storytelling is an art deserving of greatest reverence, and storytellers ought to be

considered guardians of llyrian cultural heritage. as such, the literature college will be the

most exclusive of the university’s undergraduate programs, requiring the highest exam

scores and fulfillment of the most stringent requirements. pursuant to that, it would be

inappropriate to admit women, who have not, as a sex, demonstrated great strength in the

faculties of literary analysis or understanding.

from a missive by sion billows upon the founding of the university of llyr, 680

bd

“so you’re really going,” rhia said.

effy nodded, swallowing a burning sip of coffee. all around them, other students had their

heads bent over their books, pens gripped in ink-stained hands, lips bitten in concentration. there

was the grind and hum of the coffee machine and the sound of dishes clinking as tarts and scones

were served. the drowsy poet was the favorite café of students in caer-isel, and it was a mere

block away from the sleeper museum.

“i’m not trying to rain on your parade—or, saints forbid, sound like maisie—but don’t you

think it’s all a bit odd? i mean, why would they pick a first-year architecture student for such an

enormous project?”

effy reached down into her purse and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. maneuvering around

her coffee cup and rhia’s half-eaten pastry, she smoothed it flat on the table, then waited as rhia

craned her neck to read what was written in neat, dark ink.

dear ms. sayre,

i am writing to congratulate you on the selection of your proposal for the design of hiraeth

manor. i received a great many submissions, but yours was far and away the one i felt best

honored my father’s legacy.

i happily invite you to saltney, to speak with you in person about your design. by the end

of your stay, i would hope to have a set of finalized blueprints so we can break ground on

the project swiftly.

to get to hiraeth, please board the earliest train from caer-isel to laleston, and then

switch to the train bound for saltney. i apologize in advance for the long and arduous

journey. i will have my barrister, mr. wetherell, pick you up at the station.

with greatest enthusiasm,

ianto myrddin

as soon as rhia looked up from the letter, effy said in a rush, “i’ve already shown it to dean

fogg. he’s allowing me the next six weeks to go to saltney and work on the house. and he’s

making master parri count it as my studio credit.” she tried to sound smug, though mostly she felt

relieved. she wished she had been there to see master parri pinch his nose as dean fogg delivered

the news.

“well,” rhia said after a moment, “i suppose that sounds legitimate enough. but the bottom

hundred . . . it’s quite different from here, you know.”

“i know. i bought a new raincoat and a dozen new sweaters.”

“not like that,” rhia said, with a faint smile. “i mean—back home, every single person

believes the sleepers are what’s stopping argant from just bombing all of llyr to bits. saints, my

parents were convinced that there was going to be a second drowning, before myrddin was

consecrated. here no one believes in the sleepers at all.”

but i do. effy kept the thought to herself. rhia was a southerner, and often spoke with disdain

about her tiny hometown and its deeply religious people. effy didn’t feel right trying to debate her

—and she didn’t want to confess her own beliefs, either. that sort of superstition didn’t suit a

good northern girl from a good northern family at the second-most prestigious college in llyr.

so effy kept her true thoughts to herself, and instead said, “i understand. but i won’t be there

for long. and i promise not to come back smelling of brine.”

“oh, you’re going to come back half a fish,” rhia said. “trust me.”

“which half?”

“the bottom half,” she said, after a moment’s consideration.

“think of how much money i’ll save on shoes.”

the library was blessedly empty, probably due in part to the cold. mist rolled down from argant’s

green hills and hung about caer-isel like a horde of ghosts. the university’s bell tower wore its

fog as if it were a widow’s mourning veil. students stopped smoking underneath the library

portico because they were afraid of getting impaled by hanging icicles. every morning the statue

of the university’s founder, sion billows, was caulked in a layer of new frost.

effy had never gotten a call from the librarian about the books on myrddin. whoever p.

héloury was, clearly he was not relinquishing them anytime soon. the knowledge had eaten at her

for three weeks, a low, simmering anger in the bottom of her belly. she practiced arguments with

him in her mind, imagined scenarios where she emerged from these verbal spars preening and

victorious. but none of that really eased any of her fury.

