Chapter Nine
CHAPTER
NINE
“WHY HERE?” ALDERIC asked, gazing around at the Buxton Fields Memorial Park. He was paler than usual, and grimacing like he was going to be sick again. Lyssa couldn’t blame him; crossing through the Gate took some getting used to.
“The barrier between worlds is thinner in some places,” Nadia explained. She was sitting cross-legged on one of the stone benches scattered throughout the park, stroking Brandy’s ears. “It’s easier for the Gate to spit us out in spots where it’s thin.”
It was early afternoon in Warham, the sun bright and the sky the unforgiving blue of a winter’s day. Cold, but not dismal, and there were even more people bustling about on the streets as a result.
Nadia kept a tight grip on the wagon handle as they shoved their way through the crowds.
The wagon itself was piled high with goods to sell, to supplement the coin that Lyssa had brought home from the troll-job—ladles and spoons that Ragnhild had carved; cord bracelets that Nadia had woven; the weapons, kitchen cutlery, and protective talismans Lyssa had gathered from the finished-pieces basket on her worktable before they left.
Alderic lagged behind. At first Lyssa thought he was just caught up in the crowds, but when she and Nadia stopped at an intersection to allow him to catch up, she realized that he was limping.
“Everything okay?” she asked, and he gave her a look of stern reproach.
“We have passed at least a dozen coachyards,” he said through gritted teeth. “We are stopping at the next one, and I am hiring us a cab.”
“You will do no such thing,” Lyssa said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a waste of money.” And a waste of life, when the thing inevitably crashed and killed everyone inside. She patted her thighs. “The marrowbone stagecoach is free.”
“The what?” Alderic looked at her like she’d gone insane.
“She means walking,” Nadia said with a roll of her eyes.
“Well, walking is ruining my shoes.” He lifted one of his feet and prodded at the bottom; sure enough, the heel was coming off.
“Good,” Lyssa said. “They’re atrocious.”
“As if you’re any sort of judge, wearing those big ugly shapeless things the color of old mud.”
“They may be ugly, but my feet feel nice and cozy. How are yours?” At his glare, she said, “That’s what I thought. Now, let’s go get you some footwear that won’t hobble you permanently. It’s only another mile.”
Alderic groaned. “Oh, only another mile!”
When they reached the market square, Alderic made a rather pathetic, limping beeline for the first clothier they saw with a display of satin waistcoats in the window. They were even gaudier than the one he had on.
Lyssa grabbed his shoulders and steered him away. “We are looking for practical and unobtrusive,” she reminded him. “Like that one.” She pointed to a shop across the street with woolen traveling cloaks in the window, in shades of gray and brown.
He looked at her like she had asked him to spit in a baby’s face. “But—”
“Let’s just try it.”
For a moment it looked like he was going to argue with her, but then he sighed. “If I must.”
They crossed the street, Alderic dragging his feet pitifully, and peeked inside the shop.
“Oh! Yes, this will do nicely!” Alderic exclaimed, his face lighting up when he saw a rack of pants in a veritable rainbow of colors. It wasn’t the only one, either, and Lyssa realized with horror that the display in the window had betrayed her.
“On second thought,” she started, but the shopgirl got to them first.
“Come in! Come in!” the girl cried before Lyssa could haul Alderic away, sailing over to where they hesitated in the doorway.
“The dog is welcome, too! We outfit many of the men from the Warham Hunting Lodge—a little animal hair doesn’t bother me!
” Her laugh was like the tinkling of a harpsichord, and she smiled sweetly as she waved Alderic inside. “May I ask what caught your eye?”
“Er…” Alderic glanced back at Lyssa before squaring his shoulders and stepping over the threshold into the shop. “The scarlet pants.”
Lyssa groaned, but the shopgirl clapped, delighted. “An excellent choice, sir! Would you like to try them on? Oh! And you must try these as well…”
She began pulling a riot of brightly colored items off the racks and shelves, holding them up for his inspection and chattering on and on about the cut and drape and stitching. Such talk would have bored Lyssa to violence, but Alderic looked happy, asking questions and fingering fabrics.
Lyssa turned to Nadia. “Stay here, and don’t let him leave this shop—not that he’ll want to.”
“But I have to go get supplies.”
“And I need to offload my stuff first, so that you have more money to buy those supplies, and room for them in the wagon,” Lyssa said.
“I won’t be long.” She eyed the pile of clothes in the shopgirl’s arms warily.
