9
Eventually, the pace of new rooms appeared to slow down. New doors appeared like cards shuffled and dealt, but when I turned the handles, they opened into an unsettling void, without even the pretense of reality. The House was running out of ideas, I suppose.
I was a little pleased with myself, I have to say, that I was exhausting it so quickly with my sheer determination. If I had sat and thought about my predicament too long, I would have started to fret, and so constant motion was my solution, whether cooking up a storm in the kitchen or stomping about the House and trying to run it ragged with sheer force of will.
“You must know every inch of this place, surely,” I said to Cornelius. “There must be some other place I can look.”
He gave his ear a quick wash. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “The House moves about a lot, as you can see. Changes shape. Even I haven’t seen all of it. Gets me feeling queasy, sometimes, and then I have to get away for a bit.”
“Get away outside?” I asked. “I thought you said you couldn’t get out?”
“Not outside, ” he said, as though I were an idiot for suggesting it. “To the Other House.”
I stared at him. “You’ve been watching me ransack this place for days and only now tell me that there’s another House? Where?”
“It’s not any use to you,” he told me. “I can go in and out as I please, but I’ve never seen him do it. It’s not magical, you see. It’s what used to be here, before he moved in, and this other black place grew up around him and shoved the old place out of the way. It’s always the way with these magic people. Cats can go back and forth between such places, but I don’t know if humans can.”
“I have to at least try. Maybe he’s stashing my heart there somehow.”
“I’ve never seen such a thing there. And I told you, it’s not magical.”
“Please, Cornelius. At least show me how you do it.”
He gave his funny cat shrug that I was coming to recognize. “No skin off my nose,” he said, and vanished. I jumped back at the shock of it. Then he seemed to wink back into existence, his tail lashing.
“See?” he said, as if it should all be perfectly obvious now.
“How did you do that?” I cried.
“You have to sort of think sideways, ” he said.
I closed my eyes and concentrated, feeling foolish. For a moment, I thought I had it. The world slipped out beneath me as if someone had pulled a rug from under my feet, and I tripped and fell into somewhere dim and dank, with dust swirling about me. Then it was gone, my stomach lurched, and I was back in the black belly of the House.
I tried again, ignoring the rising nausea, and thought for a second it might have worked, but I opened my eyes to find that nothing had changed. I sank to the floor, my magic-made skirts settling around me like the petals of a dark flower, and put my face in my hands. After a moment, I felt a cold, damp nudge on my elbow, and then a shiver of soft fur, as Cornelius tried to comfort me.
“It’s all right,” he purred. “I told you I didn’t think humans could do it.”
“I don’t know where else to look,” I said, knuckling my eyes roughly to discourage any tears from falling. “I could search this place forever, and open a thousand doors, and not find a thing. I might as well be wandering the inside of his head , if what you tell me about the House is true. And he’ll never give up his secrets.”
Cursed at birth, and now cursed to love a sorcerer who saw me as a sort of sentient household appliance.
“Cheer up,” said Cornelius. “It’s not so bad here.”
But he didn’t know what I had left behind.
I went to deliver lunch to the sorcerer as usual. Perhaps I could ask him more questions and find out something about my heart that way, without tipping my hand overmuch. Once the door to the throne room creaked open for me, however, I saw that it was empty, save for his throne. Where was he? I backed out, keeping the tray steady, and stood at a loss.
I noticed that the House seemed to be twitching a little underfoot. It wasn’t quite forcing me to walk in a certain direction but was definitely encouraging it. If it had been a person, it would have been winking and jerking its head meaningfully.
“Fat chance,” I told it. “I’m leaving his lunch here, and if it goes cold, that’s his own fault.”
The twitching underfoot increased in urgency. I turned to head back to the kitchen and almost walked into a wall that had suddenly appeared in front of me. I glared at it, and it stared right back. I balled my fists under the tray and turned, determined not to let the House bully me, but found myself confronted with another dead end. I sighed.
“Fine,” I relented. “Show me where you want me to go.”
A corridor unrolled before me, and I followed it. I didn’t see that I had much choice. The House led me around a few winding corners before plonking me down in front of a door. I reached for a doorknob that already seemed to be pressing itself up into my hand. What would I find this time? Another bedchamber?
