CHAPTER ONE
All that’s standing between me and the rest of my life is a man in very ugly shoes.
Not even a man. A boy: an aspirational scatter of facial hair failing to conceal a weak chin, a prominent Adam’s apple bobbing in righteous fervour and a slender frame vibrating with self-importance. I’ve had plenty of time to take in his hideously ostentatious and impractical footwear because he’s been orating at me for a solid ten minutes.
‘—and given that your application seems not to conform to the exceptions stipulated in the regulations, and with the understanding that there are neither secondary nor tertiary considerations to heed in the evaluation of your situation—’
I’ve given up trying to interrupt. All it accomplished was prolonging his nasal speech on why I absolutely cannot audition for Salato’s Guild of Bards and am a provincial fool to have expected to do so for an extra seven or eight minutes, while encouraging the use of ever more archaic Salatan words and formal constructions.
‘—I would moreover suggest the signora not endeavour in the attainment of objectives for which aptitude and jus soli fail to qualify her, and forthwith—’
He probably thinks I can’t understand him. If I were who I appear to be, he’d be right.
‘—and so, signora, I bid you good day.’
Finally. I bet he’s run out of vocabulary to show off.
He looks down at me, arms folded. We’re the same height –he’s classically Salatan, short and slight – but because he’s at the top of the steps leading to the guildhouse entrance and I’m at the bottom I have to crane my neck to talk to him.
I’m also blocking the entrance for everyone else. A small crowd of musicians has gathered in the square behind me, as if this weren’t enough of an ordeal already.
The boy’s stare tells me I can go away now and stop wasting everyone’s time. I don’t oblige him. ‘Look, if I could just talk to one of the maesters—’ If someone would just hear me play—
‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Del. And I—’
‘Of House . . .?’ he asks delicately. The curl of his lip as he takes in my appearance – plain woollen dress, muddy at the hem; stout shoes, also caked in mud; lips chapped from months at sea; hair tangled – makes it clear he already knows my answer. His own outfit of bright silks has so much lace spilling from the collar and cuffs he’d be overdressed for most occasions at the Gilnean court.
He’s also a lutenist, like me. The fingernails are always a dead giveaway.
‘Just – just Del.’ I lift my chin and try not to finger-comb my hair. This is what I get for asking Nana Grackle to make me look like a nobody. I should’ve asked for a face that makes other people do what I want them to.
‘Well, Just Del,’ the boy says, ‘perhaps I ought to simplify things, so we can all get on with our days.’ Yeah, because it was my overwrought monologue we just suffered through. The rein holding my temper slips looser. ‘I am Enzo Bartolo, heir of House Galanta –’ he’s picked the wrong person to intimidate with
his embarrassingly minor House – ‘and if you knew what that meant –’ if he knew who he was actually showering with spittle –‘you’d appreciate that wasting so much of my time is already an ambitious enough theft. Kindly understand.’ He points at a large gold key hanging round his neck. I hadn’t noticed it against his horrible doublet. ‘This marks me as the guild’s doorkeeper, a position made necessary by imported filth like you. Do you think the world’s greatest musical masters have time to hear every piece of fresh-off-the-boat canal trash who fancies herself an undiscovered talent?’
His veneer of politeness is flaking away. An ugly flush spreads up his neck. From the crowd I hear muttering and a low wolfwhistle. I fight to stay composed. I will not blow my cover over the first try-hard princeling I meet, no matter how obviously ‘imported’ meant something very different in his mouth than what’s listed in my translation dictionary.
‘Know your place,’ Enzo spits, all faux-courtesy abandoned. ‘Go back to the docks and find some fourth-rate osterra to pluck your strings in.’ He turns, strides to the tall double doors, flings them open. ‘Now get out of the way of your betters.’
I move to the side, keeping my eyes low as the crowd of musicians files inside. Many ignore me; some give my lute case a curious glance. One girl, particularly striking in crimson silk and with half her dark hair shaved to the scalp, shoots me a sympathetic grimace.
Nobody says a word as they pass me by. I can’t decide if I’m grateful or even angrier.
Finally I’m alone with the seagulls. After staring at the closed door a bit longer, I sink to the sandstone step and bury my face in my hands. Who is this Enzo Bartolo to treat me like the dirt under his hideously shod feet? Didn’t he see my lute is a Montaigne? Doesn’t he know my teacher is the great Oroton himself, and I, by Master Oroton’s own admission, his most talented student ever? Doesn’t he know I memorised Perrien’s
Well-Strung Lute cover to cover before I turned twelve? Doesn’t he know who I am?
No, says a small voice in the back of my head, sounding exactly like my sister Arabeth’s. And whose fault is that, Just Del? Haven’t you always moaned about the gilded shackles of the Ventris name? What was it you told me and Alex, about how much more seriously you’d be taken as a musician, if nobody knew you were royal? Well, you’ve got your wish.
