Chapter 11
Autumn bedded in over the week that followed. The air crisped, and I found myself in need of my cloak. Gold and bronze leaves littered the lawns and pathways, and I helped Tigo harvest giant squashes from the kitchen gardens.
I made sure to excel at anything and everything Miss Haney tasked me with.
In the face of my nagging uncertainty about Zennia, here, at least, was something over which I could exert glorious control.
I polished the floors until they shone like mirrors, scrubbed the linens so hard my palms turned pink.
My voice went hoarse from cajoling the water—and I even tackled jobs no one had mentioned to me at all.
One morning I sent fountains up over the glasshouses, washing the panes down inside and out.
When I showed Miss Haney the gleaming results later, her face glowed, and I knew I was getting there. Gradually.
All the same, as the days ticked by, I woke in the mornings under a growing shadow of unease.
I’d long since burned the scrap of parchment with the details of my meeting in my room’s narrow grate, fearful it would be discovered, but its mysterious instructions were branded on my brain.
The fourteenth was creeping nearer and nearer, and I spent my days dwelling compulsively, anxiously, on whether I’d make it and what awaited me there.
Zennia’s letter I couldn’t bring myself to burn, so I scrunched it tight and returned it to its crevice. Occasionally I watched the castle at night, but had seen no sign of the lights she’d mentioned.
In the wake of the Crakes’ surprise appearance, the family was jittery, particularly Rexim.
He walked the halls distractedly, head bent over his correspondence, or shut himself up in his study for hours.
I glimpsed the siblings speaking quietly in corners and caught a new frown line etched between Miss Haney’s brows.
Ever since I discovered that Emment Shearwater had been the last person to see Zennia alive, I found myself noticing him, distracted by his presence.
He, in turn, avoided me for the most part, so much so that it began to seem pointed.
There was a certain tensing of his features when he spotted me, a tendency to change direction rather than pass me, and the suspicion seeded itself in my mind that the sight of me reminded him of my predecessor; of the accident he’d witnessed in the bay.
Vercha, by contrast, I had to try to avoid. She’d begun to seek me out, seemed to have taken a shine to me. In the mornings, she often requested me especially to bring her bathwater instead of her lady’s maid, Debry. She brushed dust from my uniform. Corrected my poor posture.
“None of this ‘my lady,’ ” she said. “You must call me Miss Vercha. And if you ever need anything, you must come straight to me. Miss Haney is so stretched, poor thing, she’s sure to neglect you.” I soon saw how she delighted in new things, in appearances and perceptions, in society and tradition.
The day before my meeting, drear clouds rolled in and the island was curtained in a thin, misty drizzle.
With Tima marching on, the tidal range was shrinking, the waterline beginning to encroach into the bay.
At pallwater proper, the sea would settle at the bay’s midpoint: the little stone harbor I’d seen on my crossing.
Then, I gathered, there’d be barely any difference between high tide and low tide—much safer for sea travel.
Gentler waves already greeted me each morning when I visited the ocean before starting my chores.
And I didn’t know if I was imagining it, but I was starting to sense some of its fierceness, its frightening remoteness, ebbing away.
Vercha cornered me as I was collecting laundry, beckoning me out into the haze of gray rain. “Come,” she said. “I’m hunting for Father. I’ve had a letter I must speak to him about right away. This velvet, you understand, it simply can’t get wet…”
I trailed after her nervously, tugging up my high collar.
Rain was notoriously tricky for all Floodmouths.
There were so many tiny, disparate drops, and they all seemed to have minds of their own.
Generally, the smaller the body of water, the easier it was to coerce it to our will.
But beyond a certain point, the tinier it got, the less it seemed able to hear our words.
It was as though its capacity for connection dwindled and it became more chaotic—slow-witted, almost. Like a mayfly compared to a dog or a horse.
As Vercha strode across the puddle-strewn ward, I breathed out, long and slow, then whispered to the rain. It half heeded me, just sparing her hair and velvet bodice, but damp patches slowly appeared on her skirts. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to notice as she hoisted her hem high above the mud.
Rexim soon appeared, coming in the opposite direction, a sheaf of papers clutched in his hand.
