Kaitlyn Patterson - The Diminished

By the time the chamber emptied, we’d heard more than thirty petitions, and my brain felt like mush. That was the moment Queen Runa decided to begin quizzing me about the shipbuilding industry.

CHAPTER THREE

VI

With only hours left until his departure, Sawny and I stayed awake all night, teasing and telling stories and remembering and acting like nothing would change when we were an ocean apart. Even Lily managed to endure my presence in their shared room with a bare minimum of complaints. She had, after all, gotten her way.

We’d planned to leave the temple quietly before first adulations, but the anchorites who’d taken the most responsibility in raising us—Lugine, Bethea and Sula—were waiting for Sawny and Lily in the entrance hall. They wore informal yellow robes and thick wool scarves in golden orange wrapped tight around their shoulders. The color flattered Sula’s and Lugine’s dark brown skin, making them glow. Unfortunately, for a woman committed to a lifetime wearing a very limited palette, yellow turned Bethea’s thin, pale wrinkles sallow and sickly.

“You’ll not sneak away in the night like thieves,” Bethea said grumpily, but she leaned one of her canes against her hip and pulled Lily in for a hug.

I pressed myself into the wall. This was their moment, and I wanted more than anything to become invisible. The anchorites had never hugged me. Not even once. Sawny and Lily and the other twins like them were, in their own way, the children these women would never give birth to themselves, committed as they were to their goddesses. Though we three were all wards of the temple, the fact that I was a dimmy made me a threat.

I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of goodbye I would get when my time came.

Sula slipped a bulging satchel over Sawny’s shoulder and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “We’d extra copies of some cookery books in the library. I thought you might find them useful in your new life.”

Lugine cupped Sawny’s and Lily’s cheeks, one in each hand, a warm smile lighting her face. “Magritte protect you both. Write often, and let us know how you are.”

“And get yourselves to adulations,” Bethea added. “Just because we’re not there to worry you into the haven hall doesn’t mean you can stop showing up.”

Lily burst into tears and flung her arms around Bethea. Sawny, chin trembling, bit his lip and nodded. I sank farther back into the shadows, tears welling in my own eyes. Even though we’d grown up in the same hall, in the same building, raised by these same women, our lives could not have been more different, and it had taken me until that moment to realize it fully. I would never be missed, never be wanted, never be anything but a burden.

We walked in silence through Penby’s quiet streets in the faint glow of the waning moon, only one of its halves fully visible. I laced my arm through Sawny’s, trying to burn him into my memory. He’d been my best friend my whole life, and it didn’t seem possible that when I trudged back up the hill to the temple later, I would be alone.

The city came alive as we got closer to the docks, where the great iron sunships, Alskad’s greatest pride, were moored. Sailors hauled trunks and crates up and down long gangplanks, officers shouted orders from the decks, and vendors pushed carts, hawking the kinds of trinkets a person might not realize they needed until they were on the verge of leaving everything they knew and loved behind. The whole scene was lit by the hazy, flickering light of sunlamps and the first rays of sunlight peeking over the horizon.

“The ship is called the Lucrecia ,” Lily said. “I spoke to a woman named Whippleston to arrange our passage.”

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.