The door opened cleanly and silently, and I saw the same oddly plain, homely room I had found once before. The cabinets were now open, showing its full shelves, and the rectangular frame was still covered with its piece of black sackcloth. The shelves bowed with the weight of jars and canisters, and rough bundles of herbs. Was this the Room of Hearts that I had been searching for after all? My breath caught in my throat.
Several books lay open and dog-eared on the black floor, as well as crumpled notes scrawled in a dark and untidy hand—lots of question marks and exclamation marks, I noticed, as if the author had grown increasingly more agitated and frustrated. The papers littered the floor like fallen blossoms, and thick dust hovered in the air, making it hazy and golden.
I tore my gaze away from the floor and looked up to find the sorcerer sitting behind a black desk that he must have conjured for the occasion, because it hadn’t been there the last time I had glimpsed the room.
I hadn’t noticed him before because his back was to me, but as I walked around the room towards him I could see the curve of his cheek and the flickering movements of his hands before his face. More papers littered the desk, and pools of black ink shone bright and iridescent on the black surface, turning the scrawled notes to purple mush where the ink had soaked the papers.
He seemed absorbed in an intricate net of sparkling thread strung between his hands, something like the cat’s cradles we made as children back in the village, and hadn’t even looked up at my entry. I set down the lunch tray—on the floor before him, amid the mess, since there was no room on the desk—and it made a soft clinking sound.
The sorcerer spun around, his hair lifting and falling about his face. It was constitutionally impossible for any of these magic-workers to do anything gracelessly, it seemed.
“What are you doing in here?” he demanded. “How did you get here?” A sharp frown line carved its way between his brows. I felt like a child caught with her hand in the jam jar, but I rallied.
“Don’t ask me,” I said. “I was just trying to bring you your lunch, and the House brought me here.”
“Oh.” He looked at the plate. “What is it?”
“Pork chops,” I replied.
“Again.” He sighed and made a petulant face. I wanted to turn on my heel right there and march out, but I was too intrigued at the possibility that I had found the Room of Hearts at last.
It certainly felt like something significant . The air tasted of metal—it made my tongue feel thick and sluggish in my mouth. My ears buzzed faintly. Magic .
I recognized the flavor of it at once, despite never having felt it this strongly before. Perhaps it was an instinct built into me, to recognize its signature, the way a baby mouse knows from birth to fear the shadow of an owl.
The sorcerer continued to fiddle with the sparkling cat’s cradle between his hands. He seemed to have sprouted several new fingers to manage the threads, manipulating them with manic intensity. Staring at it and trying to determine exactly how it worked made my head hurt.
I discreetly stirred the discarded papers on the floor with my foot, looking about for any sign of a heart. Perhaps it was in one of the jars or bottles on the shelves, ground to a powder or dissolved in liquid. I started making my way slowly toward the cabinets, but he looked up sharply, and I stopped, trying to look like I was just idly wandering.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “What is all this?”
I bent down to unfold one of the hysterically scrawled scraps of paper. The sorcerer immediately threw the cat’s cradle down to the floor.
“Don’t touch anything!” he cried.
The cat’s cradle exploded where he dropped it, making me jump, and turned into a handful of glittering ash that descended onto the pork chops, looking like expensive seasoning.
The explosion sent the papers on the floor swirling like a cloud of moths—and it also blew the sacking cover off the frame on the wall. The sorcerer noticed and grabbed at it as it fell, but he was too late. It escaped his grasp and left its secret uncovered.
It was a painted portrait that hid behind the sacking, and I could see it now in full. I was no expert on paintings and had barely seen any besides the portraits of the king that hung in taverns and public buildings, but it didn’t seem like a very accomplished portrait to me.
Rather, it seemed like the work of an excessively average painter, someone who was still learning, and who had scrubbed out and painted certain patches over and over. There was a laborious, many-layered quality to it, and the colors were muddy.
I would have expected a beautiful woman, if I’d had to guess at the sort of secret portrait a man might keep in a locked room in his house, but despite the painter’s lack of skill, I could tell this was definitely a picture of a boy. A very young boy, no more than five years old, perhaps, although I wasn’t much use at judging the ages of sprouts.
