Chapter 6 #2
The next narrow window revealed more of the horizon. Below, near the deep cove, I caught movement through the glass: the suggestion of a tall, willowy figure on the clifftop.
The room on the next landing was stark, its walls bare.
The fireplace was swept, the bed made up severely, and a chilly-looking stone seat nestled beneath the window.
A forlorn pile of items sat beside a pockmarked dresser: a single framed painting, a few dog-eared books, items of simple clothing, folded.
Tigo lugged my case in and set it down on the bed.
“This was your predecessor’s room,” he said. “We didn’t really know what to do with her things, after…” He gestured to the sad pile, then gave a helpless shrug. “We weren’t sure if she had family, where they might be…or even if they’d want to know what happened.”
My insides wrenched. I gazed around the room. It was hard to connect this spartan space with the warm, dynamic presence of my friend.
“Miss Catua, the youngest Shearwater, sorted through her belongings. Felt terrible about it all. She’s a good girl, that one. Some of the things we sold at market. The rest are yours, if you can make any use of them.”
I stepped to the pile, stared down at it wretchedly.
“I knew her,” I said, my voice splintering. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to reveal just how close we’d been. “And trust me, her mother wouldn’t much care.”
Tigo glanced across at me, stoic, and for a moment there was silence, save the rumble of the waves outside. Then he cleared his throat and stepped to the window. “Mawre’s our Gustmouth. She has the top room, upstairs.”
Looking out, I caught sight of the figure again.
A woman: tall, bony, brown skinned, with a long black braid that streamed out behind her.
She was standing near the cliffs that encircled the cove.
In front of her, secured to a large wooden frame, were linen shirts and breeches, flapping wildly in the wind.
Laundry, I guessed, and by the look of it, the family’s.
“There’s Rhianne, too, our Sparkmouth—she’s down in the cellar—but I don’t know—”
As though his words had been a summons, the light patter of feet on the stairs reached our ears. Tigo slipped out the door. I heard whispers.
After a moment, a diminutive figure appeared. Dressed in the same purple livery as Tigo, she had a shock of red hair, an elfin face, an easy smile.
“Hurrah,” she said on seeing me. “Another redhead. Soon we’ll take over the world.” She held a saucer of what looked like roasted sweetnuts, but when Tigo moved in and shot her a warning look—Don’t get too friendly—her shoulders dipped.
Handing him the snacks and stepping over to my grate, she produced a pocket tinderbox, struck up a small flame, and murmured something to it. I jumped as it erupted with a roar.
“Easy there,” Tigo muttered.
“Sorry,” said Rhianne, warming her hands next to the fire. “I’m used to the big hearths up at the castle. Speaking of which…” She glanced out the window. “I’m due to help Cook with supper, and hells welcome me if I’m late.”
“We’ll leave you to get settled,” Tigo said. He glanced down at the sweetnuts, then placed them on my dresser. “And I’ll tell the housekeeper, Miss Haney, you’re here.”
As they turned toward the door, I couldn’t help feeling suddenly very alone.
“What’s it like?” I asked quickly before they could leave. “Working for them. House Shearwater, I mean.”
I was thinking of Zennia’s stories about the Hundred. Of the young man’s cool regard on the causeway.
They exchanged a glance. Tigo seemed to deliberate. “It’s good, solid work,” he said simply, slowly. As though he were trying to convince himself as well as me.
“They leave us alone to get on with things, for the most part,” added Rhianne. “It’s Miss Haney we deal with day to day.”
I thought they would go then, but Tigo hesitated, eyes flicking to the pile of items on the floor. “Zennia’s…passing caused a lot of turbulence,” he said. “Brigant Shearwater—he wasn’t best pleased.”
At Tigo’s word—passing—my stomach flopped. Hearing it spoken aloud, at last, felt like a blade piercing my skin.
“It’s usually a good idea to avoid Rexim’s attention.
