The Verdigris Pawn

by Alysa Wishingrad

  By the time she’d tried every possible combination she could think of, the candle clock had burned down two pegs. The night was speeding past and signs of infection were beginning to set in. There was only a short window of time before Veda would begin to fade.

  “You will be able to heal her, won’t you?” Lula asked. The girl had hardly spoken all night. Cressi had nearly forgotten she was there.

  “I hope so,” Cressi said.

  “I knew this would happen one day when she was out scouting,” Lula said. “I told her. But then she’d look sad, tuck me back into bed, and remind me to be brave. So I stopped telling her.”

  “Oh,” Cressi said, understanding finally dawning. “Veda is your mother.”

  Lula nodded. She was a stoic little thing who showed no emotion on her face. Although that didn’t stop Cressi from seeing straight through her, all the way to her dear, loving heart and beyond.

  “Why did you say you knew this would happen?” Cressi pressed.

  “I’d see it when I’d go to sleep at night. Smell it in my dreams.”

  “What else do you smell?”

  “Besides food, fire, and farts?” Lula laughed. “Not much I don’t think. I mean, I can smell fear and fury. But everyone can do that, right?”

  “No.” Cressi had been thinking all along that charming meant only one thing, but perhaps there were other talents and abilities that had been lost to time. Talents like Lula’s.

  Cressi pulled the bottle of blue-green liquid from her stocking and set it on the table. She wasn’t sure what to expect, if anything. But she certainly wasn’t expecting Lula to lurch away from her mother’s side and make a beeline for the bottle. Her eyes glazed and her lips agape, she looked as if she wanted to swallow it.

  Cressi quickly pulled the bottle away and shoved it into her boot.

  Her suspicions more than confirmed, she turned to Lula. “What do you smell from me?”

  “Right now? Hesitation,” Lula replied.

  Smart girl.

  All the while Cressi had been mixing and muddling, trying to listen to her brews, there’d been something itching at the base of her spine. Something pushing her, goading her further. But Cressi shoved it back, tried to ignore it. Whatever it was, it was unstable, murky. Dangerous.

  But what if it was the answer?

  Cressi turned back to her brews and started again.

  Instead of falling into that lovely, almost trancelike state she’d found in Anka’s kitchen, Cressi was now twisting, turning, pushing the plants where she wanted them to go. Instead of listening, she was telling, demanded the plants follow her command, submit to her will.

  And soon after, she found it: a brew that smelled of a cooling compress and healthy skin. Wholeness.

  Cressi doused a linen in the new concoction and tested it on a small burn on Veda’s hand. Lula held the lamp higher, casting a bright light for the experiment to either bloom or wither under.

  Moments passed. Cressi caught wind of the scent of lavender. Or was it skunk? The smell kept turning and changing, never once settling long enough to be defined. And then the healthy skin around the burn began to look burned too. First it looked gray, then blue, and finally black as soot.

  “What’s happening? The burns are spreading!” Lula was inching toward panic. “Should I get Gerta? I need to get Gerta.”

  Cressi held fast. The plants wouldn’t betray her. “Give it time.”

  And still the skin kept blackening until it began to smolder, a haze of smoke rising just above the wound. Lula was about to bolt for the door when Cressi stopped her. “Watch.”

  And that’s when it happened. The ashy curls of smoke began dispersing as if blown apart by a cooling breeze, leaving behind perfectly healed, unblemished skin.

  Relieved right down to her bones, Cressi exhaled as if for the first time ever. Somehow, she felt older and wiser.

  As Lula grabbed her mother’s hand, relief pinking up her cheeks, Cressi set the bowl and linen down next to her.

  “You can apply it now. Go slow. Do only small sections at a time. Wait for the healing to take hold before moving on. Understand?”

  Lula nodded, wiping her eyes clear as she set to work on her mother.

  Now came an even bigger challenge—figuring out how to charm the very air itself.

