Sky Song: Overture by Meg Merriet Page B

better candidate as he knew far more about grammar and geography, but seeing as how I had the qualification of being female, the charge fell to me.
    After the meeting, the men came out smoking cigars and holding diamond-patterned glasses of port. Dirk hung back and put a record on the gramophone. He slipped out as Maive neared and pulled her in by the waist, lifting and spinning her in a vivacious polka. Such girlish laughter burst forth from her, I almost forgot she was a witch. She seemed so like a child, twirling and grinning. I was always curious about lovers. I often watched them in candlelit corners of taverns or on benches in city parks and wondered what miracle had brought them hence.
    I never knew love like that. I made the mistake once of thinking I did with a picklock called Mikhail, but he was too good a liar, and in the end, decided I had nothing to offer that he couldn’t have with the flower girl on Bartleby row.
    Dirk and Maive retired early together. They went right past Dorian on the stairwell, ignoring him as he asked what was to be said to the men.
    Our host’s daughter Lily came into the ballroom soon after, having changed her garment to one with a plunging square neckline. She had magnetic presence, though her beauty was not without flaw. Her eyes had thick lids, her teeth came a little too far forwards in her mouth, her upper lip was plump and her nose was long, but every feature suited her.
    Lily stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled, hitting a frequency that pierced my brain like a spear. Everyone turned, and then was taken aback to see this woman in bustle and skirt standing with her arms akimbo. “So they tell me you’re a bunch of fugitives!” she said, projecting across the ballroom with a proud sort of confidence wielded only by people of noble birth. “Every last one of you. You might have survived falling out of the sky, but you’ll hang for treason if the Blue Dusk find you. Now your captain has your best interests at heart, and has brought you to our doors pleading for your sorry souls. We’re only helping him because he is a very old friend of ours.
    “You’re all welcome to stay here as your captain gets your affairs in order, but there are some house rules—” The men began to grumble over her and she had to shout to be heard. “As there were rules on your ship! No stealing or harming anyone in our company. Treat our home with respect and go outside to do your business. Dirk assures me that he will still enforce the same disciplinary consequences observed on the Wastrel.”
    I sat on a loveseat with little Molly at my feet, asking me questions.
    “Why don’t pirates have any buttons on their shirts?”
    “Because laces don’t pop off in the wind.”
    The girl and her questions were a nuisance, but these things distracted me from the lecherous attention my corset and bloomers had enticed. I’d abandoned the ehrendame gown completely and chose to go about in my undergarments, which were now transmuted from pristine white into the color of sand.
    Molly had somehow taken up the hobby of embroidery in this stranger’s home. She’d asked for my handkerchief, and upon my giving it to her, begun stitching a bouquet of pink roses.
    “Where did you get that?” I asked.
    “I found a needle on the floor. I used some of the loose threads from my skirt for the flowers.”
    “How resourceful.”
    “Do you enjoy needlepoint?” Molly asked.
    “Not really.”
    The fifty-some remaining men laid down their bedrolls and organized what few things they had left to their names. They never had much to begin with, but the loss was evident on their faces. Any small mementos like photographs, family weapons or lucky flasks had likely gone down with the Wastrel. Even if they hadn’t, all of us still mourned our ship’s destruction.
    “Do you have a beau?” Molly asked.
    “No.”
    “Probably because you don’t know needlepoint. Men like a lady to know these things if she’s to