To Best the Boys Read online

  The atmosphere’s just hit my stomach too.

  I scramble my glove across my knitted scarf and yank it up over my nose to plug my nostrils tight and slow the rolling in my gut. The baking afternoon sun has heated this room to a steamy level—like the graveyard and underground catacombs last year when the storms flooded the marsh. The rank miasma nearly suffocated half the town and drew the sirens in with the smell of rotting flesh.

  “Besides,” Beryll says, still inching for the door. “The constables are about to have better things to worry about than people stealing organs and blood from the dead.”

  I glance up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. Can we just leave?”

  I assess him with a frown. I assume he’s referring to the competition tomorrow at Holm Castle—the one Beryll’s participating in and that I’ve wanted to for as long as I can remember. But the fact that Mum and I can cut up a corpse or do an equation better than half the blokes my age means nothing when it comes to Caldon’s long-standing tradition of gender roles.

  I bite my tongue. Force my comments down. “Fine. Help me get these corpses back up, and then we’ll go.”

  I hurry back to the toppled tables and bodies as Beryll peers at the dead man still on the upright slab behind me—the one who started this whole thing with his twitching stomach.

  “Beryll!” I whisper. “Let’s go.”

  He takes cautious steps in my direction. “In my defense, Miss Tellur, I’m unaccustomed to dead bodies, let alone ones that move. And I can only imagine how Seleni—Miss Lake—would react. I expect she’d be absolutely appalled.”

  I snort and stop at the first slab. In spite of Seleni’s high civic standing, she joins me in this endeavor near monthly—and while she may be many things, appalled is rarely one of them. Mainly because Beryll is usually appalled enough for both of them. It’s like the one emotion he allowed himself at birth upon discovering he’d had to travel through his mum’s delivery canal. I highly doubt he’s ever forgiven the woman.

  I roll my eyes and glance down at the vial I’d been siphoning the body fluid into. Good. None of the precious liquid has spilled.

  But the lid . . .

  I disregard the fallen table and the smell that’s permeating every fiber of my scarf—and scan the dirty floor. Where’s the vial lid?

  “Rhen, hurry up in there.” Seleni’s delicate voice muffles through the rear door. “Beryll, tell Rhen to get a move on. We have my parents’ party to prepare for.”

  “Miss Tellur . . .”

  I ignore them both and search the floor around the upright table with the dead man. Then around the lady’s body still lying stiff with the others on the floor. The old woman’s skin matches the storm-grey slate tiles, like the petrified hand of a knight I’d once unearthed.

  “Miss Tellur—”

  “I heard her, Beryll.”

  “Good, because I feel the need to inform you—”

  “I know, Beryll, but I’ve dropped the lid.”

  “Not your cousin. The corpse. Something’s happening. The stomach’s moving again, and—”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, if you’re that nerved out, just go stand by the—”

  A gurgling sound emits from the table above my head.

  I grab the glass lid that my boot’s just bumped against and slowly rise, lifting my face eye level with the cadaver. One calculated look informs me what’s making the noise. Beryll’s right. It’s not just another odd twitch of the nerves. The guy’s bloated stomach is rippling.

  I frown. No, not just rippling. It’s . . .

  I plunge the lid onto the vial. “Beryll, get to the door.”

  “What? Why? Is he actually alive? I told you—”

  I launch for him and pull us both toward the back entrance just as Beryll lets out a horrified whimper.

  2

  I grab the door handle and yank it open as a popping sound occurs from the dead man’s body—right at the place I’d made the first inspecting incision. I must’ve cut too deep—too near the bowels—because the noise is accompanied by a sudden bursting, and then a haze of gas and fluid erupts from the poor soul’s left side like a decrepit volcano. It sends flecks flying across the room to spatter against our skin and hair and faces.

  With a hard shove I thrust Beryll out into the shimmering light of the dying afternoon—where we both slam into Seleni in her new lace skirt and take her sprawling to the ground with us.

  “What in—? Rhen, I beg your—”

  I don’t speak, just jump up and pull the two of them with me while gulping in briny ocean air to exorcise the death stench, then turn and propel the undertaker’s door shut behind us. Oops. I push too fast and the string attached to the bell clapper above the doorway—the string I always pull taut before entering or leaving in order to keep it from ringing—gets tugged, and the thing goes off with a clang.