I dash away furious tears. Yes, that’s all true. But I didn’t imagine I wouldn’t even be allowed to audition. What happened to Salato being the home of equality?
I hug my lute and try to ignore a gull’s hopeful pecks at my shoelaces. What am I going to do? My whole plan, such as it was, hinged on dazzling my way through the audition process, then using the prestige of membership in the best musicians’ guild in the world as the foundation for my new life as a concert lutenist.
Signor Sartorial Embarrassment has put paid to that. Without guild membership I can’t even perform on a real stage, only take – shudder – gigs, singing vapid folk tunes and strumming in the corner at inns and winehouses, to audiences who don’t care what I play as long as they can bang their tankards in time and sing along to dirty lyrics. I’d rather drown myself in one of Salato’s unnecessarily numerous canals.
You could go home, Adeleine, says Arabeth’s voice. Get back on a ship and return to Gilnea. Grieve with your family, be inaugurated as the new queen-in-waiting. Stop pretending you’re something –someone – you’re not.
I shoot to my feet, startling a woman who was edging past with a pair of drums. No , I think, then more forcefully out loud, ‘ No . No, I won’t. Adeleine is dead .’ The drummer gives me a strange look before bolting inside, but I hardly notice. I’m not giving up. This is my future; if I have to work a bit harder to make it come true, so be it. I’ll just build up my name
until I’m so famous that even Enzo the Eyesore has to let me inside.
I nudge a seagull out of the way, grab my pack and lute, choose a direction at random and begin to walk. I’ll need to find an inn.
An hour later I’m hot, thirsty and hopelessly lost. It’s not that everything looks the same. On the contrary, each of the eightyseven-and-counting islands and islets that make up the city of Salato has its own character, expressed with multicoloured bunting criss-crossing the narrow streets, or balconies crowded with miniature fruit and olive trees, or shopfronts brought alive with elaborate murals and mosaics.
No, it isn’t the way the isles look, it’s the unbelievably stupid way they’re connected. Or rather, aren’t. How are you supposed to navigate a city made of islands when its architects seem allergic to bridges? It’s maddening enough trying to find your way through the twisting, narrow streets flanked by tall tightly pressed buildings, without finally reaching a canal and having no way to cross it.
The locals all get around by boat, of course. As I trudge along on increasingly sore feet, kids as young as five or six zip around in little skiffs like they were born in them, those too small for poles or oars pulling themselves along the edges by ropes bracketed into the sandstone. Stuck against yet another canal in my approximately six hundredth dead end, I moodily watch a well-dressed girl float past in a lacquered gondola. She’s busy ogling the shirtless man poling the boat, but spares me a cheery wave from below her parasol.
The bridge I was aiming for is two hundred yards upstream. I want to scream.
When I turn away from the canal and come face to face with a dirt-streaked girl with messy blonde hair and a lute on her back I actually do scream, before realising it’s my reflection in the glass window of someone’s house.
That’s the other thing: the glass. It’s everywhere. It’s one thing to know that this far from Gilnea nobody believes in magic, and consequently nobody knows or cares about the dangers of mirrors, but quite another to experience that nonchalance firsthand. Just my luck that the music capital of the world is also world famous for its glass, and isn’t shy about displaying it. Even the cheapest, shoddiest houses have windows made from glass instead of safe, sensible oilskin.
I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to it. Before leaving Gilnea, I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen my own face and have fingers left over – here I’m confronted by it every few yards. Whenever something moves in the corner of my eye and I catch a ghost of a startled-looking girl, my heart rate spikes. Unhelpfully, the face staring back is even less familiar than the one with blue eyes and unruly copper-coloured hair I mostly knew from the yearly family portrait. This one didn’t even exist before I sat in front of Nana Grackle’s mirror three months ago and asked her to make me into someone new.
When I turn a corner and find myself back outside the white sandstone and stained glass of the Guild of Bards I nearly burst into tears. I’m just steeling myself to swallow my pride and beg Signor Despicable Doorkeeper for directions to one of those fourth-rate taverns he mentioned when a young girl appears from the next side street up. She dumps the burlap sack she was carrying in the shade and wipes her brow. While massaging her arms she turns a curious eye on me.
I know an out when I see one and hurry over. The girl looks about ten or eleven, with a clever mouth, sticking-out ears and light reddish-brown skin rather than Salatan olive. She’s tall for her age, especially with a pair of wooden platforms strapped to her boots, and her eyes are narrowed in the near-permanent suspicion of someone approaching adolescence.
‘What?’ she says.
‘I was hoping you could help me.’ I’m also hoping she can’t
tell how desperate I am. ‘I’m looking for an inn. A . . . a nice one. With an honest innkeeper, preferably who likes music.’
The girl sniffs. ‘Is that all? That’s easy. Follow me.’ She picks up her sack with a grunt and heads in the opposite direction I originally took.
