Unlikely (Kingdoms Gone), page 9
“He’s so beautiful.”
“Oh, Maera, who?”
“Vane.” She sighed the name, stretched it out into one ominous exhale.
“Oh, Maera. No.” She dropped her hands to the girl’s shoulders and tried to make her voice as gentle as she could. “Not Vane.”
“Why not?” Maera stiffened. She pulled away and scowled. “Why not him? He’s lovely, and strong and has all those people following him.”
“He’s a gang leader. You understand that?”
“I don’t understand. I thought you helped people.”
“I do, but fixing you up with Vane would not be helping you.”
“How do you know? I love him. He makes me feel…he looks at me and…”
“Exactly. It’s not love, honey. It’s something else.” Satina smiled, but she let a stern edge enter her warning. “This gang is trouble, Maera. Trust me. I’ve seen them at work before.”
“You don’t know Vane. Maybe he’s different.”
“He’s not. They all work the same way. The Shades down in the ports, the Starlights, all of them. They’ll be nice up front, make a good show. They can be very convincing, Maera, but falling in with them is a path you don’t want to start down.”
“How would you know?” The girl sniffed and crossed her arms. She looked away toward town.
“Because I’ve helped people get away from them.” That got the effect she’d intended. It snapped Maera’s attention back to her. The girl’s eyes narrowed.
“When?”
“Before I came here. There was a boy around your age who’d joined the Shades. He had a crush on a girl who worked in the market. He thought it would get her attention, maybe impress her.”
“Didn’t it?”
“Not exactly.” Impressed or not, the girl’s parents had packed her into a wagon and moved on long before the young man’s apprenticeship had ended. She skipped that part and focused on the message. “The point is, they wouldn’t have let him have the girl anyway, would they? Unless she’d joined up as well. They made him do things, Maera, not nice things. He lost his friends, his family. They isolated him from all of that because, once you’ve joined a gang, they are everything and the only thing allowed in your life.”
“But if the one you love is in the gang, then who would mind?”
“You don’t want that.”
“So you won’t do anything for me? You won’t even talk to him?”
“Oh, I’ll talk to him.”
Maera squeaked. She took the statement completely the wrong way, slapped her hands over her mouth and spun in the middle of the street. “Thank you! I knew it. I knew you’d help.”
“Wait!” Too late. Maera skittered away like an insect back toward the smithy. “Damn.” She’d seen that swoony look on more than one young woman’s face, and it usually meant trouble. To someone like Maera, someone whose family life was unpleasant to begin with, a gang often seemed like a romantic, adventurous alternative. She should have known the girl would be susceptible. She should have paid closer attention.
As Maera’s skirts vanished into the smoky shed, Satina bit her lip and turned away. She rounded the corner into town with a stamp in her steps and a whole list of complaints to bring against the Starlight leader. Vane—the bastard, the same egomaniacal, megalomaniac, vicious, town-destroying bastard that headed every gang chapter—with slightly different hair.
She snarled out loud at the tag glowing over the chapel doorway. The fountain splattered ahead, and Satina stormed down the street, swinging her basket wildly and cursing Vane with each step. When she saw the state of Marten’s shop, however, her curses shifted into thoughts of murder.
They’d shattered his lovely window. The shelves bore half the goods they’d carried the day she’d first come to town. Whether the gang requisitioned his inventory, or the broken window had left him vulnerable to thieves, she couldn’t say, but she felt the sting of tears just looking at the glass crystals spread in a fan across the paving stones. They gleamed in the morning light, some still in smooth slivers, and many others ground to dust under the tread of blue boots. The hooks from which his tools had dangled lined up empty and swinging in the swirls of air coming off the fountain.
Had he struggled? She ground her teeth together and jogged around the fountain, taking the shop stairs in a single leap and pushing the door open. The bells still jangled from the knob, announcing her arrival in the debris that had once been an orderly shop.
Satina threw the basket to the floorboards and pushed the shelf blocking her way back upright. Broken goods littered the floor. Jewelry flashed in a swath beside a second overturned shelf. Someone had swept the fixed shelving along one wall so that all the items piled at the base of the empty boards. Where was Marten? Her eyes followed the furnishings up and down, searched the heaps and finally landed at the counter that, miraculously, stood unscathed.
“Marten!”
She stepped over the items on the floor, down the aisle that she’d made by shifting the shelving aside. She had to walk sideways. Her heart raced. The counter was unmanned. The door to the back room was shut. A groan came from behind the counter.
“Marten?”
“We’re closed.” A hand reached up and slapped the top of the counter. His fingers flexed, and pulled the rest of him into view. “For repairs.”
His hair stuck up in places, and his right cheek had a darker gray cast that could have been a bruise. He looked groggy, like he’d slept there behind the counter, and he leaned against it in a way that suggested he wasn’t ready to stand on his own.
“It’s you.” His chin lifted and he stood a bit taller. “I thought I told you to leave town.”
“Did you sleep here? On the floor?”
“Not so much slept as passed out, my dear.” He shrugged, and the movement threw him off balance. He listed to one side and slipped, only remaining upright by wedging a shoulder against the counter.
