She forced herself out of bed, stumbling first to the window to crank it open. Sunlight flooded the room, making her squint for a moment. She turned back to the desk, and had the recollection of having too much to drink and upending the ink jar herself in a moment of fury. Last night, she had decided not to care anymore, that she could build a boat on that sea of anger and float on it until the end of time.
Now…
Mornings were a curious thing. How the mere act of sleep, and then later, the brightness of daylight, could transform the bleakness of eternity into a bad dream, had always been a source of fascination for Portia. Not today, though; today, she found herself throwing rags and old laundry on the parchment in an attempt to salvage her drawings. Already, her mind was racing through the excuses. Her boss didn’t know about the cat. She could use that again, if he would take it. He might not. He had asked her to throw the damn thing away the last time. Could she feign a robbery? It was not unheard of, and she didn’t exactly live on the safest street. But if her boss made her report to the watchmen, she could be in trouble.
She pulled a bucket of water close, dipped the soiled rags, and wrung it dry. She wiped the parchment again.
Maybe she could pretend she meant the colours to turn out that way.
Portia didn’t have the luxury to think about more than that. She heard the birds outside the window, along with the faint cry of the newspaper boy as he made his rounds, and knew with certainty that she had overslept. She tore herself away from her ruined drawings to get ready. Washcloth, clothes that didn’t look slept in, a quick bite of last night’s stew from the bottom of the pot, and then she was rolling up her drawings into a bundle and racing down the street to join the rest of Drusgaya for the day. Nerian might have been a bastard, but life had to go on.
Had to go on. Funny words, coming from the same mind that had convinced her she had been ready to die last night. She was still angry, but panic was doing a lot to hold it all in, and when she walked into the office building, she had a ready smile plastered on her face and pleasant greetings hovering at the tip of her tongue.
The receptionist wasn’t there, which by itself wasn’t a strange thing. But her boss was standing by the doorway that led to her desk. “Portia,” he said, half-surprised to see her suddenly walk in.
“Sorry I’m late,” Portia said, forcing that smile to work its way to her lips. “I had a rough night. I do have the concept drawings for the Arganus Keep that you asked for ready.” She craned the leather satchel towards him, with the bundle of rolled-up drawings.
Krastus smiled back, but he barely looked at them. “Do you have a moment?” he asked.
“What’s this about?”
“I think it would be a lot better to talk in private.”
Crestfallen, she nodded, following him to an empty hall that served as the meeting room most days. There was an enormous table in the middle of it—hand-carved oak, Krastus had once boasted—ringed with similarly elaborate chairs with velvet cushions. Arched windows covered an entire wall. You could see the inlet, and a silhouette of Halfmoon Bay, if you stood at just the right angle.
Portia didn’t think Krastus wanted to talk about the view. She sidled into the closest seat, and watched as Krastus deliberately walked to the end of the table, far enough from her to create a distance. That stood out. If he had wanted to talk about the drawings, he would’ve sat right next to her.
“It’s been a tough year,” Krastus said. “I think you know that. We lost the bid for the reconstruction of the mages’ hall at Fort Bastras, and you know how much I’ve been really counting on that to get us through the next few months. And then having to deal with the scale issue of the domed rooftop of Zokras Cathedral…” He cracked a smile.
“What are you saying?” Portia asked.
“We can’t afford to keep you on,” he said. “We’re going to have to let you go.” He said it with a small cringe, as if saying the words were a lot more painful than hearing them.
Outside, the birds chirped. They had to; it was a spring morning.
“All right,” Portia said. She had said the same words when Nerian declared he was taking a ship with that two-faced slut he’d met at the market not even a month ago. All right. It gave her a moment to think, to calm her fraying nerves, even though all she really wanted to do was hurl the nearest thing at Krastus’ sympathetic face, which in this case happened to be the bowl of fruit in the middle of the table. Why now? her insides screamed. Why didn’t you warn me before? You would’ve seen this coming. You could’ve eased me into it, let me make a few arrangements here and there to soften the blow…
“It was a difficult decision to make,” Krastus continued, oblivious of her internal dialogue. “But I think we both knew this would happen. You’ve made so many little mistakes the past couple of years with us, and after Zokras Cathedral…”
“You told me not to worry about that.” I had spent hours on those drawings last week. I stayed up all night.
“Still, you’re a junior architect, and…” He smiled, and Portia heard the unspoken words: shit rolls downhill.
He continued talking about the incidents the past couple of years, about all the things she could’ve done to change them. Portia lost sense of the words as soon as they left his lips, and stared numbly at her fingertips. Losing Nerian and her job one after another felt unreal. She was thinking about how long until her apartment’s rent was due, and how she was going to break the news to her old father and young daughter, who both lived in her hometown near the city of Lasta. She had been hoping to be able to afford to bring them to Drusgaya in a few months’ time, had somehow fooled herself into thinking she could start a new life together with them and Nerian and that cat, that blasted cat…
“…are you listening?” Krastus asked.
