The workrooms were less nauseating, even under a heavy fume of herbs and magic. Farine squinted and checked the sun’s angle. The room would be thick with it by now. Kerrigan would wonder where she’d gotten to.

  “Fari?” Hadja’s voice held a correction.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Miriam was talking to you.” She hissed now, embarrassed by her princess’ lapse.

  “Oh. Your pardon, goodmother.” The woman stood beside Hadja, and smiled tightly while the girl peered out from behind her skirts. “What was that?”

  “I only said good morning, your highness. No matter.”

  “Good morning, then. You’ve been to town?”

  “Yes. Your father has called his standing army to assemble.”

  “Miri.” Hadja warned the goodmother to silence. Apparently they hadn’t conferred on keeping Farine in the dark as of yet.

  “Really, Hadj. Do you think I don’t know? I’ve seen the guard drilling on the front lawn, just on the way here this morning.”

  “It’s ugly business.” Hadja sagged and gave in. “But I suppose there’s no good in pretending it isn’t happening.”

  “Thank you.”

  The garden fell to quiet for a moment, Miriam and Hadja stood over her and the child made covert faces and fidgeted with her goodmother’s hem. Farine felt the twitch to be moving, to get away from them all and scurry back to the palace. Kerrigan might still have some work for her to do. He couldn’t make half of the marks in his little book, and she was certain she’d be able to. Even if he wasn’t writing today, there’d be herbs to burn. The powder needed replacing, and they’d used more than a little of it the day before.

  Miriam’s voice broke her reverie. The goodmother spoke quietly, and her words held a touch of scorn that had Farine straining to catch the next comment. “Kind of you both to come today. The king is busy again, I suppose?”

  “I’m sure he’ll come, Miriam. He has so many duties. So many to look after, but I’m sure he’ll come as soon as he can.”

  “I am not sure, Hadja, but I hope you are the better judge of his character.”

  The disapproval in that statement was unmistakable. It set Farine’s teeth tight together. Before she could think of a retort, however, Hadja swooped in to defend the king.

  “Leopold is a good man, Miriam.”

  “Perhaps he is, Hadja.” The goodmother reached up, tucked a stray strand of silver back behind her ear and crinkled her rosy nose. “And perhaps you’ve been living in that palace for far too long to be objective.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” Hadja sniffed and straightened. She didn’t stand very tall, but the goodmother had the stout nature of her kind. The two faced off at a fairly even height.

  “This is not the time or place.” Miriam shook her head and then turned to the child still fidgeting behind her. “Go and play now, will you dear?”

  The girl stamped her foot and then kicked at the azalea. Her voice was, not surprisingly, whiny. “There ain’ nothing to do.”

  Miriam sighed and corrected her far more tenderly than she’d spoken to Hadja. “There isn’t anything, dear, and there most certainly is. Go on now.”

  The girl kicked the plant again, scuffed her feet in the dirt and dragged away toward the cottage. She managed to look back once to stick out her tongue, but her cheeks had a wet sheen on them.

  “We should go as well,” Hadja said. She spun and marched up the path without waiting for Farine to stand. She stalked toward home, the direction Farine had been longing for since they’d arrived. Yet, the princess hesitated to follow the woman’s stiff back.

  Hadja rarely fell to real anger, and it always scared her when she did. She didn’t care to be left with Miriam either, however. The goodmother’s glower had more of a fiend’s mettle in it at the moment. At least Hadja’s anger was a known factor, and so Farine slunk away after her maid quickly enough to put distance between herself and the garden, but not so smartly that she caught up with Hadja.

  She could hear the muttering though, the curse or two and something about an “incorrigible child.” She didn’t need to guess who Hadja meant, and yet, for all her own dislike, for all that she agreed with the assessment, Farine couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt. For the first time since they’d shown up in the gardens, Farine felt sorry for the strange girl.

