Chapter Twenty-Six Vina
Chapter Twenty-Six
Vina
I thought I saw Robin Hood in the forest—and wouldn’t that have been a coup?
But it was just a limni-marked man who’d turned himself right strange, antlers and all.
He was nice enough, but he was no incarnate.
Still, I suppose it was silly to think I’d find an incarnate outside of London these days.
We know where they all are now, don’t we?
Source: Letter from Sera Fisch to John Calthorpe
There was a horse-drawn omnibus that made its winding way toward London.
It passed near their town, but it came only once a month.
By sheer luck, it was set to arrive in four days.
Hari shut up the house, and cursed the windows to keep out strangers.
Vina arranged for the blacksmith’s apprentice Amir to watch the rabbits for them, then lay out milk for the household brownies, so the cottage would be tended to in their absence.
Maleficium was going to travel with them, so she could not do the job of house protection herself—although Vina had never seen her do anything except “be a cat,” so she doubted she’d be capable.
Hari was adamant she was capable, but also adamant that she wasn’t the kind of familiar who liked to be left behind. “She’s had too much loss,” Hari said fondly, feeding her bacon from the pan on the morning they were set to leave. “She’s better off with us.”
Vina watched, and wondered if it was Mal who couldn’t bear to be left behind, or Hari who couldn’t stand to leave her. She wisely kept her mouth shut as Galath packed Maleficium’s food bowl and her brush with exquisite care.
They walked for four miles along the edge of the forest to the inn where the omnibus would stop.
It was already waiting—it wouldn’t depart again until midday.
The horses were chuffing and neighing, restless.
A few travelers were milling outside the inn, smoking or drinking, murmuring in low voices.
They kept their distance from the forest’s edge, which was marked with a perimeter fence of hexafoils and crosses.
Low enough for a human to cross—bespelled enough to keep the rest out.
At the turn of the year, the bounds had been beaten with a broom as cunning folk had murmured their blessings.
The barrier was as strong as it could be.
Hari bought them four seats. When Vina gave him a questioning look—and considered whether she had to tell him that the cat absolutely didn’t need her own omnibus seat—he said, “We’ve got a friend traveling with us.”
“Someone I know?”
Hari shook his head. Then paused. “Maybe,” he said.
“Cryptic! I like it,” Vina said amiably. Galath gave her a look but did not comment as Hari laughed and shook his head again. Hari had always taken her cheerful tendency to drive people to madness in his stride. Knowing he’d been friends with Simran explained his patience, somewhat.
Godsblood, Vina missed her.
The omnibus began to fill with passengers, and finally a figure emerged from the shadows that edged the woods.
The fence marks flared but didn’t hold him back.
Whatever he was, he wasn’t a malicious creature.
At first, Vina thought he was a wild-man—but then he drew into the light, and his human but ruddy skin dispelled that thought.
He was dressed like a woodcutter, in dun-colored garb—but he was whittled slim, too narrowly built to be much good with felling trees. And from his forehead rose antlers, graceful and inhuman.
He smiled when he saw Vina, then leapt the fence and made his way toward her.
He nodded to Hari and Galath, then said, “Do you remember me, sir knight?”
“I’m sorry,” Vina said, shaking her head.
“I thought you might, somehow,” he said, dusting the forest leaves from his shoulders. “But perhaps one life’s memories are enough for a brain and a body to hold.”
Her mind whirred, memories falling like autumn leaves.
“Vaughan?” Vina asked. “Are you—you’re the boy Simran saved! You’re alive? I was told—in my last life I was told the green library burned,” she said, lowering her voice so they wouldn’t be overheard.
A shadow passed over his face.
“It did,” he said. “Most of the librarians escaped with our lives. The books, the tales…” He didn’t finish.
His mouth twisted, as if he couldn’t bring himself to speak of it.
The silence was enough. “But I remained in the forest, after. The magic written into me—it was happier there, where I had the trees around me. And it gave me the chance to look for the Beast, or for any stories that might have flown to safety. I never found those old friends, but I hear you’re seeking out my fellow librarians. That, I can help you with.”
