by Cat Hellisen
Fine. I’m not here to make the little brat like me, anyway. “You’ve come for tea?”
“No, no.” Nala swings her dog-walking satchel onto her lap and digs through it. It’s stuffed with scraps of paper, nubs of chalk that cover everything with colored dust, various strange shells, a withered stick that looks like it came from a flowering irthe tree, and a large bone with meat scraps still attached. She rummages until she finds what she’s looking for, beams at me again, and pulls out a carefully folded fat paper envelope.
“Uh, yes?” I stare at it as she waves it between us.
“For you.”
I take it. “Thanks.”
Nala looks at me expectantly.
“What is it?”
“Rake’s parsley. You’ll need to take a double measure every day until you bleed and from then on a single teaspoon every morning. Mind you, it tastes like the back end of a dog.” She says this so cheerfully that I can’t help but stare at her. “Make a tea, hot as you can, and swallow it fast.”
I’ve heard of Rake’s parsley, of course, but have never actually seen it before—why would I have? I can feel my cheeks burning, the blood rushing to my face. Quick as I can, I shove the envelope into my apron pocket.
Nala seems oblivious. “It’s just enough for a week, and it’s fair brass so that’s all I bought. I got it from the apothecary down on Richmond. She’s the best for this sort of thing.”
I thank her again, the words sticking on my tongue. I am thoroughly embarrassed. Then I wonder—since Nala seems to be somewhat more in tune with all things feminine—if she could help me with one other problem.
“Do you know where I could borrow a good dress, something fashionable but not too expensive?” I blurt out.
“What would you want one of them for?” She squints at me. “Trying to impress His Flashness?”
“No.” I twist my hands. “I have to attend a, well, a party tonight, you see, and I need something to wear…”
“A party. What kind of party?” She draws her brows together.
How do I explain this one. “A b-bat party.” I say the words fast, swallowing them under, hoping Nala doesn’t really hear me.
She does. “Oh. You won’t need tat too fancy for one of them,” she says as she wrinkles her long narrow nose. “I might have something at home that you can use for the night.” She gives me a flat look. “Did Dash tell you to go to this?”
Why would Dash send me to a bat party? The question is so unexpected that for a moment I am thrown. The silence is dragging on too long, and anything I say will sound like a lie. “No, um, I was invited.”
She shrugs. “Your business then, but I daresay I wouldn’t have picked you for one of them.”
One of them who? I want to ask her but she’s standing now, and the dogs whine and press their long heads against her hands, eager to be gone. Esta flings the last burned match down and follows the pack as the dogs flow out the door in a river of silky white and red fur.
* * *
EVEN WITH THREE SPOONFULS OF SUGAR, I can’t disguise the bitterness of the Rake’s parsley in my tea. Nala assured me that it’s best drunk fast and so hot that you burn your tongue. It leaves me feeling even more nauseated and shaky.
Wonderful.
Perhaps there’s a way for me to get out of Jannik’s party tonight. The last thing I feel like doing now is prancing off with a bat to some demented vampiric shindy.
The fear that he will go to my mother if I refuse overrides the pain. Above and beyond the shock, the humiliation would destroy her: House daughters do not run away, and they especially do not fake their own suicides and then go live with Hobs and half-breeds in filthy squats out on the Claw.
And they never bed Hobs.
Of course, it’s something of a lie. I know well enough that the men of the Houses take Hob women sometimes. There are enough of their bastard spawn littering Pelimburg.
I shove my aches and tiredness down into a ball at the pit of my stomach along with the ever-present craving for scriv, and when the second-shift scullery girl comes in, I head home at a slow angry trudge.
Nala’s still not back when I get there, but Lils is waiting.
Her face is set in a grim mask, angrier than her standard expression of general irritation at the world. “You’re a fool,” she says when she sees me. “And you’re not the first.”
