Chapter 37
CHAPTER
Steeler was going to win, dammit.
As I meandered through the bustling market with Emelle, Wren, and Gileon on the Friday the Cardina peddlers came to campus, I kept half an eye peeled for the items on Nara’s list.
To my dismay, we passed by almost all of them—a cart of golden dewdrops for insomnia here, a booth of castor beans for constipation there—all seemingly normal supplies unless you ate too many of the dewdrop berries or actually chewed the beans.
Or mixed them together to make a poison lethal enough to kill a faerie.
No matter what, buying such things in such large quantities would be a little hard to explain to my friends. I had to disentangle myself from them soon.
“I kind of want to get another tattoo,” Wren mused, staring wistfully at a booth where a female Object Summoner was commanding dozens of needles to dip themselves in bottles of ink and prick the arm of her current customer over and over, forming a black glob that looked like a slowly-crystallizing hummingbird.
I eyed her in surprise. “I didn’t know you already had one.”
“I have two, actually.” Wren smirked. “But they’re not in any place you would ever see them.”
Emelle and I exchanged quick, purse-lipped glances, but I recovered quickly.
“Well, what’s one more then? I say go for it.”
“You think?” Wren’s eyes had snapped back to the Object Summoner’s booth of jerking, bobbing needles.
“Oh, for sure.” I nodded, perhaps a bit too vehemently. “You can never have too many snakes or crows on your ass, or whatever—”
“Skulls,” Wren interrupted. “Snake and crow skulls. And I like your spirit today, Rayna. I think I’ll add a jaguar skull today.”
She patted me on the shoulder, cracked her knuckles in an outward motion, and dove through the crowd in a streak of feather-black hair.
One friend successfully preoccupied. Two more to go.
“What were you thinking about getting this year, Gil?” I asked as the three of us resumed a slow trek down the rows of carts and tents, the heat of hundreds of bodies and magic slowly blossoming into a sticky bubble around us.
I had a simple satchel slung around my neck today, and the rough fabric of the strap was already digging sweat into my skin.
Gileon’s brow had furrowed at my question.
“I… I can’t remember, actually. Do you, Nuisance?”
The rhinoceros beetle buzzed something into his ear, shelled wings whirring.
“No, it wasn’t a new pair of underwear.” He scratched his head. “No, not that either. It was something important.”
I frowned up at him. Last year, he’d gotten Wren a bouquet of needles, which I’d thought might have indicated some kind of romantic affection between them.
I still didn’t know whether their relationship was more than friendly or not, but I did feel like I knew Gileon’s heart—big and always focused on other people.
He looked so sad now at the realization that he couldn’t remember what he’d wanted to get today, his lip trembling, eyes glassing over, that I didn’t feel a shred of guilt for funneling an opening in my blockade toward him and slinking into his mind to try to help him out.
Whoa.
My consciousness blinked against the blinding expanse of white leather that was Gileon’s mind.
His walls were straight edged, perfectly uniform, and… padded, like bricks made of cushions from the most pristine of sofas.
When I whirled this way and that, it was to find that neither a gate nor Gileon’s consciousness were anywhere in sight.
What the hell? I hadn’t been in too many minds, but this was… strange, to say the least.
I didn’t have time to dwell too hard on the phenomenon, though, as a faint, familiar voice echoed overhead.
If only I had the right kind of pan,
I’d bake her into a pie
and feed her to the…
If only I had the right kind of pan,
I’d bake her into a pie
and feed her to the…
It took me a solid ten seconds to realize that it was a memory of Rodhi’s voice wafting over the padded walls—a memory of Rodhi’s first declaration of hatred toward Mrs. Smetlar and her vulture-like soul.
Pulling myself out of Gileon’s mind, I gave him a soft smile.
“Were you maybe looking for…” I couldn’t believe I was about to say this out loud. “… a pie pan? To buy as a gift for Rodhi?”
Gileon’s mouth popped open and his eyes went round as coins.
“Yes! You’re a life-saver, Rayna. Thank you.”
He patted me on the shoulder just as Wren had and lumbered off toward the nearest pottery cart, Nuisance still spiraling in circles around his ear.