The portraitist clearly had trouble with hands, and had erased and redrawn the eyes a number of times, but there was still something of the spirit of the boy there, despite that.
He had darkish, longish hair, a prominent nose, and an unhandsome face that nevertheless had some character about it. The painter had managed to capture a certain stubborn set to the jaw, even if they hadn’t quite succeeded in shaping the lips and had ended up with a kind of muddled, fleshy blob instead.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“No one.”
I studied the sorcerer’s profile as he looked at the picture. Every line perfect. He looked like he should be the oil painting. Or, rather, the oil painting, with all its errors and smudges, looked more human than he did.
He did not seem inclined to tell me more about it, so instead I asked, “What are you doing in here?”
He blew a stray hair out of his eyes, and I tried to stop myself from staring at his pursed lips. He stared ahead for a moment without speaking, then threw his hands up as if in surrender.
“I’m working on a ... cure, I suppose. For a ... disease. And it’s a particularly infectious and destructive disease, and a cure is urgently needed. The king has tasked us all with its finding.”
“Then the sorceresses are working on it too?”
“With more success, I am sure.”
I looked around at the mess again. I picked up one of the books at random off the floor and leafed through its pages. It felt unnaturally dense and heavy for its size, straining out of its physical boundaries as if it were a very large object pretending to be very small.
“You can read?” he asked, with a note of surprise in his voice. I don’t know why it irked me. It was a fair assumption to make; most village girls never bothered to learn. Or rather, no one bothered to teach them.
They didn’t have a Da like mine, who loved stories, and who sat his aching body in front of the fire every evening to read to me and help me shape my letters, guiding my tiny fingers with his coarse hands that always smelled a little of blood, no matter how much he scrubbed.
Most people assumed I was illiterate. Sylvester being surprised at my abilities, though—that stung.
I had expected the magical books to be in another language, perhaps even another alphabet, but I could read it all quite clearly. It was drily academic, from what I could tell.
“This is a recipe for a charm,” I noted. “You said you sold charms. Why? I can’t imagine you need the coin. Or ...” remembering the hearts, “whatever they use to pay you.”
He laughed a little. “No, I have little use for coin. I do not accept payment. But the king likes us to make ourselves useful to the common people. It keeps relations cordial, he says.”
I snorted.
“If anyone chooses to come to me for a spell, however, they must be desperate,” said Sylvester, resting his chin on his hands again. To my surprise, he sounded a little bitter.
“I imagine everyone who seeks out magic must be desperate,” I said.
“Not all. Some are simply greedy. No, I am the last resort when it comes to potions and charms. I told you, I am no better than a hedge-witch in that regard.”
“But you’re a sorcerer. ”
He crooked one eyebrow. “The others are more powerful than me.”
“Is that why you’re the only ...” I wasn’t sure how to put it. “The only one like you?” I ventured.
“Yes,” he said simply. “Magic manifests itself ... differently, in me. My spells can be somewhat unpredictable in their outcomes. And so those seeking magic come to me last, if the others have refused them.”
“What does that mean, unpredictable?”
He snorted. “Exactly how it sounds. Sometimes my magic works, and sometimes ...” he made a sweeping gesture at the mess of papers and ink, “it doesn’t. Or goes spectacularly awry.” His eyes flickered upward, unnaturally bright. “This is what I was made for. It should come as naturally as breathing. If not, I have already outlived my usefulness.”
I stared at him, and was about to ask another question when I was startled to hear a knock at the door—partly because it was a surprise, and partly because I was amazed I could hear it this far away. I thought at first I was hearing things.
“Did you hear that?” I asked.
“It’s the door,” the sorcerer said helpfully.
I felt oddly fearful. I had grown accustomed to the House and my role in it, and I was comfortable in my invisibility there. I was not eager to be seen by the world again. “Who is it?”
“I suppose you should answer it,” he said absently, preoccupied again with the papers on his desk. “Take them to the throne room.”
I muttered to myself about entitled sorcerers as I stomped to answer the door, and the House obliged (or hurried me to my doom) by making the corridor shorter.
Could it be one of the sorceresses? I didn’t know how I felt about seeing one of the magic-workers up that close. I’d only ever seen them at a respectable distance. Might she siphon the rest of my heart out of me on sight? Then again, I thought, how exactly would I be worse off?
