When the Sea is Rising Red

by Cat Hellisen

  Fear for himself or for Jannik?

  I turn and look over my shoulder. Jannik is enveloped in darkness and shadows.

  He sighs. “I heard.”

  “I mean it,” Dash says. “Tell him to get the fuck out, now. There’s nothing here that needs his attention.”

  Jannik frowns. He’s heard the same note of urgency that I have.

  “You were to stay out of New Town today, you idiot bat. I told you when I saw you last—keep the fuck out!” The fear has given way to anger. Dash pushes past me as if he barely even sees me and grabs the coach’s doorframe. The anger drops, and his words are rushed and desperate. “I meant to send you a letter,” he says to Jannik. “There wasn’t time.” He edges closer in so that I can’t see his face. “Whatever happens, you need to keep away from the New Town warehouses near the Great House holdings, trust me.”

  I stare at him. The liar. He wrote those letters. He wrote them over and over and over and they ended up on his floor, destroyed. Why is he lying to Jannik about it? The realization comes like the snapping of a silk thread. The two of them are locked into a silent argument so full of recrimination and anger and hurt that it makes the very air between them feel charged with static.

  The bites on Dash’s neck. The stranger in the shadows, watching Jannik’s window. Even that stupid Prines book—Jannik’s, loaned to Dash, then returned like a lover’s letter. I shake my head. Not true.

  And still he expects us to trust him. Just because he’s Dash.

  I’m about to tell Jannik that whatever the malignant little Hob spawn says, he’d best do the opposite, when I catch the look on Jannik’s face. He’s moved out of the shadows, his magic swirling around him. His eyes are blank and white, but there is no disguising the way his mouth is slightly open or the tightness around his eyes.

  “Please,” says Dash.

  Jannik nods at the coachman. “Do as he says. Take me away.”

  I step down completely and watch as the coachman scrambles up to his seat and clicks the skittish unicorns into action. The coach rattles off, then turns up a side road, and the hoofbeats and the sound of the wheels on the stones change timbre and fade.

  Dash looks at me. “So now we know where you spend your nights.”

  “Same place you do, apparently,” I say as I step forward and press my fingers to his shirt collar. Press them into the hidden bites on Dash’s throat. He was never mine, and Lils knew why. She was trying to protect me from this.

  He winces and shoves my hand away. “Never thought you’d be whoring yourself out for a few pieces of brass though, did I, kitty?”

  “I don’t—” I pause. “Forget it. Why are you here? What’s going on?” I jerk my chin toward the gathering crowd. “Are you starting your little revolution today?”

  “Funny you should say that.” He grins, and for a moment, the flash of his white teeth and his cocksure arrogance strike right at my heart.

  Instead of clinging to him, I press my palms against my dress and take a long calming breath. “What do you mean?”

  “Esta’s already starting fires.”

  I glance at the crowd. Sure enough, there is no sign of Esta. I wonder how long it will be before the smoke starts blowing over the city.

  “You’re going to burn down Pelimburg.” It’s hard to get the words out, they catch like tiny barbs.

  “Not at all.” He grins. “I’m merely going to punish a few of her citizens.” Dash shrugs one shoulder. “The fires just add to the whole atmosphere of our little performance.”

  I grab his shoulder, anger making me feel like I’m made of burning iron. “You’re mad. You have some … some pointless vendetta against my brother, and so you want to destroy the city. People are going to die.”

  “Never pointless,” he hisses.

  And then I see it. The truth is in his eyes: the pain and the fury and the self-hatred and the knowledge that everything he does now still won’t bring her back. I know these feelings well. They are mine, and I face them every night when I think of how I failed Ilven, was useless in the face of my best friend’s fears and pain. I drop my hand and stare at him. “No.” I shake my head. “No, no, no.”

  He shrugs again, but this time it lacks his casual arrogance. “I need you,” he says. There’s a resigned desperation there, something I would never have associated with Dash.

  “What?” I’m startled out of my despair.

