When the Sea is Rising Red (5 page)

The darkness is a blanket. I stumble over the shadows of things that are not there, falling and scraping my knees and palms on the seashell grit that edges each paving stone. This time the dog must hear me, for it yaps once into the starless night. Another dog joins it, and soon all my brother’s damned dragon-dogs are baying and barking in a frenzy. Their howls echo against the distant forested hills.

Not bothering to be silent now, I run for the long shadows of the box firs that grow alongside our house. Protected from the worst of the sea-winds, they grow tall. I huddle in between them, the fresh piney scent filling my nostrils. Under it is the heady loam of the soil, grounding me.

“There anyone out?” calls a woman’s voice. Firell.

I shut my eyes and press myself against the wall, dampening the back of my coat.
Go away.

Instead of magically hearing my thoughts and disappearing back into the house, Firell walks down the pathway. Her boots thud on the stone. She pauses, and I want to scream. Then the footsteps fade away.

Oh Gris.
Thank all the Old Saints that Hobs aren’t any more magical than a handful of dried beans. I’m about to leave my little piney sanctuary when I hear her voice again, soft and coaxing, and the rattle of the wooden latch to the dogs’ enclosure. The hounds have stopped barking, and while there’s nothing for me to fear from the dogs, I suddenly wish that I had spent less time with them.

The first comes haring up the pathway, claws clicking on stone. I close my eyes again and tip my head back against the wall in resignation. A few seconds later a cold nose is touching my hand. The bitch whines and licks at my fingers.

“Go away, Mar,” I whisper. “Shoo!”

Mar sits down on her haunches and gazes up at me with brown-eyed devotion, her long red tail sweeping the paving.

“No treats,” I hiss. “Go on! Shoo!” I flap at her with my hands, but the dog is used to getting little tidbits or scraps of meat from me, not being shoved away. She just sits there and whines low.

“What’s there, girl?” Firell’s voice is nervous. She must have a lantern because a warm orange spill of light is bouncing along the ground, lapping at my hiding place.

It’s no use. I push my hands against the wall in anger and then step out into the light.

Firell almost drops the fatcandle lamp. “Miss!” She presses one hand to her mouth and then lets it fall again. Her eyes narrow. “What are you doing out here? You’ll catch your death.”

“Firell.”

She stops her solicitations over my health and takes in the clothes I’m wearing. A frown gathers across her face. “I don’t understand,” she whispers.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“I-I—”

“Look,” I snap. “It’s simple. You’re not to say you’ve seen me here tonight, no matter who asks.” I smile at her. “Come now, Firell, sweet. I brought you a gift. Are we not friends?”

The Hob stares at me, her free hand going automatically to the little bulge in her apron pocket.

“Please,” I say, resorting to begging. “I just can’t stay here.” I look wildly about me, expecting that any minute now, alerted by the noise, my mother will come trundling down from the house with her clothes in disarray and servants following her like the tide.

“Miss,” she says again. “Miss, I can’t lie to your mother.” Her face is almost pale in the darkness, ashy with fright. “You know I can’t.”

“You’re a Hob,” I say. “You lie to her all the time—about how much sugar you put in your tea or how many slices of bread you’ve taken.”

“That I don’t,” Firell says. “Here.” She pulls the necklace from her pocket and throws it at my feet. “I don’t want none of your gifts.”

“Firell, please.” I’m desperate now. “I’m sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean it, truly. Keep the necklace, but please just do me this one thing, and I’ll never ask anything more of you.” I hug myself, shivering at the thought of being forced into a future I don’t want. Or of the punishment that waits for me if I don’t do as I’m told. Owen is not a man prone to forgiveness.

She looks at me with sudden understanding. “When I was just a Hobling,” she says, “my mam told me I’d be coming here to help look after a little girl—a little high-Lammer girl. And I didn’t have no say in the matter.”

I stay quiet, watching her, my fingers tightening on my coat lapels.

“I thought you were lucky—no scrubbing nothing, clothes laid out for you every morning, tea in bed. And all I wanted was to go back to being a Hobling in Stilt City, at play. I hated you so much, every day for years.” She kneels and takes Mar by the collar, holding her still. “Go on then,” she says. “I didn’t never see you here tonight.”

