Winterspell, page 19
“No. It’s . . . fine. I’m grateful.” And to prove it, she knocked back the rest of her drink in one foul gulp and spluttered, coughing.
The mood somewhat lifted, Karras grinned. “Excellent. Now, how to handle this hair of yours? It’s like a beacon.” He picked up a lock of her hair between his thumb and forefinger and examined it before letting it fall back into place. “But first you need a bath.”
Clara frowned. “But we bathed just last night.”
“Ah, but you can’t have too many baths, can you? Our standards here are exceptional. Doxies are many things, but filthy is not one of them.”
Lenz laughed.
“Well, at least not literally,” Karras added, smirking.
He drew a curtain across the length of the room, separating Clara from Nicholas, and led her behind an ornate filigreed screen in the corner. He turned on a brass spigot in the wall, and steaming water filled a porcelain tub painted with golden naked figures.
“Go on and bathe,” Karras said. “I won’t peek.”
Clara did, as quickly as possible. When she had finished, Karras settled her back onto the stool in a robe so soft that Clara felt indecent wearing it, the fabric kissing her every curve. She sat rigid, hunched, her arms wrapped about herself. Perhaps if she didn’t move, she wouldn’t feel the fabric slide so intimately, wouldn’t realize how slight a covering shielded her from Karras’s eyes.
He seemed unaffected, however, combing dark paste through her hair and humming under his breath.
“Karras?” Clara whispered. She had to say something. “I have a question.”
“Ask away.”
“You spoke of doxies before. What are doxies?” Clara thought she knew, and it pained her to have to ask, but she needed to learn everything she could. She could not be intimidated by impropriety—and she could not help but be curious.
“I’m a doxy,” said Karras. “Lenz is a doxy—Afa, too. She’s one of Pascha’s favorites. We man the pleasure-house, entertain the faeries.”
Clara watched half-dark, half-red strands float to her feet as Karras trimmed a short length from the ends of her hair. “Who is Pascha?”
“The faery who runs our house. Nasty priss of a man, but if you keep him happy, he isn’t so bad.”
“And . . .” Clara closed her eyes, afraid of the answer. Too similar to Felicity, too small, too frightened, despite her bravado. “Bo isn’t a doxy, is she?”
Karras made a horrified sound. “Absolutely not. No children here. Even faeries, it would seem, have their standards. So far, anyway.” He handed her a damp cloth. “Now grip this in your teeth. This part might hurt.”
Avoiding her still-tender wounds, he pasted something up and down her bare legs, from ankle to so high up on Clara’s thigh that she jerked away, afraid.
“Don’t be afraid, love,” he said softly. “I’m not looking too close.”
Then he covered the paste with cloths and ripped them free, one by one—along with every hair on Clara’s legs. She cried out into the rag. Similar sounds from Nicholas’s side of the room brought her some comfort.
“Sorry about that,” Karras said, moving to her arms next, “but Pascha likes his doxies smooth and clean. You’ve got to blend in.”
Clara nodded and bit down hard until Karras had finished. A hush fell between them as he worked, as he darted about the room to grab this canister and that brush, painted Clara’s fingernails and toenails a deep color that shone black in the darkness and plum in the light. He rinsed the dye from her hair and tied jeweled bangles around her ankles. He painted her stinging arms and belly with shimmering paint colored violet and gold, and disguised the worst of her burns and bruises with powder and cunningly tied scarves. Clara tensed as he worked at this, but if Karras thought her wounds had healed more quickly than they should have, he said nothing.
She was sure they had. She could not ignore what her eyes plainly saw, even if she could not understand it. Worry flared inside her, but she could only stand so much confusion at one time, and set that particular piece aside.
For now.
While he measured her for clothing, she stood in the center of the room in undergarments so flimsy they might as well have been air. Then he dressed her like a doll, with fabrics that slid against her skin like cool, beaded tongues.
