Tess of the Road

  Mama says to consider you dead. That was why. She could help everyone out by making that a fact.

  Suddenly Pathka leaped into the fray, crying, “Destroy it!” He torched the smashed thnik until it was a glistening puddle of molten metal. Dry leaves around it caught fire. Pathka did a hideous dance on his hind legs, capering among the flames like an ancient painting of a salamander spirit, vicious in his glee.

  “Down with shoddy, soulless thniks!” he cried to the night. “Down with the foul profits that lure us away from our truth and our calling! Let us build only what our nature bids us build, and let us be true to our nature before all else!”

  Tess sat down hard, appalled at herself and bewildered by Pathka’s reaction. He blew cool air over the melted mass, solidifying it, and placed it in his throat pouch. He noticed her staring, and said reassuringly: “You were right to break that thnik. They mass-produce those to sell at the market, as if we might buy human esteem if only we had enough coin. I will make you a better device—two better devices. Once we discover deeper caverns, we’ll want to search in our own directions and find each other again.”

  He held Tess’s gaze. “That wasn’t what you were angry about, though, was it?”

  “Not exactly,” said Tess, morose and regretful now. Dear, sad Jeanne! Reassurance had been in Tess’s power to give, even a kind word or two, but she’d acted before her mind could…

  It was like kicking the beggar under the bridge. Something terrible in her kept bursting out, beyond her control. It never went away, even if it quieted while she walked. Walking only suppressed her inherent awfulness. It wasn’t a cure. Maybe there was no cure. She’d been born bad, and she was dragging her bad carcass through the wilderness to no avail.

  She flopped onto her blanket, hurting all over, feeling like she’d slid all the way back to the beginning. It was going to be hard to make herself walk on tomorrow.

  Pathka was at her side, padded fingers soft against her cheeks. “Is it that boy?” he said incongruously.

  “What boy?” said Tess. She swatted his hands away, even though their touch was a comfort. She didn’t deserve comforting.

  “The one you loved, who abandoned you,” said Pathka. “You’ve been furious all day, long before Jeanne called you. Is he the wellspring of your anger?”

  Tess was sure she hadn’t said Will had abandoned her. That wasn’t even the word she used when she thought about Will; she always said disappeared.

  “You’re making assumptions.”

  “Deductions,” Pathka corrected her. “And of course I am. It’s my duty, as your friend.”

  Tess squirmed; there was a rock under her blanket. “Do you remember the story of Julissima Rossa? How she killed herself, repenting her infidelity, whereas Dozerius—who’d killed her husband—went traipsing off after treasure as if nothing had happened?”

  “What are you getting at?” asked Pathka.

  “Why do we forgive Dozerius?” Tess’s voice was like the embers of the fire.

  “I don’t understand the question,” said Pathka. “Who forgives Dozerius?”

  “Everyone,” said Tess. “Nobody says, ‘Saints in Heaven, this man is terrible,’ and stops reading at that point. If we can forgive him for killing an old man, why can’t we…why…” She couldn’t finish, not if she wanted to keep her composure.

  Pathka tilted his head sideways, confused. “I can’t forgive Dozerius. I’d have to bite him, but he hasn’t wronged me, so…the idea makes no sense.”

  Tess noticed for the first time that Pathka said forgive in heavily accented Goreddi, as if there were no comparable word in Quootla. “Is this not a concept among quigutl?”

  “We bite each other,” said Pathka. “It amounts to the same thing. It gets the poison out of your system so that it doesn’t eat at you anymore.”

  “What if you can’t bite the one who wronged you?” asked Tess, mystified. “What if…you don’t know where they are?”

  “Or they’re dead, or human?” said Pathka. “Then you’re biting-utl. That can lead to death—your own, if you’re lucky, or someone else’s. If you can’t bite whom you need to bite, you end up biting whoever comes near.”

  Tess had done that, she suddenly realized. She’d been the bitingest biter at the wedding, because the person she really wanted to bite was…No. She wasn’t going to think about him.