  She couldn’t help the whisper of suspicion either. What Miriam had said had hit a nerve with Hajda, but what had she meant? Lived in the palace too long? Farine chewed her lip and followed her maid toward the curtain wall. There was too much she didn’t know and no one to ask today, not with Hadja in a tiff. Even if the woman had been in a good mood, somehow, Farine guessed she’d avoid answering her questions where the Rosy Glass was concerned, where anything to do with King Leopold was concerned.

  Maybe Hadja couldn’t answer the questions. If the goodmother was correct, Hadja had lived in the palace too long to see him clearly.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “No!” The pocket spun and spun and someone chanted. No man shall, no man shall. Payne heard the words in her mind and knew the voice was her own. “No man shall!”

  Her screaming brought her round fully, but the nausea made her wish for death. Inside the pocket. Damn. If she remembered right, the burning in her shoulder was an arrow strike, except her reaching fingers found no wooden shaft. Someone had removed the weapon, and someone had wrapped her wound in soft cloth, tightly, gently and without perishing for the effort. No man shall.

  A woman had tended her but not Sariah, not in the pocket of Old Space. Besides, Sariah probably would have let her die. She twisted and pressed her good arm against what felt like cool grass. She tried to roll onto her side, but the colors spun around her, brilliant, sparkling and horrific. She choked, turned her head to the side and puked.

  “She’s awake.” The voice was high and squeaky, but male. Payne flinched from it and from the confusion that washed through her at the sound. “Now, now. It’s all right. I know better. Neeta, she’s awake.”

  “I’m coming.” Neither the name nor the voice were familiar, and when the face popped into view, Payne understood why. She’d landed amidst the Gentry, and this woman had the sharp features and pointy ears that came with that blood. If the bat wings were not a hallucination, then she’d be a fiend and most likely the person who’d tended Payne’s wound. Her eyes were wide and large, but they narrowed at the sight of Payne’s condition. “She’s sick.”

  “Pocket.” Payne choked again, but held back the spew. The fiend woman’s face blurred as the world spun off again. Payne moaned and the hurl came right back up. “Out of the pocket…please.”

  “Right.” Hands slid underneath her shoulders, lifted her enough to slide her body over the grass. It made the bright, sparkling blue sky swirl and brought on another wave of puking. “Yeah, where to?”

  “Anywhere!” Payne growled around her sick.

  The fiend took her meaning and dragged her faster. The tingle of a nearby membrane strengthened, replaced a bit of the nausea with the hope of escape. “Slipstone, get that open before she ruins my boots.”

  “They’re still out there, you know.” The male voice squeaked again. “Where am I supposed to go?”

  “Cross pockets.” The fiend grunted and Payne slid a few more feet. She wanted to protest, to offer to walk on her own, but the pocket had her weak and too dizzy to even sit up. “We can duck out from a different one. Wait…”

  The same pointy face appeared over her head, this time upside down. The fiend’s brow furrowed and her eyes widened. She stared into Payne’s face, and the look made the back of Payne’s head tingle.

  “Got it.”

  “Can you work the membrane and drag her too?”

  “Just you watch, old man.”

  Payne braced herself. The tingle swarmed over them, a wave of magic as the fiend and her high-pitched companion moved them from one pocket to another. She threw up again, groaned and spit while the colors spun and sparkled. Another tingle came, the next wave, but this time they dragged her out into ordinary space and the dull, still world that didn’t make her insides revolt.

  “Thank god.” She lay there, exhausted but not sick, and watched the clouds drift overhead.

  “You don’t do so well in Old Space.” The fiend walked around her, squatting by her feet and frowning. “But you can sense the pockets.”

  “Sense them yes, enough to stay clear. You can imagine why.”

  “Pretty nasty reaction.”

  “You took the arrow out?”

  “Yes.”

  “And bandaged me?”

  “We did.”

  “He could have been killed.” She tried to sit, but her shoulder throbbed and she ended up on one elbow. It was enough to get a look at the fiend’s cohort. An old imp hunched beside a familiar vista. He stood at the membrane of a pocket that she’d seen every morning for at least ten years. Which meant the temple was behind her, the caretaker’s keep and a view of the distant sea. “You brought me home.”

