When the Sea is Rising Red (6 page)

Tap.

“All right, then,” she says, just as I’m about to pull the shawl back up and look for another shop. “But it’s no money back if you don’t like it none.”

“How much?”

She peers sidelong at me. “Three bits.”

“I’ll give you one.”

“Cheap little whore,” she says with a shrug. “Fine. One bit it is.”

A few minutes later, she’s got me sitting on a three-legged stool, my knees up awkwardly high and a stained piece of waxed silk over my shoulders. She slaps paste onto my coiled-up hair with an even precision, then works the muck into my scalp.

“’S a shame to dye this lot,” she says. “But you won’t be the first little bastard to go on the game an not want your da seeing you.” Her fingers knead and pull, spreading the paste over every strand.

“I’m not—” I grit my teeth.

“Oho! Really.” I don’t have to see her face to know that she’s smirking at me. Her voice just has that quality. Sharp fingernails scrape my scalp. “Next you’re going to tell me that it ain’t your da you’re running from. There’s no other reason for a high-Lammer to run—you’re in trouble. You’ve lost your House face, and now you’re running.” She pauses. “Mind you, I’d run too.” Her fingers tremble against my scalp, pulling the hair. “Whatcha do? You in trouble with a boy, is it?”

“That’s not it,” I whisper. “There are other reasons—” I stop. The less I say, the better.

Her hands have begun their rhythmic massaging again, and with each long slow stroke the silence gathers. “Are you one of ours?” she finally asks, in a voice unlike her earlier one. No longer jocular and mocking. Her tone is heavy.

I do not know what she means or how to respond. “Ours?”

She snorts. “Never mind. It was a stupid thought. We got no use for your kind an you ain’t got no pity for ours.”

Anger bristles through me and then fizzles out in confusion. I’ve no idea what she’s talking about, but there is one thing she has right: high-Lammers have no pity for Hobs. At best, we think of them as children we need to discipline. I remember my parting words to Firell, and a vague guilt chews through me, making me ache.

Water sluices over my head, washing away the excess dye, washing away the picture of myself as a pampered little House daughter.

“Take this,” I say after the girl is done, and hand her the necklace Firell threw back at me. Nervous, I try my best at the city patois. “Don’t tell no one that you saw me.” It sounds strange on my tongue, stilted, the vowels not flat enough. The look the Hob gives me makes me flush, but she grins again and snatches the gift from my hand.

The mother-of-pearl necklace clatters onto her table. She examines it in the dim light, then waggles her head, as if she can’t decide between a no and a yes. “Fine.” She sweeps it off the table and undoes the clasp. As she pushes her hair up away from her neck, I see bruises and wounds on her flesh. It looks like someone’s stabbed her repeatedly with an awl. Then her hair drops back down, and the marks are hidden by her beads and braids.

The largest piece of mother-of-pearl sits between her breasts. She looks down at it, her fingers twisting it this way and that. “It’ll do. I ain’t seen nothin’.” Then she stills, her red-dyed hands at her new bauble. “You made a good choice.”

I pause at the threshold.

“To run,” she says. “Bad things are coming to the Houses, and you’re best out of there.”

“Bad things?”

Instead of answering, she squints. Then with a final dismissive wave she says, “Head down Whelk Street way.”

“Why?”

“You go down that way and ask out for Dash. Tell him Anja sent you. He’ll see you straight,” she says, and then the door closes behind me with a sharp
snick
.

My hair feels rough and strange. I’ve little idea how bad it looks, but no one on the street even gives me a second look. With my clothing already spattered with dung and roadside dirt, and my hair a tangled mess of fake red, I’m just another low-Lammer on her way to work. Whether I’m working a street corner or a market stall, well, that’s none of their business unless they’re buying. The anonymity is comfortable, like going around draped in magic, hidden from view. The thought of never having scriv again pulls at me, but only a little. We’re so rationed here in Pelimburg anyway, what with those MallenIve prats charging an arm and a leg for even the tiniest thimbleful.

Still, I never had to worry about that before. And now …

And now, my mother will have discovered that I’m gone. How long before the golden-brown shawl or an embroidered slipper washes up against the rocks? Will they lower sharif on long silk-thin ropes to inspect? Till they find anything I’m just missing once again, and I’m relying on my mother’s sense of House honor to keep quiet about it for as long as possible.

