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note: This early version of Beggar's Rebellion is not for resale or publication, and it is very much Not Safe For Work
Ella bit the nib of her pen, rereading the passage. It was this account in Markels, and those of others who came to verify it, that began the rush for yura and the Empire’s eventual expansion further south. But his claims of people using yurabilities without yura had never been substantiated, despite rumors from returning soldiers having fought the local resistance. Kellandrials had recounted a similar anecdote…
Ella leaned back in her chair, ship rocking in the current, and reached for the volume of Kellandrials reprints. Morning light sparkled from the wake of the ship, and the songs of the oarship echoed from upriver. The air was dried here, Golla lacking the energy-sapping quality it had in Worldsmouth, and the air smelled of woodsmoke. She was on the narrow back deck, passing the morning rereading accounts of the Achuri in preparation for their arrival. She flipped to the page in Kellandrials, heavy with her script along the margins:
We met a local woman, really a quite simple dobby woman of the mudports, who claimed to no longer need yura to read the history of objects—a thingread, you’ll recall we’ve labeled them. It is of course likely fancy and attempts to win into our good graces, but as her tale is rather entertaining, dear readers, we recount it here--
Ella skimmed the page, used to Kellandrial’s verbose and self-involved style. The woman claimed to have stolen a great amount of yura, then fearing discovery to have eaten it all at once—and never to have needed yura again. Now, dear readers, Kellandrials continued, burning with curiosity we repeated the experiment, yay even unto the thirtieth ball she estimated, at great expense to our person, but found on the morrow no greater remnants than an empty purse and weary bones…
Ella bit her nib again, ink bitter on her tongue. Could the Achuri have all done the same, taken so much yura that they no longer needed it? Markels at least suggested it—was that speculation or something an Achuri had said to him? Was this the secret to the Southern people’s famed strength in yurabilities?
“But it didn’t work for Kellandrials. More likely Markels was telling tales to flesh out his book,” her other voice cut in. “His accounts of the beasts on the ice sheet, three times as a high as a man, are obviously exaggerations.”
Ella inclined her head. “True. But his account of the Yati was so accurate the Empire still uses it as a primary source for ruling the people.” She felt a hint of scorn from her other voice and shrugged. “Still, it’s worth asking the local people. If they do have yurabilities without needing to take yura, it would change so much…” She began scratching notes in the margin.
A harrumph behind interrupted her thoughts. “Miss Ella?”
Ella started, looking up to find the captain with a tight set to his jaw. “Captain Ralhens. Hi.”
The man drew deeply on his pipe, sage crackling in the bowl, and spoke through his smoke. “Some men wanting to see you on top deck.”
“Some…men?” He did not sound pleased. “What’s going on?”
“Would you come with me?”
“I—“ Ella pulled her feet from the railing and stood up, smoothing her muslin gown. “I’m not really dressed for it. Give me a minute to change.”
He nodded, pulling on his pipe, and she went into her room. A minute later he was leading her to the top deck, where a crowd of twenty or so men were gathered at the front rail, watching the passage into the Genga. Three waited for her under the covered area where they’d supped last night—Olgsby, Pruitt and one other she didn’t remember, a man who’d come to her just once on the trip.
Ella nodded to them. “Gentleman. You wanted something?”
At this Pruitt spat, but Oglsby was the one who spoke. “You lied to us.” He raised a finger to point at her, voice warbling. “You deceived us.”
She summoned her most serene face. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Colonel.”
“A whore,” Pruitt spat. “A common whore, masquerading as a keisua so she can catch us out here and rob of us of our money!”
Fish meck. They must have heard that she didn’t have a keisua license. “Gentleman, I assure you—“
“You’ve already assured us, with lies!” the third man cut in. A few faces turned from the crowd at the front railing.
“Perhaps,” the captain said, “we should move this discussion somewhere more private?”
“Nothing of it,” Pruitt said, hot. “I’ll see her papers here and now, or I demand my money back, every last pig iron!”
Ella put on a smile, thinking fast. “Mr. Pruitt, I’m afraid my papers are in Worldsmouth, for safe keeping. If something were to happen during the voyage…”
“Pah,” the third one spat. “I knew you were a whore the first time I stuck my prick in you. I’ve been with keisua. I know the difference.”
Olgsby looked uncomfortable at the man’s words, but spoke in a more measured tone. “Ellumia, are you keisua or aren’t you? You have a chance here to clear your name.”
And have to repay all the money she’d made. She wouldn’t even have enough to cover passage downstream. Fortunately, when your job was acting aroused with men like these on top of you, lying was easy. “There’s nothing to clear, Colonel. I am certified keisua, trained under Madame Owengild at the House of Songs. I am willing to submit to the tests, if there’s someone here who can perform them.”
