“I guess you were one of the kids that got in with them early?” Kindred eyed Ragged Sarah’s tattoos, tracing their inky paths. She had only seen those tattoos on the pirates of the Once-City.
“Just a few years, and then I left.”
They began to walk back toward Cruel House, winding their way among the streets, threading their progress between that of the others on the paths, talking and listening.
* * *
“Where’s the captain?” Kindred asked when they had returned to Cruel House and found it empty.
“Ebb-La-Kem keeps her close,” Sarah said, taking a small cup of water from the rations in the kitchen. “She’s been spending most days with him or one of the other Council members, answering questions about Arcadian strategies and resources, defenses and offenses, all of that. Everyone here thinks Arcadia must be hiding some enormous fleet of battleships, and so I think Ebb-La-Kem and the rest keep trying to crack the captain, get her to reveal something secret.”
Kindred thought back to the docks at Arcadia.
“But there’s nothing like that. The forces that attacked were most of what I can remember.”
“Yeah, me too,” Sarah said, nodding. “If only the captain could convince them of that. But it’s all for the good. The captain will work, as we all are, and we’ll get to sail away from this place afterward. And I thought nothing could be sweeter than leaving the first time.”
And yet Kindred felt the sting of doubt.
Ragged Sarah sat at the table in the kitchen, pulling toward her one of the grass-made stools—one of only two in the house. An edge of the seat had begun to fray, spilling strands of grass out like pinions splayed in flight.
“Gods, I’d forgotten how much of this place is made of grass. Parents teach their kids to braid and plait right along with walking and talking.”
Kindred looked down at the blades of grass in Sarah’s hands as she worked them back into the seat—a gentle weave of six individual strands. It made her think of the circlet she had made for Kindred.
“I’m out of practice,” Sarah said, shrugging and pushing the stool away, but Kindred knelt next to it, running her hands over the braidwork.
“No, this is incredible,” she said, examining the swoop of greens, the strange strengthening that occurred. “I don’t think you’re out of practice at all.”
Ragged Sarah shrugged again, but Kindred saw a peak of color high on her cheeks.
“I don’t know if you would want to,” Kindred said, looking back down at the stool, “but I’d love to learn if you ever wanted to teach me.”
Sarah smiled and took the stool back, continuing her work without even really looking down.
“Of course I’ll teach you.”
A happy quiet grew between them then, and Kindred felt it working like a balm against the harsh hurt of her betrayal of the person she used to be. She thought of bringing it up with Sarah, but it was too near, too painful. She didn’t know if it was guilt or anger she felt, or something else, something like purpose, but Kindred wasn’t ready to talk about it, and so she spoke instead of smaller things.
“Why do they build so much out of grass here?” Kindred asked, wanting to change the topic, looking around. Cruel House was one of the few completely brick buildings she had seen—a few others were at least an amalgam of brick and grass, and most, especially closer toward the central staircase, were completely grass. “Is it just too much to get the materials for brick or wood buildings?”
Sarah quirked an eyebrow at her and laughed.
“No, no, if they don’t have something here, they have no problem stealing it from elsewhere.”
“Right, pirates,” Kindred said, nodding. “I was a little surprised, though, that they gave us a place like this.” She nodded toward Cruel House. “I know it needs work, but it was strange to go from those cells to one of the biggest buildings on the whole level, and one made entirely out of brick. I know it’s no Arcadian palace or Mainland castle, but it’s nice.”
Ragged Sarah grinned at her, eyes sparkling.
“You don’t get this place at all, do you?” She put a hand on Kindred’s shoulder, softening the blow of her words. “Kindred, you still think this place is full of wonder and wonderful people. But the Once-City doesn’t love us. It’s like a piece of fruit, still perfect on the surface but rotting inside, waiting for someone to be fooled enough to bite.”
Sarah gestured around at the level, the nearby houses.
“To build something out of the Sea is honorable, enviable. The Sea is everything to the people of the Once-City, and so to live in a house made entirely of the Sea’s gifts? The fundamental belief here is that a person should bend herself to the natural world—to live in and with it. It’s a sign of status and enlightenment. Hence the Council’s chambers. I remember my father saying it took one hundred weavers over three years to build and shape the Council’s chambers. They wove the creation stories of our people into the walls of that place so that none would forget where we came from and what mysteries lay all around us. But this place?”
She put a hand on the outer wall of Cruel House.
“To be housed here—in a house made of brick and stone—is a mark of shame beyond all else. To them, we’re unnatural creatures, bastards who have betrayed the world that gave us life. Putting us in Cruel House is their way of signifying just how little they think of us.”
* * *
Kindred spent the night under Ragged Sarah’s tutelage, learning to braid and plait grass, watching Sarah’s nimble fingers work like a loom against the green, struggling to reproduce even the simplest weave herself.
It was difficult to weave one-handed. The hearthfire burn on her right hand no longer hurt like it had—Sarah’s ointments had seen to that—but Kindred continued to keep it wrapped up, and even if she hadn’t, her fingers could no more shuttle in this delicate dance than they could build a new hearthfire.
And so she learned slowly. She plodded through Sarah’s lessons with the steadiness that had always been her companion. Perhaps not the quickest study, her grandmother used to say about her, but always the surest.
And when it was late and the Once-City seemed to sleep, Kindred followed Ragged Sarah up the stairs to their room, where they abandoned Kindred’s old, unwound mattress in favor of the other. So close to one another, braiding their bodies together, Kindred found her worries too distant to really matter, at least for then and there.
The clanging of bells out in the darkness pops the bubble of comfort and warmth the storyteller has worked to create.