The House Of Salt & Vows

A FALLEN HOUSE COULD ALWAYS BE RAISED AGAIN. 

From the way Cosima’s father told them, the task sounded far easier than it truly was. Still, the old man had an air of confidence that even surprised the two women travelling with him. He would repeatedly tell Cosima the same thing: chin up, dear, but don’t look them in the eyes when you meet them. Not at the floor either, but never in their eyes. With cuffs frayed where the candlelight wouldn’t reach, her father had said it often enough that she had stopped believing the words and instead chose to believe only in him.

Their boat was too small for the Vossari water-gate. They all could feel it the moment the skiff slid beneath the arch: the mooring had been built for barges hung with lanterns, for delegations, for people when they arrived. The Vaels had travelled the way poor relations always did, in a hired craft that knocked against the marble steps. A servant in gold-trimmed black looked down at the three of them and decided, in the space of a breath, exactly what they appeared to be worth.

Her father climbed out first and pretended not to need the offered hand. Her mother went second, and she took the servant’s hand, and thanked the man by a name he had not given, because Mirella Vael made allies out of furniture. Then it was Cosima’s turn, and she stepped up onto the steps of the house she was meant to be sold into, and as the city fell away behind her the cold came up through the soles of her shoes. This wasn’t a chill she was feeling. It was magic.

Not just any magic either: Saltfire.

The Vossari did not bother to hide it the way lesser Houses did. It was in the lamp fittings, as the veins of pale gold light ran through the marble underfoot. The whole palazzo was breathing magic, more than Cosima had ever stood around. Every grain of it pulled at the thing behind her sternum. The tide leaned toward all that light, wanting the way it always wanted to.

Make it stop, she thought to herself. Make it quiet. Make them all go dark.

Cosima held the leash hard, and she managed to make a warm smile. She had been smiling over magical tides since she was six years old; her face no longer knew it was lying. Her mother’s gloved hand found the small of her back, and it provided support as they both strolled in.

The receiving hall could have drowned her father’s whole estate. The Vossari kept them standing in it just long enough to make them sweat. Showing off their grand foyer let them all know what the Vossari truly thought of them. The hall quietly screamed to the three of them they were not important and that they were in fact the metaphorical barbarians at the gates. After a little time passed, the door opened at the far end. The heir of House Vossari, Dario Vossari, strolled out alone. Shocked that only he was coming out, Cosima had briefly forgot to keep smiling.

She had heard the rumors. That Dario had drowned a rival in the Salt Canal with his bare hands. Those rumors had undersold his massive hands. Dario was younger than any of them had expected, all clean hard lines and eyes that were as grey as the weather coming in. Cosima had always been worried there could be a terrible age gap with her betrothed, but this heir didn’t look anymore than a few years older than she. Dario crossed the hall without hurrying because nothing in the house had ever required him to. He did not look at her father, who had straightened to his full proud height. Nor did he look upon her mother, who had produced her warmest smile. Dario looked directly at Cosima once, top to bottom, the way a man might check on a horse he had already decided not to purchase.

“This is the Vael girl,” Dario said, but not to her. To the room.

“Cosima,” her mother graciously supplied, as though he’d asked.

“Cosima Vael?” Dario said the name like a coin he was biting to check it was real.

“Yes,” Cosima confirmed, although he wasn’t exactly asking.

“It’s old name... I’ll grant you that,” He turned, at last, to face her father. “And almost nothing else, by my accounting.”

“Excuse me?” her father replied, shocked by what he said.

“My father is sentimental about old blood, but I am not.” Dario explained. There was short pause, which was weighed and deliberate. “I’d have this settled honestly before we sit down to pretend over dinner. I don’t want this match. I want you to know I don’t, so that no one mistakes my courtesy for consent.”

Her father’s appeared to be speechless, but her mother’s smile did not move a hair. This was how Cosima knew she was afraid.

As for Cosima herself, who was meant to keep her eyes lowered, was starting to lose her patience. She had played the demure daughter through worse rooms than this but found that she was tired of the attitude. She was far from home and standing on stone that hummed with enough stolen magic to light a district. Listening to this man who thought highly of himself berate her family was all she was willing to tolerate. Most women in her position would have cowered and apologized for not meeting his expectations, but Dario had already said his mind was made. So, Cosima decided since nothing she could say would change anything, she would break with protocol and tell the ignorant ass before her what she really thought.

“Then we are in agreement on something, my lord.” Cosima chided back, “For I don’t want this match either.”

The hall went very still. Cosima’s father made a small sound that almost sounded like a wounded animal. Dario Vossari turned back to face her, and for the first time something flickered behind the weather. It wasn’t warmth, nothing so kind, but there was interest. The cold, clean interest of a man who had just been handed a problem.

“You don’t?” he repeated.

“I do not,” Cosima confirmed.

She kept her voice level. The tide pressed hard, but she held it back.

“Then why are you here?” Dario inquired, and now he was being more playful than serious.

“My House needs yours,” Cosima replied, acting a mother who was trying to explain something to a dull child. “And your father wants my blood for reasons neither of us was asked about. You and I are the price they’ve agreed to pay. So, we can spend the next weeks politely lying to one other, or we can be honest and spare ourselves the energy required to make what appears to be a futile effort.”

She paused for a moment and let herself look at him directly, which a good girl would never have done. Cosima’s hard stare gave Dario the impression that she too was as unimpressed with the match as he claimed to be.

“I expect you would prefer to spare yourself the effort too.” She added.

Dario studied her, and then he did the thing. He went still. Not the stillness of anger, but something far quieter and more total. His head tilted a fraction, and his grey eyes lost focus on her face and settled instead on the air around her, noting the space she was taking up in the room.

Cosima had seen that stillness twice before. Once on a hedge-priest who had pawed at the edge of her secret and never known it. Also once on her own mother, the night Mirella had sat her down and told her what they were, and what listeners could do. This was why she must never, ever be in a room with one.

And Dario was a listener.

The man supposed to be her betrothed heard magic, and he was listening to her now. He was listening very carefully, trying to hear from the place where every other soul in this gilded, drowning house rang like a struck bell. But this was where Cosima fought to make no sound at all.

“Huh,” Dario Vossari murmured to himself. He frowned at the silence where his alleged bride should have been. Behind her, Cosima’s mother’s hand pressed hard against her spine. She knew what her mother was thinking. Steady. Steady.

Cosima smiled back at the heir, as she now knew something he didn’t, and that was bound to frustrate the man who had been working so hard to intimidate them all.

“Is there something wrong, my lord?” Cosima inquired.