I returned before the rain and after supper, ambling into the kitchen to see if Sheval had left anything out for the tardy.
What I found was chaos.
“What passes?” I asked the nearest of his assistants.
“The master of the blood-flag is here!” the man said, visibly trembling.
“Thameis?” I asked, startled. “I thought he never came here?”
“He has now,” the man said, “Rumor has it—”
“Morgan!” Sheval said. “Sondrea was looking for you. Best find her promptly in her office.”
“Thank you,” I said, and headed off at best speed. When I shadowed her door she looked up, her habitual scowl faded to something more fretful.
“Well,” she said, “he’s come himself to evaluate the Fount, and it’s all your doing.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t expect him to take a personal interest.”
“Neither did I or I would never have asked him about it,” she groused. “Last thing we need is the blood-flag’s sovereign poking around in all our corners. And you—I want you to stay in your bunk until he leaves. If you’re bait the last thing I need is you nigh while Lord Thameis is on the premise. He has absolutely no self-control.”
I hesitated, so assailed by foreboding I could barely construct a sentence, much less commit to the actions I knew I would have to take. “Where is he now?”
“With the Fount, I imagine,” she said. “We were ordered to prepare a late dinner for him so I imagine he’ll be with him for a while.”
That was all the catalyst I needed. “Very well,” I said. “I’ll be sure to take every opportunity to minimize the chances of accidental contact.”
She eyed me with suspicion. “That’s a very fancy way of saying you’re going to avoid him.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Believe me when I say I want to stay out of his way. My last encounter with him was unpleasant in the extreme.”
Her scowl deepened. “He knows of you personally?”
“Insofar as any elf knows a human personally,” I said. “I doubt he’d remember my face anywhere near as well as I remember his.”
She sighed. “Fine. I don’t need to tell you to be careful. Go.”
“Aye, ma’am,” I said, and excused myself.
And then I ran, as best my body allowed, to the building, letting myself into the narrow hall and feeling my way down it in the dark as stealthily and as swiftly as possible. The door was open; a wan glow emanated from the room, and I heard Thameis’s voice.
“...are looking a little worse for the wear, I suppose. When the servants notice, it is a bit egregious, isn’t it?”
I heard the rustle of silk and the creak of sandal leather. “No words for your gracious host?”
No answer. Thameis laughed.
“I think I’ll tell them to let you be for a while. It wouldn’t do for you to die. I know the lessons of history. But I think you could use just a touch... more... attention, just to remind you that matters could always be worse.”
I flattened myself against the wall and did my best to ignore the sound of silk and skin and pleasure. As it went on and on I found myself biting my knuckles, remembering the feel of Thameis’s hands on my own body and the revulsion that had driven me almost to vomiting. I wondered if I’d been as silent beneath him as the king was now and couldn’t remember anything from the encounter except the wall of noise in my ears that had barred the world from entering. I built it again against the sounds from in the room, so high and so thick that Thameis’s exit surprised me. He left a wake of magic so powerful it splashed against my back. I flinched from it, hoping he wouldn’t notice, but he was long, long gone, so satiated on the stolen energies of his victim that he hadn’t even noticed me in the dark.
I slipped into the room and waited for my eyes to acclimate; even then I had trouble locating the king.
There is... a field... that surrounds a living thing, that makes it obvious that it is not inanimate. That field does not solely consist of evidence such as breathing and movement, nor of shape and form, but also of some intangible quality that defies description.
The king looked like part of the room. He had been so drained I could not find him without searching, and even when my eyes caught on an angle that I finally identified as his shoulder blade, I almost couldn’t believe it belonged to a person. He had become sculpture: lifeless and inert. As I settled onto one knee over him, I found no evidence of life. No color in his skin, no twitch of his eyelids... nothing. Perhaps elves could not be slain by what Thameis and his followers had done to him, but I had no doubt they could fail... that the flame of their souls could gutter and die, consigning them to centuries of silence and dreamless sleep like the fairy-touched mortals in folklore. I knew now what had inspired those stories. I ran my hand along his arm and felt despair. He was no longer even warm to the touch.
