Chapter Twenty-Three
The island of Caltrey was completely adorable, with cobblestone streets, winged cats perched on the roofs, and a light layer of snow over everything, but Marin wasn’t in the mood to appreciate its adorableness.
After tying off at the public dock, she paid the dockmaster and asked if she could hire someone to mend her sails.
She could have told the story of how the sails came to need to be mended.
It didn’t even need any embellishment. But without Perri …
she just didn’t want to. She was instructed to go to the tailor two doors up from the bakery, near the fountain, which—the dockmaster proudly told her—was still running.
Marin didn’t bother to ask why it wouldn’t be.
Instead, she thanked her for the directions and beckoned to Dax and Ree.
Seeing Ree, the dockmaster brightened. “Oh my! You have one too?”
“One what too?” Marin asked.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude,” the dockmaster said. “We thought our resident plant was one of a kind. He’s up at the jam shop, if you’d like to meet him.” To Ree and Dax, she said, “Welcome to Caltrey.”
“Is your plant from Belde?” Ree asked.
“Belde? Never heard of it. No, he’s from Alyssium, but he’s Caltreyan now.”
Marin thought again of the heartsinger ruby in her pocket, the one that would save her parents if she could complete the task she’d been hired to do: find Rijes Velk.
“Has there been any news out of Alyssium since the … you know…” She wasn’t certain what word to use.
Revolution was probably the right one, but her brain kept supplying words like chaos and destruction.
A revolution was lovely from a grand fix-the-world standpoint.
Freedom from tyranny was a glorious goal, and the revolutionaries were heroes, sure, but she couldn’t stop picturing how much damage had been done to ordinary lives in the process.
No one ever added them to the legends or included them in the history books.
But Yarrow’s family had lost their home and their livelihood.
And Rijes Velk … What had happened to her and the Great Library with all its history and treasures?
Why can’t governments just … not be shitty in the first place?
They were made up of people. Why couldn’t they just care about other people?
Just a little bit? Was that so hard? If they did, then they’d make reasonable laws that helped everyone, and everyone could just go about their lives without ever knowing what a burning city smelled like, a floating corpse looked like, or what “defenestration” meant.
As it was … We could make it all the way back to Alyssium with enough time and still not be able to complete the job.
She could still fail the people she loved the most, just because a few people with power couldn’t manage to look beyond themselves and understand that the empire was not more important than its people.
Gah! I shouldn’t have to think about any of this!
She wasn’t a politician. She was just a sailor.
A sailor who missed her sea serpent and had a terrible ex and just wanted to help her parents and make sure her librarian friend was okay, which she shouldn’t have to do in the first place, because what kind of monster would hurt a librarian?
Belatedly, Marin remembered she should listen to what the dockmaster was saying.
“We don’t get much traffic from the capital here,” the dockmaster said. “Last we heard was the provisional government was changing laws as fast as they could—you’ve heard the latest news that they lifted the law on magic use by non-sorcerers?”
She hadn’t heard that. That would be good news to bring back to Terlu, hopefully along with Rijes Velk.
That was what she should be focusing on next.
Except she couldn’t stop thinking about Perri and how much she missed him and how unfair it was that she had to worry about anything but missing her friend.
Should we have sailed after him?
No, he’d chosen to swim away. She had to respect his choice. She couldn’t have asked him to give up his chance to be with his own kind. No one I love should have to sacrifice for me. Not Perri. Not her parents. Not Dax.
“I hadn’t heard that,” Marin said. “Good to know.”
“It’ll help with the magic storms,” the dockmaster said, “which will be a blessing to us all.” She continued to chatter about how, without the emperor hoarding power and sending out his imperial investigators to harass ordinary people going about their ordinary lives, life was going to improve for everyone.
It would be nice not to experience another magic storm, but she couldn’t summon up the right amount of enthusiasm.
Not with everything on her plate. Not with Iovar’s deadline and Perri’s absence weighing on her like an anchor inside her rib cage.
She thanked the dockmaster again, and the three of them headed into town.
They smelled the bakery before they saw it—the heavy scent of cinnamon buns wafting down the windy street. “Oh, wow, that’s amazing,” Dax said.
“The village tailor is just beyond,” Marin said.
He headed directly for the bakery. “I’ll buy a few and meet you there?”
