14

THE HARSH CAWS of a passing flock of ibis break the morning stillness. I kneel on the bed to get a better look out of Jannik’s wide window. In the dawn light I can see over the slate roofs of the houses, all the way to the Levelling Bridge and the wide brown smear of the Casabi. The sky is gray and cool, and there are no clouds. Last night would have been a good night on the boats, and Lils will already be dockside, unloading the day’s catch and taking it to market.

“It’s early still,” Jannik says from the floor. “If you want I can have a servant draw you a bath and find you some suitable clothing.”

I can hardly arrive at the Crake to wash dishes in Nala’s borrowed dress. “That would be kind of you.” The awkwardness from last night is gone. I feel like Jannik is an extension of me, the part of me that stayed home and just dreamed about running away. I peer over the edge of the bed and smile down at him. Amazing what sleeping in a decent bed does for my mood.

“You’re entirely too happy in the morning,” he says. “I’m afraid it would never work between us. I’m just going to have to deny you your dream.”

He’s joking, of course, and I lean on my elbows and stare at him. “Heartbreaker.”

Jannik closes his eyes. “I know. I’m terrible for it. I do hope you can find it in yourself to one day forgive me.”

“Forgive you! Please, I’ve already moved on. I’m seeing someone.”

At that he blinks and sits up. In the early light his eyes are a gray violet, the color of the sea under the moon. “Are you really? Callous little flick.”

*   *   *

I GET HIM TO STOP HIS CARRIAGE a few blocks from the Crake. It’s not that I’m embarrassed to be seen with him, more that I don’t need people asking me uncomfortable questions. Despite that, I get more than a few raised eyebrows when I walk into work.

“Bats, eh?” Charl shakes his head, laughing.

I draw up and begin to answer him stiffly. “It’s not what you think—”

But he waves my protests down. “Leave it,” he says. “You’re not the first to need extra coin, and you won’t be the last neither.”

None of them will believe me. I drop any attempt to explain myself and just gracefully accept that people are going to make assumptions and that the more I argue, the more it’ll look like I’m trying to hide something. It’s annoying, but I picture myself in their places—seeing me leave last night in a bat’s carriage—and think about what conclusions they would have drawn. It makes me want to laugh at how stupid I am. Instead, I grit my teeth and head through to the scullery, my joints already aching at the thought of spending all day with my hands in sudsy water.

Gris, this dress. It’s stiff against my skin and scratches at the seams. Nala’s gown is folded up and stashed away in my bag. There’s no way I would have worn it here.

I’m itchy and it takes me a while to realize that it’s probably from the starch. This dress must belong to some maid who has long since outworn it. The red dye has faded to brown, and the hem has been let down till it’s nothing more than the narrowest seam of material. The bodice is tight and uncomfortable but I’d rather be wearing this than one of Jannik’s original offers. Better to wear a maid’s tat than to be squeezed into one of Roisin’s castoffs and not only look out of place but be reminded of everything I have thrown away.

After lunch, Charl heads through the scullery to stand at the back door and smoke a ’grit in peace, away from the eyes of customers. “You hear about the tide?”

The heel of my hand is rough against my eyebrow as I rub at an annoying itch. There’s always tide talk in Old Town, where fortunes and lives depend on the sea. Mostly I barely listen. It was Owen who paid attention to tide talk, who lived his life by the rise and fall of the ocean. “What’s it this time?” I ask, only half interested.

“Red Death.”

The teabowl shatters against the edge of the stone sink as I jerk back. It’s the Red Death that almost wiped out my family’s fortunes not that many decades ago. Red Death could bring Pelimburg to its knees. Fish will die, seabirds will die, the tiny creatures that fill the rock pools will die. Everywhere there will be the stink of rot unless the tide moves quickly past. “How bad does it look?”

Charl puffs on his hand-rolled ’grit and frowns. “Not good. It’s a big one, and it’s set to be a sitter.”

Gris damn it all. What use are our few Saints if their Visions can’t warn people long before the Red Death comes?

“It’s because of those idiot House girls,” Charl says. “Suicides and boggerts sucking bodies dry. Red Death means a sea-witch is coming, and all the magic in Pelimburg’s not gonna stop that.”

“Rubbish,” I snap. “Magic is what keeps Pelimburg running.”

He laughs. “No one but a high-Lammer would say that. It’s fish and copper and tea. Magic just makes things easier.”

Carefully, I run my fingers across the bottom of the sink, searching for the broken shards in the gray water. “Without magic, Pelimburg would be nothing but a beach where seals come to pup.”