It was a calculated risk—she knew enough from Lei’tsuna’s account that she could likely pass most of the tests, but under real examination she would fail. Some men, especially those becoming patrons, trained to administer the tests. Her gamble was that none of these men had.
No one spoke up. She was beginning to smile when Pruitt swiped his arm, as though to wipe away her lies. “Doesn’t matter. Imperial law requires you carry a certified affidavit, signed in triplicate, proof in absentia of your status.” He was a minor functionary in the Imperial bureaucracy, as she recalled. He held out his hand. “So let’s see it. Or I see the coins.”
A few of the men at the rail began to drift over. She couldn’t let this get any bigger. Let them once start talking to port authorities and she would be behind bars, or worse. Ella drew herself up. “Gentleman I don’t know what to tell you. My word is good. I defer judgment to Captain Ralhens. He has known me the longest, and his judgment is law aboard this ship.” And between Olgsby the moralist, Pruitt the legalist, and Ralhens the gentleman, she knew who she’d rather have decide.
Ralhens looked troubled at this, and opened his mouth to speak. Before he could, someone else cut in, a newcomer. “What’s going on here?”
“A whore,” Pruitt said. “Turns out this girl’s no keisua, she’s a common whore. We’re trying to get our money back, and she’s refusing.”
“Just a whore?” another one asked. She recognized him—DePri. He had been to her two or three times. Into tying her up, as she recalled. “I paid top coin for her!” He turned to her. “For a whore?”
Ella tried to speak, but the crowd overrode her, and she suddenly had a sense of how very alone she was, a single woman on a ship full of men. She tongued the yura ball in her mouth, ready to bite down. “Won’t pay?” “Not a keisua?”
“Gentlemen!” Ralhens was crying, but they wouldn’t listen. Something more than words was needed here, but damned if she’d use yura to run away. Ella took a step closer to the captain.
“Tie her up!” Pruitt called, grinning. “Tie her up and—“
Ella grabbed the hilt of Ralhens’s sword and swung it out, aiming the point at Pruitt’s throat.
Pruitt choked off, and in the brief silence that followed Ella spoke. “You men may have no regard for a woman’s honor, but you will at least listen to the captain when he has something to say. And if you speak another word, Pruitt, I swear to the Descending God I’ll cut your throat.” Nevermind that the sword tip wobbled like a drunk sailor. All she needed was for Pruitt to shut up.
It worked. Ralhens recovered himself quickly, swinging his pipe at the men. “Stand down! Stand down at once! Men!” He gave a shrill whistle and two or three deck hands appeared. “I will have order on my ship! Order!”
Ella risked a glance and the captain’s face was red—she’d never seen him this angry, or angry at all for that matter.
“As legal captain of a chartered vessel my word is law on these decks, and I say Miss Ella will not be charged nor defamed simply for accusations. You men all attended her with money ready and no questions in your mind, and now when the deed is done you turn to me, turn to accusations! Pah,” he spit, a much coarser sailor coming out for a moment, “I’d wash my deck of the lot of you if I could do it. Back to your cabins each one.”
Ella heaved a sigh of relief, but he wasn’t done. “And Miss Ella, you’re hereby cast off this ship at the next port for want of proper paperwork, and there’s an end to it!”
“Wha—“
“But the next port’s last stop!” a man overrode her. “It’s where she’s going anyway!”
“And there’s an end to it I say!” the captain roared, and the men began to back off, under the watchful eyes of the captain’s hefty deckhands. Ralhens turned to her. “I’ll have my sword back now, if you please.”
Pruitt remained frozen at the other end of the blade, and it took some doing to not shove it into his throat. Ella was gratified to see, at least, that a wet area had appeared around his crotch. She lowered it, handed it back to the captain. “I thank you, sir, for the use of your blade, and moreso for taking control of these men.”
Ralhens met her eyes for a moment, face still red, then shook his head and stormed off.
“Okay,” Ella muttered, “might have overstepped our limits a little there.”
A deckhand cleared his throat and she realized she’d said it out loud. “Ah, right! Thank you, men. Pruitt.” She nodded at him as though they’d just settled a business deal. “You might want to change those trousers before Ayugen.”
Ella took the stairs down, mind working over what had happened. Was the captain serious about her leaving the Swallowtail? Or was he just appeasing the men? There’d be no way for them to know if she took return passage north—they were all disembarking at Ayugen. But the way he had looked at her, that angry set to his eyes… Perhaps he was serious. Perhaps she would have to find another vessel.
Ella pushed into her room, familiar by now with the way the door hinged slightly crooked. She must have forgotten to lock it. She would be sad to leave the Swallowtail Mistress, said to leave Captain Ralhens on less than good terms. He had clearly never approved of what she was doing, but he’d been a gentleman about it, and she had always felt safe with him aboard. She would leave him a generous tip, at least, and write out a card thanking him.
