by Cat Hellisen
“Protect us from what?”
“That I’d love to know. But the daft wanker seems to think that if he’s not here every moment of the day, then the whole lot of us will just wither up and die without his flash presence. Thinks we don’t know how to take care of ourselves.” She glares in his direction and then passes a handful of sharpened pegs to Verrel, who pounds them into a nearby beam. “I’ll show him someone who can’t tell his arse from his elbow, I will,” she mutters.
Dash seems oblivious to our conversation, his face slack. He looks dreadful. I kneel down next to him and cock my head until he focuses on my face. There are dried stains on his collar and vest, and he stinks of sweat and must. Blood and ’ink.
“Dash?” It’s been so long since I’ve said his name aloud, it feels awkward on my tongue. “What—are you all right?”
“Hello, love,” Dash says when he finally sees me. I twist my hands. He’s never called me that. It’s always “darling,” or my false name said with an ironic grin.
His eyes are glitter bright. “You can start on the tea so our hard workers here can have a bite of summat soon as they’re done, yeah.” He lifts his hand and tries to stroke Kirren’s ears but his coordination is nonexistent, and he misses the dog and hits himself in the face instead. “There’s a good lass,” he mumbles as I shake my head in exasperation and go to fill the tea urn.
He’s either very drunk or very high. Or possibly both. Whatever it is, I decide that there’s no way I’m putting any poisonink in the tea, and instead I brew up a mix of dried chamomile flowers, redbush, and honeybush.
“That’s as much as we can get done today,” Dash says, still lying on the floor. “The light’s failing.” Lils helps me sit him up against the wall and we hold his teabowl for him until we’re certain he’s actually going to get the tea in his mouth. Then I pull her into the washroom.
“What’s going on?”
Lils twists her fingers. “Came home like this ’bout an hour ago. Wasted.” She lowers her voice. “Crying too. Got him cleaned up a bit before Charl and his lads came through with all their wood and whatnot. Can’t have them seeing him that mucked.” She looks furious for a moment. “Don’t know what His Flashness is thinking, wasting brass like that.”
By now, of course, I have an inkling of an idea concerning where Dash goes to get his seemingly limitless funding. I have a vision of him lying naked under a bat while it feeds, and I shake my head. I can’t be totally sure of that.
The getting drunk part isn’t completely unheard of.
“Crying?” I ask. “Is—is that normal for him?”
She shakes her head and chews at her bottom lip. “I don’t like this none,” she says in her dark growl. “Never ever seen him this bad. If I din’t know better…”
“What?”
Lils shakes her head again. “He’s acting like a girl what’s been thrown over by her boy,” she says. “And that’s not like him. Not at all.”
We go back into the main room. If he really was crying earlier, there’s no sign of it now. Kirren is curled on his lap, tail thumping against his thigh, and Dash is drinking the tea with a steady concentration.
Nala has returned from work, and she’s sitting next to him, playing with the dog’s ears. She looks up as Lils and I enter the room. “Dash says we’re none of us to go into work tomorrow.”
“Does he now?” Lils walks over to the tea urn and pours Nala a bowl. “Why’s that?”
“Because,” he slurs, “I have plans.”
“What kind of plans?”
“Surprise ones.” He shoves the dog off his lap and tries to stand, clutching at the wall. “Another body went and washed up on Harriers Beach, just past the point.”
I clench my fists. That makes three now: Rin, the marsh Hobling, and this latest one. And the Red Death has brought fishing to a standstill. Anything that can get out of the water is moving onto the land. There’s a glut of crayfish on the fish markets, and the selkies have disappeared, headed out for clean water, distant beaches. House Pelim, with its—our—reliance on fleets and fishing, is one of the hardest hit.
“Another body?” Esta drops her bowl. “Like Rin?”
Dash nods, still leaning against the wall. He looks like he’s about to fall over. That or be violently ill. “And the look-fars have seen sea-drakes,” he says. “Ill current is bringing them to the city.”
Not a good sign. Not at all. They can’t be too close to shore, otherwise the alarm horns would have been blown, but it’s still worrying.
“How many?” I ask.
He shrugs and almost topples to the floor.
