The sudden burning smell was terrible, like seared meat. Hot metal pressed into flesh for longer than seemed necessary. Tom’s every muscle bunched with the desire to curl around the pain, but he didn’t. He stayed on his knees, breathing heavily in and out, his flesh trembling like an exhausted horse, covered in sweat at the end of its run.
A roar went up, and the shipman held Tom’s arm aloft, hauling him to his feet and brandishing his wrist for everyone to see. Tom looked dazed, stumbling up. Violet saw a brief flash of the skin of his wrist, branded with the shape of an S, before the shipman quickly doused it with alcohol and wrapped it in a bandage.
That’s how I’ll be, thought Violet. Brave, like Tom.
He disappeared from her view, the crowd swallowing him in a wave of congratulations. She was craning her neck again, straining for any glimpse. Cut off, she went slithering down the ropes, trying to reach Tom through the press of men, even as she was shoved impersonally here and there, pushed back. She couldn’t see him at all, though the sickly rich smell of cooked meat lingered. A painful grip on her arm wrenched her sideways.
‘I told you to stay back, rat.’
The man who gripped her arm had lank hair under a dirty kerchief, his beard a rash across his cheeks. He had the rough skin of a sailor, red capillaries like netting on his face. The manacle of his fingers hurt. She smelled stale gin on his breath and felt a wave of revulsion. She pushed it down and dug her heels in. ‘Let go. I’ve a right to be here!’
‘You’re an ugly brown rat who’s stolen his better’s clothes.’
‘I haven’t stolen anything!’ she said, though she was wearing Tom’s waistcoat and trousers, and his shirt too, and the shoes that he’d outgrown. And then, humiliatingly, she heard Tom’s voice. ‘What’s going on?’
Tom had shrugged into a shirt, though the two buttons of the high collar were still undone and the front ruffle hung open. Violet had a clear view of him as space opened between them. Every eye was on them.
The sailor held her by the neck. ‘This boy’s causing trouble—’
The sheen of sweat from the branding still on him, Tom said, ‘That’s not a boy. That’s my sister, Violet.’
She saw the sailor react to that the same way that everyone reacted to it: with disbelief at first, and then with a new way of looking at Tom, as if they had learned something about Tom’s father.
‘But she’s—’
‘Are you questioning me, sailor?’ Freshly branded, Tom had more authority than anyone on the ship. He was Simon’s now, and his word was Simon’s word. The sailor closed his mouth with a snap, releasing her instantly to stumble onto the planking. She and Tom faced each other. Her cheeks felt hot.
‘I can explain—’
In London, no one guessed that Tom was Violet’s half-brother. They didn’t look alike. Tom was three years older and didn’t share her Indian heritage. He looked just like their father: tall, broad-shouldered, and blue-eyed, with pale skin and auburn hair. Violet was slight and took after her mother, with brown skin, dark eyes and dark hair. The only thing they shared was their freckles.
‘Violet. What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at home.’
‘You took the brand,’ she said. ‘Father will be proud.’
Tom instinctively gripped his own arm, above the bandage, as though he wanted to grasp the wound but knew that he couldn’t. ‘How do you know about that?’
‘Everyone on the docks knows about it,’ said Violet. ‘They say Simon brands his best men, and they rise in the ranks, and he gives them all special rewards, and—’
He ignored her, talking in a low, urgent voice, glancing at the men nearby with tense concern. ‘I told you not to come here. You need to leave the ship.’
She looked around them. ‘Are you joining his expedition? Will he put you in charge of a dig?’
‘That’s enough,’ said Tom as his face shuttered. ‘Mother’s right. You’re too old for this. Following me around. Wearing my clothes. Go home.’
Mother’s right. It hurt. Englishmen abroad didn’t usually bring their bastard daughters with them back to England. Violet knew that from the fights between her father and Tom’s mother. But Tom had always stood up for her. He’d tug one of her curls and say, ‘Violet, let’s go for a walk,’ and take her out to a street vendor to buy her hot tea and a curranty roll, while inside his mother shouted at their father, Why do you have that girl living in this house? To humiliate me? To make me a laughingstock?