Sweet & Bitter Magic

by Adrienne Tooley

  “Why are we stopping?”

  The woman shrugged. “Ask him. What’s his name? Boomer?”

  “Boor,” the man said, wheezing slightly. “And we’re stopping because we’re here.”

  Wren looked around blankly. “Where?”

  Boor clucked his tongue loudly as though he was disappointed by her. “The palace, lass. We’ve made it to the palace.”

  Wren blanched. “The queen’s palace?”

  “No, the pig’s palace,” he snapped. “Of course the queen’s palace.”

  “But…” Wren could hardly believe she was the only one protesting. “I thought you were taking us to Farn.”

  “Well, naturally you can get to the queen’s city from the queen’s palace.” Boor sighed loudly. “Saints, lass, you’re awfully picky for a girl heading north.” His eyes lingered on hers knowingly, almost as if he could see the magic moving within her.

  Wren shifted beneath his gaze. “But… we’re halfway up a mountain.”

  Boor rolled his eyes, his pinched expression reminiscent of Tamsin’s. “Exactly. Didn’t your mother ever tell you the stories of the palace on the mountain? How the queen rules above her subjects?”

  “My mother’s dead,” Wren said without thinking.

  Boor looked uncomfortable. He kicked idly at a cracked stair. “Well, the palace isn’t actually on a mountain, is it? It’s in a mountain. Everyone knows that. But what they don’t all know is how to get in through the back entrance. Lucky for you, you’ve got one of the finest tour guides in the West.”

  He fumbled around in the greenery until his hand caught on something solid. He gave a hearty yank, and a door the color of moss swung forward, revealing a dark chamber. Wren glanced over her shoulder, but Tamsin was still far behind.

  “What is this place?” Wren hesitated at the chamber’s entrance.

  “Escape route. In case of a revolt. Or a memory-stealing plague.” Boor’s laugh came out more like a cough. “In you go, lass. Where’s your friend?”

  “She’s not my friend,” Wren snapped.

  “All right, all right, no harm meant.” Boor shook his head, hands extended out protectively.

  Wren rolled her eyes and stepped into the stone corridor. Their footsteps echoed against the low ceiling. The passageway was long and squat, the light behind them dimming with each step. The taller travelers had to walk hunched over.

  Something skittered across the floor, and in her terror Wren stumbled, her foot catching on a gap in the stone. A hand as cold as ice closed around her arm. Wren shrieked.

  “Calm down, will you? I’m trying to help you.”

  “Tamsin?” Wren barely managed to stop herself from shrieking again.

  “Who else would it be?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, a bandit.” Wren’s tone was scathing.

  “Hey,” came Boor’s indignant wheeze.

  “I’m sure these men are very nice,” Tamsin said loudly. “Will you please shut up,” she snapped, lowering her voice to a whisper. “They don’t ask me questions; I don’t ask them any.”

  Wren scoffed. “Don’t you think we maybe should? How do we know this is even a palace? How did they know about this entrance?” She could not believe she had allowed dangerous men to lead her through dark passageways. She had been on the road only a few days and already she had all but abandoned her usual sense.

  Wren felt the witch shift beside her. “Look, you’re the one who followed them in here. You knew just as well as I did that we needed a way onward. They had a way. Now stop asking questions. It’s very irritating.”

  They joined the rest of the group, who were huddled around a great steel door. Boor shoved his way forward, a match burning between his fingers.

  “I can’t believe we get to see the inside of the palace,” one of the women whispered loudly to her companion.

  “Hate to disappoint you lot, but there’s not much left to see,” Boor said, swinging open the steel door and gesturing for the group to step inside. The woman who had whispered hurried forward, but Wren hung back.

  “Doesn’t the palace have guards? Do you think there’s a battalion of armed knights on the other side of this door ready to hack us to pieces?” She glanced desperately at Tamsin, who did not seem to share her concern.

  “Not a chance. The queen fled to her winter palace before the news of the plague had even reached our town,” Tamsin said, shaking her head lightly. “This palace is abandoned. Anyway, I’d bet you a true coin that these bandits have already gone through the entire place and taken every single thing of value for themselves.”