“Come, you.” Lils grabs his arm. “Nala, give me a hand here, will you, love?” She turns her attention back to Dash. “You’re going to go sleep this off,” she says. “And that’s a Gris-damned order.”
He doesn’t argue, just lets the two girls walk him to his room. From behind the new wooden wall I hear him say, “I mean it, girls. Every one of yer is coming with me tomorrer.”
I glance across at Verrel, who merely shrugs in his unhurried way. “We do what he says.”
“Do we?”
“Some of us owe him a little more loyalty than you do.” He leans back with a sigh, and I wonder what exactly it is that Dash is up to.
Should I have offered to help him to his room? I don’t truly know my place in this world, and sometimes when it seems I’m standing on solid ground, I sink into marsh mud and have no idea what I’m supposed to do.
I step toward the makeshift door, meaning to go after them, but then Nala and Lils are already out of Dash’s room.
“Here,” says Lils, grabbing my wrist and stopping me from going in. “Let’s make a bite to eat. You must be starving.”
“She’s not the only one,” Verrel says.
They close around me, dragging me to the little stove and its boiling water.
“Tea eggs,” says Lils. “That’s all I’ve got the energy for after dealing with that mucker.”
I glance back at Dash’s door. “Is he going to be all right?”
Lils pauses and gives me a strange, soft look, full of pity. “Don’t you worry about him,” she says, then looks at the floor. She shakes her head. “You poor daft girl.” The words are whispered, exasperated.
My cheeks burn, and I bite the tip of my tongue. That look—her eyes are too full of knowledge that I don’t have—and the weight of her pity smothers me. I go help with the eggs and say nothing more.
* * *
I’M AWOKEN BY A FAMILIAR HAND on my shoulder and the smell of fresh tea and toast. “Rise and shine, darling,” Dash says. I’m still grumbling into my thin pillow when the rough blanket lifts and cold air blows across me. A moment later, the cold is replaced by the warmth of a body pressing against mine. Dash kisses up my neck, pulling my hair back and coiling it loosely in his fist. Sleepily, I turn and kiss him back. He’s clean, smelling of the hard green soap we all share. His hair is still wet, fine drops dripping from his curls. I let him push up my night dress, and I cup my hands around his face.
Dash tastes like tea and tooth powder, and his tongue is soft against mine, making me moan in sleepy happiness. His body shifts and I feel his full weight on me. As I run my hands down his face and neck so that I can unbutton his shirt, he catches my fingers in his.
Bite marks.
“It’s nothing,” he says.
He tries for nonchalance, but it’s too late. I’ve already felt the scabbed-over gashes at his throat where some vampire has bitten into him. So now I know for certain. Like me, Dash has gone to one of Jannik’s parties. Unlike me, he’s let one of them feed off him for a handful of brass. These are new, the scabs still pink and soft.
“Who?” I manage to ask. The heat in my belly slips away, replaced by a cold liquid knowledge. I know the why of it—it’s about coin, as Jannik so clearly pointed out to me that night.
He pushes himself up on his palms and squints at me. “Does it matter?” he asks me s
oftly, after a long pause filled only with the distant soughing of the waves.
I nod, not trusting my voice.
He settles back down, burying his face against my neck. I wait, still holding him lightly. Eventually he says, “No one you know,” and I make a choking noise, half sob, half laugh.
I picture Jannik. “When?”
He shrugs. “What does it matter?”
I turn my head, pull away from him, and press one fingernail against the fresh scabs so that they break and a trickle of blood runs down his neck. He doesn’t flinch when I do this. Instead he laughs.
“It was a goodbye present,” he says, but he’s not talking to me.
I watch the blood run thinly across his skin and try not to think.
“I have to go wake the others,” he says, and the warmth leaves me. After he’s gone, I lie in bed watching the spiders on the ceiling while my tea cools. It’s before dawn, and the room is shadowed with blue and gray. Outside my little nook, I hear the grumbling of the others as they wake, the clink of teabowls, and the ever-present screaming of the sea mews.
With a reluctant sigh, I push off the covers and rise to meet the day.
