Girls at the Edge of the World Page 2

  “And his councilors—”

  “Understand as well,” Gospodin says. “I’m sorry, Adelaida, I am, but the decision is already made.”

  Sofie glances over at me. She mouths something, but I can’t make out what she’s asking. I shake my head.

  Adelaida lets out a long, thin breath. “So you want me to replace Pippa?”

  “That’s the pregnant one?”

  Sofie’s hand catches mine. She squeezes so hard I think she might break my finger bones. I try not to let this information sink in. Eighteen years ago, my mother had to leave the flyers because she was pregnant; her life unraveled and threatened to take mine with it. And now, Pippa. Pregnant.

  I shake Sofie’s hand away.

  “Yes,” Adelaida says. “I tried to get her to stay as long the festival, but she wouldn’t.”

  “Inconvenient,” Gospodin says.

  “Selfish.”

  “Replace her as soon as you can. These days, we need all the public support we can get.”

  “You’re not scared of a few Brightwallers scraping together an uprising, are you?” Adelaida asks.

  “I’ll worry about them. You worry about the flyers.”

  They start to walk away. Sofie and I have to hurry down the passage, ducking our heads next to different grates to stay in earshot.

  “And, Gabriel,” Adelaida says. Her voice is taut.

  “Hmm?”

  “I’d like to remind you that I’ve been a member of this court longer than even you have. I have a legacy. As long as Kostrovians walk this world, flyers will remain, I assure you.”

  “Art is an asset,” Gospodin says. “I’m not arguing with you.”

  “Without me,” Adelaida says, “no one can train the next generation of flyers when the Flood passes. I’m the only one who can rebuild the Royal Flyers. I will take my place on the royal fleet.”

  Gospodin pauses.

  “I want you to guarantee it,” she says.

  “Adelaida,” he says. “You’re a vital part of the court. You’ll be on the fleet.”

  “Good,” she says. “Good, I know that.”

  “Of course.” The space between their feet shrinks slightly; I imagine Gospodin putting a large hand on Adelaida’s shoulder. “Many breaths.”

  “Many breaths.”

  I feel Sofie’s gaze on me the moment the feet disappear, but I can’t drag my eyes away from the space where they stood.

  “Natasha?”

  I swallow. I can hear my heart beating in my skull.

  Again, quieter: “Natasha?”

  Slowly, I face her. A rectangle of light runs slanted across her eyes, bisecting her nose. Her damp hair clings to the sides of her cheeks.

  “I must’ve misunderstood something,” Sofie says.

  “I don’t think so,” I say.

  “Why is Adelaida worrying about training the next generation of flyers?”

  My throat feels dry enough to crack. “They’re not taking us on the royal fleet when Storm One hits. They’re going to let us drown.”

  2

  ELLA

  I’m going to kill the king of Kostrov.

  I didn’t grow up dreaming of murder. Murder found me. We’re getting along nicely.

  Though I have not technically killed anyone yet, my enthusiasm makes up for my lack of experience. When I go to sleep, I think about killing Nikolai. When I wake up, I think about killing Nikolai. When Maret and I drank our tea on the nauseating sail to Kostrov, we discussed, in whispers, all the ways we’d like to end his life.

  As Nikolai’s aunt, Maret brings to the table all the knowledge an aspiring assassin could want. Court structures and palace rhythms. As a nameless little nobody, I bring the sneaking and killing part of things.

  I’m going to kill the king, and I’m not going to feel bad about it.

  Here’s what I grew up dreaming of: A farmhouse next to my brothers’. The smell of my mother’s bread baking. The girl who sold flowers in town and always wore a bloom in her hair.

  But my brothers and my mother and the flower girl are all dead. Washed away.

  There was a time when I didn’t spend every waking moment thinking of Nikolai. I spent every moment thinking of his sister, who loved me and devastated me and left me alone in this forsaken, flooding world.

  But Nikolai killed Cassia.

  So I’m going to kill Nikolai.

  He’s the most heavily guarded person in Kostrov, so I’m going to die doing it. But what does that matter as long as he’s dead?