  When Wren had first learned about the plague from that family on the road outside Ladaugh, they had mentioned something similar about the queen and her winter palace. Still, she stayed at the end of the line, ready to flee back down the long, dark corridor at the first hint of danger. But all she heard was Boor’s maniacal cackle.

  Tamsin swept forward, squinting into the light of the queen’s chambers. Wren followed begrudgingly after her, glass crunching beneath her boot.

  “Told you,” Tamsin said as Wren took in the decimated room with its ripped curtains and torn pillows, its slashed portraits and its ransacked drawers.

  “All right, then,” Boor said, nudging the empty spine of a book with the toe of his boot. “I’m off. Keep your health, or whatever lie people are offering these days.” He spat loudly on the dirty carpet.

  “This is it?” Tamsin’s voice was flat. “This is as far as you take us?” She sighed darkly, crossing her arms over her chest. Boor nodded his affirmative, then slipped back through the shadows of the passageway, off to take the coins from another group of unsuspecting travelers.

  Wren was beginning to feel a bit dizzy. The acrid taste of ash caught in the back of her throat. She coughed, eyes watering with the terrible flavor. As she blinked, trying to regain her focus, her attention caught on a shadow of magic, thick and black, coiled like a rope. It slinked across the marble floor, tugging at Wren’s attention until she could ignore it no longer, her feet moving before her brain had caught up.

  “What are you…?” Behind her, Wren heard Tamsin sigh, heard the reluctant swish of her cloak as she strode after her, leaving the bandits and their fellow travelers behind. Wren followed the magic down a maze of hallways hung with gold-framed portraits and littered with piles of tarnished armor. Even the people in the paintings frowned down at the chaos—the puddles of water (or worse) in the corners of the corridors; the stench of rotten cabbage and spoiled eggs that clung to the velvet curtains, which hung in tatters; the torn tapestries; the bent swords. The giant glass windows were shattered. Tangles of deep green vines twisted their way inside, snaking up the marble pillars. Black mold sank into the carpets.

  She lost sight of it then, amid the wreckage. Everything was shrouded in shadow. Everything was black and bleak. After standing helpless in the middle of the spongy carpet, she begrudgingly let Tamsin nudge her toward and down a spiral staircase, their feet silent against the stone as they descended.

  Wren was having trouble keeping herself quiet. “Oh,” she gasped again and again as they entered room after ruined room. The ghosts of finery were everywhere in the dining hall, from the gnarled candlesticks to the puddles of melted pewter chalices to the long wooden tables now reduced to firewood. In what had likely once been the library, they came across several pyres, now only ashes. The stink of sweat and fear stained the lush carpets, and not a single book could be found on the endless expanse of shelves.

  People were huddled in corners, their faces gaunt, their bodies wrapped in the black ribbons of dark magic.

  Wren and Tamsin found the first true sign of life in the kitchens. Wren assumed the scuffling was an animal—even when the form emerged from the pantry, she still thought it a stray dog. It wasn’t until the thing righted itself that she realized it was a child.

  “Don’t,” she said, grabbing Tamsin’s wrist before she could cast a spell. Wren took a step forward and kne
lt. The child stared warily at her, his eyes wide, his clothing blackened with soot. He carefully clutched a rotten apple core.

  “It smells awful,” the witch said, her voice muffled from behind her sleeve. Wren flashed her a fierce look.

  “Hello, there.” She gave the child a careful smile. “Are you hungry?” The child’s eyes flickered over her face with disdain. The answer was so obvious as to be rude. “Here.” Wren dropped her sack and rummaged around for a piece of the now slightly stale bread Tamsin had stolen for supper the night before. Wren held the offering out carefully. The child said nothing. Then he lunged, snatching up the bread with one hand while holding tightly to the apple’s core with the other. “Are you alone?” she asked.

  The child shook his head, crumbs flying as he shoved the bread in his mouth with a grubby little fist. “My ma’s here.” His words were garbled through his giant bite. “She’s hurt.”

  “Will you show me?” Wren kept her voice soft. Careful. The child eyed her, crumbs spilling from his lips. Then he nodded.

  “What are you doing?” Tamsin whispered roughly.

  “His mother’s hurt. We have to help her.”

  Behind her, the witch grumbled. “We really don’t. For all you know he’ll lead us to a group of looters who will use our bodies for firewood.”

