Girls at the Edge of the World

by Laura Brooke Robson

  “Do you think they’ll still call it crane season after the Flood?” Ness says.

  “Why wouldn’t they?” Gretta asks.

  “Well, there won’t be any cranes left,” Ness says. According to Captain’s Log, all the animals that didn’t make it on board a ship in the last Flood died out, except for the sea life. When the waters receded, the birds and bears and bees were all new varieties, born from the seafloor and emerging with the land. “Oh, but maybe Mariner Gospodin can bring a crane on the fleet. As a cultural symbol.”

  “Can you imagine if you got thrown off the royal fleet to make room for a crane?” Gretta says.

  Sofie catches my eye. I look away.

  “I wonder if Pippa made it back home,” she says.

  “It’s her own fault for getting kicked out,” Gretta says. Sofie swats her with her cards.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Ness says.

  “No,” Katla says, “your family is probably fine. Your rich friends are probably fine. Pippa is in plenty of danger.”

  Ness’s round mouth bows. “I’m just being optimistic.”

  “Funny how obscene piles of money can make a person optimistic.”

  Ness glances around like she might find an ally among us, but no one springs to her aid. She’s the only one with a merchant father and a terraced manor in Heather Hill.

  In the end, she just ducks her head to her cards. Her curls hang over her face. “Mean.”

  “My father said the men at the university are making progress on an evaporator,” Gretta says. “For the fleet. That’s good news for our drinking water.”

  “Really?” Sofie says. “I heard some of the guards talking about it at breakfast, and they said they couldn’t taste the difference between the seawater that went in and came back out.”

  Gretta makes a face. “Well, they better hurry. I don’t want to drink grog for a year.”

  We’re all quiet for a moment.

  “You know what I wonder?” Gretta says. “Where did Adelaida go?”

  Where, indeed. Adelaida’s bedroom door is attached to this hallway. Yet another reason to sit here. But I haven’t seen her since she waved us away from the stage. She promised me we could talk after the performance, but now I’m dreading the conversation.

  She’ll say I wasn’t focused. She’ll point out that none of the other flyers got so spooked by the birds, they fell from their silks. She wouldn’t demote me, would she?

  Oh, seas. What if she dismisses me from the Royal Flyers entirely?

  “I bet she was just helping gather our equipment,” Ness says.

  “Those silks are ruined,” Katla says. “Abandon hope.”

  Ness fans out her cards and collapses them together again. “Then maybe she was helping the musicians.”

  Katla snorts. “Because it’s so like Adelaida to be charitable.”

  “Do you have to be grumpy all the time?” Ness says.

  Katla nods, her hair dusting her knees. “I am contractually obligated.”

  Gretta taps her cards against the floor. “Sofie,” she says. “It’s been your turn for five minutes. Play already.”

  “Oh! Sorry.”

  Outside, someone screams. We all flinch.

  Katla unfolds from her stretch and comes to sit beside me. She takes the bandage and finishes tying it. “Stop fidgeting.”

  I glance over at the other girls. They’re immersed in their game. In a low voice, I say, “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll check on my family in the morning,” Katla says.

  “Sorry,” I say, because I can’t think of anything more useful.

  I’ve visited Katla’s home a dozen times in the five years we’ve known each other. It’s small but cozy, full of peat smoke and cooking smells and the chaotic laughter of younger siblings. The house is squished into the mud at the edge of the boglands, and the last time I was there, during deer season, water was seeping through the cracks in every stone.

  If there’s any benefit in being alone, it’s having no family to worry about.

  The flyers are the closest thing I have to family. Sofie, Gretta, Ness, with whom I’ve trained with and laughed, and most especially Katla, who’s flown by my side since we were twelve. When Katla smiles at me in her most Katla of ways—pursed lips, no teeth, hardly even a smile, really—my heart squeezes.

  I know I need to tell her—all of them—what Sofie and I overheard. But I have to talk to Adelaida first. Make sure I haven’t misunderstood.