“Explain.” I dump my bag down on the floor and go to pour myself a bowl of whatever blended tea is Lils’s special for the day. She’s got a pot on the boil, and there are tea eggs rolling at the bottom of the murky water. The thought of biting down into an egg just about has me running for the little balcony so that I can throw up. The taste of Rake’s parsley wars with the dregs of my hangover. Never again.
Lils sighs and shakes her head. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” she says. “Don’t be a fool when it comes to Dash.”
“I’ll thank you to keep your advice to yourself.” Anger burns, choking me, and I think about how if I just had the slightest bit of scriv in me, I’d pin her against the wall, let her feel the slow crush of what a War-Singer can do when riled.
“All I’m saying is, don’t lose your head or worse over him.” Lils pushes past me to check on her eggs. “You don’t have the foggiest when it comes to that lad and what he’ll use you for.”
I take a deep breath. “Your concern is noted.” I think of Dash’s letter, of how I am far from the first, but I won’t let Lils see my fears.
“Don’t you get all fancy-Lam on me.” She snorts. “It won’t stir me none. Don’t go thinking you’re his and he’s yours. There’s things you don’t know—” Footsteps sound on the stairs and she falls silent. She turns her attention back to her pots and prods the eggs with a wooden spoon.
Nala and Esta are chattering on the stairs. Or, at least, Nala is talking, and Esta is presumably listening. I back away from Lils to go scrub myself clean and await whatever dress Nala has tucked away.
I’m hiding in the washroom when Nala peers around the door. “Do you want to have a look at it?”
I nod. Whatever it is can’t be worse than the tat I’m wearing.
It turns out to be a high-waisted crimson gown. Very last season, and the hem is a little ragged. It’s been re-dyed at least once but the faint stains won’t be visible at night or by fatcandle-light. It’s obviously meant for someone a little more bosomy than me, but it’s a good enough fit, and at least I have a clean pair of cream-colored stockings to wear with it.
Nala paces before me, looking at me from every angle.
“And?”
“It’ll do.”
“Now I really feel like a kitty-girl.” I look down at the rather-too-gappy bodice.
“Well you’re just about halfway there,” Nala says. “What about shoes?”
I don’t, however, have anything remotely resembling suitable footwear. One glance at Nala’s muddied feet tells me that there’s no point asking her if she has any shoes that I could borrow.
“Your new boots will do then,” she says. “You won’t see them under all that material.”
The knowledge that I’ll be wearing heavy leather lace-up boots with an evening gown of MallenIve silk is somewhat irksome. I don’t know what I was hoping for—perhaps my pair of embroidered slippers to rise with the tide and wash up at the doorstep.
I tie my hair up, pinning it in place as best I can. My mouth is full of hairpins, and my speckled reflection looks sallow and ratlike. Before, I would have been powdered and perfumed, my hair done in an elaborate style by the patient fingers of servants. The household crake would have written lines in my honor, my dress would have been new, and I would have been as beautifully turned out as a glass sculpture from House Canroth. And as empty. I jab the last pin in place, stick out my tongue at my reflection, and set to cleaning the grime out from under my fingernails with a splinter of wood. My hands are red, chapped. They smell faintly of hard soap. The creams and unguents in my bathroom back in my m
other’s house are like phantasmagorical things, little jewel-glass bottles, worth a month’s pay for a Hob out here on Whelk Street.
Perfumes and pretty things. I’m reduced to nothing without them. Is that all I am, all I ever wanted for myself? I face the wretch that glares back at me from the mirror. I am more than my wardrobe, more than my family name, more than my mother’s aspirations, more than a toy for my brother’s whims. The girl gives me a haughty look; it is one I recognize even without kohl and reddened cheeks. It is the look of self-possession. I smile slightly and nod back.
Nala also loans me a black lace shawl. I cover my shoulders and head downstairs looking completely out of place on Whelk Street. The few Hobs I pass whistle and jeer, but I keep my head high and ignore them. It’s a good walk back to the Crake, and I’m in a mood halfway between anger and tears when I finally pull up a free chair next to a wild-eyed crake and wait for the Gris-damned bat to arrive. The outside tables have all been lit by fatcandles in little glass cages, and warm orange firelight blossoms over the polished wooden tabletops. Some of the crakes are wearing wide-brimmed hats set with small candles that gutter out in the wind then promptly relight themselves. In this strange fluttering of light and poetry, I wait.