Perhaps it would be a blessing to get it over and done with rather than continuing to waste away in the sorcerer’s House. I decided to risk it, and I made my way to the door. I hadn’t opened the big slab of black since I had arrived.
When I did, it let in a mess of noise and light and colors as the daylight sliced across my eyeballs like one of Da’s best filleting knives. I blinked to clear my vision, bracing myself to see one of the sorceresses, but instead saw a weaselly little man clutching a leather purse and looking just as scared as myself. He actually jumped when I looked directly at him.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Who are you?” he demanded, and I couldn’t blame him. I was the last person you’d expect to see in such a grand place. He seemed to collect himself and spoke more calmly. “I’m here for a charm,” he said.
“Oh yes,” said Cornelius, who had appeared from somewhere around the region of my feet. “Haven’t seen one of these in a while.”
If the man had been jumpy before, he was practically vibrating now that he had heard Cornelius speak. I held the door open a little wider. “I suppose you’d better come in,” I said.
Cornelius led the way to the throne room, as he had when I arrived. The House behaved itself, and kept everything in the same places as usual, and didn’t play any tricks with the floor. The way the visitor acted, however, you’d have thought trapdoors were popping open all around him. I’d never seen anyone so spooked, certainly not by a gloomy black corridor.
“In there,” I told him, pointing to the throne room door. The man looked like he was about to melt into a puddle on the spot.
“Aren’t you coming in with me?” he asked in a strangled voice.
I exchanged glances with Cornelius.
“All right, I suppose,” I said. I must confess, I was interested. I pushed open the door and found the sorcerer lounging in that great black chair, as usual, juggling fireballs with one hand and propping his chin up with the other.
“What?” he said ungraciously.
“Visitor,” I said.
“Where?”
I realized the man was cringing behind me. It was hard to tell how tall he actually was, what with all the shaking and cowering.
“Pull yourself together,” I said over my shoulder.
The man poked his head out and licked his dry lips. “Greetings, Your Highness,” he said.
I almost snorted.
“What?” said Sylvester again. “I’m busy.”
“I need a ... a potion, Your Highness.”
Sylvester sighed. He let the fiery juggling balls fall one by one into his open palm, and then closed his fist in a puff of smoke.
“What sort of potion?”
“Er ...” the man glanced at me. I rolled my eyes. “I’ll wait outside,” I huffed, and stomped out, closing the door behind me. Cornelius was just outside in the corridor, sitting up with his tail tucked neatly over his front feet.
It was bound to be an aphrodisiac the fellow was after, I speculated—that, or something to rid himself of an unwanted babe. I had chatted with Goodwife Tilly now and then, back in the village, and she had said that whenever someone came to the herbal shop through the back door, it was always to ask for one of those two things. She insisted she didn’t sell them, but I wasn’t too sure.
“Does this happen often?” I asked Cornelius.
“No. They’re always like that, though, when they do come.”
The door swung open behind me, sooner than I had expected, and I had to shuffle out of the way. The man emerged, wide-eyed and clutching a little velvet drawstring bag so tightly that his knuckles were bloodless.
“All done?” I asked.
He nodded, seemingly unable to speak. He stood there staring at me until I realized he meant for me to show him out.
“Oh. This way.”
I stomped back down the corridor to the front door but drew the line at opening it for him. His knuckles were still white as pearls around the bag.
I couldn’t contain my curiosity. “What did you ask him for?” I wondered.
He jumped at my voice. “Do you live here?” he asked, ignoring my question. “How do you bear it?”
“Bear what?”
“Being so close to one of Them .” He sounded awed.
I wasn’t about to go into my whole history, and so I said, “You get used to it.”
“I’ve seen them, of course, and heard stories ... But being so close?” He shook his head.
“Yes, well,” I said, with a little acid in my voice.
The man held out his purse with a trembling hand. “Payment,” he said.
Unthinking, I held out my hand, expecting the clunk of gold coin. Instead, a handful of unpleasantly squishy, damp things, something like fermented figs, rolled onto my palm.
I swore and let them fall to the floor in my surprise, and the man shot me a furious look and dropped to his knees to scramble them up again. He batted Cornelius away, who had been sniffing at one.
