A Harvest of Hearts

13

I cried myself to sleep that night. Of course I did. It was my first kiss, and it had been given without love or even the mildest affection, as an experiment. To him it was nothing, and to me it was everything.

I cried for my cursed heart, and for the misfortune of my birth, and for my Da, and for the knowledge that I was trapped here with no chance of freeing myself, at the whim of a magic-worker who didn’t even want me.

I was an accident, as usual. I should never have been snagged, never should have come here, just as I had always believed I was never meant to be alive at all. I gave in to self-pity entirely and soaked my black pillow with tears that were absorbed by the House’s magic, leaving the cloth dry and cool as ever.

This made me feel even more as if my tears didn’t matter—didn’t have any impact on the dreadful blank blackness of the House and of the sorcerer’s heart. Cornelius curled himself around my head, letting his tail fall across my neck like a scarf, and tried to purr the sobs out of me as best he could.

I spent a restless night, as you can imagine, thoughts scurrying about like ants. I thought about making a run for it, trying to go home to Da, but I couldn’t see how I’d be much better off once the heartsickness kicked in, in force again. I’d probably end up staggering back within an hour, begging to be allowed to serve the sorcerer all over again.

The only chance I had was to stay here and hope that he would stir himself and put some effort into learning how to undo the spell or mend me somehow (fat chance of that).

Or, I suppose, hope that he would just finish the spell and take my heart and put me out of my misery before his sister could. Or perhaps the Snagged were right and their method really would work. They were fast becoming my only hope.

I thought about the sorceress’s manservant, too. Colin. He had shown a flicker of remaining humanity, right at the end. Would he be able to help me? Or, if I found some solution, would I be able to help him ? I had to try at least, didn’t I?

I woke up without any sort of solid plan, but with a raging headache that made me grump about the room as I got dressed and glower at Cornelius when he mewed. The House stayed out of my way as I stomped through to the kitchen, making the floors especially smooth and obstacle-free for me, and the kettle boiled in record time on the stove. I made a cup of tea so strong that it could have dissolved a spoon and swallowed it all down while I stared at the fire.

“Why are you in such a bad mood?” Cornelius asked me.

“That shiny bint in the fancy dress told her brother to harvest me, and he’s going to do it. If not today, then someday soon. Or she will.”

“He wouldn’t really ,” said Cornelius. “He likes you.”

“He’s amused by me,” I corrected, “and only sometimes, at that. And it sounds as if he might not have much of a choice, if she’s making him. Or if the king is making him.”

“So, you’re leaving.” Cornelius stared at me with wide eyes. I could almost see the word “bacon” imprinted on his little forehead.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m thinking about it. I don’t know if it’s even possible for me to leave, but I might have to try. I’m sure the House will give you more bacon if I go, now that you’ve got a taste for it.”

“It’s not that.” Cornelius washed his chest quickly, as he did when he was embarrassed. “Could you take me with you?”

“You want to come with me?” I was startled.

“I don’t want to stay here,” he said.

“But you said it wasn’t a bad life.”

“It’s not. But it’s not a particularly good one, either.”

“It’s a long road.” And we’re not fancy back home, like him.”

“I don’t mind. I’m a good mouser. I think.” Cornelius paused. “Actually, I don’t know how I would do with real mice now. I’m a bit out of practice.”

“We have a butcher’s shop,” I said.

His eyes brightened. “Well, that’s perfect, then,” he said. “Plenty of meat.”

“Right,” I said, still a bit startled. “Well, if I do leave, I’ll bring you with. Like I said, though, I don’t know if I can.” Something occurred to me. “Will you still be able to talk, away from the House?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” said Cornelius. “Which is a pity, because I’m getting quite good at it. I think it’s something the House gives me, and outside of the House, I don’t see how I’d be able to keep it.” He looked at me a little uncertainly. “Would I still be good company, if I just mewed like any other cat?”

I felt an ache in my heart. “Oh, yes,” I said. “You would always be good company, Cornelius.”

“Oh. Good,” he said, and looked away as if he was thinking of something else. There was a pleased tremble to his whiskers, though.

I suppose the House had been listening and wanted to distract me, creaking open one of the drawers in the kitchen. I was used to the House’s ways of communication by now.

Sighing, I rummaged about, looking for whatever it wanted to show me, and my hand closed on something small and slightly furred to the touch. Tough, but with a little give to it. I lifted it out. It was the thing that had rolled to my feet in the courtyard.

I had almost forgotten about this odd, peach-pitlike thing. I probably wouldn’t have thought about it again, what with everything else going on in my head.

“What is it?” asked Cornelius.

“Well, I found it on the street. Two idiots had been fighting over it. I hung onto it out of curiosity, but I didn’t know what it was ...” I held it out to him. It felt oddly alive in my palm. “Have a whiff. What do you think?”

