The Sea Peoples(39)
Reiko’s face was impassive as she nodded and smiled slightly. Nevertheless her polite:
“Very good news, Orrey-chan,” was entirely sincere; and it held an element of relief.
órlaith thought hard. “We’ll hold a conference tomorrow,” she said. “Time’s short, but not so short we won’t do better after a good night’s sleep.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
BETWEEN WAKING WORLD AND SHADOW
Pip looked around the chamber where she and Toa emerged, poised for threats and then feeling a rush of relief when it proved empty. That didn’t make the environment actually as unthreatening as it looked—she’d absorbed that lesson quite literally at her mother’s knee, listening to her stories—but it was nice for a start. Thora boiled up out of the trapdoor on Toa’s heels, pulling Deor who followed and promptly collapsed into a sprawl, panting, with Thora beside him putting a steadying hand on his shoulder.
Presumably this is harder on him, since he’s the one who knows about this and has to pay attention to the bits behind the scenery, Pip thought. Amazing how real this all feels . . . right down to the splinter in my thumb. Except the parts where I sort of see a lioness in the background, or feel as if I am one. Best not to think about that. God knows what Mummy would have said about her daughter turning into a large beast of prey. Of course, metaphorically speaking Mummy was a large and very successful beast of prey herself, but I think literalizing the metaphor would have offended her sense of the fitness of things.
She dug the splinter out with her teeth as she took in their surroundings. It was daylight, at least, bright beams through shuttered windows and around the edges of the door. That didn’t mean the situation was any better than in the doomed and nighted city of madness and hatred they’d left, but it made her feel a bit more cheerful, and she’d take any sort of cheerfulness going. It was also distinctly cool, as cool as she could ever recall being except for a trip to Tasmania once where there had actually been frost, but fresh and comfortable enough with the long-sleeved dress.
She prodded at the wall with her . . .
“It’s an umbrella now?” she asked—rhetorically, but with genuine anger in her voice. “I liked that cane! I had it made specially and developed my own techniques for whacking at people with it!”
I got my own ship so I could be in command, she thought. Now I can’t even control what I’m wearing. And I’m preggers . . . always thought I would, someday, but not unexpectedly! Think of the trouble it’s going to take to find a decent nanny God-knows-where!
Then with an effort of will:
Now, don’t let that make you testy, Miss Philippa. Manners Mayketh Woman.
The last part of the thought had the tone of one of her teachers at Rockhampton Girls Grammar School, a place which was supposed to give you polish and where she’d undoubtedly learned a good deal, not all of it on the official curriculum.
I never liked Miss Gresham. Rather a sour old bitch, as I recall.
Closer examination showed that the umbrella was still a stout stick of Makassar ebony with a heavy ridged knob on one end, and that the ferrule of the brolly was a triangular steel spike; she could use this if she had to, either for hitting or like a fencing épée. Looking down she saw that the dress was much the same as it had been in the first vision of New York, except that there was a petticoat beneath it, the skirt was a bit longer, and the buckles on the shoes weren’t silver skulls but just silver buckles.
Which is all to the good. I’ve no objection to skulls as a fashion statement, but I suspect they were more in the nature of a mark of your religious commitment back there.
Toa went straight to the door; he was still in dungarees, but this time his spear was more or less a long-handled navvy’s shovel . . . which would do nicely for gutting and cutting if needs must, almost as much as the original. The more so as the edge bore the telltale waving line that revealed it had been carefully sharpened.
“Still in town,” he said.
There was disapproval in his gravelly Ocker-accented voice; he disliked cities, having grown up where the only ones around were ruined and deserted. Cities made it too easy to sneak up on you, though he did approve of the broader variety of pubs.
“Cities have their points—bloody hell, I’m wearing a corset!” Pip said; a quick investigation with a finger revealed that it was a light cloth one.
But still! This is ridiculous.
“You’ve got a corset at home,” Toa pointed out. “Saw it on that stand once when you came back from that school. All frilly grundies, with ribbons and those little chiming bells.”
“That was a theatrical costume,” Pip said loftily. “And for needlework practice.”
In fact you might say it had been sporting goods, since she and a friend had taken turns wearing it at Rockhampton in amateur theatricals of their own devising. The boarding school had been rather isolated out in the sleepy countryside, and you had to make your own entertainment after classes. She’d enjoyed chess and open-air perspective drawing and the Mathematics Club, but it didn’t do to be completely cerebral and you could only steeplechase or play Extreme Field Hockey or haunt the salle d’armes so many times a week.
“So’s that droog thing with the suspenders and bowler hat a costume,” Toa said, keeping his eye to the slightly open door.