Baltic Gambit (Vampire Earth 11) - Page 28

After they were fortified by the food, the real shopping began. Duvalier found spending time with Stamp strangely exhausting, like trying to converse in a foreign language. Her one triumph came when she found some “French milled” soaps for Valentine and a boar’s-hair brush for Ahn-Kha. Stamp offered to pay, but she still had some of Montee’s Canadian currency left, and it was enough to get soap and their biggest brush, anyway.

“You’re not getting yourself a little indulgence? Not even chocolates?”

“Gives me the runs,” Duvalier said. Which was only sometimes true; the ration chocolate in the Kurian Zone had some strange fat in it that kept her squatting. She’d had real Hershey bars and been fine.

Stamp wasn’t quite the sophisticate she claimed to be. Some of the shop staff corrected her on minor points: she called any sort of fancy dress “couture” (“if it’s hanging on a rack, it’s not couture,” sniffed an Italian shopgirl) and she called an alligator purse “patent leather.” Even Duvalier, who wasn’t quite clear on what culottes were, was pretty sure alligator hides weren’t patent.

She did, however, insist on taking Duvalier to a salon to have her hair and face done. She agreed more enthusiastically than she would have believed possible a few days ago. The trip was seeming less and less of an op and more like the vacation Colonel Lambert had promised. Stamp was much more in her element there, and Duvalier had had a theatrical streak and done stage makeup a few times in her life. She’d had to doll up enough times that she was comfortable with makeup. She tried a few different colors and finally went with a pale violet base and purple highlight to go with the green in her eyes. It felt oddly relaxing to lie back in a chair and have someone putter away at her eyes, and the results were startling, even before they moved on to finishing touches with the hair. They couldn’t do much with her short-short hair, but they did plaster it down with something that gave it a nice shine and brightened the color.

The cosmetologists tut-tutted over her skin. “Do you live under a sunlamp?” one asked.

“I’m outdoors a lot,” Duvalier said

.

“Take care, duckies,” the beauticians said as they left. Stamp gave a wink and a wave.

Stamp wanted more wine, and Duvalier hoped she wouldn’t have to carry her home. Rain and wind came in from the sea with the evening, ruining their makeup and hair in a few minutes of chill exposure.

“Short hair has its advantages,” Stamp said as they surveyed the ruins in the shelter of a doorway.

“I’m pretty tired. Time to call it a day?” Duvalier asked.

“I was going to save this for later, but you might as well have it now,” Stamp said, handing over a little gift bag.

In it was a selection of makeups, lip glosses, and some kind of little pearly drops you were supposed to break open and rub around your eyes and forehead to get rid of wrinkles.

Duvalier snorted. “I feel like I owe you an apology for wasting your money.”

“Plenty more money where that came from.”

“From where does the family fortune spring?” Duvalier asked.

“UFR contracts, mostly. Roads, bridges, power lines. We do a little of everything. We’ve been busy with the respite buildup. War’s such a dead end.”

They left the hotel for Halifax’s harbor side on a chill morning, before dawn on the first day of May, piled into that same plumbing supply van with the fold-down seats.

Everyone, even so-phlegmatic-it-was-hard-to-tell-he-was-alive Sime, had enjoyed Halifax. Duvalier now found the cold ocean air refreshing. Valentine had told her what the west coast of Lake Superior was like in winter—cold and damp that sank in deep and was tough to get rid of quickly, even in the warmest room—and she’d been expecting something like that. This was more like wet and windy fall weather, which she always enjoyed, provided she didn’t have to walk far in it.

They were waiting for their ride to the docks, having received a message that their stopover in Halifax was coming to an end the following morning. Everyone was back in their travel clothes, toiletries and freshly washed laundry all packed away. Stamp had on a blue-and-white-striped shirt under a navy-colored blazer, with a cute white hat. Valentine had muttered that she looked like a Cracker Jack sailor as they shared a last round of coffee from the café below.

“No, that just won’t do,” Stamp said, looking at Duvalier.

“What won’t do?” she asked.

“You’re about to take your first cross-Atlantic voyage. You can’t board looking like a stowaway rat,” Stamp said.

“I believe this is your first cross-Atlantic voyage, too, Thérèse,” Sime said. “While you certainly look nautical, I doubt it’ll be a yacht parade.”

“I’m going on board looking right,” she replied. “Whaddya think?” she asked, performing a clumsy pirouette for Duvalier.

“Anchors aweigh,” she said.

Duvalier submitted to having her makeup put on. Stamp loaned her a nautical-looking cable sweater. Fortunately, Stamp’s shopping mania on Duvalier’s behalf hadn’t gone so far as to include a new wardrobe, so she was able to slouch around in her duster and the borrowed sweater. She wondered how her tired old Evanshikers—rubber-soled ankle boots from a cottage industry in Evansville that turned worn-out tires into new footwear tread—would handle seawater.

Preffer nursed the old van through the tight streets, going gently through the turns and taking it easy on the brakes. If there was a Kurian spy keeping tabs on the activities of the Refugee Network, his job was made a lot easier.

“Do you have any idea of the cabin arrangements?” Stamp asked Sime once they were loaded in the back.

Tags: E.E. Knight Vampire Earth Fantasy
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