There was a shout from the omnibus driver. All at once, people began to gather around the large carriage. They clambered onto the omnibus, surrounded by other bodies, sweat, and heat.
Hari and Galath were sitting together, silent as the omnibus jolted and rattled around them. But their shoulders were touching. Hari’s head was starting to list to the side. He always fell asleep on long journeys.
Her fathers had never been very affectionate around other people, but they’d always orbited each other just like this. Her stomach felt seasick strange, looking at them. When she’d last known them, a lifetime ago, they’d not even been friends. Galath had been Hari’s kidnapper.
Forcibly, Vina dragged her attention away from them.
“How are you going to go unnoticed in London?” Vina asked Vaughan.
“I won’t,” he said cheerily. He tapped one of his antlers.
“Hats don’t do much to cover these, I’m afraid.
I’ll stay just long enough to see you safe to the librarians, then I’ll return home.
As long as we don’t draw the attention of our, uh, old friends,” he said, avoiding naming the archivists, “we should be fine. And that reminds me—ah!” He fished something from his pockets—a hagstone, a single pebble with a natural hollow through the center, strung on a braided rope long enough to hook comfortably around a throat.
“A gift, from my sister,” he said. “It hides that you’re, well—you. Usually people have to pay through the nose for these, but for my sake, she said you could have this one free. Place the charm close to your skin. One turn of the moon is how long it’ll conceal what you are.”
Vina tucked it into her shirt. “Thank you,” she said.
“If you need more, you can bargain with her,” said Vaughan. “But you’ll meet her again soon enough.”
She wondered if London would be the same as she remembered—a jeweled patchwork of tales, each one twining with the next.
She had a seat near the window, and pressed her face to the glass as the city drew in.
Smoke rose from its chimneys in gray clouds; that was familiar.
There were the stone buildings by wattle and daub; the mingled tales, winding together on tangled streets.
But some things had changed. She bit back a shocked breath at the way the buildings in the flat distance shimmered and moved, shaping and changing—buildings of silver, of glass, flickering in and out of existence like mirages.
She wished that she could see London from up high—wished, briefly, that the city lay in a valley so she could stare down at it, cup all its strangeness in one look. Instead, she leaned back in her seat as they trundled into the city, and watched the streets close in like a wave.
There were three bodies hanging outside the old wall of London. As they passed through it, the omnibus felt strangely quiet. She stared up at them in silence. When she looked away, her eyes met Galath’s.
“Traitors,” he said, voice low. “Telling so-called false tales, or speaking of him.”
Him. The Eternal Prince. But if there was one thing Vina knew better than to do, it was saying his name in the Queen’s own city. Galath’s mouth was thin with displeasure.
The Queen had always been more subtle in her cruelty than this. Filled with disquiet, Vina sat silently for the rest of the journey.
They descended from the omnibus, the four of them standing in the swell and bustle of London. But as Vina looked around, she could feel the difference in the air—something new and electric, as if she could feel fresh stories sweeping by her, winding through London’s streets.
They made their way on foot to a ragged set of houses, coalsmoke darkening their windows. Vina spied some dusky windows with flags hung inside them, of a great sword running through a crown. The Eternal Prince’s symbol.
“I guess the Queen can’t hang everyone,” Vina said, and Galath hummed acknowledgment in response.
Vaughan went ahead of them and rapped on the door of a house near the end of the row, a dilapidated building nearly collapsed in on itself.
After a heartbeat, it opened. Vina recognized the woman at the door, but it took a moment for her memories to fall into place.
Cora, the witch and librarian. Vaughan’s sister.
Cora stood there, older, face and stomach softer, hair a lighter shade of red, her expression intense and focused as she looked over Vaughan, then drew him in for a hug.
She looked at Vina, Hari, and Galath more coolly. “Come in,” she said. “We’ll talk.”
The hallway was oppressively narrow, dimly lit by a single gas lamp, but once they emerged from it the space that met them was much larger—a sweep of white walls and wooden floors, splashed with faded rugs, and tables lit by bright lamps.
There were librarians at the tables—some so old that they might have been at that long-ago green library, might have seen Vina then in her last life.
But others were young, fingers ink-stained, their eyes focused on the manuscripts they were carefully transcribing.