  She’d been terrible. She felt worse than she had in weeks, like everything was caving in on her again. Right on cue, her mother’s voice cut in, cut deeper than ever: You ruin your sister’s wedding night, and then you can’t speak two words to her? How do you sleep at night?

  She wouldn’t tonight, certainly.

  “What do you do, Pathka,” Tess half whispered, “if the person you most desperately need to bite is yourself?”

  “Then you bite yourself,” said Pathka. “With your mind.”

  “Beat myself up, you mean?” said Tess bitterly. “Recite my long litany of regrets? I do that all the time.”

  It made her wish she were dead. She wrapped her arms around her head.

  “No, not that,” said Pathka. His breath burned against her neck. “I mean grasp on to yourself. Clamp down. Hold on with everything you’ve got.”

  The fire snapped; crickets chirped.

  “And then let go,” said the fierce, hot wind in her ear.

  Tess said nothing. Pathka crept back to the other side of the fire. She waited until she heard him snoring, and then she let the tears flow.

  Mama’s criticism was too painful to hold on to and too primal to let go of. It was the rock Tess had been pushing uphill her whole life, and she had an inkling that this could not be resolved in a single night. Not even close.

  But there were plenty of other things she might examine in closer detail if she dared. Specific ways she’d been terrible. Specific things she’d done.

  Will.

  He popped into her head occasionally, and she always beat him back into the shadows. That was an era of her life best forgotten. She’d been so stupid and naive and—

  Her very reluctance suggested this was important. She should hold on to the memories she didn’t want to remember.

  And then, maybe, she could finally let them go.

  She conjured Will to mind, on purpose, for the first time in a long time.

  That first taste of freedom, at the electrostatics lecture, had only made Tess hungrier. Lady-in-waiting lessons went from tedious to torturous. She couldn’t concentrate on any of it. She dropped stitches, bungled lineages, and used the wrong fork for everything.

  “There are cures for inattentiveness,” said Mistress Edwina after three days of this. “A hard rap across the knuckles with a wooden spoon does wonders. I merely mention it.”

  In fact, she didn’t merely mention it. The old woman demonstrated upon Tess’s fingers shortly thereafter—when she’d been about to use the fish fork to eat songbird pie—and even Tess had to admit it was very motivating.

  When the day of the megafauna lecture arrived, Tess squirmed like she was full of ants. She could finally go out and forget all this for a while. Evening couldn’t come soon enough.

  Mistress Edwina, of course, chose that morning to give an unannounced courtesy test—Which degree do you give the third son of the Earl of Blystane? What about his nephew? After about twenty-five curtsies with accompanying flourishes (several of which Tess knew she’d got wrong, because Jeanne had been flourishing in a different direction), Tess lost all patience.

  For her next answer, she gave eleven-sixteenths courtesy, reasoning that the Scion of Ziziba probably wouldn’t know which degree to expect anyway, since he came from far away.

  Eleven-sixteenths, absurdly, was Tess’s best flourish; it was used least, and was therefore an amusing and hilarious thing to know.

  Mistress Edwina seemed
to take it as sarcasm. She wasn’t wrong.

  The old woman grabbed Tess by the ear and pulled her upstairs to a tiny storage room. She didn’t have to say a word; Tess had been here before. Tess went inside and sat on a tiny trunk, her knees awkwardly wedged between stacks of dusty baskets.

  The dowager stood in the doorway, a slip of angry darkness against the light.

  “Do you think this is a game?” said Mistress Edwina. Her voice was quiet and steely, like a knife being drawn.

  “No,” said Tess sullenly, rubbing her sore ear.

  “And yet you persist in taking nothing seriously,” said the old woman. “You’re the one who has to marry, Heaven help us.”

  Tess slumped back against the wall. “I wish I wasn’t.”

  “Penury suits you, does it? Well, your family doesn’t agree. You’re going to court, like it or not, and impeccable etiquette is the only tool you’ll have at your disposal. Not your looks, not your temperament.”

  Unlike Jeanne, the dowager didn’t say, but Tess knew the comparison was being made.

