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THE SWARTMARCH WASN’T much of a fiefdom to rule, but then, Tabeth thought, she wasn’t much of an overlord, neither. She opened her hand and looked down at the letter she’d crushed. The paper was small and thin. Torn from the side of a courant, the note hastily scribbled in ink that was half-faded by the time it had been handed to her.
And if the Swartmarch was not a fiefdom, then the towerhouse of the Swartmarch wasn’t a fortress. Even so, it had its guards, its messengers and spies. And if people came to Tabeth and swore loyalty because of what she was, that was hardly her own fault.
They expected something of her. Not leadership, because Swartmarch Hobs and their kits all knew their own mind, and they were about as interested in things like Lammer House hierarchy as the stilt-cats were. But saving. They wanted saving. They were tired of Lammer rule and law and sentence and execution. Tabeth sniffed. She’d be surprised if there were Lammers themselves out there who weren’t tired of it themselves. But the system was in place, and it worked. Better for some, best for a few, and barely for the rest, but it worked.
That didn’t mean it had to stay. The damn letter had been one of her long-dreamed plans, and it had been dismissed as though it were a kitling’s fancy. She’d written to the Grinningtommy up in MallenIve. Written months ago, and only received the reply from Emme yesterday. Before the letter had arrived, Tabeth had been almost excited. She’d finally thought the time was right to change the world.
Time to set in motion the wooden wheels of a new machine, a new future. A new magic, and to do that all she needed to do was breed the Hobs a saviour. It was simple.
The Grinningtommy would know if there were others like Tabeth, whose parents had hidden her away from the evil of the Onnerys. She wasn’t the only one who’d escaped with her spark. Find another, male, and they could breed themselves a queen.
The Grinningtommy had called her approach mercenary and unfeeling.
“Fuck you, Emme.” Tabeth said to the piece of paper. In the shadows, one of her guard crew shifted. “Not you,” Tabeth said. “This.” She tossed the paper up, and it fell at her feet, where she kicked it across the room into the shadows.
“You a bit pissed-like?” said her guard.
Tabeth squinted at her. She was one of the younger set, who had been swallowed up by the Swartmarch and found a place here. Girl was called Vinnia, and Tabeth didn’t know why she’d left her home, but she had. Stilt-City was where the Hobs lived, shoved far from Pelimburg’s ports and shops and fancy houses. It was Lammer law, that. Making sure their precious city wasn’t tainted by being home to the Hobs who had lived there first. Typical. Tabeth scowled. But Stilt-City still had a vague respectability to it. Good families, old names. Swartmarch had none of that. It was a shadow city of cut-throats and beggars and wild Hobling kits who lived in packs and hunted like them too. Vinnia wasn’t Swartmarch-born, she had none of the distinctive wide accent of a true ’Marcher, but she was here, and that spoke volumes. And she was smart and fast. Had to be if you came in from Outside and managed to end up guard on the towerhouse. She was small and curvy, but those solid thighs gave her a firm base, and she had wicked strong arms.
“Lady?” Vinnia queried. “If there’s summat I can get for you....” She wasn’t carrying the reed-whip with which most ’Marchers armed themselves while out in the vlei, but she had a short wood staff, and the girl knew how to use it. Not that it would help with this problem.
“No,” she said. “Not unless you happen to know a sparked Hob who didn’t meet the Onnery.”
“One like yourself?” Vinnia frowned in thought. “There’s rumours sometimes, but not much more’n that. I heard there was one lot who made a run for it, had a feeling-like, they knew the babe was going to be born sparked. Lady’s sister had been, so she’s sitting now drooling and shitting herself, like, you know what I mean. Anywise, this lady and her man, they make a run for it. Go take a narrowboat out as far away from the Stilts as they can get, far from Swartmarch and any rational people, you know?”
Tabeth nodded. She did know. Her parents had done much the same, with more success than others. “What happened?” Though she was certain she had a good idea of how the story ended.
“Eh.” Vinnia shrugged. “Don’t know. There’s river-drakes in the water away from the city. Big fuckers, will take a man down and drown him, swallow him whole. No one’s ever heard from them.” She shrugged again. “Fucking Onnerys, yeah?”
“Rather. Fucking Onnerys.” A small voice had been telling Tabeth all her life that the Onnerys did what they did because they had to, because the river wanted it that way. A much larger and louder voice had recently been saying, “And why the fuck is that acceptable?”
At twenty-eight, the one voice had finally drowned out the other. Tabeth stayed as far away from Stilt-City as she could, and she kept quiet and she didn’t use magic. She’d been in the Swartmarch for three years now. Before that, she’d lived in the great upriver city of MallenIve. She’d moved there from the cold dead marshes after her parents had fallen to illness, hoping the Grinningtommy would be able to help her. The river ran strong there, after all. The magic was concentrated.