I cast around the room until I found a discarded wine glass. The bottle that had been delivered with it was still half-full, so I poured a third of a cup, dizzied by the fragrance. One hard slash against the side of my wrist with the pendant’s corner and I bled myself into the wine. I had little hope that I could get him to drink; pulling him into my lap was like manipulating a giant doll, slack and sprawled. I examined the problem at length and finally dipped my finger into the mixture. Lightly, very lightly, I touched it to his mouth and painted his dry lips. And again, this time breaking the seal between them and brushing my nail against his teeth.
“Drink,” I whispered. “Live. Please, help me.”
Again and again I dabbed his mouth with it, dripping it onto his tongue. My eyes grew dry and my back stiff and my legs went numb beneath him but I continued until my finger scraped the bottom of the glass and I realized the whole of it had gone into him and his mouth... his mouth was open.
I stared at my arm, at the angry ragged cut there, and thought about the immortality of elves. Then I bared my teeth and rent myself from palm to elbow, up the long smooth plane of my arm. As the blood flooded the cup and spilled its edges I pressed the lip of it to his mouth. Red streams still hot from their source flowed over his throat and chest.
“Drink,” I whispered as the spots swarmed before my eyes. I swayed. “Drink.”
The world flexed and throbbed and then rushed away from my sight. My fingers lost their strength; the glass tumbled to the ground, rolled across the rich carpet. I folded over him and made my offering, and the blood streaked my glasses as my cheek came to rest against his face.
I woke cradled in the arms of an autumn sunset, an immanent radiance that warmed my body in every crease and hidden fold. Stunned, I lifted my eyes and found a harvest god bent over me, steadying my face with slim, small fingers and smiling, golden eyes half-shadowed by heavy auburn lashes. His gaze was solicitous and tender and I found myself transfixed.
“It was not necessary,” he said in a bass layered with love and humor, “to give me quite so much. But I thank you for it all the same.”
“You’re awake,” I said, my voice rough.
“So it would seem,” he said. His eyes lingered on my face far longer than would have been polite in anyone else but I could hardly condemn him for a sin I myself was committing. I could not look away from him. There had been no animating force in him in all the days I’d tended his body; nothing, nothing had hinted at this benevolence. At this... this staggering tranquility of spirit. “So you are kin,” he said, voice growing low with longing and wonder.
“How...?”
He lifted his free hand; by the glow off his skin I glimpsed the blood-stained edge of the pendant.
“Ah,” I said. And then wry, “Still legible despite the gore.”
“Not the name,” he said gently. He shifted his hand so the pendant slipped into his palm, chafed a thumb against its edge until it streaked red. As I watched the blood seeped into his skin. “There are truer pedigrees.”
I glanced at him, wide-eyed.
“I would know you even if you came to me nameless and near death,” he said, fingertips lighting on my cheek. “You are my brother.”
“And you are my king,” I whispered.
He smiled and gathered me against his chest, and I was too weak to object... had I even wanted to, which I was not altogether certain I was. But every fiber in me sparked cold and white and raw when I tried to move, and from that I knew I had had convulsions. “You have given too much,” he said against my hair... and then he flooded me with the warmth of harvest sunlight, rushing through my limbs and washing them to supple life. I gasped and twitched, but he poured it over me until he judged I had had enough and only then did he stop.
“There,” he said and kissed the crown of my head. “Better?”
“I... I can move,” I whispered, shocked. I flexed my fingers against his chest.
His smile was in his voice, but there was regret also. “I am afraid I cannot undo what was done to you. But I can give you enough to lighten the burden.”
“It is more than I expected,” I said, ignoring the pang of conscience—this was the man I expected to trade to the sorcerer for my freedom? “And I thank you.”
He nodded, just the slightest inclination of his head, and withdrew so that he could look at me again. “Tell me your name,” he said with a smile.
“Morgan,” I said. “Morgan Locke of Ev—well. Raised in Evertrue. I suppose I am not of any human enclave after all.”
“Morgan Locke,” he said. “Evertrue on the mainland? You are far, far from home.”
“Ah, yes. I followed some genets here,” I said with half a smile. “You? I don’t know your name either.”
“Amhric,” he said.
“No blood-flag?” I asked.
He shook his head. His voice grew grave. “The king has no blood-flag... no, nor the prince either. We renounce those ties when the royal gifts rise in us, lest we be tempted to give too much influence to a single family.”