  “My nature is a liability, you mean?” said Tess bitterly. “No one could love me as I am?”

  Mistress Edwina gave a snort of frustration. “You read too many stories. Nobody has to fall in love with you,” she said. “There will be no prince on a white charger, sweeping you off your feet. This is business, not romance. You have merely to find a suitably wealthy suitor, and then persuade him that you’ll make a decent mother and won’t embarrass him in public. That’s all, Tess. That’s destiny. Sit there and reconcile yourself to it.”

  Mistress Edwina closed the closet door, leaving Tess in darkness.

  Tess didn’t mind. The old woman had inadvertently given her something to ponder. Had stories really warped her expectations and made her dissatisfied with her lot?

  Or were they her road map out?

  At thirteen, Tess had already read a hundred variations on this theme: a princess is required by her family to marry someone terrible, she objects and gets herself locked away in a dark tower (or storage closet), and then Dozerius (or some analog) comes along and rescues her with the power of love.

  True love was a time-honored way of escaping nearly everything—ogres, witches, bandits, tedious obligations. Her parents wouldn’t like it, but surely even they had to acknowledge that love conquered all.

  Hadn’t Papa married that dragon-woman, after all? Hadn’t Mama married Papa? Love won out every time, never mind their subsequent regrets.

  Tess wasn’t so naive as to imagine that if she stayed in this closet, her true love would magically intuit that she was here. Waiting for a literal prince was impractical, and anyway, she wasn’t a literal princess. If it was up to her to go out and find her own rescuer, so be it.

  In fact, now that she thought about it, she might just know someone suitable.

  Tess stood up and rapped softly upon the door. Mistress Edwina loosed the bolt and threw the door open. Tess blinked in the light.

  “Well?” the dowager demanded.

  Tess kept her expression rigorously neutral. “I’ve seen the error of my ways, Mistress Edwina, and am ready to cooperate.”

  The old woman cocked a deeply skeptical eyebrow but let Tess come downstairs, back into the circle of her favor. It took every ounce of Tess’s willpower not to smirk.

  * * *

  Evening finally arrived.

  Tess climbed out the window of Seraphina’s old room, met Kenneth at St. Siucre’s shrine, and crossed town with him. He chattered on about his day at the docks, and Tess smiled and nodded in all the right places, barely listening.

  She was too caught up in her hopes. This evening could change everything. Maybe.

  Please? she said, to any Saint who might be listening.

  The hall at St. Bert’s was packed to the rafters, and not with mere townspeople, there for a free lecture. Young men, the students of St. Bert’s Collegium, had filled the hall to hear the talk on megafauna. Tess noted their excited energy, students grinning and elbowing each other.

  This William of Affle was quite a dynamic speaker, apparently, if he inspired such a buzz of anticipation.

  That was one quality to recommend him. Tess was keeping a tally in her head.

  There were no empty seats on the floor, so Tess followed Kenneth up to the gallery. The last two together were up against the balcony railing, but by the time they’d maneuvered through the crowd, one of the seats had acquired an occupant, a slender fellow with an aristocratic nose and long dark curls.

  “St. Masha’s stone,” Kenneth swore. “Take the seat, Tes’puco. I’ll stand.”

  “Are you together?” the long-haired young gentleman asked Kenneth as Tess squeezed past his knees. “Take my seat and sit by your lady friend.” He rose to let Kenneth sit.

  “I’ll be fine,” said Kenneth. “She’s just my cousin.”

  “Please,” said the fellow. He was near Kenneth’s age, maybe a year older, and almost as tall. His face held a quick intelligence; his flowing hair made him downright pretty. “You’ve clearly been working all day, whilst I’ve been sitting on my arse listening to humans debate saar. My day was tiresome, but not tiring, if you follow me. You surely need the seat more than I do.”

  “I’m Kenneth.” He was blushing to his ears.

  “Rynald, Baronet Averbath,” said the young man, smiling. “Sit. Maybe I’ll settle myself here in the aisle beside you. Were you at our astronomy lecture last week? You look familiar.”