  Dash grabs my wrist and forces my palm open. Before I can protest he drops a small pouch into my hand. “In a few minutes, Lils is going to untie her hair and we are going to drown Pelimburg in madness.” He drops his voice and uncurls his fingers to show me the mark on his palm. It’s bigger now, jellied and pale. The bones show through the translucent flesh. “And I’m going to call the sea-witch. The nightmares and the destruction will bring the high-Lammers out of their Houses, and I can mark the sacrifice,” he says. “Your job is to keep the Hobs on our side of the river safe.”

  “What are you talking about?” He’s marked, boggert-touched, and still alive. “What is this?” I do not touch the mark on his palm, but he knows what I’m talking about.

  “A promise,” he says. “Now, you need to do what I ask.”

  My hands shake. It’s a barge day, when the biggest shipments come down from MallenIve, and New Town will be full of people, of House Lammers down to run through ledgers and oversee stock handling. The warehouses that line the loading docks on the Casabi will be full of new shipments of silk and scriv and glasswork. Everyone will be there, from the wherrymen guiding their barges like recalcitrant unis to the Heads of Houses overseeing stock. The low to the high and everyone between, all the dockworkers and factory girls, the mail runners and Courant readers. Everyone. He can’t be serious—he can’t be meaning to call up the sea-witch. Something Dash said flashes through my mind: the sea-witch follows the boggert but requires four deaths.

  “There were only three bodies—”

  “Four now.” Dash raises his hand, and I want to vomit.

  He’s twisting everything. He’s killing himself, killing innocents so that he can have his Gris-damned revenge on my brother. “This isn’t about saving the Hobs,” I hiss at him. “And it never was.”

  “No,” he says, and he grins. His eyes are frightened, giving the lie to his cheer. “But I did always love a good spectacle.”

  The crowd begins to move forward. I look down at the little pouch in my palm and smell the citrus musk that leaks from it. Scriven.

  My hand closes around the pouch. I know that whatever it takes, I need to try to do something to stop Dash. I look at the crowd. The people seethe, anger making them blind and ugly. They still believe in him, haven’t seen that he’s playing on their anger in order to fuel his own revenge. If I do anything obvious to stop Dash, they will tear me apart. The best I can hope for is to keep as many people safe as I can. I want to cry at the injustice of it all.

  “They deserve it,” Dash says to me. Or maybe he’s saying it to himself, still trying to convince this angry vengeful side of him that what he’s doing is right. Then louder, harsher. “They deserve it.”

  “Do they really?” My voice is thick, barely sounding like my own at all.

  His eyes are beautiful close up, threaded with gray and olive and gold and black. “This is a judgment.”

  “Justice,” I whisper back, “and with you the judge.”

  “The dead are the judges,” he says, and folds his boggert-marked hand tightly over mine, forcing me to feel the tiny grains of scriv moving under the leather of the pouch. “Not me. I’m just the person bringing in the executioner.”

  I search his face for truth and find belief, find conviction. These are truths of their own, I suppose. I bow my neck and take a shuddering breath.

  What choice do I really have?

  Dash takes my elbow and steers me along with the crowd. Ahead of us, Lils is hand in hand with Nala, and the mass of people is eerily silent. The dockyards and the fisheries and the
tanneries and the teahouses must be empty. Even the crakes walk with the crowd, their tongues stilled for perhaps the first time in their lives.

  * * *

  WITH DASH’S HAND CLAMPED ON MY ARM, we march through Old Town, gathering followers as we draw nearer and nearer to the Levelling Bridge. My arm begins to ache, and I’m certain that when this day is over I will see bruises on my skin. The scriv pouch is held tightly in my free hand, and I squeeze it harder, as if somehow I could magic it away and with it this whole dreadful farce.

  The first turrets of smoke are rising in the air over the warehouses, and the distant clanging of the city’s tower bells fills the morning with a cold precise chant. In New Town, House heirs will be rushing to their burning warehouses, watching as their fortunes go up in flames. My brother will be there.

  Those who can will waste their precious scriv containing the fires.

  We reach the bridge, and the crowd stops.

  “What now?” I pull my arm free.

  “We wait.” Dash watches the bridge with a fierceness I’m unused to. He hugs himself, and I realize then that he’s shaking. His hands are trembling, and he held me so tightly to disguise his own weakness.

