Chapter Four
Four
The world was still dark when I woke. Only the stars were out, pushing their light through the darkness because they refused to give in to it. I respected that kind of stubbornness.
Wren was already gone. We rarely had a morning off, and she apparently intended to make good use of it. I cleaned up and changed and emerged into the milky sunlight of spring dawn. Nheve and the kitchen servants were already at work in the courtyard washing and chopping and mixing.
“Wren?” I asked.
“Went to the early market. Said she needed something for an ointment.”
Wren had a good hand with plants. She’d long ago convinced Nheve to give her a small bit of the garden for things she could make into tinctures and tisanes. She must have needed something that grew wild.
Nheve handed me a bowl of porridge, and I tucked into it with a wooden spoon dark from age. The grains had been cooked in milk today, and she’d scraped in a bit of dark sugar and a curl of butter, which was melting into a deeply yellow pool.
She put her hands on her hips, frowned down at me. “What in the smiling faces of the gods did ye think ye were doing? Messing about with royals?”
“If I hadn’t, the prince would be dead.”
“And what business would that be of ours? Royals don’t care if our kind live or die. Should have minded your own affairs.”
I chewed, swallowed. “I don’t have any affairs to mind. That’s why I’m nosy.”
She huffed as Wren slipped in through the side gate, a crescent-shaped bag across her chest. Nheve had sewn it from an old tunic.
“Where were you?” I asked when she joined me at the table.
“Around. I remembered some remedies. A poultice for wounds. A balm for fever. I thought I’d take them to Innis.”
“How do you know where he lives?”
“I heard Ferren tell you. And I know where the stables are.”
“We all know where the stables are.” We occasionally snuck in to see the horses. “I thought you didn’t want to get involved. The guard said they’d be visiting today to ask more questions.”
“Helping someone from the district isn’t the same as helping a Lys’Careth. And that’s why I’m going now—so I’ll be gone when they show up.”
“Did you find any footprints outside the window?”
“No. But I know someone was out there.”
“I believe you. Maybe the Lady pissed someone off. She’s good at that.”
“Or maybe the prince’s people were checking on us.”
I snorted. “Why would they bother?”
“Because a girl who can see Anima happened to be there when an Anima-possessed human tried to kill the prince. They’ll want to be sure you weren’t in on it.”
I snorted. “Yeah. That’s why I’m here with the gold I got for the work.” I held up a spoonful of porridge. “And all the fine things it can buy.”
“Okay, then it could have been one of the assassins. Maybe they wanted revenge for interrupting their plans.”
“They’d have to find us, which is unlikely, and they still have a prince to worry about.”
She rose and nodded toward the front of the manor. “You going with me?”
“Of course. More ways to make a coin out there than in here.” I ate the last bites of porridge.
We found three servants in the flowery courtyard in front of the Lady’s residence, each carrying a square frame as wide as an arm’s length.
The frames were made of dried reeds, and stretched across them was a delicate net made from the fibers of mountain lily stalks.
The same fibers made most of our clothes.
These were soulcatchers, supposedly traps for spiteful Anima who’d be ensnared in the knots if they came too close. Anima supposedly knew this, and so they stayed away from buildings where they were hung.
Luna called them “sticks and string.” They were nonsense, but harmless.
The Lady must have confirmed the Anima’s involvement in the attack. Peasant magic or not, it concerned her enough to take precautions.
We nodded at the servants, then slipped out of the gate and walked toward the market. The pale morning light began to burn off some of the chill.
My gaze drifted to the palace’s tower, which shimmered in a thousand shades of pale green like an expensive jewel, secure behind the palace wall.
Was the prince safely tucked inside? Had he slept comfortably, or did he toss in his fancy bed, worrying about his future in this faraway place?
I refused to wonder about the guard, whether he’d let his mind linger on the girl he’d met.
Market sellers were already busy with the early crowds of residents preparing to leave the stronghold for work outside the wall and visitors coming in for work inside it. I counted seven vendors hawking soulcatchers and amulets and yelling out warnings about Anima.
The new prince had brought more than coin to the Western Gate; he’d brought fear.
“They’re looking at you,” Wren said.
“Who?” I asked.
“Everyone.”
I glanced around at the sellers, the shoppers, the people who stood in doorways. She was right; they watched me carefully. Had they seen me in the market during the assassination attempt? Or had word already traveled about a girl who’d saved a prince?
