Chapter Nine #2
Lyssa and Alderic had time to kill while they waited for Nadia to do her own shopping, so they decided to get something to eat.
They slurped down a cup of hot eels apiece, another cup each of chowder, and shared a folded newspaper cone full of fried cod.
Alderic had wanted popcorn, too, but Lyssa refused to go near the stall.
When she confessed—after much prodding on Alderic’s part—that the smell of it made her sick to her stomach, he had gotten a bag of saltwater taffy instead, commenting after Lyssa’s third handful that they certainly didn’t seem to make her ill, although that was liable to change if she kept it up.
Now they sat at a tiny table beside one of the many food stalls dotting the city streets, sipping coffee and nibbling on thin slices of bread topped with a scrape of butter.
Coffee and “thins” had been Lyssa’s breakfast every morning when she lived on the streets with Eddie, and often her lunch and dinner, too, if she couldn’t earn enough for eels or sausage.
She had gotten so sick of it as a child that she had sworn never to have coffee with buttered bread again once she could afford literally anything else, but of course now the meal reminded her of her brother, and she craved it all the time.
Pedestrians bustled past the stall; the air buzzed with the insect-drone of their chatter, mingled with the shouts of the street-sellers, the clop of hooves and squeak of wheels as the cabs and omnibuses went by, the discordant jangling of a hurdy-gurdy and not-much-better singing drifting lazily through the river of noise.
Alderic sat back in his chair, studying the crowd with an unreadable expression.
He had worn one of the all-black outfits out of the store, his old clothes stuffed into one of the shopping bags.
It was of resilient material and would travel well, the shopgirl had assured him—to Lyssa’s profound relief.
At least he had a few sets of modest clothing for their journey, amidst all the other outrageous things he had purchased.
“You bought too much,” she said, nudging one of Alderic’s bulging paper shopping bags with her foot. It rankled her, the way he had spent a small fortune as easily as breathing.
“I can’t help it. I like things,” he replied.
“I noticed,” she said flatly.
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“You have that enormous manor, and not a single servant in sight. Yet you had ten clocks in the same room, and an entire wicker basket full of brass door knockers.”
“Yes. Well. Things last longer than people do,” he said, staring down into his coffee cup like his fortune was floating somewhere in the dregs.
Lyssa’s annoyance rapidly deflated at the sight of his expression—the sorrow and hopelessness and bitter longing that she knew all too well.
“Al,” she started, not knowing what to say, only that she wanted to shake that look loose, until it fell from his face.
Ungharad’s sword, she almost asked him about fabric, but was saved from the confusing impulse by a wandering performer singing “Blood on Buxton Fields,” a distasteful ballad someone had written about the Beast. It was all poetry and heroism, glossing over the fact that most of the dead had been children.
They had even made Lyssa’s brother into a gallant lover fighting off the monster to save his bride-to-be, instead of a gangly boy trying to protect his stupid little sister.
It made her stomach turn every time she heard it.
“Boo! Play something else!” she shouted at the man, cupping her hands around her mouth so that her voice would carry over the noise of the street.
A few people turned to stare, and the street performer frowned at her. “It’s one of the most popular—”
“I don’t care! Boo!”
The performer scowled and, without taking his eyes from Lyssa’s, began the next line of the ballad regardless.
“The Beast did roar and—”
Lyssa’s last piece of bread hit him square in the face, leaving a smear of butter on his nose as it flopped to the ground, where it was instantly set upon by pigeons. “Hey!” the singer shouted. “You don’t have to throw things at me!”
“I would have thought you’d be used to it by now.”
The man gestured crudely at her before moving on to another patch of pavement, where a crowd of ladies looked eager to accept him into their midst.
“Thank the gods,” Alderic muttered, downing the rest of his coffee. “I hate that song.”
“I would rather stab myself in the ear with a rusty nail than have to listen to it one more time,” Lyssa agreed.
“The way they’ve completely romanticized a tragedy,” Alderic said with disgust, before looking at her appraisingly. “Your aim is impeccable, by the way.”
“I’m a woman of many talents.”
“Antagonizing people being chief amongst them, it would seem.”
Nadia plopped down in the empty chair across from them. Brandy, who had gone with her for protection, got a piece of fried cod from Lyssa’s pocket for his troubles.
“We should avoid Fletcher Street,” the little witch said.
Lyssa frowned at her. “What? Why?”
