28

THEODOR WAITED WITH A HARNESSED SURREY, THE LIGHTER, open carriage suited to the heat of the Serafan summer far better than our closed Galatine carriages.

“I feel badly,” I said, tying my hat a bit tighter at the nape of my neck, “that we didn’t invite Annette. But I confess I wanted a bit of your time, uninterrupted.”

“I’m of the same mind,” he confided as our driver left the confines of the city and trotted down a broad avenue. The sea glittered in the distance. “And it’s perhaps best if I allow Annette to take my place as the face of Galitha for a few hours at today’s luncheon. She’s ever so much more graceful than I.” I raised an eyebrow in unspoken question, which Theodor answered. “It grew tense this morning. Bad news out of Galitha and I admit I almost lost my head.”

“Has something happened?” I asked, startled. I glanced at the driver, nervous—should we discuss official proceedings in earshot of anyone?

Theodor followed my gaze and waved off my concern. “Hardly state secrets. Nothing more on any unrest, either. The news is economic in nature, by way of the Allied States. They claimed their usual midsummer shipments of last fall’s fortified wines haven’t arrived. It sent half the room into a mild panic that our unrest is already affecting our exports, and forecasting doom when we don’t have enough grain available this fall.”

“Based on one shipment of expensive wine?”

“The Serafans and some of the Equatorials are eager to exaggerate anything. Their alliances have long been with the nobility, and any unrest or even controlled change in Galitha means change for them, as well.”

“All because they fear their imports will grow more expensive,” I said.

“I think it may run deeper—if we reform our views on nobility and monarchy, on the distance between the common people and the ruling class, it may force similar changes on them.”

“After all,” I considered, “much of what Kristos used to write his pamphlets came out of ancient Pellian work and from studying other systems. We don’t live in a closed world, do we?”

“I suppose not. Though I might prefer it at the moment.”

I sighed, understanding what he meant, and clasped his hand.

The view of the sea was beautiful, emerald vegetation and bursts of sunset-hued flowers traipsing down easy hills to an ocean more blue than the most intense indigo that dye could ever produce. The shoreline itself varied—sometimes broad beaches of pale sand, sometimes narrow strands bordered by thick trees and vines.

The surrey slowed at a road hewn from sand and stone, and the driver pulled the horses to a stop. He spoke to Theodor, who nodded and helped me down. “He can’t drive farther without sinking in the sand, but this is the place I was told we ought to see.”

The driver stopped us and handed Theodor a plain canvas bag, speaking a few sentences that made Theodor laugh. “For our shoes,” he explained. “He suggests going barefoot lest we get stockings full of sand.”

I laughed and agreed willingly, rucking up my skirts through the slits meant for my pockets to keep from trailing them in the sand.

“You look like one of the farm girls at harvest time,” Theodor said. “Those skirts are quite fetching.”

“Think I could make a fashion of it back in Galitha?” I asked.

“If anyone could, it’s you.” He slung the bag over his back and took my hand. The sand was exquisitely warm and surprisingly soft, my feet sinking in nearly to the ankle. The path wound between walls of thick green foliage. Thick, sweet floral scents wafted from the trees. Suddenly, the path curved and we spilled out onto a broad sand beach bordered by huge rock formations framing open water.

“Someone gave you a good tip,” I breathed. I sank onto a low rock and took in the scene, more like a planned mural than anything I’d seen happen in nature by chance.

“I’m going in,” Theodor announced.

“What?” I laughed.

“Don’t tell me you don’t want to see what that water feels like,” he said. “I won’t strip naked and dive in off the sea stacks, I promise.”

“You’re wading in with all your clothes on?”

“Just up to my ankles,” he promised. “This place is fairly secluded, but it’s well-known among the Serafans at the summit. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few showed up—we ought to take advantage of the privacy while it lasts.”

“Not too much advantage.” I laughed. “Is it—is it safe? The water?”

“What could be dangerous about wading in up to your ankles?

“I don’t know. Shallows-dwelling Serafan sharks?”

“The only sharks native to northern Serafan waters are half-fin moon sharks. They’re nocturnal, and besides, they’ve only been known to eat reef bass and striped sunfish.”

I hesitated but followed Theodor to the water. Galatine shorelines, at least near the city, didn’t lend themselves to bathing, and I couldn’t imagine dipping even a toe into the swift-moving, debris-swirled river that bordered the city. This was different—open, clear water.

Delicious, open, clear water, I amended as I stepped in, letting the cool water envelop my feet. The eddies tickled my ankles, and I wished we could wade in deeper. I wanted the pure blue to wash over my entire body, to give myself over to something natural and beautiful with no restraint.

Theodor moved closer to me, gently pulling me into him, and kissing me with such intensity that I almost fell into the water. I wouldn’t have minded. “You know that I love you,” he said, cupping my face in his hands.

I murmured assent and pressed my lips into his, craving, I knew, more than the envelopment of seawater, but submersion in him. My skirts grazed the surface of the water, but I didn’t care. “I want you,” I whispered, knowing I couldn’t find the words to say what I meant—not just now, not just in stolen moments and private spaces, but a life fully entwined.

I knew he took one meaning as I felt him press against me. An impossibility here—exposed on all sides—but I didn’t stop kissing him.

A sharp crack interrupted us, and I pulled away, gasping. “What was that?”

“It sounded like a gunshot,” he said, brow constricting. “Perhaps a local hunter in the forest?”

I clambered toward dry land, letting the sand stick to my wet feet and my sodden hemline cling to my legs. “Perhaps.”

