My mouth is dry. “So they took the Royal Flyers off the roster.”
“If you were Gospodin, would you rather say no to a powerful merchant with enough money to feed the fleet for a month? Or a bunch of dancer girls?”
“He called us dancer girls?”
Adelaida busies herself with the silks as we talk, spreading out the fabric and checking for holes. “We have neither enough food nor enough ships for this Flood.”
“What about the ships from Grunholt?”
“A lie,” she says. “Or rather, a feat of optimism. Gospodin talked to the Righteous Mariner in Grunholt about securing more ships, but they need them as badly as we do. Everyone does. We should’ve had a failsafe Flood plan all along, but no—Captain’s Log said Floods only come every two thousand years, so why would we stock up on grain and ships eight hundred years early? Stupid. The only countries that might actually be prepared for this are non–Sacred Breath countries, and they’re all too busy feeling clever to consider helping us.”
“We have months left, though,” I say. “We can make more ships.”
“Fine,” Adelaida says. “Assume we have a thousand ships. What about our food stockpiles, so generously destroyed and plundered by discontent citizens? What about all the fresh water we don’t have?”
I feel like I could melt into the floor. “But . . . all the rain.”
“Yes. All the rain they have painstakingly collected, only to realize that sewage has been spilling out of a cesspit and leaking into the collection basin. Personally, I love the idea of drinking only wine for a year, but the livestock might not be terribly happy.”
I let out a slow breath. “Okay,” I say. “Okay.” My mind is spinning through ideas, and none of them are good.
“You’re panicking,” Adelaida says. “You’re a panicker. See, this is why I didn’t tell you about Pippa.”
I dig my nails into the heels of my hands. “Don’t you feel guilty? You’re really going to sail away without us, not a care in the world?”
“Ah. That’s where you’re wrong.” She drops the silk, fully inspected, and locks me in a steady stare. “You heard Gospodin. You heard what he told me.”
I strain to remember. “That you shouldn’t worry, because of course you’re part of the fleet?”
“And,” Adelaida says, “did you believe him?”
I turn the memory of his holy voice around in my mind. “I don’t know.”
She nods as though this admission pleases her. “Well, I’m not altogether convinced that Gospodin will let me on that fleet when the time comes.”
“Do you want me to offer my condolences?”
“No,” Adelaida says. “I want you to marry Nikolai.”
My laugh is sharp and loud even to my own ears.
“I’m serious,” she says.
“You believed that speech?” I say. “I thought this was just a big scheme to keep everyone distracted before the Flood.”
“It’s a scheme to do precisely that,” Adelaida says. “And at the end of that scheme, who do you think Nikolai would rather end up married to? A girl from Southtown he’s never met? An aristocratic girl with too many international allies? Or the principal flyer who’s spent the past eight years in the palace, flirting with him and befriending his guards?”
My face heats. “I don’t flirt with Nikolai!”
“That dinner? Last bear season?”
The palace hosted a royal gala just before Nikolai announced his engagement to Princess Colette. I may have noticed Gregor chatting with Nikolai, so I may have made a point to say hello to my good friend Gregor, and Nikolai and I may have talked for a few minutes. Nikolai greeted me by name and asked how my shoulder was doing, since the last time we’d seen each other—at one of the guards’ card games—I’d been icing a sprain.
He had a subtle smile. I was so busy noticing it that I didn’t even realize Gregor had slipped away, leaving us to talk alone.
I cross my arms. “That wasn’t flirting.”
“It was something,” Adelaida says.
I’ll admit to being intrigued by Nikolai—he’s young and powerful and attractive enough—but I can’t imagine myself as queen. Kissing him? Sleeping with him? And the politics? Seas. My father was a palace guard I never met, and my mother was a disgraced ex-flyer. I’m not exactly an eligible princess.
“Even if Nikolai agreed to it,” I say, “Gospodin never would.”
“Well, good thing it’s not Gospodin’s decision.”
