Blightborn (9 page)

THE PRAETOR AND THE PEREGRINE

MERELDA’S STARE GIVES
Gwennie all the information she needs to know: the look is equal parts panicked and paranoid, with a tinge of rebuke. It says:

We don’t know each other
.

Gwennie learned long ago that if you can’t suss out the situation, you should listen first, talk second. Cael was always the opposite: jabbering and giving up the ghost at the earliest opportunity. It’s why he was a terrible card player (which got him naked pretty fast, she remembers). The boy could talk his way into a tightening noose without even realizing it. And Boyland was no better: brash and cocky, thinking he knew everything so there was no reason to hold anything back.

Boys, it turned out, are sometimes dumb as dirt.

But Gwennie pays heed to Merelda’s look and stays quiet.

Before she realizes what’s happening she’s whisked up to the top of a balcony, its edge underlit with flickering firefly lights.
The only thing preventing anybody from tumbling off into the crowd on one side or off the edge of the flotilla on the other is a delicate banister made to look like a flock of birds taking flight. Again Gwennie feels the fear of falling—vertigo strikes, and her pulse starts to kick like a rabbit scratching its belly.
For the love of the Lord and the laurels of the Lady, do not throw up.

Suddenly she’s thrust forward by Annalise—a gentle but urgent shove.

There stands a trio of people wreathed in velvet smoke.

On the one side, a masculine-looking woman with short, dark hair and skin the color of creamed coffee. She looks at Gwennie with an unwavering glare. This woman’s stare is a smashing hammer, and Gwennie feels her pieces broken and examined with swift, merciless dismissal. The woman’s jaw tightens, and her brow furrows until she sees Annalise—then her face softens like warm butter in a hot pan. The two of them come together, and the praetor pulls Annalise’s face toward her own and plants a hard kiss on the woman’s cheek.

The man in the silver-skin suit says, “This is the praetor, Ashland Garriott. She oversees all the day-to-day functions of the Ormond Stirling Saranyu.”
The praetor is a woman,
Gwennie thinks.
Did not see that coming
. “And this—”

He gestures deferentially toward the older man in the middle, a man smoking a long, thin, porcelain pipe.

“This is Stirling Ormond, Grand Architect of our flotilla.”

The man mumbles an acknowledgment and uses the finger and thumb of his one hand to smooth the wiry white hairs of his mustache and chin-beard. He cocks his head toward the third and final person of the trio, a woman far younger than he but
still showing age in the way her blond hair is going ashy and how the lines around her mouth and eyes deepen as she smiles. “This is my wife. Karya.”

Karya beams at Gwennie, grabbing her hand and shaking it furiously. As she does so, a set of breasts far too large and round shimmy and quake behind the woman’s apple-red dress.

“It is an honor to meet one of our Heartland brethren,” Karya says, her voice breathy—an almost squeaky whisper.

“Quiet, Karya,” the architect mutters. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

The man with the snow-blond hair turns and puts a cold hand on Gwennie’s bare shoulder. “I’m the peregrine, Percy Lemaire-Laurent.”

“The peregrine . . . ,” Gwennie says. She has no idea what that is.

“I’m the right-hand man to the praetor.”

The praetor speaks up. “Pish. Not at all true. I have assistants for that. Percy is the law around here. Every flotilla has a peregrine. Though perhaps none as effective as ours.”

The peregrine laughs and casts his gaze downward: an expression of humility, though Gwennie can’t tell if it’s genuine. “You honor me with such kind words, Praetor.”

Gwennie turns suddenly toward Merelda. “And you are . . .”

Merelda freezes as if caught in a beam of harsh light.

“Of course,” the peregrine says. “This is my house-mistress. La Mer.”

“It means ‘the sea,’ ” Merelda says. She extends a trembling hand. Afraid that Gwennie will ruin it all for her? “It is a pleasure to meet you, Heartlander.”

“And you,” Gwennie says, hearing the coldness in her own voice. “Skylander.” It’s not a word they use, clearly, because they all chuckle a little, but she doesn’t care and can barely hear their dismissive chortles, because all she’s thinking is:

Traitor. She’s a traitor to her own people. A traitor to the land. Godsdamn you, Merelda McAvoy. Godsdamn you into the arms of Old Scratch.

