Now my name might have been Stonehewn, my heart was that cold. I wished that instead of eyes, I looked with mounted cannons on the world, to blast all gawping bystanders to the other side of the Veil.

  But I wasn’t quite alone. They say beggars can’t be choosy, and as Jadio’s slave I was less than a beggar. But even they (whoever they are) would’ve blinked at my choice for friend. Indeed, he was the only friend I had at Jadio House–if a milkmaid might call a fox “friend” and keep her throat untorn.

  Jadio’s young page Sebastian, twin to the Archabbot’s novice, sometimes came to my cell to slip me news of the outside. If he felt generous, he’d bring a bit of fruit, or bread and cheese, along with his gossip. Jadio insisted I sup on the rarest steaks and richest wines, but I had no stomach for these victuals.

  “His Majesty’ll soon have you spin again,” Sebastian had told me at his last visit.

  I’d been startled. “By rights last batch should’ve lasted him three lifetimes!”

  Sebastian enjoyed riling me, friend or not. He grinned, sharp-toothed. He tapped out a tattoo with his strangely jointed fingers on the bars of my door. “I’ve met some ignorant peasants in my life, but you sure do take the dunce cap, my milksop maid. Don’t you know anything? His Majesty’s been selling off yon goldie skeins like he’s afeared they’ll fall to ash.”

  My eyebrows sprang high. “If the Gentry ore were going to go bad, would it not have done so overnight? I thought those were the rules.”

  Sebastian shrugged. He had bony elbows and skin so clear it was like looking into a pail of skimmed milk. His rusty hair smudged his forehead like a fringe of embers.

  “Depends on your enchanter. Some Gentry tricks don’t last an hour. Some last a year. Some last the life of the enchanter. Hard to say.” His forehead scrunched. In so many ways he was still a child, but creased up like that, his expression went deep and devious.

  “What’s that look for?” I asked. “Is there something else?”

  He nodded. “Gossip goes you must be Gentry, no matter how loudly the Archabbot proclaims you gods-gifted. Folks want you quartered in the square and all your witchy bits exposed on the Four Tors. I never did see a dead witch in pieces. Promise I can watch while they kill you?”

  “Bloody-brained child!” said I, approaching the bars and prying his tapping fingers free. “You’ve lived among soldiers too long. Even your sister Candia insists I’m mortal.”

  He tweaked a lock of my ash brown hair, but I pulled away before he could kip a strand.

  When young Sebastian grinned, the fox flashed out in his face. Oh, in a couple of years, give this pageboy a velvet suit and silver swordstick and let him loose upon the town. Won’t be a maid within miles not pining for those sharp white teeth to bite the plumpness of her thigh.

  “What Candy says and Candy thinks are as different as cat’s purr from catamount’s hunting cough. She lies all the time, for spite or jest, and ‘specially when the Archabbot tugs her hair. She hates that, always has. Might even have lied for the sheer wanton pleasure of it. Never can tell. Not even me.”

  “Do you lie as well as your sister, Sebastian?”

  “His Majesty does not let me lie.” The foxboy showed me a thin ring of iron welded about his left wrist. I had one like it, but of gold. A braid of the gold thread I had ostensibly spun for him, to remind me of my place.

  “Nor may I change my shape, nor pierce the Veil between worlds with my Gentry sight. He’ll have his cub to heel, he says.”

  Sebastian’s yellow eyes with their thin vertical pupils warned me not to put my trust in him. That though he may like and pity me, he was treacherous by nature. And had been a prisoner longer.

  “What do you think I am?” I asked him.

  “I know what you are,” the foxboy answered with a gods-may-care shrug. “Fair warning, Gordie. You’ll be put to spinning soon.”

  He’d been right. Not three days after that conversation, here I was. A warehouse stuffed with straw and my ears stuffed with dire death threats if I didn’t do something about it. Gold was wanted. Mounds of gold. Pounds of gold. Gold to rival a field of daffodils on a sunny day.

  My lot hadn’t notably improved since the last time I’d been locked up with enough straw to make a giant’s mattress tick, though I was perhaps cleaner as I paced and sneezed, lavished with lavender soap as I was, my hair braided with ropes of pearls, half a pair of useless slippers on my feet. This time, the spinning wheel squatting in the middle of the warehouse was made of solid silver. None of it helped me. I was still going to die at dawn.