  Outside: thunder, wind, another scream.

  That scream belongs to someone. Someone’s father or son or brother. Probably someone with work-chapped hands and rain-soaked feet and, if he’s lucky, a house full of peat smoke. He screams for help.

  The guards won’t invite him into the palace. The servants will wince and murmur, “Pity,” but they won’t go against orders. Not when their families could starve without a month of palace wages.

  The scream is piercing.

  I can only worry about so many people.

  So I take my heart and I put it in an iron box.

  I tell myself that the man wasn’t going to survive Storm One anyway.

  And unless I am selfish, neither will I.

  8

  ELLA

  The morning after the storm, the street gleams dewy. The sky is an innocuous white, cream on its way to butter. It was a short storm this time—just long enough to last the night. When a pigeon lands on the windowsill of Maret’s apartment, it tilts its head to the side and stares at me.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be gone by now?” I say.

  It ruffles its feathers, taking offense.

  I find a note from Maret on the little table in the kitchen.

  With Edvin. Getting a present for you. Happy practicing!

  A present? I trace the loopy letters with a finger. My own handwriting is cramped and tiny, like the letters are insecure. Maret’s handwriting looks like Cassia’s, and probably all other royal people ever: smart, loud, unafraid.

  I set down the note and open a kitchen cabinet. A chunk of bread. A potato beginning to sprout.

  When Maret and I first made our plan back in Terrazza, I assumed she had a few more friends with a few more coins. One would think the title of Disgraced and Exiled Aunt of King Nikolai would hold enough clout to get us better snacks.

  I take the bread and tear a begrudging chunk with my teeth.

  The pigeon stares at me through the window.

  “This bread,” I tell it, “tastes like despair.”

  The pigeon takes off. Perhaps it doesn’t speak Terrazzan. I keep watch out the window, but I don’t see another bird all day.

  I practice on the silks, the Royal Flyers’ performance my inspiration. The way they moved their arms smoothly, never betraying the spurtive effort of lifting one hand off the silks and pulling themselves higher. The elegant points to their toes. And the climbs. I understand now why they’re called flyers, because while I’ve been practicing on an indoor rig that takes me only six feet off the ground, they soared.

  And I heard my first flyer’s name, whispered and giggled and muttered. Natasha Koskinen is the one who fell. The tall one with the excellent scowl. I flinched when her body hit the ground.

  But when she hauled herself up again, hurt or embarrassed or exhausted—I couldn’t tell from the iron set of her face—she was impossible not to watch.

  Even before the fall, the audience was chattering about what an unusual performance it was, what with only five flyers. Once the storm hit, it became a performance I’m sure Kostrov will never forget.

  Well, at least, not until Storm One. After that they will be mostly dead, so perhaps they’ll forget then.

  Maret returns at sunset with a splotchy pamphlet in her hands—the paper probably on its umpteenth round of recycling
—but she carries it like a treasure.

  I’m upside down with the silks yanking my legs in a straddle that could be a very effective means of torture. Maret pulls the paper tight in front of me. It makes a satisfying pop as it goes flat.

  “Snoitidua reylf,” I say.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Ella.”

  “It’s very taxing to read a foreign language upside down.”

  Maret turns the paper back to face her and clears her throat. “‘Flyer auditions. Girls age fourteen to twenty. Must have prior flying experience. Recommendation from director required. Contact Adelaida Folkat for audition window.’”

  I flip right-side up. The blood rushes pleasantly back to my legs. “I don’t have a recommendation from a director.”

  “Edvin has a cousin,” Maret says. “He asked her for a favor. Fortunately, she’s not all that fond of Adelaida, and so they won’t have occasion to talk. I remember Adelaida, you know. From when she was the principal flyer.”

  “Anything I should know about her?”

  Maret pauses and thinks. “Once,” she says, “I saw her push one of the younger girls into splits until she screamed.” She brightens. “But you have lovely splits, so I’m sure you’re fine.”