He made a face, but sniffed it, and coughed a delicate cat cough. “Dusty,” he said. Then he stuck out the very end of his rough little cat tongue and just barely touched the surface of the wrinkled thing. He made a face.

“It’s meat,” he said. “Or it was meat.”

“It’s a heart,” I said with certainty, putting it in my skirt pocket. I remembered the little bag of pig hearts with which the sorcerer’s visitor had tried to pay him. “Is it rotted? Molded?”

“No, I’d smell that a mile off. It’s just ... dry.”

“Can you tell what kind of meat it is? Was?”

Cornelius thought for a moment, giving one ear a quick wash. “If I didn’t know better,” he said, “I’d say it was human.”

A heart. A human heart. No wonder they had been fighting over it so furiously. I could only imagine the price a human heart would command on the black market, no matter how wizened.

I didn’t dare think about how it had been procured, but now that it was in my hands, I thought I might as well use it. I could take it to Basil and the Snagged. I could give them what they had asked for—their price for the cure. I could leave the sorcerer and his House and his cursed kiss behind.

I should have been elated. I should have run out the door there and then. But I didn’t. I stood very still, pressing my hand against my pocket, thinking. I then made breakfast in a daze, preparing all the foods and making more tea without really being aware of what I was doing.

I almost forgot to be angry and embarrassed about the kiss until I entered the throne room, and then it came back over me in a rush.

To my surprise, Sylvester was standing on the black tile just inside the door, adjusting his cuffs. The fact that he was standing at all was a shock, frankly, as I almost always found him lounging in his throne as if half asleep.

He was dressed differently, too. His hair was brushed back neatly, showing the fine planes of his cheekbones and jaw, and he wore a voluminous, black travel coat over his usual shirt and breeches. The fabric of the coat looked like thickly embroidered velvet, with a pattern that moved under my gaze and refused to let it get a grasp on it, and with dozens of buttons the size and sheen of a raven’s eye.

“You look nice,” I said, despite myself.

He looked at me blankly, as if “looking nice” was a completely incomprehensible notion. He didn’t seem embarrassed about the previous night at all.

He did brighten when he saw the breakfast plate, though, and threw himself back into his chair to eat the bacon with his fingers and lick off the grease. He was worse than Cornelius when it came to bacon.

There was an odd tangle of awkwardness and intimacy between us. I wanted to ask him more questions about the spell and what to do now, but I hesitated, hovering beside the door and watching him eat. It didn’t seem to make him self-conscious, but I felt like a fool.

“I’m going out today,” he announced when he had finished. He seemed ... nervous, suddenly? His long, white hands twitched, as if he longed to be playing with one of his toys.

“Where are you going?”

“Just out,” he said.

“You never go out.” My curiosity was getting the better of me.

“Well, I’m going out now. I’ll be a day, maybe two.” He brushed imaginary dust off his sleeve.

“All right,” I said, although my heart had started beating fast. What would happen to me if he went away? Would I fall prey to the strongest bout of heartsickness again? My stomach roiled at the thought.

And how was I supposed to go to the address Basil had given me, if I were barely able to move or speak for the pain of separation?

“Can I come with you?” I heard myself say and flushed with shame.

“No,” he said, avoiding my eye. He stood and started to fuss about with his collar and cuffs, his face turned away from me.

I started to clear the breakfast plates, anxiety building in me at the thought of the pain I would feel at his leaving.

If the heartsickness returned in full when he left, there was no way I would be able to take the heart to the Snagged. If it was anything like when I was in the village, I would be barely able to walk.

Then my love-clouded brain cleared a little, and the anxiety was replaced by sudden knowledge, and my anger rose up like bile in my throat. I dropped the plates, and they smashed at my feet. The sorcerer whirled around, startled.

“What did you do that for?” he asked, staring at the shattered pieces.

“Are you going to one of the villages?” I demanded, hardly recognizing my own voice. “Is that where you’re going? Are you going to harvest ?”

For a second, his beautiful face was unguarded, and he looked like a little boy who had broken a window with his ball. Then it was inscrutable and eerily perfect once again.

“You can’t!” I cried. I imagined what had happened to me happening to someone else, but worse, because it wouldn’t be just another snag . He would take the whole of them, their whole heart.

I also had to fight down an irrational stab of jealousy. Whosever heart he took, it would be the heart of someone he chose. Not an embarrassing accident, like me.

“You can’t,” I said again. “It’s not right.”

He said nothing.

“Why did you not tell me yesterday you were planning this?” I asked, realizing how ridiculous I sounded. As if he had to keep me informed of his plans. Still, I felt a sense of betrayal.

He sighed. “That’s not all I’ve been doing. I spent the night examining the spell that binds us and trying everything I could to break it, but there is nothing. It is so tangled up in what I am, and what you are.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“I’m sorry,” he said, in what for him was an oddly gentle tone. “All I can do is alleviate the pain a little, or so I hope.”