  * * *

  ~~~

  Maret didn’t smile for weeks after Cassia died. Not until we stepped off the ship and into Kostrov. The moment that smile crossed her lips, I felt something between us fracture. The pain of losing Cassia had bound Maret and me together. Smiling in a post-Cassia world was expressly forbidden.

  When Maret’s feet settled on the uneven stone bordering the harbor, she took a big breath of air and held it in her cheeks. She let it out in a puff and spun to look at me. “Kostrov, Ella dear.”

  I gazed around the city. New Sundstad—The only place in Kostrov worth going, Maret said on our voyage—was a paean to gray. The ocean was the color of pigeon feathers. Sooty buildings tilted out of the ground and creaked into each other.

  “To be in a city again.” Maret hefted her large handbag industriously. “I don’t think we’ll miss rustic old Terrazza one bit, will we?” Smile.

  I didn’t answer, caught up in the voices echoing across the harbor. I hadn’t anticipated that hearing so much Kostrovian all at once would feel like a goat kicking me in the stomach.

  A man named Edvin with hair blonder than I’d ever seen on an adult met us at the door to our new apartment.

  “Sorry,” he said, unlocking the door. “It’s not exactly a royal accommodation. A high ceiling, though, like you asked.”

  “You’re a doll, Eddy.” Maret swept inside and tossed her handbag on an exhausted pink sofa.

  Through the window, I spotted an equally dismal apartment across the narrow street. I took a careful step onto the pale floorboards.

  Edvin’s eyes roamed my body. They snagged on the tattoo curling around my wrist. I pulled my sleeve lower.

  “Oh, Edvin, this is Ella. I mentioned her in my letter?”

  I gave Edvin a hard stare. Maret mentioned Edvin to me too, on the voyage here. She told me she had a few friends from her palace days who could help us. They’ll get us clothes and a place to stay, but nothing too fancy, she told me. We’ll have to be terribly inconspicuous.

  Edvin’s cheeks were splotchy pink. “Cassia’s . . . friend?”

  Maret set a light palm on my shoulder. “The very same.” Then she enveloped my hand in hers and pulled me to the edge of the room. “Look how big. We’ll push the sofa to the side and there will be plenty of space for the silks’ rig, yes?”

  When Maret smiled, she looked more like Cassia. They have the same coloration—the blond hair, the bright eyes—but their faces are nothing alike. Cassia had round cheeks, an upturned nose, a pouty smile. Maret’s face is adult and angular and sophisticated. Cassia was more beautiful, but I couldn’t say why. Sometimes, I think I must be remembering wrong because she can’t possibly have been as beautiful as she is in my head. But the thought that I would misremember any details about Cassia is too unpleasant to bear.

  When I didn’t respond, Maret tapped my cheek with two fingers. “Look lively. We don’t have much longer to wait.”

  * * *

  ~~~

  But three months have passed. It feels like all we do is wait.

  Every morning, I go to the silks. Edvin set up the rig in our living room on our second day here. Four wooden beams form a pyramid just short of the ceiling. A pair of long red fabrics hangs from the vertex of the beams. Edvin even managed to
track down a book that explains all the different elements I could ever want to learn. I’m short and light and have climbed a lifetime’s worth of trees, so I thought I would find some natural-born talent in myself.

  But the silks hurt when I began to practice. Then again, all of me hurt, and at least this was a hurt I could control. And while my insides stayed numb and my head stayed foggy, the pain of overstretched forearms and tightly wound feet ebbed. I acclimated.

  I got better.

  Maret is a royal through and through; she wants to be out in the city, being admired and discussing politics with people who matter. But her supply of Kostrovian allies is thinner than she led me to believe. Sometimes she dons an inconspicuous olive cloak and ventures out with Edvin—who I think is a scholar at the university, and maybe an old lover—but most days, she paces the apartment, flipping through copies of political treatises and news clippings about the Flood. If anything she reads is too insulting to the crown, she’ll mutter that Nikolai is a disgrace to the family and hole herself up in her bedroom for the rest of the day.