*   *   *

O
N EITHER SIDE OF ME
, the bridge buildings drop away, and Spindle Way diverges and dips toward the mudflats. If I keep along the raised stone promenade, I will reach the tip of the Claw. There are only squatters and Hobs living in that area, and no one will think to look for me there.

Or I could go straight on through Old Town and lose myself in the Hob-infested marshes of Stilt City.
Ugh
. I’m safer on the Claw, among the fish-gangs. At least the houses there are built on solid land. Solid mud, anyway.

A wind rises in the east, winding around the jut of the cliffs and blowing across the harbor. The masts wail eerily and the smells of kelp and tarred wood compete with the stench of dye whelks rotting in barrels. It’s strong enough to make me gag.

Certainly, I won’t be getting a job on the wharf.

A job.

I’ll think about that later. For now, all I want is a place where I can hole up and wait for the sharif to find my “remains.” I ask a Hob leaning against a wall for directions to Whelk Street. He stares at me strangely, then tells me. His directions lead me to a place that seems horribly familiar.

It’s only mid-morning and the weather is already changing. The easterly brings clouds scudding in from the ocean, gathering thick and low. Soon it will be raining again, and with the promise of rain comes the smothering kiss of the fog. I need to find some kind of shelter. The end of the promenade with its rows of dilapidated buildings—that’s where I need to go. Back to where the selkie-girl threw a piece of windowsill at me. The place is a tangle of squats.

My feet won’t move.

No one will recognize me,
I tell myself as I pat my hair reassuringly. There’s no chance that I look like a House Lammer now. And I stink. The rough cotton of my housedress and coat smells of sweat and dirt and dye. Still, I’m nervous as I trudge forward.

The sun slips behind the cloud blanket, and the day goes dark, the shadows lengthen. It feels like late afternoon even though I know full well that it isn’t.

Pelimburg has always been a city confused by time, running on rhythms set not by clocks and minute hands but by the internal lollop of its sea-heart. Tidal beat. I match pace with the waves that crash into the promenade wall and keep my eyes open for a likely shelter.

I’m so busy peering through the shuttered, glassless windows, and dubiously eyeing the damp-rotted walls, that I don’t notice the gang until they have already circled me.

The leader of the pack grins, doglike. They’re Hobs. Dirty and ragged, with a feral look, like the marsh-jackals that hunt rats in the long salt grass and steal food from the rubbish dumps on the edges of the city. They close in tight.

I’m frozen.

“Lost are you, kitty-girl?” says the leader, drifting close enough to me that I can see the dirt in the pores of his brown face. “You won’t find paying customers down the Claw.”

The next person to assume that I’m a streetwalker is going to get punched. I ball my fist and try to keep my breathing calm. It’s hard—my heartbeat is skipping and stammering, and I’m cold. My breaths are beginning to sound more like gasps than anything else. I wonder if the Hobs can smell fear the way dogs can.

Perhaps I should ask them if they know who Dash is, but the air has become claustrophobic and tight.

The pack crowds closer and I hug my bag to my chest. I want to cry, there is a prickling at the corners of my eyes. I should have stayed at home and accepted my planned-out future. I wonder if it’s safe to go back, if by some turn of luck no one will have noticed that I’m gone and there will be no punishment waiting for me. The longer I’m gone, the harder it will be to go back, the greater the dishonor.

I think of what Owen will do to me.

“Sphynx got your tongue?”

I try not to let my lip tremble, but it’s useless. “I’m not looking for customers.” The words sound like brass bits falling one by one onto a glass table. Precise, clipped, and too loud in the otherwise empty street.

“That’s good,” he says. “’Cause I weren’t looking to pay.”

I close my eyes and hug my bag tighter. I can’t run, there’s too many of them, and my boots are too tight and my legs ache from walking and right now all I want is to be back home. His breath smells of fish and vinegary cockles. It’s on my face—hot and sweet-sour and overwhelming.

They’re so close now that the heat radiates from them. One touches my hair, and I snap.

I go from frozen statue to spitting fury. Even if what’s going to happen is inevitable, I’m going to do my best to scratch their Gris-damned eyes out or deprive a few of them of any future Hoblings. I grab the leader’s genitals and twist, just as one of his lackeys throws a punch at my cheek.