  “You’re welcome.” The fiend’s voice was flat and wary. “You were thinking of this place.”

  “Yes. Thank you.” Payne stared at the imp. His back curled, making him even shorter than his species on average. His gray skin wrinkled and sagged, but his eyes were bright and sharp as pinpoints. They hadn’t flickered from her for a second. “You took too much of a risk, though, and I can’t pay you for it.”

  “I know your curse,” he said.

  “I wish I did.” Fatigue made her arm wobble, and she laid back down, stared at the clouds and wondered if they’d find the temple empty, if he was home or away. Her body felt heavy as a stone, and she let it remain still, imagined fading into the ridge, letting the lichen eat through her bones.

  “No man shall,” the imp said. “I knew that armband more than a hundred years ago.”

  “You’re pulling my leg.” The clouds were wispy and as insubstantial as her thoughts. She felt sleep sneaking in and knew the injury had cost her more than she’d first assumed.

  “No. I’ve seen it before, but I thought it had been lost to time like so many other things.”

  “Lost to time sounds lovely.”

  The fiend’s voice broke the chant between them, gruffer and with a note of concern. “She’s weakening, Slipstone.”

  “She’ll be fine. Needs to rest is all.”

  “She can sense the pockets.”

  “I know.”

  “Is it the same curse?”

  “The same band exactly.” Someone sniffed loudly, the wind danced from her toes to her hair, and Payne felt darkness at her edges. She tasted salt. “I recognize the marks. Can you read it? By my hand only, it says.”

  “Yes. That’s it then.”

  Payne knew they kept talking. She could hear their voices like distant birds. Her tongue licked the salt from her lips, moistened away the grit and dust. By my hand only. She knew it too, somehow, but as she fell asleep again, all she could say was “No man shall. No man…”

  Ý

  Kerrigan wasn’t in the workroom when she raced up the stairs. He caught her, out of breath, at the top. At first she thought he’d been waiting for her, watching out the hallway window. He did lean his elbows on the sill, and he did stare out over the castle grounds, but when she skidded to a stop in front of Mastral’s door, Kerrigan held one finger to his lips and his brow lowered over his eyes.

  He was listening in. Farine saw as much in his expression and the overly relaxed pose. If he’d watched for her, he might have done it just as easily from the far end of the hall, from the window outside his own workroom.

  She tip-toed to the opening and earned a half smile for it. His attention was fixed on the conversation, the raised voices filtering through Mastral’s door. Farine recognized the First Mage’s and the other as well, but why Kerrigan might spy upon the king, she couldn’t guess.

  Before the conversation could give her any clues, the door opened. Leopold the Mighty stormed from the workroom, fuming but brought up short by the revelation that the hallway was not empty. He pulled to his full height and let a rumbling breath escape. It settled his expression, and his mouth shifted gears, widened into the special smile that he reserved for his daughter.

  “Fari, love. What are you doing here?” The smile painted his words kind and jovial, but his eyes flew to Kerrigan and back, and she saw a question worm through him as well.

  Farine stumbled in her father’s presence, suddenly feeling childish and squirmy, caught in the act of…of something. Before she could decide on a lie to explain her presence, Kerrigan offered the plain truth.

  “The princess has a very steady hand.” He bowed to punctuate the speech, a wise move. The king’s face softened in response. “She has benefited from her education greatly and, I’m afraid, I’ve been making use of it as well.”

  The softness vanished. Leopold rumbled again. “How is that, exactly?”

  “She’s been helping me, drawing figures that I’ve had trouble with otherwise. My eyes, you see.”

  “Ah, yes. You did mention that.”

  “Yes. Since birth, I’m afraid.” Kerrigan leaned against the sill. He looked at the king, but he didn’t show the least sign of concern…or of subservience. He smiled and waited while Farine squirmed. Didn’t he know her father could forbid her to return to the workroom? Didn’t he care even a little?