  Next to us, Nala and Lils are standing with their arms around each other, watching the people panicking on the bridge: some are running for New Town, others have seen the crowd and come down to join us, their faces grim and bright at the same time. This is no ordinary riot. This is a jury, watching the execution. The sentence has long since been passed.

  “What happens after all this?” I ask, fighting to keep my voice level. “The sharif will hunt Lils down, hunt Nala down.”

  “No they won’t.”

  “And how can you be so Gris-damned certain!”

  Dash ignores me, his gaze sweeping the bridge. He lifts his head and looks up. The sky is a perfect cerulean dome, washed clean by last night’s rain. “Because I made sure,” he whispers.

  We will none of us be safe after today, it doesn’t matter how many people he’s bribed this time. “Where’s Verrel?” I know I saw him with us earlier, but now I’ve lost him in the mass of people.

  “I’m more worried about Esta,” Dash says. “She should be back with us by now.”

  “She’s setting more fires,” a voice says behind us. I am startled and relieved at the same time: Verrel. He points to where more smoke is climbing into the pale blue sky. The wisps are faint and white, but even as we watch, the columns grow thicker. There are no warehouses on the hillside. Esta’s burning the family homes.

  “Shit and bugger,” says Dash. “She was only supposed to burn the warehouses down by the docks, not the bloody mansions too.” He takes a step toward the bridge, then jerks still. The expression on his face is torn. “Idiot,” he says under his breath, and I’m not sure whether he means her or himself. “What’s she thinking?”

  “We need to stop her,” Verrel says.

  Dash whirls around to face him. “I bloody know that,” he says. “But it’s too late—I can’t leave this now.” He sweeps one hand out to encompass the crowd, their murmurs growing as they wait to see Dash destroy Pelimburg’s old order.

  Verrel stares at him, then swallows, the lump in his throat bobbing. Fear radiates off him. “I’ll go fetch her,” he says softly.

  “We don’t have time.” Dash nods to Lils. “We need to get started before the House Lammers reach the bridge.” Desperation has given his voice an edge. Things are not going according to his grand plan.

  Verrel doesn’t seem to have noticed Dash’s rising panic. “So you were just going to leave her?”

  “I wouldn’t have to if she’d bloody gone and done as I told her!”

  “Fine.” Verrel strides past us and toward the bridge.

  “You are not one of the heroes in your fucking street operas,” Dash shouts, his voice strangled. “You’re not.”

  Verrel pauses and looks back. “And neither are you.”

  “I never bloody claimed to be.”

  “That’s not what your little mob is going to say after this day ends.”

  “No.” Dash shakes his head. “I can’t let you go after her, it’s too dangerous.” He grabs at Verrel’s arm and catches the low-Lammer’s sleeve.

  Calmly, Verrel pries Dash’s fingers off and pulls himself free. “It’s not really up to you.” His voice is as low and soft as morning surf. “You don’t own us, Dash.”

  At that, Dash steps back. We watch Verrel cross onto the bridge. Dash stares, his mouth hard, then shouts after him, “I can’t push the timing back, Verrel!”

  Verrel pauses and half turns to look at us. “Dash,” he says quietly, “whatever nightmares Lils calls up, none will be as bad as the ones I’ll have if I leave Esta to face that alone. Or did you forget what memories she carries? They’ll tear her apart.”

  “Do you think I don’t care what happens to her?”

  He shakes his head. “No. I just think that you’ve forgotten what it’s like to have a friend instead of an agenda.”

  “Fuck off then,” Dash says. His anger is back, controlled, focused. “I hope you find her, but if you don’t, I won’t mourn either of you.”

  “I never expected it.” Verrel’s mouth twists in an awful parody of a smile. “I hope your scheme works, Dash, and that you get whatever it is you want.”

  “I’m not doing this for me,” Dash says. “I’m doing this for everyone who’s suffered under the high-Lammers.”

  We watch Verrel walk across the bridge until the shadows of the Houses swallow him up. Black smoke is pouring from several locations around New Town, and the air is turning storm dark, thick with the smell of burning and ash.

  “You’d best take your scriv now, darling,” Dash says. “If you’re to hold back Lils’s dreams.” He glances down at the wide brown Casabi, its water choked with weeds and silt.