I almost laugh. “Nikolai trusts Gospodin more than his own family. You don’t think he’ll get his council on this?” Two years ago, Nikolai; his sister, Cassia; and some of the councilors hatched a plan to oust Gospodin from the royal council. They thought the Sacred Breath was getting too much power over the crown. But at the last minute, Nikolai switched sides. Told Gospodin what was happening. Nikolai’s councilors were executed; Cassia, exiled. She was hardly the first royal to be shooed out of Kostrov, but I was shocked anyway. I always thought of Nikolai and Cassia as two halves of a pair. Isn’t that what siblings are? But in the end, Nikolai trusted Gospodin more.
“Well,” Adelaida says, “maybe Gospodin will see the wisdom in choosing a girl like you. If it’s an uplifting rags-to-riches story he’s after, you’re as good a choice as any. The people know you. They’ve watched you perform for years.”
I shake my head. “What about my mother?”
“What about her?”
“Isn’t she a”—I wince, feeling like a traitor—“blemish on my candidacy?”
“Yes, but she’s been dead so long, who can really remember?”
“Gospodin, probably,” I say.
Adelaida exhales through her nose, nostrils flaring.
My mother grew up in Our Lady of Tidal Sorrows, an orphan raised by the Sacred Breath. They gave her the name Tatiana Kosen. Kosen, one of Kos, as all orphans are. But she privately renounced Kos’s Captain’s Log and read Tamm instead. The fables are hundreds of years old, telling stories from before the Sacred Breath conquered Kostrov. When this land was called Maapinn and we had clans and chiefs instead of noble families and kings. She dreamed of magic; memorized fairy tales; plotted maps to faraway kingdoms. She squirreled away money until she could have flying lessons, and she practiced until she could be a Royal Flyer.
When she got to the palace, she took a name out of Tamm’s fables: Koskinen. Sigrid Koskinen was one of the girls from one of the stories, who rowed a boat down a river to the center of the world, to a cave where it never flooded and ancient beasts roamed.
Kosen means “one of Kos.” Koskinen means “one of rivers.”
Kosen. Koskinen. A three-letter change. Just one syllable. Hardly a difference at all.
But also. An erasure of her connection with the Sacred Breath. A betrayal of those who raised her, some of whom took it personally. The biggest difference in the world.
And then she went and had a child with a man who wouldn’t marry her. Our Lady of Tidal Sorrows wouldn’t take her back, and she wouldn’t have gone if they had. She worked whatever jobs she could find. She raised me in bursts of manic attention and clouds of absence.
And then she handed me to Adelaida, walked off the edge of a canal, and never came up for air. Her final sin: Refusing to endure Kostrov any longer.
She didn’t get a funeral. Apostates never do.
But I still have her name. Her hair. Her affinity for flying. Her copy of Tamm’s Collected Fables. And unlike her, I will survive.
“Gospodin,” Adelaida finally says, “might be hard to convince.”
My mother knew Gospodin from her time as a Royal Flyer. She didn’t keep her views about the Sacred Breath quiet.
“Impossible,” I say. I remember the way he looked at me at the festival. The narrow eyes as mud arced over my head.
“And
yet, you’re thinking about it.”
“If I married Nikolai,” I say, “do you think I could bring the other flyers on the fleet?”
“Only one way to find out. Now, I don’t know about you, but there’s no way I’ll make it through audition prep without whiskey. We can put it in our tea.” She takes a few purposeful strides toward the door before I shake myself and manage to catch up.
“Hang on,” I say. “Just like that? We’re moving on to auditions?”
“Well, we can’t perform with only five flyers again. It was atrocious. Auditions are tomorrow.”
I shake my head. “We still haven’t talked about Pippa.”
Adelaida lifts a hand. “What’s there to talk about? She got pregnant. I told her she’d have to leave when she started to show, and she chose to leave sooner rather than later. That’s how the Royal Flyers do things. You, of all people, should know that.”
“But what’s the point? The new flyer will only be with us for, what, two seasons?”