  The sound rings too sharp, too loud, in the narrow stone passage, spiraling up to echo across the rooftops to rouse the constables, and down into the old underground catacombs to wake the ghouls.

  Seleni gasps and flips around as her beau, Beryll, turns the color of a late-harvest apple. “Rhen, what in King Francis’s—?”

  “Nothing. Just go!” I snag her arm and shove her toward Beryll, then click the door’s footlock in place before I take off after them down the narrow cobblestone alley that is all filth and stone beneath our feet—and walls of rotting wood on either side of us—with a thin ribbon of sapphire sky peeking through the patchwork of eaves overhead.

  The tall, two-story houses slip past, dark and creaky, as we sprint through the winding alleyways. My gloved left hand grips the sealed vial while my right hand tugs my flimsy cloak closer against the specter of cold that haunts every recess and shadow of our otherwise overbaked coastal town.

  Behind us, the bell on the inner door starts ringing. The sexton.

  “Getting sloppy, Rhen,” I can almost hear Sam and Will say.

  “Overhead!” Seleni squeals.

  I look up, then slow down, just as a waterfall of swill lands on the path fifteen steps in front of us. It splatters the ground and walls and our boots as the woman in a shawl tossing it from her window doesn’t even bother giving us a second glance.

  With a leap and a skip, Seleni and I dance past the mess in the same pattern we did as children when we’d play hop frog along the Tinny River. We wait for Beryll to gingerly step around it before we turn the corner and pick up running the narrow labyrinth of more lanes.

  Just above the midway street, which cuts widthwise through the entire sloping hill of cottages and alleys, we reach a clump of steps, which we clear in one jump, to arrive in the middle of the cobblestoned heart of Pinsbury Port. Namely, its teeming and smelly afternoon market.

  Seller booths and mingling bodies rush into view, as does a tall, flamboyant flutist trying to earn coin as children dance and giggle. I slam my soles into the ground to avoid hitting them, except my body keeps flying—straight into a man walking in front of the herbalist’s booth.

  “Look ou—” My strangled yelp retreats down my throat as my face plants into the back of the gentleman’s broad frame, right between his massive shoulder blades, just as Beryll and Seleni skid up behind me.

  The poor man lurches forward enough for my face to peel off his damp fisherman’s coat. “Sorry, sir,” I choke out. “I—”

  He flips around with dark eyes and a darker countenance, and my words drop away like the damp autumn leaves scattered at our feet.

  Oh.

  If I could evaporate into the sea-foam air I would. Instead, I stand there, stolen blood in hand, beneath the irritated gaze of Lute Wilkes, best fisherman of the port and school chum who was two grades my senior growing up, until a couple summers ago when I left to be educated at home and he to go support his family on his dead father’s trawling boat. His full lips still have that pucker the girls liked to swoon over. The same one I wondered more than a few times if th
e tissue was actually formed that way, or if he was just perpetually in the mood to kiss things. I once imagined dissecting his face to find out.

  A storm behind Lute’s eyes suggests we interrupted something. His scowl flickers over my disheveled appearance—my cadaver-stained hands, wrinkled outer coat, and hair that at some point unraveled from its bun into a forest of wild briars. His gaze slowly registers recognition before it moves on to Beryll and Seleni, who are doubled over, gasping.

  Two seconds go by and he returns his attention to me. And just like that, his eyes do the nice thing that used to illuminate the earthen cider cellar behind Sarah Gethries’s house—the one none of us were supposed to know about, but we all hung out there anyway.

  I blink, and the skin on my wrists turns the color of sweet pomegranates. My bloody, gloved fingers suddenly feel very bloody, and my hair very briar-y. And all I can think of is that maybe the whole lip-swooning thing had a point after all because they are rather anatomically balanced.

  “Rhen, what in pantaloons?” Seleni half laughs, half demands. “You set off the alarm!”