  Cressi thought about how the rock hid them from the thieves. It wasn’t that they’d disappeared as much as the veil obscured them from view. So, in theory, charming an object or the air wasn’t very different than charming a person. She’d simply have to figure out what its essential nature was.

  Once again, she had to dig deep in that place hidden between her bones to find a brew that would work. Trying, failing, then trying again, she finally landed on something, a brew that could render anything capable of creating an echo of itself.

  Cressi spilled a few well-considered drops on the table, then stepped back.

  At first, she worried it was her tired eyes showing her what she wanted to see, but the look on Lula’s face said it all.

  It worked! The table was gone—at least to the eye, although her hand knew different.

  “Call for Gerta,” Cressi said, nearly collapsing from joy and exhaustion. “Tell her I’ve figured it out.”

  Lula called out the window to a sentry to send for Gerta. She arrived a few moments later.

  Implacable and unmoving as always, Gerta stood in stony silence while Cressi showed off both Veda’s newly healed skin and the veil she’d drawn around the table. Gerta took her time inspecting both, testing the resiliency of the veil and examining Veda’s legs.

  “You’ve done it,” she said, finally. “And you’ve made enough to last us?”

  “Yes, there’s plenty of both the burn remedy and the charm for the veil to keep you safe for a long time. I hope the day comes when you won’t need it.”

  “There will always be a need to keep ourselves protected. Isolation is the only way we will thrive. Very well. Hugo will take you as far as he can. You’ll be on your own to enter Doone’s. We will not violate the agreement we have with him.”

  “Thank you,” Cressi said. “I would never have come to understand so much without you.”

  “Probably not,” Gerta said, then added, “Be careful out there.”

  “I will. I’ve a blade and my charms.”

  “I don’t mean that. Don’t follow the same path that swallowed up Annina.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t be marrying Himself,” Cressi laughed.

  “You’re thinking too simply again. Annina made too many mistakes. Miscalculated who the ace was. She was convinced it was Himself and wouldn’t listen to reason when she was told why it couldn’t be him. Then she pushed her power too far, abused it. In turn it cost her everything, and the rest of us as well. Be smarter.”

  Cressi nodded. “I’ll try, I promise.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Fixing and Sinking

  Beau mounted Puzzle feeling refreshed, even though it was late into the night. Carrying the woman’s trust fueled him for the journey ahead.

  He knew giving her those coins hadn’t been some great feat of benevolence or even a real solution to her problems. He’d only offered her a brief reprieve. She was still vulnerable, had no proper home to call her own, no way to raise her daughter safely. Her life, and all the others like hers, couldn’t be fixed by a few coins. But as he headed north, Beau finally knew what he had to do—the exact opposite of everything he had been doing.

  From the moment he left the Manor, he’d been certain he was running toward something: finding his ace, getting Doone to help liberate the children of Mastery House, even heading north to free Cressi on his own. But in truth it was no different than what he’d been doing all his life—trying to escape the inescapable and reject the life fate had chosen for him.

  “No more and never again,” he whispered to Puzzle. “This is my tainted inheritance. It’s mine to fix.”

  Puzzle replied with a nicker
and a toss of her head.

  As they pressed on the pathway was getting more difficult to navigate. Clouds had blown in masking the moon and stars, forcing Beau to open his lantern wider, holding it out front like a beacon.

  Then it began to rain hard enough to turn the dusty pathway to a muddy slick. Fearing for Puzzle’s safety Beau slipped off her back. As long as the storm got no worse, they would push on. They had to.

  But soon the winds picked up and Beau had to shutter the lamp in order to protect the precious flame. If not for the light from periodic lightning strikes, he’d have completely lost his bearings. During one of these momentary ignitions, Beau spotted the fallen tree, sharpened like an arrow pointing the way to the runner’s code stump.

  He’d been so full of hope and trust when Doone told him and Nate about the code. He’d seen the signs pointing toward Doone’s as proof they were on the path to safety. But time and experience now exposed them as part of an intricate trap to steer innocents into Doone’s web of deceit.

  Not for much longer though.

