When the Sea is Rising Red (10 page)

The cake is a heavy chocolate, soaked in brandy and covered in clotted cream and berries. It’s so rich that I have to eat it slowly, savoring every cream-covered sweet sliver.

“You’re one of Dash’s,” says Charl. He’s never spoken to me before.

I nod, even though I’m not exactly certain that I am. Even if Dash accepts me, I still have to make myself indispensable in some way, prove myself to Lils. I’ve already worked out that stern, unsmiling Lilya is the paste that holds Whelk Street together. She seems to know everyone and everything: all the best places to steal bruised fruit and where to scrounge the last of the half-rotten vegetables off the barrows. She even knows how to climb the cliff for eggs, and without her, I think the Whelk Streeters would starve. She’s hard and dry as ship’s tack though. Luckily, she’s tempered by Nala, who softens some of her brusqueness.

Charl swallows a huge forkful of cake, seemingly without chewing. “My mate says there’s poisonink down at the dock, waiting to head upriver. You let Dash know to meet us at the usual.” He sips his tea and stares at me.

“Um,” I say. “I—I haven’t seen him around, but I’ll let Lils know.”

He nods. “That’ll do. Now eat your cake.”

A black carriage rattles past us, drawn by a bevy of dark unicorns. Their cloven hooves clatter on the stone, and they swing their heavy horns back as they shake their heads.

“Bloody show-offs,” says Charl. “Can’t bloody use nillies like normal folk. Have to rub everyone’s face in it. More money than they ought to have.”

“Who is it?” I don’t recognize the carriage, and there is no House insignia on the door.

“Gris-damned bats,” he says, before spitting on the ground. “Think they own the bloody city nowadays. New money, new power. But still the same as the old lot. No better than mucking House Lams.”

The coachman flicks his whip over the backs of the unis, and they pull away, forcing the other, smaller carriages out of their path. The back of the coach glints like black oil spilled on water. Bats. I shiver, remembering the feel of Jannik’s magic ghosting over my skin. The smell of musk and soap, and the way his hair brushed against my neck as he hid me from my brother. He’s ugly, I have to remind myself. He’s pale and skinny and he lives on nilly-blood.

I wonder if it’s his coach, if he’s inside there now, watching me. My mouth goes dry, my palms sweaty. All day I’ve been trying not to think of this damned party I’m supposed to attend, but it’s hanging over me. Anything could happen. All I know of Jannik is what I’ve gleaned from two chance meetings. For all I know, once he has me at his party I’ll be caught and trotted back to my family’s home. Why not—after all, the bats need to find ways to sweeten their relationships with the Great Houses. For all the talk of equality, everyone knows the bat Houses continue in Pelimburg on our sufferance only. A step in the wrong direction and the three vampire Houses could lose everything.

I’m being ridiculous. If he wanted to curry favor with my family, he could have merely tipped them off that I’m here at the Crake.

There’s something else that he wants from me, and I’ll be damned as a Saint who told a bad future if I know what it is.

A moment later, I spot a familiar bird’s nest of red hair. Nala trots up the wide sidewalk, her hands full of leashes. She’s walking a collection of dragon-dogs. They are tall and thin, with high, sloping shoulders and long jaws with wolfish teeth. People move quickly out of her way. She doesn’t stop when she sees me, but she flashes a white smile and sort of waves her fist a little. The dogs strain on the leather and pull her onward.

Bemused, I wave back.

*   *   *

T
HE TOWNSPEOPLE ARE SHUTTING UP SHOP
, and street children are picking through the garbage on the sidewalks. I try to avoid the gangs—I’m still nervous after my attack—so I take the wide central road, where the street theaters are busy packing up now that the last shows are done for the day. As I rush through the homeward-bound crowds, someone yells my name. Or at least, the name I’ve stolen.

My heart jumps, and I try to pretend I didn’t hear the shout.

“Firell! Oi, you! The girl in blue. Kitty-girl!”

Gris-damn it all. I turn slowly. My heart is doing double-time. I can feel how the blood has drained from my face. My skin is cold.

A tall, skinny young man is waving at me. He’s standing at a street-theater wagon. Is this the infamous Dash? I doubt it, I’m sure I’ve seen this one leaving the Whelk Street house, and he’s a mild, gangling sort of person. With my breathing as steady as I can hold it, I smooth down my skirts and walk toward him.

He’s got a friendly face and hair in a long ragged cut. Low-Lammer, for sure. “You’re the new girl?” he says as I draw closer.

