“Juice,” she said meekly.
“Are you in nursery school?” Vada cackled at her own joke. “Gregory, two ales.” She slapped a five-kroger bill on the bar and the bartender began to pour the drinks from one of the copper-headed taps. “We do not seal a deal with juice,” she said, picking up the pints and carrying them to the nook where she had been entertaining May before. Agnes took a seat across from her, grateful that the booth provided them a measure of privacy from the tavern’s prying eyes.
Vada raised her glass. “You might have thought to wear something a little less”—she paused, searching for the right word—“rich.”
Agnes tugged at the collar of her blouse. “I don’t own anything less rich.”
“Somehow this does not surprise me.” She took a drink of ale, her catlike eyes trained on Agnes’s face. They were the gray of the sky before a storm today, and Agnes thought she could lose herself in them for hours. “We agreed on six and fifty, did we not?”
“We did, but I was hoping I could make an amendment to the arrangement.”
One eyebrow arched. “Amendment?”
“Not in terms of price,” she said quickly. “I need to purchase another berth.”
Vada threw her head back and laughed again. It was the wild laugh of someone who did not care who heard her. It sounded to Agnes like freedom.
“Kaolin lady, you are either very brave or very stupid. You are lucky I am agreeing to take one Kaolin passenger. Now you want two?”
“She isn’t Kaolin,” Agnes said.
“You have another Pelagan friend? Why, I am burning up with the jealousy.”
“She’s not Pelagan either.”
“You are speaking in riddles,” Vada said, growing irritated. “Perhaps our deal should be called off.”
“I can pay you two thousand krogers, up front.” Agnes took most of the bills out of her purse and slid them across the table.
Vada stared at the money, dumbfounded. “That is no small sum.” She took it quickly and counted it under the table. When she’d finished, she whistled. “Two thousand krogers,” she murmured. She flashed Agnes a wicked grin. “Well, my mama will not be happy with me, but then, she is rarely happy with me. All right, Agnes.” She raised her glass again and gave a pointed look at Agnes’s own ale. It was the color of wheat with thick white foam on top. “Slansin!” she said, clinking their glasses together.
“Slansin,” Agnes said, taking a delicate sip. The ale was strong, earthy with a bitter tang. She coughed and Vada chuckled.
“I am going to have to teach you how to drink, Kaolin lady.”
“I’m used to champagne, that’s all.”
“Of course you are.”
Agnes jutted out her chin defiantly and downed half her ale in three large gulps. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she slammed the glass on the table and prayed she wouldn’t belch and ruin the effect.
Vada tilted her head, fingering the fang around her neck. “It’s a start,” she said. She finished her own drink in one long draught and got up to get another round before Agnes could protest.
“So tell me,” she said as she set a full pint next to Agnes’s half-finished one, “how is it that the daughter of a Byrne has to purchase a berth on such a bastard ship as the Maiden’s Wail?”
“Well,” Agnes said, taking another drink and considering her response carefully, “like you said, I don’t look like a Byrne. I’m so very . . . Kaolin.”
“This is true,” Vada agreed.
“Pelagan ships aren’t taking on Kaolin passengers. And I can’t get passage on a Kaolin ship without my father’s permission, as you so aptly pointed out last time we spoke.”
“Still,” Vada said. “I cannot believe Ambrosine Byrne would not send word to some ship or other that her granddaughter needed passage to Pelago.”
Agnes shrugged and hid her face in her beer until she finished it. But when she put her glass down, Vada was watching her with narrowed eyes.
“She does not know you are coming to Pelago,” she said flatly.
Agnes swallowed. “She does not.”
“You lied to me.”
“I did.”
“I do not appreciate liars, especially not Kaolin ones.” Vada sat back and folded her arms across her chest.
“I wasn’t lying about being a Byrne,” Agnes insisted. She almost wished she had the photograph of her mother with her to prove it. “My father has never let me write to, much less meet, my mother’s family. He acts like she never existed—we aren’t allowed to talk about her at all. I’ve spent eighteen years wondering what she was like, what sort of woman she was. Eighteen years grieving over a stranger. Or maybe not grieving, but . . . missing? Is it possible to miss someone you’ve never met?” Her head felt light, and her mouth seemed to be moving of its own accord, her brain having a hard time keeping up. She stared into the depths of her empty glass as she spoke. “Leo looks just like her, Eneas always says, but not me. I don’t know if there’s anything of her in me. I don’t know anything of Pelago except what I’ve read here and there, and of course it’s all covered up in Kaolin propaganda. There’s a whole part of me that’s a mystery, an entire side of my family I’ve never known. And if I stay here, I’ll be strangled by rules and etiquette. I’ll drown in expectation.”
Vada was looking at her with some mixture of intrigue and sympathy. “I never knew my father,” she said. “My mother has been with many men. Many women, too. Myself, I prefer women. Men are such big babies, needing this, demanding that.” Agnes felt a jolt run up her spine, and a high-pitched laugh escaped her lips. Vada grinned and continued. “But if I wished to know him, she would tell me. We have no secrets. I am sorry you do not know anything about Alethea Byrne. For myself, I have heard that she was very beautiful and very headstrong. It is well known in Ithilia that your grandmother did not approve of the marriage. Alethea broke with Pelagan traditions when she married your father—she did not have permission from the family matriarch.”
“Really?” Agnes leaned forward, greedy for more information.
“Really. And now her daughter sits before me, breaking the traditions of her own country. So there is something of her inside you. You are both headstrong.” The storm in Vada’s eyes roiled. “And you are both beautiful.”
Agnes’s throat swelled up. She picked up her second ale and took a sip. “You’re just being nice,” she said. “You haven’t seen my mother. She was stunning.”
“I have seen you,” Vada said with a shrug, as if that settled it. She drank her beer and looked around the bar, and Agnes tried to collect herself.
“Ambrosine Byrne has a reputation,” Vada said. “You should be aware of that. She has much power in Pelago—some even call her the fourth pillar of the Triumvirate, though never to her face. She is deeply influential and not one to be crossed. I do not recommend showing up at her door unannounced.”
“She’s not the only reason I’m going to Pelago,” Agnes said.
“Oh?” Vada tapped the corner of her mouth with one finger, like she was trying not to smile. “Aren’t you just full of surprises. And what other purpose would a Kaolin lady have in my country?”