“Don’t let him buy anything ridiculous. Make sure he gets something in black, brown, or gray. ”
The little witch crossed her arms and glowered. “I don’t take orders from you, remember?”
“Nadia, I’m serious.”
“So am I. If you want someone to babysit him, do it yourself.”
“But I have to—”
“Then you’d better hurry up.”
Lyssa made a sound of frustration, and Nadia smirked in return.
Half an hour later, Lyssa left the Iron Lane and headed back to Muslin Street, her money pouch jingling merrily on her belt.
She had managed to offload most of the items she had made in the past few months: table cutlery, hunting knives, horseshoes, a couple of swords—non-magical, of course—and a handful of iron talismans for warding off faeries.
The merchant she bought her smithing materials from hadn’t yet gotten in the shipment of Valdalian steel Lyssa preferred to use for her magical weapons, though, which meant that Lyssa would have to come back to Warham to buy it before she could forge the sword—and she’d have to pray to the Lady that the extra errand wouldn’t throw off their timing too much.
When she returned to the clothier, Nadia was sitting on one of the padded benches in the waiting area, Brandy at her feet, an enormous array of white shopping bags arranged around them like a snow fort.
“What’s all this?” Lyssa demanded, crouching to rifle through one of the bags. “Silk cravats? Emerald-green pants? Nadia, I told you—”
“And I told you I wasn’t going to babysit him.”
“Then what have you been doing? Watching him rack up an enormous bill just to spite me?”
“I have simply been giving my honest opinion when I am consulted on matters of taste,” she said, mimicking Alderic’s voice.
“So you’ve been enabling him, is that it?” Lyssa looked at one of the price tags and swore. That waistcoat could have fed her and Eddie for a month, when they were living on the streets. “This is outrageous.”
“It’s not my fault he buys everything that happens to look good on him. Or that he looks good in everything, no matter how weird it is. Besides, it’s his money,” Nadia pointed out. “Who cares what he does with it?”
“What about this?” Alderic announced, strutting out of the dressing room in canary-yellow pants and a leaf-green waistcoat embroidered with oranges.
“You look stupid,” Lyssa said automatically, barely registering more than the ostentatious flash of color.
He lifted his chin. “Well, that is a matter of opinion, isn’t it? Fashion is subjective, after all.” He turned to Nadia. “What do you think?”
“I think it looks—”
“Stupid,” Lyssa interrupted. “She thinks it looks stupid, because it does.” She glared at the little witch, daring her to say something, but Nadia only rolled her eyes and looked away as if she no longer cared.
Alderic put his hands on his hips. “Well, I like it, and that’s all that matters.”
“Not sticking out in a crowd also matters,” Lyssa told him. “As does ease of movement. Why don’t you at least pick a pair of pants that aren’t quite so … tight?”
“Oh ho! Ease of movement, you say? Look no further!” He did a lunge and, just like the pants he had been wearing before, the garish yellow monstrosities somehow didn’t rip.
She massaged her temples and sighed heavily, praying to the Lady for strength. She should be out on the road by now, alone, heading toward her vengeance. Not babysitting a spendthrift with a coin purse bigger than his brain. “Will you at least get something in a darker color? Please?”
Alderic flashed her a smile. “Oh, all right. But only because you said please.”
When he vanished back into the dressing room, Nadia said, “Those pants really do hug the cheeks, don’t they?”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Lyssa snapped.
The little witch nudged her and nodded to the shopgirl, who was fanning herself with one hand, her face as scarlet as the pants that had lured Alderic into the store. “Well, she did.”
Lyssa snorted.
Alderic came out again after a few minutes, this time all in black, from his plain silk cravat down to his miraculously practical shoes. The effect of the darker color against his pale skin and hair was striking, and brought out the stormy blue of his eyes.
“What do you think?” he asked.
Lyssa opened and closed her mouth, completely caught off guard by how not-ridiculous he looked.
He smirked, looking pleased with himself. “Ah. A good rule in fashion: buy whatever makes the lady speechless. What about you, little witch?”
Nadia cocked her head. “You look like a handsome crow.”
Alderic nodded. “That settles it. I’ll buy six in black,” he told the shopgirl, who looked about ready to faint.
“What’s next?” he asked as they shouldered their way through the street-traffic outside the shop, Lyssa using the bags she was carrying as a battering ram.
“You need a bedroll, a pack, and a pistol,” she said, and groaned at the way his face lit up; she had a feeling they were going to have to buy a second wagon to carry all of his purchases.