He yelps and I screech. My terror is still there, let loose on them. What I wouldn’t do for a pinch of scriv now.

The noise erupts as the Hobs lay into me. Someone knocks me to the ground and I curl up on my side, trying to protect my belly and breasts and also to get in a few well-aimed kicks. At least these ugly boots are good for slamming into soft flesh. Tears are streaming down my face because even though I keep fighting, I know it’s futile. I’m outnumbered. I’m soft and I know nothing about fisticuffs. Owen used to taunt me when our mother wasn’t looking, and I feel the same defeated fear now that I felt then.

“Oi. What the fuck are you lot doing down our way?” a girl asks over the noise of the scuffling, her voice a fish-market drawl.

The Hobs still. The leader stands, pats nonchalantly at his trousers, and grins. “Weren’t doing nothing,” he says, and aims a sly kick at my back. Pain bruises down my spine.

I can’t see the girl who’s talking, just a forest of bare feet, hobnailed boots, and dirty patched trousers. Already my right eye is swelling up. It feels hot and watery and sticky all at the same time.

“If you’ve touched one of ours, boyo, and Dash hears about it, then I wouldn’t want to be in your skin.”

Dash
. A flicker of relief. I don’t even know why—I’ve nothing more to go on than the word of a Hob hairdresser and a feeling that, somehow, this Dash will help me. The girl is one of his, a friend or partner, I suppose, and she’s stepped up to protect me. It’s something to cling to.

My attacker speaks again. “We were just leaving, Lilya, darling. No need to get all stormed up,” he says. He walks past, grins, and cocks his hat at me. The pack follows him, and I’m left in the middle of the street. A faint drizzle is misting around me, covering my hair with a veil of tiny droplets.

“And who the fuck might you be?” the girl says as she drops to a crouch to get a better look. “Not one of ours, Gris knows. You’re a long way from Kitty Lane.”

“I am not,” I say through my split lip, “a Gris-damned prostitute.”

“Says you.” Lilya is short and dark, with sizable hips that soften her otherwise hard figure. Her waxed hair is pulled back in a tight bun, pinned close to her scalp with an assortment of glinting pins, revealing wide cheeks and slanted eyes. She has a fish-worker’s blood-and-scale-spattered apron slung over her shoulder. She holds out one calloused hand. “Come on then, up ya get, kitty-girl.” She smirks as she says this, and there is the faintest trace of bitter humor.

Lilya’s hand is warm and rough, and she hauls me up with ease. Her arms might be skinny under rolled-up sleeves, but it’s all wiry muscle.

“They really did you over,” she says, after peering at my bruised face. “This way, we’ll get you sorted out.” She’s not friendly, just abrupt and sharp, like she’s dealing with another problem in her long day.

“Thank you,” I say, but it’s becoming increasingly hard to talk. My lip is swelling up and going oddly numb, and my right eye is tingling, hot from the bruising. I can barely see through the puffed-up lids, and the whole side of my face aches. Not to mention the sharp pains shooting along my ribs. I keep one arm clutched across my side, like that’s going to help. I’m about to ask her about Dash when she sighs loudly.

“Gris.”
She sweeps up my bag, casually flinging it over her shoulder. “Dash is gonna love this like a punch to the face. Like we need another mucking stray hanging around.”

Best to keep my mouth shut until I know exactly where I stand. Silently, I hobble after her, barely keeping up as she strides down the street toward a house that I recognize. It’s green and faded. Lilya pushes open a door that just barely qualifies and leads me into a musty narrow entrance. Someone has tied an old sheet over the next doorway, and Lilya holds it aside and beckons me through.

The whole place smells of rotting wood—a curiously loamy and pleasant smell—and of smoked fish. The latter is decidedly less pleasant. A layer of sucking gray mud coats the floor.

“We don’t use the downstairs much,” Lilya says, and nods at a flight of rickety stairs. “Head on up.” She shoos me with her hands, and, clutching the rail for safety, I edge up the staircase. The boards creak ominously underfoot, but as I reach the second and then the third floor, I realize why the squatters prefer to use the upstairs part of the house.

The gloom falls away. Faint streaks of sunlight poke through the cloud cover and stream in the windows and dapple the walls and floors, and the wind blows through the empty windows, bringing the clean sharp ocean scent with it.