If he wanted me to say thank you , he was going to have to resign himself to disappointment.

“So, you’re going out to the villages now?” I asked.

“What do you suggest I do? Are you offering yourself to be harvested, then, in their stead? My sister will return, and she will expect me to produce a heart. If I do not, she will take yours. Are you sacrificing yourself, then?”

I stood, glaring at him, unable to think of something to say in response. I wished I could have shouted, “Yes!” and meant it, but, shamefully, I was still concerned with preserving my own hide. He was right. I was not about to offer myself up to save someone else, although perhaps I should have. He saw my answer in my face and gave a small, bitter smile.

“You could stand up to her!” I said, knowing I was being ridiculous. Why on earth would he defend his housekeeper against his sister? “I don’t care how kind your sister was to you,” I continued. “Or how helpful . She’s a horrendous, evil harpy, and you’re about to be just as bad.”

We stared at each other over the little heap of shattered plates that I had dropped.

“Don’t worry about clearing those up,” said Sylvester, an edge to his voice, and the chips of china rose buzzing into the air like a swarm of bees, reassembling themselves with sinister neatness and efficiency.

I shrank back, as if they were going to aim themselves at me and pierce my body with their thousand broken points. I felt sick. It was the first time I had perceived the sorcerer’s magic for the unnatural, world-bending thing that it was.

The House’s antics happened just out of sight, as things sidled into place at the edge of my vision, and it seemed less like true magic than a sort of sleight of hand. The toys the sorcerer played with every day were just toys, even if he tossed a ball of fire from palm to palm. I hadn’t seen magic magic, not like this, so blatant, impossible, and inexplicable.

Seeing these inanimate things rise up, as if suddenly come to life, felt wrong in a sick, visceral way; warped and off-kilter, like a dream where everyone you know looks just a little unfamiliar.

I knew all at once, with a great and strange certainty, that the sorcerer’s kind of magic was something wrong and damaging that should not be here in the world, and might even be doing harm by being here.

I watched the plates, now good as new, stack themselves neatly, obediently, ready for my shaking hands to carry them back to the kitchen.

He was making a point, I knew. The House would have provided more, but no, he had to show me what he could do. To scare me with his power? To show me how insignificant I was by comparison?

“You will wait here until I return,” said the sorcerer in what was probably meant to be a lordly tone but came off as sulky instead.

We glared at each other. I found it was possible to be helplessly in love and completely disgusted with someone at the same time. I picked up the now-mended plates, holding his gaze.

“I’d smash them a second time,” I said, “if I didn’t think you would use heart magic to repair them all over again. And it’s not worth that. Nothing is.”

He fastened the buttons of his coat, all the way up to his chin. “You may go,” he said grandly. I rolled my eyes and stomped off, hoping he’d choke on his own high collar.

I fumed in the kitchen, fiddling with a pigeon pie crust and pointedly avoiding the sorcerer until he left, hearts dancing across my brain. I nursed my anger like a beloved babe at the breast, making sure it grew and strengthened, fueling me in preparation for the pain I would have to endure that day.

I had fashioned a heart shape on the roof of the pie without realizing it—a child’s heart, simple and symmetrical. Innocent. Nothing like the real thing, which was lumpen and lopsided, valves popping out like tentacles. I had seen more than enough of them in the butcher’s shop.

I could not hear any sounds of the horses or the carriage, but as soon as the sorcerer left the House, I felt it. His carriage was swift, and the pain increased just as swiftly. It was like the journey from my village had been, but in reverse, as the pain worsened with every mile between us—the magical horses ran faster than the real thing.

And as that invisible rope that tied me to him stretched and frayed, I doubled over, startling Cornelius, who jumped back with a bottlebrush tail. I ruined my heart-shaped crust as my hand flailed out and caught its edge.

“Are you all right?” mewed Cornelius.

“No.” I groped for the black wall, realizing, now that the sorcerer had gone, how fleshlike it felt to the touch despite its hardness. It turned my stomach, suddenly, the warm black mass of it.

The House felt alien and strange without the sorcerer, its familiarity and homeliness gone, as if it had never been. And the pain was a torment. Worse than before, or at least I thought it was—waves upon waves, each growing in power, washing me toward a dreadful shore.

Perhaps I had just forgotten the agony of it, as they say women forget the pain of childbirth and long for another babe after a few short years.

I plopped down into a chair, my head in my hands, and imagined the sorcerer on his journey. I pictured the carriage rolling into a village, as it had on the day I had been snagged, all dark curlicues and jewel-studded spokes.

