Chapter 3 Yael
3
Yael
Hard as it might seem to fall asleep on the back of a steed whose hoofbeats clang like anvil strikes, Yael manages. Though “falling asleep” feels a little more like passing out—especially when they wake dry-mouthed, shivering, and with a dire headache. Perhaps they should’ve eaten before downing several glasses of wine and flutes of champagne. They left the estate while the kitchen was still preparing its seven-course dinner, supposedly in Yael’s honor. Now the sky has deepened considerably, dark as ink so far from the lantern lights of Ashaway, spattered with stars beyond counting. Yael is no ranger who can tell time by the constellations. But from the hollowness of their stomach—and the fact that they’re sober as well as miserable—they guess it might be past midnight.
They should have waited to flee until after the mutton soup. Or the oysters. Or the cheese and mushroom pie. Or the baked giant toad…
Well, it’s too late now. If the party went on without Yael, as it certainly would have, then the plates have long since been cleared. Besides, would Yael really slink home just for supper?
Supper, and bedclothes, and a warm, safe place to sleep, their patron’s familiar voice (one that sounds very much like Baremon, but deeper, like measuring a lake against an ocean) rumbles inside their mind. Or will you sleep in the weeds and die of the cold? You never do stop to think, Yael.
Hearing that voice when they’d least like to is a consequence of the warlock’s bargain, though thankfully, it’s not a common occurrence. Yael’s patron has only ever paid heed to them when they’ve disappointed him severely. Tonight’s misadventure seems to have won Yael his attention—a most unwelcome prize. Perhaps Baremon or Uncle Mikhil or, who knows, even Araphi has an altogether different relationship with the family patron. Yael’s certainly never asked. Rather, they’ve spent a lifetime trying to avoid their patron’s notice as they avoid his offering altars, even if it means that the roadside weeds are capable of greater magic than Yael.
To prove the voice wrong, Yael flips the levers that bring the mechanical steed to a stop in the middle of the Queens’ Road. This way, at least they can think without the frigid wind in their face and their head pounding in rhythm with Sweet Wind’s gait.
The sensible thing would be to turn around and ride for the capital, as they’d always meant to when they set out. They might even make it back by breakfast. It’ll be a miserable one after a mostly sleepless night, with their father and uncle glaring at them over party leftovers and tea—or, worse, laughing at them. Yael will drag their fork across their plate, trying not to vomit on their cold smoked fish. Probably, they’ll beg to stop the carriage on the ride to the Copper Court to heave up into the gutter. Maybe they can sneak a midday nap in the Records Library, tucked behind a shelf with a pile of profitability analyses for a pillow…
Starting Sweet Wind up again, Yael clucks the steed onward down the Queens’ Road, no matter that it can’t hear. If they’re not going back, they’ll need to find a place to eat and sleep—and soon. The sound of their chattering teeth is starting to rival the steed’s hoofbeats. But they’ve long since passed the first ring of villages beyond Ashaway’s walls, scattered amid farmland and riverland. Higley Brook, Poppler, and a mill town hardly worth naming sit right beside the road but are too close to the city to host an inn. Yael might’ve had to sleep in an empty barnyard stall or rent a bed in some leathersmith’s cottage, and that wouldn’t have been a very comfortable start to an adventure. They’d been sure they’d pass a crossroads eventually, but they must’ve dozed through it. Honestly, it’s lucky they weren’t found by bandits. They’d be lying in the weeds right now without a steed, without the small purse they had on them at the party to tip the hired servants, and probably with a dagger in their empty stomach.
So things could certainly be worse.
Maybe when they finally come across a town, they can barter something. Yael’s watched plenty of bards perform for supper and lodgings in the alehouses, but Yael isn’t what anybody would call gifted. They can’t even conjure a small flame for warmth. Their ineptitude at spellwork without their patron’s favor was never a problem in the capital, nor even at Auximia. But beyond the city and the reach of their family’s credit, how exactly are they going to survive?
They’re on the brink of stopping again when, finally, they see a crossroads ahead in the starlight. No inn, though. The path that cuts across the Queens’ Road—a highway several carriage breadths across and paved with six-sided capstones, which runs from Briarwall, a military outpost positioned between the forests and mountains of the dangerous Northlands and the rest of settled Harrow, down to Lintonbury at its southern tip—is little more than a dirt lane rutted by cart wheels and beast tracks. There’s a weathered signpost with one plank pointing ahead toward Olde Post, a sizable town Yael knows to be at least another day’s ride south. A second plank points east, down the lane that winds off into the dark countryside.