‘I’m Del,’ I say as we set off. I try to sound like it’s something I’ve introduced myself with more than a spare handful of times. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Mariel. Mariel Aster.’
‘Mariel’s a pretty name.’
‘I guess.’ She adjusts her sack. ‘Most everyone calls me Minnow. You can too, if you want. Where’re you from?’
‘Gilnea.’
‘That’s forever away.’
I’m surprised she’s even heard of it. My homeland tends to collect a lot of descriptors starting with ‘in’: insignificant, inaccessible, inclement weather. Impecunious, if you spell it wrong. It’s the smallest nation on the northern continent of Tenera, a narrow strip of moors fenced in by mountains on three sides and seaside cliffs angling for promotion on the fourth. You can barely fit the name on a map, when it isn’t left off entirely. The wallowing ship that brought me here from the port capital Kepniss was only the second southbound vessel to dock in our harbour that month – most southerners don’t understand why anyone would bother making the trip, and frankly, I agree with them.
‘Your accent’s really good,’ Mariel continues. She delivers this verdict as though conferring on me the highest possible honour.
I didn’t think I had an accent. As the world’s language of trade, I learned Salatan in the cradle. ‘You’re Salatan, then?’ I say. She certainly talks and acts like a native, despite her un-Salatan features and name.
‘Yeah. Well, I was born in Hellevon, but I’ve been here
longer’n I ever was there.’ She considers. ‘I reckon anyone who’s in Salato long enough is eventually from Salato. Have you got a pet? I like dogs.’
Mariel-Minnow’s questions are relentless, and I have to improvise quickly as we traverse the city. Well done, Del, I think scornfully, as Minnow jabbers on about her collection of – surely she didn’t say ales? Maybe I’m not as fluent in Salatan as I thought. You wasted three whole months on that ship practising for a fictional audition, and now you get to make up a convincing backstory while being interrogated by a pre-teen.
Luckily Minnow is easily satisfied, and only seems to be half listening anyway; she flits so quickly from one thing to another that it isn’t hard to guess the origin of her nickname. Gradually I relax as I realise my half-truths and no-truths aren’t going to be challenged. I even start having fun inventing my imaginary life.
Then Minnow comes out with a question that kills my game stone dead.
‘Have you got any siblings?’
I stumble. I nearly drop my pack, and my lute jars sickeningly against the railing of the footbridge we’re crossing.
‘Watch your step,’ Minnow says over her shoulder, oblivious to the storm she’s conjured.
‘I . . . yes,’ I say. ‘A . . . a brother and . . . a sister. Both older.’
‘Aren’t big brothers the worst? I always wanted a little sister, but no matter how much I tell Papa he should remarry he— ooh!’ She fishes a muddy red ribbon from the shadow of the stone railing and wraps it around her upper arm. ‘I lost mine,’ she says, like that explains anything, her words muffled by the filthy ribbon in her mouth as she pulls the knot tight with her teeth.
Meanwhile, my emotions rage. Grief, loss, betrayal – everything I’ve kept shut away so well these past three months – howl within me. Minnow has unknowingly ripped off a bandage that was the only thing keeping me from bleeding out.
I can’t believe I said I have a sister.
But after all . . . why not? That tragedy is Adeleine’s. Not Del’s. There’s no reason Del can’t have an older sister back home: alive and well, supportive of her move overseas to chase her dreams. Maybe she sent Del off loaded up with food and advice. Warned her about foreign boys and girls, and fickle teenage relationships. Said not to get attached, not like I did with—
No. That tragedy doesn’t belong to Del, either.
Night claims Salato softly and gently, washing its labyrinth of sandstone and plaster with coats of inky watercolour while daytime fades into shadow. As the light dwindles, spots of jewel-coloured brightness appear from the gloom, until the streets are illuminated with a patchwork of tamed rainbows. Streetlamps, Minnow explains, the pattern of colours mapping the tangled routes so you don’t get lost – but I preferred not knowing. The sight is so magical it’s a shame to encumber it with earthbound logic.
I think the same thing when Minnow halts at the apex of a tall footbridge over a canal, claiming her arms are about to fall off. While she grumbles about useless brothers and unpaid child labour I lean over the railing. Below my feet ripples an otherworldly street of black and silver, travelled by ethereal beings enclosed in pockets of brilliant gold.
‘Busy on the water tonight,’ Minnow comments. ‘Want to spit and see if we can get anyone?’
Gradually our surroundings become cheaper and muddier, until at last we draw up in front of a pair of dingy doors set into a stuccoed wall. Overhead, faintly lit by a blue light across the street, hangs a sign painted with an unidentifiable blobby animal.
‘Welcome to the Hiccupping Horse. Best osterra in the Tresta,’ Minnow says, beaming at the presumable horse with pride.
‘Thanks, Minnow. I really appreciate— Oh, you’re going in too?’
