9

THERE’S NO SIGN of Lils the following morning. With the fading of the spring storms, she’s back at work in the fish markets before dawn.

Dash is there though, talking quietly with Esta. He looks up as I push my curtain open but continues speaking in a low whisper, so as not to wake the others. The selkie-girl is curled up tight with her arms wrapped around her knees and her head bowed. She nods as she listens but says nothing. She blinks when she sees me, her dark seal eyes fathomless as a wild animal’s.

“I have to go,” Esta says as I draw closer. She leaps up and is running down the stairs before I even get a chance to greet her.

Dash raises one eyebrow at me. “And that?”

I shrug. “I’ve no idea—she hasn’t liked me from the first day we met.” I neglect to mention that the first time we met she tried to brain me with a piece of windowsill.

“How interesting. Normally she reserves her hatred for old men and House Lams.” He pats the cushioned sacks next to him. “Sit. Believe it’s time you and me had a little chat.” Then he grins at me. “I’ll make us tea.” He’s clean, dressed in unstained clothes, the stubble scraped from his chin. There’s still a slight bitter herbal smell to him from the poisonink, but it’s barely noticeable.

My heart is pattering as I sit uncomfortably cross-legged. The burlap is rough, and all I’m wearing is my long shift. I feel exposed.

“See now,” Dash says as he flicks a match against his thumb and lights the bundle of driftwood in the stove, then sets the little copper urn to boil. “Isn’t this cozy?” He half smiles at me.

Uncertain, I half smile back and wish I’d just stayed in bed.

“You’re working down at the Crake?” He tosses the spent match into the fire.

“I’ve paid my share into the bowl,” I say, already on the defensive.

“I daresay you have.” The little fire flickers, catching on the dry wood. Soon he’ll have the water at a rolling boil. “Do you like it there, working for old Breadloaf?”

“It’s … fine.” What does he expect me to say?

“Yeah, she’s a good sort—makes you work like a dog but it’s not like we’re not used to that. Leastwise she pays on time and there’s cake if you’re lucky.”

“Yeah,” I murmur in agreement. “Every little bit helps.” I relax. All he wants to do is make sure I’m bringing in my wages and helping to feed and look after the rest of the crew.

Dash grins. “Soon we’ll be bonding over redbush, sharing secrets like old friends, and you’ll feel all like you’re ready to trust me, and then you’ll tell me exactly why it is that a House Lammer is hiding out in Whelk Street with a bunch of half-breeds and Hobs.” Dash glances at the urn, then back at me. “Won’t you?”

“I—I’m not a House Lammer.”

“’Course you’re not. Firell, is it?”

I nod vigorously and will the water to boil faster so that I can have a cup to hide behind. Something—anything—to do with my hands to hide their shaking.

“You’re no low-Lammer,” he says. “Do you know how I know that?”

“How?” I swallow, and watch the steam rising so that I don’t have to look him in the face.

“Your hands are too white.” Dash takes the urn from the fire and adds a generous pinch from the tea box. “Your accent is wrong.” He glances over at me, smiles thinly, and sets the redbush to steep.

Someone has shoved a lump of coal down my throat and I can’t swallow properly. “My mother was a servant and for all that I’m a bastard, my father raised me in his House—gave me the best tutelage—” I cough, a small dry sound.

“A likely story. Pass us the teabowls, Firell.”

The porcelain bowls are cheap, made of thick white clay, cracked and chipped. I take two from the crate and hand them to him. If I keep my mouth shut, I can leave him to his guesswork.

After a few slow sips of hot tea, Dash speaks again. “Sphynx got your tongue?”

“Why should I say anything if you won’t even try to believe me?” I sit straighter and glare at him. I won’t be cowed by a Hob.

Dash laughs. “What House?”

“Pardon?”

“What House did your mam work for?”

Thoughts race through my head, and I settle on the first and most likely story I can imagine. “Malker.”

Dash swishes tea in his mouth, then twists his body so he can spit out the window. “The witch-cursed House. Go on.”