Bloomfield , it reads.
Yael is shocked to realize they know exactly where they are, after all.
“An entire day’s travel just to visit a country estate? What were the Greenwillows thinking, and why the devils did we agree?” Baremon complained to his wife, not for the first or even fifth time since setting out.
They’d left Ashaway just after morning tea—Baremon, Menorath, and thirteen-year-old Yael, along with their coachman, a footman, and Menorath’s maid—in order to reach their destination by evening. The party had stopped once along the Queens’ Road for the coachman to feed and water the horses (not as impressive as the pair of griffins they’d left in the stable, but better suited for summer travel), and even then Yael had to sit in the stifling carriage with their parents. It had only grown hotter as the day grew longer.
“We agreed to visit as their major investor and as a personal favor to Iris,” Menorath calmly reminded her husband. She had a knack for weathering Baremon’s tempers; her own were much subtler, sometimes passing over Yael’s head like a cloud, gone on the breeze before they looked up with no explanation for their accompanying chills. “Perhaps it won’t be so bad. The estate was built with her mother’s fortune after all, and I’m told it’s comfortable, if…cozy.” She made no effort to hide the distasteful twist of her sweating upper lip.
What with the heat, the faint tang of Clauneck magic in the carriage, and their proximity to their parents, Yael was more than ready to burst out the door by the time they passed through the high outer wall of Bloomfield, but there was still a ways to go. They jostled down the lane toward the turnoff to the manor—the first sign of human inhabitants in the village, and it was only an entrance gate to another path cutting farther into the woods. The open gate was flanked on either side by a pair of stone beasts, hooved and antlered, with beards of stone leaves. In the deep shade under trees taller than any they had in Ashaway, the statues seemed about to spring to life.
Little as Yael wanted to agree with their father, it was strange to see a fancy manor house way out in the woods, so many hours from anything important. The Claunecks had no real interest in being anywhere but the very heart of Ashaway, though they had estates in Lintonbury, the southernmost point on the Queens’ Road where the royal summer palace stood, and on the shore of the Jade Sea in Kingfisher, with its vital trading ports. Proper cities. Yael had never even heard of Bloomfield before the invitation to dine with the Greenwillows arrived.
The house was very nice, though. Where Clauneck Manor was a solid, towering block of gray stone with its own ramparts, arrow-slit windows, and gable-roof towers tall enough to pierce the clouds, the Greenwillows’ country estate was lower to the earth, three stories built of stone the same reddish brown as the surrounding tree trunks. Only one tower rose above the giant treetops, more like a fairy tale than a fortification.
On the grand front steps stood the Greenwillows, flanked by a small household staff and waiting to greet them; some enchantment on the gate must’ve alerted them to the Claunecks’ arrival. Iris Greenwillow was high-cheekboned and beautifully plump, with violet hair plaited into a crown. Her hair color was a quirk she’d been born with, same as her mother, Fern’s hair, and some said it was a sign of prodigious magical talents. Yael had heard their mother tittering with her landed friends over the fact that if such talent existed, it had yet to bloom in Iris. Her husband, Welton Sameshoe, stood about her height but stockier, beaming at them through a dark-brown beard. Their daughter, Margot—Yael’s friend since they were old enough to be towed along to social functions like small pets or purses—was nowhere to be seen.
Perhaps Margot’s absence had carved the worry lines between Iris’s brows, even as she exclaimed, “Friends, welcome to our home! How pleasing it is to see you.” As though the Claunecks’ arrival was a most wonderful surprise and not an event the Greenwillows had doubtlessly been planning and scrambling over for weeks.
Menorath nodded graciously. “How pleasing it is to be here. We aren’t given an excuse to leave the city often enough for my liking. And your estate—how quaint!”
Yael was attuned enough to the moods of grown-ups to guess that “quaint” was not the impression the Greenwillows wished to make. There was nothing quaint about their manner of dress. They were outfitted far more formally than the Claunecks in their traveling clothes. Of course, the Claunecks’ traveling clothes were sewn of the finest silks and leathers, only giving the appearance of simplicity, while Iris’s gown was encrusted with jewels. Vines of cut emeralds climbed her velvet skirt, blossoming into sunflowers with petals of lemon quartz and citrine. Welton wore a burgundy velvet suit to match, with a high ruffled collar. It seemed far too hot for such heavy finery, and in contrast with Yael’s family, the pair looked…overdone.