I pictured the door opening, as it had then, and Sylvester stepping out with that fine, high shine on his boots and the light glancing off the blade of his equally fine cheekbones. I pictured him brushing his black curls aside, scanning the crowd with his gray blue eyes, and fixing his gaze on one of the prettier girls, someone like Hallie, maybe, or one of her friends.

She would make her way through the hushed crowd toward him, staggering a little as if mazed, and he would stretch out one white hand to draw her in to the carriage, close the door, and twitch shut the velvet curtains.

Once inside, what? He would fill her ear with sweet words, perhaps, as he dazzled her eyes with his beauty. Perhaps he would dampen her wondering, open mouth with kisses, as well. Perhaps more. Perhaps the long, white hands would open her bodice, or part her legs.

That was what we all believed they did—or hoped they did, in our shameful and fevered imaginings. It is what I imagined him doing to me, although I allowed myself only a minute or two of such dreaming, alone in my chamber at night.

I put up with the pain for an hour, maybe more, sitting doubled over on the kitchen chair, with Cornelius at my side, before crumpling and feeling my way down the long corridors to my bedchamber.

The House sat inert, refusing to make my staggering journey any shorter or easier. Cornelius trotted along by my feet, clearly concerned. As concerned as a cat could get, at least, which was merely one or two notches above complete indifference.

“If I lie down for a while ...” I said, but couldn’t finish the sentence.

I collapsed onto the dark bed like a toad plopping into its pond and fell into a parody of slumber. The dreams of vines and long, twisting passageways were back. The passageways were familiar now, having spent so many days wandering the fickle corridors of the House. But the vines were just as strange and unkind as they ever had been, fat as snakes, and I pushed my way through them with ever-failing strength.

I slept a damp, overheated sleep that left me feeling more exhausted than if I had never slept at all. Cornelius stood guard beside the bed, tail lashing.

In my troubled dreams, he grew sometimes as big as a house, a panther made of black flame, and then shrank down to a flake of ash that could have fit beneath my fingernail. Once, he stood on his hind legs and grew as tall as a man, and wore a shifting, many-caped coat, like the sorcerer’s traveling garb.

“Foss,” I heard him say once or twice. Or perhaps he was just hissing. With a cat, it was hard to tell.

I had even less perception of the passing of time than usual. The pain was a dark, emaciated figure that picked me up between its teeth and worried me like a terrier does a rat, then dropped me for a moment of relief before dancing back, laughing, to snatch me up again.

“Why is it so much worse?” I panted to Cornelius, but of course he could not answer, because I had not really spoken, but merely dreamed that I had spoken.

The fever-dream Cornelius spread great bat wings and flew to the ceiling, where he hung staring at me with enormous upside-down eyes.

In my few moments of clarity, I thought that perhaps the sorcerer’s magic was as chaotic and disorganized as he said, and tinkering with the spell had only made it worse. Typical. He should have left well alone, rather than tangling me in another spell gone wrong.

To my surprise, however, the pain seemed to break eventually, like a fever. I lay on the sodden sheets, gasping, aware that the respite would not last forever, but grateful for it all the same.

I stayed very still, as I had when I was a sprout and had imagined monsters under my bed waiting until they heard movement to pounce. The pain did not come back, though, and I ventured to sit up and look around. Cornelius was at the foot of the bed, curled up and sleeping, but stirred when I shifted position.

“You all right?” he said.

“I think so,” I said. I stretched out my arms experimentally. They looked white and frail, but the movement didn’t cause any pain. I swung my legs out of bed and staggered to the washbasin to splash my face.

“Is he back?” I asked. That would surely be the only reason for the sickness easing.

“No,” said Cornelius. “Still gone.”

It didn’t make sense. Perhaps he had changed his mind, had turned, and was on his way back? I stared at my wet face, dimly reflected in the shine of the black walls, and then stumbled back to the bed.

Perhaps the pain was over for good, miraculously, but I couldn’t think of any good reason for why that should be the case—however much I wished it were so. Unless he had died or been killed somehow, on the road, and the spell had died with him?

I shuddered at the thought, despite my fury with him. I couldn’t imagine a world without him, even if that meant freedom for me.

After a while, however, the heartsickness started up again, just as badly as before, so I supposed he must still be alive. I did not remember the pain coming in waves like this before I came to the city. Perhaps it was the effect of having been so long in the sorcerer’s presence that altered the experience of it?

Whatever the cause, it seemed to be waxing and waning rather than keeping a steady presence. I did not know how long it took, but eventually it eased again, and I was once again grateful for the relief. I knew it would not be for long. I seemed to sense the next wave of it already, gathering itself ominously behind my eyes and readying for attack. Cornelius jumped up onto my chest and kneaded it with his paws.

“Cornelius,” I said into the darkness.

“Hmm?”

“If this is what happens when I’m away from him,” I said, “I will never be able to go back home. If he discards me, I will die.”

