House of Sand and Secrets
Read House of Sand and Secrets Online
Authors: Cat Hellisen
Tags: #Fantasy, #Young Adult, #Vampires, #Mystery
HOUSE OF SAND AND SECRETS
CAT HELLISEN
For the Brave and Strong.
CONTENTS
A PLAGUE OF HOUSES
The city stinks
of death. High summer has MallenIve by the throat and my apartments in the House Pelim holdings are stuffy and humid. We are miles from the Hob slums where a plague is currently raging, and still the air reeks of burned skin from the pyres.
Hardly an auspicious start to the season’s round of parties.
I slump in my rooms at the very top of the house, waiting for respite. Fine rivulets of sweat trickle down from my temples, and I pant while fluttering a small round paper hand-fan – MallenIve’s latest fashion – uselessly through the air. All it does is waft the heat around. At least the Houses only bother with their entertainment in the evening, after the thunderstorms have damped down the baked dust and washed away the stench of the day’s unfortunate corpses.
It’s not just the poor. Everything seems to be expiring. Just yesterday when I ventured out, desperate for some kind of contact that didn’t involve servants or the implacable mask of my husband, I saw one of the shaggy, goat-like nillies drop dead in its traces. The creature just crumpled in the middle of the street, between the shit and the pedestrians. Traffic in MallenIve is so slow and congested it took minutes before anyone but me realized it was dead.
That moment as it died and the golden eyes went dry was the first time since I came to this monstrosity of a city I felt a kinship with another living thing. It too had had enough of this stinking place.
So melodramatic, I’m sure Jannik with his penchant for awful poetry would approve. Somehow, I suspect I shall cling to life a little longer than the broken nilly. Our moment of mutual feeling only extended so far. There is no way for me to go back home, and I think I am long over the childish petulance of suicides.
How grown up you are, Felicita.
Even my inner voice manages to sneer at me.
Almost eighteen and so very adult.
“Oh, hush,” I tell myself as I wipe a palm across my sweating brow. “I am allowed to wallow in my self-pity, at least until tea.”
My mother would have understood. She wouldn’t have approved, but she would have given me a little space to indulge in some of my teenage misery. Or perhaps I am remembering her too fondly. After all, there is distance between us greater than miles. She has absented herself as my mother and her letters to me are few and say little. All I really know is that my brother’s widow has moved into the family house. I wonder if Mother gave her my turret room so that the poor girl could pretend she was at least a little bit free.
Enough of this. I refuse to entertain these maudlin thoughts. I take a deep breath and push the image of my mother out of my mind.
A small, timid knock sounds at the door, and it’s the signal that the worst of the day is over. Tea is the precursor to the punctual afternoon storm. A slight Hob girl with her dark curly hair pulled back in a neat bun comes in. The starched whites of her sleeves almost glow against the yellow brown of her hands as she sets down a tray of tea, honey, and milk. The grassy smell of redbush fills the room.
“Thank you, Riona.” I drop the fan on my dressing table with a clatter. I like this girl; she’s soft and sweet, but underneath that she’s got spine. She knows her letters, a remarkable enough thing in a Hob straight from the vast township that encircles MallenIve. I’ve worked at her, winkling her slowly out of her shell like a little sea snail. When she first started working for me she’d stand mutely staring as I tried to ask her questions about her life and her family. Eventually she stopped giving me looks of blank astonishment, and these days she actually manages to roll her eyes at me and hum in exasperation when I am at my most annoying. None of the other staff have followed her lead. I suppose the MallenIve Hobs are as unused to a Lammer speaking to them as if they were people as the Pelimburg Hobs are.
I confess, a year ago, I would have given no more thought to her and her life than I would have given a pack animal. My time in the Whelk Street squat changed me more than I like to think about.
“Your brother?” I say as she pours the tea, “Have you any word?”
“He’s doing better, my lady. Thank you,” she whispers. Her older brother works the scriv mines out past the city. When the black lung hits, the miners with their ragged lungs are the first to fall. From what she’s told me, Riona has no other family besides him. We can do little enough. I have sent a physician – who was rather disgruntled at the task – to see to him, and have paid for medicines, but the black lung will take who she will. If he’s doing better, then that’s as the world has decided.
“That’s good news then,” I say brightly. Mentally I add another task to my daily list: have the kitchen staff make up a package for the boy: food and blankets, and lemons and honey for his throat. Mrs. Palmer will pull faces, I know, but for all her scowls and mutterings, she’ll wrap Riona’s brother enough to feed a Hob-pack.
“Yes, my lady.” Despite my attempt at friendship, the girl refuses to call me by anything else.
I sigh, and flick the handle of my fan so that it slides across my table.
Small steps, Felicita. You cannot change a city in a day. Or a year.
“Will you be painting today, my lady?” Riona says as she stirs honey and milk into my tea.
“Please, Ree. I have asked so very many times.” I catch her free hand in mine and feel her muscles twitch at this unwelcome display of amity. “Felicita will do just fine.” After all, I threw away my pretence at
ladyship
when I ran away from home and dishonoured the Pelim name. It’s why I’m here in this stinking hole: to do my best to make up for all my flaws. I let her hand go with a sigh. “Not today, I think.” Another glance out the window confirms that the clouds are rolling in thick and heavy. And tonight’s engagement weighs on me as much as the clouds do. I’m in no mood to paint flowers.