If they noticed, neither Greenwillow let on. “Come, come,” Welton cheered, “and make yourselves at home. What’s ours is yours.”
While their coachman and footman and maid were led away to the servants’ quarters, the flock of waiting staff showed Yael and their parents through the arched main entrance and up a broad stonework staircase to their separate chambers. It was some time yet until dinner, and the Claunecks would be staying overnight. Yael had just finished unraveling the sweated-through linen bindings around their new and unwelcome chest to replace before dressing for dinner when a rapid knocking sounded at the door.
A voice called urgently through the keyhole, “Yael, let me in! Before Mama finds me and makes me wash!”
They grinned, hurrying to pin fresh bindings in place before tossing on a shirt. Not bothering with a vest or coat, they threw open the door, and Margot rushed inside. No wonder she was hiding out. She wore a plain brown dress that might’ve been long enough a growth spurt ago, a sweater that looked as if it had been knitted for someone Baremon’s size instead of a skinny twelve-year-old girl, and garden boots splattered with drying mud.
“Won’t you get in trouble if your parents can’t find you?” Yael asked, plucking some kind of prickly twig from where it was stuck in Margot’s hastily braided purple hair, the mirror of her mother’s.
Margot blushed, then shrugged. “Only after they find me. So we’d better run away before they do. Granny Fern’s packed me snacks for the road.” She hoisted the checkered cloth sack looped over her shoulder for Yael’s inspection. “Grab your riding boots, quickly, and we’ll be halfway to the coast to board a ship for Locronan before they know we’re gone!”
“Why Locronan?”
“Because they’ve still got dragons there,” she whispered, her rain-cloud-colored eyes glittering.
“They haven’t! There aren’t any dragons anywhere.” The great beasts that used to nest in mountain peaks and forests deep had been hunted down for the magical properties of their bones and scales ages ago, they’d learned at school.
“Well, how will we know if we never go?”
This was what Yael loved about Margot: She made everything feel like an adventure.
They slipped into their velvet dress shoes, perfectly impractical for running away from home. “Father would summon our patron himself to bring me back,” they explained with a sigh. Not that he would try very hard, most likely. Yael heard their patron’s voice about as often as they heard from their father’s father, now retired to the seaside to clear the path for Baremon: on the occasional birthday, or when Yael’s minor high jinks caused enough of a stir to merit a scolding from afar, usually delivered in a formal letter dictated to their grandfather’s footman. Yael would never admit to Margot that they were afraid of the offering altars placed about the Clauneck estate, just as they were of those letters.
“Maybe just the tower, then,” Margot conceded. “We’ll come down in time for the dinner bell. Granny only packed us strawberry jam, anyway.”
“Deal.”
Yael grabbed their coat and slung their tie over their neck, and the two snuck past closed doors and empty rooms full of grand furniture, giggling all the while, until they reached the third floor. A winding stone staircase beyond a door at the end of the hall led them up. When they reached the round chamber at the top, a dozen paces across, the tower was miraculously cool in the summer heat. It must’ve been freezing in any other season without a warming stove up here, which explained why there was no furniture—only a steamer trunk with a strange collection of objects set on top. A little wooden clock carved like a snail. A brass spyglass. A few empty jam jars—still pink and sticky around the rims—containing handfuls of pebbles, and shells, and dried brown leaves.
Yael crossed to the tower window, and Margot swiped the spyglass from the trunk to toss it to them.
“Look down there,” she instructed. “You can see Granny’s cottage, with the chimney.” Then she bent to set her bag on the floor, pulling out a jam jar and a silver spoon. She unwound the twine around the pink cloth lid to peel it back. “There’s a grotto on the north side of the property with a little waterfall, but you can’t really see it from here, with the trees in the way, except sometimes when the light catches the mist in the morning and makes rainbows above the treetops. Granny built it up with magic, and it’s one of my favorite places anywhere. Maybe I can take you there the next time you visit.”
“Next visit,” Yael promised even as their heart sank like a pebble into a pond: Their parents would never bring them back here, they were fairly certain. Menorath and Baremon had sworn as much in the carriage. Besides, they were bound for boarding school in Perpignan at the end of summer and unlikely to be summoned home for holidays—something of a mixed blessing.
