Chapter 17 #2
I slink closer and find two tall elves, one man and a woman, huddled together wearing disapproving frowns.
The woman has deep brown skin, and even darker hair that is left in free curls down her back, while the man appears much older and wizened.
His sun-tanned complexion looks like it has partially melted into wrinkles.
They continue to speak in hushed tones, and I move closer and closer, ducking around vacant stalls, hoping to hear whatever gossip they are sharing.
As I approach, I slide on a bit of damp stone, landing on my ass and crushing my tail. I curse inwardly, and the whispers go silent. I am almost sure I am caught, then another figure approaches, effectively saving me.
I right myself, peering over the wood, and see a young man with something glinting and shining, like knives or needles, arranged in a tray strapped to his chest.
“Took you fucking long enough,” the woman gripes. “Nicnevin’s tits, where were you?”
“I heard from Kaersi that they’re going to reopen positions for court tailors. Thought you might be interested in that,” the boy says with a chuff.
“Reopen positions? Less than a week before the ball? Have they lost their mind? With Keralyn gone, I’ve been so swamped in work I can’t get a straight head to save my life,” the male tailor snarls.
“She was the only one who could shape a bodice for the court without incurring their wrath. Now what? I’m supposed to take on the snippy mid-classers and the royal court?
When the hell will I sleep? Will His Majesty provide me with an in-fitting-room bed? ”
The needler sniffs. “Thought you would be pleased for the chance to get out of these shitty streets. You should be grateful to the bitch for killing your competition.”
“Don’t go around saying ‘killed’ unless you want to get thrown into a cell,” the female tailor says quickly. “Disposed. That’s the word they’re using.”
“Disposed?” The needler’s laugh is a bag of nails. “You dispose of scraps. One day, those sniveling silkbloods will realize if you kill all the people on the bottom, there’s no one—”
The sound of metal and boots passes by, effectively silencing the dangerous talk.
Liana was right about Shvathemar. I slip into an alleyway, not wanting to be caught slinking by potential guards on their rounds.
Three doors down, a boy plays a reed pipe badly, and a pair of girls dance on a plank for coins. A man in a stag-badged cloak watches, bored, then flips a copper when the taller girl stumbles and blushes. I grimace, guessing he likes the blushing, not the music.
Something in my gut churns. Disgusting. I almost go over to do something about it when he abruptly leaves, and the children continue their songs and dances.
Past that, I find the place that smells like cloves and spilled wine and onion-musty sweat—the kind of tavern where minor officials go to pretend they are major. I stand with my back to the flaked post by the entry and crane my ears.
“…humans,” one is saying, “are leaking roofs. We help one, ignore a few drops, and we will have puddles next. Puddles become marsh. Puddles…” he slurs, “turn into…er—fuck. Marshes destroy homes.”
His companion sighs in the long-suffering style of a man who only came out not to be alone. “Apt description, Ferl. But you’re being too harsh.”
“And you? You will clap when the king parades one of those things as his wife? His last one was bad enough. What next, will you take a human bride? Give more of those fucking Peredhels running around the streets, just like the last consort? Who will want to reproduce with those monsters if the king already killed his?”
Surely they aren’t referring to Arlet. Arion had other wives?
“Shut your wrinkly lips. I would gladly marry one of them. I don’t wish to let my line die with me like you.
Besides, humans aren’t half as grotesque as the corner crier said,” the still-sober one responds.
“Mereena’s tavern only has three girls available as it is, and I don’t like sharing a cunt with every lonely man in the city.
We need the fresh blood. At least the humans aren’t awful to look at—I heard there’s a place where they’ve been testing compatibility with soldiers out in the deep forest. Some of the men were bragging about it a few months ago. ”
My jaw aches as I file the information away. This city could make a saint grind his teeth to dust.
At the alley mouth, a drunk tailor’s apprentice pisses against a wall and mumbles out the words of a song.
