Our Lady of the Islands Read Free Page A

you home, my lady,” the boy answered, pushing his dark brown hair out of his eyes and grinning at her.
    After a perfunctory glance around the lush grounds, she went to her little office upstairs in the loom house to file and sort the documents, orders, and purchase receipts she’d brought from town. Always so much paperwork! Once again, she resolved to hire clerical help.
    When the bell chimed for change of shift, she looked up, startled to see the afternoon entirely passed. She straightened her desk, then began the short walk up the hill. She passed alongside the loom house and in front of the dye works, the two largest buildings on the island. Blue-and-red macaws shrieked and hopped about in the chinaberry trees above her head, scolding her for disturbing their evening congress — without offering food. “Peace, you little beggars,” she chuckled at them as she turned beside the unmarried women’s dormitory, nestled in a riot of blooming lacuina vines next to the refectory for her workers. Beyond that came the cottages of the older, married employees, and the few bachelor couples of whom she did not inquire so much.
    Her own house stood on the highest part of the island, an often cloud-capped bluff situated on the rain-shadowed western face of the peak. Like the compound’s cottages, it was built raised on poles in the traditional Alizari style, albeit with the modern conveniences of plumbing and a decent indoor kitchen. Its sweeping teak gables were pierced with tall windows and wide, elaborately carved lattice shutters to close against ocean storms or open to the sun’s benediction.
    The walk might be short — the entire island was little more than a thousand paces north to south — but the rise was of a steepness, and Sian was of an age (no matter what Reikos might say), as to leave her half out of breath by the time she’d passed the stand of bony Dragon’s Blood trees outside their gate, and slid aside the soft peg that held the front door closed. No need for guards or even locks when you owned your own bridgeless island.
    Inside, a warm glow came from the kitchen, bearing with it the welcoming aroma of food on the stove. “That you, wife?”
    “Yes, Arouf, it is I.” Sian unwrapped her elaborately patterned silk shawl and hung it on a hook by the door, next to its many mates. Today’s had been blue, with the spectacular image of an iridescent morpho butterfly picked out along its length.
    In the kitchen, she found her husband standing over a large pot, a long wooden spoon in his hand. Bela was nowhere to be seen; Arouf must have given their cook-housekeeper the evening off. “That smells good,” she said, going to kiss him on his damp and bristly beard.
    “It’s cold enough out for a spicy sweetprawn stew, I should think.” He gave her an affectionate pat on the arm, his attention still on the pot.
    “Cold?” She lifted an eyebrow, smiling as she went to the cool box to find an open jug of tart white wine. She poured herself a glass, then refilled Arouf’s. “Only a man from the farthest reach of Malençon could possibly call this weather cold.”
    “Or perhaps one who had a particular craving for spicy sweetprawn stew.” Arouf sipped his wine. “It should be ready soon, don’t wander far.”
    “I won’t.”
    Without mentioning any names, she began to tell Arouf about conversations she’d had with ‘several trading partners’ — news of the Stone Coast grape blight, the increasing labor shortage, the stagnation at the harbor at Cutter’s. “And the city feels … less civilized all the time. Jamino Fanti tells me that his runner-cart was ambushed by a mob of angry vagrants last week, demanding money from him.”
    “Or what?” Arouf asked.
    “Or they’d push the cart over and break its wheels, they said. That’s what he told me.”
    “Did he give in to this? Where was his runner while all this happened?”
    “There were too many of them for the runner to fend off,