Heaps of Pearl
by
Seanan McGuire
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
Ten thousand men that fishes gnaw’d upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scatter’d in the bottom of the sea.
—William Shakespeare, King Richard III
Autumn, 1840
The October sun had almost set. Traces of brilliant orange lingered in the west, painting the edges of the sky and casting silver shadows on the sea. I paused, my rag still poised to wipe the grease from the engine I was fighting to repair, and watched as the sun continued slipping languidly downward. Then it was gone, and the world was cast into darkness. I smiled. It was difficult not to. Cluttered and overcrowded as San Francisco was rapidly becoming, nothing would ever change the simple beauty of a sunset over the water.
Candlelight glittered around me, as bright as one of Blind Michael's Rides making its way across the distant hills of Berkeley—although he'd been showing his face less of late, as the human population grew, and it became more dangerous for even the most legendary monsters to show themselves so openly. I did not know wither he retreated when he wasn't riding his poor, stolen children into their graves, and I did not care to know. "Away" was good enough for me. Let him join the rest of the Firstborn in whatever hidey-holes they had cut for themselves, and leave Faerie alone.
There were those who said candlelight could attract the Ride's attention, and that it was best to work by pixie-light if possible. I had no stomach for penning pixies in jars just so I could work uninterrupted. The little creatures might not be intelligent as we reckoned things, but they deserved to live their lives unimpeded by clumsy oafs like me. I still did my best to lure them in when I had fine work to do, setting out dishes of cream and cubes of cake, and for the most part, they were happy to oblige, although they scattered when anyone else came sniffing around. The fashion for using them as living adornments did not sit well with those who had managed to dodge the silver chains and gilded cages for so long. I hoped the fashion would pass before the century did. It was tiresome and heart-wrenching, hearing the pixies weep so.
Grease gleamed on the engine, despite my best efforts to wipe it clean. I sighed and turned to pick up another jar of turpentine, only to stop dead when I saw the man watching me from the doorway. He had hair the color of redwood bark, and eyes like amber; he was dressed in the mortal style, with white trousers fastened high on his waist, a green waistcoat over a white shirt, and a long brown coat only a few shades darker than his bow tie. His hat was also brown, and almost offensively tall, as if he'd decided it must tower over everything since he could not.
I raised an eyebrow. "How long have you been standing there?"
"Long enough to witness you all but making love to an engine," he replied. "How much iron is in that thing? You'll warp your hands into a lobster's claws, and then what woman will want them touching her?"
"The same woman as wants them touching her now, which is to say no woman at all," I replied. "I wear gloves, I take my tinctures, I do myself but little damage, and I've nearly reached a point where I can replace an entire engine's workings with specially treated and enchanted wood. Think of it! Soon, we'll be able to build steamships of our own, and set out across the sea without humans to shepherd us, or Tuatha to demand repayment for their services!"
"Oh, I'm thinking of it," he said, stepping into my workshop. His brow furrowed. "Still thinking." He took another step before spinning on his heel, removing his hat, and dipping a low, ridiculous bow. "And now I am quite done thinking of it, as I am too bored to feel my feet. You'll perish of contemplation before you convince anyone else that this idea is worth pursuing. But do not worry, my beloved friend! Rescue is at hand."
I gave him a dubious look as I dropped my rag and reached for a clean cloth to wipe my fingers. "You, rescue me? Have you ever met yourself, I wonder? Perhaps some time in front of the mirror is in order."
"No, no, self-appraisal is also boring, and I'll have none of it." He waved my words away. "I have no need of mirrors, I grew up with a twin brother, and that was all the mirror I'll ever want. Besides, your rescue is the one under discussion tonight, not mine. Scrub the grease from your skin, beloved friend, and wipe the...whatever that horrible substance is from your face, for we're going dancing."