There was no way she could transfer to another ship directly. It would look odd, the amount of furniture she had, and for an Imperial woman at the farthest port to simply be turning around without even entering town—she’d raise eyebrows, eyebrows she didn’t need. Not to mention what some of the men from this voyage might say if given the chance. Forty-five hundred could keep her in Ayugen a while—she could rent a room in the city and spend time really studying the culture. She needed an entrance essay to the Academy—perhaps it could be on changes to the Achuri since Markels. So long as she had the money, why not? Ella glanced at the hollow statue.
It was gone.
In the place where it usually sat, wedged between Markels and some thinner broadsheet collections, there was empty space, the books leaning on each other.
Ella got up. “What the hell?”
“It has to be somewhere.”
It wasn’t. Ella searched the bed, the other shelves, the floor. Had she left it somewhere strange? Hidden it in the bureau? The bedding basket? Under the carpet? No. “What the hell?” she demanded of the empty space, chest tightening.
Then it clicked: the open door. She hadn’t left it unlocked. She never did. Someone had forced their way in.
And stolen her savings.
Ella sat down on the bed, hard. No savings. That meant no money for a return to Worldsmouth. No money for a room in Ayugen. No money to eat, even. Her chest seized. “Who would do this?”
“Anyone. Pruitt. Olgsby. Ralhens. Hell hath no fury like a man cuckolded.”
“Mothershatterers!” Ella pounded a fist on her thigh. “They can’t do this!”
“They can do anything they want. You know that.”
“But steal my savings? How did they even know where they were?” Her eyes blurred, and she rubbed an arm across them. “Either way, they’re still on the ship.” Cold replaced the fire in her chest, determination. She would timeslip. She would find the man who did it, tie him up tight and--
“Ella. Slow down. You have one yura ball. Even if you get a quarterhour’s slip out of it, that’s not enough time to break into the fifty cabins on this ship and search them.”
“Right.” Even if she had the strength to break down doors—timeslipping didn’t make you stronger, just faster—there was no way she’d get through all of them. Not to mention the crew quarters below. “But I have to do something. Have to look for him. The captain. Captain Ralhens will help me.”
”Don’t count on it.”
Ella left her cabin, not bothering to lock it—nothing of value there but books now, and she doubted any of these men would take much interest in Markels or LeTwi. An older man was coming from abovedecks, not one of her customers, but they’d exchanged a few words on the voyage. “Excuse me,” she asked. “Have you seen the captain?”
The man cleared his throat, giving her a disapproving look, and brushed past.
Word had spread then. It tended to on a ship this small. “Excuse me,” Ella snarled.
It was the same with the other men she passed, searching the upper decks: sideways looks or outright refusals to help, nasty words. Hell hath no fury like a man hit in the pocketbooks, she thought. Lei’tsuna ought to have written that.
Finally one of the crewhands, a swarthy Seinjial, answered her. “Believe he’s belowdecks, Madame,” he said in the precise Common of the Yersh. “But in a piss of a mood. I wouldn’t bother him.”
Ella didn’t have time for moods. She either found her thief now, before Ayugen, or the money was gone. She found her way belowdecks, passing the crew dorm with its reek of must and sweat. She had only been down here a few times in her year and a half on the ship, but knew the captain’s quarters were at the front. She wove her way past the midships with its stacks of goods and luggage, found her way to his door, knocked.
No answer. She knocked again.
“Who is it?” Ralhens’s voice was muffled through the door, but he sounded more calm.
“Ella, sir.”
“Ella?” There was a long pause, then the door opened. Ralhens looked better, but still not his content self. “There’s no sense begging for it, Ella, I made my choice. You’re off in port tomorrow.”
She smelled yura on his breath. He must have taken some to calm down, quiet his self-talk. “It’s not about that. Someone’s been in my cabin. They took my savings.”
“Your savings?” He looked around, then stepped aside for her to come in.
The interior was dark, the room too low for windows. A few lanterns swung on the wall, casting shadows in time with the swaying of the ship. “Yes. Sixty-six hundred marks.”
The captain let out a long whistle. “That’s how much you’ve been… making? Prophet’s teeth. And now you want it back.”
“Of course I want it back!”
Ralhens sighed, leaning on the desk that lined one wall. “All in coins?”
She nodded.
“I don’t know how you’ll get that back, Miss Ella, even were the ship more inclined to you. There’s no way of proving it. The men are hot for your blood as is, or your money at least.”
She looked at him, eyes narrowing. “Do you think they’re connected? The men getting angry and my robbery?”
