Forgotten - Kingdom Gone Book 3, page 5
My whole world is off kilter.
“Where has Malcolm gone?” Hadja lifted her skirt hems and scuttled around the visitors, rushing to Farine without explaining the goodmother’s presence. “I saw him this morning.”
“Father has sent him away.”
“We should get back to the castle.”
“Who are they, Hadj?”
Behind the maid, the child blew a raspberry and puffed her sallow cheeks out like a fish. The goodmother shooed her back toward the cottage, casting a low and secret look to Hadja. “We’ll be fine,” she said, but no one had asked, had they?
“Thank you, Miriam. I’ll see if I can bring him this afternoon.”
“Who?” Farine’s hands found her hips again.
The goodmother and child vanished inside the garden cottage and Hadja watched them until the door was closed. Then she twirled around and headed off, back toward the palace and right past Farine in the process.
“Hadja!”
“Come on, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you on the way.”
Farine remained rooted to the path. She eyed the cottage and then her fleeing maid. She could storm through the door and demand answers. The cottage belonged to her father from the stones to the thatch, and she had a right to know who hid inside it. She had a right to demand that Hadja halt, to assert her status, even though she’d never once considered doing so before.
But why should I have it? What makes my blood more significant than hers?
The dark bubble in her chest burst. She’d seen too much not to understand the foreboding, the sense of decay at their kingdom’s edge, the ominous twitch and subterfuge in everyone’s movements. She stamped her slipper against the garden path and cursed.
It came out loud and sharp, a word she’d never even thought let alone spoken, a word she’d heard the stable boy snarl when a plow horse had trodden on his boot and refused to budge. It felt like a good word, a perfect expression of the foul aura clinging to her day. When it echoed over the garden, however, Hadja hissed and spun around again.
“What did you just say?”
“It’s a perfectly good word.”
“For a strumpet, perhaps.” Hadja squinted, managing to look at least twenty years older in the process. “Your mother—”
“Don’t!” Farine stomped forward, keeping her hands firmly planted and leaning into her anger. “Don’t bring mother into this. Not today, not with everything, everything twisted and broken and—and—and WRONG!”
“What’s that?” Hadja’s voice dropped, she leaned forward to match the princess nose to nose, but her eyes pressed into an even tighter squint and her words hissed like the wind. “What do you mean?”
“Everything looks wrong! The gate is rusty, the walls are sagging, Malcolm looked at me and, well, it wasn’t like normal!”
Hadja didn’t give her an answer immediately. Instead, she made a circle with the fingers of her right hand, lay her left open against her forehead and pressed the right into it, her gesture to the Powers and a sure sign Farine had said something she wasn’t prepared to handle. Her lips moved silently, offering either prayer or penitence.
When her duty to the Powers had been sufficiently appeased, she turned her attention back to Farine. Her apologizing was done, apparently, spent on her faith instead of her princess. “Oh, child,” she sighed and her shoulders drooped. “What have you done?”
Chapter Six
“I’ll gather enough for a few cycles.” He didn’t look over his shoulder, but Payne nodded anyway, as if he might see her. “That way I won’t have to go again for a few months.”
“Good.” She sat cross-legged on the altar, half the temple grounds away, and watched his robes flutter in the evening breeze. The salt tonight was heavy on the wind, and Payne licked her lips and tried to see the pocket he would attempt to open. A faint shimmer flirted with her, just a whisper earned through long years of training without the benefit of Gentry blood. Still, she could see it now, and that small achievement made a little dent in the desperation that had hung around them all day. “That’s good.”
“I won’t be long.” He hesitated more than normal. He always gathered in the pocket, had never feared leaving her before today. “We can try something new, perhaps. I’ll stay close to the temple for a few months.”
“Okay.” There was nothing new to try, and they both knew it. She slid her fingers under her armband and felt the cool pressure of its eternal curse. “Sure.”
