Chapter Eleven #2
“Ah—” Alora held up a hand to stop him, but Mr. Macaw wouldn’t be deterred. Taking the glue, he slopped on a generous amount before reaching up higher than she ever could have hoped and pressed the paper on.
She winced.
“That’s too much glue,” she said, gently, taking the brush from his hand. “It will bulge. Here. I’ll paint; you press.”
Alora had planned to ask for a stool, or perhaps imagine one if Madam Feebledire proved too prickly, but this would work too. Together they made an efficient team, finishing one wall, then two, in the time it would have taken Alora to do half of one all alone.
“Do you live in Enver, Mister Macaw?” she asked as they began the third wall.
“No,” came the low reply.
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
No response.
“Does the work suit you?”
“I like plants.”
“Me too!” said Alora, stretching onto her toes. “I have an entire terrace of them, and I often purchase them for my work, as well. Though not here, I don’t think.” She glanced around the room.
“No. Not without sun. Not without rain.”
“Right.” They worked on in silence awhile more. “Mister Macaw,” she began carefully, glancing from the corner of her eye. “What happens to trespassers?”
She waited awhile, her breath bated, but no answer came. She sighed in defeat.
“Gone.”
“Dead?” Alora paled, spinning toward him.
Mr. Macaw, nonplussed, pressed more paper to the wall. “No. Lost.”
“Lost,” Alora echoed. “What do you mean?”
But he wasn’t given a chance to answer, as a new voice interrupted, “Master Merridon would like to see you, Mister Macaw.”
Alora spun with her brush toward the doorway. The groundskeeper, however, didn’t seem so easily disturbed and finished with the paper. The large man slowly turned beside her before offering a grunt of acknowledgement, laying down what remained in his hands. He ambled toward the door.
Alora noticed all of this from a faraway place. She only had eyes for the person standing there.
It was him. The mysterious man from her first encounter and then again in the forest. Aside from a glimpse of his covered jawline, she could make out nothing beneath his hood. Darkness tumbled in at his back as he faced her.
When the groundskeeper neared, the other man moved aside, letting him pass. Alora offered a feeble smile as Mr. Macaw glanced back toward her. He didn't return it but dipped his head instead. Then he was gone, leaving her all alone with the masked man.
“Is this about the wheelbarrow? Does Master Merridon wish to see me too?”
“No,” he replied, before adding in a mildly threatening manner, “Not yet.”
His voice was low, almost a growl. Alora wondered if he pitched it that way purposefully to intimidate. It certainly worked on her. She needed to be rid of him. “Well then, if you don’t mind, I’m very busy.”
“The groundskeeper assisted you?”
Alora squinted, trying to make out his eyes. Between the cowl and the lantern’s cast shadows, she was unsuccessful. “I didn’t force him.”
“I didn’t insinuate.”
He hadn’t, it was true. Except the way he stood there, hidden and watching, made her feel as if she’d done something wrong. “What is the purpose of this?”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you a messenger for Master Merridon?”
She watched his shoulders stiffen. “Of a kind.”
“And you patrol?”
“When necessary.”
“And you’ve been tasked with keeping an eye on me?”
A brief pause. “No, I have not.”
“Then I must remind you, again, that I am busy. I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a deadline. So please say or do what you will and then allow me to work.”
When still, he offered nothing, Alora huffed a breath in disbelief. Good god, what a dense clod! She’d ignore him, she decided. Let him stand there and watch her wallpaper the room until he grew bored enough to leave. Served him right.
Though, as she bent to retrieve the paper abandoned by the groundskeeper, she couldn’t help wishing she could see beneath his hood. Just a peek.
She brushed glue with practiced strokes before taking the paper in her hands, reaching as tall as she could.
She landed back on her heels. It was no use.
She needed that stool. She needed more height.
Alora spun back to the man. If he lacked his own work, perhaps he could fetch her one.
But instead of finding him at the door, she turned fully into an unfamiliar chest.
Swathed in black leather, he pressed up against her, and Alora’s lips parted as she looked up and up, to his hands stretched above her, dark gloves against ivory paper. He pressed it firm, before sliding them along the edges and down.
She caught the outline of his covered nose, his mouth, the strong shape of his jaw, and her eyes narrowed. “Do I know you?”
“No,” he said, stepping back.
Alora felt the loss of his heat like a fever come and gone, which was unsettling. She turned the brush over in her hand. Perhaps it was only the glue making her feel this way.
“But this isn’t our first meeting,” he added. Plucking the brush from her fingers, he dipped it, applying a thin layer of glue. “The gold is a nice touch. It will please Merridon, which I assume was your intention.”
Alora studied the paper as he applied it, appreciating the carefulness he took in aligning the edges. She wondered why he didn’t refer to Master Merridon as simply ‘Master’ with all the rest. “I favor gold in small touches rather than—” She nudged her discarded cloak with her toe.
“It’s true, the green suits you better.”
Alora canted her head. It was a compliment, maybe. Albeit a poorly delivered one. “As black suits you?”
“All variations of darkness suit me. Enchantments, chocolate, midnights. Hair the color of chestnuts. Hand me more paper, Miss Pennigrim.”
Hair the color of—
“It’s Alora,” she grumbled. Then wondered why she’d told him.
“As you wish. Alora.” Her name was a rasp behind the mask. He grabbed ahold of the paper she offered, his gloved hands meeting hers beneath.
“And you are?”