  “She sounds horrible. Perhaps we’ll get along.”

  “I set up your audition and everything. Tomorrow at two in the afternoon. So rest up until then.”

  I unwind myself fully from the silks and slide to the ground. Maret is already turning away, humming one of the songs from the festival performance.

  “Oh!” She turns back. “I almost forgot.” Maret opens her shoulder bag and rustles through it. She pulls out what I think for a moment is a clock. It’s a circle of glossy wood with a glass face and a single long hand. But instead of numbers around the edge, it has words: Dry, Fair, Showers, Stormy.

  “Is this my present?”

  “It’s a barometer,” Maret says. “Press the button at the bottom of the hand.”

  I do. The device clicks and the hand unlatches from the barometer’s face. When I pull it loose, I realize that it has the heft and sharpness of a dagger.

  “Isn’t it clever?” Maret says. “No one will blink at a girl with an innocent interest in keeping track of the weather.”

  I set the knife back on the barometer. It clicks into place.

  “If anyone caught you with a gun,” she says, “you’d be in the dungeon by lunch. But a barometer? That’ll work.”

  What she doesn’t say is, After everything with Cassia, I figured you wouldn’t want to use a gun.

  “Thank you,” I say, and I mean it.

  Maret and I have been going over our plan for months. By now I know it so well that I’m afraid I’ll start reciting it in my sleep.

  I’ll ingratiate myself with the flyers and the guards. Even Nikolai himself. When Maret was my age, a teenage princess in the palace, she and her brother—Nikolai and Cassia’s father—spent many a bored hour with the flyers and the young guards, playing cards and lounging in the gardens. According to Maret, everyone is so busy drinking, laughing, and flirting that I’ll be able to slide right next to Nikolai without anyone thinking anything of it.

  And then I’ll stab him.

  I know I’ll get arrested or killed. But I’ll get Cassia her revenge and Maret her throne. And I’d rather die this way than at the hands of the Flood.

  But first I need to make it into the palace.

  “What if I’m not good enough to get the spot?” I ask.

  Maret turns around slowly. “Why would you say that?”

  Because there are girls out there with real recommendations from real directors. Because little Kostrovian girls grow up watching the Royal Flyers and dreaming of being in their ranks.

  “Just a question,” I say.

  “Come now,” Maret says. “You’ve become an excellent flyer.”

  But what if I don’t become a Royal Flyer tomorrow?

  Not long after her exile, Maret tried to plant a guard in the palace to spy for her. He was discovered and executed within days. Then, two years ago, she attempted to use a cook. The cook met the same fate before he even got the job.

  All those palace positions, Maret told me, were scrutinized carefully. The Captain of the Guard interviewed everyone himself. Had people watched and trailed. Didn’t hire people who had nothing to lose.

  But the flyers report to a different leader.

  According to Maret, Adelaida cares about finding the best performers, not the most patriotic Kostrovians. The flyers get to flirt with royalty instead of being trampled by it. Part of the court, but never seen as political.

  Maret knows that men suspect other men but not pretty young girls. She knows that if she wants a spy in the palace, the spy has to be a girl on the silks.

  If I don’t become a Royal Flyer, Maret’s plan evaporates. And so does mine.

  She drags her finger down the silk, not quite holding it, like she doesn’t want me to see her doing it wrong. “You were plenty strong before you started training, and now you’re stronger. You have practiced every waking hour of every day since we arrived. But most of all, I know you will become a Royal Flyer because you want it more desperately than anyone else in New Sundstad.”

  “But—”

  “The other girls,” Maret says, “want to be Royal Flyers because they want a wealthy royal councilor to notice them and promise to love them forever. Someone to buy them a ticket to the royal fleet. But what do you want?”

  My voice is sticky in my throat. “I want to kill the king.”

  “That’s right,” Maret says. “And so you will.”

  9

  NATASHA

  Adelaida wakes me up by throwing a shoe at me.