“And mayhap it would have been better that way.”

And maybe he’s right.

“Do you really think that this means a sea-witch is rising?” I hate believing Hob superstition, but I find myself infected anyway.

“’Course,” he says.

“And if magic can’t stop a sea-witch, then what can?”

Charl stares at me queerly. “Ah, everyone knows that, girl.”

Everyone except me, apparently. “Humor me,” I say as I carefully wrap the shattered pieces of bowl in some old Courants I find stuffed behind a crate.

“Well, they go as soon as they get what was promised to them. And to do that, you need to speak to the boggert and get it to give you a sign.”

I pause, my fingers pressed on the sharp edge of a piece of pottery. “What do you mean?” My breath whistles.

“Sea-witches need sacrifices. That’s why they follow boggerts around. They feed on the bodies the boggerts leave behind. But you can get a sea-witch to do what you want provided you give it something in return. Whatever it is you offer has to be marked by a boggert-sign.”

“Something—what kind of something?” The words are hard to get out. In the old days, before the Hobs were brought to heel, they used to give the sea a girl and a boy every decade. Maybe they knew something we didn’t.

A corpse for a corpse.

Charl stubs out the last little twist of his ’grit. “Tell Dash we’re ready,” he says. “And all of the Fourth, and Jaxon’s pack too. He just has to give the word.” He stands and heads past me, back to work.

“I’m not a bloody messenger service,” I mumble as he leaves.

Ready for what? I push aside the slow creep of nervous sickness in my stomach. It’s probably another episode like the ’ink—sorting and bottling the herb to sell it.

His plan to destroy Pelimburg, of course.

Something’s far from right, and it has to do with my House, with Dash, and with magic the high-Lammers cannot control. Fear crackles through me. I shake my head. I’m grabbing at shadows and fancies. Dash is no destroyer of cities. He’s a street Hob who sells himself to bats.

*   *   *

I LEAVE WORK LONGING to somehow find an excuse to go back to Jannik’s bed. Of all the things I miss, why is a warm, soft mattress so high on the list? After everything that’s changed in me, am I still so selfish and so utterly House Lammer that I would sell my honor for a chance to return home to my pampered little cage? Guilt floods me, and I try to sublimate the shadowed vision of my mother’s face gone gaunt with worry. It stays, so I force myself to think of Dash instead. A thrill of excitement twines itself with suspicions and guilt. My face flushes and sweat dampens my palms. I no longer know what I’m feeling. His Hob smirk fades, is replaced by Jannik’s smile, Dash’s sallow skin painted over with boggert-white, his gray-green eyes turned indigo and darker than ink.

I laugh bitterly at myself and kick the dry circles of sand on the promenade so that dust puffs up around me.

Go home, Felicita. Stop playing this stupid childish game where you pretend to be something you’re not. My family needs me. Surely they will forgive me, erase my disgrace? Things have changed now. If the Red Death is coming, it will cripple House Pelim again, and what will my little blot of dishonor be against that dark mark? They will need me, to sell me off for whatever they can to recoup their losses. The turning of the tide brings a change in all our fortunes, and it’s too big a thought for me to face.

I dare a glance at the sea, and sure enough, it’s a strange dull color, coppery as blood spilled in a water bowl. The beaches are black with dead fish, and despite my revulsion, I hop down over the wall and onto the flats.

Oh Gris. Already this bad? The air stinks, and the huge sand flies are thick on the fish corpses.

More than a few people are standing about staring at the carnage. The Red Death seems to have caught a shoal of the little spiny puffer fish; they lie on the mud in ranks, like a deflated army.

The mass of the Red Death is coming along the warm Beren current, and it hasn’t reached Lambs’ Island yet. Maybe it’ll break up before it hits the really good fishing grounds out past the island. It’s not moving fast, after all.

And perhaps instead the Red Death will poison the city and my family will fall and I will return to them like a portent of change, of good fortune.

And perhaps scriven dust will fall like rain, and we will no longer be at the heel of MallenIve and its mines. I snort and shake my head at my own foolishness.

A group of Hobs are huddled together, whispering. A snatch of their conversation blows to me on the wind that whips about us.

“—sea-witch.”

Of course they’d blame all this on a sea-witch.

“—found another body, caught it in one of the nets—”

Oh. I pick my way past the puffers and the occasional rubbery splat of a dead jellyfish and try to hear more.

“Was clear as glass,” says the tallest Hob, her hair ripped out of its bun by the rising wind. Dark curls hide her face. “Some Hobling what got lost in the marshes. Poor mite.”