“You’re really awake,” I said, still mazed and now more than a little drunk on the liquid warmth of my own body.
“Yes,” he said. “Which presents us with a small conundrum.”
I struggled to think past the fog in my head. “Because they will wonder why you’re so healthy when they have done nothing but abuse you.”
“Yes,” he said. “It will rouse suspicion.”
“That would vastly complicate my plans to abduct you.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“Why else?” I asked.
He hesitated, and while he collected his thoughts I drew myself apart and managed to sit across from him. My body allowed it; more than that, I felt a poise I’d rarely had in all my life. It was such a surprise that I spent perhaps more time than was usual for any normal man, simply settling there... feeling the fold of a knee, the cushion of the rug against my ankle, the pressure of the floor up through a spine gone pliant and forgiving. When I lifted my face I found him studying me with a compassion so naked my skin heated.
“It is hard for you, always,” he said.
“It’s not worth discussing,” I replied, not because I feared revealing weakness, but because I couldn’t bear for him to know. “You were saying?”
“It is no burden,” he said. “You needn’t hide it from me.”
“Did you drink my thoughts with my blood?” I asked, dismayed.
“No,” he said, and laughed. He reached out and pushed my blood-drenched hair from alongside my face. “It is plain to read.”
“I thought I was a little better at obfuscation,” I said. “I shall have to work at it if I am, indeed, a prince. It wouldn’t do to be so obvious to our enemies, would it?”
“No,” he said. “But I will never be your enemy.”
And I believed him. My fine education and well-honed skepticism fell before his demeanor like straw before a strong wind. I found it preposterous that I could trust him so immediately, so completely. Cross, I said, “Do you affect everyone this way?”
He said, “Well, you find me here due to the machinations of my betrothed, so...”
“You have a fiancée?” I asked, astonished. “And she put you here?”
“Ah,” he said. “Yes. It was not uncommon for the children of powerful blood-flags to be betrothed in the cradle... but when the king-gifts rose in me, I told my affianced what I was. That not only could I not wed her, but that I had chosen the path of the King-Reclusive, and so I would rarely be involved, if ever, in the court and social functions she enjoyed. She seemed sympathetic, but I should have distrusted her. She loved power too much.” He looked up at me. “She came to an accord with Suleris and when next she entertained me her house was full of my enemies, and here I am.”
“And what did she receive in return for this perfidy?” I asked, horrified.
“She declined to inform me,” he said. “Which is peculiar of her... looking back now I see that she had a tendency to linger on the fate of her rivals. Perhaps she could not bear to do so with me out of some distant remorse. It may be that she harbored some gentle feeling for me at the last—who can know? I only hope she will forgive herself one day for the ills she has visited on others.”
“Forgive herself!” I exclaimed. “Is that all? She gave you over to the constant abuse of your enemies—and you don’t have to tell me what it feels like, what they do to you, I know how vile it is!—and your only hope is that she will eventually forgive herself for a remorse she probably isn’t even feeling?”
“I was never very good with justice,” he said with a hint of rue. “That is why I chose the King-Reclusive path. To withdraw from society and see to the magical needs of the race in solitude is a role I am far more suited to.”
“Who runs the government if the king is playing hermit?” I asked.
“The prince. Of course.” He smiled at me, brows lifted. “That would be you, O my brother.”
Chester, I thought, would be delighted. I sighed and slipped my spectacles off my nose, reaching for the edge of my thin shift to clean them and discovering the fabric just as bloody as my hair. “What a mess.”
“Yes,” he said, and rose. He was not a tall man for a human, and for one of the elves his height was positively underwhelming... but oh, how he shone, with the constancy of a gas lamp dancing, a visible mandorla in copper and crimson that bled into the air in graceful wisps. He held out his hands to me, and in numb acceptance I took them and let him help me to my feet.
“I want you to stay,” he said. “We have so much to discuss... and too, there is a thing long missing in my life that you were due to fulfill, long overdue. But there is too much danger here yet. You must go back to wherever you have been hiding.”
“Wait,” I said. Here at last was the caveat I’d been anticipating, the onerous or immoral duty he’d extract as price for being his heir. “What thing is this that I owe you?”
