Fog Season

by Patrice Sarath

  Patrice Sarath

  Fog Season

  A Tale of Port Saint Frey

  Social Robotics

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  For Aidan

  The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco.

  attr to Mark Twain

  Chapter One

  There was an air of festivity at the Port Saint Frey harbor, where Tesara Mederos and her sister Yvienne waited to send off their parents on a six-month voyage that, the entire family hoped, would restore their fortunes. Stevedores and sailors trundled up and down the gangplank of the clipper Iderci Empress with barrels and gear and supplies. The Empress was a fast, lean ship whose keel was laid eight months before; this was to be her maiden voyage. Her masts were black against the bright blue sky, her furled sails a fine white, and her balustrades and brassworks gleamed. She wanted only for passengers to come aboard with their luggage. Brevart was already on deck, asking dozens of questions of the captain and the first mate, and they were patiently answering him, though no doubt they had much to do before the ship left port.

  Despite the sunshine, clouds massed on the mountains behind the city, and Tesara could feel a wetness to the air that had nothing to do with the sea. Her power felt dampened, and she gave a little experimental push, flexing her fingers. Down the dock, air pressure and then a gust of wind rattled the dockmaster’s manifests, and the man and his apprentice scrambled to catch the pages before they flew off into the harbor.

  Oops. A small surge of nausea struck her and she swallowed. Every time I use my powers, she thought. Each surge of energy caused a blowback. She struggled to keep her composure.

  “For goodness sakes, Tesara, can you at least pay attention?” Alinesse said with exasperation.

  “Sorry, Mama,” she said, but Alinesse didn’t wait for her apology and had already turned back to Yvienne. “Now, Yvienne, I’ve spoken with Albero about the broken dumbwaiter, but I’m leaving it in your hands to consult with the engineers. After all, you know the most about those things.”

  “Of course, Mama,” Yvienne said, with a straight face. Tesara was impressed by her composure. “I’m as interested as you in determining why it’s stopped – I mean, why it never worked.”

  It had certainly worked just fine the night they ousted their enemy, the nefarious Guild liaison Trune, from their family home. No doubt in a nasty fit of spite Trune had damaged the dumbwaiter, a parting shot at the family he had been determined to destroy. The whole house had needed to be made over when they moved back in, and Alinesse, though her nature was normally frugal, had spared no expense in removing “the stench”, as she called it, of Trune.

  “I must say that if the tradesmen who installed it say it has to be taken out, I will not be displeased,” Alinesse said. She made a pursed-lip expression of disgust. “I am sure I could never be persuaded it was of any use. Finally, girls, you need to keep up with the household expenses and bills. This is your responsibility, Tesara. No, I will brook no complaint. Yvienne is busy with the office. You’ll have to meet with Mrs Francini every morning and go over the accounts. And you do have a good hand (said grudgingly), so please take over the correspondence. And another thing – no invitations. I expect you to live retiringly. Perhaps the Sansieris can visit, but none other. I am sure the gossips in this town have nothing better to do than to find fault with your conduct in the worst way. Where is your father?”

  They all looked up at the ship. Brevart followed after the captain eagerly, gesticulating. Surprising them both, Alinesse smiled, clutching her broad-brimmed bonnet. Her eyes were bright.

  “I do love a sea voyage, girls. I wish it were for better reasons, but this is the first step in restoring our fortunes. What a stroke of luck that we got word that the Main Chance was sighted off the coast in Grand Harbor.”

  Tesara and Yvienne exchanged glances. Yes, thought Tesara. That was rather convenient. Six years after the ship allegedly went down with all hands, and six months after House Mederos was restored to her rightful place, the great flagship of the Mederos fleet turned up on the other side of the continent. That sort of luck made a girl suspicious.

  Yvienne stepped forward and gave Alinesse a kiss on the cheek. “You have nothing to worry about, Mama. We’ll take care of things here, and we’ll see you in a few months.”