She didn’t have any reason to say no, except for a slight lurch in her stomach at the sight of another of her crew moving away from her.
How much loss could she take? What if she just didn’t let Dax return to the conservatory?
No, obviously no—he had the right to choose as much as Perri did. If he wanted to swim free, so be it.
Ree stuck by her side as they passed the bakery.
Its window was open and a woman with tawny fur and a smudge of flour on her cheek was leaning out.
A tabby cat with green wings sat beside her on the counter.
She was chatting with a short, thin man with a crown of antlers as Dax approached and greeted them.
She kept going while Dax struck up a conversation.
The tailor’s shop was, as the dockmaster had said, beyond a fountain of a mermaid.
Nestled in a curve of the street, the shop had an apple tree beside the front door, which, surprisingly, was still laden with apples, even though, by this time of year, the last harvest should have passed.
Snow dusted the red fruit and the still-green leaves.
Marin stared at it for a moment and then thought back to what the dockmaster had said about the change to the law against magic.
She guessed people here really weren’t worried about being turned into statues, or whatever else used to be meted out as punishment for unauthorized magic.
It was the first positive proof she’d seen that the revolution might actually help ordinary people, instead of just burning down their homes and destroying their lives. She tried to allow that to make her feel better.
It didn’t.
She still had a serpent-size ache in her heart.
“How long do you think it’ll take to mend the sails?” Ree asked.
Marin opened the door and poked her head into the shop.
She heard the whirr of a sewing machine and spotted a young man with curly hair seated behind it.
He was focused on feeding fabric beneath it, as he pumped on a pedal that caused a wheel to spin and the needle to plunge down, then up. Softly, she called, “Hello?”
He paused and looked up.
“Do you fix sails?” she asked.
After everything was arranged with the tailor, Marin and Ree headed back to the bakery to meet Dax. Seated on a stool inside the bakery, he’d shoved a cinnamon bun into his mouth. Sugar dotted his cheeks.
“You could chew,” she told him.
“It’s delicious,” he said around the gob of pastry.
The baker beamed at him, then at her and Ree.
“Free cinnamon bun to every new arrival. And can I offer you some fresh soil, my good shrub? I can have Tobin dig some up for you, if you’d like.
I’m Bryn. Tobin’s my nephew.” She waved her hand toward the window, as if her nephew were lurking outside, ready to dig soil as needed. Perhaps he was.
“The sails won’t be ready until tomorrow,” Ree told Dax.
“I’m Marin,” Marin said to the baker. “You’ve met Dax, and this is Ree. They’re my crew.” And Perri. She felt the lump in her throat again, and she forced herself to smile anyway as she accepted the cinnamon bun.
The winged cat curled around her ankles, and Marin thought of her home island, suddenly missing it so much that she could barely breathe. She realized the baker was studying her, and she bit into the bun.
Sweetness filled her: light, flaky pastry, and cinnamony sugar. It was perfection in a pastry, and she felt like crying again, which wasn’t like her at all.
Gently, Bryn said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
Ree piped up. “We miss our friend.”
“Ahh. I’m so sorry.”
“He’s with his family, recently reunited,” Marin said quickly, so she wouldn’t think there had been a death. It didn’t require that kind of sympathy. “He’s fine. He’s happy.”
“But you miss him,” Bryn said. “Understandable.”
A woman with red hair stuck her head through the back door. Heat poured out along with her. She was sweating, and her hair stuck to her cheeks and forehead. “I hate your ovens, Bryn.”
“You’re supposed to bake the dough, not yourself, Radane,” Bryn said.
The woman she’d called Radane fixed her eyes on Marin, Dax, and Ree. “Oh, hello. You’re new. Pretend you didn’t see me. I’m not here.” She ducked back into the kitchen.
“She has family issues,” Bryn said to them. “Hoping for the opposite of a reunion.”
Dax nodded. “We didn’t see her.”
“See who?” Ree asked.
Marin thought he was being sweet until she realized he was on the floor behind Dax’s shoes and probably hadn’t been able to see the red-headed woman.
At any rate, whatever the situation was with Radane, it wasn’t their problem.
Their problem was how to spend the time until the sails were fixed without dwelling on Perri too much.
“Any suggestions for what we can do in town until we’re ready to sail again? ” Marin asked.