He vanished into the pocket. The bushes beyond the farthest pillar didn’t even rustle as he passed. The wind howled though, and Payne stood and craned her neck back to see the fat, full moon over the stones. Silver, like the band. Damn the Powers, the moon and all magic. None of it had done her any good.
“Have you thought about my offer?” Malcolm Fairbright’s voice had no place here, and yet, here it was again.
“You’re back.” Payne swallowed a flutter and made her voice level and emotionless. “Why?”
“Do you have any idea how long I’ve been searching for you?” He appeared at the mouth of the gravel pathway, lit by the traitor moon. His hand stroked the mustache below his sharp nose, and he looked down at the earth rather than directly at her. “Any guess?”
“Why should I care?”
He shrugged and stepped between the pillars, inside now and with her half the circle away from the keep’s safety. Payne jumped off the altar on the far side, keeping it between them even though the man didn’t come any closer. “You tell me.”
“Malcolm, is it?” He knew about the armband, he’d mentioned the curse too, but somehow Payne didn’t feel comfortable with him pacing inside her stones. She didn’t feel safe. “How much do you know about this?”
She lifted her arm, let the moonlight dance across the metal ring and took a sudden step in his direction. He flinched away, staggered back three steps before catching his composure.
“I know enough.”
“Apparently.” She backed up and waited to see how brave he was. He couldn’t touch her, and knowing it would keep him from trying. It would keep him from dying, too. “This makes me a danger to you, Malcolm. You know that. So why come looking for me?”
“Maybe I know how to get that thing off.”
“Very unlikely.”
He smiled, but Payne saw his eyes flicker to the pathway. The way he snapped them back set off her warning bells. The way he moved forward, despite her proximity, pushed her into a backwards retreat. He’d said something earlier about a partner. The soft crunch at the path’s head suggested they’d returned together.
“You’ve brought a friend along, Malcolm.” Now her eyes flicked to the pocket, acutely aware of how long collecting could take. They had her outnumbered now, out in the open and unarmed. “Who is it?”
“I told you about my partner.” He kept forward, moved intentionally to block her from the pocket. So, he’d been watching for awhile. He also didn’t know, couldn’t know, that she would never run for that escape route, that the pocket terrified her more than he did.
“So you did.” She’d been inside one once. He’d taught her enough of magic to open the membrane, perhaps to give her a measure of defense while he was gone, an easy way to avoid this very situation. The instant she’d crossed, however, the second the colors flared and the world unfolded around them in sparkling, pre-war glory, the panic attack had begun. Her body shook and her stomach knotted over and over until she’d tossed its contents into the perfect, shimmering bushes. She’d had to crawl back out and never, not once, attempted to tread into Old Space again.
Malcolm didn’t know that, and he stopped his maneuvering directly between her and the pocket. Good. He had his back to it. Now she just had to keep him there long enough.
“You haven’t introduced us, though.” The gravel crunched openly now, to her right at the mouth of the trail. His partner had stepped into the open, but Payne would have to shift her attention from him to examine the newcomer. A quick sideways tilt of the head was enough, enough to surprise her at least and she immediately refocused on Malcolm. “Not what I expected.”
“Because I’m a girl, or because I’m so lovely?” The woman’s voice matched the impression she made, even in a lightning quick glance. Scruffy, hard-edged and hostile. The words were nasty and meant to show no trace of friendliness. Malcolm’s partner didn’t share his flare for polite conversation.
“She talks about as pretty as she looks.” Payne kept her eyes on him. Despite his little friend’s attitude, Malcolm felt far more dangerous, far less easy to dismiss.
“Come on.” He shook his head and smiled below the mustache. Far more dangerous. He spread his hands wide, but his eyes drifted to his partner and he nodded a silent message. “Let’s all be friends.”