  “Or sooner,” Alinesse agreed. She held out gloved hands to both girls and clasped them tight. “I know we can trust you. You have a good head on your shoulder and you, Tesara…” Tesara braced herself. Alinesse gave a smile that was half a rueful grimace. “You have hidden depths, my dear. If you but concentrate–”

  Before Tesara could say something she would regret, Yvienne interposed smoothly. “It’s time, Mama,” she said, nodding over at the chaplain from the Church of the Sea. He and the acolytes were preparing the Service of Outgoing Ships. Already the voyagers and well-wishers moved in that direction. The sailors and the officers on board gathered at the rail above them, Brevart among them, hats and caps doffed and heads bowed. The sailor at the end caught Tesara’s eye just before she bowed her head, and she turned to look at him as the priest began the ceremony.

  The sailor at the end of the row, slender, slighter than the other men, and with a scant beard, was none other than Jone Saint Frey.

  She gave a quite audible gasp. Yvienne looked at her in warning, and Tesara hastily bent her head and clasped her hands. But as soon as it was safe, and all had their heads bowed, she peeked again. Yes. She had not been mistaken. Tesara stared straight ahead, allowing the service to wash over her, mouthing the responses automatically.

  Our Father in Heaven, our Mother the Sea, bless and keep this vessel…

  At the last ‘amen’, she turned fully around and peered at the ship. Jone had already disappeared. The bustle around her increased, good-byes were said, people embraced their families. Brevart and Alinesse were two of eight passengers; a scattering of younger sons, amidst tradesmen from Ravenne. Tesara picked up her skirts and strode toward the gangway, ignoring her mother’s exasperated, “Tesara!”

  She pushed her way up onto the ship, shouldering past the stevedores carrying the last crates and luggage. Her father caught sight of her and waved her over to meet the patient captain.

  “Ah, Tesara, have you come to see the ship? Captain, this is my youngest–”

  Tesara bobbed a quick curtsey. “I would love to look around. May I? Thank you.”

  She went aft before they could say anything, threading between cargo and sailors, stepping over ropes and gear.

  It wasn’t hard to find him. He was coiling and securing rope on the deck. He looked up at her. She let out her breath, just then realizing she had been holding it.

  “Hello,” she said. It was wholly inadequate and captured none of what she wanted to say to him. They had not seen each other in the past six months – she had thought he no longer cared for her.

  He gave his crooked smile, the one that transformed his face from ugly to charming. Now that she saw him up close, she realized that the slender boy she knew had filled out, his face reddened and browned under the sun.

  “I wrote you a letter,” he said. “I posted it. I didn’t know your parents had booked passage, and I didn’t expect to see you.”

  “I look forward to reading it. I… Does your mother know?” It was a terribly awkward thing to assume, she knew that as soon as the words blurted from her mouth.

  This time he grimaced. “She thinks I’m in Ravenne, courting Mira.”

  Courting Mira. Had that even been possible? She felt sickened by the idea. But you knew he could never love you. You cou
ld only ever be friends. You knew that. So why shouldn’t he marry the sparkling, spoiled, charming, beautiful Mirandine Depressis?

  “Does she know?” And this time Tesara was ashamed at the jealousy in her words. If Jone heard that undertone, he gave no sign.

  “It’s all in the letter, Tes. I’m sorry – I know that was the coward’s way out.” He spoke in a sudden rush. “I spent my whole life being frightened and avoiding all unpleasantness. I knew if I gave in to my mother, I would spend decades and decades being pleasant and obedient, and never once feeling… anything. And then I would die. I needed to do what I was truly afraid of, and I couldn’t tell anyone. I had to just do it.”

  “It’s not being cowardly. It would have been cowardly not to do this.” She said it with sudden, fierce urgency. “I’m glad you’re going.” She laughed a little, and he did too.

  “I’ll miss you, Tesara Mederos. That’s in the letter too, but not this.” He came to her and kissed her, first on the cheek, and then on her lips. For a brief moment, the kiss lingered, his lips salty and warm on hers.

  “Tesara!” It was her mother, calling from the gangway. They both jumped back.

  Tesara said in a hurry, “I have to go. I’ll read your letter, and I’ll write to you – but the post will take months.”