A sudden thunder rolls through the house.
It’s not from the coming storm and there was no warning flash of light. It sounds like falling rocks and the walls and floor are shaking. Tea has spilled over my desk. My heart jumps in my chest like a landed fish.
Earthquake.
MallenIve has the worst luck of any city and if I stay here any longer I’m bound to be swallowed up and destroyed. “What was that?”
“It’s a mine, my lady.” Riona looks almost as if she is about to laugh. “One of the old scriv-tunnels must have collapsed.” She’s already wiping up the spilled tea and has set to pouring me another, completely unflustered.
“And where exactly are these tunnels collapsing?” I ask faintly.
She shrugs. “Under the city, I suppose. You shouldn’t worry, my lady, it doesn’t happen often. One time, a hole opened up right in the middle of a street, my brother says, but that was years back. So you mustn’t fuss yourself. Anyone born here is used to them.”
Plagues, collapsing streets, and high society parties.
I think I am ill-suited to this city.
A crack and flash herald another rumble, this one coming from the sky and quickly followed by the first spatter of rain. At least the house isn’t shaking any more. “I’ll need Cornelia to come up here, as soon as I’m done with tea.”
Riona nods and withdraws, and I am left alone with my porcelain and my fan. I pick it up again, not in the mood for the cloying heavy-milked drink.
After the punctual storm, I will have to bathe away the day’s sweat, be dressed up in another revolting MallenIve gown, put on my prettiest, most wide-eyed and imbecilic face, and go out to pour my share into the urn of social spite that oils the gears of MallenIve’s most powerful Houses. Usually I have to do it alone. My husband is not exactly welcome among the wealthy elite. They cannot wrap their minds around the concept that in Pelimburg, the vampires can be born into free Houses. In MallenIve, they are still nothing more than dogs, bought and sold on a whim.
“At least tonight will be a little different,” I say to the fan. My hand stills, and I turn my wrist so that the fan seems to be staring at me. It is white and blankly incredulous. It nods, and I talk to myself in a low cruel voice, as close as I can get to my dead brother’s. “You chose this,” the fan says, bobbing with each word. “I have no patience for whining little girls. And that, Felicita, is all you’ve ever been.”
All you ever are, and ever will be
, it doesn’t have to say.
My stomach cramps, and a dry needling pain flickers in the corner of my eyes. “Shut up, Owen,” I say quietly, and I drop the fan onto the polished vanity counter, among the scattered bottles of perfumes and precious oils.
Another distant growl of thunder signals the change in the day. I press my fingers to my temples, trying to push away the ache that will come soon, the closer the evening draws. I have no idea what to expect from tonight’s invitation. It is from Guyin Harun, who has committed the singular sin of not marrying a suitable House woman and breeding suitable House heirs. His situation is similar to my own, and so fate has seen fit to push us together. In a way I would prefer to be on the safer ground of being shunned by the other High Houses of MallenIve. I have learned to deal with their particular patronizing brand of false sympathy. Rather that than have to face the mirror and see for myself what exactly Jannik and I are: a mismatched and untouchable pair of nothings.
* * *
The invitation flutters
in my gloved hand as the carriage draws to a halt outside the white-faced house. I’ve managed to smooth away my earlier disquiet, pat it under layers of powder and paint, and lace it up into stays and boning and silks. Naturally, I have said nothing to Jannik. We have little enough to talk about at the best of times. The only things we have in common are deep and ugly, and too newly scabbed over. My betrayal of my family led to the deaths of so many, not least of them the lover Jannik and I shared.
That same lover used us and twisted us to his own ends and I should hate him. Only I can’t.
How much worse it must be for Jannik, who, I think, loved him. We never mention the name Dash, we do not talk about what led us here to MallenIve.
Instead, we prattle of slight inconsequential things, like invitations to parties. “Rumour has it that the Guyin hasn’t been seen in years. Never leaves his home, never invites anyone in.” I tuck the card back into my purse, and force myself to act cheerful. Even if it is just more political machination, it’s still the first time both my husband and I have been invited anywhere together. All I can hope is that this particular evening doesn’t ruin my social standing in MallenIve. I’ve managed to claw a little bit of status back, and we need that if we are to survive here. “I sense a long night ahead of us. Gris alone knows if the man has even a modicum of social graces. Last time anyone saw him, he set his dogs on them.”
“Felicita, it’s one evening. I think you’ll live.” Jannik remains as expressionless as the waiting building. The last few months have made him less awkward, he seems to have grown into his beakish nose, and his dark hair hangs past his collar. While he will never be beautiful, there is something in the paleness of his skin and the deep blue emptiness of his eyes that constantly draws my attention back to him, though he never seems to notice my stares. Tonight we are forced to spend our time together. His mother made the arrangement for us and even at this great distance, my husband will not go against her wishes. Not again. Marrying me was a big enough rebellion for him.
“This is House Guyin?” I had expected something more imposing and ancient to match the legacy of the name; a dark glass tower and crows in lightning-blasted trees. Instead we are presented with a façade like a plaster skull posed in an apprentice’s still life. It shows nothing, no emotion or accusation or welcome. Even the ubiquitous dogleaf in their grey stone pots are limp, the buds still closed and anaemic. The knocker is a dull hint of brass against the un-oiled wood.
Jannik shifts, puts one hand against the leather seat, and prepares to stand. “Apparently so.”