today, though, effy was at the library for a different reason. she took the elevator up to the

geography section on the third floor. the room was crammed with a labyrinth of bookcases, which

created many dusty, occulted corners. she pulled down a large atlas from a shelf and found herself

one of those corners, right beneath an ice-speckled window.

she opened the book to a map of the island. there was the river naer, which cut straight

through it vertically, like the blue vein on the back of her hand. there was caer-isel, of course—

with a footnote reminding her of the city’s argantian name, ker-is—a large piece of flotsam in the

center of lake bala.

the official border between llyr and argant was a large steel fence, topped with coils of

barbed wire. it gashed through the center of the city, almost right through the sleeper museum.

effy had gone to see it during her first week at the university, and the stark authoritativeness had

stunned her. a number of gray-clad security guards were stationed along the fence, unsmiling

under their fur hats. she had watched as a small group—a family—came up from the argantian

side and began the long process of unfolding papers and passports, the guards’ movements brisk

and the children’s faces growing redder as they stood out in the cold. above them, the two flags

warred with one another, and with the wind: the black serpent on a green field for argant, and the

red serpent on a white field for llyr. after a while, it had become too difficult to watch, and effy

had left in a hurry, feeling an odd sense of shame.

her finger traveled down the map. northern llyr was verdant hills, a patchwork of sunlight

and mist, pocked with squat trees and stone houses, small towns with narrow streets, and the

largest city, draefen. it was the administrative capital of llyr, and the site of her family’s

townhouse, where effy had grown up with her mother and grandparents. draefen sat snugly in a

valley between two mountain peaks, spanning both sides of the naer. the sky was clouds and

factory smog, and the line of the horizon was cut up with the crests of white sails, like the fins of

lake monsters that no one from the north believed in anymore. she had thought seeing it, even as

just a sketch on parchment, might make her feel homesick, but mostly she remembered the smells

of oil and salt and fish guts. effy’s eyes moved past it quickly.

and then, south of draefen, south of laleston, the last town that anyone with good sense had

reason to visit, was the bottom hundred. the southernmost hundred miles of llyr were all ragged

coastline and fishing villages, crumbling white cliffs and brusque, ugly beaches with pebbles that

cut right through your boots. even the illustration seemed hurried, as if the artist had wanted to be

done with it and move on to something better.

the bay of nine bells looked like the bite a dog had taken out of a rotted old piece of meat.

effy brushed her thumb along it, tracing the serrated outline of the cove. and emrys myrddin was

from here, the very bottom of the bottom hundred, a place so dismal and remote, effy could

scarcely even hold it in her mind. it was so different, it might as well have been another country,

she thought. another world.

the sound of the door creaking open made effy jump. she peered out from behind the

bookcase and saw another student enter the room, peacoat held under his arm, still breathing hard

from the cold. he put down his coat and satchel on one of the tables and moved toward her, and a

chill shot up her spine. the idea of him coming upon her, tucked on the floor in her corner, was

both embarrassing and strangely terrifying. effy stood up and tried to move quietly out of sight,

but he saw her anyway.

“hey,” he said. his voice sounded friendly enough.

“hi,” she said back slowly.

“sorry—you don’t have to leave. there’s enough room here for the two of us, i think.” he

smiled, showing just the faintest edge of his teeth.

“that’s all right,” she said. “i was leaving anyway.”

effy tried to move past him, to return the atlas to its place on the shelf, but the boy didn’t step

aside to accommodate her until the very last second, so their arms brushed. her heart jumped into

her throat. stupid, she chided herself immediately. he hasn’t done anything wrong. still—the air

in the room suddenly felt solid and thick. she had to get out.

then her eye caught the patch on his jacket. it was the insignia of the literature college.

“oh!” she said, abruptly and too loudly. “you study literature?”

“yes.” the boy met her gaze. “i’m a first-year. why?”