“What are you doing?” he hissed. “Do you know what I had to do to get these?”
“I don’t even know what they are ,” I said. I stooped to get a better look at them.
“Hearts,” he said.
“ Human hearts?”
“They’d better be, for what I paid for them.” He seemed surprised by my ignorance, and his surprise had driven away his anger. “Don’t you know about them?”
I opened and shut my mouth like a fish. What to say? “I didn’t know they were like that ,” I managed. “They’re so small! And wrinkly!”
“Well, they’ve been dried a bit,” he explained. “These could probably do with a bit more drying, to be honest, but I had to take what I could get.”
I couldn’t believe it. Did everyone in the city cart a bag of hearts about with them? Was one half murdering the other half? Well. I didn’t know what to make of that. It seemed odd that such powerful sorcery was piddled out on little cantrips and potions for the public, and the hearts sold on the black market sounded like one big swindle to me.
“I would have thought you’d seen a lot of them, living here,” he said. “They all use them for their magicks, don’t they?”
“But ... they go out and get them on their own,” I said. “They don’t buy them. How do you have so many?”
He cocked his head, puzzled, as if I was asking questions that were common knowledge.
“I’m not from here,” I explained. “I’m from the country. Far out in the country.”
“Oh,” he said, apparently satisfied. “Well yes, of course, they get their own. But there’s a market for these others, if you know where to find it. Some people say that you can learn to use them for magicks, even if you’re not one of Them, but I don’t know about that.” He had gathered all the hearts back up into the little purse, and handed it to me. I weighed it in my palm. I couldn’t imagine anything magical being left in these sad, squishy little things, but what did I know? Maybe there was something yet to be milked from them.
“And these are what they take as payment?”
“Of course,” he said. “Usually. But none of the others are selling magicks just now.”
“Why not?”
He frowned. “I don’t know. Things have been changing, lately. All the others turned me away.”
Clearly Sylvester had been a last resort, as he had said. “Well, good luck to you,” I said.
The man nodded goodbye and ducked out the door quick as winking, relieved to be out of there. I inhaled a tantalizing gasp of outdoor air before the door swung smoothly shut. I looked at the repulsive little bag in my hand.
“What’s that?” said Cornelius. I held it out for him to get a proper sniff.
“Pig, I think,” he said, with the air of a connoisseur. I knew it. I marched back to the throne room and found Sylvester hunched over on the throne with his elbows on his knees, glaring straight ahead.
“I was told to give you these,” I said. I held the bag of pig hearts out to show him. He barely gave it a glance.
“Useless. The man was a fool to be fobbed off with such.” He sighed. “Which reminds me. Our visitor bought my last potion. We may have to go out.”
“Go out? ” I imagined sitting beside him as he rolled into another village in his grand carriage, watching him snatch up another unsuspecting maiden. Did he really expect me to help him gather up hearts?
“To the market,” he said, much to my relief.
“What do you need from the market that you can’t magic up at home? The fruit bowl fills itself quick as blinking if I so much as think about an apple.”
“Some things can’t be magicked,” he said. “Or lose their efficacy if you try.”
“Like what?”
“Certain herbs, tinctures ... Even the magical food needs to be supplemented with the real stuff from time to time. Eating nothing but magic tends to make one a bit sickly over time.”
“Is that why you lot come out to get those things from the villages?” I had thought it was just a pretense.
“Sometimes.”
“But I thought all you needed for your magic was a heart.”
To my surprise, he seemed uncomfortable. He conjured one of his little fireballs and started flickering it between his fingers, as practiced as a street magician. “Well, that’s not all we need,” he said, rather sharply.
He straightened up suddenly, his clothes shimmering around him, and quick as blinking, he seemed dressed for travel: the heavy, many-caped cloak he now wore looked to be made of leather, and his boots were sturdier and squarer of toe than the ones he usually sported. (I had noticed that he had a particular vanity about his shoes, which were often the most extravagant part of his dress.) “You will accompany me to the market,” he said, still short in tone.
To fetch and carry, I supposed. I looked down at my clothes. Even though the fabric was richer than anything I owned back home, they weren’t best suited to a city outing.
As if reading my mind, the sorcerer made a gesture with one hand, and I felt the garments scramble around my body like cats after a mouse. The metallic scent of magic filled my lungs.
In a panic, I yelped and tried to hold the fabric down to cover myself as best I could, but I needn’t have worried—as quickly as the old clothes slithered off my body and raced away like shadows, new ones spiraled up my legs like vines and wrapped themselves around me, leaving no room for nakedness in between.
“You could have warned me!” I snapped. The new garments were heavy, made of something like velvet but with a finer nap, warm and close-fitting. Glancing down, I could see a row of gold buttons and some intricate embroidery on the placket.
I wondered how much of a fright I looked—a butcher’s daughter dressed up like a fine lady. There were no mirrors in the sorcerer’s House other than the one in his sister’s boudoir, and none had been provided me—perhaps because they were the last things I would wish for.
The sorcerer seemed satisfied with my appearance, however. “Come,” he said simply, and swept past me in a gust of cinnamon and copper-scented air, into the dark corridor.
Giddy from the magic and the nearness of him, I could only follow, tripping over my new fancy skirt as I did so.
Outside was fresh and biting and bracing, with a wind full of city smells and the humming of city noise. I hadn’t realized how flat my senses had become inside the magical House, how deadened and dimmed.
Now, more than ever, I realized that nothing it produced was really real, and here was the real stuff, the dazzling, stinking mess of it, ready to be swallowed down and spat back up with each breath.
The sorcerer looked back at me curiously. I must have looked like a landed fish, gasping and gulping there on the pavement.
“Come along,” he said, and turned on his heel.
I followed at a slight distance, struggling to match his pace. He noticed, I think, because he slowed a little, which made me feel like a dog trotting after his master.
I had enjoyed my anonymity in the city, but there was none of that now as I trailed behind the sorcerer. Eyes stared first at him, lingering on his beautiful face and fine clothes, and then passed to me, and widened.
I felt their gaze hot on my cheeks, and I kept my head down. I dreaded looking up and seeing pity on any face, even just one. I was pitiable, no doubt about that, but I didn’t want to be reminded of it.
“Keep up,” the sorcerer said over his shoulder. I made a face at his back.
We arrived at the same market I had passed through when I first arrived in the city. It was certainly fancier than the one in our little village square back home.
As well as the usual meat and fish and vegetables and flowers, it had a whole stall devoted to ornamental cages, some of which were filled with feathery creatures of all colors, and one to little jeweled collars for dogs, of all things. One stall even sold an assortment of cheap furnishings featuring the king’s familiar face—plates and tea towels and such.
There was nary a beggar to be seen. They probably gave them a kick and sent them rolling downhill if they dared to venture up this far.
I was surprised at the ordinariness of the sorcerer’s shopping—herbs and powders, twisted roots, even a bunch of evil-smelling flowers. He ambled between the stalls, seemingly oblivious to the stares and whispers, and I trotted along at his heels.
As he made his purchases, he stowed them away in his cloak pockets, and I came to realize that they were magically capacious, as there was no way they could hold such a bulky assortment of plants, herbs, and spice packets without spoiling the perfect line of the tailoring.
I don’t know what use I was, trailing after him, as he didn’t give me anything to carry, nor send me to fetch anything he needed. I suppose he just wanted to keep me from cleaning the House into oblivion. Or exploring it further while he was out and unable to keep an eye on me.
I became aware of a susurration in the crowd, and a wavelike movement as people drifted to either side of the market, clearing a path. I craned my neck to see what was coming and saw another one of them . The magic-workers.
The sorcerer came to a halt, and I went careening into his back. I clutched at the warm leather of his caped cloak for a moment to steady myself, and the warm spice of his scent rushed up at me and made me giddy.
I let go and stumbled back, stepping one foot into a puddle of mud, right up to the ankle. Lovely. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe, fighting back the wave of adoration that muddled my head.
It was quite the sight. A sorceress with hair as golden and gleaming as a sweet wine, trimmed with expensive cloth and fine jewels, was riding something like a fancy rickshaw. The rickshaw was all decked out with shinies and curlicues as well. Of course. Pulling it was a youngish man, tall and gangly, but with wiry muscles visible on his bare shoulders and arms. He would need them, clearly, pulling that jewel-encrusted monstrosity around.
