Mire

by Vivien Leanne Saunders

  I looked down again and made out a few words. The scrolling script described me as a noblewoman – an ambassador from the arid regions, with permission to travel through all the counties unchallenged. The thought of being a lady made me want to laugh, but then my eye travelled down and I saw that they had given me a new name. I rubbed at the ink with my thumb, expecting to see my muddy name beneath it.

  Asha Jokela

  “Who thought of this?” I asked, risking a smile.

  “Your mother.” Sweetwater said it so flatly that for a moment it did not sink in. Then I felt the paper crumpling in my hands, and had to force myself to unclench my fingers. I traced the scrawled letters which truly belonged to me. My name. The numbers which spelled out the day I was born. Nolia, the city which lay at the source of Singen’s dying river.

  “You knew?” I croaked, and then asked more strongly, “You knew who I was?”

  “Of course! We don’t kidnap children, even the ones who are already dead. Emma knew which city you came from, and she could describe you well enough to ask around. Your parents…”

  “They know I’m alive?”

  She shook her head, and I understood. I hadn’t even known I had lost them, but I felt their deaths like a real pain in my heart. The old woman lowered her voice a little and her tone was almost compassionate.

  “Your sister remembered you enough to tell us your name. She was happy to let us keep you.”

  I nodded dumbly. Of course she had been happy. She probably hadn’t even known me as a sister, just as a name and a box floating away from her down a river. I had no doubt that Emma had paid her handsomely for her silence.

  It was peculiar to think that somewhere in the world, someone knew who I really was.

  “What’s her name?” I asked. Sweetwater grunted impatiently and dug through my papers. A rough signature was scrawled on a yellow sheet: Sylvia Paleson.

  Sylvia. Neither of our names meant anything to me. Clay was determined to cling to me. I wondered how it would feel if someone said my real name out loud. How would I react if a woman with my face greeted me with it in the marketplace?

  “It’s better that you found out now.” Sweetwater’s voice was like vinegar in my ears. “It’s harder to see clearly when you’re far away from home.”

  “Home.” I echoed idiotically, and nodded. There was something mechanical in my heart. I had done it a thousand times before – agreed to surrender part of myself into a Mistress’s care. The familiar motions of obedience were comforting.

  I couldn’t blame my sister for binding me to something that I had already chosen. Never mind that I had chosen with my eyes blinded and my hands tied.

  “You will have freedom that few women can dream of,” Nara had promised me, “but it will be more painful than you can imagine.”

  I could imagine pain. This wasn’t pain. It was such a vast emptiness that I felt hollow. If I lost myself any more, I knew, I would fall into that yawning void and disappear forever.

  CHAPTER 22

  In the end, five people left the island.

  I already knew about Dahra, Jonas and myself. Sweetwater hadn’t bothered to tell me about the other two. Why should she? They were only servants.

  Their hands shook as they clung to the edge of the boat. They lifted their feet from the hull as if they might plunge through to the ocean beneath.

  I knew Dahra’s maid, Miette. She had been Dahra’s Mistress a lifetime ago. She had already taken four apprentices, so the woman must have been close to fifty when she was teaching Dahra how to smile. When her last protégée became a Siren, Miette had retired.

  I privately thought that any woman would want to quit after teaching Dahra. Both of them were as sour as vinegar. Perhaps that was why they were devoted to each other. I had never seen such softness in my Mistress as when she helped the old woman climb into the boat.

  I did not know the other woman. When moved I realized who she was – not by her face, which was unremarkable, but by her silhouette. One of her arms ended too soon. It had to be Harriet – my classmate who had been maimed by the snake. Harriet!

  I was outraged. Waiting on a Siren was the highest position a servant could aspire to. How on earth had Harriet climbed so high? She had to use her mouth in the place of her fingers. Who wanted their laces pulled tight by spittle-drenched teeth? Out of all the women on the island, Sweetwater sent this cripple to wait on me. I felt the insult like a slap to the face.

  The two servants settled themselves in the boat. I distracted myself by studying their clothes. They wore long robes. With their bodies covered, they left their true appearance to the imagination. They could have been beautiful women, or demonic minions which we had summoned to protect us. The oarsman looked more fearfully on our guards than they did on us. For all our beauty, Dahra and I were still women.

