“Mortal to the bone,” he agreed, smiling. His smile sort of made his face disappear, the way certain smiles do. He had a good voice, too. Not as smoky as the foxgirl’s, but greener and freer, like it had matured by sunlight. And if I was mortal to my bone, that was where his voice echoed, and I trembled there.
He plucked a poppet from his sleeve and dangled it. ’Twas either Da or the Archabbot; I couldn’t tell, nor how he’d managed to unearth the thing without my noticing.
“What did your hexies do to deserve such censure?”
“Cads,” I snorted, “one and all. They took me from my cows and slandered me with lies and forgot to feed and water me. In a very few hours, one of them will kill me for not being the miracle maid he says I am. And that’s after he does whatever comes before the killing.”
“What does he say you are, miracle maid?”
“Spinner,” I told him, “ore-maker. Sent by the gods to the armies of Jadio to change all their straw to gold.” I spread my arms, all pompous and public-oratorish like our village alderman. The stranger’s crooked smile went wider, crookeder. “Thus will the soldiers of the Kingless Army, richly clad and well-armed, march against the Gentry demons and purge Leressa of their foulness. Pah!” I spat, though I had nothing left to spit with. “Had I a hammer, a piece of flint, and some steel, I’d break that spinning wheel to splinters and use it for kindling. This place would go up in a poof and me with it. I wasn’t born to hang.”
The little dark man laughed. A green flame erupted in the palm of his hand, shooting sparks so high I flinched. He blew lightly on the flames until they spiraled up to flirt with his fingertips.
“Say the word, lady. If truly thou wouldst have this death, it is in my power to give it thee.”
I, despite my morose grandiloquence, said nothing.
Laughing again, he urged the green flames to chase up his arm, his neck, his face, the crown of his head, where they raced in gleeful circles. By their weird light, the silo seemed a vast undersea trove, the mounds of straw gone verdigris as waterweeds, softly breathing.
“You do not desire the burning? All right, then. What do you wish?”
“To go home. To my cows.”
“The soldiers of Jadio will find you there and bring you back. Perhaps first they will slaughter your cows and make you feast upon their flesh, that you taste your own defiance. What do you really wish?”
“I don’t know!” I threw up my arms. “To make this go away?”
I meant everything that had occurred since Da’s ill-advised boast in Firshaw’s Pub, up to and including this current assignation, enchanting as it was. The little dark man picked up a single piece of straw and tickled my nose with it.
“Where to? There will always be another cell, another spinning wheel…”
I batted the straw away. “Ah-choo!”
“Blessings befall.”
“Thank you.”
His turn to flinch.
“Oh!” I yelped. “Sorry. Mam taught me better! I know I’m not supposed to thank the Gentry. She said saying those words out loud was like a slap in the face to them—to you, I mean, your people—but she didn’t say why, and anyway, I forgot! Are you—are you all right?”
He waved his hand. “It’s naught. Briefer than a sting. Like a Prickster’s needle, I’d wager.”
I pressed the pad of my thumb where three weeks ago in my own chilled kitchen, my blood had welled to the needle’s prodding. It was still a bit sore. I wondered suddenly what the Archabbot’s wizards might do with that tiny vial now that they knew I was no Gentry-babe. Destroy it? Drink it? Put it in a straw poppet and influence me from afar?
I shivered.
“What do you wish?” the little dark man asked for the third time. His voice was barely a whisper.
I stomped my foot.
“Ack! Very well! I wish to change this mess into something that doesn’t make me sneeze.”
“Such as gold?”
“Such as gold.”
“I can do this thing.”
“Can you?” I eyed him, remembering what the Prickster had told the Archabbot about Gentry ore-makers. How only Gentry royalty had the golden touch. How my own mam must’ve been the Veil Queen herself, to have borne a child with such gifts as mine. And though I was not that child, might he be?
“Whyever would you want to?” I asked.
He shrugged. Shrugging could not have been a simple or painless gesture with those shoulders. It cost him something.
“Word reached me,” he said, “through regular but reliably suspicious channels, that you had something on your person I would find of value.”
I felt his gaze fall on my hand before I thought to cover it. As though kindled by his verdant flames, the opal on my ring began to burn green.
“This ring belonged to my mother!” I protested.
“It belonged to my mother before that,” he retorted.
“It—what?”
“What use does a milkmaid have for such a bauble?”
“For keeping’s sake. For memory.”
“Do you know what the jewel is called?”
“Yes—the Eye of…The Queen’s Eye.”
“Did your mother tell you whence she had it?”
“She said it was a gift. From a friend.”
“Your mother was my mother’s friend. Mortalborn, ignorant and common as she was, she was kind when my mother needed kindness. Not once, but twice. Give me that jewel, and I will turn this straw to gold.”
“For friendship’s sake?”
He shrugged again. How he punished himself, this little crooked man, for no reason I could tell. He was a stranger to me. But if he missed his mother half as much as I missed mine, we were kin.
“Right.” I tugged my ring a bit to loosen it, breathing deeply. “Well. Mam didn’t hold much with worldly goods anyhow. Never owned a pair of shoes but she gave them away to the first beggar she crossed.”
“I know,” said the little crooked man. “And so my mother went shod one winter’s night, when the cold had nearly killed her.”
Hearing this, I tugged harder. The ring would not come free. I’d never tried to take it off before. Fact is, until the day I’d stood before Avillius III and his clever foxgirl, I’d mostly forgotten it was there. As with Mam’s locket, which I also wore, the ring had always seemed able to hide itself. I couldn’t remember it once getting in the way of chores like dishes or milking or scrubbing floors.
Now it burned. But it wouldn’t budge.
I almost wept with frustration, but the little crooked man took hold of my hand and I quieted right down. Just like Annat, I thought, when she is upset and I scratch behind her ears.
And then he bent his head and kissed the fiery opal. Kissed that part of my hand when fingers met knuckle. Kissed me a third time on my palm where I was most astonishingly sensitive. His tongue flicked out and loosened everything. Before I knew it, the ring was in his hand.
“You are bold. But you are innocent.” He looked at me. Had Mam bequeathed me jewels enough to deck all my fingers and toes, I’d have handed them over that instant.
He slipped the silver ring onto his thumb.
“What comes next, you may not see. Dream sweet, Miss Oakhewn,” said the little crooked man, and rubbed the opal once, as if for luck.
The stone responded with a sound like a thunderclap. A flash there came like a star falling, followed by a green-drenched darkness.
I know what that is, I had time to think, that’s the sound of a Gentry grass-trap.