“He will be back tomorrow,” said Cornelius reassuringly. “Probably,” he added, less reassuringly.

“But I have to leave tonight,” I said. “I have to go to the Snagged. To take them that heart.”

The idea of leaving the House now gave me the shivers. Perhaps the House was providing some comfort, some shelter from the full force of the spell, and walking out its door would make everything worse. After all, as Cornelius had said, the sorcerer and the House were one and the same, somehow. It was an extension of his magic.

Maybe being close to the House was a little like being close to the sorcerer himself and thus protecting me a little from the pain, making it wax and wane as it was doing. Once I was outside the walls, I would really be apart from him, without even his strange black substance to surround and succor me.

I would only know for sure once I left. But I had to try. What else was I going to do, lie here sweating and fever-dreaming until he got back, and then gratefully pop on my apron and resume business as usual? No. I struggled upright.

“I need a clock,” I said to the House in what I hoped was a commanding tone.

“What’s that?” asked Cornelius.

“It’s a device that tells you what time of day it is.” I realized that I had never seen a clock in all my days in the sorcerer’s House.

“What’s the point of that?” said Cornelius with animal logic.

“I want to know how long I have. The pain seems to come in waves. If I leave when it ebbs a little, I might have time to get to the address and back.”

The House provided with its usual secretive generosity. I turned my head and saw a small, ornate pocket watch on the bed beside me, a gentleman’s toy tricked out in black metal and diamonds, dense and complicated. It had a cunning clasp that opened with a snick, and inside were the familiar numbers, old friends arranged in the usual comforting circle, as if sitting around a table together in polite conversation.

They seemed as alien here as I was, here where time was ill-mannered and unruly, and refused to be fettered by numbers and flattened behind glass.

I gritted my teeth and stared at the diamond hands as they swung around, and when the pain tightened its grip on me again, I closed my eyes. After a long while, when the pain lessened, I opened them again.

It had been almost an hour of a dull ache that was unpleasant, but bearable. Now I had to wait and see whether the respite was consistent—whether I could trust it enough to risk leaving the House. I lay back and let the pain take me again.

I could feel the walls grumbling around me. The House, although it had reluctantly provided me with the pocket watch, didn’t like its presence. It forced the House to belong to the real world (a little), and follow real-world rules (a little), and the self-governing sorcerer magic resented it.

I found it comforting, however. It had a light, sure tick that sounded like the clip of hobnailed boots on tile and made me think of Da coming home after the day’s work. It soothed me as the heartsickness worried and snapped at me, when it took me in its jaws and sank in its black teeth.

Without the watch, I could not have guessed how much time had passed. When the next respite came, I saw it had been about an hour again. I lay still for another almost-hour, listening to the tick, tick of my new friend, and then the heartsickness took me once more.

I knew now, however, that there would be an end to it, and so when the black pain snatched me up again for its mad dance, I allowed myself to be tossed and twirled without resistance, waiting for my chance to leave the House.

I lay awake that night, staring at the pocket watch and waiting for it to get near enough to midnight, holding the piece of paper with the address on it crumpled in one hand.

The watch’s ferocious, regimental ticking fought against the viscous soup of the House time—or rather, the odd timelike substance, because what filled the House’s days like wine in a cup wasn’t really true time at all, just something like it, just as the mice Cornelius chased weren’t really mice, but just mouselike enough to pass muster with a bored cat.

Although the ticking was faint, it was valiant, and I trusted that it could hold its own.

When the time came near, and the pain stopped again, I heaved myself out of bed, feeling as if I was a hundred years old, and started looking about for my boots.

I buttoned them up, pulled a new dress over my head, and fastened a new cloak at my collarbone. I stuffed the watch into a pocket. I would need to keep close guard of the time. I tucked kitchen knives into my boots and the pockets of my cloak. I was a butcher’s daughter, and a butcher myself, really, even if I’d never been given the official title. I knew how to use a knife. Last, I felt for the little wizened heart in my skirt pocket.

“You will come back, won’t you, Foss?” said Cornelius, who was hovering at my heels.

I snorted. “I don’t have much of a choice.”

“All right,” he said, looking small.

“Stop fretting,” I said. “I told you I wouldn’t leave you here for good.”

I didn’t think it through any more than that, for fear that the House might sense me thinking throw up obstacles in my way, or that the heartsickness would somehow grip me again before my hour of respite was up.

Once I had myself looking as respectable as I could, I groped my way out of the bedchamber and headed for the front door. The House, perhaps taken by surprise, didn’t do more than shiver itself a little, and I found myself with my hand on the knob, then stumbling across the courtyard, then opening the great door that led to the Outside.

“I’m coming back,” I said to the empty air, as if I were reassuring the House as well as Cornelius. The whole place seemed to sigh as I stepped out the heavy black door. I felt a suck of air, as if something inside was trying to inhale me back in, and then nothing.