Their hands touched still, the paper partway between, and Alora felt transfixed, dying to know. She waited and wondered, curious why he debated, when he said, “We don’t divulge our names, us lowly messengers.”
She stopped herself from rolling her eyes at the diversion. “I don’t believe there is anything considered ‘lowly’ about you.”
“Don’t you, really?”
She could recognize that tone a thousand times over, obvious in every line of his posture.
The only thing that might have voided her thinking were his fingers touching hers, seemingly unhurried to move.
She huffed, “You’re arrogant, aren’t you?
It wasn’t any sort of compliment. But fine, keep your identity secret as I’m sure it works well enough for you.
” She tipped her head and made a show of examining him, boots to head, and smirked at his hidden mouth.
“Or perhaps not. The black on black on black is a bit bland. Almost uninteresting.”
“Such barbs, Miss. Are you quite sure you are uninterested?”
She could feel the triumph roll off him when she gasped, his fingers enclosing over her own.
“Quite,” she ground from between her teeth. She forced herself unaffected. Forced her breaths normal. But he was everywhere, eclipsing everything. Even her breath was shared with his they stood so close.
“It is considered impolite to lie.”
“You should know best of all.”
“It isn’t a lie to withhold information.”
Which wasn’t necessarily wrong. Alora scowled over it, lifting her chin. “I only asked out of decency to begin with. I hardly care.”
She waited for him to call that for the lie it was. But he didn’t. Instead, she felt his attention shift over her features—and wondered what conclusions he’d drawn by the end.
His fingers moved against hers. He cleared his throat, an indecisive sound. “I suppose, for all intents and purposes, that you may know me by my title, if not my true name.”
“Your title?” she laughed. “Like a fairytale lord or prince or—”
“Urchin, Miss Pennigrim.”
Alora’s hands dropped as quickly as if she’d touched fire. She stumbled back, her heart thudding, fast and painful. “What did you say?”
“I’m a messenger, as you assumed.”
“You called yourself an Urchin. Those are— They are—”
“What are they?” he said, though now when he fixed his attention on her, Alora felt the darkness threaded in his words. Suddenly the room felt too small, help too far away.
“A gang! Good-for-nothings. Shadows who attack people unprovoked, stealing their memories.” She snatched the lamp to her like the flame might keep his evilness at bay.
“Is that what they say?”
“I’ve witnessed it!”
The words were out of her mouth before she could think. Horrorstruck, Alora clamped her lips closed. She didn’t even have a chance to swing the lamp toward him before he was pressed against her, his hand around her wrist.
“What exactly have you witnessed?”
“Nothing,” she breathed. “Only shadows.”
She caught the glimmer of his eyes beneath the hood, though she could neither determine their color nor their exact shape; he held the lamp away from them. “You would be wise to keep such information to yourself. Trust me in this.”
“Why?”
His hand flexed atop hers. “Because you put yourself at great risk, and my word only extends so far.”
“Your word? Are you their leader?” She made to rip her hand from beneath his, but he held it fast. Disgust roiled through her as she thought of the broken woman. Her bandaged head.
“As a general is. But beneath a king.”
“Master Merridon is your ‘king’?”
“You’re quick. That might pose a problem.” He released her at last, though he didn’t back from her. “No. It certainly will.”
She watched his hand disappear within the folds of his coat with very real terror. It was her turn to be bludgeoned, she knew. Her turn to lose her memories, to wander, asking others what had been stolen. To lose her dream.
Panic seized her.
The Urchin ‘general’ halted. Tugged. And where he jerked his hand free, his opposite followed. He lifted his hands to the light, the manacles adorning each wrist glinting plain, a short chain taut between. He raised his head to her.
“What”—the growl of his voice thrummed, muffled behind the mask—“is this?”
Alora stepped sideways toward her satchel, toward the door. The Urchin stepped with her. “Shackles?” she offered, stepping again.
“How have shackles appeared on my wrists, Alora?”
“Don't call me by my given name again, you monstrous eel!”
“Miss Pennigrim,” he said through gritted teeth, and blocked her bodily. “I think it’s time you explained.”
“I owe you nothing!”
“You’ve bound me! How?”
“How do you steal people’s pasts, Urchin?”
“You’d do better to leave that line of questioning. I mean it.”
“Do not tell me what to do as you reach to take my memories.”
“I was not.”
“Then what were you doing? While you search within your coat telling me I will certainly become a problem?” She moved to the opposite side only for him to block her again.
If she must, she’d shackle his legs, too, and run.
Though to where she'd run to she didn't know. Enver would never be safe again.
“A pen, Miss Pennigrim.”
“What?” she asked in disbelief.
“To write down a location for you. In case you’re ever in need of it.”
“That sounds like a lie, and even if it wasn’t then it sounds like a trap.”
“It isn’t a lie.”
“So it is a trap.”
He huffed through his nose. “It is neither.”
“You reached for a weapon.”
“No. Come and see. I cannot reach deep enough into the pocket on account of these magic manacles conjured from thin air.” He awkwardly patted his left breast pocket, hidden beneath the coat.
Alora narrowed her eyes. “If you harm me, I’ll truss you up in chains.”
She didn’t like that he paused awhile. “Understood.”
Alora stepped tentatively nearer, then nearer still, until she could reach out with her fingers and move his coat aside. Beneath was a black shirt with a single pocket. She saw no hint of a pen.
She cried out in surprise when the cool chain met the back of her neck, dragging her in.
“I don’t plan to harm you,” he said.
But when she looked up beneath the cowl his eyes were black.
Then so was everything.