Beneath Ceaseless Skies #46 Read online

  “I do know that,” Therese said, “and I’m only glad I serve them my way instead of yours. Now that you’re not dripping all over the carpets and leaving a trail behind you, how do we get you to safety?”

  I froze. Of course we’d left a wet trail. “Tell one of the servants I asked for them to steam all the carpets in this wing,” I said, trying to sound calm.

  Josine was the only one who did not look at me as though I’d lost my wits. The steam cleaners are hand-cranked and extremely loud. They can’t be operated with fewer than four people, and six is more useful. With the smell and the noise and all the people involved, they could only be more conspicuous if we installed flashing lights on them, and possibly some kind of tracer that penetrated into the Underhill. Some of our girls have claimed, when we have run the steam cleaners on their days off, that you can already hear the things all the way into the Underhill.

  I had thought of all that.

  I had also thought that Miss Josine Valdecart is the very last person who would be expected by her friends or relations—or, more to the point, her implacable and obsessive enemies—to be seen running a steam cleaner in the halls of a whorehouse. Even a very high-quality whorehouse such as our own.

  Therese reported back: ”They’ll be in the hall with the steam cleaner in half an hour.”

  I nodded. “Good. We’ll go out and join them, and that’ll get us out of this wing at least. Therese, get someone to distract the Rust Lords as much as you can, please. Dance for them. Something. Try to keep your head down, Josine.”

  “Will I break it?”

  Sukey laughed. “My dear girl, it is a steam cleaner meant to be run by the newest and lowliest of maids. We design them to be sturdy. All you have to do is turn the crank and hope your arms don’t fall off.”

  “That sounds... I can do that,” said Josine.

  She almost couldn’t. Of course there is no spell on the steam cleaner to make people’s arms actually pop off, but she was not used to that kind of exertion. Nor, to be fair, were Sukey and I any more; and certainly not after half an hour of unaccustomed swimming. The servants who were with us had to do the lion’s share of the work, poor dears.

  As we came nearest to the Rust Lords, clanking and swearing, I could smell them. I had the belated realization that Sukey and I could simply have walked off to our own rooms and let Josine and the servants handle the steam cleaner. But as well as she’d kept her head, I didn’t trust that it would be permanent.

  We didn’t have time for a bath, when we were safely into our own wing, but a quick wash-up was not beyond us. We settled our hair back into place, and I loaned Josine the green silk that made me look muddy. (I have, in my time, managed to be earthy. Muddy, no, never when I can help it.) I expected it would be a permanent loan. We settled into the parlor and drank large cups of tea and tried to pretend we had some idea of what to do next.

  “There’s always the... ,” said Sukey.

  “I could try a spell that... ,” I said.

  Josine said, “....”

  I had really intended to have another biscuit or something, because I was ravenous. Apparently I was more tired than hungry, because I shut my eyes for just a moment, and my mouth tasted woolly when I heard, “Aren’t the three of you a pretty tableau! I should see if that painter fellow wants to use you as models. You look likely to stay still for him, at least.”

  We all jumped and turned as one.

  Madame was there.

  * * *

  5. Stain Removal and Other Laundry Services

  Madame is old, or would be old if she could be bothered to let time infringe on her borders with impunity. As she cannot she is merely a bit shiny around the edges from where time has bounced off her and left her herself. She always wears a white dress with white or iridescent embroidery, white stockings and white slippers, and her charm bag is white-on-white as well. Under gaslight, starlight, or candlelight, Madame sparkles.

  No one knows what she does in sunlight.

  She offered Josine her hand graciously, turned as though Josine might kiss it. Josine shook it instead, and Madame smiled. “Miss Valdecart,” she said. “You seem to have gotten yourself into a considerable amount of trouble.”

  “Yes, Madame,” said Josine. Her voice remained steady, and I was proud of her in her gently reared inexperience. Very few young ladies of her background would do so well in the face of the most notorious brothel-keeper in the city, after an Underhill flight and soaking, attired in the borrowed bathrobe and underthings of a whore.

