The Nine Oceans

Chapter 12

Tenet Mik

Louise laid there for a few moments after waking and tried to figure out if she was dreaming or not. The room felt warm, and the bed was comfortable, but she couldn't hear her father snoring... She sat up with a start and squinted around at the darkened room. As with every other morning since agreeing to work for Montrade and being taken off the house staff, the realization of where she was sleeping and why the bed and room were comfortable was something she tried to pinch away as just another dream. Today's first pinch added a new little bruise to the short row of fading bruises on the inside of her left arm.

The room was still there the second time she squinted around at it.

She spun her legs off the bed and banged her knee into the bedside table she kept forgetting was there because she'd never had one beside the bed before. That knock rattled the table and reminded her that – as of yesterday – she now had glasses. Proper frames measured to fit her face and lenses correcting her eyesight to the extent she could see tree branches, people's eye colors while talking to them, and read the small, side notes in the margins of the journals Mister James let her use as references. Her glasses were right there on the little table where she'd left them last night before falling asleep.

Everything snapped into focus as she settled the frames onto her face and blinked around at the room she was sleeping in. Her bedroom. Her father's bedroom was across the short hallway, which was why she couldn't hear him snoring. They had two bedrooms. And a sitting room. And a kitchen. And a private bathroom! With hot and cold water pumps and faucets as needed for the separate toilet, sinks, and shower!

Louise pinched the inside of her right arm and added another bruise to the row there; a row of fading dots matching those on her left arm because she still couldn't believe after the first pinch that she was really awake. They'd been given a Montrade company room with two bedrooms because Mister Cromby had known her father was also working on the estate and assumed they would want to live together.

She lit her pocket flame and stood up, the thick rug warm under her bare feet, and then quickly tidied the covers before hurrying to the bathroom and giggling because it was really there. She raced through her morning routine and crossed back to her bedroom to dress. The chest of drawers in each bedroom was as wide as her arms could reach, with two deep drawers below and one shallow one at the very top. From cleaning other people's homes, she knew the shallow drawer was for jewelry and keepsakes. Smiling at the thought of one day having something to put in the shallow drawer now that she had one of her own, Louise opened the top deep drawer. For now, that's where all her clothing fit – with room to spare – so that was the only one she needed to open.

She hummed her way through dressing, smiling about the mending she'd done last night being so much tidier than every night before getting glasses, and then folded and tucked away her repaired night dress. She twisted her hair up quickly so the few pins she owned would hold it and crossed to open the heavy drapes to let in the early-morning light. Dawn was just breaking and the few clouds were brilliant shades of golden reds against the soon to be bright blue sky. She loved this time of the morning. The corner of one of the manor kitchen's gardens was visible outside her window and she watched the cooks she could see laughing over a joke as they collected what they needed for finishing the morning meals for all the house staff, and probably for making up breakfast for Mister James...

Time for breakfast! She scooped up her little pocket flame and hurried over to her own kitchen. She pumped cool water into the kettle and stoked the furnace providing heat for hot washing water and for the stove, remembering she needed to remind her father to refill the wood and ask where to get coal now that they had the... the...

She stared at the wood catch, not processing at all that it had been refilled overnight, and a bag of coal was sitting on top with a note pinned in place to be seen. A door in the wall at the back of the catch she hadn't noticed before, big enough for someone to place logs through without scraping their knuckles, was open. Louise ducked down and looked through the little door to see a plain, wide, empty corridor on the other side. She unpinned the note and held it close to her pocket flame so she could read it: