Wayfarer: A Tale of Beauty and Madness (Tales of Beauty and Madness) Read Online Free Page A

the Waste was only barely scarier than staying
here
. She added it up inside her head again, and came up with the same answer. Two hundred and eighty credits. Not even a quarter of what she needed to pay for passage
and
indemnity. Good luck finishing school or getting apprenticed in another city, too, where she didn’t know anyone and had no money for rent or food. She’d be better off getting an apartment in one of the nasty parts of New Haven, except the trust wouldn’t pay for her to attend Juno if she wasn’t living in the family home. The Strep had mentioned as much this evening, casually, her candy-sweet tone dripping with venom other adults couldn’t hear.
    The Strep had been awfully forthcoming about some things, but less forthcoming about the terms of her guardianship. If Mother Heloise hadn’t looked at the will—or was the Mother bluffing?
    I don’t care. At least Juno’s a good education
. All she had to do was get through the next couple years. Year and a half. Year and eight months. Whatever. Ebermerle had dormitories, and the prospect of getting out and away from Perrault Street was enough to give her a small warm feeling of optimism.
    Just a tiny one, but you took what you could get.
    The Strep glanced sidelong at her, and Ellie’s face ached with the effort to keep itself neutral. The woman had a goddamn genius for finding any trace of rebellion in a teenage girl’s expression.
    Maybe I could be a diplomat. Dad always said they could keep a straight face under torture.
    Oh but the thought of her father hurt. Seeing him cave in around the hole of Mom’s death, and then Laurissa suddenly there like a fey’s bittercake present, sweet candy frosting hiding nasty underneath . . . God.
    If there was a God, Mithrus Christ would strike the Strep down.
For a moment she was lost in the fantasy—Mithrus descending from iron-colored clouds, book and whip in hand, pointing at the Strep.
For the crime of being evil, you are condemned to . . .
    That was a problem. Ellie couldn’t think of any afterworld dire enough. Better to plan her next cred-grab. If she did it subtly enough, the Strep didn’t notice a few credits missing from her purse here and there.
    There was always Southking Street, too. Even an unlicensed charmer could always make some cash on the sly there, but with her Potential still unsettled, she had to take half price for anything, because of the higher risk of Twist or side effect. Then there was the danger of being caught, though the jack gangs that extorted protection money from anyone vulnerable enough were a bigger headache.
    If she could just stay afloat a little longer, work a little harder, she could survive the Strep. Maybe even escape early.
    “
Mar
guerite!” the Strep cooed, and Ellie returned to herself with a jolt. “
Lit
tle
sis
ter, how
are
you?”
    Oh, hell
. She sized up the girl in a swift glance.
    Chubby, her hair a lank mass and her dark gaze half-dead, the Strep’s sister clutched a battered cardboard suitcase and flinched as the train let out another sonorous whistle. She looked as disheveled as anyone who had just come off a sealed train would, though there were damp traces on her round cheeks as if she’d washed—or had been crying. Her eyes were red too; cinder-laden recycled air wasn’t good for anyone’s tender tissues. She didn’t even have a hat and veil, just a plaid skirt and dingy kneesocks, a sloppy peach-colored boatneck sweater that could have done a lot for her if it wasn’t so baggy and dingy, and sensible, scuffed, unpolished shoes.
    She looked like a refugee, or a poor country cousin. A kolkhoz girl, with no shimmer of Potential at all. How could she have absolutely none when the Strep was so high-powered? It wasn’t fair.
    Ruby would call her a fashion
disaster
, and Cami would simply shake her head slightly, the compassion in her blue eyes somehow painful because it was so acute.
    “Is that
all
you have?” Laurissa was clucking as if