I kicked a path through a pile of dirty laundry and opened the large cedar chest in the corner, the one that held my map of Carthage and all of my clean things. I pawed through the trunk, pushing aside a beaded cape, cotton petticoats, a Renaissance sack gown, an I ? NY T-shirt. We only had a few rules when Navigating, but one of them was proper dress. When I was younger and we visited the nineteenth century, I used to tuck my hair up in a cap and let everyone believe I was a boy, but that disguise had become less believable in the past few years. Since we’d stayed near the dock, I’d been able to get away with trousers in Calcutta, but if I dressed too poorly when visiting shops here, I’d likely get kicked out . . . or propositioned.
I unearthed a black dress with a white lace collar; it was the right era, but it was wool. I thought back to the small crowd at the docks: light colors, loose dresses, no corsets or jackets. This was the tropics. I dropped the dress and shook out a striped cotton pinafore I hadn’t remembered owning. It was three inches too short and so tight across the chest I had to leave it open in the back; still, after Calcutta, I’d rather be messy than sweaty.
In for a penny, in for a pound. I passed over my black Victorian boots in favor of shapeless leather flats, comfortable and hideous. They still had yellow mud from India in the seams. Then I scrutinized my reflection in the big mirror tacked to the wall. Everything was a little off.
I was more tan than the fashion for the era, but being out on the water, that was unavoidable. My hair—coffee streaked with copper and whipped into waves by the wind and the salt—was never properly Victorian, but in this era, my mixed heritage stood out more than anything else. Although perhaps less so in Hawaii. Whenever we visited nineteenth-century England, though, I got sideways looks when I was out with Slate. Then again, so did he.
However, there was much I had inherited that I couldn’t change. Nothing gave me away outright, and I was fairly comfortable in the vernacular of the era; that was another rule, of course, one should never speak to the franca unless you used their lingua. I did, however, throw a shawl around my shoulders, which didn’t match, but it hid the open back of my pinafore. I slapped a brooch on it in a futile attempt to pull the outfit together. Then I gave up. It would have to do.
The caladrius had flown the ship. I was about to do the same when a voice stopped me.
“Nice shoes. Tres belle.”
“Dammit, Kash.” He was in my hammock, grinning like a rake. I narrowed my eyes. “You aren’t looking too flash yourself. Is that the same shirt you were wearing last night?”
“God, I hope so.” He extended his foot lazily to push off against the rail. The hammock rocked gently. “Where are you going?”
“Out. Like you.”
He raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t press for more information. “One should always make one’s own mistakes, instead of the mistakes of others, amira.”
“Out like me, then.”
“Dressed like that?”
“And what’s wrong with it?”
“It looks like you chose the pieces by throwing darts. Besides, it’s much too short.” He pointed vaguely toward my ankles and winked. “The whole world can see the top of your foot. You look like a hussy.”
I grabbed my skirt and flashed him my knees. He pretended to swoon. “Don’t worry. This is late Victorian, not early. More permissive.”
“If you say so. Just try to steer clear of the saloons and the dens of iniquity. I can tell you where they all are if you want to plan your route.”
I laughed. “More fun to find them myself.”
He called me back as I was halfway down the gangplank.
“Amira!”
“What?” I turned to face him; something was coming at me. I grabbed for it and wobbled on the slender board, only barely catching my balance as my fingers closed around the leather bag. It clinked, and I swore.
“Khahesh mikonam,” he said, giving me a little salute.
“I didn’t say thank you.”
“Bad manners. You’re welcome anyway.”
“Didn’t we just have this argument?”
“I won that money fair and square. Or do you disapprove of gambling too?”
I weighed the purse in my hand. “Yes . . . but not enough to give it back.”
His laughter followed me onto the wooden timbers of the dock. The streets ahead were empty in the thin light of morning. I stood there on the wharf between ship and shore; the mermaid at the prow leaned in like a conspirator, encouraging me.
This was old Honolulu, before tourism began in earnest, before skyscrapers and seaside hotels. There would still be locals speaking the native tongue, telling native stories; their culture was fading but not yet gone. Waikiki would still be a swamp, and there was nothing taller than three stories downtown, except, here and there, the steeples of churches, rising above the bars and brothels.
This is where I would have lived, if my mother hadn’t died.
I stepped off the dock and onto the packed earthen road.