  He has to be joking. But one look at the set of his jaw and the iron in his eyes and I realize he isn’t. Every muscle in my body has gone tense. “I can’t hold it all back,” I whisper to him. “I can’t.” I’d need to pull a bubble of protection over the whole of Old Town. Perhaps if I’d been trained at university—Gris knows I have the natural talent.

  “You can and you will.” He turns to face me. “If you don’t, all these people will suffer.” He spreads out one arm, showing me the massed crowd behind us, the silent witnesses.

  “And the ones in New Town?”

  Dash looks across the bridge. “Only our enemies wait there.”

  “Our enemies? There’s no our in this. Your enemies. My brother is there, my mother, Esta and Verrel.” I look at the tall buildings that rise up the hillside. “Innocent people, Dash!”

  “No one is ever innocent. All the Houses,” he says, “not just Pelim, the whole lot, and everyone who stands with them.” He raises his chin. “Lils!” He’s going to make the workers suffer too, the ones who haven’t heard the message to clear out of New Town, the unlucky ones who don’t pay any attention to skip-rope rhymes. And he doesn’t even care.

  Lils and Nala turn at his call, stepping out onto the center of the bridge. Nala lifts her hands to her lover’s braid to undo the little black ribbons that keep Lils’s dream-hair knotted back, that keep the nightmares trapped. They must hate so very fiercely to be willing to unleash that on Pelimburg. How many others are so deeply indebted to Dash, or feel that they are, that they’re ready to do anything at his command?

  Lils’s hair is a tangled coil of tight curls. Pin by pin, ribbon by ribbon, the waves come loose, and the first faint flurry of dream-images tickles along my vision, rustling through my memories like a playful wind through fallen leaves. Nala brushes her fingers through the sticky curls, and the wind picks up, stirring the nightmares lying under the drifts.

  “We’re waiting, Felicita,” Dash says.

  I’ll do this now, and afterward Dash better run, because I will string that little Hob bastard up by his fancy necktie.

  He grins at me as if to
say I know, darling, and I don’t care. I suppose he doesn’t. After today, he’s dead anyway, final victim to the boggert. But there’s something plaguing me, a niggling detail. I recall a conversation with Charl.

  “Who are you giving to the sea-witch?” I say. “What did you promise her?”

  He narrows his eyes. “A life for a life, of course.”

  “Who?” I can barely whisper it, although I know the answer.

  “It could have been a sister for a sister,” he says. “But I liked you too much for that.”

  He’s going to kill my brother. All this suffering handed out to the Houses and their retainers just so he can feed Owen to a sea-witch. Dash might hate the high-Lammers with an indiscriminate passion, but when it comes to Pelim, his loathing takes on a personal tone. He wants them all to pay but it is my brother he will make an example of.

  Dash pulls something small and silver bright from his pocket: a hairpin, picked out with the emerald leaves of House Malker’s crest. I have seen this particular trinket many times, holding back hair straight and pale. It’s Ilven’s. “I have the boggert-sign,” he says. “All I need to do is mark the right person, and the sea-witch will come for him.”

  Ilven. A name hooked on kisses and secrets. The pin flashes, and I remember running my fingers through her hair and using this pin to hold the twist of her loose bun in place. The smell of her neck, like sea salt and citrus.

  The boggert-sign. My heart curls small, a little animal, terrified at this realization.

  “And if you don’t?” My hand jerks, wanting to knock the offending item from his fingers.

  “Then the sea-witch will rise and kill, and keep killing. Without a marked sacrifice, she’ll not return to the water.” He closes his fist. “Someone has to die, Felicita, darling. Or are you going to step up in his place?”

  Fear comes first, followed by guilt. I don’t deserve to die, I think, and I realize I am a coward. That he has made me into one. “You utter bastard,” I say. “You’re no better than my bloody brother.”

  He laughs in a desperate way.

  I open the pouch and take a healthy pinch of scriv. One deep breath, and I can taste oranges in the back of my throat. Magic boils in my veins. I will make him pay. Pay for using me, for using my friend’s death, and for twisting her ghost to his stupid, stupid cause.