“The Royal Flyers need to maintain some semblance of normalcy. The longer you’re in the palace, the better your odds of enamoring Nikolai. There’s no one better poised to abduct his heart than the principal flyer.”
“That sounds oddly violent,” I say.
“Love always is.”
10
ELLA
Maret spends the morning of my audition preparing me. She twists my curls into a braid that wraps around my head like a crown, the same style the Royal Flyers wore at the festival. I shut my eyes and draw the palace maps in my mind. I imagine walking down the long hallways. Turning a corner and seeing Nikolai, haughty, his crown glinting on his head.
My stomach is a knot. I’m a nervous eater—my mother could always tell I was anxious when the pantry would go intriguingly empty—but Edvin hasn’t yet brought our usual weekly delivery from the market.
Maret tugs at the sleeves of my black full-suit, procured by Edvin. “A little short, but if you mind the cuff, no one can see the tattoo.”
Next, she stuffs a letter in my cloak pocket. “You can drop that at the postal office in the Wharf District before you head to the palace for auditions. I have an old friend in Illaset. Now that Nikolai has reneged on his engagement, I think the Illasetish might be keen to see a change of leadership. You remember the postal office?”
“The one that said they wouldn’t hire anyone who wasn’t from Kostrov?”
“You’re very hung up on that.” She straightens my cloak. “There. You’re ready.” She sets her hands on my shoulders. “You look like a flyer already, dear girl.”
I can feel my heart beating in my stomach. After so many months, I’ll finally see the place that made Cassia. And meet the boy who ordered her death.
“Remember. If anyone asks, you trained with Luda. Your parents were Terrazzan, but you moved to New Sundstad as a girl. You live on a no-name street in Southtown.”
I nod.
“You’re an excellent flyer,” she says. “Don’t look so nervous.”
But she looks as nervous as I feel. We both know how important my audition is.
“I don’t want to disappoint you,” I say.
“You’re not doing it for me,” she says. “You’re doing it for Cassia. And the crown.” She wraps me in a brief hug. Squeezes. “The crown is everything. I wouldn’t trust anyone else with this job.”
Then she wishes me luck, and I’m off.
My path through New Sundstad winds. Some of the stone bridges have crumbled, leaving one the choice to hire a gondolier or keep looking for a dry route. Since I don’t have any money, I walk on.
A tangy smell settles over the street. I press my sleeve to my nose. Just when I think I can’t take the stench any longer, I turn a corner and see a gray animal carcass sprawled across the path.
It has a pale, distended belly and a flat face. Three men in smart wool coats and brimmed caps lean over the body. One holds a knife, slicing open the creature’s blubbery middle. Another holds a pen, scribbling notes. The third holds his nose.
“It’s a bay porpoise,” the man with the knife says. “Look at that coloration.”
“Are you daft?” the pen-and-paper man says. “He’s a seal-nosed porpoise. Where are the Skaratan scholars? They’ll tell you.”
“I’m going to be sick,” says the nose-holder.
I wince at the porpoise of indiscernible species. He deserves better.
Once I’m upwind, I can breathe again, but the porpoise isn’t the only remnant of Storm Five. Overhead, silhouettes of birds pebble the sky, but the city is nearly barren of them. Whole streets are so flooded that I can’t walk through them. Roofs have caved in. The canal water teems, carrying a current of branches, boards, children’s dolls, men’s work boots, glass bottles, a pair of spectacles, a sodden copy of Captain’s Log.
When I reach the Wharf District, I see the line for the postal office before I see the actual building. I drop Maret’s letter in a mail slot inside as a woman argues with the postal clerk behind the counter.
“No letters from Grunholt? Are you sure? But my sisters are there. No, I’m sure they want to reach me. Well, when do you expect the ship from Grunholt will arrive?”
At least, when I left Terrazza behind, I didn’t leave anyone to worry about.