His eyebrows lifted. “Could be. But who knew about your savings? Did you show em where it was?”
“No!” Ella took a breath. “I always kept it hidden. Someone must have figured it out.”
The face at the window. The one you think you saw.
“Meckstain!” she cursed. Ralhens gave her a look. “Ah, sorry. I just—I realized, someone might have been looking in last night.”
He nodded slowly. “I’m sorry to say it, Miss Ella, but I think your savings are gone. Anyone smart enough to set the men against you, then get into your room while you were gone, they’re going to have hidden the money by now. And if it’s your word against theirs…” He left the thought unfinished.
“You won’t take my side.” It was only half a question.
Of course he won’t.
“I’m afraid I have to be fair,” he said. “This is the first I’ve known of your savings, and you have plenty of motivation to want to get back at someone on board. Everyone here has coinage saved up for Ayugen. That’s part of the reason they take my boat, to keep away from the lower class that’d be wanting to steal it.”
See?
“Someone clearly was anyway,” she said, bitter. “And nothing you can do for me? Not even an announcement or a search?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Ella looked around, grasping for something else. “I won’t be able to give you the normal tip. I am clean dry.”
He nodded. “I believe you. I don’t have to believe you, Miss Ella, but I do. There’s just nothing I can do about it.”
A thought came to her. “Can you at least board me back to Worldsmouth? I have savings there, and I can work up passage in the meantime—“
Ralhens pursed his lips, eyes sad. “I can’t do that, Ella. Wish I could. It’s been pleasant having you on board, it really has. I’ve had less fights and some men even booking because of you, but I can’t risk it now, you know that. I could lose my boat.”
Of course. Of course he could.
“But I can pay you,” she insisted. “In Worldsmouth. Just get me back there. Think about how much I have, if I made sixty-six on this trip alone.” He was shaking his head. “Double! I’ll pay you double! Triple!”
Ralhens stood. “I’m sorry, Ella. I can’t do it. Now if you’ll kindly leave me, I have some paperwork to prepare before port.”
She bit her lip, trying to think of something, anything she could say, but there was nothing. “Thanks, then, Captain. I mean it.” She didn’t, but knew she should, knew she would if things were different.
He nodded and she left the cabin fuming. “Not a decent man among them,” she growled.
“Not a decent man on the globe.”
Ella sighed, clenching her jaw. “Shatter it, then. I’ve been through worse. This is nothing.”
“And if we ever find the bastard who took the money,” her other voice said, “we will make him pay.”
“Oh yes,” she said, something cold in her waking up, something that had slept half a decade. “Oh yes we will.”
Still she had few options for the time being. There was little chance she could sell enough sex in the next twenty-four hours to cover passage back to Worldsmouth, on any ship.
“Even if they wanted to sleep with you.”
Ella was pacing back and forth in the narrow space between her bed and wall. “Oh they want to sleep with me still. You saw it in their eyes, abovedecks. They just don’t want to pay for it.”
“And there’s no way they’d pay keisua prices now.”
“No.” So what? “I try to work in Ayugen?”
“Too dangerous. You don’t know the city.”
“Right.” Ella glanced at her shelf of books. For all that she’d read of Achuri culture, she had no idea how their pleasure girls worked, if they had keisua, if they sold sex at all. Travelers didn’t tend to write about those things.
“Though they certainly know about them.”
“But they have to have other work, right? Cleaning? Or serving tables? I’ve done that before.”
“And you want to go back to that?”
Ella’s memories of her time working the tables and docks of Worldsmouth were dark. Not the darkest, but dark enough. Hard work, danger, men everywhere, and a handful of coins at the end of each moon. “No. No, I don’t. But what else is there?”
Her other voice was silent. Ella huffed out air, slamming her fist against the bureau in her cabin. There had to be a way. There was no way she was going back to serving tables and turning tricks in back rooms for marks a week. She’d chosen the risk of pretending keisua status precisely because it was the only way to be a free woman with enough money and time to pursue scholarship. The only other options were to marry a wealthy pushover or join an Eschatolist convent, and she’d be damned if she’d give up her freedom for anyone, even if it meant living in constant danger.
Then she remembered something, remembered Odril rolling off her, offering to be her patron. What had he said? Two thousand marks a month. It was paltry, but still leagues better than fifteen marks a week. And patronage left a deal more freedom than marriage or the convent.
“And he’s not the only one who wanted to buy you.”
“No,” she said, spinning on her heel. “He’s not. Olgsby, Densfeir, Tannets, they’ve all made offers.”
“You can’t trust them,” her other voice croaked.
“I wasn’t planning on it. But if they give me a place to land and enough marks for the return voyage at the end of the month, I can put up with it. Especially someone old, like Tannets, he wouldn’t need much more than a lady to hold his hand of an evening.” A tension in her chest relaxed. This could work.