A snatch of rhyme drifts down from a high window. It’s the skip-rope song the Hoblings in the street are so fond of singing while they play. Mostly I barely hear the words these days, the taunts slipping over me as smoothly as the finest silk from MallenIve. This time though, they’ve added a new verse.
A corpse for a corpse, the sea-witch said,
A hand for a hand, a head for a head.
Pelim rose and Pelim fell,
A death for a death to end the spell.
The words are meaningless—children’s gibberish—but I shiver anyway, hoping for Jannik to arrive soon so I can leave this place.
The faint chimes of the tower bell are calling out the hour when I spot a black coach rounding the corner of the cobbled street. The six unis pulling it are soot black, their backward-sweeping horns crystal and silver. Even the most demented crake stops whispering to himself when House Sandwalker’s coach comes to a halt. I die inside. Everyone is watching, and for days after this they’ll be gossiping about some tarted-up kitty-girl getting into a bat coach. I pull my shawl tighter and try to pretend that everything is normal as I rise and walk over to where the coachman is holding the door open for me.
“Are you trying to get me noticed?” I whisper to the dark figure inside. “People will talk.”
He smiles in answer, fang tips flashing. “Get in, and then you can berate me to your heart’s content.”
Impossible damned bat. I sit opposite him, and the coach sets off with a jerk, bouncing so hard over the cobblestones that I’m certain that any moment I’m going to be violently ill. If I am, I shall aim in Jannik’s direction. Serve the insolent, grinning fool right.
“Are you feeling poorly?”
I glare at him. House Sandwalker is up in New Town, a hillside villa, so I have at least a good half hour of bone-rattling traveling to endure before we get there. I am not in the mood for conversation. I perch on the edge of my seat and make sure my feet are tucked away under my dress. The only thing remotely comforting about this nighttime ramble through the city streets is the faint tickle of magic that brushes my face. I’m almost tempted to lean closer to him just to feel more of it. Idiot. I concentrate on glaring harder instead.
He sighs and leans back against his seat. “It’s not that bad.”
“And I have only your word on that.”
“Come now, Feli—Firell, it’s a party, there’ll be wine and food and music. Nothing you haven’t faced before.”
“And if someone recognizes me?”
“The only people who will recognize you are unlikely to care.”
A tendril of worry winds its way up my spine. “How do you mean?”
He sighs again and looks out the black window. Vague shapes flit past us, ghost houses and lights. “You’ll see.”
13
THE SANDWALKER HOUSE CROUCHES high on the slopes of a hillside, looking down over New Town. The stone building faces directly onto the street, and a wide flight of stairs sweeps up to the grand doorway. The marble steps are opalescent, smooth as a fish’s eye.
It’s vaguely reminiscent of the university entrance, albeit on a smaller scale. Moonvines are growing rampant over the face of the building, although this early in the season the flowers are nothing more than tight green promises.
I imagine that when the vines flower, the whole façade will look like a painting done in a palette of whites and greens. There’s an air of cool serenity to it that I would never have associated with the bats.
Then again, what do I really know about them? In MallenIve they are considered lower than gutter-trash, but thanks to the wealth of the three families here, they’ve been granted citizenship in Pelimburg. It’s a cheap, dishonest freedom. All it really means is that the bat House Heads—all three of them—are on the city council and that they and their families no longer have to carry pass-letters and are free to travel at night. Mostly Pelimburg just ignores them, pretending that they are a distant joke told at someone else’s expense. The Haner Street Agreement supposedly gives them freedom, but all it really does is make it plain that the bats keep to their own and know their place. Not so very different from before. I suppose we all take what little freedoms we can get. At least now it’s an offense to stake a bat for no reason.
“Here we are,” Jannik says.
“So I see.”
