The Cogsmith's Daughter (Desertera #1)(6)
“You know what Duke Aster told me yesterday?”
Aya shook her head.
“The new queen was crowned last night. Finally. Apparently, the bishop wanted to wait at least a month to do it, given that Queen Isadona barely lasted three months from marriage to funeral pyre.”
Aya rolled her eyes. “Long live the queen.”
“Ha! Fat chance of that. I wonder why they all run so quickly into other men’s beds. I mean, King Archon isn’t the most attractive man in the world, but he’s not an ogre or anything. Surely he’s not so repulsive that it’s worth losing your head for a better bedding.”
“Maybe his hands are as clumsy as Lord Derringher’s.”
“Or maybe his pecker is—”
Aya held up her hands. Dellwyn smiled and shut her mouth.
“Maybe it’s just a side effect of the curse,” Aya offered. “There hasn’t been a devoted royal couple since before the great flood. Maybe they can’t be faithful anymore.”
Dellwyn scoffed. “You don’t really believe that fundamentalist garbage, do you?”
Aya shrugged.
“I’ll tell you what it is.” Dellwyn pointed toward the palace. “They know that people out here still believe all that religious nonsense. And they also know that it is all made up. The second there is a faithful royal couple, all the common people will start asking about rain. And when the rain doesn’t come, it will prove that their gods and goddesses don’t exist and that the world is just a burnt crust—the way it always has been and always will be.”
Dellwyn stuffed the last piece of her roll in her mouth. She retrieved two tin cups from the trunk next to the stove and poured them each a glass of water. “If you ask me, King Archon just needs to suck up his pride and accept the fact that his wives are going to sleep with other people. He can hold as many trials as he likes and sentence every one of his queens to death, but it will never scare the next one off adultery. There’s no point in keeping that law around, not in today’s world.”
“He’ll never do that,” Aya whispered. “He’s killed better people for less.”
Dellwyn slid Aya’s water cup across the table, careful not to disturb the urn. “So he has.” Dellwyn lifted up her cup. “To never becoming queen!”
Aya smiled, clinking her tin cup with Dellwyn’s. “To never becoming queen.”
CHAPTER TWO
At sunset, Aya and Dellwyn left for work. Aya wrapped her cloak tightly around her. While everyone in Sternville knew what she did for a living, she didn’t like to flaunt her corsets and high-slit skirts to every peeping wellman. Dellwyn, on the other hand, didn’t bother holding her cloak closed. She strutted through the dusty, winding streets of Sternville, letting her stocking-clad legs emerge from her cloak with every stride. Aya looked everywhere but at Dellwyn.
As they approached the tall propellers in front of the Rudder, a knot twisted in Aya’s gut. She imagined those propellers spinning, slicing through ice-cold water, and she couldn’t decide whether she would rather be aboard the Queen Hildegard as it sailed away or jump into the blades’ path. She remembered the first time she saw those blades, so tall and wide, always looking as if they could cut through the sand and spin again at any moment. They made her sick then, too.
*
“Excuse me?” Aya asked one of the women leaning against a propeller blade. “I’m looking for the Rudder. Is this the way inside?”
The woman looked Aya up and down. She crossed her arms over her chest, pushing her breasts up in the process. “Honey, you’d best turn around. This is no place for little girls.”
“I’m not a little girl. I’m thirteen.”
“Is that so?” The woman chuckled. She crinkled her nose and pointed in between the two bottom propeller blades. “Right through there.”
Aya hesitated and peered through the gap. Pitch black. As she walked, Aya placed her left hand on the propeller blade the woman leaned against, as if to keep it from moving and chopping them both to bits. The woman placed her hand over Aya’s. “If you walk in there, there’s no coming out.”
Aya stared up at the woman, who was only a few inches taller than her. Now that they stood closer together, Aya realized that the woman was near her age, maybe sixteen or seventeen. She would have been beautiful with her bright, blond hair and blue eyes, if it weren’t for the purple bruises and red splotches dappling her face and neck.
Aya’s lower lip trembled. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
The woman sighed and looked out over Sternville. The tents were dark, but a few of the hovels glowed orange from the dinner fires of wellmen families. She removed her hand from Aya’s. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” Aya whispered.
Squaring her shoulders, Aya walked into the dark entrance. She had never been to the Rudder before, but she’d heard some of the merchants’ wives in Portside say that it was the only place in Desertera for orphaned girls, and she was an orphan now.
At first, the Rudder didn’t look so bad. The entire room was made of metal—walls, ceiling, and floors. A tall, wooden desk stood near the center of the room with a large book open on top of it. An even taller woman stood behind it counting coins. The woman was thick, but she had pulled in her girth with an emerald corset, worn over a black dress. Her hair was red, like the sun just before it slipped below the earth, and it was piled in a curly, frizzy mess on the top of her head. Thick black makeup lined her green eyes, and Aya thought they looked like charred timbers burning under her fiery hair.