Chapter Thirty-Nine Nina
In Mrs. Trunk’s living room, my eyes rose from the parchment.
“Well,” John said gruffly, glaring at Polly. “Still don’t say nothin’ about the Seam though, does it?”
We were gathered around Polly’s latest translation—all but Mrs. Trunk, who was tending her shop, and Theodore, who was still resting on the settee.
Patrick closed his eyes in frustration. “What else is there, Polly?”
She was weary, drooping further with every hour. She shook her head. “That’s all I’ve managed.”
“It ain’t enough, Scribbler,” John said, clicking his tongue. “Not enough for a fare out of Hoaklin.”
“I can’t remember it all, no matter how hard I work at it,” Polly said. A capillary had burst in her right eye. She stretched her shaking fingers as though they were calcifying. “I told you it would be difficult.”
“How long to translate Idia’s story?” Patrick asked her. “It must be comin’ next.”
“I don’t know,” she said despairingly. “Weeks, maybe.” But she looked as though she wouldn’t last another day.
John scoffed. “Weeks!” A cruel smile twisted onto his face. “Then you best forgo sleep and pray for a miracle, darlin’, because that ship of yours only comes round once a year off our shores, and it’ll anchor down in a fortnight.”
Polly’s head shook, fervor returning to her eyes. She gripped the fringes of her coiled hair between her knuckles. “There are too many symbols I don’t know. Too many gaps to make sense of the rest! It’s slowing me.”
“It’s all right, Pol” came Theo’s feeble voice. “There isn’t a more talented Scribbler anywhere. You’ll find a way.”
But Polly was biting her thumbnail, pacing around the room. “I need a bloody cypher. I’m just stumbling through without it.”
Patrick sighed. “And if you had it, how quickly could you translate?”
She concentrated for a moment. “Hours,” she said. “Only a good few hours.”
“Well,” said John, “your luck ends here, Scribbler. We ain’t got a cypher between us.”
“But your grandfather had one,” Patrick said to Polly. “You said he taught you Verian Script with it.”
She nodded.
“And he died here in Lavnonshire?” Patrick asked.
Polly’s lips thinned. “He… did.” She seemed to know where the line of questioning was headed.
“And who would have been charged with his possessions after he died?” Patrick asked. “Who would have donated his books to the archives?”
Her brow twitched. She hesitated before answering. “My parents.”
“Locals, I’d bet.”
Polly nodded stiffly.
Patrick exhaled in a gust and pulled his coin from his pocket. “Then you’ll be payin’ old Ma and Dad a visit.”
Immediately, Polly shook her head. “That—it isn’t possible.”
“Sure it is,” said John, teeth glinting in the thicket of his beard. His energy seemed restored. “Call on ’em for a spot of tea.”
“You don’t understand. They’ve forbidden me to return home,” she said. “I’m the very last person they’ll help, and not especially with anything that pertains to the Stewards.”
There was shame in her now, weighing down her posture.
“Let me be clear,” Patrick told her. And he flipped the coin over again, watching the face turn tails to heads. Canary to lord. “If it’s not you goin’ in to find that cypher, then it’s me.”
It was threat enough. Polly’s eyes drifted shut. “All right,” she said. “I’ll need different clothing.”
Patrick paused in the act of turning away, his eyes skimming over Polly’s form with little interest. “Nothin’ wrong with what you’re wearin’.”
“I look like a Craftswoman,” she said, her voice extinguishing at its end. “My father… won’t like that.”
Patrick sighed. “Then find yourself somethin’ suitable from downstairs,” he said, stalking down the hallway to his room. “We’re leavin’ now.”
I stepped forward. “I—”
“Don’t bother,” Patrick called over his shoulder. “You’re stayin’ here.”
I gritted my teeth.
“I might as well come along,” John said, interlocking his fingers and flexing them. “Wouldn’t mind stretchin’ me legs.” He ambled off behind Patrick.
Polly’s eyes flitted to me once with something I thought was pleading. But then she gathered her skirt in one hand and went for the stairs.
With the translation in hand, I moved to the window.
I listened to Patrick’s muted voice coming through thin walls, to John’s boots plodding over the floorboards, to Theodore’s steady breaths.
I looked out over the sun-drenched ocean, ranks of whitewash barreling toward the cliffs, and I reread Dione’s story another time, then started again.
I wondered if the town that had used and abandoned Dione was now the seaside parish of Lavnonshire.
I didn’t see any reason why it couldn’t be.
It was a sign, surely, that we were on the right track.
Perhaps after everything, Idia was leading us.
Theodore cleared his throat.
“It’s quite something, isn’t it?” he said, not without effort. “Quite a different account from the one we were taught.” Theo snatched his breath in, gripping his side.
I looked at his bandaged wound, swallowing hard. “You’re starting to sound like you believe.”
His nose wrinkled. “It’s a fascinating story,” he said. “But if there’s any truth to it, the Artisan historians would have written their own accounts.”
“And what if this was just another secret the House took pains to keep buried?”
Theo seemed to consider it seriously, then he shook his head. “What motive would they have? To protect the nations who invaded Belavere?” he scoffed. “Doesn’t sound like them.”
No, it didn’t. If anything, the House promoted hatred of the enemy nations who’d once come to these shores to take their terranium, just as they promoted hatred of the Miners Union now.
I bit my lip, looked back to the cerulean sea. I didn’t want to admit that Theo had a point, that maybe this book was a work of fiction, and we were barreling toward a dead end. “I need to believe it’s real,” I said aloud. “Or what do I have left?”
When I looked at Theo again, he stared down at where the bullet had entered. “In case it wasn’t obvious, Clarke, you’ll always have me.”
I was transported, for a moment, to a time when this sentiment might have moved me. How different I was now.
But I nodded. It seemed the least I could do for someone who’d stood in the way of death for me.
I gripped the parchment between my fingers. “Do you remember what Dumley told us about Lavnonshire? That the waves never breached the cliffs. Never crumbled them. He said it was likely the work of ancient stone Masons and earth Charmers.”
Theo nodded. “I remember.”
“What if it was Dione all along?” I said. “What if she died here in Lavnonshire, and they didn’t even have the decency to remember her name?”
“We can’t know that for certain,” Theo said simply, shrugging.
But already I was running away with the idea. “She saved their whole fucking town from sinking into the ocean,” I fumed. “And they served her up for slaughter anyway.” I felt that familiar rage in my core, seeping outward again, ravenous.
Theodore looked at me long and hard. “If there’s one thing you can trust in people, it’s their tendency to save themselves first.”
But that didn’t quite encapsulate it. Those townspeople hadn’t just forsaken Dione to save themselves. They’d wrung everything from her first.
I closed my eyes. Saw a young girl on the cliffside.
“It’s just a story, Nina,” Theo said.
But the waves were already rushing overhead, hammering down. And I was tossing in the depths, lungs burning, fingers reaching for the surface, curling into claws.