By the time Karras stepped back to inspect her, Clara was so deeply uncomfortable that she could feel herself trembling. Such humiliation—practically naked, scrubbed and plucked and daubed within an inch of slapping Karras’s hands away and running back into her room to hide. What would Dr. Victor think of her? She squeezed her eyes shut at the thought, fighting back tears; she could feel the air against so much of her body, so many unveiled curves. Such an unabashed, nasty display. She imagined what she looked like, how much skin she would see, and felt ill.
A soft finger at her chin prompted her to open her eyes. Karras’s face was compassionate.
“You can’t be afraid,” he said quietly, “or Pascha will find you, no matter how well we try to hide you. He has a nose for fear, you see.”
“And if . . . if I get caught,” Clara said, forcing her breathing back into some semblance of regularity, “I cannot find my father.” She balled her hands into fists. Her fingers were heavy with rings. “Or return to my sister.”
“See, there you are, that’s the spirit.” He patted her on the shoulder—firm but not unkind. Then he stepped back, tugging here, dabbing there, and grinned. “I’m not usually an egotistical sort of man—”
“Ha!” Lenz laughed again from the other side of the room.
“—but look at yourself. Can I paint, or can’t I?”
It was a tremendous effort to turn toward the mirror, and when Clara did, she took stock of herself with a clinical eye. She needed to know what she looked like now, what the people here would see, but she certainly didn’t need to examine every last mortifying detail. Dyed ebony curls, falling past her shoulders and threaded with pearls and rubies; eyes outlined with kohl and tiny golden flecks; skin glistening with paint; jewels surrounding her navel; freckles masked with powder. Gauzy dark fabric and braided golden cords covered not much more than the essentials. On her wrists thick bands of metal glazed with gold paint marked her as, she presumed, a doxy of this house.
Before Clara could react, Afa entered the room and nodded her approval.
“Well done, Karras,” she said, and drew the curtain aside.
Nicholas stood there, and Clara hardly recognized him. Lenz had painted him into a living mosaic. Shimmering shapes in black, blue, and silver ink swept across his skin, artfully disguising the remnants of the curse—the plate on his right shoulder, the metal slivers snaking around his forearms like vines. Dark strands of jewels hung across his torso, clasped at his neck, wrists, and belt.
It was good work, Afa said, and Pascha would never suspect anything. They looked like new recruits vying for permanent positions.
Even so, Clara felt exposed, fragile. Sullied, and as though she would likewise sully anyone who looked at her, infecting them with the obscenity of her bare skin. Afa led them through the twisting corridors for a meal and to meet with Bo, and as Nicholas walked beside Clara in silence, their many jewels knocked together, jarring her precarious calm.
After a moment he laughed softly. “I can’t imagine eating right now. I feel like if I move too much, this pretty shell they’ve put me in will crack to pieces. And these pants make me itch like you wouldn’t believe.”
“At least,” Clara said, striving for lightness, “your shell covers most of you. I feel as though mine merely serves to point out things I’d rather people not see.”
Nicholas was quiet for a moment, and paused outside the common room. He reached for her arm and then, perhaps, remembered the paint. He pulled away, and his fingers brushed against the jewels at her waist. He muttered an apology.
Clara braced herself, shame welling up inside her. If he says anything complimentary about how I look, I will happily punch him.
The paint on his face was the most severe of all, to mask any distinguishing features. Clara saw within it strange shapes, as changeable as storm clouds.
He smiled, his eyes firmly on hers. “I miss your red hair. And your freckles. I’ve always liked them.”
When he offered her his hand, she took it.
* * *
During their lunch of roasted figs with honey and rosemary, spiced coffee, and a cold pudding topped with black currants, Clara had an epiphany.
“That map. It was two maps in one.”
Nicholas looked dumbfounded. “What do you mean?”
“Something was bothering me about it, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.” She set down her coffee, and for a moment she forgot to care that she was largely naked, that Nicholas was so near. “There were lines across it, faint ones. I thought perhaps they were outdated borders, or rivers, but—”
“Caught that, did you?” Bo said, slipping into the room with hardly a sound. “They’re tunnels.”
Nicholas cursed. “Bo, you’re worse than a cat. I nearly jumped out of my skin.”
She took off her shabby hat with a flourish. “Thank you, sire. I do aim to please.”