  “Josine was going to tell us what, exactly, happened at that masquerade, that drew the attention of the Rust Lords to her,” I said. “But things keep interfering.”

  Josine looked at Madame shamefacedly. “I had never been to a party like that, you see.”

  “Gently reared,” said Madame, with a touch of sadness.

  “Quite so, Madame, and not much out in the world. One hears of the Rust Lords mentioned, almost as bogeymen for children. One does not appreciate the social reality of being introduced to them at a party.”

  “And were you introduced.”

  “Not—per se,” said Josine, flushing further. “There was an ice sculpture. It was in the shape of a rabbit—”

  “This was for the equinox?” Madame interrupted.

  “Yes, the spring equinox. It was not so long ago, I suppose.” Josine played with the fringe of her borrowed robe, then collected herself. “The air was chill enough yet that the rabbit melted but slowly, a few drips from nose and ears was all. And then they came, and one of them pointed at the rabbit and laughed, and it collapsed with a splash into a puddle of water that soaked the table and passersby.”

  “And then?” Madame prompted, when Josine seemed to want to go no further.

  “And I—I was—upset,” said Josine.

  “You were angry,” said Madame.

  “Madame, I was.”

  “What happened when you got angry?”

  “Other girls get angry and break things,” said Josine in a rush. “Hairbrushes or porcelain plates or glass vases. I get angry and things... fix themselves. And the sculpture fixed itself. There was once again an ice rabbit. It surged out of the puddle. From the look they got, I think they thought they might have angered an undine, who was now coming after them. But no, it was just me, they saw soon enough that it was just someone. And they had to find out who would dare cross them, and who had the strength.”

  The rabbit had formed itself out of a puddle? I wondered if I could have gotten Miss Josine Valdecart angry about my brother’s lungrot. Surely that would have been worth more than an ice rabbit dripping away to nothing. A cousin bleeding out in the nighttime streets, a friend hunched with the bonetwist... and this girl’s power restored lapine idols. Not even false gods. False rabbits.

  I am among them so much, the rich and the powerful, that sometimes I forget how angry they make me.

  Or perhaps it’s that I am one of them so much, these days.

  I turned my eyes to Madame’s face. She had been silently examining Josine. Josine, all honor to her, returned the favor.

  “How did they find out it was you?”

  “They took one of the servants,” said Josine. “They had knives, rusty knives but sharp, and they snatched one of the pages as if out of the air, and they cut a line in his flesh, a killing line if I hadn’t been there. If I hadn’t intervened.”

  And my thought of my cousin had not been premature. She had done it, had stopped a rusty blade from spilling a young life into the night, whether it was on grimy cobblestones or marble tiles. I could be content that I had helped her swim. She was what she was, and not a little rag doll with powers.

  “They will want you always,” said Madame. “If you do not find a way to guard against them, they will pursue you. They love to destroy, and you make it possible for them to destroy again and again. If you are in their power, they can cut that page’s throat again and again. You understand? They need not find somet
hing new to smash until they have wrung all the joy out of one toy, if you are with them. You must not let them take you.”

  “Lady, I know it.”

  “Do you?”

  It was time for me to speak. “Madame, she was brave in the Underhill Ways. She cannot swim, but she let the selkies take her, and she tried to help them with her own upkeep, her own... upbearing. She has courage, Madame. She does her best.”

  “As do you, faithful Lucy,” said Madame.

  “I try.”

  Sukey said, “Madame, we fear that they have caught her scent in the building. There was not much room for Lucy to draw her gate in the new water Underhill. We came in very near the rooms they use, and it was a near thing for Josine to stay hidden from them. We may not have much time.”

  Madame drew herself up. “Am I mistress of this place, or is some other? For I tell you truly, it has no lord.”

  “You are,” said Sukey, “but the Rust Lords have no respect for persons.”