  Our departure had been all people talked about from morning until night. The servants had used all of their ferocious energy preparing us for the journey. Sweetwater had me watched after our argument, so I could not retrieve my poison after all. Well, as long as I had water and a fire in Altissi, I would be able to look after myself. I read as many books as I could before we left and tucked a few pamphlets into my trunks, hoping to find deadly solutions on the journey. The people of Altissi had promised us safe passage, but promises meant nothing.

  After our boat reached the Mainland Jonas escorted us to a ship which he had hired. It was a whaling ship, but in the days he had spent on the island it had been readied for our voyage. The point (they told me it was called a bow) was decorated by a sinuous carving. Miette told us it was supposed to be a Siren. The Mainlanders carved them onto their boats to bring them luck. Harriet and I stared at its looping tail and painfully large breasts and broke down into fits of laughter.

  “Be serious.” Dahra growled, and tugged my veil straight where the wind had caught it. “You’re here to be a Siren, not a sniggering brat.”

  “Some of the Siren like to have fun.” I replied sulkily. My Mistress glared at me from behind her sheer veil, and turned away. I had not meant to be rude, but I knew that my words had sunk in. Any grudging truce between us that the journey might have formed was already broken.

  Harriet followed me onto the ship, and busied herself unpacking my travel trunk in our shared cabin. The floor listed as the boat set off, and I clutched at my narrow bunk.

  “This is the captain’s quarters.” Harriet said, running her fingers over a bronze nameplate on the door. “That’s like a High Mistress, isn’t it?”

  I looked around at the cramped space. “I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe we should find out.” she suggested pointedly. I blinked, and tore my veil away from my face. She was right – we should be studying everything about the Altissi. We would look ridiculous if we arrived at the court and made mistakes about simple protocol. When I nodded, my servant smiled. Her face was lovely; a Siren’s regal mask softened into gentleness. It was cruel that nobody had cut her face when she became a servant. I suppose that there was no need – her arm made her hideous enough – but every time she looked in a mirror she must have seen the chance of glory that had rotted away with her flesh.

  The ship’s captain gave us a heavy ledger with the word ‘log’ scrawled onto the first page. Miette told us – in front of him! – that the word meant ‘journal’ rather than ‘wood’. We were humiliated. Did she want the sailors to think that we were stupid?

  We decided to stay in our cabin and read the log from end to end. Harriet made it through one page before she turned pale and threw up. I spent my first few days alternating between cleaning up vomit and reading aloud to the useless cripple. The sailors assured me that it was seasickness and not a fever, but I still covered my nose and mouth when I tipped her waste bucket into the sea.

  I felt sick to my stomach whenever I sat beside my maid. It wasn’t her fault that her arm ended in a pitted, pustular knot of flesh and sinew. She stank of sweat and sick, and her scar might
as well have been a festering wound. I told myself that I should be friendly, but I could not manage it. I decided to treat her like one of the men. I could fool them. Yes, she was stupid enough to trust me. I could pretend to be as loving as her closest friends. She would never be able to tell that she disgusted me.

  I spent a lot of time on deck. Whenever I stood in the fresh air I closed my eyes and breathed in so deeply I could feel the salt sinking down all the way to my toes. There was a vast hook on one side of the boat, and an oddly hatch-marked square on the other. The sailors had told me that they travelled far to the north to hunt down the huge whales whose blubber could light a thousand lamps. Sailing to Altissi, they said, was less of an adventure. Still, they were honoured to have been chosen. I flirted with them shamelessly, delighting in their admiration after the long, tedious hours with Harriet.

  One night I escaped from Harriet’s bedside and saw Jonas standing on the deck. He was leaning on the rail that ringed the bow. We hadn’t spoken since he had spied on my tryst. He grunted and turned to leave, and I caught his arm.

  My voice was terse, “Do you want me to apologise? Is that it?”

  “No.” he retorted in a cold, practiced voice, “You didn’t hurt me. I don’t care. Why should you apologise?”

  “I don’t know. Why do you hate me?”