And with that, he’s given me my lie. Inwardly, I’m smiling, but I keep my voice shaky and nervous. “I left after Malker Ilven took the Leap.” I even let myself shiver—just a slight tremble of the shoulders—before continuing my story. “I couldn’t stay there, not after that. The bad luck would have killed me, driven me mad. You know what they say about suicides crawling back from the deep and bringing death with them.” I put my half-empty bowl down on the floor and pull my knees to my chest. “Don’t make me go back,” I mumble. “Please.”

Dash frowns, and I feel him staring hard at me. It’s like spiders crawling over my skin, and I want to shake my head, scrub at my face with my fingernails.

“And so you came here,” he says very softly, his eyes never leaving my face. “Why?”

“I—Anja said I should go to you.” The hairdresser’s words, an instruction I never really questioned until now. I try to keep myself steady, to not blink or waver. “She said to tell you that.”

He watches me for a moment more, his face smooth, expressionless, then he quirks one side of his mouth up in amusement. “Welcome to Whelk Street, Firell.” He stands and straightens his rolled sleeves and his emerald-green waistcoat. “See that the teabowls are washed before Lils gets back,” Dash says. “Girl can get right shirty if she thinks you’re skiving.” He grabs a dark blue scarf from one of the lines that crisscross the room, picks his way through the piles of material, and heads downstairs without another word to me.

After a few minutes I pick up the teabowls and go to fetch a pail of fresh water for rinsing them. Water, icy from the night, slops over my shift, and I curl my toes and mutter a few newly learned expletives. Working at the Crake has taught me more than merely the ins and outs of dish washing.

I hope the arrogant little gutter-dandy stays away for another week.

He’s very …

… tiring.

*   *   *

ALAS, I HAVE NO SUCH LUCK.

Dash returns just after we’ve eaten breakfast. Nala’s still here with Verrel, gathering her bag so she can buy bones from the butcher and treat her dogs. Verrel is sitting by the window, blowing smoke out into the morning air. The room smells like salt and tobacco.

“All right, crew,” Dash says. “I need everyone here to buckle down.”

Nala stares at him. “Dash,” she says patiently, “I’ve dogs that need walking.” Her bag is slung over one shoulder.

“Walk them later.” He stoops over to grab a slice of flame-blackened toast and chews it hurriedly. “I need this lot shifted before the sharif get wind of it.” He gestures at the covered bundles stacked on the floor.

Nala scowls and crosses her arms. “It’s illegal?”

“Not really.” He shrugs, then kneels down to untie the twine around the first of the white-shrouded bales. “It is stolen though.”

“Oh sweet Gris, Dash! You said last time was the … last.”

“Too good an offer to pass up, Nala. Now, run down apothecary way and get as many glass jars as you can carry. Money’s in the bowl.”

She scowls and turns away, but not before digging through the communal bowl for a handful of brass. The slap of her bare feet against the wood falls to silence, and then it is only Dash, Verrel, and me. We stare at one another. Verrel raises one eyebrow as Dash pulls the bale open to reveal a mess of stems with tiny furred gray leaves. Poisonink.

“And you want us to do what with it?” Verrel rolls a new ’grit with one hand and drinks tea with the other.

“Sort it, pack it. We’ve got a buyer for the finished product, and the sharif are only looking for the raw stuff.”

“The sharif? Wonderful.” Verrel takes a deep, thoughtful drag and eyes the poisonink. I look at it in horror. The damn stuff will get me caught—ruin me.

Dash looks across at me and grins. “You ever sorted ’ink before?”

He knows I haven’t, the little shit. I scowl at him and shake my head. If he brings the sharif down on us and they realize who I am … Damn. I need to get this stuff away from me as soon as possible. “What do I have to do?” I say between gritted teeth.

“Here.” He kneels down and lifts a single branch. “Go like this.” Dash runs his hand loosely down the branch, and the twisted gray outer leaves fall onto the white sheet. “That’s the stuff you want to get rid of. What’s left”—he flicks the small tightly furled new leaves—“that’s what you want to put in the jars.”

“And this?” I point at the mess of dried leaves on the open sheet.

“Ah, save that for me,” Verrel says. “I can compost it for the garden.”

Garden? The whole house is slowly sinking into mud. Obviously, Verrel is as insane as the rest of the Whelk Streeters.