“Look a little south,” Margot continued, “and you can see Bloomfield.”
Yael pressed the glass to their eye. “That’s the village, right?”
“Barely,” she said, but fondly. “It’s more of a…collection. Yes, a collection of people who moved there because of Granny. The walls you passed through used to be a military outpost, but it was abandoned years ago to rebuild closer to Olde Post. Granny bought the land when her business took off.”
“Took off” was putting it mildly; Yael didn’t know everything about their parents’ peers, but they knew that much. They’d only met Granny Fern once, because the Greenwillow matriarch never seemed to come to Ashaway, let alone the Copper Court or the Clauneck offices. But nobles and royals and townsfolk alike would travel long distances for her remedies and potions. Fern was the whole reason Yael’s parents were so eager to invest in Iris and Welton, and (no offense to Margot’s parents) Fern alone. On the carriage ride to Bloomfield, they’d speculated as to whether Margot might equal her grandmother’s talents someday—Fern’s gifts had clearly skipped a generation. “We should keep an eye on the girl,” Menorath had suggested, speaking over Yael’s head.
Yael could’ve told them that Margot was already extraordinary, but when had their parents ever taken them seriously?
“So she’s the landlord of Bloomfield?” they asked Margot.
She paused with the spoon in her mouth. “I suppose. But she doesn’t collect taxes or make the laws or anything.”
Yael frowned. “Who does, then?”
“Well, the community, I guess. Which is mostly people who came to live near a famous plant witch, or Granny’s friends. Some from when she was our age. In fact, Granny used her own money to help build their houses and businesses.”
“How did they pay her back?”
“They didn’t. Granny does drink at the tavern for free, though. Shelby insists. But my parents won’t let me go with her.”
Yael had never heard of anything like that, and Baremon and Menorath probably thought Granny Fern was a bag of loose marbles. But Yael liked Margot, who clearly loved her grandmother. So they nodded as though they understood.
She took the spyglass from Yael, trading it for the spoon piled with bright-red strawberry jam.
“Is it magic jam?” Yael asked eagerly.
“People say so. They say it helps if you want to be in love. Or rather, if somebody doesn’t love you back.”
“Are you in love, Margot?” Yael teased. “I heard Sedgewick Wayanette asked you to dance at his birthday celebration. He’s very…tall.”
Margot blushed again. “I just like Granny’s strawberries, okay?” she mumbled around her own spoonful.
It’s been ten years since that night—the last time Yael visited the Greenwillows’ country estate, as they knew it would be—and nearly that long since they last saw Margot. Yael had gone away to finish their secondary education at boarding school, as planned. It was tradition in their family, as it gave them a head start in mixing with their peers beyond the realm. A mutual friend had told Yael that Margot’s family left the city in the spring before Yael came home to attend Auximia, and they’d expected her to return at the end of summer as well. She hadn’t, though. Yael never saw her at the academy, or in the alehouses, or at parties. Never saw her parents, who used to be fixtures in the Copper Court. Eventually, they’d accepted that life must have led her elsewhere.
It would be so nice to see Margot again.
Yael turns Sweet Wind off the Queens’ Road and down the rutted lane. The ride seems longer than they remember, even if it has been forever, and they’ve truly started to worry, when at last they see the stone walls of the old outpost, the abandoned watchtowers blotting out the stars behind them. The landscape that would’ve been cleared of scrub and trees in its military days is dotted with dormant berry bushes. No fires burn in the seemingly empty towers, and the heavy entrance gate stands open to travelers.
Baremon would scoff at the lack of fortification, as he did years ago. But Yael could hop off Sweet Wind and kiss the open gate with gratitude.
They ride through, and at last, after half a mile of forested road where they pass nobody, they see the manor. Or rather, the entrance gate. Two familiar statues stand at either side, moss grown up over their stone hooves, creeping vines twined around their legs and the bars of the shut gates. The starlight is thin through the trees above, but what looks like bird droppings spatter their antlers. Strange. Yael remembers Margot’s parents being just as worried about appearances as Baremon and Menorath. Probably more so, since the Greenwillows could never quite rely on setting trends and dictating tastes the way the Claunecks always have. Near-infinite wealth and power will do that; were anyone to spot bird droppings upon the gates of the Clauneck estate, they’d be in fashion by the end of the week.
