by Cat Hellisen
“What are we going to do?” Lils says, and takes a hesitant sip of her vai-laced tea.
“About what?” says Dash.
“About Esta. She’s barely here.”
He shrugs and flicks ash into the mermaid’s-ear ashtray. “Keep her away from matches?” He sighs out smoke. “I really don’t know. We’ll have to keep an eye on her, or maybe distract her. I’ll think of something.”
Verrel leans forward. “And someone needs to make sure she stays far away from the Pelim boatyard.”
“Indeed.”
Nala finally looks up. “I could do that, take her out with me when I walk the dogs.”
“That’s a start.” Dash leans back, and his arm brushes mine. I pull away, but he pays no attention. “She’s not to be left alone. I’ll go deal with the sharif tomorrow. A couple of bribes should see them forget about Rin.”
“And the boggert?”
He glances at me before looking back at Nala. “There’s no such thing. No boggert, and no sea-witch coming after it.”
She runs one hand through her wild frizz of hair and glares at him. “What if there is? You know of anything else that turns a body into a jellyfish? Boggert drained him, everyone knows the way of these things.”
“There is. No. Boggert.” He frowns at the ’grit smoldering between his fingers. “So stop talking about it.” He looks up, his eyes bright. “Now would someone be so kind as to pour me another vai?”
I don’t know how he can drink more vai on top of all the ’ink he’s been doing. So far it doesn’t seem to have had any effect on him, but I’m feeling the lazy buzz of the scriv tickling down my spine. The fine hairs on my arms are standing up, fuzzing my skin.
“Cold?” says Dash in my ear.
“No.” I shift away from him and run my damp palms down my legs. “I—I think I’ll have another vai too, please.”
Lils and Nala exchange a look, and I try to ignore them. The vai might have only the tiniest bit of scriv in it, but it makes my mouth dry with anticipation. I can feel the air against my skin like a live thing, and I want to twist it, manipulate it, make it do my bidding.
Dash stands and holds out his hand to me.
“What?” I say.
“We’re going to watch the sun set,” he says. “I’m not sitting here any longer. Too much misery in this room. I need out.”
Lils sneers. “And you want us to all traipse off to the garden and watch the sun set because you hate dealing with reality?”
“I can deal with reality perfectly well,” he says back, grinning. “I just don’t see why I should.”
“He’s right, though.” Verrel lazily flicks ash. “Better to be out there than in here.” He clambers to his feet.
“Fine.” Lils grabs the vai, and at her nod, Nala goes to check that little Esta is sleeping soundly.
“Out as can be,” she says after peeking around the curtain.
“And she won’t wake for a while, neither,” says Dash. “Not with that much vai in her.” His hand is still held out, and with a sigh, I grab it and let myself be hauled upright. “You’ll like the garden.”
Verrel leads the way downstairs and out to one of the houses farther down the Claw. This one can barely be considered a house, being little more than beams lashed together to stop them from blowing away into the sea. Someone has built a series of wooden platforms on what’s left of the roof, and we have to climb up a rickety ladder to reach them. Verrel slings Kirren under one arm and the dog allows this with a long-suffering expression that tells of many such trips.
The platforms are covered with planters made out of every conceivable type of junk. The tubs and wooden crates are overflowing with greenery, the first sprouts waving new fronds in the sea breeze. Here and there rough-made screens channel the wind away from the young plants.
There are no other houses to impede the view, and the sea is stretched out behind the garden, bronze and gold and red as the sun sinks lower in the sky.
“Welcome to Verrel’s masterpiece,” says Dash as he sits down on the edge of the platform.
“It’s amazing,” I say, and, really, it is. Come late summer, this will be a paradise, full of food for the Whelk Streeters. When I was just a girl, I kept a botanical sketchbook with painstakingly inked plants, their parts neatly labeled. For all my skill with a brush, when it came to actually growing anything I was black thumbed. Ilven once gave me a little violet love-in-hiding for my windowsill, and there it languished. I managed to wither a plant that not even the harsh cliffside weather could kill. I look up at Verrel. “Truly beautiful.”
