When the Sea is Rising Red (25 page)

“I’m … here,” I answer. And I am. I’m me again. I’m the daughter of a Great House, and I will not be brought down by the infidelity of Hobs. I’m going to find a way to go back home with my honor intact. Leave Dash and his flunkies for good.

Then I think of my mother dealing with the inevitable mockery, her already brittle relationship with me shattering. My brother’s scorn and disgust. They’ll know I lived with the Hobs, they’ll assume I bedded down with them. Nothing I can say will make that better. Perhaps I could run to MallenIve, and from there begin a correspondence. We have apartments, holdings. I could oversee our assets there … and who would be stupid enough to marry me? In MallenIve there’s a chance that they would at least do business with a woman, unlike in Pelimburg. But I am not one for figures and accounts. I have never had a head for business. Oh, I could make deals and be the face of our House, but how would I know to choose one offer over another? Or when to hold out for a more fair transaction? I need a business partner, and I can think of no one I trust.

So I will face this day like any other. With a sigh, I roll over and scoot off the edge of the bed. Jannik is looking at me, only one eye visible. I give him a slightly embarrassed wave and tiptoe through to the bathroom.

My clothes, despite the fact that I wrung them out and hung them over the bath to drip-dry, are still damp. Jannik’s nightshirt is so warm and comfortable that I have to fight myself to take it off and get dressed in the cold layers.

Everything feels too tight against my skin, and I’m horribly uncomfortable. I hope my clothes will dry as I walk to work—the sun is out and the storm has swept past Pelimburg.

When I get back to his room, Jannik has dressed in a plain black suit; the only hint of color is in his dark olive necktie. He looks pale and sickly, and I wonder if part of the disgust we feel for the bats comes from the way they remind us of illness and death. Well, that and the fact that they feed on blood.

Unbidden, the nightmare memory of Anja at the bat party rises again. I wonder if Dash knows that just a few nights ago she was stretched out naked under a bat and probably begged him to bed her afterward. Of course, I suppose he’s done much the same. Let them comfort each other, then. I swallow down my revulsion and shiver.

“You’re leaving already?” Jannik says.

I nod. “I’m late. Even if I run I won’t make it there on time.”

“Oh. I assumed you’d be riding with me.” He stumbles over the words and a faint frown puckers his brow.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I have to go to our buildings by the docks. New stock of rockrose and sandalwood is coming in from MallenIve today, and I need to check the quality and see if we should place more orders.” He cocks his head slightly. “It wouldn’t be that much trouble to take you to the Crake.”

It would certainly help, and it’s not like I haven’t ridden in a carriage with him before. Or, I muse, shared his bed. I flush at the memory of magic caressing me, wrapping me up in a shroud of windle-silk. It’s better that I concentrate on his magic than remember watching him sleep and thinking him strange and beautiful.

We walk through a house just rising, and servants bow or curtsey as Jannik passes. They ignore me in my drab work clothes. I pull my mostly dry shawl tighter around my shoulders and dip my head so that I don’t have to look into their eyes and see the thoughts there.

Lammer-whore.

I am not this thing. I raise my head sharply, and with my chin jutted out I walk alongside Jannik, willing these Gris-damned bats to say something,
anything
. The anger waits inside me, cold and ready. Even I know it’s just a façade. I’m so scared now that I have nowhere left to go. My armor is frost thin and just as useful.

Nothing happens, no one breaks my meager defenses.

Instead, Jannik takes my arm and we walk down the steps to the waiting carriage.

*   *   *

T
HE COACH RATTLES
and jolts across the bridge. By now I’m strangely calm inside, as if last night happened to some other person. Both of us sit in comfortable silence, and I watch the buildings flicker past us and let the rocking carriage soothe away my thoughts until I am empty. The faint reflection of my face is laid out on the glass, like a ghost over the city. I look wan, tired.

“I—I’d like to see you again, if that’s possible,” Jannik says.