“It’s a bad business,” says another. He’s old, world-weary.

“Damn those stupid Lammer bitches and their fucking Leap.” This one’s young and fiery, snappy as Dash, as Jaxon, as Charl. “Bringing all their bad luck down on us like a storm.”

“True enough,” the woman says.

“They’ll get as they deserve, you’ll see,” the young man says, with a harsh fervor that makes the others laugh.

“Oh, what, you’ve had yourself a Vision have you?” the woman says. “Leave that mucking guesswork to the House Lammers.”

The Hob shakes his head. “No guesses,” he says. “I know.”

I take a deep breath, turn away from the mass of dead fish, and head back home.

*   *   *

THREE DAYS HAVE PASSED since I spent the night at Jannik’s house. There’s been no sign of Dash, although I passed Charl’s message on to Lils, who took it with a grim-faced nod.

I pass my time working. The shop is quiet as the city holds its breath, watching the Red Death crawl up Pelimburg’s beaches.

Whispers are everywhere, passing among the Hobs and low-Lammers and spreading a net of rumors. Sea-witches and sacrifices. The skip-rope chants around the city grow more menacing, more superstitious. If I see Hoblings at play, jumping in time to their songs, I detour to not hear what fresh insult they’ve added to their list against my House.

I’ve heard nothing from Jannik, and he and Dash war in my mind, their faces overlapping. Which of them can I trust? Both? Neither? As I dawdle home from the Crake I think of the bat feeding on the Hob, of her legs splayed, and of my late-night conversation with Jannik.

It’s hard to picture him doing that. He seems so … controlled, studious. I have an easier time imagining him filling in account ledgers than giving in to any kind of passion. Maybe he was just trying to shock me. Testing our boundaries. I shake my head. No, Jannik doesn’t … do that with his food. He can’t. I will it not to be.

A wind comes off the ocean, heavy with the smell of decay. The heat is rising, and it isn’t long before the beached fish and dolphins go off. Some ill-dressed Hobs are trying to scavenge what’s washed up—they’re desperate.

I walk faster and keep my eyes down, not wanting to look at the miasma of sand flies cloaking the carcasses down on the flats.

Quickly, I turn onto Whelk Street, and relief sweeps through me as I enter the familiar front door. From the bottom of the steps, I can hear raised voices and a strange, repetitive thumping. Frowning, I put one hand to the rickety banister and make my way up.

My heart skips. It’s his voice. A flush of terrified excitement fills me, even though I try to tamp it down with my anger. I can’t. What about the letter-writer, Felicita? Stop this, stop acting like a lovesick nilly. I want to see him, and only now do I realize just how worried I’ve been. I bound up the last few steps, trying to stop the stupid smile that I’m certain must be plastered all over my face.

Dash is lying on the floor of the common room, giving orders to the rest of the Whelk Street crew, Kirren curled against his chest and licking his face.

The floor is covered with planks of wood, smelling of sawdust and sweet sap. It’s a fortune in building supplies, and Lils, Esta, and Verrel are building partitions across the rooms to replace the makeshift curtains. Verrel is working with a speedy assurance, hammering joins together with hardened wooden pegs. The other two are holding what they’re told to hold and generally just being the dogsbodies.

“What’s going on?” I hiss at Lils as I dump my shoulder bag in a mostly clear corner.

“Dash wants the building fixed before it falls down on our heads,” she says with a shrug. “Wants to protect us or some rubbish like that.”

“Protect us from what?”

“That I’d love to know. But the daft wanker seems to think that if he’s not here every moment of the day, then the whole lot of us will just wither up and die without his flash presence. Thinks we don’t know how to take care of ourselves.” She glares in his direction and then passes a handful of sharpened pegs to Verrel, who pounds them into a nearby beam. “I’ll show him someone who can’t tell his arse from his elbow, I will,” she mutters.

Dash seems oblivious to our conversation, his face slack. He looks dreadful. I kneel down next to him and cock my head until he focuses on my face. There are dried stains on his collar and vest, and he stinks of sweat and must. Blood and ’ink.

“Dash?” It’s been so long since I’ve said his name aloud, it feels awkward on my tongue. “What—are you all right?”

“Hello, love,” Dash says when he finally sees me. I twist my hands. He’s never called me that. It’s always “darling,” or my false name said with an ironic grin.

His eyes are glitter bright. “You can start on the tea so our hard workers here can have a bite of summat soon as they’re done, yeah.” He lifts his hand and tries to stroke Kirren’s ears but his coordination is nonexistent, and he misses the dog and hits himself in the face instead. “There’s a good lass,” he mumbles as I shake my head in exasperation and go to fill the tea urn.