The others are bleary eyed, and I stumble past them and help myself to more tea, avoiding all eye contact with Dash. For some reason I feel embarrassed by their knowledge of my relationship with him.
“So what’s your grand plan then, master Dash?” says Lils. We’re eating a quick breakfast of eggs and toast, and the sun is just beginning to tinge the horizon. I lean back and set my teabowl down. I’m rather interested in the answer myself. It had better be good if there’s a chance I’m going to get fired over it.
Dash catches my look of irritation and winks. “Well,” he says, and straightens his waistcoat, “it’s a spring low, so we can mostly walk to Lambs’ Island.”
Everyone is silent, then Lils says to him, “You’re a right mucking chancer, you know that? What if we’re caught? You got a taste for iron pliers all of a sudden?”
“No one will be caught. I’ve paid off the look-fars.” He stands. “Now, everyone get a move on. We need to bring back as many mussels as we can carry before the Red Death hits the island.”
Lambs’ Island is forbidden. Once, years ago when we still traded with the Mekekana nation, it was the only place that they were allowed to land their bug-ships. Since the war, and since the War-Singers of MallenIve and Pelimburg stood together to destroy an attacking Meke fleet, we’ve seen not a breath of them. Lambs’ Island has been abandoned, the old iron warehouses crumbling into the sea and the traders’ villas left to the lizards and the seabirds. No one goes there. We are magic, and the Meke are not; our worlds will not meet on friendly terms again.
On days when the tide is at its lowest, there’s a broken causeway that extends from the tip of the Claw all the way to Lambs’ Landing. Parts of it are difficult to cross, and you’re bound to reach your destination wet, but that’s not what keeps people away.
“What about the Meke ghosts?” I ask.
Dash just laughs at me. “That’s a rumor spread by the Houses. There are no ghosts on Lambs’ Island.”
“How do you know?”
“We’ve been there before,” Lils answers for Dash. “He’s right. There ain’t nothing there but broken-down buildings and blue mussels as fat as your fist. We bring enough of those back, we’ll make a mint at the market. Especially now.”
The others nod. Shellfish are scarce now with the bad tide, and they seem to think the rewards outweigh any risk.
Faced with their certainty and the knowledge that, thanks to Dash’s connections and vai, the House look-fars in the towers won’t report us to the sharif, I take the tightly woven straw bag that Nala holds out to me. The other Whelk Streeters trip downstairs, chattering softly to one another as they go. Kirren runs under feet and between legs, making even sullen little Esta laugh. Dash stays at my side, keeping pace with me as we make our way to the rubble-built causeway.
* * *
THE SUN IS WELL OVER THE HORIZON by the time we reach the island. Kirren is wet and happy, bounding along the sandy beaches before racing back to Dash’s heels. The air is clean, unspoiled by coal fires or fish markets or the mess of city stink that infuses everything in Pelimburg. I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with the sharp taste of it. The sea here is still green and gray, untouched by the distant spreading mass of the Red Death.
“Here’s a good lot!” Lils yells from one of the tide pools. I join her and Nala, pulling the fat mussels from the rocks. Tugging them free is hard work, and sweat trickles down my brow and back. It doesn’t take us long to fill all the sacks we’ve brought, and then we tie them tightly and set them in a shallow tide pool to keep the mussels alive.
As I’m tying my hair back again after it’s come loose in the wind, I spot Dash climbing the rise of the hill to where the Meke’s long-abandoned lighthouse stands. It’s weather crumbled and stained white with guano. Scores of birds are wheeling around the tower. Among them are the large black-winged shapes of the sooty albatross; I’ve heard enough Hob talk to know they believe that these birds are the ghosts of the drowned.
No they’re not, I tell myself firmly. They are birds. Live birds, who squabble over the fish guts sailors throw overboard.
Silently, I follow Dash up the low hill, keeping him just in sight. The air has chilled, and I shiver in the breeze whipping off the ocean. Maybe Lambs’ Island really is the home of ghosts. If there’s a boggert feeding off the Hobs, then perhaps it’s here now, watching us.
Dash disappears over the crest of the hill. I lift my sodden skirts and climb faster.