Dash just nods as if this is the most normal conversation in the world. He unwraps another bale and then opens up a second sheet. “Good stuff here.” He points at the one sheet. “Compost there.”

I stare at him.

“Get on it then, kitty,” he says.

“Firell.”

“Firell.” He smiles, then shakes his head.

Verrel stubs out his ’grit and drinks the last of his tea in one gulp before sitting cross-legged on the floor and taking a branch. With a sigh, I fold my skirt over my legs and sit down next to him.

It’s mindless work and strangely soothing. The poisonink leaves a sticky black residue all over my fingers and thumbs, but after a while I find myself feeling almost content. The sweet sharp scent of the ’ink cleans the air of the sour smell of bodies and poverty. Verrel sings and hums while he works, and occasionally Dash will join in. Verrel’s voice is strong and sure, while Dash’s is thin, although, thankfully, in tune.

Nala gets back after about an hour. We can hear her coming up the stairs, swearing and clinking glass. Dash puts down his branch and rises to go give her a hand.

“This is the last time, Dash.” Her voice comes up from downstairs. “And I need to go to work, or I’m going to lose my job.”

“You can get another.”

“I like this job. I’m not the same as you, always running off to find something else to do.” Dash and Nala appear at the top of the stairs holding a large burlap bag between them. “Besides, the dogs love me, and I’d miss them.” She sets her end of the bag down. “I’m going now, all right?”

He stares at her, mouth twitching, then looks over at where Verrel and I are making considerable progress through the collection of bales. “Fine.” He drags the bag the rest of the way to us and starts pulling out glass jars. He sets them out with a meticulousness I didn’t expect from him, all the jars in order of size and shape.

“Dash…”

“What?” he snaps back at Nala. “Go on then, I said it was fine.”

“You’re going to hold this against me?”

He pauses with an opal jar in his hands, turning it over and over. Finally, Dash shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Go before your dogs all die of broken hearts.” But he says it with a smile, and his voice is easy.

“You’re a changeable little monster, you do know that?” Nala says.

Next to me, Verrel laughs and begins to fill the first jar, packing the ’ink in tight. “Of course he does.”

“It’s part of my charm,” Dash adds.

“Charm—is that what they’re calling it now?” Nala’s relief is clear in her voice. I do not think that Dash is always so easily mollified.

By mid-morning, we’ve done most of the bales. There are two left, and we’ve filled about fourteen of the glass containers. My hands are black and so sticky I can barely touch anything. I crick my neck from side to side, trying to ease the tense muscles.

Esta’s come back from combing the beach with Kirren for signs of her brother and is sullenly making tea.

“Time for a break.” Dash stands. He stretches his arms high above his head, exposing a flash of stomach. He is the very opposite of Jannik, brown and wiry with workman’s muscles. I copy him, pretending I haven’t seen this arc of skin. Verrel also stretches; something in his back clicks loudly, and we laugh at each other.

“Shite,” says Esta from her spot near the window. “Dash? Come here.”

Dash picks his way over the debris and joins Esta by the little stove. They both stare out the window for a few seconds, then Dash hisses under his breath, swearing. He puts one sticky hand to his face and grimaces. “Verrel, start moving everything next door.”

“Sharif?”

Dash nods. There’s a black mark on his face left there by the gummy residue from his fingers.

I’m going to vomit. Verrel must see the panic on my face because he rests one hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he says. “Help me gather this.” He points at the sheet where we’ve been throwing all the waste leaves. I nod hurriedly and knot it together into a bag, while Verrel grabs as many jars as he can carry. “This way.”

He leads me to the cracked and tiled washroom and through a broken panel into a cramped, gloomy passage.

“Where are we going?”

“Up,” he says, and jerks his head at the ceiling. There’s a small square piece of board, and Verrel uses a length of broken timber to push it away to reveal a hole. “Up you go,” he says, and cups his hands for a footrest.

“You’re joking.”

“Not at all. I’ll boost you and then hand everything up.”

The hole is pitch-dark, and I stare at it in dismay.

“Come on, time’s wasting.”