  All I could do was invent couplets to curse my captor with.

  "All hail Jadio: let him hang

  "Long his rope and brief his reign

  "Yank his innards, chop his head…"

  A voice I had not heard in a whole month finished: “Grind his bones to make my bread!”

  Unthinking, I laughed, spinning on my heel all the way around. Haste lost me my battle for balance. From a heap of satin and straw, I sat up again and craned for the voice–there he was! My hunch-backed goblin wreathed in smiles, straddling the spinning wheel’s stool, with his arms draped over the machine and his head resting on crossed wrists.

  He, too, looked less raggedy than last time. Perhaps he had combed his hair once or twice in the days since I met him. My opal still flickered on his finger.

  “You! How did you find me? I was afraid, when they took me from the island you wouldn’t–I mean, did you traipse all this way? The roads are so dangerous for Gentry…”

  A torque of his crooked shoulders. I winced, but he did not.

  “I did not take the roads. I took the Ways. Time is different in the Veil. It did not seem a month to me.”

  I humphed. No better reply came to mind than: “I hope it felt a full year then, you flame-crowned bugaboo, for that’s how it did to me,” which would not have been at all prudent to speak aloud. He spun the silver wheel with a lazy finger.

  “So,” he observed, “another room.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mmn. Bigger.”

  “Much.”

  “Still sneezing?”

  “Ayup. Enough to cause typhoons in Leech. Also, I have new rashes.”

  “Rashes even?”

  “Rashes in places no rash e’er ventured yet.”

  “My condolences.”

  “Ah, stick ‘em where they’ll do most good.”

  We lapsed. He spun the empty wheel. I drew my knees up, wrapped my arms about them and thought of all the questions I did not dare ask. What were the Ways like? Did he walk them alone? Had he many friends in the Veil? Did he drink nectar with them in Gentry pubs, dance barefoot when the sweetness went to his head? Did any raucous movement jar his crooked back–or did his body only hurt him in the mortal realm? What had his life been like all this while I’d never known him, and what would it be when I was dead and gone?

  He seemed to have been thinking along some of these same lines. Or at least the part about my corpse.

  “What will happen to you tomorrow, milkmaid, if this straw is not spun to gold?”

  I related Sebastian’s jolly vision of my witchy bits exposed on the Four Tors.

  “Not,” I added, “that I have any witchy bits. Not real ones anyway.”

  “Not a one,” he concurred, looking deeply at all of me with his thorn-black eyes. “Though what bits you have are better clad than last I saw them.”

  “Yes,” said I, “a pretty shroud to wrap my pieces in.”

  “Pearls do not suit you.”

  “No–I prefer opals.”

  “A healthy milkmaid needs no adornment.”

  “Doesn’t mean we won’t prize a trinket if it comes our way.”

  “What good are trinkets to you, lady? You’ll die tomorrow.”

  “Maybe so, Mister,” I huffed, “but it’s rightly rude to mention it out loud like that.”

  He scratched his nose. It was not so blade-thin as the foxboy’s, but it was harder, more imposing, with a definite downward hook like a gyrfalcon’s beak. Such a nose would look fine with a ring through the septum, like my good bull Manu had. A silver ring, I thought, to match the one on his finger, and when I wanted him to follow me–wherever–I’d need only slip a finger through it and tug a little.

  My blush incinerated that train of thought when his eyes, which seemed to read words I did not speak aloud as written scrip upon my face, widened with surprise. The instant he laughed, green flames danced up from his hair and swirled about his skull.

  “Come, milkmaid!” he cried, standing up not-quite-straight from his stool. “Do not be so melancholy, pray. Am I not here, merchant and laborer? Is this warehouse not our private marketplace? Your life is not yet forfeit. What have you to trade?”

  I laughed at his ribbing but shook my head. “Not a thing that is my own, sir!”

  “I have it from my usual source–“

  “ –‘regular if reliably suspicious’?”

  “–yes, of course–that you wear a fine ivory locket on a black ribbon ‘round your neck.”

