“Yes, unhurt. You? Unhappy?”

  “Not unhappy. But unwhole.”

  “How you have changed!”

  “How I have missed you!”

  “Say nothing.”

  “Be still.”

  “Look away.”

  The lightning of their gazes sparked once, went dark. As if such shuttings off had been polished by practice. The foxgirl gave me a furtive look from under the bloody fringe of her lashes. I had only a dizzy countenance to show her. No time, however, to further unmuzzle this mystery, for the tall man grabbed my right elbow, and the Archabbot darted down his dais to grab my left.

  “General,” said Avillius III, “our interrogations here have not yet reached a satisfactory conclusion. We must retain Miss Faircloth for further questioning, perhaps rehabilitation…”

  The tall man smiled. “I myself heard your little vulpona bitch pronounce this maiden mortalborn. As she does not traffic with the dark spirits of the Valwode, Winterbane has no jurisdiction over her.”

  “If Winterbane has none, Jadio has less so!”

  “No, no jurisdiction,” laughed the tall man, “but an army at my back. Come, Miss Faircloth; my palace awaits you. Your Grace, I am your most humble…” He laughed again, and did not finish.

  It was then I knew what I stood between. On my left, Avillius III, who, with his Pricksters and his parish priests, wanted total control over Leressa, secular as well as spiritual. On my right, the one man who stood in his way: the great General Jadio, Commander of the Kingless Armies, and Leressa’s unofficial liege lord.

  My nose had swelled shut, my eyes burned, and my throat was parched.

  Had I been crying, sobbing, begging General Jadio on bended knee for my freedom? No. Wouldn’t have done any good anyway. Jadio was a right monster, no mistake, and if you could prove that blood ran through his veins instead of bitter winter waters, I’d eat my own dairy stool.

  What I had done was been shut up in a silo with enough straw to stuff a legion of scarecrows. From the itching in my arms and the tickle in my nose, I apprehended a heretofore unknown but deeply personal reaction to straw. In sufficient quantities, and given enough time, the straw might actually murder me.

  Time was one thing I didn’t have.

  If I didn’t spin all of this sneeze-making, hive-inducing stuff to gold by dawn–so declared my gold-haired, laughing captor–I’d be hung toe-first from an iron tree, pocked by stones and pecked by crows until I had no flesh left to pock or peck, and by which time, I’d heed neither foul wind nor fair, for, and I quote, “the dead feel no discomfort.”

  Huddled in a hollow between mounds of the wretched straw, I stewed.

  How are you supposed to spend your last hours? Praying? Cursing?

  The first option was out. I was too mad to pray. Who did the gods think they were anyway, sticking people like Jadio and Avillius in charge, who were good for nothing but drowning dogs and mangling men and was that any good at all? It was the gods that killed my mam with a long, low fever that had sapped even her smile, the gods that drew the Pricksters to Feisty Wold, snatching me up and leaving my cows in the care of drunken folk like Da. A pox of itches on the gods. I’d rather be a heathen and worship the beauty of the Valwode, like the Gentry.

  Curses it was.

  So I bundled up a fistful of straw into two tight bunches perpendicular to each other and bound them tightly with thread torn from the hem of my skirt. I used another ravel of thread to differentiate the head from its cross-shaped body. Holding the poppet high with my left hand, I glared at it and growled:

  “General Jadio, Commander of the Kingless Armies, I curse thee, that all thy wars will be unwon and all thy wenches as well. Oh, and,” I hastened to add, forgetting formality, “that, being as they are unwon, you lose all taste for war and wenching until you sicken and turn flaccid. And when you die, I hope it’s a querulous and undignified death. You jackass.”

  I punched the little bundle with short, vicious jabs until the threads loosened and the whole thing burst apart. The straw fell. I gathered up a fresh fistful and fashioned another faceless poppet.

  “Avillius III, Archabbot of Winterbane, I curse thee, that your shackled pet will bring thy order to ruin. That she will escape you, to rouse mortals and immortals alike under the banner of the red fox and win Leressa back for all free people. I curse thee to rot forgotten in thine own forgetting hole, and that after thy death, the word “Archabbot” is used only in stories to frighten uppity children.”