I hurried as fast as I could and reached the tavern without incident. Every so often, I thrust my hand into my pocket to touch the little heart, reassuring myself that it was still there. I was all ready to show it to Basil when he answered my knock, but as soon as he opened the door, he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me inside, shutting and locking the door behind me.

I noticed then that all the other Snagged who were present were standing in a tight circle around something on the floor and had not turned at my arrival. Just my luck—they were probably performing some eldritch ritual in which I’d be expected to take part.

Then I felt a stab of fear—there was a body on the floor. I backed away, walking into the door that Basil had just closed and bolted behind me.

“Open the door,” I said. “Let me go. I want no part of this, whatever it is.”

“No, wait.” Basil tried to lay a hand on my arm, but I shook him off. “It’s Jol,” he said. “The mold has spread.”

Which one was Jol? All the Snagged had blurred together in my mind. Basil went back to the circle, and I followed him.

The Snagged were clustered around a young man—ah yes, I remembered him now—who was curled up on the floor, panting and twitching. A woman had his head cradled in her lap and was washing his face with a soaked rag that she dipped and refreshed in a tub of water at her side every few seconds.

He was shirtless, his torso almost concave, eaten away by the same rot that had corroded Nat’s. It was a sickly, queasy green-gray, deepening to a bright sap green under his left ribs, where his heart should have been.

There was a smell, too, like fresh-turned compost—not wholly unpleasant, but strange in that stone room where nothing grew or should be decaying.

I did not want to keep looking at him, but I couldn’t seem to tear my eyes away. As I watched, he started to writhe again.

“Shhh, love,” said the woman who cradled his head, as if he were a sprout having a nightmare. She even smoothed his hair back from his forehead, and her hand came away wet with his sweat.

A lump clogged my throat for a second, seeing her motherliness. Da had done his best, but there was something about a mam feeling her babe’s forehead for a fever that always made me wish for a mother of my own.

“We should call a doctor,” I said.

“There is nothing a doctor can do for us,” said Basil.

No one else met my eye. We stood, or sat, or crouched, and kept watch while Jol shook and spasmed. The green mold had spread up his throat and was reaching fingers into his mouth. He coughed, and something splattered on the flagstones. Everyone took a step back, except the woman who was holding him. The sputum was bright green.

“Not long now,” said Basil.

“How can you just stand there and watch him?” I shouted. “At least try something!” I was practically vibrating where I stood, so tensed was I with the desire to jump in.

“We have tried,” said Basil. “With others. Nothing helps when it gets this far.” He absentmindedly rubbed at his own breast, through his embroidered waistcoat, and coughed. I felt my own chest instinctively, wondering if I was short of breath because I was anxious, or because there was some creeping corruption beneath my own ribs.

“There is nothing to do but wait,” added Basil.

No one moved as Jol struggled to his death—no one except the woman who soaked her rag, wrung it out, and dabbed at his clammy forehead, over and over. The water was probably warm by now, and certainly filthy with his sick sweat, but she kept going.

I wished I had been given such a task, something to keep my hands and my head busy, but instead I had to stand and watch as the green decay bubbled in his chest with every labored breath, slowing and slowing, until I could not be certain if the faint movement of his lungs was more breath or just the mold itself shifting and settling.

I looked from one face to another, and saw them all determinedly still and fixed, never turning away, hardly blinking, as if bearing witness to Jol’s death was the only way in which they could do him honor.

After a long while—I could not have guessed how long—his chest stilled. It was my first time seeing death close at hand, human death, and I could tell at once when the life left him.

There was no way of seeing it, exactly, but the body on the flagstones transformed from a he to an it in an indefinable but unmistakable way. Jol was dead.

Basil knelt and felt his pulse at arm’s length, keeping a fastidious distance. “He’s gone,” he confirmed with a quick nod. The woman who had been dampening Jol’s forehead held the wet cloth still, without putting it back in the bucket, and there was a steady drip, drip, drip of dirty water onto the floor.

“Best get cleaned up,” said Basil, and the watching Snagged came to life as if they had performed this dance many times before.

“What will you do with him?” I asked, staring down at Jol’s body. The mold was still bubbling a little.

“Burn him,” said Basil, matter-of-factly.

I must have looked shocked, because he added, “We can’t be sure that the corruption won’t spread. I doubt it, because so far it seems to be confined to those who were harvested. But we cannot take the chance.”

“And if someone else saw this,” added another man, who was helping to wrap Jol’s body in a piece of sacking, “they would ask questions. Talk to a doctor, maybe.”

“But wouldn’t that be a good thing?” I said, exasperated. “You should talk to a doctor. Hells, they might be able to help you. You don’t know unless you ask!”

“She doesn’t know,” Basil told the other man.

