When the Sea is Rising Red (17 page)

Nala paces before me, looking at me from every angle.

“And?”

“It’ll do.”

“Now I really feel like a kitty-girl.” I look down at the rather-too-gappy bodice.

“Well you’re just about halfway there,” Nala says. “What about shoes?”

I don’t, however, have anything remotely resembling suitable footwear. One glance at Nala’s muddied feet tells me that there’s no point asking her if she has any shoes that I could borrow.

“Your new boots will do then,” she says. “You won’t see them under all that material.”

The knowledge that I’ll be wearing heavy leather lace-up boots with an evening gown of MallenIve silk is somewhat irksome. I don’t know what I was hoping for—perhaps my pair of embroidered slippers to rise with the tide and wash up at the doorstep.

I tie my hair up, pinning it in place as best I can. My mouth is full of hairpins, and my speckled reflection looks sallow and ratlike. Before, I would have been powdered and perfumed, my hair done in an elaborate style by the patient fingers of servants. The household crake would have written lines in my honor, my dress would have been new, and I would have been as beautifully turned out as a glass sculpture from House Canroth. And as empty. I jab the last pin in place, stick out my tongue at my reflection, and set to cleaning the grime out from under my fingernails with a splinter of wood. My hands are red, chapped. They smell faintly of hard soap. The creams and unguents in my bathroom back in my mother’s house are like phantasmagorical things, little jewel-glass bottles, worth a month’s pay for a Hob out here on Whelk Street.

Perfumes and pretty things. I’m reduced to nothing without them. Is that all I am, all I ever wanted for myself? I face the wretch that glares back at me from the mirror. I am more than my wardrobe, more than my family name, more than my mother’s aspirations, more than a toy for my brother’s whims. The girl gives me a haughty look; it is one I recognize even without kohl and reddened cheeks. It is the look of self-possession. I smile slightly and nod back.

Nala also loans me a black lace shawl. I cover my shoulders and head downstairs looking completely out of place on Whelk Street. The few Hobs I pass whistle and jeer, but I keep my head high and ignore them. It’s a good walk back to the Crake, and I’m in a mood halfway between anger and tears when I finally pull up a free chair next to a wild-eyed crake and wait for the Gris-damned bat to arrive. The outside tables have all been lit by fatcandles in little glass cages, and warm orange firelight blossoms over the polished wooden tabletops. Some of the crakes are wearing wide-brimmed hats set with small candles that gutter out in the wind then promptly relight themselves. In this strange fluttering of light and poetry, I wait.

A snatch of rhyme drifts down from a high window. It’s the skip-rope song the Hoblings in the street are so fond of singing while they play. Mostly I barely hear the words these days, the taunts slipping over me as smoothly as the finest silk from MallenIve. This time though, they’ve added a new verse.

A corpse for a corpse, the sea-witch said,

A hand for a hand, a head for a head.

Pelim rose and Pelim fell,

A death for a death to end the spell.

The words are meaningless—children’s gibberish—but I shiver anyway, hoping for Jannik to arrive soon so I can leave this place.

The faint chimes of the tower bell are calling out the hour when I spot a black coach rounding the corner of the cobbled street. The six unis pulling it are soot black, their backward-sweeping horns crystal and silver. Even the most demented crake stops whispering to himself when House Sandwalker’s coach comes to a halt. I die inside. Everyone is watching, and for days after this they’ll be gossiping about some tarted-up kitty-girl getting into a bat coach. I pull my shawl tighter and try to pretend that everything is normal as I rise and walk over to where the coachman is holding the door open for me.

“Are you trying to get me noticed?” I whisper to the dark figure inside. “People will talk.”

He smiles in answer, fang tips flashing. “Get in, and then you can berate me to your heart’s content.”

Impossible damned bat
. I sit opposite him, and the coach sets off with a jerk, bouncing so hard over the cobblestones that I’m certain that any moment I’m going to be violently ill. If I am, I shall aim in Jannik’s direction. Serve the insolent, grinning fool right.

“Are you feeling poorly?”