“There are nuances I would have more leisure to explain,” he said.
“A précis,” I insisted.
He smiled, looking up at me, and grasped my upper arm in his small hand. “This,” he said, squeezing. “To touch. To see you. And through you to remain aware of and connected to the world.”
“That’s... all?” I asked.
“That is everything,” he said. “What is spirit without matter? Thought without act? Generosity without context? Love... without people?”
As I stared down at him, wide-eyed, he lifted himself on his toes and kissed my blood-streaked brow. “Go, brother mine. Before we are discovered.”
“I—ah. Yes,” I said and went to the door.
“Morgan—”
I turned.
“Do not be alarmed if you find me next much as you found me before,” he said. “What you have given me will not be lost... I will lend it to the earth to hold for when we need it next.”
“The esoterics of magical philosophy are somewhat beyond my small understanding and my smaller vocabulary,” I said. “I will trust you to handle it.”
He laughed softly. “Ah... I look forward to learning you better, my brother.”
“I shall do everything in my power to give you the opportunity,” I said, and ducked back into the corridor. I made it to the end without thinking; from there I went to the well. As I poured bucket after bucket of water over my head, I fought the flutter of my heart, and still I continued until my teeth chattered and my skin wrinkled and my fingers went numb and sore from the hard wooden handle. Leaning against the well frame, I thought that I was punishing myself, but it was too late. I had had the indecency to fall in love with a king.
The following morning I woke from the gossamer of dreams and into a body that remained compliant. I reached outward, twisting my wrist and watching the play of light over the ropy muscles in my forearm. Stretching for the pleasure of stretching was a foreign concept, and just feeling it... I closed my eyes. I wanted to be healthy, oh how I wanted to be whole! But I didn’t think I could pay for it with Amhric’s life. I was not so naïve as to think he would fare well in the care of someone of Sedetnet’s obvious depravity. In folklore, it was the villain who gave good and gentle men to evil sorcerers, not the hero.
Except kings could not be good and gentle men. I was not living in the realm of folklore, but in the realm of history, and history had ample evidence of that nasty truth.
I covered my eyes. I couldn’t, just couldn’t imagine bringing that man to the tower. But I couldn’t imagine living my life in the kind of pain that had become my world.
With a sigh, I hefted myself from my warm bed and decided on breakfast. For once I was hungry; I thought I should at least enjoy my appetite while it lasted. I dressed and took myself cautiously to the kitchen, keeping a watch for any signs of Thameis or his entourage and finding the compound silent. Perhaps it was to be expected—the sun was still new in the east and I had never observed any elf to rise with the common laborers. Sheval and his assistants, however, would have been at work for at least an hour and I looked forward to sampling whatever partially-baked delicacy their artistry had conceived.
“You’re early,” Sheval said when I entered. The energy in the kitchen was greatly depressed, from the sounds: the knives did not chop briskly, there was no laughter, no banter.
“I thought I’d steal some breakfast,” I said. “I hope you did not suffer overmuch due to our unexpected visitor?”
“A drunk and a debutante.” Sheval waved his arms. “What good is it to educate the palate of one’s diners if they dull their senses with too much wine?”
“Good wine, at least,” I said with a grin.
“Ah!” he said. “Useless! Just useless. At least he ate what we sent. But so much wine!” He sniffed. “I imagine he’s sprawled unconscious in his suite.”
“No doubt,” I said, looking over the counter at the dough proofing in giant bowls near the oven. Sheval had trailed off and ceased to meet my eyes. “I have never noted our masters to have much by way of self-control. So is there anything edible yet...?”
“I came for breakfast,” Thameis said behind me into the silence I hadn’t noticed. “And here I find just what I need.” His hand lit on my shoulder and then smashed me against the counter, bending me until my face hit the wood and my glasses skewed off my nose.
“Delicious,” he said, and ripped from me all the well-being and the power that Amhric had so gently bestowed. He sucked it out of every finger, out of my wrists and arms, out of my feet, up through my legs and hips... and nothing filled the hollows so that I felt my body collapse in on the empty spaces, crushing my breath out of my chest, my thoughts out of my head, and there was nothing but agony, white agony, stronger even than humiliation. And still he took, carving great gaping holes, and through those holes the demons came, laughing and nibbling the interstitial spaces with their needle teeth.... perching on the counter and sneering.