At the rise, I pause and look down. He’s making his way to a protected little bay, just a narrow tongue of sand between black rocks. The sun bites into my eyes and I squint and shade them so I can see better. A few minutes later he’s crouched on the sand as if he’s waiting for something.
The sea laps at his feet. His mouth is moving, but I can hear nothing.
He’s been still so long that eventually I tire and sit down cross-legged among the wax-berries and aloes and the ubiquitous sea roses that shed their wide black petals like old blood. I should leave him to whatever he’s doing and head back to the others, but something keeps me watching.
And I am rewarded.
A sleek head rises from the waves, her blond hair plastered back. There’s something familiar there, but I’m too far away to see the face clearly. The girl, pale and silvery as a fish, stays in the shallows, the foam swirling about her feet. She takes Dash’s hand, and he talks.
I want to know what it is he’s saying, but there’s no way for me to move closer without him noticing me.
The girl listens and then nods, but she doesn’t let go of Dash’s hand. He has to pull himself free. She bows her head, her fingers tearing something from her hair. It flashes silver and green, bright as new leaves, and she holds it out for a moment before dropping it in the sand at Dash’s feet. It blinks there.
She says something more, then lets the tide pull her back out into the water, back under. Dash watches her sink before he bends to pick up the thing on the sand. Quickly, he tucks it into his pocket and stands.
I crawl backward, out of sight, and run down the hill before he can see me.
Lils, Nala, Verrel, and Esta are lying stretched out in the sun like basking seals. Esta gets up as I approach and toes Verrel in the ribs until he rises and follows her off across the sand. Lils props herself up on one elbow and scowls at me. In contrast, Nala laughs and pokes Lils in the side.
It doesn’t take long for Dash to join us. I pretend to have seen nothing.
We lie on the beach near the shadow of the old lighthouse, watching the clouds scud across the sky and the little pale crabs ghost-walk between strands of the beached seaweed. Dash pulls a bottle of vai from his leather rucksack, and that elicits a ragged cheer from the others. My body is dry for magic, begging me to indulge once again despite my last hangover.
&
nbsp; “Not for me, thanks.” I push the bottle gently away, hard as it is to resist its allure.
“You should, you know.”
“Should what? Get drunk on a beach just before walking back in time to beat the tide?” I laugh and throw a piece of driftwood for Kirren. He brings it back to me, his hot breath warming my fingers as he snuffles the bleached wood into my hand. I scratch behind his ears and throw the stick again.
“I promise you, it’ll make the return journey much more interesting.”
“I’ll just bet.”
Nala takes the bottle from Dash and swallows deeply before handing it to Lils. They’re drinking fast, giggling and leaning against each other. Off in the distance, Verrel is helping Esta build a bonfire on the beach.
“What is it with Esta and fire, anyway?” I ask. “One day that girl is going to burn us all while we sleep.”
“Well, we won’t be the first,” Dash says. He grabs the bottle back from Nala and drinks. This time I give in and take it when he offers. As he passes it over, I spot an opalescent mark on the palm of his hand. The skin looks puckered and tender.
“What do you mean?” I shiver even though it’s warm here in the spring sunshine. Esta whoops as the dry branches catch.
“Our dear little Esta and her brother escaped from their father by tying him to the bed and setting him on fire one night.”
I’m horrified. I stare at her. She’s so small, delicate-looking, and with her selkie-dark skin she looks like a fragile sculpture carved from the glassy black rocks that sometimes wash down the Casabi. “And her mother?”
“Her mother was a selkie. She got back her skin while her husband burned and headed straight for the sea.”
And here I am, feeling sorry for myself because of the choices I’ve made. An angry guilt moves me, and I drink deeply. The strong spice washes the sour sick taste from my mouth, and already I can feel the scriv drifting through my veins. So very little, but it’s a drug, and my nerves are screaming for more.
Something must show on my face because Dash is looking at me queerly. “He was a hard bastard, their father. And I know the type, my own da was the same.” He shrugs. “There’s some who deserve to live and some who don’t. The world wasn’t going to miss him. Esta did what everyone else in her family was too damn scared to do.” He sounds like he respects her ruthlessness. “She did what was right.”
