body. But I am curious about what the sharif are asking Esta.

  The sight of the corpse makes me gasp, and I clap my hand over my mouth to stifle the sound.

  Rin is lying stomach-down on the mud, one arm pillowing his cheek. His body is intact, strange enough considering that he’s been in the water for more than a few days. In fact, he’s not bloated, or gnawed on, or disintegrating.

  Instead, he is perfect, like he’s asleep on the mud.

  Except for one thing: he is as clear and gelatinous as the box jellyfish that sometimes wash up on the beaches. His bones are faint and silvery, the lines of his organs barely visible. It’s as if the seawater has leached all the color from his naked body. I’ve never seen anything like it before. It is far worse than witch-sign.

  Through him, I can see the indentation of his body in the soft ground. There are rag worms nosing from the mud, nudging at his flesh, and sea-beetles scuttling around his corpse. They leave feather-fine tracks around him.

  “Boggert done this,” someone whispers from behind me. “There’ll be worse to come, you mark me. There’s bad tides coming.”

  I look up in horror, and Dash catches my eye. He shakes his head, frowns, and with a quick jerk of his hand, signals me to head back to the house. He wanted me to see this, I realize, and now he wants me gone.

  Heart pounding, I run all the way back to where the green house is standing stubborn-faced to the wind.

  * * *

  “THE SHARIF THINK IT’S ONE OF US,” says Nala, “that there’s Hob magic at work.” Kirren is lying against her feet, tongue lolling. Every now and again he whacks the floorboards with his tail.

  We’re all of us gathered together—the first time I have seen every one of the Whelk Streeters in the same place. Dash has filled the stove with driftwood, and the flames crackle in merry counterpoint to our somber mood.

  “Don’t you worry about that,” says Dash. “I’ll keep the damn sharif off our back.” He pokes at the fire. An urn is warming on top, and Lils is carefully mixing dried tea in a bowl. Her fingers measure out equal amounts of redbush and sweet aloe as a base, and then she takes Lady’s Gown for calm and the smallest pinch of poisonink, just enough to take the edge off reality.

  “I don’t like this none,” says Nala. “It’s magic. Not scriv, wild magic.” She glances at Lils, her eyes wide. “They know.”

  “Don’t matter,” says Dash. “They’ve no idea how to stop it. And I—we can use this.”

  “Use my brother’s death?” says Esta, rather too calmly.

  Everyone pauses, uncertain, and Dash gives the smoking twigs another vicious jab. “You want someone to blame,” he says, “you don’t look to us. You look to those bastards in Malker and Pelim. You look to them.”

  Esta makes a hiccuping sound and hugs her knees close to her chest. Dash stops tormenting the fire and sits down next to her. “I’m sorry, my sweet,” he says into her hair. “But we’ll make it even, you’ll see.” He hugs her close, and she lets him. “We’ll make them pay.”

  Lils presses her lips together in a thin line and shakes her head in warning.

  I watch them, my hands folded in my lap. Everyone else seems to be trying to keep themselves occupied: Verrel rolling countless ’grits, pulling them apart and rolling them again, Lils with the tea, Nala stroking her hands down her thin bare ankles, over and over, and Esta, poor Esta, is holding Dash’s coat with her fingers so clenched that the knuckle bones look like they are about to poke through her skin.

  Dash has her half sitting on his lap, one arm around her, pulling her close. She turns her face against his lapel and sobs. He looks up helplessly and sees me doing nothing.

  “Go through to my side of the house. Second crate to your immediate left you’ll find a bottle or two. Bring me a vai.”

  Lils glances up from her tea making and squints at me. Her face is blank, but suspicion emanates from her. She looks back at Dash, one eyebrow raised.

  “Come now, Lils,” Dash says. “Can’t have a proper wake without a drop of the blood.”

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

  “It’s time the girl got involved,” he says. “She’ll be useful.”

  A creeping flush of anger spreads up toward my face. I hate it when people discuss me as if I were too feebleminded to understand anything. Owen and my mother did it all the time.

  Lils touches her tightly coiled hair and frowns at Dash. “It’s on your own head, then,” she says. “I don’t like it. None of it—you’re messing with what you can’t control.”

  “You don’t have to like it, Lils, but you keep your trap. I know exactly what I’m doing. Everyone has their place here, and we’ll soon find kitty-girl her own spot in the war.”