I glare at him. House Sandwalker is up in New Town, a hillside villa, so I have at least a good half hour of bone-rattling traveling to endure before we get there. I am not in the mood for conversation. I perch on the edge of my seat and make sure my feet are tucked away under my dress. The only thing remotely comforting about this nighttime ramble through the city streets is the faint tickle of magic that brushes my face. I’m almost tempted to lean closer to him just to feel more of it.
Idiot.
I concentrate on glaring harder instead.

He sighs and leans back against his seat. “It’s not that bad.”

“And I have only your word on that.”

“Come now, Feli—Firell, it’s a party, there’ll be wine and food and music. Nothing you haven’t faced before.”

“And if someone recognizes me?”

“The only people who will recognize you are unlikely to care.”

A tendril of worry winds its way up my spine. “How do you mean?”

He sighs again and looks out the black window. Vague shapes flit past us, ghost houses and lights. “You’ll see.”

13

T
HE
S
ANDWALKER HOUSE CROUCHES
high on the slopes of a hillside, looking down over New Town. The stone building faces directly onto the street, and a wide flight of stairs sweeps up to the grand doorway. The marble steps are opalescent, smooth as a fish’s eye.

It’s vaguely reminiscent of the university entrance, albeit on a smaller scale. Moonvines are growing rampant over the face of the building, although this early in the season the flowers are nothing more than tight green promises.

I imagine that when the vines flower, the whole façade will look like a painting done in a palette of whites and greens. There’s an air of cool serenity to it that I would never have associated with the bats.

Then again, what do I really know about them? In MallenIve they are considered lower than gutter-trash, but thanks to the wealth of the three families here, they’ve been granted citizenship in Pelimburg. It’s a cheap, dishonest freedom. All it really means is that the bat House Heads—all three of them—are on the city council and that they and their families no longer have to carry pass-letters and are free to travel at night. Mostly Pelimburg just ignores them, pretending that they are a distant joke told at someone else’s expense. The Haner Street Agreement supposedly gives them freedom, but all it really does is make it plain that the bats keep to their own and know their place. Not so very different from before. I suppose we all take what little freedoms we can get. At least now it’s an offense to stake a bat for no reason.

“Here we are,” Jannik says.

“So I see.”

The carriage door swings open to give me a clearer view of the house. I step down, and the house looms over me.

I try to raise my hem as little as possible as I climb the marble steps. Vanity, I know, but I’m inordinately embarrassed by my boots. Another manservant—also a bat, I notice—opens the doors wide as we approach and Jannik ushers me in ahead of himself.

The entrance hall is the exact opposite of the one at House Pelim. Ours is dark and stuffy, but still homey, with umbrellas leaning in muddy piles against the wall and the collection of leashes and rain boots and other tack that seems to accumulate whenever my brother is home making the house smell of leather and wildness. The serving Hobs do clean up quickly, but the house always feels lived in, like a real home.

This place is cold and clean. The walls gleam, and the only items to greet a visitor are a slender plinth displaying a small silver card tray and a pale minimalist flower display. It all seems rather bleak. Jannik leads me quickly from the room, as if he too finds the atmosphere chilly, and we go through a series of rooms and passageways to an enclosed garden. The scent of forced flowers, thin and sweet, drifts on the cool evening breeze.

Distant murmured conversations hum over a sweep of music I vaguely recognize. I think I last heard this piece with my mother when I accompanied her on one of her rare outings to a performance at the Pelim Civic. All I remember was boredom, and a certain resentment at her for paying all her attention to Owen. It was the night he told us that his quiet little wife was with child. A new Pelim heir on its way.

Now the music sounds sublime, seawater rushing over me after a hard day’s work. I let it drown me and then realize with a start that Jannik is laughing. I open my eyes.

“All there?”

I don’t even know what he just asked me. “So what can I expect at a ba”—I swallow the word—“vampire party?” I probably don’t want to know. He did make it quite plain that there would be no other Lammer Houses attending.

“It’ll be easier to show you than to tell you,” Jannik says, and leads me past a bed of flourishing greenery, down a small stone path to where the party is in progress.