“Thank you.” But the Hob woman has already turned away, dragging the dog with her. On the ground, the little gift still lies. I drop to one knee, scoop it up, and jam it deep into my coat pocket.

I wait a few heartbeats, letting the silence of the night drift around me in a thick mist before I set off again. This time I keep to the long shadows where the darkness gathers thickest, picking my way across the silvery damp grass until I reach the edge of the world. Below, the rocks and waves are grinding against each other, and the wind sucks at me, begging me to take one more step, to throw myself down.
Sacrifice,
the water says in its sea-witch voice, full of whispers and promises. Sometimes I have to wonder if the Hob belief that the sea is animate, alive and full of magic, is more than just primitive nonsense.

Instead, I kneel and pull a rock free from the cliff edge. The wind tugs at the golden-brown silk as I unwind and rewrap the shawl around the shoes and the lump of pale chalk. Then I stand, take a careful step away from the edge, and hurl the shawl out into the ocean.

That’s all the sharif will find of me.

4

B
Y THE TIME
I see the Levelling Bridge, the sun is streaking the horizon pink. Gold edges the last of the smeared clouds, and the sails of the returning fish boats are cheerily white. My feet, however, are far from cheery. The whole of my right heel feels like one huge blister—the boots are certainly a size too small. My toes are pinched and sore. With my teeth gritted, I hoist my little holdall higher and walk down Spindle Way, drawing closer and closer to the bridge. Around me the first of the early-morning delivery carts are
clip-clopping
past. The large goatlike nillies with yellow eyes—unicorns who have had their horns sawed off to feed our need for a cut-rate replacement for scriv—shove at one another, and the stone road is already covered with the little black pellets of their dung. Straw and mud have been tracked here, and they mingle with the fine white sand that blows in from the harbor.

I stand with one foot on the bridge. The bridge-houses loom on either side of me, packed close as cards in a Saint’s deck. Once I cross and lose myself in Old Town, it’ll be done.
That’s what you want, Felicita.

Or I could be a little bird again and fly back to my tower. And then what? A lifetime of dull and careful parties, a marriage engineered for Pelim’s fortune, and then a long stretch into eternity. Gray and featureless.

Old Town might stink of fish and feces, but it still has to be better than
that
.

Even the thought of my mother’s face creased in anguish can’t slow me. She will soon forget any heartache, I’m sure. After all, she has Owen. If I return before my mother has time to panic, all that will happen is that I’ll be watched more closely, have less privilege. A few months and then I’ll be trapped in House Canroth, watching Piers blow baubles of glass. Perhaps, dutifully, I’ll even make my own.

I imagine his white fingers touching me, slug-like in the dark, and I shudder. A show of weakness that I can’t allow myself. If there’s one thing my mother taught me, it is how to wear the perfect mask. Never show them what you’re really feeling because that’s how they hurt you. I picture my mother’s face when she must go out in public with Owen, the cold arrogant look she wears, as if the whole world is filth before her. It is an expression I’ve learned to copy well, and like all roles, if you can believe it, you can be it. I press my hands to my face and push, smoothing the worry and fear away. I’m better than them. Better than Owen, than Canroth Piers. They can never really control me because they cannot bridle my thoughts.

It works. I’m calm again. Let Piers and Owen make the wedding arrangements, just don’t expect the bride to be there like a dog called to heel. I’ll choose my own Gris-damned husband, thank you. If I even want one, and I’m not exactly certain of that. I want life on my own terms, not on the dictates of tradition and of haggling over power and land.

I will never let myself be caught like that—any marriage I make will be my own. A choice. A free one.

Idiot girl
. Owen always called me that. And perhaps now it is truer than ever, but I don’t care.

The thought of my future husband isn’t easily forgotten, so I try to replace it. In my head I turn Piers’s pasty fingers to long white ones, the overpowering smell of scriv to that strange subtle magic I got off the bat on the promenade … I shake my head, breathe deeply.

