House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)
Cat Hellisen
A PLAGUE OF HOUSES
The city stinks of death. High summer has MallenIve by the throat and my apartments in the House Pelim holdings are stuffy and humid. We are miles from the Hob slums where a plague is currently raging, and still the air reeks of burned skin from the pyres.
Hardly an auspicious start to the season’s round of parties.
I slump in my rooms at the very top of the house, waiting for respite. Fine rivulets of sweat trickle down from my temples, and I pant while fluttering a small round paper hand-fan – MallenIve’s latest fashion – uselessly through the air. All it does is waft the heat around. At least the Houses only bother with their entertainment in the evening, after the thunderstorms have damped down the baked dust and washed away the stench of the day’s unfortunate corpses.
It’s not just the poor. Everything seems to be expiring. Just yesterday when I ventured out, desperate for some kind of contact that didn’t involve servants or the implacable mask of my husband, I saw one of the shaggy, goat-like nillies drop dead in its traces. The creature just crumpled in the middle of the street, between the shit and the pedestrians. Traffic in MallenIve is so slow and congested it took minutes before anyone but me realized it was dead.
That moment as it died and the golden eyes went dry was the first time since I came to this monstrosity of a city I felt a kinship with another living thing. It too had had enough of this stinking place.
So melodramatic, I’m sure Jannik with his penchant for awful poetry would approve. Somehow, I suspect I shall cling to life a little longer than the broken nilly. Our moment of mutual feeling only extended so far. There is no way for me to go back home, and I think I am long over the childish petulance of suicides. How grown up you are, Felicita. Even my inner voice manages to sneer at me. Almost eighteen and so very adult.
“Oh, hush,” I tell myself as I wipe a palm across my sweating brow. “I am allowed to wallow in my self-pity, at least until tea.”
My mother would have understood. She wouldn’t have approved, but she would have given me a little space to indulge in some of my teenage misery. Or perhaps I am remembering her too fondly. After all, there is distance between us greater than miles. She has absented herself as my mother and her letters to me are few and say little. All I really know is that my brother’s widow has moved into the family house. I wonder if Mother gave her my turret room so that the poor girl could pretend she was at least a little bit free.
Enough of this. I refuse to entertain these maudlin thoughts. I take a deep breath and push the image of my mother out of my mind.
A small, timid knock sounds at the door, and it’s the signal that the worst of the day is over. Tea is the precursor to the punctual afternoon storm. A slight Hob girl with her dark curly hair pulled back in a neat bun comes in. The starched whites of her sleeves almost glow against the yellow brown of her hands as she sets down a tray of tea, honey, and milk. The grassy smell of redbush fills the room.
“Thank you, Riona.” I drop the fan on my dressing table with a clatter. I like this girl; she’s soft and sweet, but underneath that she’s got spine. She knows her letters, a remarkable enough thing in a Hob straight from the vast township that encircles MallenIve. I’ve worked at her, winkling her slowly out of her shell like a little sea snail. When she first started working for me she’d stand mutely staring as I tried to ask her questions about her life and her family. Eventually she stopped giving me looks of blank astonishment, and these days she actually manages to roll her eyes at me and hum in exasperation when I am at my most annoying. None of the other staff have followed her lead. I suppose the MallenIve Hobs are as unused to a Lammer speaking to them as if they were people as the Pelimburg Hobs are.
I confess, a year ago, I would have given no more thought to her and her life than I would have given a pack animal. My time in the Whelk Street squat changed me more than I like to think about.
“Your brother?” I say as she pours the tea, “Have you any word?”
“He’s doing better, my lady. Thank you,” she whispers. Her older brother works the scriv mines out past the city. When the black lung hits, the miners with their ragged lungs are the first to fall. From what she’s told me, Riona has no other family besides him. We can do little enough. I have sent a physician – who was rather disgruntled at the task – to see to him, and have paid for medicines, but the black lung will take who she will. If he’s doing better, then that’s as the world has decided.
“That’s good news then,” I say brightly. Mentally I add another task to my daily list: have the kitchen staff make up a package for the boy: food and blankets, and lemons and honey for his throat. Mrs. Palmer will pull faces, I know, but for all her scowls and mutterings, she’ll wrap Riona’s brother enough to feed a Hob-pack.
“Yes, my lady.” Despite my attempt at friendship, the girl refuses to call me by anything else.
I sigh, and flick the handle of my fan so that it slides across my table. Small steps, Felicita. You cannot change a city in a day. Or a year.
“Will you be painting today, my lady?” Riona says as she stirs honey and milk into my tea.
“Please, Ree. I have asked so very many times.” I catch her free hand in mine and feel her muscles twitch at this unwelcome display of amity. “Felicita will do just fine.” After all, I threw away my pretence at ladyship when I ran away from home and dishonoured the Pelim name. It’s why I’m here in this stinking hole: to do my best to make up for all my flaws. I let her hand go with a sigh. “Not today, I think.” Another glance out the window confirms that the clouds are rolling in thick and heavy. And tonight’s engagement weighs on me as much as the clouds do. I’m in no mood to paint flowers.