Three glasses of bubbly in quick succession and already Balastair is feeling it. His stomach flutters. His head drifts. He turns to flag down another Bartender-Bot, and just as he’s trying to suppress a little burp, he runs face-first into Eldon Planck.

“Hello, Balastair.”

Balastair holds a fist against his lips and ill suppresses the burp. “Eldon. I was going to come and say hello.”

“Of course you were.”

Eldon smiles that cruel, handsome smile.

Erasmus whistles and says, “Uh-oh!”

The smoke rising from the architect’s pipe is acrid and skunky; it stings Gwennie’s nose and brings water to her eyes. Whatever it is, it’s softening the man’s eyelids and making his mouth droop more than a little. He keeps making this wet, plying sound with his mouth:
smack smack smack.
Occasionally he jolts back to awareness.

For her part, Gwennie can’t escape the attentions of the architect’s wife, Karya. That woman keeps drinking and pushing
closer and closer against her—Gwennie first thinks it’s not out of lust but rather some mad, sodden fascination, as if she’s a strange object or an odd animal. The woman’s hand falls to Gwennie’s knee, and she keeps leaning in, boozy breath washing over them both in waves. And suddenly Gwennie isn’t so sure.

“What are you drinking?” Karya asks, and before Gwennie can answer, the woman says, “I’m drinking a Gee-Whiz,” and shakes a tall, slim glass of something unnaturally blue. It splashes on the woman’s own knee.

Gwennie’s about to say that she’s not drinking anything, but then Annalise flits along (butterfly pollinating flowers) and places a drink in her hand. “A Tuxedo Tassel,” Annalise says. “As ordered before you . . . hurried off.” And then she’s gone again, once more joining the praetor and a crowd of other hoity-toity types whom Gwennie can’t possibly relate to or understand on even the barest human level.

She takes a sip of the Tuxedo Tassel and finds it awful. As if she’s drinking an old tree. A piece of something—skin from some kind of fruit maybe—collects on her teeth, and she suddenly feels very awkward trying to pull it off.

“Let me,” Karya says, reaching in with too-long, bloodred fingernails to pluck it free from Gwennie’s teeth. Like a bird picking seed. Then her hand falls to Gwennie’s knee again and gives it a squeeze, the fingers doing a drunken waltz up toward her thigh—

Gwennie coughs, clears her throat, and stands up suddenly.

“I need some air,” she says, and quickly shoulders her way through the small balcony crowd toward the banister.

Wind sweeps over her.

She feels loose, unmoored, as if she might fly away at any moment. A fluffy seed from a ruptured pod cast skyward.

Out beyond the balcony is the Heartland. A black blanket with a few pinpricks of light—towns maybe, or processing plants. Motorvators performing their tireless chores through the corn. The land below is black. The sky above is lit by a panoply of stars.

Someone comes up behind her. A hand at the small of her back. A jab of fear sticks her along with, she has to admit, a weird worm-turn of excitement in the deep of her belly as she thinks it might be Balastair—

But it’s the peregrine who speaks.

“Karya’s a flighty one,” Percy says. “Is she bothering you?”

“No. Ah. It’s—No, she’s fine.”

“You Heartlanders are modest people. Simple folk.”

She’s not sure if he’s being plainspoken or if he’s insulting her, but she nods anyway. “That sounds about right.”

“Are you enjoying your time here?”

“It’s fine,” she says, hearing the strain in her own voice.

His hand remains at the small of her back. She can feel the cold of his palm through the dress.

“You’re under Balastair Harrington’s care.”

“I am.”

“A smart man. How goes the Pegasus Project?”

I’m cleaning up lots of Pegasus shit, if that’s what you want to know
. “Great. I guess. I wouldn’t know; I’m just simple folk.”

“You seem a tad hostile.”

“I’m not good at small talk.”

“Of course. Heartlanders like to be direct.”

“We’re not all one person who likes one thing,” she snaps.

“Yet I’ll do you the favor of assuming
you
like things to be direct. As a further favor, I’ll be clear: I know that you know her.”

Her
. “Merelda.”

“La Mer, if you please. It means ‘the sea.’ ”

“Yes, she said that. And I
do
know her.”

His hand leaves her back, and he comes up next to her, and she realizes then how tall he really is—his elbow almost touches her shoulder. He leans forward and begins talking, never once looking at her, always keeping his gaze fixed on the darkness of the Heartland below.

