Лаура Гилман - The Underwater Ballroom Society

Her hands are still twitching with the desire to do violence. And then it drains from her, as it already has from Trevelyan, and the two of them set out still in silence, back up the headland.

I don’t smuggle flesh . To be foresworn in such a thing, Pen thinks, is not a mere venial sin. It’s only as the town’s lanterns are close that she can find it within herself to ask, “Where might they be taking him?”

“To the New World,” Trevelyan says dispassionately. “There are places there that are a thousand miles from the sea.”

“You knew all about it,” Pen says, this more shocking than anything else has been in these strange few days. “You knew, damn your eyes, Trevelyan!”

“No!” Trevelyan says, panicked, and Pen’s heart hurts. “I didn’t. I didn’t know enough to stop it.”

She’s gripping her cuffs, and Pen knows it’s just as Deveraux said. Trevelyan serves at the pleasure of those who may use her as they will.

“But I’ve heard of such things,” Trevelyan says, after a minute. Calm again, though still waters run deep in her. “Those with true magic”—in which Trevelyan does not include herself, Pen understands—“are not entirely gone. Some are still born with it, but they’re not enough to be more powerful than the sum of their parts. Not enough to hold off the sea, nor to return magic to Kernow. So when they are found, a different use is found for them. Money changes hands in considerable sums, and… well. The Crown needs revenue.”

“It doesn’t need you ,” Pen says. She’s angry that the Crown should have Trevelyan in its service alongside Deveraux; as though the two were in any way like. “Not for its dirty work.”

“I have my orders,” Trevelyan says impatiently. “Would you have me a smuggler instead? Shall I unload your tubs and crates?”

Her night work spoken of so plainly, but Pen doesn’t bristle. Without the Revenue, Pen would not be a smuggler. For the first time, she understands the truth of this—that they hold the same equilibrium as the tides, she and Trevelyan. Each unable to be what she is, without the other.

“We don’t know,” Pen says, after a while. “We don’t know what the boy dreams of. He could… find something there.”

(It’s not likely. There was such fear in him, such violence born from desperation. But nevertheless he may not know where he is bound, and he may not have loved the things and places that he left behind.)

“A new life. A new world.” Trevelyan considers it. “But even if he does. This is still what we do, with what we have.”

Yesterday, Pen wondered if Trevelyan minds the loss of her own inheritance; that she will be the last of a particular kind of people, who have lived in this place since the sea gave it up, and thought they were to be here forever. Looking at her now, Pen knows she was foolish to wonder. Trevelyan minds it. She minds it a great deal.

“They will all be sent far from here,” Trevelyan says. “The old ways will never return to Kernow.”

Her voice has a bleak, awful finality. It settles in Pen’s stomach like a stone.

As they reach the town, her attention is caught by the lights burning in the town square, the yellow glow shuttered by the bars on the windows. The old constable is about his business, lighting the lamps. In the morning, Pen will call on Goody Nanskevel, to speak of her son’s freedom. She has that comfort, cold as it is. Trevelyan does not.

In that moment, Pen makes a decision. “Trevelyan,” she says. “If you’re not to ride tonight, you’re welcome to stay.”

You’re a fool, Pen , Merryn says, as clearly as though she were really there. And Pen may be, but Trevelyan is not. She considers the offer, and says:

“Yes.”

(This is where Penhallow lives: in the town that bears her name, yes, and in a house maintained by its rents and tithes. But simple, nevertheless. It’s a fine name with much to recommend it, but its finery is not in the stripped-wood beams, the ewers and plain cloths. It is in its antiquity, and its hospitality. Because—as Penhallow will have to explain to Merryn in due course—this is not the first time the Revenue have been invited under this roof. They have taken the bread and ale due to them as an honourable foe, and come and gone in peace.

That, Merryn will say, is quite a different thing.)

Penhallow is climbing the wooden stairs with a lantern held in both hands. At the top, in a darkened room, Trevelyan turns from the window with a smuggler’s moon high and proud behind her.

A hush descends, though there is no silence here that is not underscored by the sound of the sea.

“I hear you take orders, Trevelyan,” Pen says. “Take off your coat.”

Trevelyan steps away from the diamond panes. The brushed, heavy wool lands on the bed.

“And your boots.”

A thump, then another.

Next, the undone cuffs; the shirt and the buttons; breeches; everything beneath. The dagger. Her throat and wrists are bare without the insignia of the Crown. When only moonlight remains, Pen sets the lantern by her feet so the shadows are enormous. Trevelyan stands upright, always—through this as everything.

For a moment, Penhallow wants to make her kneel. She’s played that game with other women, women she’s liked, who would have laughed and done it. But for Trevelyan it would be an obscenity to countenance.

(She could have saved Jackie on her own account. She could have chosen not to see what she saw, three nights ago; she could have made a promise to Pen, to make in her turn to Goody Nanskevel; and the two of them might somehow have brought the gifted boy back to his own shores, to decide for himself what might be wrought by his power. But she did not, and Pen did not ask. Trevelyan does not bend and she does not break.)

“Get on the bed,” Penhallow says. Still crisp, to be obeyed. “And make it pretty for us.”

It takes Trevelyan a moment to understand, the instant of confusion more softening to her features than any sweet nothing would be. And then they’re awash with tiny glittering lights, like fireflies at midsummer, and for all it’s a party trick it’s the loveliest thing Pen has ever seen. More so then Trevelyan herself, whose body is bones and sharp edges against Pen’s sheets, to be investigated with care for fear of being cut.

But this is what Pen wants. She checks again that it’s what Trevelyan wants. And it seems the firefly lights have a little extra magic in them; they brighten and dim in rhythm with their maker’s pitch of breathing, and Pen laughs with delight as they all go out.

In the rose-red dawn, Trevelyan gathers her clothes and Pen pretends to be sleeping. With her eyelids open a crack she watches the rise and dip of Trevelyan’s feet, arched away from the ice-cold floorboards. Trevelyan pauses in the doorway, boots in hand, looks back at Pen with an indefinable sweetness about her expression, and turns to go.

Penhallow doesn’t regret this, not at all. She couldn’t return what was taken—she couldn’t bring magic back to Kernow; but she could bring Trevelyan to this quiet, comfortable place, and she could give what was hers to give.

What was hers to give. Pen sits bolt upright, swears at the cold, and launches herself at the door. “Trevelyan! Wait! I’ve got an idea!”

Not quite an hour later Trevelyan is looking out over the water lapping in the harbour and saying, “Penhallow, this is not a good idea.”

“Neither is His Majesty’s Inland Revenue. Get in the boat.”

Trevelyan sighs and steps in, and Pen scans the horizon intently, running her internal calculations again. The delay in the tunnels the night before, together with the struggle she and Trevelyan had with Deveraux and his men, and sea’s long rise and fall at this time of year.