“Are you injured?” She pushed the last few feet to the counter and worked her way around the end.
“A bit.” His head wobbled back and forth. “Mostly cold.” He didn’t resist when she slid under his arm. She eased some of his weight onto her shoulders and helped him sit again. His legs didn’t want to hold much weight, and after the kick she’d witnessed, she couldn’t blame them. She had a feeling it had only been the first of many.
“I can fix cold,” she said. “Just you wait.”
He leaned his back against the counter and stared at her. Satina ignored the look and rummaged under her cloak.
“You didn’t leave.” He made it an accusation.
“No. Look.” She pulled out her warmer and watched his curiosity war with his temper. He wanted to scold her some more. She could see it in his eyes. Instead he nodded at the spindle.
“What is that?”
“My trinket.” Without dirt to stick the spindle in, however, she needed to get creative. The debris around the counter produced her spool of thistledown. Perfect. She placed it on the floor in front of him and slid the spindle end into the center hole. “Now watch, because I want you to be properly impressed here.” She flicked the lower disk, then the top one in the opposite direction. “The enchantments are opposites, and the counter action—”
“Makes heat.” He grinned. “You made this?”
“I did.” The warmth flowed immediately from the device, removing the chill from their part of the shop and spreading out in a wave. “Now that you’ve seen how clever I am, I’ll go and fetch Hadja’s basket.” She felt certain it would hold something that could help him. Hadja had a different, alien sort of power, and Satina both admired and feared it.
She reached the shop front and glared through the broken window at the town square. The fountain drew the children like flies. Without a stranger perched there, the town’s youngest members hung around the water, splashed feet, hands and each other in the spray. The cats vanished from the streets. The play was innocent enough. She’d seen similar scenes, certainly. But overnight, the games had adopted an insidious addition.
The children all wore something blue. A kerchief, a shirt, a scrap of cloth torn from the hem of someone’s dress when no eyes were looking—today Westwood’s children played at being Starlights.
Satina plucked the basket from the rubble and turned her back on the town. She picked her way back to Marten and found him examining the disks on her warmer. He’d stopped the spinning, but the whole store was warm enough by now, and the effect would last for a few minutes before dispersing. She let him finish the inspection, squatted beside him and poked through the contents of Hadja’s basket.
“Well?” She questioned him when he’d set the spindle back into the spool. “What do you think?”
“The broach was an allurement charm.”
“Something like that, for certain.”
“Where did you get it?”
“I dug it up.” She hadn’t expected that particular question, or the slightly accusing tone. “Hadja sent you some salve, a bandage, and what looks like a dried newt.” She held up the desiccated thing.
“I think that one’s a joke,” he said. “You do much digging?”
“From time to time.”
“You know you owe me a story still.”
It wasn’t all she owed him, and it didn’t look like he’d be open for business anytime soon. “Yes, I do.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“Can you walk on that leg?”
“Sure. It’s just a bit sore.” He patted it and winced, but his eyes glinted at her and his smile curled, back to normal and full of wicked humor. “Are we going somewhere?”
“Yes.” She handed him the salve and put the newt back in the basket. “Once you’re fixed up a bit.”
“Where?”
She grinned. It was her turn to be cryptic. Something about the way his eyes squinted told her he didn’t mind. She unrolled a bandage and answered with more mystery, “To the nearest pocket.”
Chapter Eleven
He had more secrets as well, her Marten. They included a small rift just a short ways out of town in the opposite direction of their stairway. He hadn’t mentioned the escape route the day the Starlights had come to town, even though it would have been the quickest path away. Perhaps, it had been too permanent an escape? She let herself imagine he hadn’t wanted her too far gone—even then.
He walked with a trace of a limp, but Hadja’s medicine had obviously offered some relief. She hadn’t missed him daubing the stuff on his cheek either, confirming her suspicion about the dark bruise there. If she’d been remotely proficient with a weapon, she might have called Vane out directly. As it was, her mind chewed on a plan to rid them all of the bastard for good.
This pocket barely had room for them to stand. It encompassed a space between two slender trees, and the trunks took up most of the real estate inside the bubble. Marten leaned against one of them and raised one eyebrow at her—her cue to surprise him.
She put her hands forward and caressed the filmy wall. Through it, Satina felt the other pockets waiting. She caught a flash of the ruins nearby, the staircase, the last pocket she’d stepped through by the Shade port. Her most recent visits filtered past and she saw more distant bubbles. A waterfall drifted past where she’d spent a night after dropping of the boy. It had only been a muddy trickle in ordinary space, but in the pocket, the water raged over the rocks and sang of a river that once was. She caught a whiff of the air there, clean and charged, before the bubbled shifted away again.
She rifled through them, looking for Henry.
It took concentration, picking a specific pocket. It took power, and she still had a long month ahead on limited dust. Usually she’d let the pockets choose for her, fly on a whim to a random location and trust fate to put her where she was needed most. But today she had a destination selected, and thanks to her special tie with Henry, the correct pocket presented itself without overmuch strain.