Two friends successfully preoccupied. One to—
I turned to find Emelle folding her arms at me.
“Lucky guess.” I shrugged at the question swirling in her eyes.
She didn’t look convinced, but didn’t argue.
Instead, she just asked quietly, but firmly, “And what are you hoping to find today, Rayna?”
Wishbones, snake skins, and black caiman scales. But obviously I couldn’t say that or she’d know something was up, so I settled on another honest answer.
“I think I’d like to find a jewelry maker.” A blush warmed up my cheeks against my will. “I’ve been wanting to have a necklace made.”
I’d had the idea right before that almost-kiss in Steeler’s mind—an idea that was now buried in a pocket of my satchel, along with a fat handful of coins that I’d saved up from my years growing up in Alderwick.
Emelle’s mouth softened and her arms fell. Perhaps she’d seen the vulnerability of that truth in my eyes.
“Oh. I think I actually saw a jeweler on the other side of the fountain.” Standing on her tiptoes, she pointed over a clump of students ogling at a shoe stand, where the cobbler had bewitched his shoes to change color at every step—nothing but a gimmick, considering the enchantment would eventually fade.
“It was in that green-striped tent with the little flag,” Emelle continued, “if you want to… um, can I help you?”
A Cardina man had suddenly appeared in front of her. Short, ruddy-faced, and bulbous-nosed, he was staring at Emelle’s cleavage with sweat running in rivulets down his face and drool sitting in the corners of his mouth.
“What a lovely bosom you have, ma’am.”
Oh, hell no. My hand had already whipped my knife out when Emelle actually laughed.
“Stop it, babe. I know it’s you.”
To my utter shock, the man didn’t bubble into Lander’s true form, but shrunk…
and became a bundle of potted begonias that Emelle caught with quick hands, as if she experienced this kind of thing all the time.
Only after I slipped my knife back in its sheath did Lander himself emerge from around a nearby booth.
“Did I almost get you, at least?”
Emelle beamed at him, hugging the pot of flowers to her chest.
“Almost. The sweat and drool were nice touches, but he had your eyes… and your eyes are much too beautiful to belong to that creep-face.”
“Dammit,” Lander swore. “I’ll have to work on that. The eyes are the hardest thing to change.”
I looked away as he leaned over the begonias to press his mouth against Emelle’s.
Not just because I didn’t want to invade this brief moment of privacy, but because…
holy shit. I hadn’t realized Lander had become so advanced at Shape Shifting that he could turn plants and inanimate objects into walking, talking people.
That had to be a fourth-or fifth-year thing, even if he couldn’t quite get the eyes right.
Had I become so far removed from my old friends that I hadn’t realized when one of them became unnaturally good at their gift?
“You could have had me fooled,” I tried to say cheerfully when Lander and Emelle finally broke apart. “That was… creepy.”
Lander grinned at me, his arm wrapped around Emelle.
“It’s hard to maintain for long periods of time, but it comes in handy when my friends are late to class—which happens more often than you’d think in the Shifter sector. I can turn a book or a fountain pen into a replica of them until they show up.”
“Wow.” My jaw had actually dropped open. “That’s seriously badass, Land. I never would have thought you’d cheat the system that way.” No, before the Institute, Lander had always been all about diplomacy and rules and fairness. But now…
He shrugged, but that newfound glint speckled his eyes. “If you ever need help out of a tight spot like that, I’ve got your back.”
“Noted.” I forced out an easygoing laugh, then nodded toward the direction of the fountain. “I’m going to go check out that jeweler. See you at dinner?”
I was already angling away, remembering all too well what had happened last time I’d tried to sneak away during the Cardina market: Emelle had demanded to go with me.
For a split moment I thought she’d do the same now. Time seemed to waver as she sucked in a breath at me—then blew it out again. Eyes softening again, she waved. “Yeah, see you at dinner!”
She was already tilting an ear toward the begonias to focus on their faint, crooning music, a smile lighting up her face.
I turned to leave, ignoring the weight of eyes lingering on my back.