  The locket was hidden now beneath layers of silk. I clutched it through the cloth and shook my head.

  “Mister, you can have any pearl that pleases you. You can have my braided hair with it! Take my gown, my slippers, see? Gifts from a king! But do not take my locket…”

  “It belonged to your mother?” His voice was gentle.

  “Aye.” I scowled at him. “And I suppose it belonged to your mother before her?”

  “Aye,” he mocked me, glare for glare. You quite forgot he was an ugly creature while his shining eyes dissected you. “Your mam, may I remind you, never cared for worldly treasures.”

  “Unlike yours?” I asked.

  “My mother is made of treasure, though decidedly unworldly. Opal and ivory, silver and gold. If you ever meet her, you will understand.”

  “If I die tomorrow, I’ll never meet her,” I growled.

  “Just so.” His smile became a coax. Almost a wheedle. “Give over, milkmaid, and you’ll live another day in hope.”

  “Who says I want to meet your mother?”

  “Is the friend of your mam not your friend too? Have you so many friends in this world?”

  There he had a point. Back at Feisty Wold, our neighbors had liked Mam well enough, but during the Invasions, as illness queered her and fever weakened her, they dropped out of her life. Sometimes one would leave a basket of jams or new baked bread at our doorstep, but not a one wished speech with a sick woman who only ever whispered, and never of safe or comfortable topics. The memory stung my eyes. My hands flew up to unknot the ribbon. That little ivory locket hung around my neck with the weight of a dead heart. I could almost feel it bleeding into my lap.

  “I can’t!” I cried. “It’s stuck!”

  Then he stood before me, his nearness calming my struggles. My hands fell to my sides. He seized my wrists, squeezed once, then inched his grasp upward, my arms the purchase his arms needed to attain any height above that of his chest. The crease of pain between his eyes deepened to agony. The hump on his back shuddered. The gesture I took for granted while combing hair or brushing teeth cost him ease of breath, grace, comfort of movement.

  By the time his hands had gained my shoulders he was gasping. His head bent heavily before me and his whole body sagged, but his grip on me only tightened. I placed my hands lightly on either side of his ribcage, hoping to support him if he should collapse. His flames were utterly damped by the sweaty dark tangle of his hair, which smelled of sweetgrass and salt sea. A few strands of shining green twined with the black. I pressed a brief kiss to the crown of his head.

  “Mister,” I told him, “take the locket quickly. You look pale and weary.”

  He wheezed a laugh and loosed the knotted ribbon at my neck with a touch. The ivory locket fell into his palm. He pressed it hard against his heart.

  “Let me,” I whispered. “Let me.”

  He did not relinquish it, but allowed me the ribbon’s slack. I tied it around his neck, smoothing his wild hair down over the knot. He shivered.

  “Are you very hurt?”

  “No.” His voice was almost as gruff as the foxgirl’s. “Where did you learn to be kind?”

  I shook my head and turned away. “You saved my life. Twice if we include tonight.”

  “You paid that debt. Twice if we include tonight. You did not, do not have to–to…”

  I wished he would not speak so, not in those tones, not brokenly. My heart was on the verge, if not of explosion than of collapse, hurtling to an inward oblivion, sucking down with it the very ground I stood on. For a moment I believed my bones were Gentry bones, hollow as a bird’s. I was that light. I missed the locket’s weight around my neck. I missed my mother.

  Without turning back to him, I confessed, “There is no one here who cares for me. For me to care for. I feel like I’m dying. The parts of me that matter. If you save my life a thousand times it won’t mean anything unless I–unless I can still…feel something. Tenderness.”

  “Yes,” he whispered. “That is it exactly.”

  I covered my face with both hands, unwilling to sob in front of him.

  “Put me out!” I begged. “Now! Please. Like you did before. I am so tired.”

  This time his grass-trap was less like a thunder tunnel, all green flash and brash spectacle, and more like a hammock of spider silk and flower petal rocking, rocking, rocking me to slumber on a dozy summer evening. I swear I heard him singing lullabies all the way down.

  Another month went by, much like the last: too much satin, too little hope, and only intermittent visits from my friend the foxboy to alleviate the tedium of despair.