He’s either very drunk or very high. Or possibly both. Whatever it is, I decide that there’s no way I’m putting any poisonink in the tea, and instead I brew up a mix of dried chamomile flowers, redbush, and honeybush.

“That’s as much as we can get done today,” Dash says, still lying on the floor. “The light’s failing.” Lils helps me sit him up against the wall and we hold his teabowl for him until we’re certain he’s actually going to get the tea in his mouth. Then I pull her into the washroom.

“What’s going on?”

Lils twists her fingers. “Came home like this ’bout an hour ago. Wasted.” She lowers her voice. “Crying too. Got him cleaned up a bit before Charl and his lads came through with all their wood and whatnot. Can’t have them seeing him that mucked.” She looks furious for a moment. “Don’t know what His Flashness is thinking, wasting brass like that.”

By now, of course, I have an inkling of an idea concerning where Dash goes to get his seemingly limitless funding. I have a vision of him lying naked under a bat while it feeds, and I shake my head. I can’t be totally sure of that.

The getting drunk part isn’t completely unheard of.

“Crying?” I ask. “Is—is that normal for him?”

She shakes her head and chews at her bottom lip. “I don’t like this none,” she says in her dark growl. “Never ever seen him this bad. If I din’t know better…”

“What?”

Lils shakes her head again. “He’s acting like a girl what’s been thrown over by her boy,” she says. “And that’s not like him. Not at all.”

We go back into the main room. If he really was crying earlier, there’s no sign of it now. Kirren is curled on his lap, tail thumping against his thigh, and Dash is drinking the tea with a steady concentration.

Nala has returned from work, and she’s sitting next to him, playing with the dog’s ears. She looks up as Lils and I enter the room. “Dash says we’re none of us to go into work tomorrow.”

“Does he now?” Lils walks over to the tea urn and pours Nala a bowl. “Why’s that?”

“Because,” he slurs, “I have plans.”

“What kind of plans?”

“Surprise ones.” He shoves the dog off his lap and tries to stand, clutching at the wall. “Another body went and washed up on Harriers Beach, just past the point.”

I clench my fists. That makes three now: Rin, the marsh Hobling, and this latest one. And the Red Death has brought fishing to a standstill. Anything that can get out of the water is moving onto the land. There’s a glut of crayfish on the fish markets, and the selkies have disappeared, headed out for clean water, distant beaches. House Pelim, with its—our—reliance on fleets and fishing, is one of the hardest hit.

“Another body?” Esta drops her bowl. “Like Rin?”

Dash nods, still leaning against the wall. He looks like he’s about to fall over. That or be violently ill. “And the look-fars have seen sea-drakes,” he says. “Ill current is bringing them to the city.”

Not a good sign. Not at all. They can’t be too close to shore, otherwise the alarm horns would have been blown, but it’s still worrying.

“How many?” I ask.

He shrugs and almost topples to the floor.

“Come, you.” Lils grabs his arm. “Nala, give me a hand here, will you, love?” She turns her attention back to Dash. “You’re going to go sleep this off,” she says. “And that’s a Gris-damned order.”

He doesn’t argue, just lets the two girls walk him to his room. From behind the new wooden wall I hear him say, “I mean it, girls. Every one of yer is coming with me tomorrer.”

I glance across at Verrel, who merely shrugs in his unhurried way. “We do what he says.”

“Do we?”

“Some of us owe him a little more loyalty than you do.” He leans back with a sigh, and I wonder what exactly it is that Dash is up to.

Should I have offered to help him to his room? I don’t truly know my place in this world, and sometimes when it seems I’m standing on solid ground, I sink into marsh mud and have no idea what I’m supposed to do.

I step toward the makeshift door, meaning to go after them, but then Nala and Lils are already out of Dash’s room.

“Here,” says Lils, grabbing my wrist and stopping me from going in. “Let’s make a bite to eat. You must be starving.”

“She’s not the only one,” Verrel says.

They close around me, dragging me to the little stove and its boiling water.

“Tea eggs,” says Lils. “That’s all I’ve got the energy for after dealing with that mucker.”

I glance back at Dash’s door. “Is he going to be all right?”

Lils pauses and gives me a strange, soft look, full of pity. “Don’t you worry about him,” she says, then looks at the floor. She shakes her head. “You poor daft girl.” The words are whispered, exasperated.

My cheeks burn, and I bite the tip of my tongue. That look—her eyes are too full of knowledge that I don’t have—and the weight of her pity smothers me. I go help with the eggs and say nothing more.