Yael peers through the thickly grown trees, attempting to see the house, but only the round tower pokes above the treetops, its little window dark. Obviously, the Greenwillows will be in bed at this late (or early?) hour. Yael could leave Sweet Wind at the gate, making their way to the house on foot, where they’ll…what? Knock until they wake a maid? Charm them into popping down to the kitchen and putting some soup on the fire while they wait for Margot and her parents to rise for the day? They could throw pebbles at the window of Margot’s old bedroom and hope for the best, but of course she might not even be in there. Maybe she’s still away at school, wherever she ended up, or is managing an estate of her own. She could be married by now, settled down and all grown up like Yael is supposed to be.
The thought of their close childhood friend as a partner or parent suddenly fills them with longing. For what, they’re not sure, but a Margot who no longer runs wild in the woods or sneaks up to secret towers to avoid dinner parties would be the world’s loss.
Yael looks ahead up the lane. Margot mentioned a tavern in Bloomfield where Granny Fern drank for free. If it doesn’t have rooms for rent, Yael can sleep on the bar counter, then ride back to the manor to bluster their way through that awkward conversation in daylight. They won’t smell any better than they do now, but at least they won’t be shivering and pathetic in the dark.
It’s only another mile or so to the outskirts of the village, where they’re relieved beyond belief to get their wish: a dark wood tavern with a thatch roof, the frames painted tomato red around windowpanes lit from within. No stable that they can see, and they hesitate to abandon Sweet Wind outside. The steed is all they have. But apart from the sounds of laughter and song inside, the rest of Bloomfield appears to be in bed.
Anyway, you’d have to know how to ride a mechanical steed to steal one. In a middle-of-the-countryside place like this, that seems unlikely.
After hours of riding on wood and iron, Yael can hardly feel their tingling thighs and buttocks as they climb down from the saddle (perhaps the inn has a healer on retainer who can lay on hands). Slowly and painfully, they make their bowlegged way to the red tavern door, where they push through and are greeted by a welcome blast of warmth. A hearth crackles in the corner, casting flickering shadows and dim light across a handful of patrons clustered at small, round, rough wood tables. Probably townsfolk rather than travelers; passers-through would keep their heads down in their drinks, but nearly the entire tavern looks up at Yael as they enter.
Self-conscious, Yael swipes their fingers through their wind-tangled hair to fluff it up and comes away with a palmful of road dust. “Evening,” they say, aiming for charming as they wipe their hand on their hopelessly wrinkled trousers.
A teenage boy in a linen apron passes by with a tray of food, trailed by a sleek black weasel with a dustpan brush clamped in its jaws; a familiar, no doubt. Leaning in subtly to smell the brown bread and stew and golden ale held aloft, Yael feels their stomach nearly consume itself.
They hobble over to the bar counter, hoping for quicker service, and sink gratefully onto an empty stool. There’s only one other customer at the counter, currently draining a large tankard with her head tipped toward the ceiling. From the corner of their eye, Yael sees a thick braid, dark in the shadows beyond the firelight, dangling halfway down her back. Her dress, roughly embroidered with strawberries, is streaked with soil. Another traveler? Garden boots and a cardigan seem like strange riding attire…but then, look at Yael in their dusty silk party suit.
“What’ll you have, love?” a pretty young woman with an abundance of champagne-colored curls pulled back with a ribbon asks from behind the bar. “Kitchen’s closing soon.”
“The bread and stew, please.” Yael flashes a smile despite their pounding head and sore backside, hoping for an extra ladleful. “And have you got a good wine here? I bet you’ve got a good wine.” The purse at Yael’s belt feels awfully light for good wine, but they decide that’s tomorrow’s problem. Especially if they can put off their hangover just a little longer.
She giggles. “We do, pressed from grapes grown in the village vineyard.”
“Excellent. One for me, then, and one for my new friend…” They turn expectantly toward the customer in the muddy dress. No need to sleep at a tavern table if they can flirt their way into curling up in a fellow traveler’s room, after all.
The woman sets her now empty tankard on the counter and looks their way, rosy mouth dropping open in shock. Yael nearly falls off their barstool at the one person they’d hoped to find in this town, but the last person they expected to see in a humble tavern after midnight, still wearing mud-caked gardening boots.
“Margot?”