“Correction: you don’t know her,” he says. “You think you do, but you don’t. She isn’t a Heartlander. She’s from another flotilla. A flotilla far away, toward the coast.”
The coast?
she thinks. “Stay away from her, and all will be well. In fact, if you—”

Gwennie narrows her eyes. “You’re the law, right? Might complicate your job if I told them who she really was. Might mess with this nice thing you got going.”

“See, I was about to offer you a taste of honey, and you have to go and pour vinegar all over it.” He sighs. “Let me revise my sentiment. You tell them what you know, they’ll give me a slap on the wrist. I’m too entrenched in my work. The praetor likes what I do and will forgive my dalliance as just that: the sins of the flesh taken hold. But what will happen then is they’ll take your friend Merelda, and they’ll march her to the end of a gangplank, and they’ll push her off it. Maybe with a noose around her neck so she dangles, or maybe just so she plummets all the way down to the dry and dusty fundament you call the Heartland.”

“You sonofab—”

“—I’m not finished. What will come
next
is, I will be very distraught and blinded by anger, and I will go and find your mother, your father, and your little brother. I’ll hurt them very badly. I’ll hurt them personally if I can manage the privilege, claiming I caught them in . . . some act of sedition, some madness deserving the mercy of my pistol. Do you understand? Then I’ll make you identify the bodies just so you see how they suffered.”

“You’re a monster.”

“I’m merely protective, as I’m sure you are of the things you hold dear. Which is why I know you’ll do the smart thing and keep quiet. I have a wife and two beautiful sons, and they all know that I am deeply in love with La Mer and that I take my job very seriously, and I’ll not have some scrubby callus-hand from the corn-blasted below threaten that.”

The wind grows suddenly cold.

Gwennie cannot suppress the shiver.

“Are we clear?” he asks.

“We are,” she says, barely finding her voice.

“Excellent. I’m going to tell them you’re not feeling well. Go find Balastair and have him take you home.”

He reaches up and touches her arm.

“You look very pretty,” he says. “You clean up nice.”

Then he’s gone, and she dry heaves over the side of the balcony.

Flustered, feeling as if she can’t catch her breath, Gwennie finds Balastair standing face-to-face with some other Empyrean, an older man whose looks hover somewhere between dapper and
rugged. Next to that man stands a young woman—pretty, a streak of silver shot through ruddy-red hair. Gwennie comes up and tugs on his arm, and she’s about to tell him it’s time to go, but they seem in the middle of a conversation—

“You’re really quite bitter,” the older man says to Balastair. “A few glasses of bubbly and you fall to pieces. Unlike my auto-mates, of course. You’ve heard of the Initiative, have you? Down there in the Heartland?”

“The who now? The what?” Balastair looks flummoxed. Erasmus chirps and burbles on his shoulder.

“Ah. Well. I daren’t split my lips to spill news that isn’t mine to spill. But this Pegasus thing is really just a drop in the bucket. We’ll be airborne by the end of the week and . . . you can go back to your lab. Isn’t that where you want to be? Back doing
real
work? If they’ll let you, of course.” He takes another sip. “After failing to create a true Pegasus to embody the Empyrean ideals, a living sigil to demonstrate the pride of the heavens. Failure is like honey, Balastair—it’s really quite sticky.”

“
You’re
sticky,” Balastair hisses, what Gwennie assumes is a nonsense insult that comes plopping out of his fool’s mouth.

“Sticky!” Erasmus echoes.

The other man just laughs.

Then he turns his gaze toward Gwennie.

“This is your . . . charge,” he says, swishing his drink around the bell of his glass. “Your
ward
of the flotilla. How interesting. Heartland girl, is she?”

“I’m right here,” Gwennie says. “I can
hear
you.”

“Gwennie,” Balastair says, and she hears the droopy slur in his voice as he gesticulates with a sloshing glass of something
pink and bubbly. “This is Eldon Planck, the men behind the mechanical man—er, the
man
behind the mechanical
men
, and that there, the woman
right there
, is his lovely wife. His new wife.
Cleo
Planck.”

“Great,” Gwennie says. “We seriously need to get the hell—” She pauses and looks at the woman. “Cleo?”

“That’s right,” the woman says.

Gwennie takes Balastair’s glass from him and splashes the drink in her face.

All around her are gasps and mumbles followed by a swift silence.

She feels a hundred pairs of eyes on her.