For a moment, I thought that I had heard wrong. He continued to beam at me, bright and guileless as a child. I considered objecting to his ludicrous proposal, but realized just as quickly that it would do me no good. Some men were born friends to logic, capable of grasping both its presence and its absence. Other men could be led to logic. Then there was Simon Torquill, who had never encountered a terrible idea that he didn't think of as a pleasant way to spend the hours between midnight and morning.
"No," I said, and turned back to my engine.
"What? I must have heard you wrong." Simon trotted across the warehouse and put his hand on my shoulder. "You would never refuse a friend in need."
"Oh, now you're the one in need, when before I was the one who needed to be 'rescued'?" I turned and threw my rag at him. He danced away, leaving it to fall harmlessly to the floor. "I said 'no,' and 'no' is what I meant. If you're not sure what 'no' means, go home and ask your lovely lady wife. I'm sure she'll find something to refuse you."
"Likely not," he said. "She is, after all, a lovely lady wife, and tends to be fairly amenable, as long as I never ask her for anything she doesn't want to give. But you see, that's one more reason for you to come dancing with me! You've long since passed the point where you should have found yourself some companionship, someone to hold your jars of unmentionable fluids and pass you tools that I can't even remember the names for."
"You make this sound better and better." I crossed my arms. "Why are you set that I should agree to come dancing with you?"
"Didn't I mention? It's because I wanted you to feel as if you'd had a choice." Simon's smile was sudden and bright, clearly intended to be disarming. He reached into his coat and produced a gilt envelope sealed with the stamp of King Gilad's herald. "Don't worry, I haven't been reading your mail. I received one exactly like it."
I gave the envelope a sidelong look, silently willing it to disappear. It did not oblige. "What is it?"
"Why, an invitation to a dance, of course; anything else and my insistence that you agree to come dancing would make no sense at all." Simon continued to hold the envelope out toward me. "The old Duke of Saltmist is finally stepping aside, Oberon rest and keep him, and his daughter's due to ascend. Good King Gilad, in the interests of good relations with our neighbors to the west, has declared a grand ball in honor of Duke Morcan of Saltmist, to celebrate his reign before it ends—and to let the Duchess in waiting meet all us land rabble before she has to hold herself above us. Come on, Patrick! When are you going to get the chance to meet a real, live mermaid princess?"
"She's not a princess, she's an heir, and about to be a duchess, which means she's doubtless tiresomely polite and uninterested in meeting men with grease under their nails," I said mildly. "What's more, I have less than no interest in the meeting of mermaids. I prefer ships which stay above the waves to scaly women who waste their time beneath them."
"You must admit, it won't be boring. Perhaps she'll smell of haddock, and have scales in her teeth. Or maybe she'll be the most beautiful woman in the world, and all the rest of us will have to weep with envy at your freedom to pursue her."
"Don't be a fool, Simon. Your Amy is the most beautiful woman in the Kingdom, possibly in several Kingdoms, and no water-logged mer-girl is going to offer her any competition."
He smiled brightly. "You'll have to c
ome and see, then, won't you?"
I sighed as I reached over and plucked the invitation from his hand. When King Gilad called, we landless nobles had no choice but to show up. Anything else would be an insult to the crown, and since we had no lands to confiscate, he could threaten our titles. The fact that he had never been inclined to do any such thing was no reason to relax. As the coming transfer of power in the Undersea demonstrated, no reign was forever.
"Yes," I said. "I suppose I shall."
*
The structure of lands and titles in Faerie is odd, and seems to have been devised to be uniquely frustrating. Most titles above the rank of "knight" or "lady" convey with them a certain amount of land, possibly with a knowe already constructed and ready for occupation. Others, well. Don't. My title—Baron of Feathered Stones, which has something to do with grinding wheat, and please don't ask me why anyone thought that was important enough to deserve a county—is hereditary and unlanded, passed down by my mother when she didn't need it anymore. If I lived long enough, I would eventually inherit my family's lands and become the Count of Twycross. As that position would come with responsibility, new fealties, and the death of both my parents, I wasn't in any particular hurry.