“He saw her pretty as the sun, and then from her to the marshes he did run. The hag carved a smile upon his face, to win his beloved’s heart with borrowed grace. But love runs deeper than the skin…”
He forgets the lyrics, it seems, shakes off a bit of his drunken stupor, staggers, catches the post near me with a hand, and blinks up into my hood as I approach. His pupils pin to the shadow of my face and slide away. He’s learned not to hold a stranger’s gaze.
I consider leaving. But something about his words…
A hag, I think, humming. Could that be Neryth? I don’t have the best track record with getting women to use their magic to fix me, but I screw up my courage and straighten my back, feeling my cleaver’s handle dig into my spine.
“What old hag?” I ask.
He squints, working the name loose from his ale-addled tongue. “Liked my song? Give me a coin, you poor bastard. Can’t drink for free!”
I don’t move a muscle. “Is the story real?”
The man, caught off guard by my tone, glances from side to side. “Of course it’s real. Why would I see-ng a song about—”
“Who is the hag?” I repeat.
“Ner…Neryth.”
At last. I feel like I can fly.
“The mirror-needle. Cheated reflections so well that the court thought the mirrors were lying. She’s got glamour good enough to make an ass look like a thoroughbred.
The High Beautifier took offense. They demoted her.
” He lets out a sputtering, drunken cough that has him half doubled over.
“If you want a face the palace can’t smell, you go to her.
If you want a face that flatters, you go to anyone else. ”
“Where?”
“Salt End.” He waves his hand vaguely toward the city’s low quarter, the part that tips back out toward brine and river. “Old glass row. But I would stay away from there. No one lives there after the last raids—’s bad luck, if you ask me.”
I nod once. He takes it as permission to forget the conversation. Two steps later, he is singing about needle pricks and fresh fabric. It occurs to me that the song has a double meaning when he starts to describe the thrust of the needle.
Fuck, am I really about to trust such a man?
As if in response, the Fuegorra aches in a dull, stupid way behind my sternum. It’s not as if Arlet is nearby, but the feeling in my skin is a reminder of her. My hand lifts, then drops.
I push back in the direction the man pointed, past the other pubs overflowing with men and more men.
Voices pour out into the night, coming from those who have no real home to return to. Rumors drape themselves on me like cloaks.
“—five nights—”
“—collar set with green stones, to match her gown—”
“—humans bring plague, and pity, and petitions—”
“—if she breeds true, I’ll have a human in my bed in less than a week after the announcement—”
“—if she breeds at all—”
Some of their comments feel eerily familiar. It makes a sour taste coat my tongue. I had my own disdain once. I wore it like armor. Humans were trouble, soft as bread and twice as quick to mold. Sympathy makes poor warriors, and being a warrior was all I had ever been.
Until Arlet came into my life.
I push the memories down, only to find, to my surprise, that they don’t stay down. They float up again and stare back at me with Arlet’s eyes.
My eyes burn unexpectedly, and then my Fuegorra rumbles deep in my chest cavity. Heating, and likely lighting up under my thick cloak. With that, I move on.
Off to find Neryth.
I cut away from the tavern front and into a vein of an alley that smells like salt and charred wood. The shop signs tilt more here, and the windows hold on to the last daylight the way certain people hold on to their dignity. Two blocks in, I find a lane that’s lost one of its stones.
Above the street, I see a sign that says “Salt End.” It hangs from a crusting rope, and beneath it, I see the first of many shops. I start walking, looking into the strange, magical glass—somehow superior to what I had seen in Enduvida—until something catches my eye.
A string of tiny mirrors dangles inside one of the windows, catching lamplight and spitting it in jittery pieces across the door. The glass shows false images of my face. There is a smear of pale where my cheeks should be, a gray eye, a shadow where my nose is.
I glance once back down the lane. It’s empty, but I still pull my hood lower. I raise my hand. This seems exactly where a woman who glamours faces would live. So, slowly, I raise my hand and knock.