Something bit into Payne’s shoulder, a sharp sting and a punch that had her staggering to one side. She reached up with her other hand, felt for the wound with fingers that thickened and refused to answer her. The temple tilted and she lunged forward, saw Malcolm scurry backwards out of her range. Just a little farther and he’d be on top of the pocket. Not that it mattered now, when the world was fuzzing into black at the edges.
She touched the barb, plucked it free and squinted at it. Darker, rippling now as she drifted under whatever poison they’d tipped it with. Her words echoed as she accused him, falling toward the smooth, worn down stones. “Youuuuu-uu darted-d-d-d meeee?”
“Sorry.” Malcolm managed to sound just fine. Ordinary even, casual. “I told you I never leave a task unfinished. I was sent here to find you and, willing or not, I…can’t…leave…without…”
Ý
“Tell me exactly what happened.” Hadja picked up the dishes and shuffled them to the doorway, but she only set them on the table there and returned, placing her hands on her ample hips and facing Farine with that look, the one that took away any chance of resisting. “When you looked into the unicorn’s eye.”
“I saw how it felt, Hadj. Anger, fear, fury. It was smart and…and just really mad.” Farine sat on the edge of her bed, and her hands drifted to the brocade woven into the coverlet. Silk threads and a few loose enough to fiddle with. That the pattern showed unicorns, the irony of the pretty design, was not lost on her. “And I felt dizzy, light-headed as if I could just rise up and float away if my feet hadn’t been so heavy.”
“Magic.” Hadja snorted and nodded as if she’d suspected it all along. “Damn.”
“Are you saying the…someone put a spell on me?”
“No.” Hadja’s voice softened, her shoulders sagged and she deflated visibly. She heaved a sigh and turned to gaze into the bedroom mirror. “I’m saying someone took one off of you.”
“Oh…what?” She’d felt a whisper of disappointment, a startling revelation that she’d hoped, perhaps, the User had ensorcelled her. It paled quickly in the realization of what her maid implied. Someone else already had. “Took one off! Took what off?”
Hadja didn’t speak. She stared instead, as if her reflection might speak up and do the dirty work for her. She didn’t even blink, and Farine couldn’t wait, couldn’t imagine one more second of not having that question answered. She sprang to her feet, intent on throttling an answer from the woman if necessary, but Hadja started before she could move in.
“Your mother was young when she married.” Even confessing, Hadja kept her eyes locked on the mirror. “She was terrified, and she didn’t know your father at all. He was much older.”
“You’ve told me the story,” Farine bit her lower lip. Interrupting would only prolong the torture, but she’d heard this many times already. “Your mother was her new maid.”
“But we couldn’t console the girl. Nothing could. She only wept and wept for her home.”
That part was new. Hadja had always told her how they’d become fast friends. She’d used that fact to cement their own friendship when Farine was much younger.
“The mirrors are enchanted.” Hadja sniffed and straightened. Her shoulders came back and she turned away from the glass. “Every last one in the castle.
“The…what?” Farine couldn’t help but look. What could it hurt now, when she’d been looking in them her entire life? “How?”
“Look,” Hadja said. “Tell me what you see now.”
Farine closed in on the mirror, the oval glass she’d gazed in every morning as long as she could remember, ever since she could drag herself up onto her mother’s poufy chair and see just the top of her hair from tippy-toes. She saw the same face, the same, golden hair and the wide green eyes as always. But she saw the shadows too, the hint of purple under her eyes, and the red boil blossoming on the right side of her nose.
“I have a pimple.”
“You do.”
“I’ve never had a pimple before.” Farine waited, but Hadja’s silence said enough. “I have had a pimple?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Who would do this?” How many times had she been hideous and not known it? Had she looked like this at the faire? Her stomach tightened and she thought of the User. “Who does this affect? Just me? Everyone else can see the truth?”
“No. Most of us have fallen under the mirrors’ spell over time, living with them. They were only meant to help your mother adjust, but then the king feared without the Rosy Glass that she might fall into despair again.”
