Page 11 of A Dark and Drowning Tide

Sylvia leapt to attention as soon as Lorelei shut the front door behind her.

“Allow me.” Before Lorelei could protest, Sylvia snatched one of her traveling cases from her hands. She made a surprised little sound as she hefted it. “Saints, Lorelei, this is heavy! What have you got in here?”

“Nothing,” Lorelei snapped automatically. “Put that down at once.”

“Why?” Sylvia looked alarmed. “Is it something dangerous?”

“Of course not.” Lorelei paused, pretending to consider it. “Just don’t make any sudden movements.”

She did not like to be separated from her valuables: a set of ivory-handled pens her mother had gotten her for her eighteenth birthday; a collection of leather-bound notebooks filled with her folktale transcriptions and illustrations; a sedative in the strongest dose Johann was willing to compound for her; and her battered copy ofTales of the Tropics, the one sentimental indulgence she allowed herself.

As a child, she had run wild through the streets of the Yevanverte. She’d collected vials of water from the river for study, stuffed her pockets full of clippings from the neighbors’ gardens. She’d collected insects, tucking beetles into her mouth forsafekeeping—untilone had secreted acid onto her tongue and put an end to that. She had sat on the roof and watched ships in the harbor, a black forest of masts and sails bobbingand shifting in the wind. She’d driven her parents mad filling the house with her collections, until one day, her father came home with a book:Tales of the Tropicsby Ingrid Ziegler. A book, he said, written by the most famous woman in Brunnestaad.

She had lain awake deep into the night, devouring every word until the candle went out, puddled on her windowsill. It painted a picture so exquisite, she’d wept from longing. Now, having read Ziegler’s later works, Lorelei knew it was a piece of juvenilia. But that book had cracked her world open like an egg. It was a place full of wonder, of adventure. And for the first time, her yearning had a name: naturalism. That far-off dream contented her at first. But as she grew older, she realized that girls from the Yevanverte didn’t get to leave it.

She had no money to buy equipment. No influence to persuade anyone to finance an expedition. No legal documents that would allow her to travel. It had been an impossible dream until Ziegler answered her silly, girlish letter. Training as a folklorist had been her ticket into the university. But without the king’s favor, come graduation, she would be cast out of this world again. She would be nothing and no one.

Sylvia adjusted the case in her arms very carefully. Then she set off down the street. Lorelei took one long stride forward and fell into step with her. They followed the narrow street to the northern gate, a rotting wooden door set into a low archway. The stone walls enclosing the Yevanverte were unadorned and overgrown with moss. They reminded Lorelei of gravestones slumped together. Sylvia set down Lorelei’s trunk just long enough to unlatch the gate and let them through. Lorelei breathed in the damp air, marveling at the silence. The storefronts lay dark, the construction sites empty. At this hour, the city still dreamed.

It never failed to strike her just how simple it was to leave. There were no guards, no complicated locks or wards, no dogs primed to chase them down. No one who lived here would willingly walk into the dangers outside these walls, and no one in Ruhigburg particularly cared if anyone snuck in.

They certainly did not care what happened once they did.

Lorelei closed her fist around that familiar rush of anger. “So. What is it you wanted?”

“Right.” Sylvia sighed fretfully. “I have come to ask you to reconsider accepting the position. I worry that Ziegler’s decision was shortsighted.”

Lorelei stiffened. “Is that so?”

“Please, listen before you immolate me,” Sylvia protested. “Wilhelm is in over his head. In title, he is a king, but at heart, he is a soldier. He has a brilliant mind for strategy but no stomach for policy. He has done what his father set out to do, but he has no real vision from here.

“His ancestral lands are small and sparsely populated. The administrative burden of acquiring so much land in such a short period of timeis—well,I shall not bore you with the finer points of governance. What matters is that there has been a great deal of upheaval over the past few decades, and it is the common people who pay the price.”

“Yes, yes, I understand your point,” Lorelei said impatiently. She was admittedly surprised to find she hadn’t disagreed with Sylviaoutright—andthat Sylvia spared a thought for commoners beyond an abstract sense of duty. “Where are you going with this?”

A small measure of relief softened Sylvia’s expression. Pressing her advantage, she went on. “Wilhelm is ill-prepared to rule during peacetime. I, however, have prepared my whole life to manage a vast territory. After the success of the expedition, I’d intended to ask to be appointed to his retinue.”

Now Lorelei saw the shape of it. Sylvia’s bruised ego was masquerading as noblesse oblige. And yet, the passion in hervoice...Shespoke as though she believed every word. In the end, that was what rankled Lorelei the most. What did Sylvia of all people have to prove? She and Wilhelm werefriends—andthere were other methods a noblewoman could employ to ensure her place in court.

“You will be. Perhaps you’ll be heartened to know that the Ursprung isn’t in Sorvig. He may marry you yet.”

Sylvia sighed exasperatedly. “I have no interest in marrying Wilhelm.”

“No? You already bicker as if you’re wed.”

“Healthy rivalry is, by his own philosophy, the instrument of progress.”

“Is that right?” Lorelei asked dryly.

“It’s different when it’s between equals,” she huffed. “Wilhelm needs to be challenged. But you slink and scrape for him like a beaten hound, just as you do for Ziegler. How can you ever hope to be of use to him that way?”

Her words struck like a slap to the face. So that was it. Sylvia didn’t think Lorelei deserved it. Perhaps she did not have a grasp on the finer points of governance, but Wilhelm had a veritable army of advisers to steer him true. Perhaps she was not bold enough to challenge him, but Sylvia would never understand what it meant to make yourself less than you were. If she had nothing else, she would always have hername—andall her stupid pride.

There was nothing else to do. Lorelei laughed. By now, she knew it was not a pleasant sound, low and what Heike had once described assinister. A shiver, barely perceptible, passed through Sylvia.

“What’s so funny?” Sylvia asked, clearly distressed.

What’s funny is that you’ve been given everything, and you can’t even see it. It would be so simple to say it, to watch Sylvia’s temper go up like a wildfire. But for once, Lorelei found she had no will to pick afight—atleast not at five in the morning.