I hurry back into the damp square of the Wharf District. My stomach is roiling more fiercely than ever. I pass a girl about my age, long-limbed with a pretty smile, and all I can think is, Seas, I hope she’s not auditioning. I don’t know what Maret will do if I don’t get the spot. I don’t know what I’ll do.
A cluster of people stand in the shadow of Our Lady of Tidal Sorrows, and when I turn my nose to them, I catch a smell so lovely that I almost forget the odor of dead porpoise.
I take a few steps closer.
It smells like honey and warmth.
In the door of Our Lady of Tidal Sorrows, a woman stands by a table stacked with cloth-covered loaves of bread. My stomach grumbles monstrously.
I take another step. Glance around. When no one stops me, I slide into the queue.
The seashell façade of Our Lady of Tidal Sorrows looms over me. Nearby, one of the windows is smashed. Bits of glass still scatter the stone beneath. As a pair of men walk by, one elbows the other and says, sourly, “Brightwallers.”
A man in all white is scrubbing paint from a wall near the window. I don’t recognize what’s written there. I know three languages, but not this one. It’s almost Kostrovian, but—
The person in line behind me jostles me forward. I drag my gaze away and keep walking.
When I reach the front of the line, the woman greets me with a broad smile. She wears a modest white cloak and her hair in a subdued knot.
“Many breaths, friend,” she says.
“Is the bread free?”
She waves me closer. “A gift from the Sacred Breath. Come.”
I shamble forward, transfixed. When she tugs back the cloth, revealing row upon row of beautiful, steaming loaves of rye bread, I think I’m liable to soak them with my drool.
I reach out. The woman lifts up a loaf but doesn’t give it to me.
“It’s easy to be afraid during a storm,” she says. “Even I found myself as frightened as a child when the thunder started booming.”
Seas. She knows she has a captive audience. I try to give her a polite degree of attention, but my eyes keep flicking back to the bread.
“So,” she continues, “during Storm Five, I lit a candle and returned to one of my favorite passages in Captain’s Log. The sea chose to spare Kos during the last Flood. When we read his words, we read a guide on how one must act to earn the sea’s favor. Compassion. Patience. Hope.”
“Um,” I say. Bread bread bread bread bread. “Yes. Completely.”
“Kos dreamed of a golden age,” she says, “when s
ociety was pure and no longer required the cleansing of the Floods.”
My stomach rumbles again. “I couldn’t agree more.”
“Though the consequences of the last Flood were high, think of the benefit. It allowed Kos to spread his message.” She smiles with lots of teeth. “The next Flood will bring a New World even more beautiful than this one.”
And then, finally, blessedly, she extends the bread toward me. I stretch out my greedy, greedy hands.
But my sleeve inches up my forearm, putting the tattoo on display. A swirl of hair; vacant eyes; a woman’s torso; a fish’s tail.
“Oh,” the woman says. “Oh.”
I yank my sleeve over my wrist.
She pulls the bread back to her stomach. “A siren?” Her eyebrows come together, and it’s not empathy that follows the flash of disgust. It’s pity.
The crowd stirs behind me.
She waits for me to explain, but there’s no point: She’s already decided she knows all she needs to.
I drop my hands to my sides.
“Oh, dear,” she says. Her cheeks are pink. I would like to tell her to stuff her secondhand embarrassment up her holy ass, but I don’t feel safe in this crowd. “Perhaps you ought to run along.”
I turn in a hurry. I collide with a body twice my size in every dimension. The man’s hair is long and thin and dirty, and I can see his scalp through it.
“Excuse me,” I say, but he doesn’t move.
I clench my hands into fists and go around him. I’ve only made it three steps when he says, “You’re too pretty, you know.”
I turn slowly. Back toward him. His eyes are on my sleeve.
“To be that way,” he says.
I grit my teeth until I think they will break. But I say nothing. I walk away. My vision threatens to blur with the memory of Cassia.
Too pretty, he says.
The sea is pretty too.
Girls at the Edge of the World Page 6
