“Now you’re just trying to make me stay.”
“No,” Bern says. “Look, here it comes again.” He gets behind her to guide her gaze. A shadow rushes at them.
“I hear it now,” she says, “the whooshing.” She laughs and presses against him. “You said it was bigger.”
The shadow closes. The stars atop the bay are blotted out. Then maid and guard are whooshing upward, claws digging beneath their collarbones. She screams and Bern blows his horn, but they’re too far above the city already for anyone to hear.
2
* * *
On a small bench beside his front door, Livion sits in his stocking feet while his partner, Tristaban, dresses down their servant girl for leaving a spot of mud on the toe of his dragonskin boots. He can’t see it, but he trusts it’s there. Nonetheless, he wishes he could save the girl. He knows what it’s like to be dressed down in front of another, that’s the life of a sailor, and it only got worse as a mate. He didn’t grow up in a world of glossy boots and girls who shined them, though, so he leaves the issue to Tristaban and considers the hall tiles.
When did it stop feeling strange to spend his days on unmoving stone?
Tristaban looks like she’s conducting musicians, the way she’s moving her finger around. It’s not like the boots aren’t going to get filthy once he gets to the Harbor. He’d rather wear sandals, which are less conspicuous and comfortable. And boots, like the Aydeni who favor them, have gone out of fashion. But “Trist insists.” If he wants to solidify his new position in the Shield, he has to remind people constantly how he became a Hero of Hanosh and why her father let them be partnered.
She wasn’t so conscientious when they were seeing each other behind her father’s back: meeting in artisan taverns where no one would recognize them, finding quiet places alone beyond the walls, even taking a room for a week in Hanoshi Town and playing at living together as if they were common laborers or farmers come to sell their crop. She was coy, adventurous, and lively. Now she is . . . pretty. When she smiles. Thanks to her father, Chelson, he lives far more comfortably than he would have in the stern cabin he pictured for himself as a boy. He does love her. And he can’t shake from his memory the looks she used to give him right under her father’s nose, even as she orders their girl to wipe his boots again and dismisses her.
Tristaban takes a deep breath and settles back into herself. She brushes the shoulders of his white silk shirt, the latest trend among shipowners. She says, “I hate to trouble you with household affairs. Say hello to my father at Council.” She pecks his forehead. Her neck smells like vanilla. It’s his favorite scent. And if her neck smells like strawberries tomorrow, that will be his favorite scent.
She goes around the corner toward her chamber. A moment later the girl appears. She silently pushes his boots on. She reminds him of a doll, her cheeks as hard as ceramic, her eyes as cold. She can’t be more than twelve.
Livion stands up and turns each boot in the dawnlight coming through the small window beside the door. “Good,” he says. “Here, between you and me.” He holds up a penny then sets it on the bench.
“I cannot,” she says and hurries away. Did she rebuff his guilt? Or, how stupid is he, a perceived advance? Livion shakes his head. He pockets the penny—today’s penny is tomorrow’s coin, his father-in-law says—and steps outside.
His small whitewashed stucco home is on a skinny lane, Brimurray, just above the servants’ district, and halfway up the Hill. It’s a respectable height for one of his position, and the sundeck abutting its blue tile roof adds a rare distinction. Nonetheless, Trist has her eye on a house a few lanes higher, one big enough for children. Or live-in servants.
Brimurray leads to a larger, guarded boulevard that connects to one of the switchbacking streets between the weathered Harbor and the blinding white mansions of the Crest at the top of the Hill. The streets are already streaming with barrows and carts bringing goods from the early galleys to the Upper City beyond the Crest, and with people flowing down to offices and jobs in the Harbor. Most are dressed in drab cotton and leather, and he remains surprised when someone darts out of his way. Trist says they dart out of respect—he’s a Hero of Hanosh—but he can’t believe he’s recognized even when people do point him out to their children.