  Wren turned, anger boiling in her veins. “Have you no compassion? No sympathy for anyone but yourself?”

  Tamsin stared at her blankly. “No,” she finally said. “I’m cursed. That was sort of the point.”

  “Fine.” Wren let of a groan of frustration. She should not have expected better from Tamsin, but of course she had. She always looked for the best in people, even when they gave her reason not to. “Go away, then. But I’m going to see if I can help.” She turned to follow the child, who had scampered away, past the giant ovens and the overturned produce baskets. The kitchen floor was littered with rotting onion skins, broken chicken bones, and giant piles of dust so thick and gray they might have been the corpses of mice.

  Wren hurried after the child, who had taken a hard right. Something loosened in her chest when she heard Tamsin’s footsteps behind her. The witch was still grumbling, but she was there. Wren turned in time to watch the child disappear through a trapdoor in the floor. Tamsin grabbed her wrist.

  “You can’t be serious.” Tamsin gave her a sharp look. “This is stupid, even for you. You don’t know who or what might be lurking down there. It’s too dangerous.”

  Wren didn’t care. All she could think of was the emptiness in the child’s eyes, the way hunger had stripped him down and made him weak. Wanting. She had been that way too. Wren knew what it was to feel hunger—not just the growling of the stomach but the pang of guilt, the fear that she deserved the sick, impossible feeling. The light-headedness. The hopelessness.

  She could not turn her back now. Not when she knew so intimately what that child was up against. Wren pulled her wrist from Tamsin’s grasp and followed the child through the trapdoor.

  The stink was much worse below, pungent and hot and stale. Wren tensed at every scuffle, every sniffle, every sob. The dark was so deep that she could see nothing, not even in her mind’s eye. When a tiny blue flame flickered to life, she momentarily lost her bearings.

  Tamsin hopped down the final rung of the ladder, the light she held illuminating the distaste upon her face. “Hey.” The witch’s voice was hard. “Stop that.”

  Wren looked down. The child had pressed a kitchen knife against her hip, the point poking her skin through the thin fabric.

  “He wouldn’t…” But Wren trailed off at the determination on the child’s face.

  “What do you want?” The voice that came from the shadows was hoarse and thin, like the croaking of a toad. Tamsin lifted her light higher. Wren braced herself, but it illuminated only the face of a woman, defeat written across it in the purple bags beneath her eyes, in the greasy strands of hair, in the dirt that clung to her clothes.

  “I’m Wren.” She smiled cautiously. The woman didn’t look fearsome, nor had the child moved to break her skin with the knife. “I just wanted to see if I could help.”

  The woman shifted, at great personal cost. She let out a moan, deep and guttural, like a sow ready to birth. It was then that Wren saw the comparison continued. The woman’s belly was swollen, apparent even through her many layers of grimy garments.

  “Can’t help me,” the woman groaned, a hand resting against her stomach. “Nothing t’be helped now. Leo, come.” Her accent was sharp, like the women in the caravan they’d passed in Ladaugh, her vowels quick and hardly apparent.

  Wren felt the child shift, the pressure disappearing as he retreated. She took a hesitant step closer. “Are you in pain?”

  The woman grunted. Or laughed? Perhaps neither. Maybe both. “I don’t know. All I know’s this babe was due three weeks past. She’s still in there, kicking. Won’t come out. Not now, perhaps not ever, thanks t’this plague.” She glanced darkly at her stomach. “Can’t say I blame her.” She looked up at Wren. “No, lass, just leave me be. Nothing t’be done. Any rate, she’s safer in there than out.”

  The woman’s resignation was so absolute that Wren didn’t know what to do. “Here.” She fumbled in her bag for a few coins. “Take these, at least.” Wren’s body shuddered as she held them out, her brain rebelling against her heart’s offering. But the woman smiled sadly up at her.

  “Ah, lass, you’re not from here, then. Coins get you nothing. There’s nothing t’be got. The queen is gone, left us to die.” Her face darkened. “Never mind that I gave up all my years to cook her food. Scrubbed her potatoes, I did, baked her pies with little birds on the crust, and all I’ve got to show for it is this miserable life. Don’t trust a queen, girl. Not even when her face gleams like the sun at the taste of one of your roasts. Never learn to love someone untouchable. They’ll only disappoint you in the end.”

