Sky Song: Overture by Meg Merriet Read Free Book Online Page B

bed. The maids brought a corset for me. I was used to discomfort, but this was a whole new level of torture. They cinched my waist to an inhuman measurement then fitted me with a hoop skirt. I was already wearing ten pounds of clothing when they added another twenty with the gown. They secured over a hundred buttons in the back and on the cuffs. The off-shoulder mutton-chop sleeves clung tight, securing my prison of stiffened silk.
    They added a choker to cover my scar and showed me my reflection in a gilded mirror. They all smiled, and looked as if they expected me to do the same. I’d never seen my own cleavage before or even known I had any. The sight of myself made me want to retch. It was like seeing my body flayed: exposed, filthy, and yearning for death.
    They did not have any shoes that fit me, but I was permitted to wear my boots as long as I walked slowly so they didn’t peek out from the bottom of my hemline.
    “Where is Molly?” I asked.
    The crone folded her hands at her waist and said, “That whiny brat is still getting ready. The child cries and cries and nothing in the world can console her.”
    “If I could just see her.”
    “You will go up before her to scatter rose petals on deck.”
    “May I have my fiddle? My lady requested I play it.”
    “We have a quartet from Leffen.”
    “Where is my fiddle?”
    The crone’s face grew severe as she lost her patience with me. “The groom will have fun breaking this one in.”
    I coughed on my words when I begged her pardon.
    “What do you think the ehrendame is? You’re to be your mistress’s handmaiden and the prince’s lover,” the crone explained.
    My heart sank like a dagger into a boiling sea. “That swine won’t touch me.”
    The crone shoved a cast-iron cauldron of flower petals into my arms and slapped me across the face. It stung, but not as much as her words, “Do as you’re told, peasant.”
    I had heard that phrase before on that awful day when the Blue Dusk came to Shale.
    “It should be quite an exciting night,” she went on to say. “A wedding feast followed by the execution of a notorious pirate.”
    “The Wastrel will blow the Crescendo out of the sky,” I hissed. I saw my own temper reflected back at me. The crone slapped me again.
    “Quiet, slattern. You may be dressed as a lady, but do not forget that you were born sullied.” This poor woman. She didn’t know any better. She only saw Mona, peasant girl of Shale. She didn’t know Mona died long ago when the Cerulean Knight cut her throat. I was Clikk, a picklock, a thief, a sky pirate. That thought of pity for the old woman fluttered in my mind like a lone feather on the wind, and then Clikk took over.
    I smacked my cauldron over a maid’s head, stole the hair pick right out of her bun and stabbed the crone in the shoulder. She screeched and I slammed her head into the bedpost. The remaining maid tried to flee, but I caught her by the apron sash and pulled her in like a prize of war.
    “Shhhh,” I whispered in her ear, stealing her hairpins one by one and tucking them down the front of my corset. “You have the long white neck of a swan, easy to break. So keep quiet, and help me tie up these ladies.”

 
    VII. Clikk
     
     
    A nd now I was improvising. The original plan had been sketchy from the start, and I could not in good conscience abandon my captain to the mercy of the Blue Dusk.
    The sumptuous halls were well serviced. The fruit bowls overflowed with bright apricots and berries. Floral arrangements bloomed with radiance. I did not find my fiddle, and accepted it was lost to me. Finding Dirk was my prerogative now. I kept my head held high with an air of belonging, as I had done when I first hit the city streets of Amaranthia in search of work. I smiled courteously to each person I passed, channeling Molly’s innocence and propriety. Nobody bothered me or asked what I was doing. Not a single guard had any suspicion of the yellow-haired noblewoman holding a