Too much so, as it had turned out. They didn’t need an Onnery up in MallenIve, because the river took care of that. Sparked Hobs born near MallenIve were dead almost as soon as they took their first breath, if not earlier. She’d stayed close to the Grinningtommy long enough to see the twisted, deformed stillbirths, and the rare live one, sometimes blinking one lonely eye, or screaming with two mouths, with multiple limbs or none. They’d been monsters, all of them. The river was too rich up north.
So she’d come downriver, sniffing for sparked Hobs, until she’d reached the Swartmarch, and there she’d made her home. And all that time she’d kept her head down and waited.
“Gil knows one of the Onnery lasses, though,” said Vinnia, conversationally.
“Lucky for him.” Tabeth had no idea who Gil was, but the fact that he was on terms with an Onnery family member didn’t endear him to her. She scratched long nails into her scalp. Her head was aching from the tight braids, and she was getting restless. It was part of why she was in such a mood, Tabeth knew. She’d kept the spark reined in too long. It wasn’t safe to do anything with magic this close to Onnery land. They could sense it, like dogs sniffing shit. “Who’s this Gil when he’s at home? Not one of ours, is he?”
“Who, Gilly-boy? Not half.” Vinnia gave a wicked grin. “He’s one of mine, and a nice prick to ride when I’m in the mood for a bit of something from the other side of the river.”
“A Lammer?” There were little cross-divide relationships all the time; it was the nature of Pelimburg and her history and her people, but most were doomed to high passion and drama, and ended in tears and rage. “Your Gil is a Lammer?”
“Well, low, of course. I’m not exactly the kind of girl who goes up to the Houses or sells myself to bats.”
“No, of course not, but how’s a low-Lammer friends with an Onnery?” The idea was preposterous. The Onnery family was as old-name Hob as you got—sticklers for tradition and close-knit families, and a kind of stubborn insularity Tabeth supposed was a combination of rock-headed stupidity and pride.
“It’s the middle daughter, I heard. Bit of a wild thing she is.”
It made a little more sense. Onnery magic only went to the eldest daughter. If there were a pack of them, then the rest were probably left to do as they pleased, needing only to marry well and sew straight. This middle girl wouldn’t have any Onnery magic, but the trade-off would be that she wasn’t horribly disfigured. The true Onnerys were marked, their faces blotched as if with some contagious skin disease. Or so Tabeth had heard. She did her best to stay far from trouble, and have trouble not get the slightest hint of her in return.
Tabeth tried to put the Grinningtommy’s note from her mind. She’d take a boat into the marshes tomorrow and let down her hair, and wash the magic quiet. Until then she could let herself be distracted by one of Vinnia’s stories. The girl kept a rotating pack of men she picked from according to her mood, and she was a ribald storyteller.
“So, what does this rebel daughter do, that she knows the kind of rake you’re partial to?”
Vinnia ignored the question, pouncing on thoughts of her beau instead. “Oh, Gil-boy’s not a rake. Bit sharp with the cards, and he can be light-fingered if he’s the mind to it, but that’s not his thing. Going to be an artist.” Vinnia’s eyes briefly took on a vaguely moony look that Tabeth was certain she’d never had herself. It all seemed dreary, this back and forth over love. She liked a good fuck, and she knew men who’d oblige her when she’d the need, but she’d not allow distraction. It was, from what she could tell, a painful and idiotic occupation, love.
“And the Onnery girl is into artists too, I take it.” Tabeth poured herself and the guard girl pottery mugs of watered-down white wine from the vineyards upriver. From below them, in between the creakings and groanings of the towerhouse, the scent of the communal meal came rising. Barley-porridge and salt-fish, from the smell of it.
Vinnia accepted her cup with a smile. “No idea, but she’s got a wicked streak for a girl from an old family. She runs in a pack with Gil, see?”
Tabeth clicked her teeth. So a good girl from the Stilts ran about with a rabble of thieves and pickpockets? “Packs. And here you are trying to tell me your dear artist boy isn’t a rogue.”
“I never said he weren’t a rogue.” Vinnia grinned crookedly. “I said he weren’t a rake. There’s a difference, you’ll know.”
Tabeth couldn’t help the faint smile. “I wouldn’t, but go on.” There wasn’t much she was going to be able to do today. The Grinningtommy’s haughty dismissal of her idea, and the stark reality of how hard it would be to find a fully grown sparked male Hob, had thrown her good mood. Tomorrow she would go scratch the itch, and cast her net. Perhaps she’d journey herself down the thousand marsh river routes, looking for hidden families. It might take her years to find a match, but she knew women who were still giving birth in their thirties. It wasn’t unheard of, just dangerous.