built for speed: all clean lines, streamlined. It looked fast, anyway.
They showed their tickets to a man standing in front of the ship. He glanced at the tickets and waved them up the ramp that led to the ship's main deck without even looking at their faces.
'Enjoy your journey,' he muttered as they passed.
On board they wound their way through a tangle of deckhands and dock workers busy stowing the ship's cargo. A few soldiers, in uniform but on leave, lingered abovedecks, smoking at the ship's prow. A family with a quartet of young children were making their way belowdecks. Silverdun waved Sela down the narrow stairs behind them, taking her handbag from her.
'After you, my darling,' he said. Their cover story was that she and Silverdun were newlyweds; he was a bookkeeper and she was the daughter of an innkeeper. Ironfoot was Silverdun's brother. They were returning from a holiday in Mag Mell. Sela had found the whole thing terribly romantic when Silverdun had first come up with the idea, but the reality of it left her feeling a bit pathetic, her awkward fantasy coming to life as a mere illusion.
At the bottom of the steps, Silverdun put his arm around her. It felt good, but Sela couldn't decide whether she was enjoying herself or not.
The main cabin consisted of a few dozen rows of plush leather seats. Wide windows were set into the hull, admitting bright shafts of morning sunlight. Silverdun led them to the rear of the cabin, where they sat facing the young family.
'Good day to you all,' said the husband, a friendly fellow with smiling eyes. His wife nodded to them and went back to tending the children.
Sela eased into her seat and suddenly felt the weight of their travels come down on her. Before Mab''r Contempt even slipped its moorings, she was asleep.
Sela knows from books that a Fae girl's sixteenth birthday is special. It is the day she becomes a woman. The crones have promised her a fantastic gift for her birthday, and Sela can't wait to see what it is. The only other gift she's ever received was the mechanical bird that Lord Tanen brought her, the one he crushed beneath his boot. She has asked the crones if this gift will be like that, but they scoffed at her and told her to stop being foolish. Girls like her don't have birthdays.
The day comes and Sela awakes early, with the sun. She dresses in one of the special gowns, the ones that the crones have shown her how to wear. For dances in the city. She has been taught how to match shoes and earrings, how to put her hair up in glamoured combs, and how to apply the paint to her lips and eyelids. She knows quadrille and farandole and tarantella, and how to hold a fan. All of these things will someday be useful, but she doesn't know why.
She hears Lord Tanen's carriage before she sees it. She is sitting on the steps of the manor, making a daisy chain, making holes in one stem with a stolen sewing needle and threading the next stem through, flower upon flower. The crones will not approve of this, but she thinks that because it is her birthday they won't punish her for it. She has nearly completed a necklace when she hears hoofbeats echoing through the trees.
Lord Tanen steps out of his carriage, and she can see that someone is with him. He holds out his hand to the stranger and she descends. It is a girl, Sela's age, dressed in a gown of whitest linen. Her hair is gold and put up in shining plaits, her face scrubbed clean. Sela gets up and runs toward the carriage, but halfway there she stops, her breath caught in her chest.
What if this girl has been brought to replace her? What if she is going to be taken away in that carriage and left in the forest? In stories sometimes this happens. A girl is taken away by a cruel parent, usually a stepmother, and left in the forest to die. These children usually end up as princesses, but Sela has been told by the crones that her parents are dead now, and that she is worthless on her own; her only value is what Lord Tanen gives to her.
But her thoughts of being replaced vanish when the girl looks at her and smiles, showing a row of crooked teeth under bright blue eyes.
'Happy birthday, Sela,' she says.
'Who are you?' asks Sela, mystified.
'I'm Milla,' the girl says.
Sela looks at Lord Tanen, confused.
'This is your birthday present, Sela,' says Tanen. 'A most special gift for a most important birthday.'
Sela still doesn't understand.
'I've brought you a friend, Sela. I've brought you someone to love.'
Someone nudged Sela awake. She sat up, startled, not sure where she was for a moment. Sunlight, sky, soft chair. She was still on board Mabs Contempt.
Silverdun leaned into her. 'Camellia blossoms,' he said.
'Hm?' she mumbled.
'Laurel blossoms. Whatever. There may be trouble,' he whispered.