  I kicked the poppet so hard it flew up over my head and was lost somewhere behind me. Wiped my nose. Went on. There was nothing else I could do.

  I’d have spun gold from that straw if I could, spun until my fingers were raw, I was that scared. The creeping cold fear numbed even my screaming red skin. But Annat the cow might as soon have used that spinning wheel as I. I bent to work on another straw doll. Shook it and squeezed it until I felt the muscles standing out in my neck. Rage choked me, thickening my words.

  “Prickster woman who dared blood me, who mocked my mother and took the word of a known sot as law, I curse thee to get lost in the Valwode without thy rowan-berry-broidered boots or silver bells, and to suffer what befalls thee there! That thou wilt be dragged before the Veil Queen herself for judgment and be shown such mercy as thou hast shown me.”

  I spat on the poppet, wrenched off its head, and crushed it under my heel.

  One more bundle. Just one more. Then I’d stop. I was tired, though outside the silo I was certain it was not yet dusk. Besides, if I kept on, I’d fray my only skirt past the decency required for burial. Not that Jadio had any plans to bury me, I’d been assured. Burn my remains, maybe. After they’d been displayed a goodly time.

  “Da,” I said. I stopped. My eyes filled up. Blight this straw. If only I could sneeze, I’d feel better.

  “What’s the point, Da? She died and left us, didn’t she? Any punishment after that would only pale. Poor bastard. Oh, Da. When your pickled innards finally burst to bloody spew, I hope you die with a smile on your face. That’s all.”

  I laid the little effigy gently on the ground and covered it.

  “Does it help?” asked a voice from the corner, near to where the spinning wheel stood.

  My head snapped up too quickly, and that’s when the sneezes started. One–two–three–four–five–six–seven! So violent they knocked me backward into a pile of, that’s right, straw, which jostled another bigger pile into toppling all over me. Dust and critters and dry bits filled my nose and mouth until I flailed with panic. But a pair of hands locked around my wrists and pulled. I was heaved out from under the avalanche. Exhumed. Brushed off. Set down upon a stool. And smiled at.

  Which is how I found myself face to face with the ugliest man I’d ever seen.

  Now, I got nothing against ugliness. As I’ve said, I’m no Harvest Bride myself, to be tarted up in fruits and vines and paraded about the village on a pumpkin-piled wagon. General Jadio was pretty much the prettiest man I’d seen to date and right then I was in the mood to cheerfully set fire to his chiseled chin.

  This man was an inch or two shorter than I and so thin as to be knobbly. His crooked shoulders were surmounted by a painful-looking hump, and his wrists stuck out from ragged sleeves. A mass of hair swirled around his head in unruly black tangles, framing a face irregular with scars. His mouth, well… Was smiling. In sympathy. And though some of his teeth were crooked, some too sharp and some completely missing, those he had kept seemed to glow in the dark.

  Besides the teeth, it was his eyes gave him away, set at a slant so long and sly. The starry black of his stare left no room for white.

  “You’re Gentry!” I stammered.

  “Me? You just hexed four folks in effigy,” he said.

  Red and sweaty and covered in rash as I was, maybe he wouldn’t notice that I blushed.

  “Mam always told me hexes only work if you’ve a bit of the hexies with you,” I explained. “To put in the poppet, like? Fingernails or hair or a bit of their…. You know. Fluids. Plus, you must be magic to begin with. And I’m not.”

  “Mortal to the bone,” he agreed, smiling. His smile sort of made his face disappear, the way certain smiles do. He had a good voice too. Not as smoky as the foxgirl’s, but greener and freer, like it had matured by sunlight. And if I was mortal to my bone, that is where his voice echoed, and I trembled there.

  He plucked a poppet from his sleeve and dangled it. ‘Twas either Da or the Archabbot; I couldn’t tell, nor how he’d managed to unearth the thing without my noticing.

  “What did your hexies do to deserve such censure?”

  “Cads,” I snorted, “one and all. They took me from my cows and slandered me with lies and forgot to feed and water me. In a very few hours, one of them will kill me for not being the miracle maid he says I am. And that’s after he does whatever comes before the killing.”

  “What does he say you are, miracle maid?”

