Claire McKenna - The Deepwater Trilogy

Arden’s trunk was her life reduced to a painted tin box, four foot by two. It contained all the certificates of her career as a signaller, ten years as a Lady of the Lights upon the Clay Portside docks. It was an odd paradox that she was both nobility and labourer in a country where there was such a deep and unfathomable division between commonblood folk and the sanguinem with their precious and valuable labours.

She paused before the trunk and studied her gloves before sliding one off. Her hands were strong as any common worker’s, with calluses from the endless winding mechanisms of signal-work and canal locks.

But the new coins in her palms made her weak.

A metal disk in the centre of each inflammed hand – a silver moon stitched in between the heart and head-line. They were protective grommets for the act of blood-spilling required to keep the lighthouse fire burning.

The small fires of the signal lights she had tended before had needed far less blood. She hadn’t needed the disks before now.

With a hiss of discomfort she pulled the gloves back on and shifted books and papers aside.

‘Only a few months,’ she said herself. ‘Then you’ll have everything you ever wanted.’ All her shuffling of the contents of the trunk to make way for the coat ended up uncovering a small trinket-chest carved of bone. A small noise escaped Arden’s throat.

‘Don’t open it,’ she said to herself sternly. ‘Don’t open it, Beacon.’

But she couldn’t help herself. The enchantment within was too great. Love was venomous, its toxin poisoned you forever. Arden opened the box and the past fell out.

A silver-print on paper floated onto the bedspread, no bigger than her palm. A clean-cut man in an airship officer’s uniform looked out at her, his black hair grown long from a military shave, rakishly tilted cap, twinkling, good-natured eyes.

On the back, a blue-ink cursive. Thinking of you always – Richard.

The regret hit her hard. A bitter memory came, of a stolen kiss at the Guild Ball a year before. I’ll come back for you , Richard Castile had said to her. I will be a Captain at last. We will be married in the winter. Wait for me .

She had wanted to spirit him away to her apartments that night. But Richard had been evasive, preoccupied. Danced with other women. She’d tried not to be upset. Their love was forbidden, so of course he wouldn’t risk affections in public. He’d told her that he had already bought a ring for their upcoming elopement. All she had to do was wait. Fretting would only be foolish.

The cracks in their relationship, so easily ignored, could not be ignored forever.

That Guild Ball was the last time she saw him. He left before dawn on his packet-ship to Vinland. Arden didn’t arrive in time to catch him, but had caught instead the girl coming out of his apartment, the one wearing Vinland pearl earrings and the rose-gold stag-brooch of the Castile family crest. Perhaps Richard had told her about Arden, for upon seeing a frantic sanguis marching in her direction the girl had blushed ferociously and ran off, dropping the silver-print in the gutter. Arden was about to call after her when she’d seen the face staring up from the cigarette butts and orange peels.

Richard’s face.

Thinking of you always – dr.

The pain had been an assassin’s dagger, slid between her ribs. She had always wanted a picture of him, but Richard had constantly refused. Too risky, he said. If an Order agent found an image of a common-blood man in a sanguis trousseau, then he would be demoted, if not worse. Arden was a Beacon , that oldest and most ancestrally fortified of sanguine genealogies. She would need to wait for Richard to catch up. Until he was a Petty Officer. Flight Lieutenant. Captain. Or the god-damned King of Lyonne, it seemed. Ten years of waiting, with no end in sight.

She snapped the opal box shut. No. He would never change his mind and she’d not lock the damn krakenskin coat away with her other failures. She would wear it, defiantly and proudly. She shared something with Mr Riven’s wife, after all. She too had been betrayed by someone she loved.

Arden stood up from the steamer trunk, the photograph still in her hand. Walked woodenly to the fireplace and threw it in. The flame leapt green, the paper crisped black. His eyes, twinkling and knowing. Eyes saying, do what you like, lantern girl. It’s really because of me that you are out here.

The eyes were the last to burn.

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