  Wren’s throat tightened, and she felt her heart clench at the woman’s words, although she could not determine what about them, exactly, affected her so. “No,” she said finally, her voice cracking despite her best efforts. “You will not die.” She turned to Tamsin, who was wringing her hands helplessly. “Stop that,” Wren commanded her, trying to get ahold of herself. “Get this woman some food. Leave her with endless fire and blankets to keep warm.”

  Tamsin widened her eyes in protest, trying to communicate without speech. Wren sighed.

  “Mother, I cannot help you deliver your child, but I can make sure you are well taken care of with food, and blankets, and fire. Do you protest if these items come from a witch’s hands?” She stared down at the woman, who blinked blankly at her.

  “Lass, I cannot move. I care not where the help comes from—only that it does.”

  “Well, then.” Wren turned to Tamsin. “That settles it. Here.” She offered her hand to the witch.

  “What’s that for?” Tamsin studied her suspiciously.

  “To help,” Wren snapped. “You keep forgetting that I can help.”

  Tamsin reached for Wren, and her frozen fingers closed around Wren’s palm. Wren shivered, both from the shock and from how quickly the witch had resigned herself to help. She watched as her magic flowed toward Tamsin, turning the color of clay. There was a crackle, the sound of a flame. Tamsin spoke a few words. Magic swirled around the witch and Wren, and for a moment the two of them were surrounded by a tornado of light. It was oddly intimate—ruined, of course, by Tamsin’s scowl.

  Items burst forth from their magic, settling themselves around the woman and her child: heaping piles of blankets, candles and flint, loaves of dense brown bread still steaming, links of plump sausages, baskets of crisp red apples.

  The woman’s eyes were so wide they threatened to fall from her face. Leo, the little boy, had already pounced, an entire sausage hanging from his mouth. Tears spilled down the woman’s cheeks. “Thank you,” she said, her voice breaking. “I cannot thank you enough.”

  “Then
don’t,” Wren said quietly. “Just take care.” She wanted to promise the woman a cure, wanted to reassure her the way she could not reassure herself. But she could offer the woman nothing more than what she had already given. Still, the woman managed a small smile before collapsing back into tears.

  Wren turned to usher Tamsin back up the ladder, but the woman stopped her. “That way,” she said, pointing into the darkness. “It’s how they smuggled wine in from the East. They say the queen is pure of heart”—the woman made a sour face—“but she does still love her drink. There’s another trapdoor that’ll lead you down the mountain and land you in the center of Farn. Take care. There are men with sharper knives than my Leo here.”

  She ruffled the boy’s hair, but the child was so immersed in his sausage that he did not look up. Wren bid them farewell, her heart heavy. She had done something, but it was not nearly enough.

  “Well, that was quite the production,” Tamsin said, flicking her wrist at the trapdoor. A rope of magic swirled about the iron ring and pulled it open effortlessly. Daylight flooded the dark room.

  “That,” Wren said, smiling serenely at the witch, “was called kindness. I thought you could use an education.” Her tone was chastising, but not cruel. For Tamsin had aided her, and more willingly than Wren had expected. It had reminded her of that flash she’d seen of Tamsin filled with love, open and thoughtful and full of hope.

  Wren glanced down through the hole in the floor. Ladder rungs clung to the side of the mountain. She wondered at the dedication of men carrying crates of wine up to such a precarious entry point. The things people did out of duty. She slipped carefully onto the rungs, her feet finding solid purchase, her fingers wrapping around the iron as tightly as they could. There was still a long way to go.

  * * *

  Halfway down the side of the mountain, Wren glanced up at Tamsin, who was several rungs above. She could see nothing but the worn soles of the witch’s boots and the dusty, burr-covered hem of her skirt. Wren carried a similar level of filth. She had taken to breathing mostly through her mouth in order to avoid the sweet, sour smell of herself. Her hopes rose each time they came across a riverbank or stream, and yet every time she got close enough to the sound of running water, she was put off by the sludgy, bubbling mud that filled the banks. Without Tamsin’s ability to conjure, Wren would not have had a single drop to drink in days.