The carriage door swings open to give me a clearer view of the house. I step down, and the house looms over me.
I try to raise my hem as little as possible as I climb the marble steps. Vanity, I know, but I’m inordinately embarrassed by my boots. Another manservant—also a bat, I notice—opens the doors wide as we approach and Jannik ushers me in ahead of himself.
The entrance hall is the exact opposite of the one at House Pelim. Ours is dark and stuffy, but still homey, with umbrellas leaning in muddy piles against the wall and the collection of leashes and rain boots and other tack that seems to accumulate whenever my brother is home making the house smell of leather and wildness. The serving Hobs do clean up quickly, but the house always feels lived in, like a real home.
This place is cold and clean. The walls gleam, and the only items to greet a visitor are a slender plinth displaying a small silver card tray and a pale minimalist flower display. It all seems rather bleak. Jannik leads me quickly from the room, as if he too finds the atmosphere chilly, and we go through a series of rooms and passageways to an enclosed garden. The scent of forced flowers, thin and sweet, drifts on the cool evening breeze.
Distant murmured conversations hum over a sweep of music I vaguely recognize. I think I last heard this piece with my mother when I accompanied her on one of her rare outings to a performance at the Pelim Civic. All I remember was boredom, and a certain resentment at her for paying all her attention to Owen. It was the night he told us that his quiet little wife was with child. A new Pelim heir on its way.
Now the music sounds sublime, seawater rushing over me after a hard day’s work. I let it drown me and then realize with a start that Jannik is laughing. I open my eyes.
“All there?”
I don’t even know what he just asked me. “So what can I expect at a ba”—I swallow the word—“vampire party?” I probably don’t want to know. He did make it quite plain that there would be no other Lammer Houses attending.
“It’ll be easier to show you than to tell you,” Jannik says, and leads me past a bed of flourishing greenery, down a small stone path to where the party is in progress.
A quartet is performing unobtrusively on a raised stage, and in the clearing, several long couches have been positioned, draped with lush materials. People mill about, dressed in somber finery. Here and there a flash of jewel-bright silk adds a high note.
It takes me a moment to realiz
e that the crowd is all, or mostly, river-Hobs. A few pale-skinned vampires move between them like predators. There’s not a single Lammer in sight. I’m the only one here. As I take this in, it becomes apparent that the Hob fashions are rather like my own. They are out-of-date, overdyed to fit the season or to cover fading and wear.
My gaze falls on the occupants of one couch. A bat is feeding off a Hob, drinking from her brown wrist.
No. My stomach turns and I whirl around to face Jannik. “You bloodsucking sack of filth!” It seems that I am learning well from my Whelk Street compatriots.
Jannik closes his eyes. “I didn’t bring you here for that,” he says without looking at me. His tone is slow and patient, and that only infuriates me all the more. “I have other sources for blood.”
“Bats are supposed to feed only on nilly blood—that’s part of the Haner Street Agreement.”
“And any willing donor.”
“Semantics—there’s no such thing.”
“Obviously, your experience of poverty has been cushioned somewhat,” he says. “There are many who when offered enough coin will do such things that you would find … unpalatable.”
Maybe he’s right, but how desperate do you have to be to let a bat drink your blood? It’s revolting, and my stomach won’t settle. It’s—it’s not allowed, I keep telling myself, even as I remember the Hob girl who dyed my hair. Anja. She had wounds on her throat. And the blood on Dash’s thigh. Dash—
Bile creeps up my throat and I swallow convulsively. I keep my eyes on my feet, not wanting to look at the scene. If I don’t look, I can pretend it’s not real.
Jannik sighs. “Would you like a drink?”
Ugh, after last night I really don’t think so. “Water,” I say. “Please.”
“We do have wine. For the Hobs.”
“Strangely, I have no desire to drink some barrel leavings you’ve deemed bad enough to waste on a pack of starving Hobs.”
The sound of his laughter makes me look up. “You really know nothing,” he says. “My mother would never feed a meal badly. Besides, we own a vineyard in Samar.”