“And any one of them could be your thief too.”
“Right.” Ella put the yura ball in her mouth and bit down, tasting earth. “And Prophet help them if they are.”
Ella leaned back in her chair, ship rocking in the current, and reached for the volume of Kellandrials reprints. Morning light sparkled from the wake of the ship, and the songs of the oarship echoed from upriver. The air was dried here, Golla lacking the energy-sapping quality it had in Worldsmouth, and the air smelled of woodsmoke. She was on the narrow back deck, passing the morning rereading accounts of the Achuri in preparation for their arrival. She flipped to the page in Kellandrials, heavy with her script along the margins:
We met a local woman, really a quite simple dobby woman of the mudports, who claimed to no longer need yura to read the history of objects—a thingread, you’ll recall we’ve labeled them. It is of course likely fancy and attempts to win into our good graces, but as her tale is rather entertaining, dear readers, we recount it here--
Ella skimmed the page, used to Kellandrial’s verbose and self-involved style. The woman claimed to have stolen a great amount of yura, then fearing discovery to have eaten it all at once—and never to have needed yura again. Now, dear readers, Kellandrials continued, burning with curiosity we repeated the experiment, yay even unto the thirtieth ball she estimated, at great expense to our person, but found on the morrow no greater remnants than an empty purse and weary bones…
Ella bit her nib again, ink bitter on her tongue. Could the Achuri have all done the same, taken so much yura that they no longer needed it? Markels at least suggested it—was that speculation or something an Achuri had said to him? Was this the secret to the Southern people’s famed strength in yurabilities?
“But it didn’t work for Kellandrials. More likely Markels was telling tales to flesh out his book,” her other voice cut in. “His accounts of the beasts on the ice sheet, three times as a high as a man, are obviously exaggerations.”
Ella inclined her head. “True. But his account of the Yati was so accurate the Empire still uses it as a primary source for ruling the people.” She felt a hint of scorn from her other voice and shrugged. “Still, it’s worth asking the local people. If they do have yurabilities without needing to take yura, it would change so much…” She began scratching notes in the margin.
A harrumph behind interrupted her thoughts. “Miss Ella?”
Ella started, looking up to find the captain with a tight set to his jaw. “Captain Ralhens. Hi.”
The man drew deeply on his pipe, sage crackling in the bowl, and spoke through his smoke. “Some men wanting to see you on top deck.”
“Some…men?” He did not sound pleased. “What’s going on?”
“Would you come with me?”
“I—“ Ella pulled her feet from the railing and stood up, smoothing her muslin gown. “I’m not really dressed for it. Give me a minute to change.”
He nodded, pulling on his pipe, and she went into her room. A minute later he was leading her to the top deck, where a crowd of twenty or so men were gathered at the front rail, watching the passage into the Genga. Three waited for her under the covered area where they’d supped last night—Olgsby, Pruitt and one other she didn’t remember, a man who’d come to her just once on the trip.
Ella nodded to them. “Gentleman. You wanted something?”
At this Pruitt spat, but Oglsby was the one who spoke. “You lied to us.” He raised a finger to point at her, voice warbling. “You deceived us.”
She summoned her most serene face. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Colonel.”
“A whore,” Pruitt spat. “A common whore, masquerading as a keisua so she can catch us out here and rob of us of our money!”
Fish meck. They must have heard that she didn’t have a keisua license. “Gentleman, I assure you—“
“You’ve already assured us, with lies!” the third man cut in. A few faces turned from the crowd at the front railing.
“Perhaps,” the captain said, “we should move this discussion somewhere more private?”
“Nothing of it,” Pruitt said, hot. “I’ll see her papers here and now, or I demand my money back, every last pig iron!”
Ella put on a smile, thinking fast. “Mr. Pruitt, I’m afraid my papers are in Worldsmouth, for safe keeping. If something were to happen during the voyage…”
“Pah,” the third one spat. “I knew you were a whore the first time I stuck my prick in you. I’ve been with keisua. I know the difference.”
Olgsby looked uncomfortable at the man’s words, but spoke in a more measured tone. “Ellumia, are you keisua or aren’t you? You have a chance here to clear your name.”
And have to repay all the money she’d made. She wouldn’t even have enough to cover passage downstream. Fortunately, when your job was acting aroused with men like these on top of you, lying was easy. “There’s nothing to clear, Colonel. I am certified keisua, trained under Madame Owengild at the House of Songs. I am willing to submit to the tests, if there’s someone here who can perform them.”
It was a calculated risk—she knew enough from Lei’tsuna’s account that she could likely pass most of the tests, but under real examination she would fail. Some men, especially those becoming patrons, trained to administer the tests. Her gamble was that none of these men had.