  I sit with a start and rub my shoulder. She leans against my doorframe, arms crossed. A second shoe dangles from her index finger.

  “You wanted to talk?” she says.

  “You threw a shoe at me!”

  She frowns at the shoe that’s come to rest on the ground beside my bed. “I figured the slippers you were wearing yesterday were ruined from the rain.”

  “So you decided to attack me with a new pair?”

  “Ah, yes, here lies Natasha Koskinen, bludgeoned to death by four ounces of satin. Get dressed.”

  “Last night,” I say, “where did you—” Adelaida shuts the door on her way out. “—go.”

  My new slippers and I meet Adelaida in the studio ten minutes later. I’m freezing in a charcoal-gray full-suit with a gauzy skirt. Adelaida is laying peat briquettes in the fireplace. Her cat, a lumpy creature named Kaspar, winds around her ankles.

  The light streaming from the window is thin and pale. From outside, I can hear the drip, drip, drip of leftover rainwater streaming off the eaves.

  “Maybe tomorrow you could wake me up with a new cloak,” I say. “I lost mine.”

  The fire sparks. Adelaida stands and brushes off her knees. “You’re very demanding. And on today, of all days, when I did not even have a serving girl offer to light the fire for me.”

  “Perhaps,” I say, eyeing the cat, “the serving girls are stretched a bit thin checking on their storm-terrorized families this morning.”

  I stoop to pick up Kaspar. He’s quite possibly the stupidest cat to have ever lived, and despite Adelaida’s impatience for foolish humans, she’s rather fond of Kaspar.

  “Well,” Adelaida says, “that’s very selfish of them.”

  “Seriously?” I say.

  “Don’t blame me,” she says. “I’m cranky when I’m cold.” She scoops Kaspar out of my arms and holds him to her bosom. Her eyes latch on my wrist. The bandage is still snug with Katla’s knots.

  I can feel my heart beating in my throat.

  “So.” Adelaida’s gaze meets mine.

  “It was that bird.
Acting all strange because of Storm Five.”

  “You were distracted.”

  “The bird was huge! Adelaida, you know I’m too good to have fallen like that.”

  “Your arrogance is inspiring.”

  “But it wasn’t my fault.”

  “Sure it was,” she says.

  Tartly, I say, “Well, you’re the one who trained me. So.”

  “I trained you well and right,” she says. “Enough to stay on those silks. But you were always free to fall. That much was up to you.”

  “Please, Adelaida.”

  She watches me through squinted eyes. I have to fight my instinct to look away, to cross my arms over my stomach. My teeth clench. Kaspar bats at her chin, and her nose wrinkles.

  “No,” she finally says. “No, you probably wouldn’t have fallen if not for the storm. But you did fall, and even before that, it was as bad a festival performance as I’ve ever seen you give.”

  I gather a breath. “I overheard what Gospodin said. About the fleet.”

  She bends down and releases Kaspar. He bounds away, bumping his head against the mirror as he goes. “How much did you hear?”

  “We’re not going on the royal fleet, are we?”

  “It depends,” she says, “what you mean by we.”

  I ball my hands into fists at my sides. “What do you mean? You promised I’d be safe. How could you lie? I thought you were my—”

  But what is Adelaida? Not my friend. Not my confidante. And though Adelaida knew my mother, flew with my mother, she’s never tried to assume a maternal role. In the end, I suppose, she’s just my director. She cares about me because I’m a good flyer.

  “I wasn’t lying to you,” she says. “As far as I knew, Gospodin intended to take you on the royal fleet.”

  “Gospodin? Not Nikolai?”

  She waves a hand. “Gospodin, Nikolai. Same thing. I thought we’d all be included. And we’re not the only ones. Midway through seal season—around Storm Six, I think—a few of the big merchant families started talking to each other. Seems just about everyone who’s ever had so much as an afternoon tea with Gospodin thinks they have a spot on the royal fleet. But there’s not enough food. Not enough supplies. Not with the storms and the fires and the insects and the famine. Someone had to go.”