  War. I stare at Dash. He’s still stroking Esta’s head.

  “You’re too trusting.” The water is boiling and Lils turns her attention back to her tea making. “You’ll tell anyone anything if you think it’ll get them to help your cause.”

  “It’s not my cause,” he says. “This is for all of us. We’ll level things. We’ll purify the city and make it like it was before the first Lammer ships came.”

  “And you think you’ll build a perfect world from the ashes.”

  “And you, Lils, dear, have no vision. You used to trust me, what happened to that?”

  Lils narrows her eyes. “I still do. And you know I always will. Just sometimes I wonder about your methods.”

  “Well, don’t. Pretend we’re Hoblings again and things are still the same as they ever was.”

  “And you’re the one getting us out of the same trouble you got us into in the first place?” Her voice is gently mocking, but I can tell that the argument is already over, that Dash has won.

  “Just that exactly.” Dash rocks Esta, patting her back like a mother will do with a hurt child: soft, soothing monotony. He looks over Esta’s shoulder, straight at me. “Go on then,” he says. “Go grab that vai.”

  In a way, I’m glad he’s ordering me about. It gives me an opportunity to leave the close atmosphere. Listening to Esta sob over her lost brother reminds me that in my old home my mother is weeping over my death.

  “And don’t go touching nothing,” Dash shouts at me as I pull the corner of his curtain aside and head into the previously forbidden territory of his room. Kirren has followed me, and his nails click against the wood. The dog’s presence is reassuring. I forgot how much I missed the comfort of my brother’s dogs, their unassuming friendship. I lean down and scratch Kirren’s head.

  It’s dark here. The sun has slipped behind the bank of clouds on the horizon and all the windows on this side seem to be shuttered. It’s a moment before I see the crates stacked up on my left.

  The second one is filled with bottles. One or two, he said. I laugh drily. There’s a veritable fortune in here. It’s not hard to work out how Dash keeps the look-fars and sharif paid off. I grab a bottle of vai and then pause to look at the rest of the room. Kirren whines and edges backward as if aware we are overstaying our welcome. There’s a narrow bed against one wall—clearly Dash doesn’t bring his lady friends here for entertainment purposes. A small book sits next to his bed, but before I can have a look at what it is, Dash calls out to me from the common room.

  “Have you bloody well managed to get lost in there?”

  “Uh,” I shout back. “No!” Quick as I can, I carry the vai to where they’re waiting. Dash meets my eyes and does his weird half-grin thing at me. “You can do us the honors,” he says
, indicating the waiting teabowls. I pour a generous shot of vai into each one. This should be interesting: Hobs especially tend to feel the effects of the scriv in vai like a hallucinogenic. Add the high alcohol content and the poisonink in the tea and … I wonder exactly what Dash wants to achieve.

  Esta drinks her bowl fast and immediately holds it out for another drink. Obviously, she’s planning on obliterating tonight from her memory. Old before her time, she acts more like a seasoned drinker than a little girl. Not that I really blame her. There have been nights lately when I wished I could do the same—stop Ilven’s frightened, desperate face from taking over my dreams and nightmares.

  I’ve never seen anything like Rin’s corpse before. Never heard of such a thing happening.

  Boggert, someone said. If that’s true …

  If it’s not laid to rest, then Pelimburg is in deep trouble. I stare at Dash, wondering if he had anything to do with Rin’s death, using it to fuel whatever he’s planning. If somehow he has control over sea-witches and boggerts and other strange creatures. Then I shake my head—sea-witch—please. I’m getting all caught up in Hob fancies. Next I’ll be thinking that there really is Hob magic at work and that Dash knows how to manipulate it.

  Dash stares back at me, his expression flat, as if he can read my mind.

  The drinking actually seems to help. Esta’s gone quietly catatonic, and Dash lifts her easily. “Time for bed, sweet,” he tells her. She mumbles something in response and grips his coat harder. “Hush,” he says. “Sleep.”

  He disappears behind Esta’s curtain, and we can just hear the soft sound of his voice but not the words.

  “Want a ’grit?” Verrel asks when Dash comes back.

  “Only if our delightful Lils will add a little ’ink to the mix.” He sits down. Right next to me.

  Lils sighs and shakes her head but hands over some dried poisonink anyway. Verrel crumbles the leaves into one of the ’grits, rolls it one-handed, then passes it over.