A thief didn’t want attention; anonymity was much more valuable. So I ignored the stares, hoping they’d assume they’d picked out the wrong girl.
We joined the queue at the gatehouse, then passed through the wall’s shadow and into sunlight again.
The market outside the stronghold was livelier than the one inside it.
Stronghold residents wanted good meat, but they didn’t want pigs running through the market or the tannery making a stench near their homes.
The dirty work was done in the district. Another reason it was cheaper.
We turned west, putting Mount Cennet at our backs.
We’d just passed the garrison stables, which smelled like sun-warmed hay and animals, when Wren veered into a narrow gap between the dun-colored buildings.
People in the district had made homes wherever they’d found space, so the alley became a maze that veered back and forth at odd angles.
The scent of horses was replaced by the scents of cooking, pickling, and soaping up laundry.
And more than once, Wren doubled back to take a different route.
“I thought you knew where you were going.”
“I do,” she said, her lips curving into a smile as she approached a wooden door. One of the prince’s soldiers stood outside, as directed.
The soldier, a tall woman with bright blue eyes, looked at Wren, then at me.
“We’re here to bring remedies,” Wren said. Apparently deciding we weren’t a threat, the soldier turned her attention back to the passageway. I considered sneaking the dagger out of her belt to prove we were worth the attention but knew that was ridiculous.
Wren knocked. A moment later, Ferren opened the door. She looked tired, with crescents of shadow beneath her eyes. She glanced at Wren, then me, and her gaze narrowed with recognition.
“There’s no trouble,” I said, and held up my hands. “We know what happened yesterday wasn’t your husband’s fault. How is he doing?”
“He’s still so hot.”
“I brought you some remedies that might help,” Wren said.
Ferren looked out at the passageway, then gestured us in.
Aether suffused the room, glittering like dust motes in sunlight. Pain stabbed through my chest in response, and I pushed the palm of my hand against my breastbone to ease the tightness. Wren put a hand on my arm.
“I’m fine,” I whispered. She did enough to protect me, and I wouldn’t let this become her problem. But each pinch seemed a little more painful than the last.
The room inside was small, simple, clean. There was a fireplace, not burning. A low table with a cup and plate and a round of bread, a couple of chairs, a rug of knotted fabric. A ladder led to a small loft above, probably for sleeping.
Innis lay on a bed of thin blankets on the floor. The room was cool, but wet cloths were draped across the man’s forehead and bare chest. The Aetheric haze across his skin was fainter today but still visible, like an old stain on linen.
“There’s rumors of an evil Anima,” Ferren said quietly when she’d closed the door.
I nodded. “We think an Anima possessed your husband.”
“Possessed?”
I wasn’t sure how much to tell her. We weren’t certain what was happening, and I didn’t want rumors to start a panic in the stronghold. But this had happened to her and her family, and while I doubted the practitioner would bother them again, she deserved to know.
“We think someone may have used an Anima to take control of your husband and use him to attack the prince.”
“May the gods preserve us,” Ferren said, and glanced up at the Terran gods—the gods of land, air, water, and fire—painted high up in the room’s corners, where they could stand their quiet watch over the family.
Wren pulled packets of waxed fabric from her bag. “I made a poultice for his wound and a salve of mint and chilling elderbalm. It might help reduce the fever.” She unfolded one of the packets, revealing a paste that smelled as green as it looked.
When Ferren nodded, Wren moved to Innis and knelt beside him. Gingerly, she pulled away the linen covering the man’s wound and looked it over. “It’s good and clean.” I looked away when she began to spread greenish paste over torn flesh.
“There’s more injuries,” Ferren said quietly.
I looked up. “More?”
She pushed up Innis’s sleeve, revealing a cluster of small dark bruises—as if someone had grabbed his arm and squeezed hard. Maybe the practitioner, when forcing Innis to undergo the possession. Spreading from the marks were jagged green lines that looked like lightning beneath his skin.
“The bruises will disappear soon enough,” I said. “I’m not sure about the other marks. Do they seem to hurt him?”
Ferren shook her head. “Not as bad as the wound.”
“Fox,” Wren said, still fiddling with the wound I didn’t want to see. “Open the other packet. Put it on his forehead and his cheeks.”