Why couldn’t she use a horse? I suppose it was to show off her power—to intimidate. I would have expected her servant to be straining and panting at the weight, but his face was oddly blank and rigid.
What surprised me most was that the crowd started to cheer as she passed—respectfully, no rowdiness or rude remarks. I heard, “Bless you, my lady!” more than once. Back home, we would have goggled and stared, of course, but silently—certainly no cheering, as we knew what they had come to us for.
Things were clearly different here. Children laughed and pointed with no fear, and the men and women gazed and smiled with not just the expected adoration, but with approval. I was used to seeing the magic-workers worshipped—but liked? That was a new one.
Sylvester hadn’t even looked up.
“It’s one of your lot,” I said.
He glanced her way. “So it is,” he said without expression.
She had spotted him too. He was hard to miss. She reached for a pair of reins— reins? She was really using reins on her servant?—and pulled on them, bringing the rickshaw to a halt. I could hear the tinkle of her bracelets as she lifted her hand, and her dress shivered and sparkled before settling, all those elaborate folds reacting to the movement.
I watched her servant come to a halt. His bare torso gleamed with sweat, but his face remained impassive. The jewel-encrusted reins linked to a collar around his neck, also elaborately decorated, so they seemed more for show—and humiliation?—than practical use. If he felt shame, though, he showed none. I could see nothing living behind his eyes.
As far as I could tell, no one in the crowd seemed surprised or outraged at the sight of him, as we would have been back home. A servant drawing a rickshaw for a fine lady, all right, but wearing a collar and reins? There would definitely have been some mutterings back in the village.
The people around us dispersed respectfully, muttering prayers or blessings as they departed and went about their business. I knew enough about the nature of people, however, to be sure that their attention was still fixed on us, even if they turned their backs and pretended to be absorbed in their shopping.
“Sylvester,” the sorceress greeted him. Her eyes flickered over me, widening just a little as they took me in. I was face-to-face with a sorceress, closer to one than I had ever been.
The word “dazzling” didn’t even come close. It was like looking into the blue heart of a fire or tasting a spice that set your mouth to burning. The perfection of her face hurt me; the symmetry sliced me open.
It would not matter who was behind that face—the most evil-minded, meanest, and most rotten-cored person could have been inside there, and it would not have mattered. I would have worshipped her all the same. Anyone would have.
“Clarissa,” said Sylvester. Of course she would have a name like Clarissa.
“I don’t often see you at the market,” she said, and a thread of judgment wove through her crystalline voice. “I am glad to see you out and about among the people.”
I stole a glance at the sorcerer. I’d never seen anyone less pleased to be out and about. “I needed more herbs,” he said shortly.
“You’ve been selling spells? Even better.” She seemed pleased, which made him glower even more.
“Go,” he said, turning to me. I blinked. Go where? Then I realized that, of course, they would want to speak alone, and embarrassment stung my cheeks. Dismissed, like the servant I was.
I swallowed down the ache in my heart as best I could and walked away, trying to look like it didn’t matter to me one way or the other. The bespelled part of me felt jealousy twist in my gut, even though he hadn’t seemed overly pleased to see the sorceress.
Well, it was a chance to look about for someone who seemed likely to have the knowledge I sought about retrieving my heart. I wasn’t going to accost just anyone.
I wandered around the market for a while, wondering how to broach the subject and whom to speak to, until I saw again the sign I had seen on arriving in the city: advertising quills and paper, and “Letters Read and Written.” Behind it sat a bespectacled man.
I started toward him, with the vague idea that someone who was around ink and paper a great deal would have more knowledge than the average person. And then I realized—I couldn’t believe this hadn’t occurred to me before—I could write to Da! I could explain where I was and what I was doing, far better than in my hastily scribbled note that I had left on the counter back home.
“Need something read?” asked the scholar when I approached, eyeing me dubiously. I suppose my fine clothes made me look less illiterate than usual.
“You’re a scribe?”
“That is my trade,” he said, tapping the sign.
“Could you get a letter out of the city? If I wrote one?”