“Ah, there you are,” he said. They stopped out in the open. I pleaded with the rain in a desperate undertone and managed to persuade it not to soak Rexim’s hat. “News just this morning.” He held up the papers. “Dunlin’s succumbed—died night before last.”
He flicked a glance over me, only now registering my presence, but I avoided his eyes, concentrating on the rain.
“How terrible,” Vercha said, not sounding as if she meant it. “And sooner than we’d thought—has the vote been arranged?”
“Ballots to be cast in just a few weeks,” the Brigant said. “I’ve been speaking to Ferda about organizing a coach. I must go to Pen Aryn. I’ve been away too long.”
My eyes flicked across the ward to the stables. Ferda was the island’s stablemaster, though he also performed countless other odd jobs.
“All the way to the capital? Because of what Crake said?” Vercha’s nose wrinkled. “But you have a solid lead, and he clearly knows it.”
“All the same,” Rexim replied. “That lead could dwindle. If I am out of sight this close to the vote, I am out of the Hundred’s minds. I must go. Besides, the funeral will be held in Pen Aryn, and I need to be seen there, speak to those present.”
“What a blow,” said Vercha, pulling an envelope from her bodice.
“For I have just heard from our old friends, the Cormorants. We’ve been saying for some time that we should meet on the mainland, but today they write to say they miss us, and the island.
They ask if they can stay. And what a good excuse for a party…
” She ran a thumb over the letter, forlorn.
Rexim took in his daughter fondly. “Invite them anyway,” he said.
“I shall be back in a few weeks. I should be glad to know they are keeping you occupied in my absence, and on my return…Yes, I think I have decided. We shall host a ball in the Cormorants’ honor and try to make up for that disastrous luncheon.
I want to see Osprey again, without Crake, and the other eastern families—as many as can come.
A final push before the vote. What do you say? ”
Vercha’s whole countenance glowed.
“A ball,” she gushed. “Oh, I must meet with Cook immediately, and Miss Haney, and, oh dear, none of my dresses will do—”
Rexim waved a hand. “Tell Madam Mora she may bill me directly. And don’t forget to order one for your sister.”
Vercha was almost vibrating with delight. “You are too good to us, Father.”
He shook his head distractedly. “Now, where is your elder brother? I must tell him in no uncertain terms that neither he nor any of you are to leave this island while I’m gone.
” His eyes roved the windows, brows drawn down.
“Things are far too unsettled for any of his usual nonsense. I have no choice but to leave him to hold down the fort, but I’m counting on the rest of you to help keep him in line.
No Veil, not until—” His eyes suddenly shot to me.
I’d blended into the background: quiet, unassuming.
“Well, if you run into him, you send him straight to me.”
He strode off, boots squelching in the mud, and I looked at Vercha, pulse thudding in my throat. “What’s the Veil?” I asked as innocuously as I could.
She cocked an eyebrow before squinting up at the drizzle. “Oh, just a place we all meet in Port Rhorstin. Our…circles, I mean.” She flicked me a glance. She must mean the Hundred. The local nobility.
Why in hells was my meeting there?
But she was already beckoning me back toward shelter, and I could only hurry after her, fighting to hide my dismay.
—
The next day, with a mixture of nervous energy and cold dread, I went to meet Vercha and Debry on the beach.
I’d had to don my livery for this, but I knew I couldn’t wear it into the Veil: a haunt of the Hundred, according to Vercha.
From what Rexim had said, it seemed Emment, at least, was a regular, and I didn’t want to risk someone recognizing the crest and mentioning the fact that I’d been there to the Shearwaters…
I’d need another outfit. But I had a plan for that.
Vercha’s revelation had kept me up in the night. Was it one of the Hundred who’d slipped the note in my luggage? But how was that possible? It had been packed at Arbenhaw and remained unopened until we got to Tresteny.
I’d also been fretting about the crossing itself.
With pallwater a week away, the causeway was covered, nearly a third of its length now sitting beneath the waves.
And though a gale had whipped up that would help nudge us westward, I still suspected my services would be called on.
I pictured all the practice I’d done coming to nothing.
The sea roundly ignoring me. Vercha, right there, witnessing it…
But at dawn that morning, for the first time, I’d made a breakthrough. Crouching on the shingle, I’d made a whirlpool in the surf, the calmer ocean seeming more receptive to my cajoling.