She nodded. “I understand.” She did, and she didn’t. She was still thinking of Nerian. “You have to run a business.” And you have to live your life. And it didn’t matter what that meant for hers, the turmoil she was being thrown into, that yesterday morning she thought she knew where it was headed and now she was going to have to resign herself to pick up the pieces and find a way to make them fit again.
Krastus allowed her to go back to her desk to get her things. One of the junior architects greeted Portia as she came in, made a quick joke about the sound the airships make when they enter the docking towers. She smiled half-heartedly, shoving as much of her things as could fit into a wooden crate, before leaving the office without another word. She caught Krastus’ face on the way out: a pained smile, an acknowledgement that he had plunged a knife into her and was going to leave it there. She wasn’t entirely sure if he was sincere or not.
Outside, the day was as bright as ever. Up above was a blue sky, filled with wisps of flurry clouds, and clear, cascading sunlight that dimpled off the plump dewdrops on the cherry blossoms. It was the sort of beauty that could make any artist weep. She didn’t realize her thoughts were starting to wander again, and in her usual awkwardness stumbled on the side of the street. She tightened her hold on the crate to stop most of its contents from spilling, but a single item rolled out.
Portia bent over to pick it up. It was a small, golden fork. Nerian’s, she realized with a pang of grief. She could still remember the look on his face when she had asked to borrow it during one particularly busy morning, before they had ever moved in together. He was fastidious about his things, but after some…convincing…he had conceded. She had held on to that victory a lot longer than she should’ve—a sign, she had thought, that Nerian was finally softening up, was starting to care, could learn to love her with the depth she loved him.
Her fingers hovered over the handle. A part of her told her she ought to leave it on the street where it belonged, but before it could even stop speaking, she had already picked it up. She stuffed it into her pocket and continued walking.
She didn’t know if she made that wrong turn on purpose. Her apartment was on the right, a small
flat along a crowded, run-down street that she wouldn’t be able to afford next month if she didn’t find work fast enough. She took the left path, along the wide canal that was filled, during this time of the day, with mechanical barges that allowed people to get on and off at certain stops along the city. She could see the three remaining towers of Teleres Palace in the distance. It occurred to her that in all the time she had been in Drusgaya, she had never once paid it a visit.
She joined the crowd waiting to get on a barge, and managed to wedge herself into a seat with the crate on her lap. A woman smiled at her; she smiled back. “Going somewhere in particular?” the woman asked.
“No,” Portia admitted. “I just lost my job,” she added. She hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that.
The woman’s face deepened in a smile of sympathy, and her eyes made a quick glance at the crate on Portia’s lap. “That’s unfortunate,” she said. “But it happens. What do you do for work?”
“I’m an architect,” she said. “At least…I was trying to be. I don’t know anymore.” She looked down at her things, at the scrunched up rolls of paper, dried brushes, a handkerchief, and a jasmine plant in a pot, half-dead. Why did she bother?
“You must’ve come in during the reconstruction boom.” The old woman paused, pointing at a building surrounded with scaffolding. “Two years later, and they still haven’t come close to restoring all we’ve lost during the Hafed attack. They haven’t even picked the next emperor.” She patted Portia’s hand. “Don’t worry. There’s enough builders scrambling throughout the city these days. You’ll find something new.”
“I guess I will,” Portia said, although the words rang empty inside of her. How was she supposed to explain that she had tried that before? It was what brought her to Drusgaya in the first place—a chance for a new beginning, to build a foundation on top of ashes. And now that same foundation had joined the ashes, and she didn’t know how to start again. Was life all just about picking things up after others had knocked it down? Over and over again, until the day you die? How much were you supposed to take?
The barge jolted to a halt. Portia stared at the old woman, wondering if this was her stop. She didn’t really want to talk to her anymore than she had to. When the woman didn’t show signs of moving, Portia herself got up, stammered an awkward goodbye, and stepped back out on the street. The barge rattled behind her before drifting further down the canal.
She looked around, realized she had never gone this far from home before. She had picked her apartment precisely because it had been so near Krastus’ office. She began to wonder if she should’ve begged Krastus to give her another chance. She had tried that with Nerian; it hadn’t worked. There was only so much begging she could do in a day. She had to salvage some dignity.
She realized the street was becoming narrower and that the crowd behind her was gone.
Still, it did not occur to her to worry. Unlike Lastra, Drusgaya’s streets were kept religiously clean, even in the darkest alleys, which gave them a false sense of security. Portia had heard that a team of mage-thralls did the work, that in these few instances, they were allowed to draw on the agan to sweep the gutters and burn the garbage. It was commonly seen as a frivolity, an added burden to the agan fabric that the city could do without. Portia didn’t know much about such debates. Builders were primarily concerned with the physical world, and she hadn’t had the chance to work with mages on any project yet.
Or ever, she found herself thinking.
The woman had been right about the number of builders streaming into the city to set up shop since the Hafed attack two years ago. Krastus had been one of them. Everyone had been hoping to nab a project or two and make a name for themselves before the competition became too much. But most of those builders had brought people in from their old offices; the chances of a new hire getting noticed by a company in Drusgaya was low. The only reason Portia ever got Krastus to look her way in the first place was because his last junior architect had come down with an incurable cough and had decided that the weather in Ad Methas suited him better.