Verrel grins and flushes, brushing one hand through his messy hair.
Lils and Nala have joined Dash on the platform’s edge, their feet dangling over the mudflats. Verrel quickly takes a seat, and I see that there is only one place left for me to sit: on Dash’s right. I sigh inwardly.
When I’m settled, Dash grins at me and hands me the vai bottle.
Together, the five of us—six with Kirren—are bathed in the last ruddy light as the sun dips below the horizon. We watch in silence, passing the bottle back and forth, and as the sun slides lower, the tide rises, and beneath us the wavelets lap at the house’s foundation.
“How many bodies?” Lils asks as she watches over the waves. I have no idea what she’s talking about, but there’s a tightness in her voice that makes me peer sidelong at her. Her face is stern, dark eyes shaded by her hand. “Before the boggert’s done here.”
Whatever they were trying to keep from me earlier, it seems the vai has loosened their tongues and smudged their memories. I stay quiet, plucking what I can from their conversation.
Dash drinks from the bottle, the vai spilling over his chin and dampening his shirtfront. “Four,” he says as he lowers the vai.
“I don’t like this.”
“We all have to do things that we don’t like sometimes.”
“This is different, Dash. We’re not talking about robbing a market barrow or hustling ’ink. You can stop this before it goes further, tell the boggert it’s dead. You said you know where—”
“I said I think I know where it is. That’s different.”
“Then you could try to stop it,” she says.
“Perhaps.” He takes another gulp. “But I’m not going to. We need that power, Lils.”
My head is spinning, and I can barely piece the fragments together. It makes no sense. The rest of the Whelk Streeters are also quiet—whether because they agree with Lils or would rather not get involved in the argument, I don’t know.
“If you really mean to do this, then I just hope you know what you’re doing,” Lils says.
“Oh I do,” he says. “Don’t you worry yourself about that.”
* * *
WHEN IT STARTS TO GET DARK, we all traipse giddily back home where we carry on drinking in the common room. Every time I look up, Dash is watching me or pouring me another drink. His fingers brush mine as he hands me a bowl filled to the brim with the spice-sharp liquor. It spills over my skin, and I suck my fingers without thinking.
The edges of things are going blurry, colors bleeding into each other. I think it’s the poisonink in the tea that’s making me react so badly.
“I’m going to bed,” I mumble.
“All alone?” says Dash.
I wave off his lecherous comment. “Oh hush, you. No, really, I need to sleep.”
“No head for vai,” says Lils, who has become more and more companionably intertwined with Nala as the night has settled in. “None at all.”
“Poor thing,” agrees Nala, and licks Lils just behind the ear.
I watch them kiss in the fatcandle-lit room, distantly jealous.
Dash catches my eye and leans back on his elbows. “Sure you ain’t gonna stay up for one more drink?”
“No.” I shake my head, and the room swims alarmingly. I must be slightly tipsy, because in the half-light, Dash looks almost pretty. Definitely a sign that this night has gone on long enough. I stumble aw
ay from the others, and I’m barely able to unlace my boots before I collapse on my bed.
The soft sound of their voices carries me into sleep.
* * *
A FEW HOURS LATER I’m awoken when someone trips over my nest of blankets and lands next to me, laughing and cursing.
“This,” Dash points out, “ain’t my bed.”
“Rather.” I shove him with one hand, hoping that he’ll roll off the bed and, if I’m lucky, down the stairs too.
“Don’ be so pushy, kitty-girl,” he says. “I’m trying to get some shut-eye here.” He’s mumbling and drunk and I do not have time for this. Tomorrow morning I have to be at the Crake by six.
“Gris! Can’t you go sleep in your own bed?”
He’s already snoring. I sigh, give him a final shove for good measure, turn on my side away from him, and try to get back to sleep.
* * *
DASH WAKES ME AGAIN, in the early morning. Only this time it’s by nuzzling at my neck. He’s thrown one arm over me and pulled himself close during the night. I suppose I should be grateful that he’s still wearing his clothes.
“Are you drunk?” I ask loudly.