My fear of being found by the sharif and sent back to my House in disgrace overrides my fear of the dark. I scramble up into a narrow attic space with sloping walls. After a few blinks, the gloom takes on shape and shadow. I reach down and start hauling up all the contraband.

We work fast and quiet, and in a surprisingly short time, all the jars of ’ink have been transferred into the attic.

Dash gives Verrel a lift into the loft and then slides the board shut, enveloping us in utter darkness.

“Now what?” I whisper. “We just sit here until they leave?”

“Not a chance.”

“What?” My eyes adjust again, and I can make out Verrel’s face near me, calm and expressionless. “What then?”

“We’re moving it across.” He shuffles off on hands and knees, one jar clamped under his arm. “You need to be careful and stay on a beam or else you’ll go right through the ceiling,” he says. “Now follow me.”

Obediently, I gather as much as I can and crawl after Verrel, my fingers gripping the wood so tightly that I’m probably going to be picking splinters out from under my nails for weeks.

What was I thinking? I should have bloody well run back home to Mother the day I left and hoped for the best.

At the end of the loft, Verrel shifts a segment of broken wood out of the way, and we crawl into the sunlight-dappled attic of the adjoining house. The beams creak ominously as we settle our stolen ’ink here.

“It’s not going to fall down, is it?” I look up at the straining wood beams of the ceiling, at the huge gaps between the slate tiles.

“Not today,” says Verrel. “Hopefully.”

After several excruciatingly slow trips, we’ve moved everything across. Verrel seals the join between the two houses and leans back with a sigh.

The house groans in the wind, creaking and snapping. “Oh sweet Gris,” I say. “If this place collapses and I die, I’m going to come back and haunt that little bastard like a boggert.” I shiver and pull my legs up to my chin. “What are we supposed to do?”

Verrel laughs softly. “Now we sit tight until Dash gives the all clear.”

“What about the others?”

“Dash can talk his way out of just about anything, don’t you worry about him. He knows half the bloody sharif by name and what they had for breakfast. Right now he’s probably giving them the grand tour and asking them about their mams’ gout.”

“I’m not worried about him,” I snap, and hug my knees tighter.

The minutes barely scrape by. A sharp wind blows through the dilapidated roof, and I shiver. I hear dogs barking, the distant rumble of the sea, the rag-and-bone man’s desultory handbell. But for all I strain my ears, I can hear no voices, no sharif calling out. No Dash. In the silence, I’m left to thinking, and all my thoughts are either about scriv or that damn bat Jannik. As much as I try to think about something else, my mind keeps wandering back to them. I miss magic.

I breathe out slowly, imagining that my lungs are full of power, that all around me the air is gathering, ready to do as I say. It does nothing to rid me of the dull itch in my mind. I need to taste scriv—citrus bright—in my throat or feel the teasing prickle of the bat’s magic.

Below us come scritching noises, rustles and scratches.

“What’s that?”

Verrel shifts. “Hmm? Rats, most likely.”

Wonderful.

“Kirren’s probably chasing them about down there. Having a whale of a time while we sit here with our arses going numb.” He rubs gum off his fingers onto his coat, then pulls a packet of tobacco out of his pocket. “Want?”

I shake my head.

“You’re like Esta then? Got a sweet tooth?”

“Not particularly.” I sigh, scratching patterns in the dirty wood with my thumbnail. “I like MallenIve salt licorice.” I think of the delicacies we sometimes got from the capital city. Things I am unlikely to ever taste again. Scriv. Stop it, I tell myself, and flex my fingers against my stomach as if that will still the hunger. “Ama seeds.” Hot and bitter, and small as fingernail parings. I used to eat them while reading, popping the tiny burning seeds onto the tip of my tongue to see how long I could stand it before swallowing them.

That surprises a laugh. “Expensive and odd tastes you got there,” he says.

“Reminds me of my father.” There are other things that make me think of him, although I keep these to myself. The smell of tobacco and vai. Leather and hounds. I squeeze my eyes shut. “Tell me about Dash.”

All I can hear is Verrel’s slow exhale. Then: “There’s not much to say. He keeps secrets, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Secrets?”

“Well they wouldn’t be secrets if I was going about telling them, now would they?”

I laugh softly. “So how did you end up here?”