No one spoke up. She was beginning to smile when Pruitt swiped his arm, as though to wipe away her lies. “Doesn’t matter. Imperial law requires you carry a certified affidavit, signed in triplicate, proof in absentia of your status.” He was a minor functionary in the Imperial bureaucracy, as she recalled. He held out his hand. “So let’s see it. Or I see the coins.”
A few of the men at the rail began to drift over. She couldn’t let this get any bigger. Let them once start talking to port authorities and she would be behind bars, or worse. Ella drew herself up. “Gentleman I don’t know what to tell you. My word is good. I defer judgment to Captain Ralhens. He has known me the longest, and his judgment is law aboard this ship.” And between Olgsby the moralist, Pruitt the legalist, and Ralhens the gentleman, she knew who she’d rather have decide.
Ralhens looked troubled at this, and opened his mouth to speak. Before he could, someone else cut in, a newcomer. “What’s going on here?”
“A whore,” Pruitt said. “Turns out this girl’s no keisua, she’s a common whore. We’re trying to get our money back, and she’s refusing.”
“Just a whore?” another one asked. She recognized him—DePri. He had been to her two or three times. Into tying her up, as she recalled. “I paid top coin for her!” He turned to her. “For a whore?”
Ella tried to speak, but the crowd overrode her, and she suddenly had a sense of how very alone she was, a single woman on a ship full of men. She tongued the yura ball in her mouth, ready to bite down. “Won’t pay?” “Not a keisua?”
“Gentlemen!” Ralhens was crying, but they wouldn’t listen. Something more than words was needed here, but damned if she’d use yura to run away. Ella took a step closer to the captain.
“Tie her up!” Pruitt called, grinning. “Tie her up and—“
Ella grabbed the hilt of Ralhens’s sword and swung it out, aiming the point at Pruitt’s throat.
Pruitt choked off, and in the brief silence that followed Ella spoke. “You men may have no regard for a woman’s honor, but you will at least listen to the captain when he has something to say. And if you speak another word, Pruitt, I swear to the Descending God I’ll cut your throat.” Nevermind that the sword tip wobbled like a drunk sailor. All she needed was for Pruitt to shut up.
It worked. Ralhens recovered himself quickly, swinging his pipe at the men. “Stand down! Stand down at once! Men!” He gave a shrill whistle and two or three deck hands appeared. “I will have order on my ship! Order!”
Ella risked a glance and the captain’s face was red—she’d never seen him this angry, or angry at all for that matter.
“As legal captain of a chartered vessel my word is law on these decks, and I say Miss Ella will not be charged nor defamed simply for accusations. You men all attended her with money ready and no questions in your mind, and now when the deed is done you turn to me, turn to accusations! Pah,” he spit, a much coarser sailor coming out for a moment, “I’d wash my deck of the lot of you if I could do it. Back to your cabins each one.”
Ella heaved a sigh of relief, but he wasn’t done. “And Miss Ella, you’re hereby cast off this ship at the next port for want of proper paperwork, and there’s an end to it!”
“Wha—“
“But the next port’s last stop!” a man overrode her. “It’s where she’s going anyway!”
“And there’s an end to it I say!” the captain roared, and the men began to back off, under the watchful eyes of the captain’s hefty deckhands. Ralhens turned to her. “I’ll have my sword back now, if you please.”
Pruitt remained frozen at the other end of the blade, and it took some doing to not shove it into his throat. Ella was gratified to see, at least, that a wet area had appeared around his crotch. She lowered it, handed it back to the captain. “I thank you, sir, for the use of your blade, and moreso for taking control of these men.”
Ralhens met her eyes for a moment, face still red, then shook his head and stormed off.
“Okay,” Ella muttered, “might have overstepped our limits a little there.”
A deckhand cleared his throat and she realized she’d said it out loud. “Ah, right! Thank you, men. Pruitt.” She nodded at him as though they’d just settled a business deal. “You might want to change those trousers before Ayugen.”
Ella took the stairs down, mind working over what had happened. Was the captain serious about her leaving the Swallowtail? Or was he just appeasing the men? There’d be no way for them to know if she took return passage north—they were all disembarking at Ayugen. But the way he had looked at her, that angry set to his eyes… Perhaps he was serious. Perhaps she would have to find another vessel.
Ella pushed into her room, familiar by now with the way the door hinged slightly crooked. She must have forgotten to lock it. She would be sad to leave the Swallowtail Mistress, said to leave Captain Ralhens on less than good terms. He had clearly never approved of what she was doing, but he’d been a gentleman about it, and she had always felt safe with him aboard. She would leave him a generous tip, at least, and write out a card thanking him.