“He tricked her.” Farine fought for air, but now her lungs felt like they were shrinking. “So she’d see what?”
“A perfect life.”
“A lie, Hadja.”
“Yes.”
The User didn’t live in the castle. He’d have seen her for who she was, pimple and all. He’d encouraged her to break the spell, had pushed her to do it. Why? This morning she’d wanted him gone, but now, she only wanted to see him, to ask him how he’d known and why he’d bothered. Maybe to thank him. This stranger had given her the truth, but everyone she knew and loved had lied to her.
“Why can I see it now? Will it last?”
“The unicorn’s gaze has been known to break enchantments.”
“For how long?”
“Forever. I’m sorry, Farine. Once the mirror has lost its luster, the view can’t be recaptured.”
“Recaptured? Why would I want it? You think I want to go back to living blind? How can you think that? How could you have let them do this to my mother?”
The room pressed in and she spun back to the bed and threw herself face down onto the coverlet. She felt like tearing at her pillows, like stamping and throwing a royal fit like she hadn’t even considered in years. Instead, she sobbed softly against the brocade.
The mattress shifted as Hadja sat beside her and, after a moment, the soft hand patted her back and stroked her hair. This time, the soothing had a hollow edge to it. Hadja had known about this Rosy Glass the whole time. She’d let Farine live under its effects too, live thinking her whole world was perfect. A lie.
“Who are the people in the garden, Hadj?” Farine bit the inside of her cheek. She listened for the temper of her maid’s answer.
“Miriam is a good friend of mine.”
“She’s a Granter?”
“No.” Hadja made a tutting click with her tongue. “Miriam is her own woman. She doesn’t even bow to the Powers when she ought.”
“But she’s a goodmother.”
“And can’t help that anymore than you or I can help being what we are.”
“What we are.” That identity trembled at the moment. She was princess in a castle she could see right through, daughter to a king she probably didn’t know. That thought sent a bolt of ice through her veins. Did she know him? How had her father seemed, since the unicorn’s glance had crumbled her illusion? He’d been busy, secreted away with Mastral or surrounded by his elves and now, now he was interviewing Users. “My father is afraid of something, isn’t he?”
“Affairs of state are not for us to worry on.”
So his fears had to do with politics. Hadja had grown too reliant on her Rosy Glass too. She had no skill at subterfuge, and Farine could see between her words as well. “Who is the girl in the garden? Is it your friend’s daughter?”
“She is Miriam’s niece.”
Farine pushed herself upright, shaking off the maid’s hands and scooting away to her pillows. She glared at Hadja and saw the woman’s face fall. Her round chin dropped and the cascade of her wispy hair hid her face.
“How often do you lie to me, Hadj?”
“Very rarely.” The woman swallowed and turned her gaze up to her Powers or perhaps to watch the bed curtains ripple in the draft from the open window. “And only when it’s important.”
“Is it important that I think this girl is Miriam’s relative?”
“Not exactly.”
“Who is she?”
“A child from the village.” Though her words rang clearly, Hadja paused. Her brow scrunched and the lines around her eyes deepened, speaking of the years that were sneaking up on her. Soon those lines would be permanent, and Farine felt a twinge of sympathy. Did Hadja see herself in the Rosy Glass, young and thin and pretty too? “Her mother has passed away, and she has—she is on her own now.”
“And Miriam is caring for her, but she’s not Granting?”
“Yes.”
“In our garden cottage?”
“For now.”
It was the truth, and yet, it was well crafted too, carefully worded to reveal just enough to satisfy her. Farine chewed, tasted sharp iron on her tongue and remembered her cheek. She examined Hadja’s face, her dearest friend, maybe her only friend. The maid stared back, open and without obvious deceit. There was affection there, friendship and a kind of mothering inherent in Hadja’s nature. She could trust the woman with her life, but today she’s learned not to trust her to deliver the absolute truth. Not if she judged a better purpose in the lie.