“I knew Esta and Rin, and they needed a safe place to hide, so I brought them here. Didn’t want to leave them alone, so I asked Dash if I could stay on.”

“And he just said yes?”

“Not hardly. Then he found out I work the street theaters and he became a bit chummier.” He coughs. “Now I’m his glorified message boy, but it’s all right, ’cause, whatever else, Esta’s safe. There’s no one in Stilt City or Old Town that would even think of crossing Dash.”

“Why’s that?”

Verrel shrugs and flicks ash down between the beams. “Long story.”

“I think we have time.”

“Ah, was long before I met him, right. Back when he was just a Hobling, him and Lils, well, they were neighbors, and Lils—well, there’s something about her, and—” He suddenly looks uncomfortable. “I shouldn’t say nothing.”

I keep quiet, and he apparently takes that as reason enough to trust me, at least a little. “So anyway, there’s some stupid Hob, just gone old enough to want to be bringing in some money for his family but still young enough not to realize you don’t sell out your own people. And he thinks he’s going to turn our Lils over to the sharif.”

I squirrel this information away, wondering what fish-market Lils, common as anything, can possibly be hiding that would warrant the interest of the sharif.

“Now, Lils and Dash—I mean, they’re just barely turned nine—they don’t know how to stop this when they hear him say he’s gonna go turn her in. Lils thinks to go to her mam and hope that she can talk some sense into this Hobling lad. So she goes home, and that’s that, because the next day the Hobling is gone.”

“To the sharif?”

“Well, that’s what everyone thinks. And all the neighbors are talking in whispers, and Lils’s mam is getting ready to take her into the deep marshes and go into hiding and live on raw fish and crabs, and Dash is just being all Dash, grinning like it’s all some huge mucking joke. That’s how I heard it told, anyway.”

“He thought it was funny?” I can’t keep the disgust out of my voice.

“He knew it was funny, because not two weeks later, someone pulls this half-eaten body out of the marshes and the only way they could identify him was from his boots and shirt.”

It takes a moment for this to sink in. “I’m sorry—are you saying Dash at age nine killed another person to keep Lils safe?” There’s no disguising my disbelief.

Verrel laughs. “Nothing of the sort. Dash never gets his hands dirty. What he does do is put the right word in the right ear and do a favor for this one or that and the next thing you know … things happen.”

“At age nine?” I repeat. Then I shake my head. “You must think I’m an imbecile, telling me that and expecting me to fall for it like a little fish with a fly.”

“Believe what you want,” Verrel says. “There’s others who could tell you better tales. And maybe they’re truer, and maybe they’re not.”

I think of the Hob downstairs, a gadabout, a skinny boy barely older than me, and all the things Verrel seems to think he’s done or is capable of.

“Secrets, huh?” I say after a while. I have run to a house tangled with secrets and deceptions, bringing my own with me. The light falling through the holes in the slate roof is growing fainter, and the air has the smell of rain. I tuck my feet close to my body, wondering how much longer we’ll be forced to stay up here.

Three ’grits later, a voice calls from the other attic. Verrel sighs in relief, pulls the board back, and shoves his head through. “We’re all right, then?”

“Right as rain,” says Dash cheerfully. “Sharif have sailed off for fishier waters.”

I grit my teeth and wonder if it would matter if I strangled Dash in his sleep. Or poisoned his tea. I wonder what his neck would feel like under my fingers.

We crawl out across the roof beams and back into the squat. I’m just passing down the last of the glass jars to Verrel when I hear a familiar gruff voice from the main room.

“What bloody happened here?” Lils says. “Market’s bloody crawling with sharif, all asking nosy questions.”

“Tea?” says Dash.

Lils mutters something I don’t catch.

“It’ll all be gone by afternoon. Charl and his lads are coming to collect it.”

I ease my legs and body through the hole and then let go to land lightly on the passage floor. Verrel grins and holds out two jars. “It doesn’t happen that often,” he says. “It’s all part of Dash’s grand plan, he needs the money.”

“What grand plan?” I mutter as I brush dust and cobwebs and shreds of poisonink leaves off my dress, then grab the jars out of his hands.

“His plan to destroy Pelimburg, of course.”

Of course.