The Deepwater Trilogy. Claire McKenna

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       A whore clothed herself

      ‘A whore clothed herself in this rag,’ he concluded with caustic passion. ‘A bitch who lay down with an animal and got herself killed for it.’

      His curse words spoken, and with God having not struck him from the face of the earth for saying them, Mr Justinian shoved the trestle table once for emphasis, then stalked off across the town square towards the Black Rosette.

      Arden exhaled, prickling with both triumph and remorse. She had won something over Mr Justinian, but at what cost?

      The jumble seller, a stout grey-haired woman with the pale vulpine features of a Fictish native, remained cheery in the face of Arden’s dismissal.

      ‘You’ll get used to the muck and bother here, love. Once our Coastmaster gets a pint of rot into him, all will be back to normal.’

      ‘I must apologize,’ Arden said with forced brightness to the jumble seller. ‘Ours was not a disagreement we should have made you witness to.’

      ‘The young Baron is correct about the krakenskin, I’m afraid.’ The woman shook the violet threads of ragfish intestines off a pair of trousers that looked identical to the ones she herself wore. ‘The coat is a cast-off and completely unsuitable for any purpose.’

      ‘But it’s hardly used. I need a wet-coat to work the lighthouse. Only krakenskin could reliably stand all the weather that the ocean might throw at it.’

      ‘The lighthouse? You mean Jorgen’s lighthouse?’ The woman shifted her now-nervous attention over Arden’s shoulder. The horizon behind the town was mostly obscured by fog, but a good five or ten miles away as the crow flew the land curved into a hooked finger of stone. At the very tip of the promontory a granite tower stood erect as a broken thumb, a single grey digit topped with a weakly flashing light.

      ‘I am Arden Beacon, Lightmistress, Associate Guildswoman and Sanguis Ignis from Clay Portside, the traders’ city of Lyonne,’ Arden recited, still unfamiliar with her official titles. She held out her gloved hand. ‘I have come from Clay Portside in Lyonne to take over the lighthouse operation from my late uncle, Jorgen Beacon.’

      ‘A sanguinem?’ The woman frowned at the offered hand. ‘All the way out here?’

      ‘It’s all right,’ Arden said. ‘Touch doesn’t hurt me.’

      Still cautious, the woman shook Arden’s hand timidly, her eyes still on the pony-plantskin gloves, so fine compared to the ubiquitous bonefish leather of the coast. Was not the gloves she minded, but what lay under the gloves that gave the woman pause. The coins. The little metal spigots that were both symbol and necessity of her trade.

      Arden did not take offence. The reaction would be the same in Lyonne, among the commonfolk. The woman was gentle, and released her quickly.

      ‘Oh, I wasn’t minding your hands, dear. I was surprised that Jorgen was replaced so quickly when we could have well put a distillate lamp in there and be done with all the sadness.’

      ‘The Guild is very protective of its properties. That flame has been kept alive by sanguis for centuries, and they’d not likely stop now. Anyhow, what is the price of the c—’

      ‘Now that you say it,’ the woman interrupted, ‘I see the resemblance to Jorgen in you, that Lyonne high breeding, so elegant.’ She simpered a little, trying to curry favour with a rich woman from the hot North country. A rich sanguis woman, possessed of esoteric skills. ‘I am Mrs Sage. My husband is both apothecary and doctor in our town centre.’ Mrs Sage waved towards a rude row of wood and brick that even in Clay Portside would have been considered little more than ballast shacks. ‘We were told of Lightmaster Beacon’s passing, and that a blood-talented relative would soon replace him from the North, but … We expected a brother.’

      ‘All my uncle’s brothers have permanent Lightmaster positions in Clay Portside,’ Arden explained, annoyed that she would now have to have this conversation, and justify her sex, again. In Lyonne there would have been no question of her capabilities – labour was labour, regardless of the source. ‘I was the only one not contracted to any gazetted navigation post, and the Guild requires a sanguinem to crew their stations, so …’ She shrugged. ‘The Seamaster’s Guild requested that the Portmaster of Lyonne provide someone of the talent to take his place. So here I am. Buying a coat—’

      ‘Just like that?’

      ‘Well, the Seamaster’s Guild does have to administrate a lot of coastline. I cannot shirk a duty.’

      Mrs Sage shook her head that Arden had not questioned such a direction. ‘It’s not right, a woman sent out to those rocks alone …’

      ‘The Portmaster of Clay is also my father,’ Arden said with a theatrical display of generous patience at Mrs Sage’s concern, so desperate was she to conclude this sale. ‘He understands more than anyone what my abilities are. He also understands that if there is not a Beacon at that lighthouse, it will go to a Lumiere or, God forbid, a Pharos, and,’ she stopped to give the most forced of smiles, ‘ignis families are very competitive for those positions offered us. It would break his heart for our family to lose another lighthouse post.’

      ‘Still. It pains me to sell you this coat, Lightmistress Beacon. I must refuse.’

      Arden saw the coat sliding away in the manner of a barely glimpsed dream. She clutched it tighter.

      ‘Then why have it for sale if you won’t accept my purchase?’

      Mrs Sage smoothed a sou’wester out upon its pile. Her red, chapped hands rubbed the linseedy surface of the rain hat. ‘I was hoping one of the ambergris merchants from Morningvale might buy it today, and take it far away from here. Sell this garment for a profit in a city where nobody knows its source. The young Baron was correct. The woman who owned this coat is dead.’

      Murdered whore. Coastmaster Justinian had delivered the words with such venom, meant to hurt with СКАЧАТЬ