  She felt the little stabs of fear and something else akin to disappointment but more soft and uncomfortable. What if he didn’t care? She sucked in her bottom lip and bit it. Whatever it was that she thought of their time in the workroom, to Kerrigan, perhaps, it was just assistance with his work. Her eyes dropped toward the tiles. She felt the weight in her shoulders, her father’s judgment, Kerrigan’s indifference.

  But something sparkled in the corner of her eye. Kerrigan’s hand shifted, moved only a fraction and hid the source. Still, Farine had worked in the fumes and the smoke enough to recognize the flash of magic. Her pulse revived, raced in anticipation.

  “Well, I don’t see any harm in that,” Leopold the Mighty shrugged off his frown and nodded absently. “Provided Fari is willing?”

  “Yes, father.” She dipped at the knee and tried to sneak a glimpse of what Kerrigan held. “I am.”

  “Good. Fine.” The king smiled for her again and then marched to the stair and began to descend it.

  Kerrigan stiffened however, rigid and with his eyes still fixed on the workroom. Mastral stood in the doorway, scowling more than any elf Farine had ever seen. His pointed face actually wrinkled with displeasure. He took a step toward Kerrigan.

  “Good day, First Mage.” Farine found her voice. The elf, she actually could outrank, and Kerrigan obviously could not. Nor did he seem inclined to try his magic trick on the First Mage. He’d worked her father beautifully, but Mastral would be up to her.

  The elf turned slowly, and the look he gave her was only slightly less tense. One of his eyebrows arched until it nearly tapped his high hairline. His head tilted, graceful and full of suspicion. His mouth opened, but whatever words he might have had, he didn’t speak.

  Farine dipped her head forward and even gave a tiny curtsey. “If you’ll excuse us.”

  Mastral’s eyes turned charcoal. She suspected he’d have a word or two for the king about Kerrigan, but for now he only nodded and backed into his workroom. He closed the door slowly, and tossed a final frown at Kerrigan before shutting it fully.

  “Hmm.” Kerrigan eyed the door for less than a breath. His face was blank, unreadable. His stance no longer could be labeled relaxed, however.

  “What—”

  “Not here. Come.” He led the way down the hall and waited until they were both safely inside his workroom before continuing. “That was good work with Mastral, but I fear he didn’t care to be reminded of his place.”

  “He never does.” Farine frowned at the workbench. He had no scroll out today, no herbs and the only tool on the table was the long knife he used to collect the plants. Had he meant to visit the garden today as well? “Mastral hates anything that reminds him he’s not perfect.”

  “Always an elf.” Kerrigan swept the knife away, tucked it onto one of his many shelves and retrieved the scroll they’d worked on the day before.

  “What did you do to my father?”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “You have something in your hand.”

  Kerrigan held out both palms, empty and not nearly as innocent as he pretended them to be. His expression didn’t hold water.

  “You had something. I saw it.”

  “Very sharp, princess. Have I told you that?”

  “Yes.” Farine crossed her arms over her chest and stuck her chin out.

  He bent down and lifted something from behind the table. It was big, flat and wrapped in leather, but she knew what it was before he unfurled the cover. “May I present the Rosy Glass.”

  “A mirror.”

  “An enchanted mirror. Useful. You can imagine.” He pulled the cloth away, revealing a web of cracks toward the bottom of the glass. The mirror was a small oval, one of many that could be found in any of the castle’s smaller rooms. He’d probably pinched it from his own quarters, but the crack confused her until he held up what he’d concealed in his long sleeve. A single shard of mirror, a flashing diamond. A portable Rosy Glass.

  “Does it work the same way?”

  “I’m experimenting,” he said. The question tickled his intellect, however, and he forgot that he hadn’t told her, possibly hadn’t meant to, and let the excitement wash through his words. “I’ve tried a few sigils on the back, tweaked the spell a little to see what sort of results I can manage.”

  “Like in the hallway.”

  “Yes.”

  “On my father.”

  “The king, yes.”

  He looked up and blinked as if just noticing she was there. A whisper of color tinted his cheeks. He’d committed treason by magic, and confessed it to the king’s daughter, but he’d done it to keep their work going, and Farine had wanted that as well, had been prepared to lie for it.

 

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