  I swallow and nod at her but keep my eyes on Lute, who smells of salt-wood and morning tides and freedom. He’s a bit more sun drenched than the last time I ran into him a few months ago when Roy Bellow called my da crazy and my mum an independent woman. At the time, Lute had been helping his mum and brother in the glassmaker’s shop where I’d been “borrowing” a particular set of magnifying lenses. Lute frowned at Roy, but I’d already taken it upon myself to suggest that being crazy and independent were far better than being a suckling calf.

  Which apparently isn’t something one should say.

  Roy has tried twice since then to corner me in an alley.

  Lute tips his chin down, and a swag of black bangs falls forward as a sprinkle of sun rays catches his dark lashes and scatters thin shadows across his brown cheeks. Like firelight from an evening burn. He raises a single thick brow in a smart look, as if he’s remembering the interaction, and slips into an easy smile. “Did you at least hide the body this time, Miss Tellur?”

  I bite my cheek and freeze. “Body? I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Wilkes.”

  He glances behind us, then puckers those well-balanced lips and dips them toward my bloody gloves. “I’m assuming one of your verbal carvings has rid the Port of yet another fool.”

  Dimples. Deep, genuine, and stupidly distracting while my mind is trying to decipher his words. When it does, I frown and feel my cheeks warm. Oh. I sniff. “If such a fool’s been rid, Mr. Wilkes, it’s by his own doing and likely well deserved.”

  He chuckles, and the casualness in his tone and grey gaze makes me feel light-headed, as do the cloying market smells assaulting my senses. I frown because I’ve no interest in feeling that way, particularly not around Beryll and Seleni. So of course I do the only thing I can think of:

  I glare.

  “Rhen, I asked what happened!” Seleni thumps my arm.

  Lute’s gaze slides over to her and Beryll.

  I blink. Right. Blood and alarms.

  Clearing my throat, I turn. “It was nothing. Just an accident. I was going too fast and Beryll screamed. Sorry we bumped you, Lute.” I reach up to dust off his fishing-coat sleeve, only to leave behind a streak of body fluid. I wince and with a meaningful glance Seleni’s way make a “let’s go” head motion to her. “Nice seeing you again.”

  My cousin doesn’t move. Just sticks a mischievous hand on her hip and points at her beau. “Go? Just look at poor Beryll. He can’t go anywhere! You traumatized him!”

  What? I turn to assess him. He’s not traumatized, he’s just . . . I sniff. He does appear to be holding back his lunch. “Okay, so he’s traumatized. But I didn’t traumatize him. The dead man’s body was too bloated and I—”

  “Dead body?” Lute leans back and crosses his arms. Those dimples deepen.

  I stall and hear Mum’s voice rush like a tide in my head. “Rhen, people aren’t as impressed by dead bodies as you are. You can’t just talk about them in public.”

  I pinch my palms and turn to peer back into the alley for the angry sexton, because this might be a convenient time for him to appear. Instead, I find a group of kids with snot-smeared faces whispering excitedly and pointing toward the northern hillsides where the fancy estates all sit. The highest up of which belongs to Mr. Holm. “Holm’ll pluck out your eyeballs with his pointy teeth if you try to sneak in,” a girl says.

  “And gnaw your fingers off!” another squeals.

  “My old man says Holm comes down here at night looking for kids to steal, and when he catches one, he sticks ’em in his Labyrinth. That’s what the scholarship test really is—to see how many you can free before he eats ’em.”

  The smallest of the group nods. “That’s what he does to trespassers too. Sticks ’em under his castle and lets the old knights at ’em.”

  The kid beside him shivers.

  “You guys still going tomorrow then?” says the first girl, a suddenly nervous lilt in her voice.

  “Of course. I wanna hear who dies first,” her friend crows. He casually glances our way, and I catch his eye and offer a smile. He responds by putting on a fierce face and assessing Beryll’s fancy, lined surcoat. He points it out to the others and they all start snickering. “Pretty sure he’s going to be the first to die in there,” the youngest says, before his gaze moves on to gawp at Seleni’s pretty shoes.

  “Care to draw a bet on that?” another asks.

  I glance at Beryll just as the baker in the nearby booth growls at the kids. “You rats stop lollygagging and scat! I won’t warn you again. Yer scarin’ away my customers.”