Being a baron protected me from certain of the duller aspects of life. I didn't need to worry about assaults on my person, as they would be taken as insults to the crown. Most of the nobles in the Mists were willing to put me up without asking me to work in the kitchens or stand as a pageboy, and more, since I had a title, and had lands waiting for me, no one was overly anxious to groom me as part of their court. Why waste time on someone who would inevitably leave? That left me free to devote the majority of my time to things that actually mattered, like the inner workings of the fabulous ships that sailed in and out of the San Francisco Bay at all hours of the night and day.
Steamships were the future. They could cut the seas in half with their engines, and circle the globe in days, instead of weeks or months. If I could find a way to put that power in the hands of Faerie, we could build them in the Summerlands, where the seas were even more truncated than they were in the mortal world, and we could travel anywhere, virtually at the speed of thought. The need for wings and teleportation portals would be a thing of the past. We could communicate with our families across the seas, and Faerie would be unified once more.
And all that assumed that I was being left to my work, not forced to fritter away my time on something like a ball in honor of a man I'd never met and had no intention of having any political dealings with, now or at any time in the future. I was no emissary or important diplomat: I was part of a quiet show of force, one more face that the King's men could point to and nonchalantly say, "That is a baron, and a pureblooded Daoine Sidhe who will fight for us, should the need ever arise."
King Gilad's fondness for the Undersea was a well-established fact. He was still a King, and as a King, he had a responsibility to his lands and people. He needed the new Duchess to understand that a challenge to his authority would not cement her rule: it would, quite probably, end it.
There was a knock on the door of my chambers, followed—in indecently short order—by Simon Torquill letting himself in and proclaiming, "We're about to go from 'fashionably late' to 'possibly committing treason to the crown.' What is the difficulty, Patrick? Too tired from beating off your many potential escorts for the evening?"
"With a stick," I said dryly. As always, Simon was impeccably dressed. His trousers tonight were dark gray, only a few shades off from the arms of the Kingdom, and matched well to his charcoal coat and hat. His waistcoat was a deep shade of rose, over an ice-white shirt. Amandine, I knew, would be wearing a gown to flatter the rose, while their daughter, August, would be dressed primarily in white. Simon might seem careless and casual, but he was in all things devoted to his family, and his family's image.
I grimaced as I held up my tie. "I can't quite convince my fingers of how this is supposed to go."
"And you think I can help you? I'm a married man."
"A married man who's far more likely to help his wife with her laces than to receive help himself. Please? Unless you want to explain to the King why the mechanic kept the gadfly from his ball while he struggled to remember the proper way to tie a knot."
"Oh, come over here," said Simon, holding out his hand. I walked obediently over, dropping the tie into his fingers and standing at attention. "I swear, you'd be lost without me. You're a sailor. I've seen you twist rope into every shape under the moon, and yet here you are, undone by a scrap of silk barely worth the name. Couldn't you have purchased something finer?"
"What, and dipped into my savings? I need equipment for my work."
"This is part of your work." He drew the knot snug against the hollow of my throat. "Remember that. Be polite. Hold yourself with grace, and remind everyone that you are of the nobility. They cannot dismiss you simply because they do not understand you."
"You worry too much."
"If I were not a married man, I would make a project of you, and teach you how to enter every room on my arm, envied by all, until you believed yourself as valuable as I know you to be." He leaned close as he all but whispered in my ear, "You are too often alone, Patrick. You forget how beautiful you are."
"But you are a married man, and while you flirt, we all know you'd never stray from your lovely Amy," I said, stepping backward. He didn't pursue. Simon's sense of how far to take the game had never erred. "Now. How are we to get to the King's halls without attracting attention or making ourselves later still?"
"Easily. My brother loaned me the good Sir Etienne to serve as our carriage. He's waiting outside."