  “They have respect for powers,” said Madame. “We will get her through this safely.”

  We all nodded; if Madame said it, it must be so—not because she was omnipotent, but because she had a sense of her own limitations, even when they were far beyond ours.

  “One thing more,” I said. “Miss Valdecart—Josine—has a housekeeper with a message for you. She wants you to know that the daughters of the ones who sewed for you last time are ready.”

  Madame looked thoughtful. “Are they. That is welcome news indeed.”

  “Madame, what are you—what did she mean?”

  She smiled at me. “In good time, my flower. Now. Miss Valdecart. I want you to listen carefully. I can help you now and have that be the end of it,” said Madame. “If the Rust Lords come for you next week, it will not be my concern, but my price will be one you can pay over the next few months. That cost will be measured in silver.”

  “Or?” Josine prompted.

  “Or you may choose what these women before you have chosen,” said Madame. “Loyalty. I stand by my people, as they can attest. My powers, my skills, my connections, are theirs to draw upon. Lucy and Sukey knew that I would accept their debt to the selkies for your rescue. They considered whether it would be the best solution. But they did not have to consult me, and they did not fear my wrath for it. Because we trust each other.”

  Even after all these years, I felt a warm glow on hearing her say it. Sukey reached over and squeezed my hand.

  “I don’t know you,” said Josine. “But I have gotten to know these women a bit this afternoon. And if they trust you, I think I will.”

  I did not dare to look at Sukey, for she would be sniveling, and I did not want to snivel myself. Instead I looked out in the hall, where there was a little fluttering sound.

  There was a plover. I tipped my head to consider it. We did not customarily have plovers in the house; while we cater to a wide range of tastes and interests, birding is not, alas, on offer; not, at least, of the traditional sort. I have a few ideas what a gentleman who asked Sukey to assign him a girl who was a real birder might get, but they did not seem terribly relevant to the actual plover at hand.

  “Madame,” I said softly, “we have a problem.” She turned to me, and I indicated the bird. “They’re moving the waters of the Underhill again.”

  “That will not do,” she said, so quietly we all had to strain to hear her.

  “What do they want?” said Sukey fearfully. “Why would they—they could beach selkies that way, or drown other fae. Surely they don’t want their cousins to organize against them.”

  “They’re betting we don’t want anybody organized against us as well,” I said.

  Everyone looked at me curiously. “Why would they?” asked Sukey.

  I jerked my head towards Josine. “We’ve got her. And they want her. All this is to draw her out.”

  “I should have gone to them immediately,” said Josine.

  Madame favored her with one of the coldest looks I’ve seen in my time in the house. “If you thought that, you should never have entered my service.”

  Josine bowed her head. “No, you’re right. I won’t surrender to them. I put myself in your hands; direct me, and I will fight.”

  Madame smiled. I think she had missed her time as a general, all these years. I had no idea how much that time would come again.

  * * *

  6. The Locks Without Keys

  I was not sure leaving Madame’s house was the best idea, but the Rust Lords were still there. It would wreck the business if they remained, and Josine was having none of that. I think Madame was relieved that she did not have to present it as the first test of Josine’s professed loyalty, though of course it could also have been the first test of Madame’s.

  We went down to the cellars, down where the river ran little channels under the building for receiving goods or, from time to time, for customers who preferred even more discretion than a scarf or a domino or a spell could provide. It smelled dank down there, but Madame’s stevedores and bouncers were as loyal as the rest of us, keeping out armies of mice as well as more human invaders. We had arranged for a boat—nothing so elegant as a gondola, I’m afraid; they were all in service—and were waiting for it to come back from the errand on which it had previously been sent. And they came.

  There were four of them, and they wore rusty black cloaks with the dye coming off in streaks. Their faces, too, were streaked, with red-orange veins like leaves on their white surfaces. They might have been beautiful if they had not been so horrible.