“I don’t know what ?” I snapped.

“Doctors might be able to help,” said the other man. “Unlikely, but there’s an outside chance. Mayhap they have some potion or some such.”

“Exactly. That’s exactly what I’m saying,” I said.

“Or mayhap not. Then maybe they go to one of the magic-workers, ask for a magical remedy for some strange ailment that rots you like an apple. Then the magic-workers come looking for us.”

“They already know you’re here, though,” I said. “Don’t they?”

The man avoided my gaze. He wrapped Jol’s body with care, paying particular attention to the head and feet, tucking the dead man’s arms into the sacking as if tucking a child into bed. Soon the body was an innocuous bundle, like a parcel you might take home from market.

I appealed to Basil. “What difference would it make? At least there would be a chance of finding a cure. Or at least stopping us from dying like this .”

“We stay outside of the Magic-Workers’ notice,” said Basil.

“But they know you’re here! You followed them here, you said. Jol said he slept on one of the sorceresses’ front doorsteps for weeks!”

“They do not know where we are now, nor that we gather together to talk and share information,” said Basil. “Why do you think we meet here secretly?”

“You mean you’re hiding from them?”

“Yes, in a way,” replied Basil. “For our own protection. Oh, they let us stay for a bit, sometimes, while it amuses them, or serves them, I suppose, or if we slip their minds for a time. But eventually, if we do not hide from them, they come back for us. To use up what’s left. We think it’s easier for them to use up a heart they’ve already snagged. Takes less effort. And when they come back for one of us ... We are powerless to resist. Because it’s what we want, deep down.”

He looked at Jol’s wrapped body as it was carried out of the door. “The corruption is spreading faster and faster now. It was slow, at first, developing over weeks and months, but now it is more like days. We need to find out everything we can, as quickly as possible. Before this happens to more of us. Poor Jol. If he could have hung on, just until we found the hearts, and took them to our contact for repair ... He had so much hope.”

“You still think you’ll be able to heal yourselves? The rest of you?”

“If we all find hearts with which to replace our own, I have every faith,” he said. He wiped his hands briskly on his waistcoat.

“What is the name of the person who will repair—or replace—the hearts?” I asked.

“I’m keeping that quiet for now,” said Basil, tapping the side of his nose. I wanted to hit him. I decided to keep the little heart to myself for the time being. I didn’t want to stay there any longer, with the stink of corruption in the air.

I had cut it fine. The heartsickness hadn’t quite descended yet, but I could still feel it waiting, subtle but dense, like a nagging headache that never quite surfaces, lurking behind your eyeballs and burdening your thoughts.

Outside the tavern, I hailed another cart and perched tensely on the seat, jiggling and fidgeting and willing the driver to go faster, checking my pocket watch obsessively.

I wondered about Dav, back home. According to Basil and the rest, his days were numbered. How much of his heart was left? Was he, too, covered in that creeping mold? I wish I had talked to him more, back in the village. I wish I had found out all I could, while I could.

I felt much more sympathy for the poor fool now than I ever had before. If I ever made it back to my village, I thought, I would sit down for a long conversation with Dav Mallet.

When I reached the higher levels of the city, all I could think about was sinking into my soft, black bed, resting my aching body, and letting my mind slow its unrelenting race for long enough to sleep a little before breakfast. I don’t think I had ever lived through a longer day.

According to my reckonings earlier, I should have started to feel the full strength of the heartsickness again, but I was still fairly hale and hearty when I stepped into the courtyard.

When I opened the door to the main part of the House, however, Cornelius was there to greet me, his tail like a great bottlebrush standing up behind, and his eyes even bigger and yellower than normal.

“Where were you?” he said.

“I told you I would be back.”

“He’s going mad,” said Cornelius. “Smashing everything. Setting fire to things.”

“What? Who?” I asked stupidly, before realizing. “He’s back already?”

He was back, much sooner than expected, and he knew that I had been out. I didn’t know what to make of that. It did mean that I wouldn’t be getting heartsick again, though, so that was something.

“Who do you think? He singed my whiskers,” said Cornelius. “He didn’t mean to, but he did. Now I’m lopsided.”

“They’ll grow back,” I hazarded.

“Maybe,” he said gloomily. “Either way, you’d better go in.”

He turned and then added, “He’s in a right state.”

I started toward the throne room. But Cornelius said, “He’s in the kitchen.”

“The kitchen? He’s never in the kitchen.”

“Well, he’s there now.”

The House practically hurled us through the door, like a mother handing her child over to the father when he gets home and saying, “I can’t do a thing with him, you try.”

The place was a mess. Sylvester was standing beside the kitchen shelves and on top of a stack of broken china. Less of a stack, really, and more of a small hill.

There was far more broken china than there should have been, judging from the number of dishes the House had conjured into being for me. It must have made more of them just for him to smash—or perhaps the sorcerer had made them himself.