“The Children of the Moonlit Grove are there, handing out flower crowns. Faerie-lovers,” she explained to Alderic as Lyssa groaned, rubbing her hands over her face in frustration. Fletcher was the fastest way back to the memorial park, and it would take them twice as long to go around.
“Like the ones who chased me through my wall?” Alderic asked.
“Sort of. Different cult, same delusions,” Lyssa said.
“Though the Children of the Moonlit Grove aren’t considered enemies of the Crown.
” At his puzzled look, she added, “As far as the king is concerned, the citizens of Ibyrnika can worship the faeries all they want. But the Hounds slaughter his taxpayers indiscriminately, and that is where he draws the line. Protecting the monsters is akin to attempted murder.” There was a bounty on the head of every single Hound-warden on the isle, as a result, and Lyssa was not ashamed to admit that she had collected a few of them herself—though not the one that mattered most.
He frowned. “I still don’t understand why anyone would worship faeries.”
Nadia cut off Lyssa’s rant before it could begin.
“Remember what Rags told you about the Blessed Ones and the Wicked Ones? There are good and bad faeries just like there are good and bad people, for all that the Butcher here pretends that every last one of them is a horrific monster intent on murdering humans.”
Lyssa scowled at the little witch. “Yeah, there are ‘good’ faeries,” she sneered. “Right up until they decide you’ve wronged them. Then they’ll fly into a rage and try to murder you.”
“Sounds like someone else I know,” Nadia said with a smirk.
“Do we need to be worried about them?” Alderic asked.
“No,” Lyssa said, still glaring at Nadia. “The Hound-wardens pose an actual threat, but the Children are completely toothless.”
“Then why do we need to avoid them?”
“Because they hate Lyssa,” Nadia said brightly, as if that fact delighted her. “Whenever they see her, they throw eggs at her.”
“Wasteful idiots,” Lyssa muttered. “It’s not my fault I got hired to kill the dryad they decided to worship. They don’t throw eggs at Deborah Grayson or the new mansion she built on the land where its tree used to be.”
“You should travel in disguise,” Alderic said, and, with a wicked smile, added, “I know. I’ll buy you a dress. You could sail right by them, and they’d never guess it was you.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “You say that like you think it would humiliate me to wear one. For your information, I have nothing against dresses. They’re just impractical in my line of work.
” Impractical, and a symbol of the life she had lost when her mother died.
She couldn’t shrug it back on again, even if she wanted to.
“It’s a fine idea, but we’ve wasted enough time here as it is. ”
“What about this, then?” he asked, fishing a bowler hat out of one of his shopping bags.
“Well, that’s lucky,” Nadia said as Lyssa wound her braids around her head and jammed the hat on over them.
“No,” Alderic said with a self-satisfied smile. “That is good shopping.”
Fortunately, Lyssa had never had much of a “womanly figure,” even before she took up blacksmithing.
With the hat pulled low and her coat wrapped tightly around her, she looked like every other clerk or banker walking back to the office after lunch, and they managed to skirt by the Children of the Moonlit Grove without being pummeled by eggs—though Lyssa did get a flower crown jammed onto her bowler hat despite shaking her head when they asked if she wanted one.
She had promptly discarded it the moment they rounded the corner; Alderic, meanwhile, was still wearing his.
“Hold on,” he said as Lyssa got out her chalk. They were in the Buxton Fields Memorial Park, standing beside the wall in the back, where people rarely ventured.
“We have wasted two hours waiting for you to finish packing your bag,” Lyssa said through gritted teeth. “I’m not waiting any longer.”
“But I have something I wanted to…” He rummaged through the remainder of his shopping bags, balanced precariously atop Nadia’s wagon; she had agreed to bring home anything he didn’t pack, and store it safely in the cottage until he returned.
Lyssa pinched the bridge of her nose with a heavy sigh.
“I thought we had agreed that you were satisfied with your choices,” she said, looking pointedly at his massive traveling pack.
It was three times as heavy as hers and was stuffed with enough gear for ten people.
If he hadn’t been so enthusiastic about demonstrating his ability to carry it without complaint, she would have made him get rid of half the stuff inside. “You do not need to add a single—”
“Aha!” he said triumphantly, holding up the thing he had been looking for—a drawstring pouch with a pattern of little black crows dotting the pale gray fabric. He presented it to Nadia with a flourish.