EIGHTEEN

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To my utter surprise, the next few weeks passed without incident. During the day, I handled most of the housekeeping and preparations for our tavern while Ryon worked in the city. Jaida let him cut his hours in half, giving him a chance to spend time with me...and get much-needed sleep. Each day, the tavern bustled with more life, especially as the winter nights grew long and cold. Coins piled onto our stack, accumulating into a small but comfortable fortune.

Despite our success, our anxiety heightened.

And for good reason.

The more who showed up, the more likely it would be that the Guard would discover us.

Or for Elodie to find out. 

Even in the empty house, I often glanced over my shoulder, expecting the Guard to come knocking or Elodie to come screaming. We avoided each other day in and out.

Until one winter morning, when the house snoozed beneath snow flurries.

Elodie approached me for the first time in weeks. Her pregnancy flowering, she rarely slept, her eyes hanging tired and worn. At night, Ryon and I operated our little tavern in silence, praying she would not venture downstairs.

Lucky for us, she often paced on the top floor between the bathroom and her room. 

She approached me after Marietta and Ryon left for work, calm and poised. “Nanette?” 

I glanced up at her from my cup of tea. “Oh... Elodie.”

She fidgeted with her bracelets as she spoke. “I’m heading into the city to go to morning service. I was wondering…would you care to join me? It would mean the world to me…especially as I am going to be moving soon.”

I pondered. I had no aspiration to attend a ceremony sanctioned by Elder Vic Tor Cordova and the Order of the Effluvium. 

But Elodie stared at me with those longing eyes. It tugged at my heart.

I wanted my sister back.

“Alright. Let me get my coat,” I said. 

Her smile might have set the field ablaze.

By the time I retrieved my coat, Elodie had already hailed a cabby. As we gathered in the back of the buggy, an awkward silence rocked between us. We hadn’t spent time alone like since we last traveled to the Temple together. It was odd. This was the girl I used to explore the swamp beneath Stilette with, laugh and tell stories with, and swoon over lover and romance with, but now we were mere strangers, navigating an unfamiliar and tenuous landscape. I used her own home to harbor criminals. If Elodie caught us, she would be just as much to blame as Ryon, Marietta, and me. Guilt welled in my stomach.

But what about all those people who face persecution for mere tales?

Elodie and Marietta’s move to the city couldn’t come soon enough.

But today, I had to feign a smile. Pretend everything was okay. 

Elodie sliced open the tension a few minutes into our ride. “Are you happy, Nanette?”

I stared at her. “Pardon?”

“You hardly leave home, and you’re always mulling about. You look tired too. What has gotten into you?”

“I’m perfectly content!” I argued.

Elodie continued, “Is Mr. Barnes turning you into a housewife? I never took you as one—”

“If you’re going to critique Ryon all day, I’ll get out of the cab right now!” I glared at her.

“Right, right, I apologize, Dor—Nanette. Marietta wants…I want to mend our relationship if it is alright by you. It would not please Father that we are not getting along, after all. He wanted us to remain together. We’re sisters.”

“We are,” I whispered.

“And even if we disagree on many things, I want to remain sisters.”

“As do I. But it might be hard to forget some of what we have said...” 

“I do not imagine it will be an easy fix...but there is no reason to continue our spats—”

I wanted to scream. She started these spats! But I kept my mouth closed.

Every day, I yearned for my sister back in my life.

Elodie placed her hand on her balloon stomach and continued, “If anything, we can be cordial and civil. After all, I want you to meet my dear babe once she’s born.” 

“Are you sure you’re having a girl?” 

“It better be. I got everything in pink!”

“A boy can like pink too!”

“Oh, I know that, but I would hate to choose a new name for a boy! I am not naming a boy Lisa.”

“You don’t have a backup name?” I chided.

“Lester is what Marietta suggested.” 

We both giggled. A weight lifted in my chest with the laughter. We hadn’t laughed like that in a long time.

I missed it.

But with the laugh, my heart broke a bit as well. I was using her home for my gain...my sister’s home! 

I couldn’t stop now, though.

Father always said that while family is important, stories unite us. How could I live in Rosada without stories? How could I be what Elodie wanted when she tossed tales away?

I had my virtues. I wouldn’t abandon them.

 

The trip into the Capitol proved uneventful. I attended the service with Elodie. Despite my distaste for Elder Vic Tor’s words, with his constant preaching to disregard the stories and to give our lives to the Effluvium, Elodie and I didn’t argue. Instead, side-by-side as sisters and friends, we ventured into a few shops after the service in search of baby clothes. Elodie even showed me where she and Marietta would live soon.