  “Spinner,” I told him, “ore-maker. Sent by the gods to the armies of Jadio to change all their straw to gold. Thus will the soldiers of the Kingless Army, richly clad and well-armed, march against the Gentry demons and purge Leressa of their foulness. Pah!” I spat, though I had nothing left to spit with. “Had I a hammer, a piece of flint and some steel, I’d break that spinning wheel to splinters and use it for kindling. This place would go up in a poof and me with it. I wasn’t born to hang.”

  The little dark man laughed. A green flame erupted in the palm of his hand, shooting sparks so high I flinched. He blew lightly on the flames until they spiraled up to flirt with his fingertips.

  “Say the word, lady. If truly thou wouldst have this death, it is in my power to give it thee.”

  I, despite my morose boast, said nothing.

  Laughing again, the little dark man urged the green flames to chase up his arm, his neck, his face, the crown of his head, where they raced in gleeful circles. By their weird light, the silo seemed a vast undersea trove, the mounds of straw gone verdigris as waterweeds, softly breathing.

  “You do not desire the burning? All right, then. What do you wish?”

  “To go home. To my cows.”

  “The soldiers of Jadio will find you there and bring you back. Perhaps first they will slaughter your cows and make you feast upon their flesh, that you taste your own defiance. What do you really wish?”

  “I don’t know!” I threw up my arms. “To make this go away?”

  I meant everything that had occurred since Da’s ill-advised boast in Firshaw’s Pub, up to and including this current assignation, enchanting as it was. But he took it literally. He picked up a single piece of straw and tickled my nose with it.

  “Where to? There will always be another cell, another spinning wheel…”

  I batted the straw away. “Ah-choo!”

  “Blessings befall.”

  “Thank you.”

  His turn to flinch.

  “Oh!” I yelped. “Sorry. Mam taught me better! I know I’m not supposed to thank Gentry. She said it’s like a slap in the face to them–to you, I mean, your people–but she didn’t say why, and anyway, I forgot! Are you… Are you all right?”

  He waved his hand. “It’s naught. Briefer than a sting. Like a Prickster’s needle, I’d wager.”

  I pressed the pad of my thumb where three weeks ago in my own chilled kitchen my blood had welled. It was still a bit sore. I wondered suddenly what the Archabbot’s wizards might do with that tiny vial now that they knew I was no Gentry-babe. Destroy it? Drink it? Put it in a straw poppet and influence me from afar?

  I shivered.

  “What do you wish?” the little dark man asked for the third time. His voice was barely a whisper. I stomped my foot.

  “Ack! Very well! I wish to change this mess into something that doesn’t make me sneeze.”

  “Such as gold?”

  “Such as gold.”

  “I can do this thing.”

  “Can you?” I eyed him, remembering what the Prickster had told the Archabbot about Gentry ore-makers. How only Gentry royalty had the golden touch. How my own mam must’ve been the Veil Queen herself, to have borne a child with such gifts as mine. And if I was not that child, who was he?

  “Whyever would you want to?” I asked.

  He shrugged. Shrugging could not have been a simple or painless gesture with those shoulders. It cost him something.

  “Word reached me,” he said, “through regular but reliably suspicious channels, that you had something on your person I would find of value.”

  I felt his gaze fall on my hand before I thought to cover it. As though kindled by his verdant flames, the opal began to burn green.

  “This ring belonged to my mother!” I protested.

  “It belonged to my mother before that,” he retorted.

  “It–what?”

  “What use does a milkmaid have for such a bauble?”

  “For keeping’s sake. For memory.”

  “Do you know what the jewel is called?”

  “Yes–the Eye of… The Queen’s Eye.”

  “Did your mother tell you whence she had it?”

  “She said it was a gift. From a friend.”

  “Your mother was my mother’s friend. Mortalborn, ignorant and common as she was, she was kind when my mother needed kindness. Not once, but twice. Give me that jewel, and I will turn this straw to gold.”

  “For friendship’s sake?”

  He shrugged again. How he punished himself, this little crooked man, for no reason I could tell. He was a stranger to me. But if he missed his mother half as much as I missed mine, we were kin.

  “Right.” I tugged my ring a bit to loosen it, breathing deeply. “Well. Mam didn’t hold much with worldly goods anyhow. Never owned a pair of shoes but she gave them away to the first beggar she crossed.”