Over the next few hours, I filled my satchel with almost everything on Nara’s list, slipping coins into sweaty palms and stuffing the ingredients deep into the bag, where nobody would be able to see them.
In the end, there was only one thing I couldn’t find among all the carts and booths—those poisonous dart frog eggs.
I couldn’t help the smile from tugging at my mouth. The Cardina market didn’t have every ingredient I needed, after all. I’d won. I’d have to make a quick trek into the jungle to collect the frog eggs myself, but I’d won that bet with Steeler.
I couldn’t wait to gloat in his face when we saw each other next.
First, though, I really did want to check out that green-striped tent with the little flag on top.
A golden glow was trickling through the layer of clouds overhead as I made my way toward the tent, finally pushing through the flaps and taking in the spread of gemstones and shiny metals on the table inside.
“Hello,” I told the woman behind the table.
She was sitting in a whicker rocking chair, her bony fingers moving as if knitting. But instead of a needle and yarn, she worked with ropes of pure flame, shaping a glob of floating silver into a delicate ring.
“Oh.” She looked up briefly, the wrinkles in her face scrunching.
“Another customer.” Her face had soured so viscerally that a sliver of my blockade opened again on instinct to pick up the thoughts behind that twisting expression.
Funny how you kids still want bracelets and rings and piercings when the world’s about to come crashing down.
But a woman’s got to make money until the very end, eh?
I stared at her, my grip on my satchel tightening. “What makes you think the world’s about to come crashing down?”
The jeweler froze in her rocking chair, the ropes of fire halting in midair. “Ahhh, I see. You’re a dirty, eavesdropping little Mind Manipulator, aren’t you? Spying on my thoughts?”
I froze, trying to mask the mortification warming my cheeks. It had happened so casually, so easily…
“I’m sorry. I’ll go.”
“No, you’re not a Mind Manipulator,” she interrupted, halting my abrupt turn to leave. “Because Mind Manipulators don’t admit fault to strangers. They’re too proud for that. What are you, then?”
I am a Mind Manipulator and a Wild Whisperer and a faerie with an undeveloped power of my own, I wanted to say. But of course, I didn’t. I bit down on my lip until the jeweler sighed and stood on a frail pair of legs.
“The wind is my friend, and it brings me the smell of death and decay from other villages. They got Gildenleaf and Eeler first. Then Sickimore. Then Merkwell. Soon, they'll be coming for Cardina and this Institute and the rest of them, too.”
My blood seized up along with every muscle in my body.
“Who? Who got them? Do you know?”
The jeweler shook her head. “The wind doesn't ever give straight answers. It spirals and loops and eddies around the truth, but it tells me the attackers are pale. Damaged. Altered beyond recognition. Now, what pretty piece of jewelry would you like to wear to your deathbed, hm? I have this stunning pair of topaz studs that—”
“Actually, I’d like to give you a custom order.” My stomach was curling inward at those words she'd just uttered out loud. Pale. damaged. Altered beyond recognition. Whatever was attacking the villages, they didn’t sound human or faerie.
I blew a breath of air out through my teeth, and the jeweler’s bony fingers twitched upward as if to catch it.
“I don’t take custom orders from Esholian Institute students.”
She winced and braced herself, as if… as if expecting me to use Mind Manipulating to coerce her into taking a custom order anyway.
The brand on the back of my neck burned with shame as I wondered how many times someone had used that kind of magic on her.
I didn’t know how to make commands yet, but I wouldn’t even if I could.
“Okay,” I said. “Have a good day, ma'am.”
She blinked, then called out just as I was turning around, “How would you expect me to get it to you anyway? Custom orders take time, you know, and I’m afraid I'll have to pack up and head home for Cardina soon, seeing as that nasty president of yours forbids us from staying any longer.”
I bit my lip. This had been a stupid idea. I had frog eggs to collect and corrupt rulers to poison, not pieces of little jewelry to have made.
But the soft remnants of black bamboo that always lingered on my skin nowadays seemed to pull me back, reminding me of what lay in that pocket of my satchel.
I turned to the jeweler. “I thought you said the wind was your friend.”
In response, she cracked open a smile and beckoned me back.