She had moved from Lastra for this job. And if she didn’t find anything new before her rent was due, she was going to have to go back. In Lastra, they still had to shovel horseshit from the roads twice a day.
Yesterday morning, she had been planning to take her daughter to Arganus Keep, to show her what a woman could do if she put her mind to it. Your mother’s design, she had wanted to say. Imagining her daughter’s beaming face was even more painful than the finality in Krastus’ voice.
She had been so deep in these thoughts that she almost walked into a door, flung open to block half the alley. Portia was able to gather her senses in time to see a lithe, black-haired woman in soldier’s garb scamper down the street. A moment later, two men thundered through the door after her.
Portia threw the crate, jasmine pot and all, at their backs. The wood shattered.
One of the men fell forward, crashing against the hard pavement. The other turned to face her. He had a scarred face, twisted features. Not the sort of men Portia usually interacted with. She had the sudden impression that she had done a very bad thing.
“The fuck do you think you’re doing?” the man hissed.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Portia said, backing away. She could smell his foul breath, even from the distance. “I didn’t see you.”
“The fuck you didn’t. You threw that on purpose!”
“You startled me, that’s all!”
“The bitch is getting away,” the other man groaned, pulling himself up. He gave Portia a glare before starting to limp down the street.
“If I catch you skulking around here again…” the first man snarled, brandishing a bare dagger at Portia before tearing after his friend.
Portia watched their figures recede in the distance before she caught her breath. She tried to suck in more air, which made her realize that there were tears in her eyes. She leaned against the wall, and took a moment to cry.
A moment—just a moment. She forced the tears back as soon as she could, her fingers on the bridge of her nose, her spectacles…no. She had forgotten her spectacles in Krastus’ office. How could she have made that mistake? She needed them to read, but she didn’t want to go back there. She would rather die first than have to go back there.
Nerian had always thought she was too emotional. That she carried too much baggage and then showed too much of it, too fast. “How long do you think you’ll survive Drusgaya without me?” he liked to ask her, a smug grin on his beautiful mouth before he would lean in to kiss her. Back then, lost in the taste of him, she hadn’t minded the words so much. But now… How long, indeed. He had been gone less than a day and she had already lost her job and was running into thugs. In clear daylight!
Somehow, the strength returned to her knees. She decided not to pick up her things—she didn’t need them, anyway—and began to make her way back to the barge. She didn’t quite remember the turns she had made, but she reasoned that all she had to do was find the canal.
She hadn’t gotten very far when she heard a sharp whistle.
Portia turned to the sound and felt a hand on her shoulder. Someone dragged her into the alley. She started to scream, and then realized it was the woman, the soldier from earlier. The woman placed a finger on her lips and gestured.
Without asking why, Portia stumbled in after her. They were behind a tall, stone wall, the top of which was decorated with a nauseating array of corbels that seemed to have been installed on a whim. It sometimes boggled her mind how much money the nobility were willing to spend on just showing that they, in fact, had money to spend. It had bothered Krastus, too, and he liked taking their money. In fact…
“My thanks for what you did earlier,” the soldier was saying. Portia snapped back to the present. “But I’m afraid I’m in further need of your help.” She pulled her arm up, revealing a bleeding gash from the elbow to her wrist.
Portia looked at the gaping wou
nd and felt nauseous. “I’m not a physician,” she said, surprised that she could speak without gagging. “Do you uh…want me to find you one?”
“I don’t think I can trust any physician in this neighbourhood,” the woman mumbled. “I just…I haven’t been able to shake those two off my tail. And I need to get back to the palace district in one piece.”
“W-what do you need me to do?”
The woman craned her neck to the side. “I dropped my sword back somewhere. I can tell you where, but I need…” She sank to the ground and was silent. For a moment, Portia was afraid that she was dying, or dead.
“Are you all right?” Portia asked.
The woman’s eyes snapped open. “I just need to rest. I need my sword. They’ll find me soon enough.”
“If you can’t even walk back to get your sword, what makes you think you’re strong enough to fight them?”
“With rest, I can. That’s why I’m asking you to get it,” the soldier said. The irritation was plain on her face.
Portia found herself nodding. “Tell me where,” she mumbled.
The soldier drew her close, whispered the directions in her ear. Portia stumbled back onto the street. There was blood on her robes, on her sleeve and across her collar. The metallic scent clung to her nostrils—no amount of wiping would make it go away.
She found the sword exactly where the soldier had said it would be. Portia didn’t know much about swords, but she had seen it often enough on the watchmen to know it was a standard issue, a sabre, she had heard a fellow architect mention once. She picked it up by the hilt with the tips of her fingers and then quickly dropped it. The leather was drenched with blood.
Portia swallowed and tried to pick it up more firmly this time. The blade seemed so sharp and foreboding that she held it as far away from her body as she could. She felt a little silly holding it this way, but then she didn’t know how to hold a sword properly in the first place.
The Dragonlord's Call Short Story Collection Page 4