“Where have you been, anyway?”
“Oh, here and there, and here again.” Bo tossed a hunk of misshapen metal onto the table. “Got myself a treat.”
Clara recoiled at the broken metal feathers, the dim blue eyes. “A kambot?”
“I like to snatch ones I can, knock ’em out when they’re not looking, rewire them. It’s to mess with her, see? Take away some of her eyes.” Bo shrugged, gleefully wrenching some of the kambot’s feathers even farther out of place. “I can’t do much, but I can do that at least. I can, in pieces, turn their own damn machines against ’em. And, here.” Bo pulled the map from her jacket. “Take another look.”
Now that Clara knew what she was looking for, she could see it plainly, beneath the bolder lines of the ten districts.
“Tunnels,” Nicholas breathed, leaning closer. “That’s brilliant. We can use these, Clara.”
A treelike network of faint lines fanned out across the map, branching off one another and knotting together in hubs marked with tiny numbers. Delicate beneath the bolder lines of districts and landmarks, they would not be noticed upon first glance.
Afa glided in, glistening with a light sheen of sweat. She had been forced to leave, she had said, for an early afternoon appointment. Clara could not meet her eyes.
“Ah,” Afa said, fanning her overheated skin, “scheming with my cunning deviant of a sister?”
“Hadn’t quite gotten there yet.” Bo pointed to the map, in the district marked KAFFLOCK. “Here’s where we’ll go today—the neighborhood lothouse, see?” she said to Clara and Nicholas. “Sort of like an official market. Clean and neat and all, not like the streets, but dangerous. Crawling with faeries. Soldiers, nobility, successful businessfolk like our Pascha. They go there to shop. Humans do too, if they feel like risking it. Food’s cleaner, so’s water and sugar.”
Nicholas looked up. “Risking it?”
“Sometimes if soldiers don’t like the look of you, they’ll—” Bo mimed the motion of a spear. “Zzzt! For no reason. Or worse things than that.”
Afa settled onto a settee across from them, tying her damp hair off her neck in a hasty braid. Clara could not stop stealing glances at her, looking for signs of what had happened upstairs. Reprehensible fascination seized her. She wondered if Afa had been hurt, humiliated. If she had been forced to perform for the faeries, and what, exactly, that had entailed.
Clara twisted her napkin in her lap, careful not to smudge the paint on her bare belly. Wicked images overtook her thoughts. It was as though her new clothes, the air upon skin so unaccustomed to it, the knowledge of where Afa had been and what she might have been doing, and the close press of Nicholas against her thigh—this entire monstrously unfamiliar experience—was spinning her out of control. And she had to be in control, for her own sake, for her family’s. She had to clamp down on her wandering thoughts, this salacious curiosity, the new pulse of her blood that seemed horribly synchronous with the pounding music upstairs.
“And what will we find there?” She focused on Bo, and the sight of her childish face cleared Clara’s head. “At the lothouse?”
“Traveling companions, for one,” Afa answered. “You will need guides, to travel the country in search of your father, Clara, as well as to make for the capital. Although, Your Highness, how you intend to reach it with Rieden standing in your way . . .”
“We’ll work something out,” Nicholas said, clipped, intent on the map.
“And if I’m right,” Bo said, “and I usually am—”
Afa cleared her throat, her eyes teasing.
“Usually, I said, dear sister. Don’t give me that look. Anyway, since I’m so usually right, we can find information about your father there as well, Clara.” Bo smiled, and when she moved to sit closer to Clara, it was so gentle, so quietly trusting, that it reminded Clara of Felicity. Even so, as Bo took them through the afternoon’s plan, Clara could not quite block out the sound of the music upstairs, and shifted restlessly. She felt Afa’s eyes upon her, and Nicholas’s. She felt transparent under their scrutiny, as though they could read her and were disgusted by what they saw.
Stubbornly she stared at the map. If they were—and she would not blame them—she hoped they would keep it to themselves.
