Page 57 of A Magic Deep & Drowning

Hauling herself up, she slipped past a mule pulling a cart wafting with the stench of offal. It was cold, but it was the sort of cold that could be staunched with a good fire and a warm blanket, nothing like the devouring chill of the water. She welcomed it with a gasping cough, filling her lungs with the sharpness of it.

The West India House’s distinctive white facade glowed across the square, the only landmark that told her where she was in the city. Smoke curled out of a nearby tavern, laughter and lute music spilling out from orange windows into the night. Before her tenure as Alida’s assistant, all she had known of taverns was what she had seen in the paintings on her father’s wall. They were bawdy places, servicing people fromclasses and backgrounds that she would never be permitted to associate with. But now she saw them for what they really were: places in which to disappear.

Wringing the water from her hair, she pushed her way past the men loitering about the doorway, pipes dangling from their lips. Hardly anyone spared her a glance. Inside, Clara slipped onto a bench at a rough-hewn table next to two men in a heated argument about the price of tobacco. A serving woman leaned over Clara, her bosom brushing her shoulder as she plunked a heavy mug of something on the table. “You’ve got the smell of the sea, on you,” she said, not unkindly.

Clara was certain the briny smell was the least of what marked her as different now. In the smoky light of the tallow candles, she could see the paleness of her hands, the way the water had smoothed and polished them. Her legs felt wobbly, like one of the colts Piet used to break every summer, and she walked just as unevenly. She didn’t even want to consider what her hair looked like.

The woman was called away by another customer, and Clara curled her fingers around the earthenware mug. Whatever was inside was thick and warm, mildly spiced. It left a burn in her throat as it went down, but it was the first hot thing she’d had since her exodus from the water, and she could have cried for how good it was.

She’d hardly set the mug down when the woman returned, a pitcher in her hand. “Another, love?”

Clara nodded. The woman lifted the pitcher to pour, then seemed to think of something and stayed her hand. “You can pay, can’t you? I’ll need to see some coin.”

The concept of payment was one that was so foreign to Clara, that for a moment she was certain the woman was jesting with her. Most of the errands that she had run for Alida had been paid for with credit, and the little money she had kept with her must have been lost to the water. She had pawned herruby pendant and gold ring as soon as she’d come to the city in order to buy new clothes.

The woman was looking at her, a faint scowl starting to pull at her lips.

Clara would not squander her precious last wish on the bill for a smoky tavern drink. But then her finger fluttered to her collarbone, probing the small indent where the marble that had held her air still rested. No longer tethered to Thade’s magic, it came away easily in her hand.

The iridescent marble dropped with aclinkand rolled down the length of the table. Silence fell. The marble continued its journey, twinkling with unnatural light until it dropped over the side of the table, releasing a puff of blue smoke as it shattered. Faces turned to look at her, and the woman with the pitcher narrowed her eyes, as if finally putting all the odd pieces of Clara together.

“Just what are you, anyway?”

Clara palmed the last stone in her pocket. The atmosphere in her father’s genre paintings had always seemed so jolly and welcoming, but now the air in the tavern had gone taut as a lute string. It wasn’t a wealthy clientele, but some of the patrons wore small ruffs, and porcelain plates hung on the walls. Every detail reminded her of the accusations Thade had leveled against her and her people. As they sat drinking and making merry, there was an entire world below which bore the scars of the accumulation of these things. She was not going to be able to pay for the drink, and she had already attracted attention to herself. Giving a hard swallow, she rose on shaking legs.

“I am... I have come as a messenger,” she said, finding it a thousand times harder to address this drunken crowd than she had the court of the Water Kingdom. “There is going to be a flood,” she added quickly, before she could lose whatever little conviction was buoying her along. “Have you heard what happened in Franeker? The same will happen here if wedo not mend our wasteful ways. The land that was reclaimed does not belong to us, and we have used it poorly. Every stitch on your back was sewn at the expense of some poor soul in the Indies. Every plate upon your wall is a trophy of a trade route forged in blood.”

Clara swallowed. The taut silence only grew thicker. Her heart pounded in her ears, her chest tight.

“Wasteful?” The man that finally broke the silence was stout and ruddy-faced, a yellowed pipe in his hand. “We’re all good Christians, aren’t we? You don’t see any of that gold and icons hanging about in the New Church, do you?”

“We work hard,” chimed in an old woman from her seat. She was small and hunched, her gnarled hands testifying to her claims of labor. “I keep a good, clean house, and fear God. What waste do you see in that?”

The first man snorted. “A flood! If a flood comes, it will be because of a storm tide and a lack of sluice gates. Not because a girl decried black velvet doublets as an extravagance!”

No one would believe her. She was a woman without the weight of a family name behind her, and she looked mad with her tangled hair and skirt that was crusted in sea salt.

Clara ducked as someone threw a hard piece of bread at her, and soon it was followed by another and another. The serving woman stood with her arms crossed over her broad chest, scowling at Clara as if she had brought the plague itself into the tavern.

“Go back to the poorhouse,” jeered a woman from the lap of a laughing man.

The door slammed shut behind Clara, the cold night smugly welcoming her back. Her bare feet gripped the cobbles as she braced herself along the sides of buildings and iron gates, still unused to walking on land. At least out here she was not the object of undue attention; she looked like any other poor soul, making her way back to an almshouse for the night.

The magic of the wishing stone was capricious, and because she had not specified where on the land she wished to be returned, she found herself in a far-flung part of the city. But the tangled canals and streets of Amsterdam had become familiar to her during her time as Alida’s apprentice, and with the Brouwersgracht to guide her, she set off in the direction of the studio.

She passed another tavern, laughter and song spilling out into the night. It was late enough that bakers were beginning to light their ovens and bake the morning’s bread. The smell made her stomach twist with hunger.

Would Alida welcome her back? Would she still want Clara to be her apprentice? What must she have thought when Clara had disappeared? All of it mattered little if there was to be a flood that swept away all the studios and paint shops and frame makers.

The piercing spire of the Old Church rose into the dark sky. Clara thought of her wedding in Franeker. How odd was the passage of time, the way that it was not the number of years that informed growth, but rather what happened within them. For twenty years she had grown taller and fuller, her mind fed on starvation rations of embroidery and Bible verses. Yet in the course of only a number of weeks, she had expanded her entire understanding of the world. She had been an entirely different person on her wedding day, and she would never be that Clara again.

The bakers might have been preparing for the coming day, but with the sky still ink black and the air seeping in through her damp clothes, Clara did not think that she had the luxury of waiting for the warmth of morning much longer. With the cold wind nipping at her heels, she followed the spire.

Inside the church it was shadowy, echoing with the sleepy cooing of birds. It was warm, and incense filled the air. Candles guttered and swayed in the nave, each one a flickeringreminder of a soul since passed. Church had never felt like a sanctuary before; it was where she went because she was expected to go, and the grinning skulls and bleeding savior seemed to be more cautionary than hopeful. But now, she was grateful for the building that welcomed her when the rest of the city seemed to see her as nothing but an unwanted reminder of poverty.

A few other desperate souls had sought shelter in the nave, indistinct shapes huddled at the foot of the great pillars that soared up to the vaulted ceiling. It was a far cry from the cabinet bed in Alida’s kitchen, and further still from her chamber in Wierenslot. But it was dry and warm and Clara could feel her body beginning to gravitate toward the ground, her eyes heavy.

“Sparrow? Is that really you?”

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