I nod.

“Verrel.” He pulls a bag of tobacco from his paint-spattered jacket and begins to roll himself a ’grit. His fingers are deft and fast. “Smoke?”

“N-no thanks.” Verrel is one of the Whelk Streeters, and relief warms my skin. Lilya said he keeps to his own time, out chasing skirts and keeping the pubs in business. When he’s not playing at being a theater boy. Everything she’s told me about him makes him sound like a reprobate, but instead, he comes across as affable and charming. Perhaps he is all three, and then he will have been well named after the infamous progenitor of House Ives. It’s even possible that he’s some bastard cousin to the current Ives’ line, saddled with a name like that.

Verrel shakes his head and licks the paper closed, his tongue darting smoothly. After he’s lit it and taken a long suck on the smoke, he cocks his head at me, as friendly as if he were one of my brother’s dragon-dogs.

“Lils described you pretty good.” He grins. “You’re heading back?”

Before I can even answer, he’s rummaging in his pockets again. “I’m going to be late, got a night show. We have candle-lanterns and everything.”

“I see.” I don’t, not really. I’ve never paid Hob street theater much mind. He’s so excited that he doesn’t notice my lack of enthusiasm.

“Here then, there you are,” he says to the small brown paper packet he’s finally retrieved from his bulging pockets. “Give them to Esta for me, will ya?”

The packet smells sweet and minty, and inside it are hard roundish lumps.

“Humbugs,” he says. “Tell her not to set any Lammers on fire, and I’ll take her out for cakes when I get my day off.”

“Oh, oh—yes. I’ll do that.” I shove the packet into my little tote.

He grins and takes another long drag. “Poor thing,” he says. “Not much of a girlhood if there’s no one giving you sweets and toys.”

I try to picture sullen little Esta ever playing with dolls or wooden and ivory blocks. It seems unlikely.

“Nice meeting you,” he says, just as a Hob, portly and covered in greasepaint and wearing a voluminous fake beard, yells at him to stop chatting up the lasses. “Say hey to the rest.” He touches his hand to his ragged hair in a friendly salute and turns back to packing up the sets.

I stand there for a moment, thoughts swirling through my head, then trot on toward home.

*   *   *

B
ACK AT THE SQUAT
, Lils is crouched in the washroom, wearing nothing but a graying shift, while Esta pours jugs of water over her head. Lils’s hair is still tightly pinned up. It makes no sense. Wordlessly, I hand Esta the crumpled, sticky packet. She scowls.

“From Verrel,” I tell her, but she doesn’t say anything back, just fishes out one striped golden-brown sweet and pops it into her mouth.

Uncertain, I stand there, waiting for a chance to give Lils the message.

Lils wipes water from her face and glares at me. “What do you want?” Her shift is wet, clinging to her body and almost see-through. She looks vulnerable, like a hermit crab changing shells.

“Oh … uh … I have a message from Charl at the Crake—”

“I know who he is. What does the little chancer want?” She touches her damp hair, then looks to Esta. “Another bucket, need to be sure it’s wet all the way through before I let it down.”

Esta goes to fetch another bucket, leaving us alone.

“The message is for Dash,” I mumble.

Lils snorts. “Give me it.”

“Something about poisonink, and meet Charl at the usual.” I spread my hands in apology. “He didn’t say much.”

Her brow wrinkles into a frown, then after a moment’s thought, she nods. “I’ll let Dash know, sure enough,” she says. “Verrel spotted him down at Market Way earlier.” Lils squints at me. “His Flashness’ll be pleased to hear that bit of news, right enough.”

“So he’ll let me stay?”

“Can’t right say.” She turns away. “Depends on if you got what he wants.” Lils turns her back to me and begins to pull hairpins loose, slowly, one by one, setting them out neatly before her.

For a moment I can smell the meadows behind my house, the must of nillies and leather. A childhood recollection of trying to follow Owen on a hunt, of a fall made nightmarish by the passing of years. The crack of bone, followed by almost unbelievable pain. I remember sweat sticking my dress to my skin, and how my arm throbbed, hardly feeling like it belonged to me. Walking home alone across the heath because Owen did not want to stop his chase.

Water splashes on the tiles, spattering my boots and dress as Lils dumps a bucket over her loosened curls.

I am back in the present, and I frown at the memory as it slips back to where it belongs, hidden and best forgotten.

If I’ve got what Dash wants?