  The rust smell almost did not hit me in time, with the watery smell of the canal next to me. I whirled and shoved Sukey and Josine behind me. “Don’t,” I said. “She’s one of ours. You will regret it.”

  “We spend remarkably little time on regrets,” said one of them. His voice was like a shrieking hinge.

  “Just come to us,” said another. His voice was much deeper, something falling into a very dark pit. “Make no trouble for the others.”

  “She won’t,” I said when Josine didn’t say anything.

  The first one raised a hand, and behind us I heard our boat splintering in the water. The rower had the good sense to swim the other direction, and they didn’t do anything I could hear to him as the splashes retreated towards the river proper.

  The protective amulet around my neck crumbled to dust. From the gasp I heard behind me, I could tell that Sukey’s had as well. They didn’t waste time bouncing spells off to see what our amulets could handle, they went straight to the source.

  So I did, too. With a few quick gestures and a yank of power from the river, I cut off their access to the Underhill. Which usually makes magic beings weak and angry, sometimes furious enough to try things that won’t work, and then I have them.

  The Rust Lords didn’t blink. One of them smiled, or tried smiling; with the cracks of his face it was impossible to say that he’d succeeded. There was a creak in the stone path beneath us and a stabbing pain in my right arm. Though I knew I should not look down, I did.

  My arm had shriveled. I was like an old woman who had had an apoplexy so many years past that the muscles in her bad arm were gone beyond redemption. In a moment it happened.

  “We will have her,” said the one with the voice like falling. “We will. You need only choose whether we will have you as well.”

  I gritted my teeth. “I’m afraid that’s the only way it happens.”

  “Afraid,” said one who had not spoken before. “Good. You should be afraid.”

  And I was, oh, I was. His voice was not like the others. It was an ordinary man’s, a light tenor, the sort of voice you would meet at a costume party. The sort of voice that could convince you that the cracked rust lines were only a grotesque mask, until it was too late. And I was afraid indeed, for the ones who had sent me to Madame’s alone and wounded, all those years ago, had sounded just like him.

  But I knew more now than I did then. I cast an unbreakable binding on one
of them. I could feel it clicking into success, and a gurgling howl came from his frozen throat. Sukey behind me whimpered and fell, and I could feel the rest of my body failing. I would not be able to get another. It would not be enough. I was withering, dying of old age. I tried to reach for the river’s soothing magic, and I could not scrabble together enough of a grasp on it.

  Madame would not be pleased.

  And then I felt myself cooled, straightened, and the Rust Lord with the light tenor voice laughed in pure malicious delight.

  “I knew you would not be able to resist it,” he said. “Not selfless Miss Valdecart, properly brought up, so refined. You could not let another die for you, and certainly not in that way.”

  I was too busy gasping air into my rejuvenated lungs to retort. Josine merely said, “No. I could not.”

  “Take your place with us, then. We can do it again, and we will, unless you come.”

  I dared a look back. Sukey too was gasping, flexing her smooth hands convulsively. Josine cocked her head to the side like a little plover.

  “I would,” she said, “if I thought I would be your limit. But you, my lords, are as my dear mother has taught me of all men: you must limit yourselves.”

  “That is the one thing we will not do,” said the screeching one. He raised his hand again, and I flinched. It shamed me. I darted a look at Josine and started to draw the threads together to freeze another of them eternally. Josine shook her head at me, barely perceptibly. I held the spell in abeyance.

  “But you must,” Josine was saying, in tones that implied she was urging them to try one of the fairy cucumber sandwiches at a daring and risqué afternoon tea salon. “You have wanted to bring me into your company since you met me. I am your opposite number, and oh, you do enjoy what I can do, don’t you? More than the talents of the girls of this house? You just love being able to smash the same thing to bits over and over again.”

  “Lady,” said the tenor, “we do.”

  “But I do not love it, do you see? I do not love it in the least. And while you could crumble my associates and me, while you could turn us to dust in a thought, I do not think you can keep me alive against my will.”