“i was just wondering . . .” she hesitated. she was sure the request would seem odd. but the

morbid, bitter curiosity had pricked at her for so long. “do you know any argantian students in

your college?”

he frowned. “i don’t think so. well, maybe a couple, in their second or third years. but it’s not

common. i’m sure you can imagine why. i mean, how many argantians want to study llyrian

literature?”

her question exactly. “so you don’t know any of them by name?”

“no. sorry.”

effy tried not to look visibly disappointed. she knew it was childish to make p. héloury the

avatar of all her bitterness. but it was just so wretchedly unfair. argant had been llyr’s enemy for

centuries. why was it that an argantian could study llyrian literature, just because he was a man,

but she couldn’t because she was a girl? why didn’t it matter that she knew myrddin’s books back

to front, that she’d spent almost half her life sleeping with angharad on her bedside table? that

once she’d tried to fashion a girdle of iron for herself and laid boughs of mountain ash at the

threshold of her room?

“that’s all right,” she said, but the chagrin crept into her voice anyway. the boy was looking

at her with bewilderment, so she felt the need to explain. “it’s just, i was trying to take out some

books on myrddin—”

“oh,” he cut in. “you’re one of myrddin’s devotees.”

his tone was disparaging. effy’s face warmed. “i like his work. a lot of people do.”

“lots of girls.” an expression she couldn’t quite read came over his face. he looked her up

and down. “listen, if you ever want to pick my brain about myrddin, or anything else—”

her stomach lurched. “sorry,” she said. “i really have to go.”

the boy opened his mouth to reply, but effy didn’t wait to hear it. she just dropped the atlas

on the table and hurried out of the room, blood roaring in her ears. it was only once she’d made it

down the elevator, out through the library’s double doors, and back into the biting cold that she

felt she could breathe again. that same inner voice told her she was being childish, absurd. just a

few words, a narrow-eyed look, and she’d reacted as if someone had jabbed her with a knife.

her vision was blurry for the entire trek back to her dorm. rhia wasn’t home, and her own

room was nearly empty, everything packed away in the trunk that she would take with her to

saltney. the only thing left out was her copy of angharad, dog-eared at the page where the fairy

king bedded angharad for the first time. beside it, her glass bottle of sleeping pills.

she poured one out and swallowed it dry. if she didn’t, she knew she would dream about the

fairy king that night.

there remained one thing to do.

the door to her adviser’s office seemed wider and taller than the rest of the doors on the hall,

like one of the ornamental letters on an old manuscript, embellished and baroque and huge

compared to the small, ordinary text that followed.

effy raised a hand and laid it flat on the wood. she had meant to knock, but somewhere along

the way her body had given up her mind’s goal.

it didn’t matter. from the other side there was a shuffling sound, a muttered curse, and then the

door swung open.

a blinking master corbenic stared down at her. “effy.”

“can i come in?”

he nodded once, stiffly, then stepped aside to let her through. his office was how she

remembered it: so cluttered with books that there was only a narrow path from the door to the

desk, dusty shutters pulled down so that only a knife of light squeezed through. framed degrees

lined the wall like taxidermy animal heads.

“please,” he said, “sit down.”

effy stood behind the green armchair instead. “i’m sorry i didn’t make an appointment. i’m

just . . .” she trailed off, hating the smallness of her voice. master corbenic’s sleeves were rolled

up to his elbows, exposing the swathes of dark arm hair and the golden watch glinting within it.

“it’s not a problem,” he said, though his words had a chill to them that made effy want to

shrink down and vanish through that tiny gap in the shutters. “i figured you would come back

sooner or later. i heard about your little project.”

“oh.” her stomach knotted. “i suppose dean fogg told you.”

“yes. he’s speaking to me again, miraculously.” master corbenic’s voice had grown even

colder. “saltney is a long way from the big city.”