“A letter? Nothing easier. Shall I write it for you?” He was still looking at me oddly, as if he wanted to say more. “No, my hand is fair enough. But I will need pen and paper,” I said.
He passed me both, wordlessly, and I palmed him a coin. I wrote a few lines, telling Da where I could be found, and that I was working as the sorcerer’s housekeeper (“and nothing else ,” I added and underlined it, because I knew he would worry). I told him I would be back as soon as I found a way, and then I signed my name and addressed the letter.
I feared it would do little to ease his worry. He would know better than to come to a sorcerer’s house looking for me, of that much I was sure, but we all knew what the magic-workers did to a person. Well, we had thought we knew.
“Thank you,” I said to the man as he stashed it in a leather bag filled with papers. I waited until he had tucked it away safely and then said in a low tone, “I’m looking for someone who can tell me about the sorceresses.”
He jumped, then rearranged his face into a neutral expression. “The what?”
“The sorceresses. The ... beautiful women. The magic-workers.” I gestured vaguely at where Sylvester and the sorceress were still talking.
“The Magic-Workers!” I could hear the capital letters he added, dropping them like a couple of sugar cubes into tea.
“Right. Them,” I said.
“What do you want to know about them?” he asked, still guarded.
I hesitated, wondering if anyone was eavesdropping and if it would matter. The man saw me twisting my skirts in my hands like a bashful country girl and took pity on me.
“What’s your name?” he asked me.
“Foss Butcher,” I replied.
“My name is Basil,” he said. He looked at me narrowly and moved a little closer, although the bustle of the market already smothered our voices, and I doubted anyone would have overheard us.
“You want to know about the hearts? ” he whispered.
“I know that they take them. But I don’t know why, exactly, or what they do with them afterward.”
He peered behind me, as if expecting an army of guardsmen to jump out from behind the fruit stalls.
“Why do you ask?” he said. He leaned in even more. “Have you been snagged ?”
I wondered if it was a dirty question.
“I don’t know what that means,” I said.
He looked at me closely, peering into my face as if he could read it like one of his scrolls. It was disconcerting, I tell you.
“I think you have,” he said. He scribbled something down on a scrap of his paper—an address.
“Come here tonight, at midnight,” he said. “It is best if no one sees you.”
I raised an eyebrow. A strange man giving me an address and telling me to go there alone, in the middle of the night? He must have read these thoughts in my expression, because he waved his hands.
“No, no, it is nothing sinister, or dangerous. Our gatherings are merely ... frowned upon.”
“By whom?”
“All of them. The king. The Magic-Workers. They prefer to keep their business ... quiet.”
Well, that was reassuring, all right.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”
“Here,” he said, folding the little paper and holding it out. I started to open it, but he flapped his hands at me urgently and hissed, “Hide it! Hide it!”
I wondered if he was slightly unhinged. Maybe I’d open the paper back at the House and find nothing but a meaningless scrawl. Still, it was the best chance I had, so I tucked it away in my pocket.
Idly, I cast my eye over his wares and saw a little seal and picked it up, so that I would look like nothing more than a customer should the magic-workers glance my way.
The wood was smooth in my hand, and the design looked like an amateurishly drawn carrion bird—a crow, perhaps, or a raven. It reminded me of the dishes in the sorcerer’s House, and of him. It appealed to me. A memento, for when I left, then—if I were ever able to leave.
“I’ll take this,” I said, and waited as the scribe wrapped it in waxed paper. He tapped the side of his nose, as if to remind me of our shared secret, and I left.
I did feel better, though, having written to Da. Sending that letter to him was almost like reaching out my hand to him and feeling his larger, rougher one take it. I felt warmed and strengthened.
I walked back to the magic-workers, who stopped speaking abruptly when I turned up. The sorceress parted her lips for a moment as if to say more, then seemed to think better of it.
“I will call upon you soon, Sylvester,” she said. She twitched the reins again, and her expressionless servant picked up the rickshaw shafts.
“Come,” said Sylvester abruptly as she moved away. He turned on his heel and started back toward the House. Again, I had to trot to keep up with him.
I imagined the letter I had written to Da, nestled in that leather bag and waiting for the mail coach that would take it all the way back to our village. It took a piece of my heart with it as surely as the sorcerer did.