  Beau tethered Puzzle to a tree and headed for the stump. At least the woods offered some shelter from the winds, allowing him to open the lamp up more. He soon found the stump, set the lantern down, and got to work. The small awl he’d taken was the perfect tool for the job.

  The runner’s code marking on the south-facing side was a series of five hash marks—the sign for a safe road. Somehow Beau would have to change that to the cockeyed T, the code for beware. The only way he could figure to do that was to carve straight through the five hash marks, turning them into a single line, and cross them on an angle.

  But before Beau could finish, the winds began to shift again. Even under the cover of trees, the rain hit hard. He could hear Puzzle nervously snorting and pawing at the ground. He quickly finished up his work, heartened that he’d done enough to warn any future travelers to stay away from Doone’s, then took his first muddy steps toward what awaited him next. But before he reached Puzzle’s side, he felt a strange heat coming through the bottom of his boot. He shifted his weight to change direction but found his foot stuck to the ground. He tried again, this time pulling harder. But instead of releasing, Beau’s foot sunk deeper. More confused than afraid, he tried again only to feel the heat inching up past his ankle.

  No, it couldn’t be.

  Not a sand pit.

  Beau tried to scramble onto solid ground, using his one free leg and hands to pull him out. But the more he fought the sand, the harder it pulled him back. He looked for something solid to grab, but the stump was out of reach, and there were no overhanging branches.

  This couldn’t be!

  But it was. He was sinking into a sand pit, with no chance of climbing back out.

  Confusion turned into full-out panic as he heard Puzzle whinnying and whining, straining at her tether.

  “No!” he begged. “Stay there! Do not come any closer!”

  Puzzle’s cries filled the air as Beau slowly succumbed to the searing pain, to the pull of the sand, and finally to the dark.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Fevered

  The journey to Doone’s took Hugo and Cressi through forests thick with tangled trees and riddled with pockets of deadly sand. When a rainstorm blew in from the west, Hugo found a small cave for them to wait it out in. Although Cressi tried to sleep, the mounting anticipation of finally finding Beau and Nate along with the pawn jumping in her pocket made sleep hard to find. It was shortly before dawn when they finally emerged from the woods on the edge of a large, open field.

  If she didn’t know better, Cressi would’ve mistaken the homestead laying at the far end for the picture of the ideal family farm, a dream left over from a time long ago.

  “You’d best get in and out without Doone finding you,” Hugo counseled. “When you find the others, you come straight back to us. We’ll help you get where you need to go from there.”

  “Really?” Cressi was more than surprised. “I thought Gerta would never want to see me again.”

  “If that were true, you wouldn’t be here now. Good luck, charmer.” And with that Hugo turned and melted back into the woods.

  With her bag strapped tightly to her back and her resolve fixed even tighter, Cressi stepped out into the field. The morning sun had not yet risen, giving her time to find a good hiding spot, but it also made her passage treacherous, for the field was riddled with shallow craters and clumps of soil, rocks, and debris. But more than that, the ground reeked of a smell she couldn’t put a name to. The feelings of devastation it evoked, however, were crystal clear.

  This was nowhere she wanted to be for very long.

  She finally made her way to the closest outbuilding—a two-story stone structure—just as the sun began to rise. The spot afforded her a view of the rest of the compound and a convenient corner to hide behind. She was peering out to survey the area when the sound of footsteps sent her back into hiding, waiting for them to move on. But when the sound didn’t recede, she cautiously eased forward to get a better look.

  That’s when she saw him standing there, wobbling on unsteady legs. She knew it was him before she could see his face, for she knew his shadow as well as her own.

  Cressi raced out of hiding to his side, catching Nate just as he was about to pitch forward into the dirt.

  “What happened?” she whispered, helping him to the ground.

  But Nate had no answer. Though he looked in her direction, his eyes were glazed over, and his skin was electric to the touch.

  “You’re fevered. You should be in a bed, wrapped up warm,” she said. “Not out in the night air.”