*   *   *

I’M AWOKEN BY A FAMILIAR HAND on my shoulder and the smell of fresh tea and toast. “Rise and shine, darling,” Dash says. I’m still grumbling into my thin pillow when the rough blanket lifts and cold air blows across me. A moment later, the cold is replaced by the warmth of a body pressing against mine. Dash kisses up my neck, pulling my hair back and coiling it loosely in his fist. Sleepily, I turn and kiss him back. He’s clean, smelling of the hard green soap we all share. His hair is still wet, fine drops dripping from his curls. I let him push up my night dress, and I cup my hands around his face.

Dash tastes like tea and tooth powder, and his tongue is soft against mine, making me moan in sleepy happiness. His body shifts and I feel his full weight on me. As I run my hands down his face and neck so that I can unbutton his shirt, he catches my fingers in his.

Bite marks.

“It’s nothing,” he says.

He tries for nonchalance, but it’s too late. I’ve already felt the scabbed-over gashes at his throat where some vampire has bitten into him. So now I know for certain. Like me, Dash has gone to one of Jannik’s parties. Unlike me, he’s let one of them feed off him for a handful of brass. These are new, the scabs still pink and soft.

“Who?” I manage to ask. The heat in my belly slips away, replaced by a cold liquid knowledge. I know the why of it—it’s about coin, as Jannik so clearly pointed out to me that night.

He pushes himself up on his palms and squints at me. “Does it matter?” he asks me softly, after a long pause filled only with the distant soughing of the waves.

I nod, not trusting my voice.

He settles back down, burying his face against my neck. I wait, still holding him lightly. Eventually he says, “No one you know,” and I make a choking noise, half sob, half laugh.

I picture Jannik. “When?”

He shrugs. “What does it matter?”

I turn my head, pull away from him, and press one fingernail against the fresh scabs so that they break and a trickle of blood runs down his neck. He doesn’t flinch when I do this. Instead he laughs.

“It was a goodbye present,” he says, but he’s not talking to me.

I watch the blood run thinly across his skin and try not to think.

“I have to go wake the others,” he says, and the warmth leaves me. After he’s gone, I lie in bed watching the spiders on the ceiling while my tea cools. It’s before dawn, and the room is shadowed with blue and gray. Outside my little nook, I hear the grumbling of the others as they wake, the clink of teabowls, and the ever-present screaming of the sea mews.

With a reluctant sigh, I push off the covers and rise to meet the day.

The others are bleary eyed, and I stumble past them and help myself to more tea, avoiding all eye contact with Dash. For some reason I feel embarrassed by their knowledge of my relationship with him.

“So what’s your grand plan then, master Dash?” says Lils. We’re eating a quick breakfast of eggs and toast, and the sun is just beginning to tinge the horizon. I lean back and set my teabowl down. I’m rather interested in the answer myself. It had better be good if there’s a chance I’m going to get fired over it.

Dash catches my look of irritation and winks. “Well,” he says, and straightens his waistcoat, “it’s a spring low, so we can mostly walk to Lambs’ Island.”

Everyone is silent, then Lils says to him, “You’re a right mucking chancer, you know that? What if we’re caught? You got a taste for iron pliers all of a sudden?”

“No one will be caught. I’ve paid off the look-fars.” He stands. “Now, everyone get a move on. We need to bring back as many mussels as we can carry before the Red Death hits the island.”

Lambs’ Island is forbidden. Once, years ago when we still traded with the Mekekana nation, it was the only place that they were allowed to land their bug-ships. Since the war, and since the War-Singers of MallenIve and Pelimburg stood together to destroy an attacking Meke fleet, we’ve seen not a breath of them. Lambs’ Island has been abandoned, the old iron warehouses crumbling into the sea and the traders’ villas left to the lizards and the seabirds. No one goes there. We are magic, and the Meke are not; our worlds will not meet on friendly terms again.

On days when the tide is at its lowest, there’s a broken causeway that extends from the tip of the Claw all the way to Lambs’ Landing. Parts of it are difficult to cross, and you’re bound to reach your destination wet, but that’s not what keeps people away.

“What about the Meke ghosts?” I ask.

Dash just laughs at me. “That’s a rumor spread by the Houses. There are no ghosts on Lambs’ Island.”

“How do you know?”

“We’ve been there before,” Lils answers for Dash. “He’s right. There ain’t nothing there but broken-down buildings and blue mussels as fat as your fist. We bring enough of those back, we’ll make a mint at the market. Especially now.”