The stench of Pelimburg thickens as I go farther across the bridge. A few hardy souls have already set up open-air tea stalls, and fat Hob women with dark faces and screeching voices call out as I pass. “Tea’s champ,” they say. “Hot for the girls and cold for the boys.” Another one fries elvers in oil and wraps them in flat-bread cones. The air smells of shellfish, sweat, rotting seaweed, and strong tea. I wrinkle my nose and wonder if pressing a kerchief to my mouth will give me away as a House Lammer. If people remember seeing me, and talk to the sharif, then my game will be up.

A sudden chill stops me. Someone did spot me before and told my brother where I was. How long before word reaches him and I am hauled back, on a tightened chain? I need to do something. I look this way and that, suddenly terrified that everyone is staring at me and wondering why it is I’m here in Old Town, dressed in tat.

Then I see them.

Two bats are standing outside one of the bridge tailor shops, waiting for it to open. Most businesses will only serve them at prearranged times or unlikely hours so that more respectable Houses will not have to endure the bats’ presence. They’re watching me. One walks away from his kin, toward me, frowning. While bats all look similar, there is something about him that tugs at me, about the way he stands, as if he is not really a part of this world, as if he is merely someone looking on. I lower my head and walk faster, pretending that I don’t notice, that he is not the Sandwalker bat I met the last time I ran. The memory of his scent and magic makes my breathing tight.

“Felicita?” he says. It is him.
Please, please,
I whisper under my breath.
Please go away. Please don’t remember seeing me
. I do not look up. If I make eye contact, then he will know that it’s me.

He doesn’t call my name again, and after a few moments, I risk a backward glance. The bats are gone. The tailor has ushered them into the shop. Curiosity, or something like it, makes me backtrack. I peer through the dusty windows into the warm glow. The spry little tailor is talking to them. The bats have their backs to me. I linger, my palms pressed to the glass, just watching the shorter one as he stands with an easy, casual grace, his hands in his trouser pockets.

Then, as if a string has tightened between us, he turns around and sees me.

I jerk away from the window and lurch down the pavement, blindly knocking pedestrians out of my path.

A cleaning-Hob flicks her street-broom at me. I step out into the street, trying to avoid the press of bodies.

“What about this,” says one Hob, her hand reaching out for me. “Lost, are you, little Lam?”

I rush past her and pull my ugly brown shawl from my holdall and cover my head. I’m too recognizable as a Great House Lammer—the auburn is a dead giveaway. It won’t be long before I’m caught out for what I am. Gris-damn the Pelim red in my hair.

I pause in my tracks.

Some of the low-Lammers dye their hair red. It’s a cheap dark color, with no subtlety or life.

Perfect. And for the first time since I left my prison, I find myself smiling.

“Here! Out of the way, frail-bit,” yells a man, and a cart clatters past me with a full load, a tangle of tarred ropes and netting. I twist out of his way and hurry on down the sidewalk. All I need to do is keep my nose high and wait till I smell the distinctive pungent aroma of hair paste.

It doesn’t take long. The hairdresser’s is a dark little shop squeezed between a fish stall and a nilly-runner’s. Already a line is streaming from the runner’s door, as the men place bets on the racing.

The hairdresser’s glass-and-wood door is grimy, and I push it open gingerly, wondering if my mother is not completely insane in her belief that all the Hobs and low-Lammers carry filthy diseases. A little ivory bell clacks, and a girl with her hair in many long thin braids looks up. She’s leaning on the counter, and next to her elbow is a fatcandle, its oily smoke drifting about her head. Her hands are stained a deep red as if she’s wearing bloody gloves, and she stares at me over her interlaced fingers. Her wide eyes are slanted, the deep gray green of true Hobs. Her skin is warmed gold by the candle-lamps, and she looks otherworldly, beautiful.

“Clear off,” she says, giving me a dismissive glance. “You’re in the wrong shop.”

She can make it so that no high-Lam or bat with a passing acquaintance could possibly recognize me. Carefully, I straighten my shoulders and pull the shawl from my head.

“Oh.” She taps at her teeth with a brown fingernail. “Definitely in the wrong shop.”

“I want you to dye my hair,” I say. I try to stare her down but she just looks at me, her forehead puckered. She’s still tapping at her teeth.

Tap tap tap.