The words break into my cocoon, pull it apart. I stare at him in confusion. He is frowning slightly, not really looking up at me. He pulls a monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket and twists it around his fingers. “There’s a new tearoom that’s opened on Fletcher Street. I—p-perhaps,” he stutters. Then he lets the last words free in a rush, “Perhaps you could join me there tonight? Or tomorrow or…”

I have no idea how to answer. What could I possibly have said that would make him think there could ever be something between us? After all, there is no precedent in Pelimburg for a relationship between a vampire and a high-Lammer. While I’m wondering what to say to him to let him down as gently as I can without making some kind of fuss, all expression slides from his face. He leans back and looks past me, through me, and the white eyelids flick down and cover his pupils.

“I apologize,” he says. “You need time to get over your previous relationship.”

It’s a convenient out for both of us. I nod and look away from him, stare instead at my hands, curled up in a tight ball on my lap.

I want to say something to him, to tell him that it’s all right, but my words are dead. “It’s not about you being a—” I begin, but he saves me the trouble of my little fabrication by cutting me off.

“I understand.” His voice is brittle. The magic around him is thickening, twisting in on itself. It’s almost as if I can see it turning the air dark. My breath catches and he must hear the soft gasp, for the magic stills, goes quiet.

What does it taste like, this magic of his. Would it be scriven-sharp and sweet or would it run like blood across my tongue. I push the thought back. What am I thinking? To grind up his bones into dust like desperate high-Lammers do with uni-horn when they can’t get scriv?

The carriage jerks to a halt and I look up. The Crake is already open, the tables set up on the wide gray sidewalk.

But nothing is normal.

Dash is standing there, arms folded, waiting. Behind him are the other Whelk Streeters, looking defiant and angry.

They’re far from alone. A crowd is slowly gathering, people spilling in from the alleyways and side streets. The snatches of ever-present skip-rope songs are gone, their message relayed, their role played.

“What’s going on?”

Jannik shakes his head. “I’ve no more idea than you.”

The vampire coachman opens the door. I’m supposed to get out. Forcing my feet to step forward, I allow the coachman to take my hand and help me down from the shining black carriage. Dash is already striding forward, but he stops in confusion when he sees me.

“Tell the bat to go play with his numbers down in the Old Town warehouses. He has no place here with us,” he says. He sounds angry, but under that is a constricting fear, so dense that it is palpable.

Fear for himself or for Jannik?

I turn and look over my shoulder. Jannik is enveloped in darkness and shadows.

He sighs. “I heard.”

“I mean it,” Dash says. “Tell him to get the fuck out, now. There’s nothing here that needs his attention.”

Jannik frowns. He’s heard the same note of urgency that I have.

“You were to stay out of New Town today, you idiot bat. I told you when I saw you last—keep the fuck out!” The fear has given way to anger. Dash pushes past me as if he barely even sees me and grabs the coach’s doorframe. The anger drops, and his words are rushed and desperate. “I meant to send you a letter,” he says to Jannik. “There wasn’t time.” He edges closer in so that I can’t see his face. “Whatever happens, you need to keep away from the New Town warehouses near the Great House holdings, trust me.”

I stare at him. The liar. He wrote those letters. He wrote them over and over and over and they ended up on his floor, destroyed. Why is he lying to Jannik about it? The realization comes like the snapping of a silk thread. The two of them are locked into a silent argument so full of recrimination and anger and hurt that it makes the very air between them feel charged with static.

The bites on Dash’s neck. The stranger in the shadows, watching Jannik’s window. Even that stupid Prines book—Jannik’s, loaned to Dash, then returned like a lover’s letter. I shake my head. Not true.

And still he expects us to trust him. Just because he’s Dash.

I’m about to tell Jannik that whatever the malignant little Hob spawn says, he’d best do the opposite, when I catch the look on Jannik’s face. He’s moved out of the shadows, his magic swirling around him. His eyes are blank and white, but there is no disguising the way his mouth is slightly open or the tightness around his eyes.

“Please,” says Dash.

Jannik nods at the coachman. “Do as he says. Take me away.”

I step down completely and watch as the coachman scrambles up to his seat and
clicks
the skittish unicorns into action. The coach rattles off, then turns up a side road, and the hoofbeats and the sound of the wheels on the stones change timbre and fade.

Dash looks at me. “So now we know where you spend your nights.”