I grimaced. Etienne was sworn to Sylvester's service. He was a fine, upstanding Tuatha de Dannan knight, with no aspiration to any higher rank; all he wanted to do was serve his liege and go about his business. He was one of the only people, aside from Simon, who didn't find me boring—possibly because Sir Etienne was so boring that he was no longer capable of recognizing the condition in others.
Simon read my expression and laughed. "He's not lingering. He'll be returning to Shadowed Hills to keep watch until dawn. Then, after the sunrise is safely past, he'll take you home. Unless you've already gone home with someone else."
"Which is never going to happen, so I suppose we should get moving." I grabbed my jacket from where it hung on the door of the wardrobe. "The sooner we arrive, the sooner I can retreat to the kitchens and hide from the festivities."
"There's the joyful soul I know and love," said Simon brightly, and took my arm and led me from the safety of my room.
*
As I had expected, Etienne's portal deposited us in the receiving hall, where the lovely lady Amandine Torquill and her daughter awaited. She wore a gown that was two hundred years out of style, and wore it so well that it seemed no one should consider anything else. It was a few shades darker than her husband's waistcoat, embroidered with green and red roses around the cuffs and hem. She smiled at the sight of me.
"Patrick," she said, extending her hands. "It's so good to see you. Why do you never come to see us at home?"
"Because your garden is beautiful, and I am an oaf," I said, allowing her to take my hands and kiss my cheeks. I directed a quick nod toward August. "Milady Torquill."
August smiled back, although it was clear that her heart wasn't in it. She was still young, having scarce turned sixteen, and parties were still novel enough to her to be enjoyed for their own sake. Wasting time waiting for her father and his wastrel friend to arrive was keeping her away from the dance floor.
Simon recognized her restlessness as well as I did. "Well, old friend, I've brought you this far; you can make an entrance on your own." He took Amandine's hand from me, seating it firmly at the crook of his elbow.
"I can," I agreed. This was always the way of things. Simon could drag me out, but he couldn't drag me in: not when protocol demanded that he enter with his wife on one arm and his daughter on the other. Th
ey were the finest family I knew, a testament to the health of Faerie here in the far Westlands. To disrupt the image they presented would have been the height of rudeness. So I hung back, and watched them walk toward the vast double doors at the hall's end, which opened to admit them. Light and music drifted back to tempt me. Then the doors were closed again, and I was alone.
No: not quite alone. Two guards stood by the knowe's open door, protecting us from all the specters of the night. I wandered over to them.
"Evening, Baron Twycross," greeted the nearer of the two. "Planning to duck out before anyone notices that you're here?"
I grimaced. "Am I that predictable?"
"We could make a game of it," she said. "In fact, we did make a game of it. If you walk out now, you score the opposing team a clean ten points, and we'll need the Duchess of Wild Strawberries to start a bar brawl before we can make up that much ground."
"I see," I said. "Are you attempting to convince me to go into the party, just so you don't lose some sort of bet?"
She smiled brightly. "Exactly so, sir. I always knew you were a clever one."
"This is blackmail."
"No, sir, blackmail is us pointing out that we'd have to tell the King we'd seen you when he asked whether anyone tried to sneak away."
"And he will ask," said the second guard. "This is a very important party. Means he actually wants people to show up for a change."
"I see," I said again. "How long must I stay?"
"At least long enough for the King to see you," said the first guard. "Call it an hour?"
"Right." I sighed as I turned to face the door. "No escape, I suppose."
"Not a bit," said the first guard.
They were laughing as I walked down the long entry hall. Not cruelly—they seemed genuinely amused, not mocking—but I couldn't help wondering how well they'd like it if our positions were reversed. Parties and balls were part of the price of being noble. That didn't mean all of us were well-suited to attending them. Why did they never hold a ball in a workshop, or in a smithy? We could pour our own silver and make jewelry for the ladies to wear, and come away with something more worthwhile than sore feet and aching heads.