But he may take a little more interest in your performance, these first few weeks, in the wake of…
well”—Tigo scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck—“as he sees it, in the wake of Arbenhaw’s failure, thus far, to provide him with a capable Floodmouth. ”
Anger stung me, while shame warmed my cheeks.
Tigo had been there on the causeway; he’d seen me fail.
If I couldn’t persuade the ocean to listen to me soon, if this feeling of floating adrift got worse, Brigant Shearwater would surely notice.
I’d be sent off somewhere else, perhaps somewhere far worse.
I’d never make it to my meeting at the Veil, never find out anything more about Zennia.
“Zennia was the best of us,” I said into the silence. “Top of our year. She was more than capable.”
At that, Rhianne darted a quick look at Tigo. But the Mudmouth carefully avoided her eyes.
“We’re needed at the castle,” he said, grim faced. “I’m sure Miss Haney will contact you soon.”
He took Rhianne’s arm—a gentle steer—and the two of them padded out into the hall. Tigo pulled my door closed behind him.
As I stood there, every intake of breath hitching, their murmurs echoed up the stone steps. Quickly, I slipped off my boots and darted to the door. I eased myself through it, footsteps silent, and moved to the top of the spiralling stairs.
“How did the drop-off go?” Rhianne’s voice, drifting upward.
Tigo’s deeper one: “Fine, apart from the crossing back. Turnstone agreed to half the gold now and half in two weeks, on market day.”
A pause. “Do you think he’ll go out again tonight?”
“Undoubtedly.”
The sound of a faint, shallow sigh.
Rhianne: “Did you hear what she said in there? About Zennia?”
I sidled forward, creeping down another stair.
But Tigo’s answer, when it came, was short: “Not now.”
And with that, their footsteps faded to nothing.
I stood there a moment, listening to my breathing, and thought of the Shearwater Tigo had been accompanying. Was that who they’d been talking about? And why had Rhianne been so struck by what I’d said?
Gripped, now, by a sudden fervor, I hurried to my room and stared around at it. There had to be something here of Zennia’s—something other than that sad pile of items. But I went to them first, rifling through them.
The painting I’d noticed was a picturesque scene of the bay, its docks crowded with ships’ masts.
Maybe Zennia had bought it with her wages, but it seemed unlikely—we were hardly paid anything.
I pried it from its frame, searched for any notes or names, but there was nothing. Perhaps it had come with the room.
The books were slim and looked well thumbed. One of poetry, the other of local legend. After flipping through them, chest tight with grief, I placed them carefully on my dresser, for later.
I couldn’t make myself handle her clothes, some of which I recognized, painfully, from Arbenhaw, so I left them and set about searching the rest of the room.
I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for, really. Anything else—anything that meant something. A hidden journal my friend might have kept; initials scratched somewhere on wood or stone…Something personal that would thread me to Zennia, help me picture her last weeks in this world.
But though I crawled under the bed and peered under the dresser, searched all the drawers for hidden compartments, tapped on the floorboards looking for loose nails…there was nothing. Only bare chill and emptiness.
I was left to sink onto the bed, where she’d slept, and stare at the ceiling through a thick haze of tears.
—
A summons arrived for me just before sundown, borne by a footman from up at the castle. He was dressed impeccably in navy livery embroidered with the House crest: a soaring, white-bellied shearwater.
His arrival interrupted my fevered practice in front of a basin of cold water in my room.
Anxious to confirm I hadn’t lost all my ability, I’d commanded the water to form a whirlpool, made waves in it, parted it, told it to spring into a fountain.
It had heeded me, which was both reassuring and unsettling—though it collapsed as soon as the footman’s knock sounded.
The summons turned out to be from Miss Haney. She wrote, in tiny, careful script, that the family had requested my presence at dinner. I was to present myself at the gatehouse at eight of the clock and was not under any circumstances to be late.
My hands trembled as I placed the note on my dresser. I hadn’t touched the sweetnuts next to it; I was too nervous. I rifled through my garments—and, in desperation, Zennia’s—trying to decide which were the least objectionable.