He stops nuzzling but doesn’t pull away. “No. Are you?”
“I’d have to be far drunker than I was last night to want to take you to my bed.”
Dash pulls his hand away and half sits up. “It can be arranged,” he says, but he’s laughing, and for some reason I laugh too.
“Go away,” I say, and cover my head with my coat, trying to burrow away from the light.
“Ah, you can’t mean that.” He sounds like he’s amused by me.
“Yes I do. You’re pretty and vain, and you think you can get anyone to do what you want. I’m not interested in people like that.”
“Pretty?”
“And vain. Don’t forget vain.”
“I’ll do my best not to.”
Outside, the terns and the sea mews are calling. It’s still quiet though, just the soft rumble of the surf. Pelimburg is asleep. Faint gray light threads through a gap in my curtain and Dash drops back down again.
He’s warm.
Would it be so bad to indulge him, to tie myself deeper into the Whelk Streeters? I shiver as he brushes a tendril of hair away from my neck and kisses the skin there. A thread coils through me making me warm and cold all at the same time. I turn over, and he curls one arm under me, sliding his palm down my back. His weight is half on me, and I feel smothered, scared. My breathing speeds up.
I can’t tell if I’m nervous.
He kisses down my throat, and the kisses are hot against my skin like sparks blown from a fire. I feel like I’m going to have burns all down my neck, and then those same spots turn cold as he moves farther down. Dash pulls away, easing off me as if he knows that if he doesn’t I’ll just stop breathing from the sheer overwhelming need that’s rising in me.
“You don’t have to,” he says. “Do anything you don’t want, I mean.”
But I don’t know what it is I want. “I have to get to work,” I whisper.
The warmth leaves me as Dash sits up. “Go on,” he says. “Get dressed.”
The curtain swishes softly behind him as he leaves.
I roll flat onto my back and take a deep gasping breath. Wonderful. It takes a few minutes before I can calm the strange flutter of my heart, and then I head to the little tiled washroom to scrub myself clean in cold water and change into my new blue dress.
When I’ve untangled my hair sufficiently and brushed it back into a bun, dressed in clean clothes, rubbed skin grease into my chapped hands, and rinsed out my mouth, I feel almost able to face the day. Through the small high window I can just see the sun rising, casting a pale pink glow over the cloudless sky.
To my surprise, when I tiptoe into the common room I find Dash sitting, waiting for me, two steaming bowls of tea in front of him on a cloth-covered crate. He’s also toasted some heels of stale bread over the fire and set them on a plate.
“Sorry there’s nothing to go with them,” he says, gesturing at the chipped plate. “I thought you’d need a bite before you go to work.”
“Oh.” I sit down, and stare at the plate and bowl. “Thank you.”
The tea is chamomile, and Dash and I sit in comfortable silence, drinking our tea and listening to the birds that wheel and dip outside the house. A sea mew lands on a windowsill looking for a handout, and I throw him the last of my crust.
“Now you’ll have the whole lot of them here begging,” Dash says. He throws a scrap out through the window and the bird catches it in mid-flight.
I leave the house feeling oddly light. Even the prospect of a day filled with washing dishes can’t bring me down.
11
WORK IS EQUAL PARTS dull and busy. I wash dishes and dream of sunsets. I think about what happened, playing every word, every touch, over in my head. Can I trust Dash?
I doubt it. And now I have a new worry—what if he finds out about this thing I’m meant to go to with the bat Jannik? Gris-damn it all, then he’ll really believe I’m some kind of kitty-girl, that I’m selling myself. He can’t find out. I press my water-wrinkled hands to my forehead and damn myself for a fool. It’s too late now to get out of this.
The day stretches on, long and longer, brown-stained teabowl after teabowl. My legs ache from standing, the small of my back throbs in dull agony, and I keep having to stop and press my fists against the hollow there, as if somehow I can knuckle the pain out of my body.
I want to sleep, to go lie down and wake up in my turret room, the servants bringing me tea in bed, warm blankets, goose-feather pillows. I want to be clean, to wear clothes that aren’t wrinkled and stained, that don’t smell like cheap soap and sweat and tea and fish and grease.