  He grinned, and he looked in that instant like a carefree young sailor. “Send it to the Cape – we’ll pick it up on the return journey.”

  “Tesara!” Her mother called again with rising impatience.

  She pressed his hand. “Good-bye. Good luck. Remember, there are no such things as sea monsters.”

  He laughed, and she hurried back to her parents.

  All during their leavetaking, she couldn’t help but think of the kiss. It was Jone Saint Frey. They had kissed. It had been lovely and unexpected, and so part and parcel of the new Jone, halfway to shedding the skin of the quiet, uncertain boy that wore him down. So why did she have such deep misgivings?

  There are no such things as sea monsters. Except me.

  The sunk fleet haunted her, and she knew she would not rest until her parents discovered the truth. And if that truth was that their daughter was an ungovernable monster, what then? Tesara pressed a hand against her abdomen, trying to quiet the ever-constant roil. Next to her, Yvienne, quietly noticing, gave her a quick side hug. Dear Yvienne, Tesara thought. She always knew when she was worried.

  At last the lines were untied from the moorings and tossed back onto the deck of the Empress. The tugs, manned by twelve muscular longshoremen apiece, began the laborious task of towing the ship out of the harbor. Slowly she made headway. The acolytes tossed the flowers from the service into the water. The passengers clustered on the rail, waving.

  “I don’t really have to manage the household accounts, do I?” Tesara said, waving after the departing ship.

  “I wouldn’t dream of letting you near them,” Yvienne promised.

  Finally the order came and the sails unfurled, belling as they caught the wind. The ship began a slow, ponderous turn, and the tugs rowed out of her way. At the same time, the fog bank flowed over the mountains and settled onto the city, dampening the sun behind them, while the sea before them dazzled with freshening whitecaps.

  The last sight Tesara caught of the Iderci Empress was of her gliding out into the sunlit sea, while all around them the docks and the city turned gray and wet.

  Bother, she thought. Fog Season had come early this year.

  Chapter Two

  Yvienne Mederos, the unheralded savior of her family’s trading House, once the most distinguished, ruthless, and successful business of Port Saint Frey, looked at her disreputable Uncle Samwell and wondered why she had even bothered.

  “Why in the name of Saint Frey himself would you want to commit to such an unsuitable contract?” Yvienne said to that shabby, rotund gentleman. He blinked at her in surprise.

  “Here now, missy, don’t take that tone with me,” he said, helping himself to coffee from the carafe on the sideboard, and adding a generous dollop of whipped cream. They were in the House Mederos offices on the dock, and the windows were wide open to the brisk, cold, wet air of the harbor, the smell of salt, dead fish, and cargo wafting in with the wind. Yvienne loved it. It smelled like money.

  All of which Uncle Samwell was seeking to squander with the stroke of a pen.

  One week, she thought. They’ve not even been gone one week. She took a deep breath, holding herself steady. She didn’t want to shout, because she could see through the open door their two clerks bent over their tall desks, ostensibly handling the accounts, but clearly poised to listen so they could gossip on their dinner break at the coffee house later in the day.

  “Uncle,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Inigho Demaris gave you terrible terms on that contract. We would be on the hook for most of the costs, and we would have to sell at such a volume that the chance of making even a five percent profit is quite low.”

  “Oh, and I suppose that a slip of a girl like you understands better than an old salt like me? I’ve been making deals before you were born, young lady. We need to show this city that House Mederos is back and ready for business. Working with Inigho gives us credibility. Once the word gets out, everyone else will fall into place.” He snapped his fingers.

  How to make him understand? She put her hands on the desk and leaned forward to face him. Despite herself, her voice rose.

  “We have credibility. We have the good wishes and fellowship of the merchant families. What we don’t have is money. And this contract won’t allow us to make any. Inigho Demaris is a shrewd businessman. He’s not doing us any favors by agreeing to do business with House Mederos. He’s taking advantage of our perceived weakness.”