The others nod. Shellfish are scarce now with the bad tide, and they seem to think the rewards outweigh any risk.

Faced with their certainty and the knowledge that, thanks to Dash’s connections and vai, the House look-fars in the towers won’t report us to the sharif, I take the tightly woven straw bag that Nala holds out to me. The other Whelk Streeters trip downstairs, chattering softly to one another as they go. Kirren runs under feet and between legs, making even sullen little Esta laugh. Dash stays at my side, keeping pace with me as we make our way to the rubble-built causeway.

*   *   *

THE SUN IS WELL OVER THE HORIZON by the time we reach the island. Kirren is wet and happy, bounding along the sandy beaches before racing back to Dash’s heels. The air is clean, unspoiled by coal fires or fish markets or the mess of city stink that infuses everything in Pelimburg. I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with the sharp taste of it. The sea here is still green and gray, untouched by the distant spreading mass of the Red Death.

“Here’s a good lot!” Lils yells from one of the tide pools. I join her and Nala, pulling the fat mussels from the rocks. Tugging them free is hard work, and sweat trickles down my brow and back. It doesn’t take us long to fill all the sacks we’ve brought, and then we tie them tightly and set them in a shallow tide pool to keep the mussels alive.

As I’m tying my hair back again after it’s come loose in the wind, I spot Dash climbing the rise of the hill to where the Meke’s long-abandoned lighthouse stands. It’s weather crumbled and stained white with guano. Scores of birds are wheeling around the tower. Among them are the large black-winged shapes of the sooty albatross; I’ve heard enough Hob talk to know they believe that these birds are the ghosts of the drowned.

No they’re not, I tell myself firmly. They are birds. Live birds, who squabble over the fish guts sailors throw overboard.

Silently, I follow Dash up the low hill, keeping him just in sight. The air has chilled, and I shiver in the breeze whipping off the ocean. Maybe Lambs’ Island really is the home of ghosts. If there’s a boggert feeding off the Hobs, then perhaps it’s here now, watching us.

Dash disappears over the crest of the hill. I lift my sodden skirts and climb faster.

At the rise, I pause and look down. He’s making his way to a protected little bay, just a narrow tongue of sand between black rocks. The sun bites into my eyes and I squint and shade them so I can see better. A few minutes later he’s crouched on the sand as if he’s waiting for something.

The sea laps at his feet. His mouth is moving, but I can hear nothing.

He’s been still so long that eventually I tire and sit down cross-legged among the wax-berries and aloes and the ubiquitous sea roses that shed their wide black petals like old blood. I should leave him to whatever he’s doing and head back to the others, but something keeps me watching.

And I am rewarded.

A sleek head rises from the waves, her blond hair plastered back. There’s something familiar there, but I’m too far away to see the face clearly. The girl, pale and silvery as a fish, stays in the shallows, the foam swirling about her feet. She takes Dash’s hand, and he talks.

I want to know what it is he’s saying, but there’s no way for me to move closer without him noticing me.

The girl listens and then nods, but she doesn’t let go of Dash’s hand. He has to pull himself free. She bows her head, her fingers tearing something from her hair. It flashes silver and green, bright as new leaves, and she holds it out for a moment before dropping it in the sand at Dash’s feet. It blinks there.

She says something more, then lets the tide pull her back out into the water, back under. Dash watches her sink before he bends to pick up the thing on the sand. Quickly, he tucks it into his pocket and stands.

I crawl backward, out of sight, and run down the hill before he can see me.

Lils, Nala, Verrel, and Esta are lying stretched out in the sun like basking seals. Esta gets up as I approach and toes Verrel in the ribs until he rises and follows her off across the sand. Lils props herself up on one elbow and scowls at me. In contrast, Nala laughs and pokes Lils in the side.

It doesn’t take long for Dash to join us. I pretend to have seen nothing.

We lie on the beach near the shadow of the old lighthouse, watching the clouds scud across the sky and the little pale crabs ghost-walk between strands of the beached seaweed. Dash pulls a bottle of vai from his leather rucksack, and that elicits a ragged cheer from the others. My body is dry for magic, begging me to indulge once again despite my last hangover.

“Not for me, thanks.” I push the bottle gently away, hard as it is to resist its allure.

“You should, you know.”

“Should what? Get drunk on a beach just before walking back in time to beat the tide?” I laugh and throw a piece of driftwood for Kirren. He brings it back to me, his hot breath warming my fingers as he snuffles the bleached wood into my hand. I scratch behind his ears and throw the stick again.