  Nate flinched at the sound of her voice, as if he knew it yet couldn’t place it. He licked his dry, cracked lips, trying to form a word.

  “Shh,” Cressi counseled. “Where can you lie down?”

  Nate managed to raise a hand and feebly pointed to the second floor of the stone building.

  He wasn’t completely lost to the fever yet. “Lean on me. I’ll get you there.”

  All thoughts of her original plan and her own safety vanished as Cressi managed to pull Nate up the stairs into a cozy bedroom. She laid Nate out on the unmade bed and covered him over with the blankets, for the fire in the hearth had burned down to cinders leaving the room colder than the predawn air.

  “Why were you outside?” she pressed, yet Nate only mumbled incoherently. “Where’s Beau? Why isn’t he tending to you?”

  “Beau!” Nate spat the word out like a bite of rotten food.

  Cressi turned the lamp up and examined Nate, almost hoping to find a wound or festering puncture to explain his condition. But the telltale grayish cast to his skin, the red blotches, and the signs of dehydration confirmed it.

  It was the fever.

  If Nate had it this bad, what of Beau? Had he already succumbed? Who else had it, and how far had it spread?

  No, first things first.

  Focus.

  If Beau were dead the pawn would have told her.

  Fighting to keep her hands steady and her mind still, Cressi pulled her bag off and fished the fever brew out. Gently cradling Nate in her arms, she poured a small measure of the charm into his mouth, but he was so parched he could barely swallow it. It took some doing, but she finally managed to get a fair dose into him, then she laid him back against the pillow and waited for him to pink up.

  “You’ll feel better soon,” she whispered, as much a promise to herself as to him. She hadn’t come this far only to lose him or Beau to the fever. She would not let that happen.

  “Nate.” She gently nudged him. “Where is Beau?”

  Nate turned and looked at Cressi, recognition finally sparking in his eyes behind the fever.

  “Cressi?”

  She smiled, the better choice than crying. “You’ll be fine, very soon.”

  “You charming me?” Nate could barely speak above a whisper.

  Cressi shrugged. “I’m trying to.”

  “He wa
s right,” Nate said. “The rat-mucker.”

  “Who was right about what?” Cressi urged. “Where’s Beau? Is he all right? What’s happened?”

  But it was no good; Nate slipped back into the deep, dark sleep of the very ill.

  “Please work fast,” she implored the brew.

  While Nate slept, Cressi pulled a chair up to his bedside and waited, fighting to stay awake and watchful for the moment the brew would bring him back to full health. Yet no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop herself from bobbing and weaving into a restless kind of sleep.

  When the rustling began it wasn’t loud enough to wake her, though it did infiltrate her dreams, filling her head with visions of bedclothes being tossed off and leaves flying. Then came the scratching at her ankle. A bug? A rodent? Cressi shooed it away without waking.

  It was only the telltale clink and clank of bottles being jostled that finally sent Cressi swimming back up to consciousness. Weighed down by exhaustion and her bearings off-balance, it took more than a few moments for her eyes to refocus, to remember where she was. To see him.

  He stood right before her, her bag at his feet and several of her vials open in his hand. He was tall with a thick mop of hair and eyes so blue they nearly glowed. At first glance, he was handsome, smiling, but Cressi quickly saw him for what he really was—a foul and twisted monster.

  Judging from the expression on his face as he sniffed at her various brews, he clearly saw Cressi for what she truly was too—a charmer.

  Doone corked the vials and dropped them back in her bag. “And here I was about to ride off to find you. The famous Cressi. Crafty was right about you, wasn’t he?”

  “Crafty?” she repeated. “Who’s that?”

  But instead of answering, Doone kicked the foot of Nate’s bed. “Wake up! Where is he?”

  Cressi jumped to her feet and planted herself between Doone and the bed. “He can’t answer you—he’s got the fever.” She spoke with absolute authority, as if there were nothing strange about her being there.

  “Serves him right.” Doone slipped the straps of Cressi’s bag over his shoulders. “Shouldn’t have taken what wasn’t his.”