I want to tell Owen that I’ll do as he says, marry whoever he wants, as long as I can still have scriv.
Then I think of Ilven’s pale face, her hands as she played with that thin ring. In a way, I’ve done this for her. If I go back now with my tail tucked like a beaten dog and take whatever punishment they give me, whatever husband will have me with my honor in shreds, then Ilven’s perfect leap means nothing.
Perhaps what I really want to do is go home to Lils and Nala, to the Whelk Streeters.
Not that I’ll be leaving the shop anytime soon since the evening-shift girl is late. Mrs. Danningbread has no one to pick up the slack, and so I have to stay until the flustered girl finally runs into the scullery almost three hours late.
I’m practically crying with hunger. All I’ve had to eat the whole day is the toast Dash gave me this morning and endless cups of tea. The tea is my attempt to fill the hollow space inside me, and it works. For a short time anyway.
Mrs. Danningbread has left for the evening, but her daughter-in-law, Stella, takes one look at me and sits me down by the tearoom counter. The waiters are clearing a space in the corner of the shop and laying down wooden pallets to make a low stage. I watch them without any real interest, my head cradled in my arms.
“Eat this,” Stella says, and puts a plate loaded with scones and gooseberry jam before me. The scones are dry and the jam a little badly set but I don’t care. I wolf the scones down so fast that I feel like I’ve stuffed my stomach with chalk.
Finally, when I’ve gorged myself so much that I don’t think I’ll be able to stand, let alone walk back home, I take a look around the emptying tearoom, half hoping that I’ll see Jannik scribbling away, his dark head bent over a book. But the poets are gone, most of them, and a younger, smarter, brighter crowd is taking their place.
They remind me a lot of Dash. They are low-Lams, Hobs, and half-breeds, but they carry themselves with a gallant swish, their coats are deep navy or black, and they wear crisp white shirts that wouldn’t look out of place in a House wardrobe. Their waistcoats are jewel bright, and some are heavily embroidered with delicate patterns. They’re none of them well-bred though, for all their finery. They laugh loudly and shove at each oth
er’s shoulders as they tell ribald jokes and off-color anecdotes. They slap the thighs of their tight dark trousers and stamp their high boots.
“What’s going on?” I ask Stella as I push my empty plate away. With one finger I press at the crumbs, wanting to prolong the sweetness.
“It’s the night crowd,” she says, and measures poisonink leaves into an urn. “They’re always a bit boisterous on a music night.”
The small stage suddenly makes sense. I wonder what kind of music they play—if it’s going to be like the street-theater musicals. Curiosity makes me linger. Already it’s growing dark out, and the thought of running through Old Town in the night isn’t exactly appealing. Stella shoves a cup of the poisonink tea across the counter toward me and I sip it, watching the crowd.
I’m about to get up to leave before the last light is gone when Nala comes bounding through the door, her red hair in a frizzy cloud around her shoulders. She’s wearing a loose dress of faded purple and, as usual, not a stitch on her feet. They are gray with mud splatters.
The boys who greet her with wild hugs and plant overenthusiastic kisses on her cheeks don’t seem to mind. She waves them off, still laughing, and then spots me.
“Firell!” She dances through the crowd and takes my hands in hers. “I didn’t know that you’d be coming tonight.”
“Neither did I,” I say.
“Verrel is coming later with Esta and Lils.” She claps her hands. “It’ll be good, all of us, just the thing to keep Esta from thinking too much.”
“And Dash?” Felicita, you idiot. I can’t believe I’m even asking. My heart speeds up. Too much tea, obviously.
Nala gives me a sidelong look. “Of course he’ll be here. We better snag good seats.” She grabs my arm and maneuvers me to a table near the stage. I sit down and I relax and let myself forget about Jannik and his stupid intrusion into my life. I’ll go to his little party, and then never think of it again.
Charl is working the night shift and he ducks and weaves among the patrons, filling tea orders and selling bottles of brown ale from under the counter. He grins at me and touches my shoulder as he passes.