“I promise you, it’ll make the return journey much more interesting.”

“I’ll just bet.”

Nala takes the bottle from Dash and swallows deeply before handing it to Lils. They’re drinking fast, giggling and leaning against each other. Off in the distance, Verrel is helping Esta build a bonfire on the beach.

“What is it with Esta and fire, anyway?” I ask. “One day that girl is going to burn us all while we sleep.”

“Well, we won’t be the first,” Dash says. He grabs the bottle back from Nala and drinks. This time I give in and take it when he offers. As he passes it over, I spot an opalescent mark on the palm of his hand. The skin looks puckered and tender.

“What do you mean?” I shiver even though it’s warm here in the spring sunshine. Esta whoops as the dry branches catch.

“Our dear little Esta and her brother escaped from their father by tying him to the bed and setting him on fire one night.”

I’m horrified. I stare at her. She’s so small, delicate-looking, and with her selkie-dark skin she looks like a fragile sculpture carved from the glassy black rocks that sometimes wash down the Casabi. “And her mother?”

“Her mother was a selkie. She got back her skin while her husband burned and headed straight for the sea.”

And here I am, feeling sorry for myself because of the choices I’ve made. An angry guilt moves me, and I drink deeply. The strong spice washes the sour sick taste from my mouth, and already I can feel the scriv drifting through my veins. So very little, but it’s a drug, and my nerves are screaming for more.

Something must show on my face because Dash is looking at me queerly. “He was a hard bastard, their father. And I know the type, my own da was the same.” He shrugs. “There’s some who deserve to live and some who don’t. The world wasn’t going to miss him. Esta did what everyone else in her family was too damn scared to do.” He sounds like he respects her ruthlessness. “She did what was right.”

“Verrel said that he brought her and Rin to you.”

“About three years back now. Lils was less than impressed at the time.”

“Shut up,” says Lils. “You didn’t give me no warning. It was you I was pissed at, not the mites.” She looks at me. “You never saw children so angry and scared. Gris knows what their da did to them, and there was no way they could follow their mam into the sea.” She shakes her head. “Half-breeds, always getting the worst of both. Took months for the bruises and burns to fade.”

“And the sharif were looking for them,” Nala says softly, drawing shapes in the sand with her finger. “That was a bad year. I don’t think they left Whelk Street for that whole time. Dash was always bringing them back treats, and Verrel would try to cheer them up with his stupid songs.”

“And half our money went to paying off the bloody sharif,” Lils says. “And hiring chirurgeons. And then paying them off so they wouldn’t talk none.”

Dash shrugs. “It was worth it.”

“For Esta and Rin?” Lils says. “Or for you?”

“Oh, always for me, of course.” Dash grins. “All my love for my fellow man is long since used up.”

Lils snorts and drinks deeply. “Wasted it, did you?”

“You bled me dry.”

“Shut up, you.”

“Tossing me aside for some skinny redhead…” He’s still grinning, and I take this to be some kind of long-running joke between them.

Nala punches him in the arm. “Skinny redhead? I’ll show you skinny redhead,” she says, then collapses against him in a fit of giggles. She looks up, squinting against the sun. “Weather’s going to change soon,” she says. “Best get this over with.” Nala clambers to her feet and waits.

Lils says nothing. Instead, she traces the edges of the picture Nala has drawn in the damp sand. With her dark expression gone tight and a little frightened, she allows Nala to pull her up.

“We’re going to go swim,” Nala says, tugging on her lover’s hand.

There’s no need to talk. I sit next to Dash, drinking with him while we watch the two girls pull off their dresses and wade out into the shallows wearing nothing but their bloomers and shifts.

“How far are they going?”

Dash moves closer to me to take the bottle. “Until it’s safe.” Heat radiates from him, and he smells like salt and dune sage.

I frown. The two girls are far out now so that just their heads are bobbing at the surface. Lils’s is dark and small, with the bun pinned tightly at the base of her skull, and Nala’s wild cloud of hair is slicked back with seawater into bloodred tendrils. For a moment, she reminds me of the pale girl in the water—they have the same fine bone structure, the cheeks and jawline of House daughters. She reaches out with her pale hands and undoes Lils’s bun.

The wind changes and I feel a shiver of terror, remembering:

the bat feeding at the Hob’s thigh Jannik’s mother pulsing with stomach-churning power the long giddy drop down Pelim’s Leap as I tossed my shawl and shoes into the surf Ilven’s face white and pinched the last time I saw her after her mother had announced her betrothal the taste of her breath in my mouth, sweet with sugar and scriv and fear

Then the visions fade as Lils leans back and lets the water cover her hair.

