woman laughed heartily. “My daughter. Though I’m grateful to you for the mistake. Let’s get your papers sorted, shall we?”
I tugged on Sawny’s arm, drawing him away from the gangplank and the sunlamp’s glow. Once we were in the shadows, I pulled him close to me, like the sweethearts we’d never been. Never thought of becoming. People’s eyes slipped away from sweethearts, cuddled up to say goodbye, and now more than ever, I needed to go unnoticed.
Sawny squirmed. “What’re you about?”
“Shut up and let me hug you, yeah?” I said, loud enough for anyone passing by to hear. I stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear. “If you’re going to insist on leaving me behind, I have a going away gift for you. But you have to promise me you won’t open it until you’re well away at sea.”
“Vi, you’ve nothing—”
“Don’t be after arguing with me, Sawny. I’ve never had a scrap to give you for birthdays, high holidays, none of it. Let me do this one thing.”
I dug into my pocket and fished out the little pouch, keeping my other arm around Sawny’s shoulders. There were sixteen perfect pearls and a couple of dozen less valuable, slightly blemished ones inside the pouch I’d sewn from a scrap of a too-small pair of trousers. The pearls were some of the best of my collection, and enough to give them a start on their savings. It wasn’t enough to pay off their passage or set them up with a shop of their own, but it was something. It was all I could give them.
A long time ago, when I’d first learned to dive from one of the anchorites’ hirelings, she’d told me how pearls were made. The temple anchorites only had use for natural pearls, the ones that came of a tiny grain of sand or bit of shell irritating the oyster’s delicate tissues. But, the woman had told me, there was beginning to be a market for a new kind of pearl, one that could be farmed on lines strung in the ocean. They weren’t quite as valuable, but when you knew that almost every oyster would make a pearl, a bigger profit could be had.
That bit of information had sparked an idea, and as soon as I’d begun to dive on my own, I’d hung lines and baskets beneath the docks, where none of the other divers ever went. I tended them for four long years, and on my twelfth birthday, I opened the first oyster off my lines and slipped a pearl as big as the nail on my little pinky from its shell. In the three years since, I’d harvested close to two hundred pearls from my lines, more than ten for every one natural pearl I’d found and handed over to the anchorites.
That collection was hidden away beneath a floorboard in my tiny room in the temple. I’d created a small cushion for myself—enough to buy a cottage on one of the northernmost islands in the Alskad Empire, where folks were said to keep to themselves.
When I lost myself to the grief, I’d be far enough away from other folks that I wouldn’t be able to do much harm. I’d be alone. It was selfish of me, wanting to spend whatever time I had left in the company of my only friend, but still I’d thought about offering Sawny and Lily my whole stash—everything I’d ever saved, everything I’d ever created—just so they wouldn’t leave. Wouldn’t leave me alone. But in the end, I couldn’t have lived with the guilt of it. My friendship with Sawny was the only real, honest relationship in my life, and I couldn’t bear the thought of holding them back from the life they’d chosen just because I was so desperate not to be left alone.
Pressing the pouch into Sawny’s hand as stealthily as I could manage, I pulled back from our hug just far enough to fix him with a hard stare. “Don’t say anything.”
Sawny’s dark eyes were wide. “Are these...?”
“Don’t. You know the law. You know the consequences. Sell them when you can. Take your time. Be careful.”
“Vi, this is, far and away, the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Sawny,” Lily called. “It’s time.”
Sawny threw his arms around me and squeezed me tight, and a part of me shattered, knowing it was the last hug I was ever likely to feel.
“I’ll miss you,” he said, and I tucked those words, his voice, deep into my heart.
“I’ll miss you, too.”
I watched as they boarded the Lucrecia and disappeared. As I stood there, the sun crept slowly up behind the ship, lightening the sky from navy to violet to lavender, and a sharp cacophony of pink and yellow and orange. Tears streamed down my cheeks as the sunship was tugged out into the harbor, as the tugboat disconnected and the enormous solar sails unfurled and turned to greet the rising sun.
Watch over them, Pru.
I waited until the ship was a mere speck, a memory traveling far across the sea. I watched, careless of the time, of the stares I gathered from passersby, of the tongue-lashing Lugine was sure to give me the moment I showed my face in the temple, empty-handed and having skipped my morning dive. I didn’t care. I was alone in a city full of people, and nothing at all mattered anymore.
* * *
Without Sawny around to fill my spare time, I wandered through the temple aimlessly, counting down the days left until my birthday, when I would be free of this place and all the unpleasant memories of my childhood that frosted its walls and stained its floors. Whenever I wasn’t diving or off on some errand for an anchorite, I found myself in the library, revisiting the books I’d read over and over as a child. I’d always been fascinated by the stories about the world before the cataclysm.
It had been so vast and varied, and yet so isolated at the same time. But, as the Suzerain would have us believe, its people had grown too bold, too selfish. Dzallie the Warrior asked Gadrian the Firebound to make her a weapon that would split the moon. As moondust and fire rained down upon the world, Hamil the Seabound washed away the dregs of the corrupt civilizations that had so angered the gods. Rayleane the Builder took the clay given to her by Tueber the Earthbound and reshaped the remnants of humanity, splitting each person into two, so that everyone would go through life with a twin, a counterweight—a living conscience. Those few precious to Magritte the Educator remained whole, becoming the singleborn.
There were dozens of religious texts that told the story of the cataclysm, but I think the thing that drew me back to the library again and again were the stories from before. Stories about a time when losing your twin didn’t mean losing your life, your whole self.
It didn’t take long for one of the anchorites to find Anchorite Sula and tell her I’d been lurking around the stacks, failing to make myself useful. One evening after supper, when I’d found an empty corner of the library where I could read in peace, Sula came bustling up to me, her orange robes fluttering behind her and a pained look of concern plastered onto her face.
“Obedience, child,” she said. “Do you want for tasks that will better allow you to serve your chosen deity?”
I shut the book I’d been reading and uncurled myself from the sagging armchair, already exhausted by a conversation I’d had a thousand times or more over the course of my childhood. Every child was encouraged to choose one of the gods and goddesses on whom they could focus their worship. I’d chosen Dzallie the Warrior, not that it mattered much to me either way. I’d long since given up any pretense of believing in the gods and goddesses. Growing up in the temple had shown me time and again that the Suzerain’s goal wasn’t actually the salvation of the souls of the empire, but