  Jonas looked at me levelly, “Do you remember the man you seduced? The murderer?” I nodded, and then froze at his next question, “What colour was his hair?”

  Seeing me struggle, he smiled coldly and shook his head, “That’s what I thought. I see why you didn’t ask his name, but you should remember what he looked like. For god’s sake, Clay!”

  “He was a murderer.” My voice was like ice, “The best punishment is to let him be forgotten.”

  “Bullshit. You flattered him and screwed him. Do you really think he’s suffering just because you left?”

  I stumbled over my reply. Jonas couldn’t know that I had poisoned the man. “He knew I’d betrayed him. I told his secret to the world. I took away his money and his trust. Then I forgot his stupid hair colour, because I couldn’t care less about him. He meant nothing to me, and now he means nothing to anyone else. I think being forgotten is far worse than if I… I’d killed him.”

  Jonas waited for me to finish, and then shrugged and turned away from the sea. He slouched back on the wooden rail as if it wasn’t the only thing keeping him from falling into the lethal depths.

  “Would you rather I killed him?” My words were out before I could stop them. Jonas scoffed, and I shook my head. “I’m being serious. I want to know what you would have done. He killed an innocent man for a few pathetic gold coins. He confessed to it. How should I have punished him?”

  “How about I let him argue with you?” The man growled, and pushed himself away from me. “I can’t imagine anything worse.”

  “See? You have no idea.” I taunted him, planting my hands on my hips. Jonas’s face flushed a brick red, and his hands constricted around the rail.

  “Fine.” he spat. “Yes, you should have killed him.”

  I couldn’t help pressing him. “It’s an easy thing to say. It takes a lot of courage to actually go through with it.”

  “Courage?” he gave a brittle laugh and shook his head. “No. If you were absolutely certain that he deserved it – that you had the right to punish him – then it would be the simplest thing in the world.”

  “Then why do you hate me for getting him to confess? For finding that… that certainty?”

  He looked at me narrowly. “Half the sailors on this ship would swear the sky was green if it meant they could sleep with you. Hell, most of them would probably say it just to watch you undress. Your murderer was lying.”

  “He wasn’t.” I resisted the urge to stamp my foot, and took a deep breath instead, “I can always tell.”

  “Really? You can read us so well?”

  I nodded, and he spread his hands in an odd, open gesture. “I’m not angry with you. I’m just confused. You couldn’t tell that, could you?”

  I blustered, blushing: “That’s different. I’m not trying to read you. It’s… it’s not proper.”

  Jonas glanced at me speculatively and then stood up straight. “When you work out what I’m really thinking, come and tell me. Right now I’m so twisted up I really could believe that the sky is green.”

  “It is.” I closed my eyes and smiled, and saw the moonlight shining into the drowned man’s eyes. Belief was easy. I had spent my whole life showing people things they wanted to believe in. When I opened my eyes Jonas was staring at me. I raised my hands, and showed him the dancing sunlight which the seawater reflected onto my soft, white palms. The man swallowed, and moved as if he wanted to push my hands away, but he stopped. There were a few inches between our hands, and the iridescent light bloomed over both of our fingertips.

  “Stop it.” he said, but couldn’t force himself to touch my hands. His voice was rough. “Don’t you play your tricks on me.”

  “They’re not tricks. It’s who I am.” I closed my hands, pulling them back into the shadows of my dress. It looked as though I was clutching great handfuls of the light. I turned around so that I was standing between Jonas and the sun. He folded his arms stubbornly, and squinted against the bright light.

  “Look at the sky.” I said, and tore my own eyes from the bright fire to the cloudy sky. The sun had burned my eyes, and the sky was a shimmering prism of light. I watched it for a moment, and then closed my eyes again to see the shining eyes of the weeping god. “You see?” I murmured, “It’s every colour you’ve ever dreamed of.”

  “You really are beautiful.” he said, and my eyes flew open. He was watching me, not the sky, and his eyes were full of the swaying light. I hated myself in that moment. I had been playing, or daydreaming – not trying to be a Siren, but only trying to tease him, or…

  “Don’t worry.” Jonas said. “It’s only on the outside.”

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