  “I know,” said the little crooked man. “And so my mother went shod one winter’s night, when the cold had nearly killed her.”

  Hearing this, I tugged harder. The ring would not come free. I’d never tried to take it off before. Fact is, until the day I’d stood before Avillius III and his clever foxgirl, I’d mostly forgotten it was there. As with Mam’s locket, which I also wore, the ring had always seemed able to hide itself. I couldn’t remember it once getting in the way of chores like dishes or milking or scrubbing floors.

  Now it burned. But it wouldn’t budge.

  I almost wept with frustration, but the little crooked man took hold of my hand and I quieted right down. Just like Annat, I thought, when she is upset and I scratch behind her ears…

  And then he bent his head and kissed the fiery opal. Kissed that part of my hand when fingers met knuckle. Kissed me a third time on my palm where I was most astonishingly sensitive. His tongue flicked out and loosened everything. Before I knew it, the ring was in his hand.

  “You are bold. But you are innocent.” He looked at me. Had Mam bequeathed me jewels enough to deck all my fingers and toes, I’d have handed them over that instant.

  He slipped the silver ring onto his thumb.

  “What comes next, you may not see. Dream sweet, Miss Oakhewn,” said the little crooked man, and rubbed the opal once, as if for luck.

  The stone responded with a sound like a thunderclap. A flash there came like a star falling, followed by a green-drenched darkness.

  I know what that is, I had time to think, that’s the sound of a Gentry grass-trap.

  He’s opened one up to swallow me down, and will I sleep now a hundred years the way they do in stories when mortals fall through grass-traps in the Valwode, and will a ring of mushrooms sprout up all around me, followed by a ring of fire, and will he be there to pull me out when at last I wake…

  “Tar his limbs and boil his skin

  "Carve his skull for dipping in

  "Acid piss and stony stool

  "Wrack his eyeballs, rot his rule

  "All hail Jadio! Let him hang!

  "Long his rope and brief his reign.”

  My rhymes were improving. With no one to talk to in this vast dusty room but myself, all standard imprecations swiftly palled.

  I stomped around Jadio’s warehouse. Slogged, more like. Not an inch of floor to be seen under all that straw, and I was knee deep in it, not to mention hampered by satin skirts. I’d lost one pearl-studded slipper already while pretending one of those straw heaps was a recumbent Jadio (sleeping peacefully and off his guard) and subsequently kicking him to death. I did not mind the slipper’s loss, but I think I pulled a muscle in my enthusiasm.

  It had been an eventful month. The Kingless Armies finally had their king. With the golden skeins he had found piled high in the silo the morning after he’d set me to spinning, General Jadio had bought himself Leressa’s crown and the Archabbot’s blessing with it. (Or the appearance of a blessing. Remembering the Archabbot’s sweating red pate, his furious grip on my elbow, I was not convinced.)

  King Jadio decided not to take up residence where old King Lorez’s palace lay in ruins. Lirhu is a city of ghosts, a drowned city. They say one of the Deep Lords of the ocean destroyed it with a great wave after the First Invasion, when the Crown Prince was enchanted into bear-shape and his sister sent into a hundred-year sleep, and King Lorez lured by a Will-o’-Wispy off his road, bogged in a marsh, and drowned dead.

  Whether the Deep Lord had sent the wave out of solidarity with his landed Gentry-kin or out of pique because Lorez, being dead, did not tithe to the tides at the usual time and place, no one knew.

  No, Jadio was too canny to repeat Old Ironshod’s mistakes. He had built his grand house inland, in a very settled city, far from any wilderness, where even the river ran tame. There he brought me, across the wide waters and away from the island where I had been born, under full guard and in chains, but dressed up in such gowns and choked with such jewels that I was the envy of all who looked on me. Plenty did. Jadio liked a good parade.

  I’d glared back at every crowd he set me against. My face froze into an expression of bitter unfriendliness. Before the Pricksters had invaded my cottage, I was perhaps a bit brusque by temperament, but I’d harbored goodwill to my neighbors, and smiled and sang, proud of being Mam’s daughter and wishing to do well by her name.

 

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