  Beryll swallows loudly, straightens his soiled sleeve cuffs, and acts as if he didn’t just hear the children’s monetization of his impending death. “Miss Tellur, maybe I should explain the predicament you just put me in. Seleni—I mean, Miss Lake—please pardon my current dishevelment, but I feel it my duty to inform you that the horrific event that has just taken place is not what I had in mind when you invited me to attend such an endeavor. And, as such, I hardly want to speak of it, for fear it’ll upset your delicate constitution.”

  Good. Then don’t.

  Seleni lifts a hand. “Constitution monstitution. One of you dish it before I throttle you.”

  Not in front of Lute. I glare at Beryll to clamp his mouth shut.

  The nineteen-year-old’s face falls grave, but he clenches his lips and lifts his narrow chin. “Fine then. In that case, Miss Lake, your cousin here . . .” His tone dips confidentially as he adjusts his sleeve cuffs again and nods at the wide-eyed group of children still observing us from near the baker’s. “Your cousin has just exploded a body.”

  “You did what?” Seleni swerves to me.

  “Did she really now?” Lute murmurs.

  “At first I thought the poor chap was alive.” Beryll wipes at his short brown bangs across his forehead. “Which was its own sort of terrifying. I’d rather you not think on it further, lest you faint.”

  “From the smell of you two, I’m surprised she hasn’t already.” Lute’s amused gaze stays on me as Seleni’s cheek suddenly twitches.

  “Is there anything left of him?” she demands.

  I cough softly into my shoulder.

  Beryll lifts a finger to adjust his rumpled collar.

  “I’m not sure,” I finally admit. “It was like a spew. It even hit a wall.”

  “As well as your faces apparently.” Seleni looks down as if it just struck her that we have actual corpse fluid on our clothes and skin. “Oh dear.” Her cheek twitches again. “Oh my.”

  “Well, in my defense, the stomach gases can build up and—”

  Beryll’s eyes bulge from their sockets. “Gases—really, Miss Tellur? Perhaps you can keep your voice down.”

  Except there’s no need because Seleni has just erupted into a high-pitched peal of laughter that causes the ogling children to stare harder and eve
n a few of the market sellers to turn and look as their customers waver between buying leather shoes or leftovers.

  “Miss Lake!” Beryll uses his second-level-of-appalled tone, which is normally reserved for things like exposed elbows, liberal thinking, and every time I talk about undergarments. “I find nothing funny about this or the fluid on our faces. And I’d like to get home to bathe immediately.”

  “Oh good grief, Beryll.” Seleni starts to tug away from the growing stares of interest, except a voice ripples out from the market booths opposite us. “Oh, Seleniiiii! I thought that was you over there!”

  I freeze. I don’t have to see the owner to know who it belongs to. She’s married to one of the town’s papery owners, with whom my uncle landed me an apprenticeship two summers ago. The woman is squeezed in between two seller stalls with an armful of fresh eggs.

  “Did your mother get those cards she ordered, dear? We had our boy drop them off at the estate.”

  Seleni makes her voice cheerier than usual. “Yes, Mrs. Holder. My mum received them this morning, thank you. So nice to see you.”

  “Oh good. Well, I’d love to hear if she’s pleased with them. If she is, perhaps she could mention it to your father’s parliament friends.” The woman pauses long enough that I think maybe she’s moved on, but I catch her looking at Lute and me. I hold my breath, but her demeanor doesn’t alter other than to adjust the load in her arms—as if to suggest we carry it for her. When we don’t offer, she apparently thinks better of it and turns away.

  I let my shoulders ease, until she stops and something flicks across her countenance as she swerves back our direction. She takes a step nearer and my lungs crawl inside my spine. “Miss Tellur,” she says sharply. “I hardly recognized you.”

  She glances at my clothes, then at our surroundings, and furrows her brow. “Young lady, I’d hate to mention to young Vincent’s parents that this is how you spend your time. I can’t imagine they would approve.” She purses her lips as if she has more to say and believes it would do me a favor to do so. But instead, mercifully, she tightens her arms around her market load and says nothing further. Just turns and strides away, and I am left with embarrassment flaring in my gut and on my face at the mention of Vincent, and at knowing full well what the rest of her words would’ve been.