“What—?”

Dash grimaces. “That’s our Lils. It’s only safe for her to let down her hair where there’s no people, and where there’s salt water to wash all the nightmares out.”

“What are you talking about?”

He looks at me sidelong. “Lils is a throwback, a Hob with magic. She can trace her family line back to MallenIve, and to the opening of the Well.”

The Well: root of all the magical disasters that befell our country. The magic unleashed by House Mallen that day warped the living things around it. There were patches of fallout that made Hobs and Lammers and animals of all kinds turn strange, some bodily, others magically. Most of the tainted survivors were killed, although some escaped—like the unicorns and the sphynxes who took to the red sands of the deep desert. Even the nixes and selkies fled for the safety of the sea and the treacherous Casabi. Few magical Hobs managed to evade the later purges led by the Great Houses.

Dash carries on talking with a kind of fierce wistfulness. “As long as her hair is coiled up tight the nightmares stay where they are. Her family was able to hide the children who were born with the nightmares by catching them young and keeping their braids tight. No one ever caught one of the dream-children.”

I stare at Lils with faint horror. “If the sharif find out about her, they’ll have her destroyed.”

Hob magic—like all things from the Well—is too unpredictable. Dangerous.

We do not allow it.

I take another gulp of vai from the almost-empty bottle.

“The sharif won’t find out,” he says.

“You’re going to make sure it never happens, I take it?”

Dash nods, then throws a handful of sand at me. Without thinking, I let the scriv boil up through my center, turning the air solid and thick, leaving the sand hanging in a shimmering curtain between us.

“Shit.” I let the sand drop and it hisses as the grains land. Cold rushes over my skin.

“Got you,” he says. “There’s no denying that little game.” Dash grabs my upper arm and tugs me closer to him. “What House, Lammer? And the truth this time.”

I swallow hard. “Pelim.”

He lets go of me. “So you’re the other dead girl.”

There is nothing I can say. He’s going to send me away, send me back to my family. I can’t face that, and my throat goes thick with tears. What will they do when I arrive on the doorstep, stinking of Hob and sweat and tea eggs? I should have stayed, should have taken the bit like a well-trained uni and let them marry me off to whomever they liked. At least I’d still have a home and a future, even if I had no dignity.

The last thing Dash will want in his life is someone like me. Or worse—now that I know about Lils and her illegal magic, he could kill me and bury my body here where no one will ever find it. It’s not like anyone will be looking for me.

Fear makes it impossible for me to face Dash. All I can think of is the ways he could destroy me.

So I’m not expecting it when he leans in, tilts my chin up, and presses his mouth against mine. It’s a very gentle kiss, soft and sweet. He pulls away. “You can trust me, Firell,” he says. “I keep all the secrets for everyone.”

“It’s Felicita.”

“Not anymore.”

The cold leaves my skin, the fear dissipates. I’m his, part of the Whelk Streeters, and nothing will ever break that. My past slips from me like a shawl in a strong wind.

A shout from the water makes us both turn. Circling Nala and Lils is a group of bobbing heads. Esta shrieks, drops the stick she’s using to prod at her fire, and runs fully clothed into the ocean.

“Selkies,” I whisper. They tend to keep to the deeper waters or to only come ashore as seals. It’s too risky for them to show their true selves. The selkies come up out of the waves, slender and dark and beautiful.

“Sweet Gris.” I’ve never seen a selkie up close before, but the legends are true. A man could lose his heart and head over them. Then one bows down to hug Esta close. Even from where I sit I can see the way the selkie’s grief twists her face. Esta is crying too, great sobs that rack her slight body. It’s as if all her sorrow for Rin is finally being unleashed. When she’s done, I think she will be left as light as a rag.

“You knew they’d be here. We didn’t come here for mussels or—” The girl in the water.

Dash shrugs again. “I knew there’d be a chance,” he says. “The look-fars told me that they’d spotted selkies out past the island.”

The selkies crowd around Esta, enveloping her, touching her short hair and stroking her face. I may not have known Rin, but the sight of their sorrow punches me, and I choke down my sadness. If all I can feel is the very fraying edge of their grief, then I do not want to think how dark the center must be. It makes me think of how my own mother must be mourning me.

Nala and Lils skirt the selkies and come to join us, Lils busy pinning her dripping hair back up in a tight coil. Before she does, I can see that it hangs almost to her hips and I wonder what would happen if she had to cut it off:

Would the dreams inside her be free to touch all of Pelimburg and drive the city mad?