It was peaceful.

Normal even.

As if, once again, we were friends. 

Though the cloud still hung in the air as we returned home.

We went our separate ways back at the house. Elodie joined Marietta upstairs while I sat on the porch, waiting for Ryon to come home from work, as I did most days. I loved running to Ryon and throwing my arms around him, acting like a woman waiting for her husband to come back from war. It might as well be a war, with how tired he was most days. I yearned to take the burden of balancing the two jobs off his shoulders; perhaps someday soon we’d be self-sustaining, and if he desired, he could quit his job in the government.

After all, Ryon was born for these quiet revolutions… not to be a pencil pusher who hardly understood tap-code.

That day he arrived home like all the others. I embraced him on the front lawn. We kissed, our passion yet to be tapered by time, and hurried into the house. Marietta smiled at us as we raced past her and down into our little tavern, clicking the lock shut behind us.

As we had most days, we slowly set up the tables, dancing around each other, stealing kisses and touches as we walked past each other. Some days we ducked behind the counter and let passion grip us for a moment. Not that day, though.

Exhaustion labored its way across Ryon’s body. I saw it in the way he walked. He kept his back arched, his hair covering his eyes.

As we put out the last stool, I took his hands. “Go sleep. You need it. I can handle this on my own.”

He stroked my cheek. “You sure?”

“Of course. I’m the tavern wench, aren’t I?” 

“A wench on a bench in the tavern...” He mumbled incomprehensibly. 

“Go to bed!” I ushered him to the stairs.

“Okay! Okay. I’ll try to stop down again in a few hours, okay?”

“Even if you don’t, I can handle it.”

He kissed me once before going back up upstairs.

I finished tidying up the tavern. Glasses aligned, drinks set, and a stage glimmered; we were ready for our next batch of storytellers. We averaged well over twenty people a night, each vetted, with passwords handed out with care. 

With everything in place, I opened the door to the tunnel. At least ten patrons, half of whom I recognized, waited outside the speakeasy. The password this time was a single phrase.

“Elder Vic Tor is a bastard,” the first patron whispered.

And I welcomed them inside my tavern.

 

The night began without fault. Stories wove their way through the tavern. I manned the bar and monitored the tunnel entrance as more and more people knocked on the door. Few patrons asked where Ryon ran off to, but most of the time, people kept fixated on the stories:

A tale of a woman who climbed a vine up towards the clouds.

A story of a wild beast who builds a city from straw.

A narrative about a doctor who cured the world of all death and disease.

And a plot detailing a magical child who turned the world into cheese.

I leaned against the bar, listening as each story frolicked in the air. Some stories knitted vivid scenes in my imagination. Others, well, they fell flat, receiving a dull round of applause. I still can’t get over how storytellers can transform a basic plotline into something unique.

Every hero’s story is a little different.

Everyone’s life is their own.

I suppose that is the beauty of storytelling. Without it, are we even human?

As I filled up another pitcher of ale, the clattering of pots and pans tugged my attention from a story about a unicorn to the top of the stairs. My stomach dropped. 

Another pot chimed. 

No one noticed. This wasn’t our warning bell. 

If it were, everyone would hear. 

But someone was in the kitchen.

A light glowed from beneath the door. I held my breath. Perhaps it was just Ryon.

Laughter drowned out another clatter of pans. 

The next few moments beat like a drum.

The knob turned.

My heart fell.

It wasn’t Ryon. 

Before I processed anything, I grabbed the pan hanging on the far wall and banged it in tap-code.

--. ---

Go.

All the patrons stopped.

Then the tavern broke out in chaos.

They moved with the speed and agility of mice. The candles darkened. The stage silenced. And out the patrons left through the tunnels, the last one closing the door in a hushed silence.

But despite the darkness, it was too late.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON DOWN HERE?”

It was the first and only time I ever heard Elodie curse.

I lit the gas lantern behind the bar. The room sat empty now, except for Elodie in the stairwell. 

We stared at each other among the ransacked tables and chairs, our glares like the broken glass on the floor. 

My heart continued in my chest as I met Elodie’s piercing glare.

“I can explain.” It was a lie. How could I explain… this? We opened an illegal tavern below her house. What else was there to say?

“No.” Elodie turned, her fists shaking, her voice quivering, “You have nothing to explain to me. I understand perfectly.”

“Elodie—”

But before I said another word, she stormed back upstairs and slammed the door shut.

Leaving me alone.