The Prince lives, one of them said.
The Prince suffers, said another.
The Prince is impotent, said the last, laughing. And while he writhes beneath the bodies of his masters we will be free to wreak our evil.
“What?” I whispered, trying to clasp the broken bits of stories through the fog of pain in my head. “What did you say?”
We will come again, the demon said, leaning down to lick my temple. To kill and maim and eat the dead and raise them to follow us. And you will let it happen.
Flashes... bone warriors and scythes and immortal prices paid. I shuddered beneath Thameis’s assault. No... surely some things were truly tales.
We will come again, the demon promised, purring into my ear.
“The hell you will,” I said, and spat at him.
Thameis jerked me back into the world, grabbing a knot of my hair at the back of my head. “Did you say something?”
I stared up at him past the tilted edge of my spectacles, trying to make sense of the blur of color and malevolence.
“Because I don’t tolerate insolence in my food,” he said and shook me. “Understood?”
I planned defiance, but before I could work up another mouthful he scowled and said, “What’s cut me?” As I tried to jerk away he raked my hair to one side, exposing the nape of my neck... and the necklace tangled there. “Jewelry? Did you steal it off the dresser of your bette—”
I closed my eyes.
Thameis flipped me around and arched me against the counter, framing my face with a hard hand and scrutinizing me. “Surely not,” he said. “And yet...” He looked up and said, “You. Send messengers to Temeret and Iris. Tell them to meet me here as soon as possible... and to bring their mages.” He yanked the pendant free, tearing some of my hair with it, and then wrapped the chain around my wrists, binding them flush to each other with magic. The pendant hung between them like a lock, or some kind of cruelly ironic ornament. Unbidden from the annals of history sprang the accounts of princes arrested by their own kings for conspiracy, chained by the populace for rough justice, found dead, dragged off by rivals or kin. I wondered if any of them had been so weak as to almost collapse in the wake of their captors as I did when Thameis led me away. The humans did nothing, of course... what could they do? Though as I stumbled after the elf I glimpsed the fleeting regret on Sheval’s face. But soon enough I was beyond their aid.
“Let’s see, let’s see,” Thameis said, scanning the grounds. “There, that should do.” He tugged me along behind him; when I faltered, some invisible force propelled my feet. That same force trammeled me when he came to a halt before the Black Pearls and opened the topmost cage with a sharp gesture. “This should do for now,” he said, and pulled me up by my tunic. I was never more aware of the surrealism of magic than in that moment when a man lifted me twelve feet in the air and shoved me in a wire cage. It was so unbelievable I could not remember the details of how it had been accomplished moments after he’d done it.
And then he shut the door on me, flicked the lock closed and left me there, exposed to wind and weather, still bound and trembling from his assault. Too, the cage was meant for slim, furred creatures almost two heads shorter than I was. I had to contort myself to fit and still it chafed.
“We did not expect you to come to us this way,” one of the genets said from beneath me.
The wind ruffled my hair and cooled my face, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before what felt pleasant became uncomfortably chill. “I didn’t quite expect to join you thus, no.”
“Are you to be our new Fount, then?” one of the ones beside me asked. They were so close I could smell their musk, feel their body heat.
“I hope not,” I said. “No offense meant.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I assume to keep me from escaping,” I said. “Though being locked in a room would have been sufficient. This is rather excessive.” The first tremor traveled my arms to my shoulders, cramping my neck. “May I trouble one of you for a favor?”
“What’s that?” the one next to me said.
I managed, clumsily, to remove my spectacles and offer them to her through one of the holes in the mesh. “Hold these for me.”
“For how long?” she asked.
“Until I stop thrashing,” I said, resigned. There was no room in the cage; when I came to, I would be hurt, even with the pendant chaining my hands together. But at least I would be able to see. Another aching shiver traversed my spine to nestle against the base of my skull. I clenched my teeth against the next. And the next. Small mercy: the convulsions had barely begun in earnest before my mind sank into the dark. I felt only the first few scrapes and blows.
