A Study in Drowning(63)

While Effy looked at Preston, he looked at her. She wondered what he saw. Master Corbenic had seen green eyes and golden hair, something soft and white and pliable.

Sometimes she wanted to tell someone everything that had happened, and see what they had to say about it. She had already heard the version of the story in which she was a tramp, a slut, a whore. She had heard it so many times, it was like a water stain on velvet; it would never quite come out. She wondered if there was another version of the story. She didn’t even know her own.

Surely Preston couldn’t guess at all the things running through her mind. Unlike Effy, he looked very tired. Behind his glasses, his eyelids had begun to droop. That was something funny: his left eyelid seemed to droop slightly more than his right. From far away, she never would have noticed.

“Sleepy yet?” he asked, his words somewhat slurred.

“Not really,” she confessed.

“What else can I do?”

“Just . . . talk,” she said. She had to lower her gaze, embarrassed. “About anything, really.”

“I’ll try to think of the dullest topics I know.”

She smiled, biting her lip. “They don’t have to be dull. You could—you could tell me something new. Something you’ve never told me before.”

Preston fell silent, contemplating. “Well,” he said after a moment, “if you want to know why I remember ‘The Mariner’s Demise’ so well, it’s because there’s an old Argantian saying that’s eerily similar.”

“Oh?” Effy perked. “What is it?”

“I’ll tell you if you promise you won’t flinch at the sound of our heathen tongue.” The corner of his mouth twitched upward.

Effy just laughed softly. “I promise.”

“Ar mor a lavar d’ar martolod: poagn ganin, me az pevo; diwall razon, me az peuzo.”

“Is that really Argantian?”

“Yes. Well, it’s the Northern tongue. It’s what grandmothers speak to their eye-rolling grandchildren.” Preston smiled faintly.

“What does it mean?”

“‘Says the sea to the sailor: strive with me and live; neglect me and drown.’”

“That does sound a lot like something Myrddin would write,” Effy said. It was the first time, she realized, that she’d heard Argantian spoken by a native. It was beautiful—or maybe just Preston’s voice was. “Say something else.”

“Hm.” Preston frowned, considering. Then he said, “Evit ar mor beza? treitour, treitouroc’h ar merc’hed.”

“What’s that?”

Amusement crinkled his eyes. “‘The sea is treacherous, but women are even more treacherous.’”

Effy flushed. “That doesn’t sound like something your grandmother would say.”

“You’re right. She would clap me on the back of the head for that one.”

“Tell me another,” said Effy.

Preston pursed his lips, eyes glazing over for a moment as he thought. At last, he said, “Ar gwir garantez zo un tan; ha ne c'hall ket beva? en e unan.”

“I like how that one sounds the best,” Effy said. “Tell me what it means.”

Behind his glasses, Preston’s eyes fixed on her. “‘Love is a fire that cannot burn alone.’”

Effy’s heartbeat skipped. “It sounded a lot longer in Argantian.”

“I’m paraphrasing.” His voice grew lower, sleepier. “I promise I’m not secretly swearing at you.”

“I didn’t think that.” Effy’s own eyelids were beginning to feel heavy. “That helped, though. Thank you.”

Preston didn’t seem to hear her. His eyes had slid shut. After a few moments, his breathing slowed, his chest rising and falling with the rhythm of sleep.

Very gently, so as not to disturb him, Effy reached over and took off his glasses. He didn’t shift at all.

A curiosity overcame her, and she slipped the glasses onto her own head for a moment. Effy had wondered, more than once, whether Preston really needed his glasses or if he just wore them to make himself look more serious and scholarly. But when she blinked and blinked behind the thick lenses, her vision blurring and head throbbing, she realized that he did need them after all, and quite badly.

Well. Angharad still eluded her, but that was one mystery solved.

She folded the glasses neatly and laid them on the bedside table. As she turned over, Effy saw one of the hag stones half sunk into the plush carpet. It must have fallen out of her pocket while she undressed. Effy fished it off the floor.

Preston still had not shifted. She turned back over, and held the hag stone up to her eye, holding her breath, pulse quickening.

But all she saw was Preston’s sleeping face: his long, thin nose, winged with the tiny indents his glasses had left, his freckles, the slight cleft of his chin. His skin looked soft; there was a small furrow in his brow as if, even in sleep, his mind was turning on so many things.

Effy lowered the hag stone. Her heart was still pounding, but for a very different reason. She rolled over and set the stone on the bedside table next to Preston’s glasses. Then she pulled the chain on the vaguely kitschy-looking lamp, settling them both into darkness.



Effy did manage to sleep, eventually. When she woke the next morning, Preston had already risen. He was sitting at the desk, Myrddin’s diary open in front of him.