  By the time Maret manages to pull herself out of her own head around dinnertime, I’ve usually worked myself so far past my physical limit that I’m lying on the floor with the silks dangling above me. If I haven’t, she makes me show her what I practiced. She checks the book, corrects my form if my body doesn’t match the illustrations. When I speak to her in Terrazzan instead of Kostrovian, she clicks her tongue.

  “You won’t get away with that in the palace,” she said the last time I did it.

  “At this rate, I won’t ever get to the palace,” I said. “You’re sure there’s no news on the next auditions?”

  “None of the flyers have left,” she said. And then, “But if no one leaves by the next storm, I might have to arrange for one of them to take a nasty fall into one of the canals.”

  “That’s a joke, right?”

  She let out a loud breath through her nose.

  Three months of practice. Three months of Kostrov. How many more months do I have? How many more months does anyone have?

  The thought strikes me while I’m hanging upside down in the silks on a day when Maret’s gone to see Edvin. I prefer these days. Maret is, if not motherly, then like my aunt, making sure I find something to eat every day and letting me ask questions about Cassia that I didn’t get to ask when she was alive. But auntly or not, I don’t like it when Maret paces around me. It’s like being trapped in an apartment with an increasingly bored lynx.

  When Maret throws the door open, though, she’s as giddy as she was on our first day in Kostrov. I’m so startled by the change in her that I almost lose my grip on the silks.

  “It’s time.” Maret kicks the door shut with her heel and flings her cap across the room. “The flyers have an opening.”

  I unwind myself. “Now?”

  “Edvin just brought me the rumor. One of the flyer girls dropped out.”

  I run my hands down the silks. “Did you push her into a canal?”

  “For seas’ sake, Ella. No, I didn’t push her into a canal.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Great news.”

  “Are you ready for the palace?” Maret says.

  “I’m ready,” I say.

  Maret gives me a smile that shows each of her shining teeth. “Nikolai,” she says, “will never expect you.”

  3

  NATASHA

  Pippa’s departure is the worst-kept secret of the crane season festival. On the morning of the festival, I summon a gondola to ferry the silks to our stage in the Wharf District. Three different times, strangers stop me—leaning over bridges as I glide through the water—to ask after Pippa.

  I’ve been a Royal Flyer since I was nine, but I’ll never get used to the way people act like they know us personally. They’ve read our names; heard rumors from flying instructors who trained us as little girls; laughed over sticky tavern tables about which of us is prettiest. So on the third of these interruptions, when a barrel-chested man stops setting up his festival booth to ask if Pippa’s truly pregnant, and if the father is that redheaded palace guard, I growl.

  “Shove off!” my gondolier says. He slaps the flat of his paddle against the water, spraying murk. The gondolier gives me an apologetic smile. He paddles once, twice. “But is Gregor Lepik really the father?”

  The other flyers arrive as a team of hired men finish setting up the rigs and silks along the waterfront. Five jewel-toned fabrics swing from wooden beams.

  I rub my cold hands against my legs. It doesn’t feel right to do this without Pippa. But then, nothing has felt right since I overheard Adelaida talking to Gospodin. The other Royal Flyers cluster around her at the stage. I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to catch Adelaida alone for the past two days. I’m convinced she’s avoiding me.

  Adelaida surveys each of us in turn. “It’s noon now. Be back by two for warm-up.”

  Ness, who joined the flyers just a few months ago, claps her hands. Her round cheeks are wind-blushed. “All right then, girls. Into the festival?”

  I hang back, watching Adelaida as she stalks to the edge of the stage, snapping at the violinists. They share a weary look.

  “Natasha?”

  The flyers—Ness, Sofie, Katla, and Gretta—wait at the far end of the stage.

  “Are you coming with us?” Ness says. She rocks forward on her slippered toes.

  Sofie tilts her head. Her mouth is a stubborn line. “Yeah, Natasha,” she says. “Come on. We can share a baked apple.”