I returned to consciousness enclosed in musk and warmth, with nearly the entirety of my world circumscribed in fur. Every genet in every cage adjoining mine had pressed herself against the wall closest to me; even the ones beneath me were on their feet, pushing themselves against their ceilings. I had expected to be battered, and I was... but there was no blood. I felt the weight of their contentment and shuddered.
“Here,” the one on the near side said, passing me back my glasses.
“Thank you.” I cleared my throat. “How long...?”
They passed a series of looks amongst one another. “Hour?” one of them said at last... Seven, I thought.
Only an hour and already I felt distorted and sick. How long did Thameis intend to keep me here? “Do you know the name of your master?” I asked.
“We are the property of the blood-flag Suleris,” the one next to me said. The Dam.
“Then you know Thameis,” I said.
“We have heard the name of the blood-flag’s head,” Seven said. “Yes.”
“Do you know of a Temeret or an Iris?” I asked.
“Kin,” Nine said. “As we are kin.”
“His brother and sister,” I said.
“Yes.”
Worse and worse. I couldn’t imagine such an interview going well. I had to free myself and Amhric before they decided to consign me to a prison as cruel and effective as my brother’s. If I could only open the lock, I could sneak back into his room and the two of us could flee; even unprepared we stood a better chance of escape if we left before Thameis and his kin could descend on us with their mages and their experiments and their curiosities. Amhric was a small man, and stripped nigh unto fleshlessness by his time here; the drake could surely carry us all. The only thing I had to do was open the door of my cage. I turned my eyes to the lock.
“It’s no use,” Nine said.
“It’s been tried,” the Dam said.
“There has to be a way.” I grasped it awkwardly through the mesh and turned it, looking for any interruption in the smooth metal and finding none. The wind cooled my fingers, making them clumsy. God, how I hated the cold.
“Only the elves can open it,” Seven said.
“I’m an elf,” I growled. It was hard to keep the thing in my hands with my wrists chained together; my arms had lost most of their mobility. “Why doesn’t it open for me?”
“Perhaps you are not the right blood,” one of the others said. “All magics are built from blood ladders.”
If she was right... but I couldn’t afford to believe she was. I remembered the calm that both Kemses and Amhric had emanated just before their own uses of magic and tried to regulate my breathing... to close my eyes and concentrate on the world outside my aching skin and raw senses. The wind snaked into every seam of my clothes, pebbling my flesh and then stinging my face with my hair. The warmth of the genets around me pulsed like a furry heart, shifting, musk and cinnamon-scented. But beyond the wind, beyond the presence of the creatures sharing my suffering, I felt... something. Something that slid along the shifting currents of the wind, riding them, heavier than the air and lighter than sunlight, something that smelled wild and rich, as mysterious and vast as the ocean. Almost I could reach for it, touch my fingers to it... caress it out of the air. Almost I could see a knot of it nesting in the lock. I willed it to unravel, and it... it became aware of me, as if it had the ability to focus attention.
Unravel, I told it, my fingers trembling.
Its attention grew more distinct.
Undo, I commanded, praying. Open. Unknot.
Nothing happened. The ethereal winds that clothed the world around me continued to blow, but the lock remained obdurate. Perhaps it needed more than command; perhaps it required a key. But if merely wishing it open wasn’t enough, what was?
The lock fell out of my numb hands and I pressed my knees to my chest, frowning. The breeze skated over my body and as expected the weather had gone from pleasant and mild to clammy and chill. I had reached an impasse, without clear notion of which direction to turn in for fresh answers; in the past, I had dealt with such blocks by setting my mind to completely different endeavors, but I was hard-pressed to think of one I could accomplish while trapped in a cage in the dark.
One of the genets petted my knee from beneath, tickling.
“I don’t suppose you know how to make a magical key,” I said.
Seven said, “I’m afraid not, Master.”
I sighed. Though it made me uncomfortable, correcting their use of the title would only upset them... but they had reminded me of something I could do while imprisoned here. “While this wasn’t exactly how I’d planned to keep my promise about coming to talk to you, I am here. Shall I tell you stories?”
“Stories?” the dam asked.
“It was my area of study before I came here,” I said.
“We like stories,” Nine said, and the others murmured agreement.