20
The lothouse crawled with faeries, as Bo had said—uniformed soldiers, spears in hand, gloves flashing; what Clara assumed was the nobility, in outrageous cloaks and feathered hats, hair braided into elaborate knots; wiry merchants, overseeing multiple stalls manned by harried-looking humans. Each human, like Clara and Nicholas, was marked by some sort of insignia—a band at their wrist, a tattoo on their neck, an emblazoned sash. They were property, like she was pretending to be.
Clara, Nicholas, Afa, and Bo had entered the lothouse separately, to arouse the least suspicion. Not that Clara thought anyone would have noticed their tiny group in this chaos. Countless others were dressed as extravagantly as she and Nicholas, some even more so. Although the sheer quantity of flesh mortified her, Clara could not help but be glad. At least the faeries would have many other doxies to leer after. Humans, too, surrounded them, looking much healthier than those on the streets—servants and doxies, groomed and sometimes resplendent, though none half so glamorous as the faeries. They manned stalls, carried bundles for their faery owners, and, if they were doxies, flirted in an exaggeratedly obsequious manner that seemed to please their potential faery patrons. Once, a human servantwoman laden with baskets of goods stumbled and fell against Clara, nearly knocking her over. A nearby faery soldier shoved the woman to the ground with the butt of his spear, spilling her goods. The buzzing spear seemed to shock her, send her reeling, but she hardly whimpered, as though she were used to such pain.
“My apologies,” the faery said to Clara afterward, but there was nothing genuine about him. He tapped the bands around her wrists with one long fingernail, his eyes on her body. “From Pascha House, are you? Might have to pay a visit soon.”
Clara tried not to show her disgust, murmured her thanks, and hurried away.
She wandered toward the lothouse’s back end, where ridged metal walls met the iron rafters arching high overhead. A severe black door marked what should have been the entrance to this lothouse’s chromocast station. There was one at every lothouse, Bo had said, and sometimes two. A bored-looking faery soldier stood guard before the door. Clara felt for the pouch at her waist, beneath her slitted skirt. Yes, there was the tiny weight of the lock pick Bo had gifted her. It should be, she had said, an appropriate size.
Should be.
Clara paused at a stall selling luxurious fabrics. The human man working the station glanced at Clara’s bands and looked hurriedly away, as if struck—or as if she would strike him. Discomposed, she pretended to sort through his bolts of fabric until she caught sight of a dark shape in the rafters, tiny and swift.
Her heartbeat surged. It was time. If everything was going as planned, Afa and Nicholas were at this moment finding the information they needed.
And now, Clara hoped, she would find hers.
She watched the tiny dark shape swoop through the rafters, joined by another shape, and another. She said a tiny, quick prayer for Bo, and wondered, not for the first time, if there was a God in Cane, and if he was as useless here as he was at home.
The shapes exploded—one, two, three—in great sizzling bursts of light. Other explosions followed from throughout the room—hidden beneath merchant stalls, buried in piles of goods. The air filled with black smoke.
Soldiers hurried into action, shouting foreign commands. The nobility ducked, screaming, covering their glittering coiffed heads. The humans screamed as well; some held up their hands, threw themselves onto the floor in supplication, but others laughed and took the opportunity to snatch goods from unmanned carts.
Clara looked to the door. The soldier had gone.
She took one last frantic look at the lothouse floor. Various stalls caught fire as the explosions continued, scattered throughout the building. One singed metal flake of a kambot feather floated down from the ceiling to fall at Clara’s feet.
On edge, stretched thin with fear, Clara smiled anyway. Bo, I could kiss you.
She turned to the door, fumbled at the latch with her pick, wiping the sweat from her eyes. When she thought she had it, the latch began shifting, right there beneath her fingers, with a roiling black hiss.
Faery magic. The door had been enchanted.
She recoiled and, through her alarm, felt something else building inside her. It was cold and piercing, the same sudden force from her nightmare, when winter had torn through her blood and turned everything blazing. The same sudden force from the doomed train.
It burst out of her like a fist, this energy, and threw her against the wall. She sagged there, clutching her throat, coughing for air. Something was inside her; something was crawling. She was choking like she would turn inside out . . . and then it was gone. It left her, like a storm brimming in and out of existence.
