A Study in Drowning(7)

She opened the book to a map of the island. There was the river Naer, which cut straight through it vertically, like the blue vein on the back of her hand. There was Caer-Isel, of course—with a footnote reminding her of the city’s Argantian name, Ker-Is—a large piece of flotsam in the center of Lake Bala.

The official border between Llyr and Argant was a large steel fence, topped with coils of barbed wire. It gashed through the center of the city, almost right through the Sleeper Museum. Effy had gone to see it during her first week at the university, and the stark authoritativeness had stunned her. A number of gray-clad security guards were stationed along the fence, unsmiling under their fur hats. She had watched as a small group—a family—came up from the Argantian side and began the long process of unfolding papers and passports, the guards’ movements brisk and the children’s faces growing redder as they stood out in the cold. Above them, the two flags warred with one another, and with the wind: the black serpent on a green field for Argant, and the red serpent on a white field for Llyr. After a while, it had become too difficult to watch, and Effy had left in a hurry, feeling an odd sense of shame.

Her finger traveled down the map. Northern Llyr was verdant hills, a patchwork of sunlight and mist, pocked with squat trees and stone houses, small towns with narrow streets, and the largest city, Draefen. It was the administrative capital of Llyr, and the site of her family’s townhouse, where Effy had grown up with her mother and grandparents. Draefen sat snugly in a valley between two mountain peaks, spanning both sides of the Naer. The sky was clouds and factory smog, and the line of the horizon was cut up with the crests of white sails, like the fins of lake monsters that no one from the North believed in anymore. She had thought seeing it, even as just a sketch on parchment, might make her feel homesick, but mostly she remembered the smells of oil and salt and fish guts. Effy’s eyes moved past it quickly.

And then, south of Draefen, south of Laleston, the last town that anyone with good sense had reason to visit, was the Bottom Hundred. The southernmost hundred miles of Llyr were all ragged coastline and fishing villages, crumbling white cliffs and brusque, ugly beaches with pebbles that cut right through your boots. Even the illustration seemed hurried, as if the artist had wanted to be done with it and move on to something better.

The Bay of Nine Bells looked like the bite a dog had taken out of a rotted old piece of meat. Effy brushed her thumb along it, tracing the serrated outline of the cove. And Emrys Myrddin was from here, the very bottom of the Bottom Hundred, a place so dismal and remote, Effy could scarcely even hold it in her mind. It was so different, it might as well have been another country, she thought. Another world.

The sound of the door creaking open made Effy jump. She peered out from behind the bookcase and saw another student enter the room, peacoat held under his arm, still breathing hard from the cold. He put down his coat and satchel on one of the tables and moved toward her, and a chill shot up her spine. The idea of him coming upon her, tucked on the floor in her corner, was both embarrassing and strangely terrifying. Effy stood up and tried to move quietly out of sight, but he saw her anyway.

“Hey,” he said. His voice sounded friendly enough.

“Hi,” she said back slowly.

“Sorry—you don’t have to leave. There’s enough room here for the two of us, I think.” He smiled, showing just the faintest edge of his teeth.

“That’s all right,” she said. “I was leaving anyway.”

Effy tried to move past him, to return the atlas to its place on the shelf, but the boy didn’t step aside to accommodate her until the very last second, so their arms brushed. Her heart jumped into her throat. Stupid, she chided herself immediately. He hasn’t done anything wrong. Still—the air in the room suddenly felt solid and thick. She had to get out.

Then her eye caught the patch on his jacket. It was the insignia of the literature college.

“Oh!” she said, abruptly and too loudly. “You study literature?”

“Yes.” The boy met her gaze. “I’m a first-year. Why?”

“I was just wondering . . .” She hesitated. She was sure the request would seem odd. But the morbid, bitter curiosity had pricked at her for so long. “Do you know any Argantian students in your college?”

He frowned. “I don’t think so. Well, maybe a couple, in their second or third years. But it’s not common. I’m sure you can imagine why. I mean, how many Argantians want to study Llyrian literature?”

Her question exactly. “So you don’t know any of them by name?”

“No. Sorry.”

Effy tried not to look visibly disappointed. She knew it was childish to make P. Héloury the avatar of all her bitterness. But it was just so wretchedly unfair. Argant had been Llyr’s enemy for centuries. Why was it that an Argantian could study Llyrian literature, just because he was a man, but she couldn’t because she was a girl? Why didn’t it matter that she knew Myrddin’s books back to front, that she’d spent almost half her life sleeping with Angharad on her bedside table? That once she’d tried to fashion a girdle of iron for herself and laid boughs of mountain ash at the threshold of her room?

“That’s all right,” she said, but the chagrin crept into her voice anyway. The boy was looking at her with bewilderment, so she felt the need to explain. “It’s just, I was trying to take out some books on Myrddin—”