All I could do was invent couplets to curse my captor with.
A voice I had not heard in a whole month finished: “Grind his bones to make your bread!”
Unthinking, I laughed, spinning on my heel all the way around. Haste lost me my battle for balance. From a heap of satin and straw, I sat up again and craned for the voice—there he was! My hunch-backed goblin wreathed in smiles, straddling the spinning wheel’s stool, with his arms draped over the machine and his head resting on crossed wrists.
He, too, looked less raggedy than last time. Perhaps he had combed his hair once or twice in the days since I met him. My opal still flickered on his finger.
“You! How did you find me? I was afraid, when they took me from the island you wouldn’t—I mean, did you traipse all this way? The roads are so dangerous for Gentry…”
A torque of his crooked shoulders. I winced, but he did not.
“I did not take the roads. I took the Ways. Time is different in the Veil. It did not seem a month to me.”
I humphed. No better reply came to mind than, I hope it felt a full year then, you flame-crowned bugaboo, for that’s how it did to me, which would not have been at all prudent to speak aloud.
He spun the silver wheel with a lazy finger.
“So,” he observed, “another room.”
“Yes.”
“Mmn. Bigger.”
“Much.”
“Still sneezing?”
“Aye. Enough to cause typhoons in Leech. Also, I have new rashes.”
“Rashes even?”
“Rashes in places no rash e’er ventured yet.”
“My condolences.”
“Ah, stick ’em where they’ll do most good.”
We lapsed. He spun the empty wheel. I drew my knees up, wrapped my arms about them, and thought of all the questions I did not dare ask. What were the Ways like? Did he walk them alone? Had he many friends in the Veil? Did he drink nectar with them in Gentry pubs, dance barefoot when the sweetness went to his head? Did any raucous movement jar his crooked back—or did his body only hurt him in the mortal realm? What had his life been like all this while I’d never known him, and what would it be like when I was dead and gone?
He seemed to have been thinking along some of these same lines. Or at least the part about my corpse.
“What will happen to you tomorrow, milkmaid, if this straw is not spun to gold?”
I related Sebastian’s jolly vision of my witchy bits exposed on the Four Tors.
“Not,” I added, “that I have any witchy bits. Not real ones, anyway.”
“Not a one,” he concurred, looking deeply at all of me with his thorn-black eyes. “Though what bits you have are better clad than last I saw them.”
“Yes,” said I, “a pretty shroud to wrap my pieces in.”
“Pearls do not suit you.”
“No—I prefer opals.”
“A healthy milkmaid needs no adornment.”
“Doesn’t mean we won’t prize a trinket if it comes our way.”
“What good are trinkets to you, lady? You’ll die tomorrow.”
“Maybe so, mister,” I huffed, “but it’s rightly rude to mention it out loud like that.”
He scratched his nose. It was not so blade-thin as the foxboy’s, but it was harder, more imposing, with a definite downward hook like a gyrfalcon’s beak. Such a nose would look fine with a ring through the septum, like my good bull Manu had. A silver ring, I thought, to match the one on his finger, and when I wanted him to follow me—wherever—I’d need only slip my pinkie through it and tug a little.
My blush incinerated that train of thought when his eyes, which seemed to read words I did not speak aloud as written scrip upon my face, widened with surprise. The instant he laughed, green flames danced up from his hair and swirled about his skull.
“Come, milkmaid!” he cried, standing up not-quite-straight from his stool. “Do not be so melancholy, pray! Am I not here, merchant and laborer? Is this warehouse not our private marketplace? Your life is not yet forfeit. What have you to trade?”
I laughed at his ribbing but shook my head. “Not a thing that is my own, sir!”
“I have it from my usual source—”
“ —‘Regular if reliably suspicious’?”
“Yes, of course—that you wear a fine ivory locket on a black ribbon ’round your neck.”
The locket was hidden now beneath layers of silk. I clutched it through the cloth and shook my head.
“Mister, you can have any pearl that pleases you. You can have my braided hair with it! Take my gown, my slippers, see? Gifts from a king! But do not take my locket…”
“It belonged to your mother?” His voice was gentle.
“Aye.” I scowled at him. “And I suppose it belonged to your mother before her?”
“Aye,” he mocked me, glare for glare. You quite forgot he was an ugly creature while his shining eyes dissected you. “Your mam, may I remind you, never cared for worldly treasures.”
“Unlike yours?” I asked.
“My mother is made of treasure, though decidedly unworldly. Opal and ivory, silver and gold. If you ever meet her, you will understand.”
“If I die tomorrow, I’ll never meet her,” I growled.
“Just so.” His smile became a coax. Almost a wheedle. “Give over, milkmaid, and you’ll live another day in hope.”
“Who says I want to meet your mother?”
“Is the friend of your mam not your friend, too? Have you so many friends in this world?”
There he had a point. Back at Feisty Wold, our neighbors had liked Mam well enough, but during the Invasions, as illness queered her and fever weakened her, they dropped out of her life. Sometimes one would leave a basket of jams or new baked bread at our doorstep, but not a one wished speech with a sick woman who only ever whispered, and never of safe or comfortable topics. The memory stung my eyes. My hands flew up to unknot the ribbon. That little ivory locket hung around my neck with the weight of a dead heart. I could almost feel it bleeding into my lap.
“I can’t!” I cried. “It’s stuck!”
Then he stood before me, his nearness calming my struggles. My hands fell to my sides. He seized my wrists, squeezed once, then inched his grasp upward, my arms the purchase his arms needed to attain any height above that of his chest. The crease of pain between his eyes deepened to agony. The hump on his back shuddered. The gesture I took for granted while combing hair or brushing teeth cost him ease of breath, grace, comfort of movement.
By the time his hands had gained my shoulders, he was gasping. His head bent heavily before me, and his whole body sagged, but his grip on me only tightened. I placed my hands lightly on either side of his rib cage, hoping to support him if he should collapse. His flames were utterly damped by the sweaty dark tangle of his hair, which smelled of sweetgrass and salt sea. A few strands of shining green twined with the black. I pressed a brief kiss to the crown of his head.
“Mister,” I told him, “take the locket quickly. You look pale and weary.”
He wheezed a laugh and loosed the knotted ribbon at my neck with a touch. The ivory locket fell into his palm. He pressed it hard against his heart.
“Let me,” I whispered. “Let me.”
He did not relinquish it, but allowed me the ribbon’s slack. I tied it around his neck, smoothing his wild hair down over the knot. He shivered.
“Are you very hurt?”