His arms were upraised, his hair was wild and floating about his face, and his whole bearing had more energy than I’d ever seen in him before. His lean form was a black flame, wavering at the edges a little as he moved, as if his agitation was shaking the air around him.

The House trembled. When he noticed that Cornelius and I had burst into the room, the sorcerer paused mid-smash, staring at us wide-eyed. The final plate hovered with an apologetic air, as if denying its involvement.

“What are you doing?” I asked, because that seemed like the thing to say. I rested my palms very slowly and carefully on the kitchen table.

“Oh,” he said. “You’re back.”

“Yes, I just ... went out,” I said.

He let the hovering plate drop. It only broke in half, rather than smashing into smithereens like the others. The pile of splintered china gave a cheerful, welcoming tinkle as the halves joined their ranks.

“How long have you been at this?” I asked, staring at the pile. “That’s quite a stack.”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, stop it.”

He paused, seemingly at a loss. His hair, which had been crackling about his head with manic, magic energy, floated down to its normal place about his shoulders.

As he calmed down, a broom appeared in the corner, with an expectant sort of look on its ... Well, it didn’t have a face, but it managed to look expectant anyway. I grabbed it. Seemed like the sorcerer could have cleaned his mess up himself, but the House didn’t seem to be presenting that as an option.

“I thought you had gone,” he said.

“And so, your first thought is to come down here and smash up my kitchen?” I asked, starting to sweep and ignoring the little leap my heart gave. He was worried? “I needed some fresh air, is all. I’ve been cooped up in here with no one to talk to but you and the cat ...” I swept furiously, keeping my eyes on the floor.

“Oi,” interrupted Cornelius. “ The cat is right here.”

“... and I just needed an outing. I didn’t think you’d be back until tomorrow.” It was a feeble explanation. Why would anyone go for a casual stroll at midnight?

The sorcerer was so removed from the usual rules of time and human habit, though, that he didn’t seem to question it.

“Oh,” he said. Everything about him was slowly settling, and I realized that his feet had been drifting a tiny way above the pile of smashed dishes. As I watched, they lowered until his high-shining boots rested on top of the stack.

“Can you get off that? I’m trying to clean,” I said.

His face looked odd, off-kilter. It was still perfect, of course, every line of it a brushstroke painted by a master in the art, but something about it was different. His eyes roamed around the room, taking in the stove, the fire, Cornelius, the plates, and finally me.

“I thought you had gone,” he said again.

I let the broom dangle from my hand.

“I wouldn’t just leave,” I heard myself say. We stared at each other.

“Where were you?” he asked.

“I didn’t realize I was a prisoner.”

“You are not.” His face was flushed. “You know I do not keep you here deliberately. You are here of your own will.”

“Hardly my own will ,” I said, hands on hips, “when I am ensorcelled and bound to you, whether you wish it or not. And what do you care if I go out? You didn’t bind me to you on purpose, as you said.”

He bit his lip. “I thought you had left. Because I had gone to harvest.”

“You’d hardly miss me,” I said. “You don’t need a housekeeper at all. Your House takes care of itself, and the rare times it doesn’t ... Well, you can just snap your fingers.”

“It can’t make meatloaf,” he said.

I stared at him for a second, then resumed sweeping. “Yes, it can. It can make anything.”

“It’s not the same,” he insisted.

We stared at each other for another moment. I hated the perfection of his face. If I were wearing some sort of silk and lace contraption like the ones in the mysterious bedchamber, it might have been romantic.

As it was, I stood stolid as a stump and waited for him to speak further. He did not, but leaned toward me ever so slightly. My heart thumped about like it was trying to throw itself into his hand.

“I ...” he began, and stopped.

“What?” I whispered. My voice came out dry and thready.

“Nothing,” he said, and turned to go, leaving me trembling on my feet and yearning after him. I did manage to overcome my heartsickness enough to ask, “Did you take one?” He stopped, without turning around. “One what?” he said.

“A heart.”

He stayed still for a minute, then kept walking as if I hadn’t spoken. Cornelius trotted after him, leaving me with the mess of broken china and the hum of spent magic, and the knowledge that some poor soul’s heart had been harvested and bottled like autumn preserves, from a village like mine, somewhere out beyond the city’s walls.

Once I was alone in my room, with not even Cornelius as witness, I peeled off my dress and underclothes and examined my own chest. I palpated the skin around my breast and ribs with my fingers and peered as closely at it as I could, but saw nothing—no rot, no decay, not even a greenish cast to my paleness. It seemed I had been lucky so far, but how long before I succumbed to the same corruption that was consuming the rest of the Snagged? I would have to keep an eye on it—and redouble my efforts to find out how to extricate myself from the sorcerer, before I ended up like Jol.