  When she stopped, the usual work noises in the clerk’s office were dead silent – and then with haste the men began to whistle and their adding machines clattered all over again.

  She knew she had hit home though, because Samwell turned pouty.

  “Just like your father. Always have to put down any idea that I have. Well, I won’t have it, missy. You are not the boss of this House, for all you act like it. You should know, I’m the only one that kept us going in the bad times. My connections, my business deals. You keep this up, and there’s nothing stopping me from starting up my own merchant house. The Balinchards were great once – we will be again. Then we’ll see who has the business sense.”

  He stormed off, letting the door slam behind him. This time the clerks stopped work with no pretense. Yvienne couldn’t blame them, though she made a mental note to move their desks into the records room, where they wouldn’t be distracted by family matters.

  She pressed her fingertips to her forehead, then pushed back wisps of dark hair from her temples. As always, the wind of the harbor tousled her careful bun, but she preferred the crisp outdoor air except in the coldest weather. It helped her think.

  She looked once more at the contract. It was florid and well drawn, with the Demaris seal next to Inigho’s signature, and the blank space waiting for a representative of House Mederos to sign and seal. She went to rip it up, then held off and reread it, shaking her head at the exorbitant terms. If Brevart found out his ne’er-do-well brother-in-law was trying to make yet more deals on behalf of the Mederos family, he would be livid. Alinesse, too, would be thoroughly annoyed that her little brother Samwell Balinchard was at it again.

  A polite cough broke through her absorption. With a start, Yvienne looked up from the pages of printed contract. A strange man stood in the entrance of the office. He was short and stocky, in a tweed coat that had seen better days, and thick wool trousers, ditto. He was clean-shaven, his hairline receding for all that he was a youngish man, only six or seven-and-twenty. There was something about his expression – he had an appreciative look about him, as if he had been watching her for a good while and liked what he saw. Yvienne felt irked that he had spied on her while she was lost in concentration.

 
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I knocked, but you never acknowledged me.”

  “I do apologize, Mr–?”

  “Fresnel. Abel Fresnel. Harrier Agency.” He came into the office, hand outstretched.

  She didn’t take it. In Port Saint Frey, a man bowed to a woman. Maybe it was his frank appraisal of her that set her off, but she had no interest in schooling a stranger on customs. After a moment he fished in his vest pocket and stepped into the office, handing her his card. She didn’t take it. He set it down on the desk. The card was smudged and bent at the corners. She read it upside down. Abel Fresnel. Detecting Man. Harrier Agency.

  Yvienne remained calm. She gave him an inquiring look. “How may House Mederos help you, Mister Fresnel?”

  “I’ve been hired by the Guild to investigate some doings early this year, and since your family was involved, I thought I’d start with you,” he said. His accent had a trace of something she could not identify – a bit country, she thought. Unsophisticated. It set off alarm bells. The famed Harrier Detecting Agency did not hire country bumpkins. The accent was a lure, meant to reassure, before a trap was sprung.

  “Goodness,” she said, at her most neutral.

  “The Guild was interested in your opinion of the matter,” he went on. She raised a brow. That was an out and out lie; the Guild knew all about the Mederos opinions. She wondered why he told her that.

  Mister Fresnel pulled a chair out from against the wall and sat across from her, crossing his leg and leaning back. He nodded his chin at the card. “That’s me.”

  “I see. As you can see, I am very busy today. Too busy to offer my opinion. Good day.”

  He didn’t make a move. She glanced over at the clerk room, and knew by the different quality of silence that they were gone to their dinner.

  Mister Fresnel had no doubt waited until just that moment to enter.

  “What do you want?” Her voice sharpened, and she cursed her temper that made her reveal her fear and discomfort. She kept her hands on the desk. If one didn’t know to look at it, one would never see the outline of the small compartment built flush into the desktop, where a bit of pressure would release the catch. Father had stashed ready cash in the drawer; Yvienne kept her pistol there. This man had made no threatening overtures, but Yvienne had no doubts that she faced grave danger. If there was a Harrier nosing about, it could only mean the Guild had suspicions regarding last spring’s activities.