“Same place you do, apparently,” I say as I step forward and press my fingers to his shirt collar. Press them into the hidden bites on Dash’s throat. He was never mine, and Lils knew why. She was trying to protect me from this.

He winces and shoves my hand away. “Never thought you’d be whoring yourself out for a few pieces of brass though, did I, kitty?”

“I don’t—” I pause. “Forget it. Why are you here? What’s going on?” I jerk my chin toward the gathering crowd. “Are you starting your little revolution today?”

“Funny you should say that.” He grins, and for a moment, the flash of his white teeth and his cocksure arrogance strike right at my heart.

Instead of clinging to him, I press my palms against my dress and take a long calming breath. “What do you mean?”

“Esta’s already starting fires.”

I glance at the crowd. Sure enough, there is no sign of Esta. I wonder how long it will be before the smoke starts blowing over the city.

“You’re going to burn down Pelimburg.” It’s hard to get the words out, they catch like tiny barbs.

“Not at all.” He grins. “I’m merely going to punish a few of her citizens.” Dash shrugs one shoulder. “The fires just add to the whole atmosphere of our little performance.”

I grab his shoulder, anger making me feel like I’m made of burning iron. “You’re mad. You have some … some
pointless
vendetta against my brother, and so you want to destroy the city. People are going to die.”

“Never pointless,” he hisses.

And then I see it. The truth is in his eyes: the pain and the fury and the self-hatred and the knowledge that everything he does now still won’t bring her back. I know these feelings well. They are mine, and I face them every night when I think of how I failed Ilven, was useless in the face of my best friend’s fears and pain. I drop my hand and stare at him. “No.” I shake my head. “No, no, no.”

He shrugs again, but this time it lacks his casual arrogance. “I need you,” he says. There’s a resigned desperation there, something I would never have associated with Dash.

“What?” I’m startled out of my despair.

Dash grabs my wrist and forces my palm open. Before I can protest he drops a small pouch into my hand. “In a few minutes, Lils is going to untie her hair and we are going to drown Pelimburg in madness.” He drops his voice and uncurls his fingers to show me the mark on his palm. It’s bigger now, jellied and pale. The bones show through the translucent flesh. “And I’m going to call the sea-witch. The nightmares and the destruction will bring the high-Lammers out of their Houses, and I can mark the sacrifice,” he says. “Your job is to keep the Hobs on our side of the river safe.”

“What are you talking about?” He’s marked, boggert-touched, and still alive. “What is this?” I do not touch the mark on his palm, but he knows what I’m talking about.

“A promise,” he says. “Now, you need to do what I ask.”

My hands shake. It’s a barge day, when the biggest shipments come down from MallenIve, and New Town will be full of people, of House Lammers down to run through ledgers and oversee stock handling. The warehouses that line the loading docks on the Casabi will be full of new shipments of silk and scriv and glasswork. Everyone will be there, from the wherrymen guiding their barges like recalcitrant unis to the Heads of Houses overseeing stock. The low to the high and everyone between, all the dockworkers and factory girls, the mail runners and
Courant
readers. Everyone. He can’t be serious—he can’t be meaning to call up the sea-witch. Something Dash said flashes through my mind: the sea-witch follows the boggert but requires four deaths.

“There were only three bodies—”

“Four now.” Dash raises his hand, and I want to vomit.

He’s twisting everything. He’s killing himself, killing innocents so that he can have his Gris-damned revenge on my brother. “This isn’t about saving the Hobs,” I hiss at him. “And it never was.”

“No,” he says, and he grins. His eyes are frightened, giving the lie to his cheer. “But I did always love a good spectacle.”

The crowd begins to move forward. I look down at the little pouch in my palm and smell the citrus musk that leaks from it. Scriven.

My hand closes around the pouch. I know that whatever it takes, I need to try to do something to stop Dash. I look at the crowd. The people seethe, anger making them blind and ugly. They still believe in him, haven’t seen that he’s playing on their anger in order to fuel his own revenge. If I do anything obvious to stop Dash, they will tear me apart. The best I can hope for is to keep as many people safe as I can. I want to cry at the injustice of it all.