Satina snagged it with her mind and anchored the link. She wove the two bubbles together in space, so that the membranes just touched. Once the connection was fixed, she held it with only her memories of the place and her bond with Henry. He waited on the other side.
She kept one palm against the pocket edge and used the other to wave for Marten’s attention. She had it now, they could step right through. First, she needed to warn him about her watchdog.
“Follow me.” How did you explain something like Henry? “Stay behind me and don’t make any sudden moves.”
He didn’t respond, and she took a deep breath and stepped through, keeping the two pockets together so that Marten would have time to cross as well. It required just enough concentration to delay her reaction when Henry charged. Marten stepped over and directly into the path of the hurtling gargoyle.
To her eyes, Henry romped in their direction, wagging his long, forked tail merrily. She could only imagine what Marten saw. The look on his face gave her some clue, though he followed her directions and made no sudden movement. Then again, he might have been paralyzed with fear. Henry’s size, his armored flesh and long, curling talons had registered. She could tell by the way his lips moved, by the way he said, “g-g-g.”
“Henry, sit!”
“Gargoyle.” Marten got the word out once Henry had stopped his charge and settled on his haunches obediently, his leathery wings arching out to either side in a slow flutter.
“Yes.” Satina watched her stony friend carefully. His initial reaction had been friendly for her benefit, but now his black eyes flicked from her to Marten, and his front fangs protruded just at the tips from under a slightly curled upper lip. “Henry, this is my friend, Marten.”
The gargoyle rumbled an answer.
“Friend, Henry.”
The marble nose flared and twitched. His muzzle turned to point directly at them.
“If you meant to be rid of me,” Marten spoke softly. “There are other ways—nicer ways.”
“He’s fine.” Satina stepped between them and approached the monster who guarded her thistledown. “See?” She stood on tiptoe and scratched Henry behind his pointed ear. He moaned and lowered his head.
“You know,” Marten said. Now awe tinted his words. “I think it’s time for that story now.”
They lay on their backs in the tramped down patch where Henry had spent a good three minutes chasing his tail. Overhead, white tufts of thistledown floated beneath a blazing, blue sky. Everything glowed golden and otherworldly, and the scent of blossoms drifted on the same currents that swirled the fluff.
“So the custodian found you in a basket on her doorstep,” Marten said. He chewed on a stem and fiddled with the heap of fluff they’d collected into a pile between them. “And you have no idea where you came from. It makes so much sense.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It’s a bit cliché.”
“Maybe.”
He ran his fingers through the down, then turned on his side, propping himself up on one elbow. “Well it explains how you know so little about pretty much everything we are.”
“What?” She sat up. “I’m the one who has a gargoyle, remember?”
“Right.” Marten laughed, but he didn’t move from the relaxed pose, just gazed off toward the edge of the pocket. In the distance, far beyond the membrane, stood a perfectly preserved castle. Three stout, black towers broke the horizon, surrounded by a circuit of crenellated wall. “What about that? What do you know about that?”
“I told you. I’ve tried to get there, but I can’t find the pocket.” The one they lounged in ended at the far boundary of the thistledown patch. “Henry flies there, though. I’ve seen him pop in from that direction.”
“And outside the pocket?”
“I can’t step out here. It only leads to other bubbles.”
“We should tell Hadja about that.”
“Why?” Her frustration leaked into her voice, and Henry perked up, lifting his head from the long thistles and rumbling a warning. “Easy, go back to sleep.” The gargoyle had allowed Marten’s presence on her word, but he hadn’t warmed to the strange man in his territory.
“You see, you should know why.”
“I’m not blind, Marten. Hadja has more skill than any human I’ve met, but she still is human.”
“And everything you know about us, about yourself, comes from humans.”
“So what?”
“So you know what they know about us, but not what we know about us.”
That stumped her. His point had implications that made her nervous. If there were secrets, things the blooded kept from humans, she wouldn’t know them. True, but she’d found the pockets on her own. She’d spent enough time with the Gentry that she considered herself an expert, and she’d made strong allies amongst them. And no matter how self-important he sounded, she’d have bet her thistledown he didn’t shift pockets as well as she did, that he’d been impressed by her skill, and of course, by Henry. Gargoyles were thought to be as extinct as unicorns or elves. No gobelin builders outlived the Final War, and all the surviving castles were supposed to be in ruins.
“Satina?” He sat up now, and she’d been too lost in thought to notice the shift in his position, or the shift in his mood. Now he looked directly at her, and his eyes shimmered and flashed with something she should have been sharp enough to pick up on. “Hadja would be a good teacher.”
“Would she?” Something about his expression made her feel suddenly warm. His lips twisted into a smirk, and she found herself staring at them. His skin sparkled in the pocket, and his hair looked less gray-blond and more straw gold.
“So would I.”
“What’s that?”
His hand lifted and he brushed the free tendrils of her hair back from her face, tucking the strands behind her ear. A storm of electricity rocketed out from that soft touch. She felt it in her spine, her toes, her all over.
“I could teach you,” he leaned in until only inches separated them. “Things too.”