Wordlessly, Theodor took my hand and we walked back toward the surrey. The delight I had felt in the sand turned to frustration as we stumbled in our haste, sand clinging to our wet feet and throwing clouds of grit over our legs. The driver met us halfway down the path.

“Safe?” he panted in Galatine.

Theodor answered in Serafan, and the two exchanged terse words while I warily looked around us.

“It’s fine,” Theodor said, realizing I had no idea what they had discussed. “There was a shot fired in the woods—the driver doesn’t think it could have been a hunter, but no one has come out of the woods.”

The driver added a few more details, and Theodor nodded as we headed back up the path.

When we arrived at the road, the surrey was gone.

“What in the world?” Theodor turned to the driver, whose face was drawn, the bronzed tan turned ashen. He repeated his question in Serafan.

The driver merely shook his head, and then began to speak very quickly.

“No, no, you’re not—I’m not—stop!” Theodor said. He turned to me. “He thinks I’ll punish him, have him sacked, that I think this is his fault.”

“Someone stole the surrey,” I said. “And I’m guessing they also fired that shot to get him away from it long enough to get away with it.”

Theodor nodded and turned back to the driver. I stared down the wide avenue leading back to the diplomatic compound—our drive had taken enough time that, though I knew we could make the walk back, I didn’t relish the thought. The sun was oppressive, and any refreshment from the sea was sucked into the humid fog of late afternoon heat. Worse, we were effectively alone and unguarded here.

Our driver seemed trustworthy enough, but it was entirely possible he’d been in on whatever scheme, whether random horse thievery or something more pointed at Theodor and I, was playing out. “There’s little choice but to walk. Perhaps someone will meet us on the road and take pity,” Theodor suggested with weak confidence.

The sand scratched inside my stockings, and the sun was hotter on the main road than in the shade of the thick forest on the small path we’d taken to the beach. “Damn it all,” Theodor muttered. “There’s no way we’ll be back in time for dinner, and West Serafe was making a bid on the Open Seas Arrangement. It was rather important to attend.”

I caught his arm. “Could someone have intended for you to miss that meeting?”

“Hang it all,” Theodor said. “It’s entirely possible. Though why, I haven’t the faintest notion. Someone who thinks Merhaven would make a better representative of their interests. That’s as far as I can get with it.” We hiked in silence for another mile, then crested a short hill and a wide plantation lay before us—a low, sprawling stone house and wide swaths of tall trees and low shrubs.

“Oranges,” I said as we grew closer. “And what are the shrubs?”

“Citrine berries, I believe. They don’t transport well, so I’ve only ever encountered them in preserves.” As we approached the house, the field hands tending the berry shrubs stopped to stare. They wore simple undyed linen trousers and most had bare chests, their heads wrapped against the sun in white linen scarves. I tried not to stare back, but I was curious—I knew how hiring day laborers in agricultural regions of Galitha worked, the nobles who owned the land making the work available first to the residents of the villages nearest them, then to itinerant workers who followed planting and harvest seasons in waves of migration across Galitha’s fertile valleys. Did these workers live here, I wondered? How were they compensated? Or were they traveling specialists, like those in Galitha, here for a certain task and gone next week?

“Wait here,” said Theodor in a low voice as we approached the main house. An arbor stretched in front of the house, laden with showy red vining flowers above and populated with benches below. “In case our hosts are not particularly friendly.”

I waited as Theodor knocked on the door and then spoke in quick Serafan to the boy who answered. His white servant’s garb was similar to that of the diplomatic compound’s staff. While he waited on the doorstep, I watched the field hands work. They seemed to be pruning the bushes, snapping off shoots and pulling dead foliage from inside the bushes. Occasionally one glanced in my direction, still as curious about me as I was about them. Though only partially obscured behind the huge red flowers, I felt at a great distance from the workers who made up most of the population here. I had come to Serafe confident, and concerned, that learning the various cultures I would be surrounded by would be part of the journey. I saw how limited that education was bound to be, shut inside the diplomatic compound and speaking only to the elite leaders of these nations.

These men were, like the field-workers in Galitha, cut off from their capital and its politics. Yet the agrarian workers in Galitha had, according to Byran Border, organized themselves and joined the loose association of willing revolutionaries bound by letters and homemade red caps. These Serafan farmhands may have been invisible to the privileged Ainirs and Ainiras I had met at the summit, but I saw them. I saw their strength, their numbers, their potential.

Theodor returned. “The overseer is having a wagon hitched as quickly as he can to take us back to the compound.”

“It seems curious that we haven’t been invited inside,” I said.

“The family isn’t here; the overseer can use the family’s farm equipment, but to invite us inside their home would be beyond his purview,” he replied.

The overseer was a lithe man with pockmarks pitting dark skin made deeper brown by a lifetime under the sun. He and the driver exchanged words briefly, deciding the logistics of returning the wagon, the driver said.

“The workers,” I whispered to Theodor. “Why not have one of them drive with us?”

He shook his head slightly. “Most of them are indentured, either to the plantation itself or to a labor exchange. Many were forced into indenture to pay debts or penalties, so they’re not typically trusted with a responsibility like the family surrey.” I glanced back at the linen-clad field hands, bound here in service. If every citrine berry and goldenfruit plantation in West Serafe relied on a supply of forced servitude, no wonder the nation felt threatened by populist rumblings out of Galitha.

“Will we get back in time for that meeting?”

“I’m not sure.” He sighed. “Merhaven had better not say anything stupid.”