  If Adelaida has been avoiding me, I’ve been avoiding Sofie just as methodically. She wants me to tell the rest of the flyers what we overheard. But I can’t; not yet. I know how they react when they’re nervous. Ness loses the rhythm. Katla throws her hands in the air and sometimes quits for the day. If they realize we’ve lost our spots on the royal fleet, our performance will fall to bits.

  Besides. I’m still holding out hope that I misunderstood Adelaida and Gospodin.

  It’s not as though I’ve seen the roster for the royal fleet, but the flyers have always been entwined with the royals—why should that change now? It would be like leaving all the guards off the ship. Guards protect the royals’ safety, but we protect their culture. Their history.

  “Oh, let’s just leave her,” Sofie says. “She probably wants to practice anyway. We should look for Pippa.” Sofie turns to go, pulling Ness in her wake. Gretta—at fourteen, our youngest and most sullen flyer—hesitates, frowns, then follows them.

  Katla hangs back. She crosses her arms.

  “I’m waiting to talk to Adelaida,” I tell her.

  Katla doesn’t budge.

  “You can go,” I say.

  Her face is impassive.

  I shoot one last look at Adelaida—still berating the violinists and acting very much too busy for me—and sigh. Then I trudge to Katla, matching her pace as she heads down the street and into the heart of the festival.

  “You have bags under your eyes.” She nimbly sidesteps a puddle. “Your face is all purple and splotchy.”

  I scowl. “Your face is all purple and splotchy.”

  “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

  “Who says I’m not sleeping?”

  “Tasha. Come on.”

  We stop at a jagged point of street. I think it used to be connected to something, maybe a pier, but it’s been bitten by storms. Now the stone crumbles straight into the ocean.

  I avoid Katla’s gaze, staring pointedly over her braided crown of hair to watch the festival unfolding. The smells of peat smoke and caramelizing mushrooms and spicy wine warm the wind. The crane season festival was my favorite celebration as a little girl. It’s a spooky affair, held on the equinox to celebrate the last days before the snow comes.

  The other three flyers wait in front of a pushcart with a festive orange awning. They pay while
the peddler exclaims at their costumes, handing them rye toasts dripping with jam.

  Sofie catches my eye from a distance. She holds up her toast in a gesture of cheers, but her mouth doesn’t so much as twitch toward a smile.

  “What’s going on with you two?” Katla says. “Is she mad about Pippa?”

  “No,” I say. “I mean, maybe.”

  “But you didn’t know.”

  “No, I would’ve warned you. And Sofie.” I finally meet Katla’s gaze.

  Her mouth bows. This expression is Katla’s default. Suspicious, downturned lips. Her heavy brows knitted. We’re both fair-skinned, Katla and I, but her hair is dark and thick. Mine is thin and dry from too many aggressive buns. “You’re all mixed up because of the weather today,” she says.

  I glance at the sky. “You know, given the new standard for bad weather, I think I’m okay with cloudy.”

  “It’s worse today,” Katla says.

  A shard of sunlight manages to clip through the haze of clouds. “I’ll take your word for it. Hey, is your family coming today?”

  “I hope so.” She turns and squints in the direction of the boglands. “I haven’t been able to ask, though, with the schedule Adelaida’s had us on. She’s got to let up soon.”

  I follow Katla’s gaze. Through the fog, I spot a few silhouettes, a few glimmers of red—the sides of distant barns and cottages.

  Families like Katla’s, who have lived in the boglands for as long as anyone can remember, are called Brightwallers. When the Sacred Breath crusaders from Grunholt landed on our shores three hundred years ago, they were—as the story goes—struck by the garish, brightly painted buildings. That vivid shade of red, the kind tailor-made for a snow-nestled barn—that’s Brightwall red. It was good sense to paint the buildings red. The paint comes from the copper mines on the other side of the boglands, and it helps weatherproof wood. It also makes buildings easier to see through our famously heavy fog. But when the Grunholters got here, they acted like all those red walls were childish, somehow—a tasteless design decision from a people who didn’t know how to paint a house white.