Eventually I settled on a plain ivory kirtle over a linen blouse with ballooning sleeves. It was nothing special, intended as workwear, but with my bodice laced over it and my hair brushed and braided, I hoped I wouldn’t be turned away in disgrace.
It was too early to leave, but I knew that if I stayed, I would only end up anxiously pacing my room, so I grabbed the note and headed downstairs.
Tigo’s room still stood empty, and Rhianne must be off stoking some stove somewhere. I ventured warily out of the tower, finding that the rain had finally eased off, and headed toward where I’d spotted Mawre from the window.
She was still there on the clifftop, speaking to the wind.
As I approached, I saw she was perhaps in her early thirties.
In service, I knew from my lessons at Arbenhaw, younger Orha worked alongside older.
As placements out in the Queendom became available—whether drying the Hundred’s laundry or guiding merchant ships into harbor—graduates from the Institutions were sent to fill them.
Most Orha grew old doing the same menial job.
We were born equal, none naturally any better than another, and though more years under our belts did mean more experience, nature didn’t care whether we were eighteen or eighty—if we didn’t temper our emotions, it would resoundingly ignore us.
And the reason for that, we’d been taught at Arbenhaw, was that nature itself was merciless, unconcerned with our feelings; it preferred to commune only with like minds, with those who respected it.
How good we were, therefore, was down to nothing but control and our rapport with our element. Both of which, out here, were newly eluding me…
For her part, Mawre looked serene as a statue, a small pair of spectacles perched on her nose. Her vibrant purple livery matched Tigo’s and Rhianne’s. She noticed me out of the corner of her eye but didn’t turn, merely offered a shallow nod.
“So you come to fill Zennia’s boots,” she said eventually. I felt the wind die a little in the absence of her coaxing.
I wondered how well they’d all gotten to know Zennia. Tigo and Rhianne had been wary, reserved, but for me that reaction was nothing new. Zennia had been easier to talk to, to laugh with; the only reason our classmates hadn’t liked her was envy.
“I can only try,” I said tentatively. “We were friends, Zennia and I. Back at Arbenhaw.”
Mawre didn’t seem surprised by this. Perhaps the others had conferred with her earlier.
“My sympathies,” she said simply. “It must have been a shock. We were sad to lose her.” She adjusted the linens.
I was desperate to ask what had happened—how it had happened.
If the note in my case was to be believed, Rexim Shearwater had held something back in his letter to Arbenhaw, or at least didn’t know the full story.
Foolhardiness. Ineptitude. It just didn’t square.
Zennia had been confident but far from a fool.
I’d never known anyone to learn so quickly.
Mawre turned and looked at me, but not in the eyes. “You’re welcome here,” she said with the ghost of a smile. “I’m sorry. I don’t get on well with gossip or chitchat.”
“Nor do I,” I answered automatically.
I got the feeling that she was telling the truth; that it wasn’t just an excuse because Tigo had warned her off.
I also got the feeling, suddenly and powerfully, that we were similar in some strange, indefinable way; that we shared some thread in our temperaments. I usually felt like a different species around people. But with Mawre, already, I felt a vague sense of understanding.
I held up the note. “The family wants me to dine with them.” I couldn’t quite keep the waver from my voice.
Mawre squinted at it, then briefly caught my gaze.
“Probably Vercha, the eldest girl. If you’re not careful, she’ll make you her latest…
project.” She paused to rehang one of the shirts on the rack.
“Or the Brigant. Perhaps he wants to get your measure. I’ve rarely seen him so angry as after Zennia died. ”
So Tigo had implied, back in the tower. Nervously, I wondered what “get your measure” meant.
But I recognized the closing of Mawre’s features, the averted gaze, the slight lift of her shoulders, and I left her alone, as I’d have wanted to be.
Turning away, I took a deep, steadying breath and began the climb up the hill to the castle.