“Then let me think of a good one,” I said. Something to entertain the hopeless, something that wouldn’t be too cruel to tell slaves... and then I laughed. “Ah... I think this one will strike you as interesting. The Witch and the Maiden-Queen.” I felt their concentration like an embrace and began the recitation, the story as I’d first learned it before I’d uncovered its four or five variations. The original folktale dated from just before Eddard, the first king, a man without siblings or cousins and whose queen remained mysteriously barren for many, many years before producing a single son in her twilight years. They’d called Victor the miracle child; his mother had died in childbed but rumor reported she’d gone to her rest with a smile on her face. Not long after, this particular folktale had become popular again... in which the maiden-queen, widowed before the consummation of her marriage to the elderly monarch, had gone to the witch at her mountain hermitage to request a child, begotten without dishonor and without the aid of a man. The witch set her a task—in later versions, the number of tasks varied—which she completed after much hardship and misadventure. This proved her worthy of the baby, which the witch enchanted into her womb, and she returned to her kingdom to deliver an heir to her people and ensure the peaceful succession.
When I’d finished, Seven said, “That is a pretty story.”
“But why did she have to prove herself to the witch?” the dam asked. “Isn’t it enough that she wanted to be a mother?”
I chuckled. “Ah, but wanting something isn’t good enough, particularly in folklore. There must be a test. A sacrifice. The hero has to be willing to give in order to receive.”
“Tell us another,” a fourth genet said.
I smiled and indulged them, choosing the songbird tale for the similarity of its theme; in it a charboy whose life had been greatly enriched by the daily visit of a beautiful songbird went on a quest to the realm of the fairy king, there to negotiate for its life after a passing nobleman slew it in a fit of pique.
“He really gave up his voice for a bird’s?” one of the genets asked, eyes wide.
“So the stories say,” I replied, and chose another. The girl who bargained with a talking fish to feed her family through a terrible famine; the king who died on an altar to win the attention of a god and save his people from war; the lord who cut off his fingers and toes and planted them in the earth of his people’s farms to ensure the harvest.
My voice had grown hoarse when at last I trailed to a halt.
“Those were good stories,” one of the genets said. “True stories.”
“I cannot attest to their truth,” I said. “Only to their importance.”
“They must be true,” Nine said. “To have so much blood in them. Everyone knows that everything important must be paid in blood.”
“On that I’m sure the elves would concur,” I said with a hoarse laugh. And then I froze. Of course. What an idiot I was. I tested my fingers and found them almost too stiff to bend, but I reached out anyway. If my suspicious were correct, I didn’t have to hold the lock anyway; merely touching it would suffice. I abraded my fingertips on the wire until they grew wet and tender and then stroked the lock with my chained hands.
Open, I whispered.
The lock tingled beneath my fingers.
Open, I said again, and then drew in a shaking breath. Open now!
The lock jumped against my palms and then something lunged for me, wrapping around my wrists. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it digging past my skin and catching on the web beneath it. Startled, I jerked backward, banging my hands against the wire and falling awkwardly against the other side, but whatever it was came with me. It felt like Thameis’s assault only sharper and without sentience.
“Master?” the Dam asked, pressing against our shared cage wall.
“The lock is trying to eat me,” I said, struggling to maintain a sense of humor as involuntary tears streaked my cheeks.
“You gave it blood,” the dam said. “It must want more.”
“I don’t fancy emptying my veins on the behalf of an inanimate object,” I said, gritting my teeth as the jaws of the thing crawled up my arms. “God! But it has teeth like broken glass!”
“Maybe it wants your arms the way the fairy king wanted the boy’s voice,” a second genet offered.
“Magic,” Seven said. “It is magic it wants, not the arm. Smell it. He smells like champagne.”
Crazed, I wondered just how genets in cages had come to know the smell of champagne, and then her words snapped into focus. “Magic. Magic must be the key.” I ignored their curious looks and grabbed the lock with my stiff and trembling hands. “Here, then,” I said. “Take it!” And forced the stream of life I could just barely sense beneath my skin into the questing jaws.
The lock twitched in my fingertips and fell open. Before I could cry my triumph, the pain swept me from palm to head and though I fought it with all my power it was no contest. The barbs embedded in me from birth choked me down, stole my voice and, as the door swung open in the still dark, my consciousness.