There was no way she could transfer to another ship directly. It would look odd, the amount of furniture she had, and for an Imperial woman at the farthest port to simply be turning around without even entering town—she’d raise eyebrows, eyebrows she didn’t need. Not to mention what some of the men from this voyage might say if given the chance. Forty-five hundred could keep her in Ayugen a while—she could rent a room in the city and spend time really studying the culture. She needed an entrance essay to the Academy—perhaps it could be on changes to the Achuri since Markels. So long as she had the money, why not? Ella glanced at the hollow statue.
It was gone.
In the place where it usually sat, wedged between Markels and some thinner broadsheet collections, there was empty space, the books leaning on each other.
Ella got up. “What the hell?”
“It has to be somewhere.”
It wasn’t. Ella searched the bed, the other shelves, the floor. Had she left it somewhere strange? Hidden it in the bureau? The bedding basket? Under the carpet? No. “What the hell?” she demanded of the empty space, chest tightening.
Then it clicked: the open door. She hadn’t left it unlocked. She never did. Someone had forced their way in.
And stolen her savings.
Ella sat down on the bed, hard. No savings. That meant no money for a return to Worldsmouth. No money for a room in Ayugen. No money to eat, even. Her chest seized. “Who would do this?”
“Anyone. Pruitt. Olgsby. Ralhens. Hell hath no fury like a man cuckolded.”
“Mothershatterers!” Ella pounded a fist on her thigh. “They can’t do this!”
“They can do anything they want. You know that.”
“But steal my savings? How did they even know where they were?” Her eyes blurred, and she rubbed an arm across them. “Either way, they’re still on the ship.” Cold replaced the fire in her chest, determination. She would timeslip. She would find the man who did it, tie him up tight and--
“Ella. Slow down. You have one yura ball. Even if you get a quarterhour’s slip out of it, that’s not enough time to break into the fifty cabins on this ship and search them.”
“Right.” Even if she had the strength to break down doors—timeslipping didn’t make you stronger, just faster—there was no way she’d get through all of them. Not to mention the crew quarters below. “But I have to do something. Have to look for him. The captain. Captain Ralhens will help me.”
”Don’t count on it.”
Ella left her cabin, not bothering to lock it—nothing of value there but books now, and she doubted any of these men would take much interest in Markels or LeTwi. An older man was coming from abovedecks, not one of her customers, but they’d exchanged a few words on the voyage. “Excuse me,” she asked. “Have you seen the captain?”
The man cleared his throat, giving her a disapproving look, and brushed past.
Word had spread then. It tended to on a ship this small. “Excuse me,” Ella snarled.
It was the same with the other men she passed, searching the upper decks: sideways looks or outright refusals to help, nasty words. Hell hath no fury like a man hit in the pocketbooks, she thought. Lei’tsuna ought to have written that.
Finally one of the crewhands, a swarthy Seinjial, answered her. “Believe he’s belowdecks, Madame,” he said in the precise Common of the Yersh. “But in a piss of a mood. I wouldn’t bother him.”
Ella didn’t have time for moods. She either found her thief now, before Ayugen, or the money was gone. She found her way belowdecks, passing the crew dorm with its reek of must and sweat. She had only been down here a few times in her year and a half on the ship, but knew the captain’s quarters were at the front. She wove her way past the midships with its stacks of goods and luggage, found her way to his door, knocked.
No answer. She knocked again.
“Who is it?” Ralhens’s voice was muffled through the door, but he sounded more calm.
“Ella, sir.”
“Ella?” There was a long pause, then the door opened. Ralhens looked better, but still not his content self. “There’s no sense begging for it, Ella, I made my choice. You’re off in port tomorrow.”
She smelled yura on his breath. He must have taken some to calm down, quiet his self-talk. “It’s not about that. Someone’s been in my cabin. They took my savings.”
“Your savings?” He looked around, then stepped aside for her to come in.
The interior was dark, the room too low for windows. A few lanterns swung on the wall, casting shadows in time with the swaying of the ship. “Yes. Sixty-six hundred marks.”
The captain let out a long whistle. “That’s how much you’ve been… making? Prophet’s teeth. And now you want it back.”
“Of course I want it back!”
Ralhens sighed, leaning on the desk that lined one wall. “All in coins?”
She nodded.
“I don’t know how you’ll get that back, Miss Ella, even were the ship more inclined to you. There’s no way of proving it. The men are hot for your blood as is, or your money at least.”
She looked at him, eyes narrowing. “Do you think they’re connected? The men getting angry and my robbery?”
His eyebrows lifted. “Could be. But who knew about your savings? Did you show em where it was?”
“No!” Ella took a breath. “I always kept it hidden. Someone must have figured it out.”
The face at the window. The one you think you saw.