  It was early morning–not Sebastian’s usual hour for visiting–when I woke to footsteps outside my door. The king strode into my cell, his gold-braided crown bright upon his pale hair, his long red cloak sweeping the tiles of turquoise and lapis lazuli. He leaned one hip against my pillow, stroked a single fingernail down my face, and when I flinched fully awake, smiled.

  “How do you feel, Miss Faircloth?”

  Should I sit up? Cover myself with the blanket? Dare answer? It seemed safest to bob my chin. The dagger on his belt was very near my cheek. He was not looking at me, but at what the blanket did not cover. My shift was thin, made of silk. His cold eyes roved.

  “My page is in regular contact with his twin at Winterbane. She apprises him of the Archabbot’s movements. Did you know?”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t known, but I had guessed.

  His hand, as if by accident, drifted from my face to my collarbone. Had I anything of value left, I’d’ve wagered it that he felt my pounding heart even in that lightest graze.

  “Just this morning,” said the king, “Sebastian passed me the latest of his sister’s news. Avillius is conscripting an army of his own. He thinks to march on Jadio House, to wreck all I have assembled, and from the rubble rebuild a temple to his gods.” He leaned closer to me, studying my face intently. “But I am favored of the gods. They have turned their faces from him. They have sent me you.”

  “Me?” This was no time for sudden movement. His palm pressed me hard into the mattress, very hot and very dry.

  “You, Gordenne Faircloth. The Archabbot’s coffers are fat, but they are no match for the treasure troves of heaven. He cannot feed and clothe his army with prayer–especially when by his actions today he proves himself a heretic. His toy soldiers are of tin while mine are of gold.”

  They are not toys, I wanted to scream. They are people! Not gold or tin but flesh. And if this war is let to rage, we shall all be crushed to dust between the inexorable convictions of crown and miter. You shall be king of a graveyard realm. The temples will stand empty with no one to worship in them, and the Archabbot will have only himself to pray to.

  But I said nothing.

  First of all, and obviously, Jadio was bent on this war. Lusted for it. Had done his damnedest to incite it, for all I could see. Secondly, I knew very well (for her brother had told me, not that he could be trusted to keep tail or tale straight) that half of what Candia gabbled were tales so wild only a consummate actor could hear them with a somber face. Thirdly, if Avillius were building an army, it wouldn’t be an army of tin weaklings as Jadio seemed to expect. Pricksters Avillius had already, and zealots. He would hire mercenaries, too, and not hesitate to use those Gentry or Gentry-babes who had fallen under his power, whether from greed or grief or some dark hold he had over them to swell his ranks. He was not the kindly man he appeared, no more than Jadio was as good as he was beautiful.

  The king hauled me out of my thoughts and onto his lap, where he proceeded to crush me breathless.

  “Therefore, Miss Faircloth. Gordenne.”

  “Your Majesty?” I braced both hands against his chest, hoping to keep some distance, but he took it as an invitation for further intimacies. After swiping my mouth soundly with his tongue, mauling my ears and sucking at my neck, he pulled back and grasped my shoulders, shaking me. His fingernails drew blood.

  “Therefore, my darling, today you’ll get to spinning. I have filled the ballroom at Jadio House with all the straw in Leressa. You are not to leave the room until your alchemy is performed. You are not to eat or drink or see a soul until that gold is mine. And when it is, Miss Faircloth,” he crushed me to him again, harder, letting me feel the power of his body and the weakness of my own, “when you give me that gold, I will give you my name, my throne and my seed. You shall be Queen of Leressa. The saint of our people. The mother of my child–and my wife.”

  I opened my mouth to explain how I could not do what he asked, had never been able to do it, how I’d started out a nothing, and now was even less than that. But he dug his nails again into the gouge wounds he had made and shook me by the shoulders all over again.

  “If you do not!” he whispered. “If you do not!”

  I waited in the shadow of the spinning wheel. Dusk came, and midnight, and dawn again. He did not come. By the king’s orders I’d nothing to eat or drink, no blankets to cover me, no visitor to comfort me. Dusk, then midnight, dawn again. I cleared a small space on the floor and pressed my face to the cool tile, and slept. High morning. High noon. Late afternoon. Twilight. Night.

 

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