“that’s what i wanted to talk to you about.” she picked at the loose fibers on the back of the

armchair. “dean fogg said i could have six weeks starting with the winter holidays, and he made

master parri agree to count it as my studio credit, but i still—”

“he wanted your adviser to sign off on it,” he finished tonelessly. his fingers, crumpling the

white fabric of his shirt, looked enormous.

she drew a breath, steadying herself against the armchair. she had pulled out so much of the

green thread that it looked like she was clutching a tangle of vines. but the armchair had been in

tatters since the first time she saw it. at the beginning of the semester, whenever effy came back

from master corbenic’s office, for hours she would find these small green threads caught in her

hair.

slowly, she reached into her pocket and took out the folded parchment. “i just need your

signature.”

there. she had said it. immediately her chest felt lighter. the grandfather clock in the corner

ticked past the seconds, each one plinking down like a droplet of rainwater on the floor. her hand

shook as she held the paper out to him, and for a while he said nothing, did nothing, until all of a

sudden he lurched forward.

effy took a stumbling, instinctual step back as he grabbed the paper from her hand.

master corbenic gave a low, short laugh. “oh, for saints’ sakes. there’s no need to act like a

blushing little maiden now.”

her pulse was so loud and fast that she scarcely heard herself say, “you’re still my adviser—”

“yes, and isn’t that a wonder—i was sure dean fogg would have dismissed you, or had me

sacked.”

“i didn’t tell anyone,” she managed, her face burning.

“well, word still got around, didn’t it?” master corbenic said, though he deflated visibly,

leaning back against his desk. he ran one enormous hand through his black hair. “i met with dean

fogg last week. he was apoplectic. this could have cost me my career.”

“i know.”

she knew it so well, it was all she had thought about, when he stood over her in that armchair.

when he palmed the back of her head, when the weak sunlight glanced off his belt buckle, all effy

had been able to think about was how dangerous it all was. master corbenic was young,

handsome, a darling of the faculty. he and dean fogg took tea together. he didn’t need her.

but oh, he had made it seem like he did. “you’re so pretty,” he had said, and had sounded

almost breathless. “it’s agony to watch you come in here every week, with your green eyes and

your golden hair. when you leave, all i can think about is when you’ll come back, and how i’ll

survive seeing something so beautiful i can’t touch.”

he had held her face in his hands with as much tenderness as a museum curator would handle

his artifacts. and effy had felt her heart skip and flutter the same way it did when she read her

favorite bits of angharad, those permanently dog-eared pages.

“is this all you need from me?” master corbenic slashed his pen across the page and thrust the

parchment back to her, then huffed a lower, shorter laugh. “you know what i think, effy. you’re a

bright girl. you have potential, if you keep your head out of the clouds. but a first-year student,

taking on a project of this scale? it’s beyond you. i can’t fathom why the myrddin estate would

put out a call for students in the first place. and—i assume you’ve never been south of laleston

before?”

effy shook her head.

“well. the bottom hundred is the sort of place that young girls escape from, not go running

off to. it would be easier to just stay here in caer-isel and try to get your grades up. if you need

tutoring in master parri’s class, i can help you.”

“no,” effy said quickly, pocketing the parchment. “that’s all right.”

master corbenic stared at her inscrutably, the late-afternoon sunlight pooling on the face of his

wristwatch. “you’re the sort of girl who likes to make life more difficult for herself. if you weren’t

so pretty, you would have failed out already.”

* * *

effy left master corbenic’s office with her eyes stinging, but she refused to cry. on her way

back through the college lobby, she saw the class roster, her last name crossed out and replaced

with whore.

after checking to make sure no one was coming, effy tore the paper down, balled it up, and

carried it out of the building. her heart was pounding. the bottom hundred is the sort of place

that young girls escape from, not go running off to. perhaps she was running away. perhaps she

was making life more difficult for herself. but she couldn’t bear it, the rush of floodwater in her

ears, the haze that fell over her eyes, the nightmares smothered only by the annihilating power of

her sleeping pills. she wasn’t a southerner, but she knew what it was like to drown.

she walked past the library and out onto the pier. she stood there, leaning over the railing,

wind biting her cheeks, and then she threw the crumpled paper into the ice-choked waters of lake

bala.