Islands in the Sky

4.9

Cassa sat for a moment and thought.

It was an odd way to deliver the news, Cassa thought, having this man do it rather than Cassa being summoned to her grandmother’s chambers to speak in person. It was odd, but it was also very much her grandmother’s way, and Cassa thought she understood why. With some of her cousins, it was probably wise to ensure the overseer and the cousin actually met, even if only once, and knew one another’s faces, before the cousin lost interest in business and stopped meeting with the overseer.

Having this man tell her made a certain kind of sense, Cassa thought. Knowing her cousins, it actually did. And the rest, that she was being given the bird-fishing fleet, that was interesting, too.

It was her grandmother’s doing, so it ought to mean something. Her grandmother’s doings always meant something. Something more than just being presented with a wedding gift and an income. Cassa was being rewarded, that much was obvious. Not as richly rewarded as perhaps she might have hoped, not with a merchant ship, or a trade route, or a scavenger fleet. That was the reward her cousins would probably expect on their wedding days, but not Cassa.

Cassa got the bird-fishing fleet, and there was a message in that.

That the fishing fleet was better, Cassa thought. That might be the message. If so, it was one she already knew. She paid attention, and already understood. Most of her cousins might not realize, but Cassa did. The fishing fleet was better.

Her cousins with scavenger boats were vastly rich once or twice a year, spending a great deal, their lives full of friends. And then, all the rest of the time, they were impoverished, and desperately waiting for news. The scavenger boats were a nuisance as much as a gift, a rope to bind a troublemaker rather than a source of influence or power. The scavenger boats were mostly a nuisance, and a merchant vessel often was just as bad, too. The Middletower family was a mercantile family. Trade was the heart of their power. Cassa’s grandmother would never let control of anything actually important out of her hands, so any trading boat she gave away was one she didn’t need.

The fishing fleet was different, though. It wasn’t critical to the family’s position, but it was food, and food was important. It was a steady earner, year in and year out. It was half-forgotten, unglamorous, plain and unpolished, and yet it was important all the same. Most of all, it was ongoing, steady income, income that was always there, and steady income was a foundation upon which other things could be built, things such as wealth and power and influence.

Cassa thought she was being told something, and she thought she understood what it was. The fleet would make her money, and wouldn’t inspire as much jealousy. Her cousins, her rivals, wouldn’t notice she was ahead of them. And also, that she was being given complete control of the whole fleet, to do with as she wished, that was interesting too. It was her grandmother telling her to prepare, she thought. To make friendships. To find loyalties. To have a place of strength she could begin from, build outward from, as she prepared to take over the family.

It was clever, Cassa thought. Her grandmother might have been planning this for years. She might even have married Cassa off now because of her own age, rather than Cassa’s, to begin pushing Cassa in the direction she wished Cassa to go.