“You’re in Kaolin,” she said. “It’s a pretty big country, and quite hot at the moment, as you may have noticed. I don’t know what the weather is like where you’re from, but here every year seems to get hotter and hotter.” She bit her lip and cringed.
The weather, Agnes? she thought bitterly. You have a potentially new species of human sitting in front of you and you’re talking about the weather?
But the girl didn’t seem to care. She kept pushing at the net.
“I’m sorry,” Agnes said for the millionth time. “I would take that off you, but I’m in quite enough trouble as it is.” Or I will be, once I get home. “My father is sort of . . . well, he’s a difficult man, to put it mildly. He’ll probably lock me in my room for a month after this. I just can’t seem to act like the daughter he wants me to be. I don’t fit in Old Port society and I don’t want to.” She knotted her fingers together. “I only snuck onto this expedition so I could catch a sprite and write an essay and be accepted to the University of Ithilia. And now I’ll never get there. I’ll be stuck in Old Port for the rest of my life, forced to put on a face and act like all the other girls when I’m just not. Life isn’t fair sometimes, you know?”
Agnes assumed she’d been rambling to herself until the girl nodded with a sympathetic look on her face.
“Can—can you understand me?” she gasped.
Another nod.
“But . . . how do you know Kaolish?” The girl thought for a moment, then shrugged and pointed to the crook of her elbow, which was covered in dirt. Agnes didn’t know what that meant. She was still wrapping her head around the fact that the girl could understand every word she was saying. This was truly incredible. Agnes felt herself on the brink of something not even the great Cadhla Hope had ever experienced.
“Are you from Pelago?” she asked, wondering if maybe this girl was like the Arboreal or the mertag, before realizing she probably had no idea what Pelago was. But the girl shook her head and Agnes was once again surprised. “You know Pelago?”
The girl nodded. Then she started speaking very fast, her musical gibberish forming what must have been a string of questions, each one growing more insistent than the last.
“I wish I could help,” Agnes said. “But I don’t know what you’re saying. I’ve never heard anything like your language before.”
The girl leaned back, gazed at the roof of the truck, and made a sad, five-note wail.
“I don’t understand,” Agnes said with a sigh. The girl sighed too, and they lapsed into silence. Agnes felt her wonder turn to worry. Whoever she was, wherever she was from, this girl was intelligent and sensitive and extraordinary. She would surely be snapped up by Xavier McLellan and held along with his other creatures. Agnes found herself growing protective. The poor thing didn’t deserve the life her father would force her into. She probably just wanted to get back to whatever place she came from.
“I think it would be best if you don’t let anyone else know you can understand Kaolish,” she said. She felt certain her father would use it somehow. The girl stared at her warily for a few seconds, then nodded.
They had left the plains too late to make it back to Old Port that day, so they stayed the night at an inn. When it became clear they were going to leave the girl in the truck overnight, Agnes refused to take a room and insisted on staying in the truck as well. Her reasoning was twofold. In the inn, she’d have to act like a proper lady and force smiles and all that awful stuff. But really, she didn’t trust Branson’s crew. The leering looks they had given the girl had turned Agnes’s stomach, and she wasn’t going to let them put their dirty hands on her. She’d already stolen a small dagger from the supply truck, and she kept it tucked in her belt.
“At least let her out of the net so she can get some sleep,” Agnes said to Branson.
He laughed. “What, so she can run off in the night? I know you women are tenderhearted, but this is business. She’s got to be worth more than the tree and the little fish-man combined.” He leaned in close, and she could smell his foul breath as he gripped her shoulders. “If you even think about cutting her out of that net, you’ll have more than a slap on the wrist from your father to worry about.”
Agnes’s throat closed up, but she couldn’t afford to show him fear. “Get your hands off me.”
Branson snorted and released her. “Just remember what I said,” he warned before following the others into the inn.
It was a fine establishment, with a large common room and wide, open windows. The night was windy, and carried the voices inside out to where she sat at the edge of the truck, keeping a watchful eye on the door. Leo was clearly drinking too much whiskey, because he got insufferably loud. She thought back to the moment last night when he’d let all his stupid bravado fade, when he admitted that perhaps their father had sent him on this mission to fail. That was the Leo she wanted to share a bag of peanuts with. This Leo she wanted to punch in the face.
“She’s out in the truck.” Leo’s boasting was getting louder. “Caught her myself.”
Was he a complete and utter idiot? Didn’t he know the danger he was putting the girl in? Another burst of raucous laughter came from the inn, and Agnes took the dagger from her belt. Damn the consequences, she wasn’t about to let the girl be hurt—she would cut her free regardless of any threats. But just then, the inn door opened and two of Branson’s men came swaggering out.
“We’re to stay out here for the night,” one said. “Make sure nothing happens.”
Agnes subtly slipped the dagger back into her belt, cursing herself for her hesitation. The two men threw themselves on the ground at the edge of the open truck door, and Agnes retreated back inside to perch on a crate beside the girl, who was looking back and forth between Agnes and the men with alarm.
“Sorry,” she said. “Those guys are real jerks.” The girl looked confused. “Not nice people,” she tried to explain. The girl’s eyes narrowed, and she made a sound halfway between a growl and a purr.
Agnes had to laugh. “Wherever you come from, it’s got to be better than here,” she said.
The girl shrugged modestly.
“I’m Agnes, by the way,” she said, suddenly conscious that she hadn’t introduced herself. The girl gave a short but beautiful wailing word that Agnes took to be her own name.
“I wish I could understand your language,” she sighed.
The back of the truck was crammed with boxes and equipment, but there was a small square of floor exposed, covered in a layer of sand and dust and dirt from the long ride. The girl poked her fingers through the net and began drawing shapes in it. It was mostly squiggly lines, triangles or circles with slashes through them, and other strange markings Agnes didn’t recognize. When she ran out of space, she erased the symbols with a brush of her fingers. She tried again and a word appeared. A word with letters Agnes could read.
Sera.
“You can write?” she cried. The girl was staring at the letters, looking as shocked as Agnes was. “Sera—is that your name?”
She nodded eagerly. A strong gust of wind blew into the back of the truck, clearing the dirt and dust from the rudimentary chalkboard and making both of them cough.