We walked down the docks, scanning the names painted large on the backs of the ships.
“There’s still time to back out,” I said quietly to Sawny, fingering the small pouch I’d stuffed into my pocket after supper the night before. “The anchorites would let you stay a bit longer. Work’s sure to open up somewhere in the city. If not, I’ll be sixteen soon. I know there’s work up north we can take.”
But just as I finished speaking, the Lucrecia loomed up out of the darkness at the end of the dock, her name painted in bright white across the stern far above our heads. A brat couldn’t grow up in Alskad without learning a bit about sunships. Even in the cheap cabins set aside for contract workers, Sawny and Lily would experience more luxury in the short trip across the Tethys than we’d ever imagined. There would be endless buffets, libraries and game rooms. They’d sleep on soft beds, and for the first—and only—time in their lives, they’d wake each morning with nothing to do. A part of me wished that I could walk onto the sunship with Lily and Sawny, just to see, but that would never happen. Not for a dimmy. Not for me.
An imposing woman stood at the end of the gangplank, a sheaf of papers in one hand, a pen in the other. The light gray fur of her jacket’s collar set off her high cheekbones and deep, russet-brown skin. She eyed the three of us as we approached.
“Names?” she asked.
I turned to Sawny. “You’re sure?”
“There’s more opportunity there than we could ever hope for here,” Sawny said, his eyes begging me to understand. “It’ll be a better life. An easier life.”
I retied the bit of string at the end of my braid. Lily reached out and squeezed my shoulder, and I started slightly. It was the first time she’d touched me in years.
“We’ll take care of each other, Vi, and we’ll write. All the time.” She turned to the woman at the end of the gangplank. “Lily and Sawny Taylor. I believe I spoke to your sister?”
The woman laughed heartily. “My daughter. Though I’m grateful to you for the mistake. Let’s get your papers sorted, shall we?”
I tugged on Sawny’s arm, drawing him away from the gangplank and the sunlamp’s glow. Once we were in the shadows, I pulled him close to me, like the sweethearts we’d never been. Never thought of becoming. People’s eyes slipped away from sweethearts, cuddled up to say goodbye, and now more than ever, I needed to go unnoticed.
Sawny squirmed. “What’re you about?”
“Shut up and let me hug you, yeah?” I said, loud enough for anyone passing by to hear. I stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear. “If you’re going to insist on leaving me behind, I have a going away gift for you. But you have to promise me you won’t open it until you’re well away at sea.”
“Vi, you’ve nothing—”
“Don’t be after arguing with me, Sawny. I’ve never had a scrap to give you for birthdays, high holidays, none of it. Let me do this one thing.”
I dug into my pocket and fished out the little pouch, keeping my other arm around Sawny’s shoulders. There were sixteen perfect pearls and a couple of dozen less valuable, slightly blemished ones inside the pouch I’d sewn from a scrap of a too-small pair of trousers. The pearls were some of the best of my collection, and enough to give them a start on their savings. It wasn’t enough to pay off their passage or set them up with a shop of their own, but it was something. It was all I could give them.
A long time ago, when I’d first learned to dive from one of the anchorites’ hirelings, she’d told me how pearls were made. The temple anchorites only had use for natural pearls, the ones that came of a tiny grain of sand or bit of shell irritating the oyster’s delicate tissues. But, the woman had told me, there was beginning to be a market for a new kind of pearl, one that could be farmed on lines strung in the ocean. They weren’t quite as valuable, but when you knew that almost every oyster would make a pearl, a bigger profit could be had.
That bit of information had sparked an idea, and as soon as I’d begun to dive on my own, I’d hung lines and baskets beneath the docks, where none of the other divers ever went. I tended them for four long years, and on my twelfth birthday, I opened the first oyster off my lines and slipped a pearl as big as the nail on my little pinky from its shell. In the three years since, I’d harvested close to two hundred pearls from my lines, more than ten for every one natural pearl I’d found and handed over to the anchorites.
That collection was hidden away beneath a floorboard in my tiny room in the temple. I’d created a small cushion for myself—enough to buy a cottage on one of the northernmost islands in the Alskad Empire, where folks were said to keep to themselves.
When I lost myself to the grief, I’d be far enough away from other folks that I wouldn’t be able to do much harm. I’d be alone. It was selfish of me, wanting to spend whatever time I had left in the company of my only friend, but still I’d thought about offering Sawny and Lily my whole stash—everything I’d ever saved, everything I’d ever created—just so they wouldn’t leave. Wouldn’t leave me alone. But in the end, I couldn’t have lived with the guilt of it. My friendship with Sawny was the only real, honest relationship in my life, and I couldn’t bear the thought of holding them back from the life they’d chosen just because I was so desperate not to be left alone.
Pressing the pouch into Sawny’s hand as stealthily as I could manage, I pulled back from our hug just far enough to fix him with a hard stare. “Don’t say anything.”
Sawny’s dark eyes were wide. “Are these...?”
“Don’t. You know the law. You know the consequences. Sell them when you can. Take your time. Be careful.”
“Vi, this is, far and away, the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Sawny,” Lily called. “It’s time.”
Sawny threw his arms around me and squeezed me tight, and a part of me shattered, knowing it was the last hug I was ever likely to feel.
“I’ll miss you,” he said, and I tucked those words, his voice, deep into my heart.
“I’ll miss you, too.”
I watched as they boarded the Lucrecia and disappeared. As I stood there, the sun crept slowly up behind the ship, lightening the sky from navy to violet to lavender, and a sharp cacophony of pink and yellow and orange. Tears streamed down my cheeks as the sunship was tugged out into the harbor, as the tugboat disconnected and the enormous solar sails unfurled and turned to greet the rising sun.
Watch over them, Pru.
I waited until the ship was a mere speck, a memory traveling far across the sea. I watched, careless of the time, of the stares I gathered from passersby, of the tongue-lashing Lugine was sure to give me the moment I showed my face in the temple, empty-handed and having skipped my morning dive. I didn’t care. I was alone in a city full of people, and nothing at all mattered anymore.
* * *
Without Sawny around to fill my spare time, I wandered through the temple aimlessly, counting down the days left until my birthday, when I would be free of this place and all the unpleasant memories of my childhood that frosted its walls and stained its floors. Whenever I wasn’t diving or off on some errand for an anchorite, I found myself in the library, revisiting the books I’d read over and over as a child. I’d always been fascinated by the stories about the world before the cataclysm.
It had been so vast and varied, and yet so isolated at the same time. But, as the Suzerain would have us believe, its people had grown too bold, too selfish. Dzallie the Warrior asked Gadrian the Firebound to make her a weapon that would split the moon. As moondust and fire rained down upon the world, Hamil the Seabound washed away