A quartet is performing unobtrusively on a raised stage, and in the clearing, several long couches have been positioned, draped with lush materials. People mill about, dressed in somber finery. Here and there a flash of jewel-bright silk adds a high note.

It takes me a moment to realize that the crowd is all, or mostly, river-Hobs. A few pale-skinned vampires move between them like predators. There’s not a single Lammer in sight. I’m the only one here. As I take this in, it becomes apparent that the Hob fashions are rather like my own. They are out-of-date, overdyed to fit the season or to cover fading and wear.

My gaze falls on the occupants of one couch. A bat is feeding off a Hob, drinking from her brown wrist.

No.
My stomach turns and I whirl around to face Jannik. “You bloodsucking sack of filth!” It seems that I am learning well from my Whelk Street compatriots.

Jannik closes his eyes. “I didn’t bring you here for that,” he says without looking at me. His tone is slow and patient, and that only infuriates me all the more. “I have other sources for blood.”

“Bats are supposed to feed only on nilly blood—that’s part of the Haner Street Agreement.”

“
And
any willing donor.”

“Semantics—there’s no such thing.”

“Obviously, your experience of poverty has been cushioned somewhat,” he says. “There are many who when offered enough coin will do such things that you would find … unpalatable.”

Maybe he’s right, but how desperate do you have to be to let a bat drink your blood? It’s revolting, and my stomach won’t settle. It’s—it’s not allowed, I keep telling myself, even as I remember the Hob girl who dyed my hair. Anja. She had wounds on her throat. And the blood on Dash’s thigh.
Dash
—

Bile creeps up my throat and I swallow convulsively. I keep my eyes on my feet, not wanting to look at the scene. If I don’t look, I can pretend it’s not real.

Jannik sighs. “Would you like a drink?”

Ugh, after last night I really don’t think so.
“Water,” I say. “Please.”

“We do have wine. For the Hobs.”

“Strangely, I have no desire to drink some barrel leavings you’ve deemed bad enough to waste on a pack of starving Hobs.”

The sound of his laughter makes me look up. “You really know nothing,” he says. “My mother would never feed a meal badly. Besides, we own a vineyard in Samar.”

Some of the very best wines come from Samar. I’m quietly impressed, not that I tell Jannik. “Perhaps I might have a glass.”

Jannik signals to a gray-coated servant, and we are promptly served two glasses of red wine. The color is deep, almost black, like the sea roses that bloom in summer in my mother’s garden. I can taste raspberry and sour fig and sorrow. Like the music that swells around us, this wine makes me think of home. My real home.

“So.” The wine gives me brittle courage. “If you didn’t bring me here to be a meal, why exactly did you invite me?”

Before he can answer, another bat glides up to us. She’s tall, and although she looks a little like Jannik, the lines of her face are softer, less angular. She stares at me.

My heart drums faster, and I can hear the blood in my ears. At any moment, she will recognize me the way I have her, and my game will be up. But Roisin merely flicks me a look of bored disinterest, then turns to Jannik. “Moving on, are we?”

“Something like that,” he says with a pained smile.

“Mother will be so pleased,” she says. “It was an embarrassment seeing you get so pathetically involved with that—”

“Not as pleased as she’d be if you started showing some sign that you were indeed born into the Sandwalker line.” He says it acidly, and it is the first time I have heard hatred in his voice. “You can’t hope to impress her with nothing more than your talent for perfumes.”

While I can still feel the delicate feather brush of Jannik’s strange magic, his sister, Roisin, is as dull as a piece of driftwood. It must be a humiliation to both her and her mother, that this exalted daughter is weaker in power than her unwanted brother. That is, if I understand the hierarchy correctly.

Roisin blinks very slowly, and I am reminded of my mother’s old cat. I fully expect to see Roisin lashing the tip of a gray tail and flexing her claws. “Enjoy your meal,” she says. And then to me, “Perhaps a low-Lammer will be more to his taste.”

She leaves us with an imperious sweep of her long skirts, and I turn to Jannik. “She seemed to think you brought me for a reason. So if it’s not food, what is it?”