My heart flutters, and I will it to slow. Just what exactly does she mean by that, I wonder.

8

T
HE NEXT AFTERNOON
when I hang up my apron at the end of my shift, I get my first pay packet. I’ve worked six whole days, and the thirty brass bits clinking inside the envelope seems like both a fortune and a pittance. I pick my way nervously through Old Town, aware of the strange heaviness in my coat pocket. I wonder if I walk naturally, or if there’s an extra swing to my arms, a giddiness to my walk that might make me a target for Jaxon, or someone like him.

Tomorrow is my day off, and I plan to head down to Old Town market early to trade in my pilfered trinkets from Pelim House and my boots, and get a pair that fits and a change of clothes. A whisper flutters through my head, about how if I worked harder, longer, perhaps I could save up enough for a smidgen of scriv. The thought makes me laugh aloud, choking on my own naïve hope.

I’ll never be able to afford scriv now. Even uni-horn—a barely passable substitute—trades on the market at thirty-two copper bits an eighth. And trade in scriv is strictly controlled. The few merchants will sell only to House Heads or their official representatives.
Never again, Felicita.
Shaken by this realization, I lurch around the curve of the promenade and up Whelk to where the shabby green house is waiting.

Upstairs, Lils is already home, although there’s no sign of Nala or Esta. Verrel from the street theater is stretched out on the carpet smoking a roll-up and staring at the ceiling. Every now and again he hums a snatch of a tune from one of the popular low musicals that are all the rage in Old Town. Lils is deep in conversation with a skinny little Hob who is sitting cross-legged on a tea crate, stripping the husks off some withered green maize that must have fallen off one of the vegetable barrows. He looks my age, maybe a year or two older, and he has the leanness of poverty, the old eyes in a young face. All around him are white linen-wrapped bales, smelling sweet and dusty. They seem to have taken over the squat, covering every available surface. He’s one of Charl’s lackeys, I gather, come to drop off the ’ink.

“—and not,” the Hob says, jabbering away so fast that the words melt into each other, “for any reason. No reason that they can give, of course. Typical fucking Houses, ya know?”

“I know.” Lils prods at the stock she’s boiling up out of end-of-day market pickings.

“Just where do they get off? I mean, the best they can do is tell Esta that they’ll give’r compensation. What’s that worth? What do you pay someone when their family is dead? I mean, Rin’s ’er brother, he’s all she fucking has—had—left, and they think a handful of brass is gonna heal all ills?” He keeps asking questions, but doesn’t wait for anyone to answer. “Fucking Lammers,” he says. “Present company excluded.”

“Exclusion accepted,” says Verrel, and he sings a line from
Merriweather’s Fortune
before taking another protracted drag of his smoke.

The Hob is high. I’ve seen them a lot now around Old Town, strung out on the little silvery-gray leaves of poisonink. ’Ink can give you visions, make you think you can solve all the world’s problems, but it also tends to make you talk a load of absolute nonsense. The crakes take it. For inspiration, they say.

“Is this lot ready?” the Hob asks, hands twitching as he waves at the pot.

Lils sighs, stabs at the contents with her wooden spoon, and says in a patient voice, “Not for hours yet. Why don’t you go lie down and I’ll give you a shout when I dish up.”

But he’s not listening. He’s spotted me, and he hops down from the crate. The Hob is a little taller than he looked sitting down, but not by much, and he has a roguish grin that reminds me of Jaxon. I step back and brush a tangled lock of hair behind my ear.

“And this,” he crows as he approaches me, “this must be the latest addition to our happy little family. You’re the kitty-girl, right? Lils told me all about you.”

“I—” I take a deep breath because I have really had enough of this now. “Am. Not. A. Gris-damned. Kitty-girl. Will you lot get that through your thick Hob skulls!”

Lils laughs and keeps stirring. Verrel coughs on his hand-rolled ’grit.

“Oh,” says the Hob. “I like you.” He holds out one hand. “I’m Dash, by the way, kitty dearest.”

Right.
I stare at the Hob. Even Jaxon was more impressive. He grins back at me as I scrutinize him. Like most Hobs, his olive skin is tanned a deep brown, and his hair is thick and black and unruly. It curls down to his collar and falls over his gray-green eyes. There are salt stains on his clothing, although, for a Hob, it’s pretty fine clothing. His waistcoat is silk, emerald green, and the buttons are black ivory from a sphynx’s tooth. He’s wearing a black neckcloth, loosely knotted in a lopsided bow.