“Meckstain!” she cursed. Ralhens gave her a look. “Ah, sorry. I just—I realized, someone might have been looking in last night.”
He nodded slowly. “I’m sorry to say it, Miss Ella, but I think your savings are gone. Anyone smart enough to set the men against you, then get into your room while you were gone, they’re going to have hidden the money by now. And if it’s your word against theirs…” He left the thought unfinished.
“You won’t take my side.” It was only half a question.
Of course he won’t.
“I’m afraid I have to be fair,” he said. “This is the first I’ve known of your savings, and you have plenty of motivation to want to get back at someone on board. Everyone here has coinage saved up for Ayugen. That’s part of the reason they take my boat, to keep away from the lower class that’d be wanting to steal it.”
See?
“Someone clearly was anyway,” she said, bitter. “And nothing you can do for me? Not even an announcement or a search?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Ella looked around, grasping for something else. “I won’t be able to give you the normal tip. I am clean dry.”
He nodded. “I believe you. I don’t have to believe you, Miss Ella, but I do. There’s just nothing I can do about it.”
A thought came to her. “Can you at least board me back to Worldsmouth? I have savings there, and I can work up passage in the meantime—“
Ralhens pursed his lips, eyes sad. “I can’t do that, Ella. Wish I could. It’s been pleasant having you on board, it really has. I’ve had less fights and some men even booking because of you, but I can’t risk it now, you know that. I could lose my boat.”
Of course. Of course he could.
“But I can pay you,” she insisted. “In Worldsmouth. Just get me back there. Think about how much I have, if I made sixty-six on this trip alone.” He was shaking his head. “Double! I’ll pay you double! Triple!”
Ralhens stood. “I’m sorry, Ella. I can’t do it. Now if you’ll kindly leave me, I have some paperwork to prepare before port.”
She bit her lip, trying to think of something, anything she could say, but there was nothing. “Thanks, then, Captain. I mean it.” She didn’t, but knew she should, knew she would if things were different.
He nodded and she left the cabin fuming. “Not a decent man among them,” she growled.
“Not a decent man on the globe.”
Ella sighed, clenching her jaw. “Shatter it, then. I’ve been through worse. This is nothing.”
“And if we ever find the bastard who took the money,” her other voice said, “we will make him pay.”
“Oh yes,” she said, something cold in her waking up, something that had slept half a decade. “Oh yes we will.”
Still she had few options for the time being. There was little chance she could sell enough sex in the next twenty-four hours to cover passage back to Worldsmouth, on any ship.
“Even if they wanted to sleep with you.”
Ella was pacing back and forth in the narrow space between her bed and wall. “Oh they want to sleep with me still. You saw it in their eyes, abovedecks. They just don’t want to pay for it.”
“And there’s no way they’d pay keisua prices now.”
“No.” So what? “I try to work in Ayugen?”
“Too dangerous. You don’t know the city.”
“Right.” Ella glanced at her shelf of books. For all that she’d read of Achuri culture, she had no idea how their pleasure girls worked, if they had keisua, if they sold sex at all. Travelers didn’t tend to write about those things.
“Though they certainly know about them.”
“But they have to have other work, right? Cleaning? Or serving tables? I’ve done that before.”
“And you want to go back to that?”
Ella’s memories of her time working the tables and docks of Worldsmouth were dark. Not the darkest, but dark enough. Hard work, danger, men everywhere, and a handful of coins at the end of each moon. “No. No, I don’t. But what else is there?”
Her other voice was silent. Ella huffed out air, slamming her fist against the bureau in her cabin. There had to be a way. There was no way she was going back to serving tables and turning tricks in back rooms for marks a week. She’d chosen the risk of pretending keisua status precisely because it was the only way to be a free woman with enough money and time to pursue scholarship. The only other options were to marry a wealthy pushover or join an Eschatolist convent, and she’d be damned if she’d give up her freedom for anyone, even if it meant living in constant danger.
Then she remembered something, remembered Odril rolling off her, offering to be her patron. What had he said? Two thousand marks a month. It was paltry, but still leagues better than fifteen marks a week. And patronage left a deal more freedom than marriage or the convent.
“And he’s not the only one who wanted to buy you.”
“No,” she said, spinning on her heel. “He’s not. Olgsby, Densfeir, Tannets, they’ve all made offers.”
“You can’t trust them,” her other voice croaked.
“I wasn’t planning on it. But if they give me a place to land and enough marks for the return voyage at the end of the month, I can put up with it. Especially someone old, like Tannets, he wouldn’t need much more than a lady to hold his hand of an evening.” A tension in her chest relaxed. This could work.
“And any one of them could be your thief too.”
“Right.” Ella put the yura ball in her mouth and bit down, tasting earth. “And Prophet help them if they are.”