  Kenneth was either in awe of him as an astronomer or shy of his beauty. Lord Rynald seemed charmed by his discomfiture, in either case. Tess sighed wistfully.

  Kenneth was naturally, effortlessly lovable. She was not going to have it so easy.

  She chewed her lip and watched the stage.

  It had been a day of debates, as Lord Rynald had said, and this—the public lecture and final event—was no exception. Two podiums had been set up. Will, tall and blond, stood at one, beaming and waving at people in the audience; he had a lot of friends (a second mark for the tally, or maybe a third; tall and blond surely counted for something).

  At the other podium stood a stocky person with a doughy face, dressed ambiguously in an old-fashioned floor-length robe.

  “Scholar Spira, a dragon,” Lord Rynald told Kenneth.

  Professor the dragon Ondir raised his hands for silence. The rowdy students roared and stomped, a last hurrah, before settling down. “Today’s final pair, scholar versus scholar, are my two doctoral candidates. The dragon Spira”—a smattering of applause and jeers—“will debate William of Affle”—raucous cheering now—“about megafauna of the mountainous regions, whether to exploit or preserve them, and how this may best be accomplished. Scholars, proceed.”

  “Thank you, Professor,” William called after Saar Ondir’s departing form. “Of course, we’re required to omit the largest mountain animals of all—dragons—which is like omitting vultures from a discussion of birds, but I’ll do my best to pretend you don’t exist.”

  Scholar Spira, in a voice as flat as vellum, said, “Let me begin by—”

  “Did you hear something?” cried William. His human cohort laughed uproariously.

  It was a rather stupid joke, but Tess found herself grinning for the first time all day.

  “Our dragon professors suggested these debates,” Lord Rynald was telling Kenneth. He had to shout to be heard; Tess leaned across to listen. “They’re meant to sharpen our critical faculties, but a keen wit stabs harder than a finely honed argument. The dragons have been slaughtered today, by human reckoning.”

  Scholar Spira began speaking, in a grating, nasal whinge, in favor of conservation—a counterintuitive position for a dragon, Tess felt. Didn’t they like exterminating whole species? Maybe just humankind.

  Tess couldn’t recall Spira’s ar
guments later. The scholar’s voice was like a nail on slate, and William of Affle spent the entire time pulling disrespectful faces.

  Rude, Tess thought, which should have been a mark against him, but there was that grin tugging the corners of her mouth again.

  “Is anyone still awake?” said William when he finally took the stand. His voice was like a rich ocean breeze after the doldrums of Spira’s monotone.

  Tess would have found it utterly charming if he hadn’t been arguing for exploitation. The great animals, per his thesis, were nothing more than a resource, and had been placed here by Heaven for humans to use as they saw fit.

  “Of course I exclude dragons,” he said with a saucy wink. “Since I must.”

  His friends in the audience laughed, but Tess found his argument unkind and, frankly, disappointing. He’d understood that she loved animals, and this had made her believe, perhaps mistakenly, that he loved them, too.

  Lord Rynald was saying, “And there he goes, playing the provocateur. He’s full of beans, and his human audience eats them right up.”

  Ah. Maybe that explained it. He was arguing for the win, rather than from conviction.

  Tess had to admire his gall, even if it seemed a dangerous way to go.

  William placed his hands on the podium as if bracing for the most provocative argument of all. “Let me conclude by suggesting, Spira, that you dragons may have an ulterior motive behind your ethic of ‘conservation.’ ” He raised his chin and his voice: “I assert that there are animals—fabulous creatures, like beings straight out of myth—that you saar are actively hiding from us.”

  His friends laughed; William looked mildly irritated at this.

  “You think I’m kidding,” he said. “But our two races work together at this Collegium, ostensibly to share knowledge and build trust. This requires good faith on both sides. How is humankind ever to catch up if dragonkind won’t tell us the whole truth?”

  The word truth reverberated through the silent hall, and then a confused mutter went up. He didn’t mean that, surely?