The gondola slowed, though we were still moving forward. Water swished along our sides. I can usually see pretty well in the dark, but right now I saw nothing beyond our circle of lantern light. “Kill the light,” I told Silversword. “I need to see what’s out there.”
He hesitated, but did what I said. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Me too, honey bunch.
Silversword quenched the lantern, and everything went black for a moment.
Now I could see the trees outlined along the bank of the canal. There was no moonlight, no stars, so how could I see them? They glowed faintly silver and gold in the darkness, and from the hushed exhalations from my fellow sacrifices, I wasn’t the only one seeing them.
“This is new,” I said.
“What does that mean?” asked Silversword.
“It means don’t trust your weapons, don’t trust your eyes and ears, don’t trust each other, and sure as hell don’t trust anyone or anything that you meet here.”
Chas swore softly.
“You said it,” I agreed. What else could I say? Humans didn’t have any place in the worlds outside our own. I only survived my occasional visits to the OtherRealm because I was acknowledged as half fey. This strange land wouldn’t extend the same favour to me.
“How did the Senior Mistresses think we’d have a chance?” Demi asked in a whisper.
“Maybe they didn’t,” I said. “Maybe they thought we’d provide a more entertaining tithe this time around.” I suck at morale-boosting platitudes.
The gondola bucked, so violently that we actually left the water and smacked back down. The current dragged us urgently along, speeding up again towards our destination.
“You,” a vicious voice snarled at me in the near-darkness. Fredo the priest of sunshine and happiness. “You are of the same kind as this evil queen of the fey. You have betrayed us to her!” His truncheon whistled past my face. I grabbed his wrist and disarmed him swiftly, throwing the damn thing overboard. Someone grabbed him and pulled him back before he could retaliate. “Get your hands off me, wench!” he snarled.
My rescuer was Demi, chic and dignified as she gripped the struggling priest. “Do shut up,” she said in her usual silken tones. “We’re in the Faerie Quene’s boat, and we came here of our own accord. No one had to betray anyone.”
“Only it’s not the Faerie Quene,” said Silversword thoughtfully. “So who is it?”
I had been wondering that myself. Why would anyone pretend to be the Faerie Quene? Okay, that was obvious. She was the most powerful fey figure anyone had ever heard of. If you convinced people you were the Faerie Quene, you could scare anyone into doing anything. Even sacrificing seven people every seven years.
But why a sacrifice? That was the part that didn’t make any sense. Gods are the only ones who have a taste for sacrifices, but they aren’t into pseudonyms. They like atrocities to be committed in their name, or not at all.
Maybe we weren’t supposed to be killed. That was a comforting thought, most unlike me. But what were they going to do with us?
The canal widened. We couldn’t see the tree-lined banks anymore. We went into a slow spin, the gondola turning with the force of the water.
If a sacrifice is made in an empty river, does it make a noise? I thought giddily.
Something hit us from beneath, thrusting us up into the air. I heard something cracking and saw something black as it slammed into my field of vision, and then I didn’t have a field of vision anymore.
Everything was gone.
–§–§–§–§–§–
I woke up feeling like seven different kinds of idiot. What had I been thinking? It would be a lovely adventure, we’d stroll into an otherworldly dimension, slay the wicked old witch and be home in time for cream buns and ginger beer?
Dream on, Bounty.
As the resident fey expert of this team, I should have advised everyone to stay home and forget about it instead of jumping in boots first. The fey are not to be messed with.
Had I really gone along with this because of Silversword’s intriguing grey eyes? Fourteen different kinds of idiot. I didn’t deserve to live.
I was so cold that I hurt from skin to spine. I was lying on something even colder. Get up, I told myself. Naturally, my body didn’t listen to me. I’ve always been the rebellious type. Get up, stupid cow, or you’ll die, I tried, but the only response was that my eyes flickered slowly and opened.
I lay on my back, staring up at silver trees. They were genuine silver, glossy and firm. Jewels twinkled down at me from the branches. Pretty.
There was a deep pain somewhere inside me. Probably my kidneys shutting down. I was lying on snow.
Get up, stupid cow, or you’ll die wearing a fake leather gymslip and pigtails. That was enough to kick my limbs into gear. I shoved myself painfully upwards. The fishnet stockings were soaked through, and I was so cold that I wasn’t even shivering anymore. Bad, bad sign.
I got to my feet, glad that I wasn’t wearing my favourite boots. They would have been ruined. Instead, I had ruined an ordinary pair of buckled schoolgirl shoes. They sagged on my feet, pathetic little swollen articles. I put one in front of the other, and started walking.
There was no sign of the canal, or the gondola. No sign of my six fellow sacrificial victims. It wasn’t dark anymore, but that didn’t help. All I could see was snow, more snow and a forest of silver and gold trees, their glittering branches dripping with precious jewels.
My feet had stopped hurting. Another bad sign.
Someone was humming. I followed the sound, struggling to make my limbs work. Finally, as I staggered up a slight rise of a snowdrift and looked over the other side, I saw another living soul.
She was wrapped in thick furs, and sat near a crackling fire. Mm. My favourite kind of hallucination. As I got closer, I saw that the fire was burning without any obvious signs of fuel except for a small black object. As I got even closer, I saw that the object was a shoe.
“Georginne?” It took me a few moments to remember her name, but when she turned her head I saw that it was, indeed, the little shoe-mistress.
“Hello,” she said calmly, her hands working on a new dancing slipper, this one pale green with a pattern of jewels on it. I wondered if she had harvested them from the trees. “Where did you get those clothes?” I asked.
Georginne reached into the large sack beside her and pulled out a pair of slippers. They were flimsy with pompoms of fur on the front, and break-your-neck high heels.
“Wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” I said sourly.
“Try them.”
Anything was better than the soggy school shoes currently freezing to the flesh of my feet. I pulled the flimsy pompom shoes on over my own, thinking they wouldn’t fit, but they did.
When I straightened up, I was warm and dry, clad in a fur cape and hood, long fur and leather trews, and boots so thick and fluffy that it felt like I had a grizzly bear on each foot. “Wow,” I said, feeling at a loss for anything more. “You’re good.”
“I do shoes,” she said, with a small shrug, concentrating on her work. “There’s a pair for every occasion.”
“Do you know where the others are?”
“She took them,” said Georginne.
I wanted to ask who ‘she’ was, but wasn’t sure I would like the answer. “She didn’t take you?”
Georginne held up her hand, curled around something I couldn’t see. “Invisible slippers. She missed me.”
I was starting to get some idea of what a shoe-mistress was capable of. Maybe the Senior Mistresses actually knew what they were doing when they assembled this team. I wondered what hidden talents the others had to offer. “Which direction did they go in? And do you have another pair of those invisible slippers?”
Georginne smiled.
–§–§–§–§–§–
We walked for ages, invisible. There were no footprints in the snow, which was another clue that we were in a
land with entirely different rules to the mortal realm.
I didn’t ask how Georginne knew we were heading in the right direction. I could only assume that she had a shoe-compass of some kind. In any case, we kept walking until I heard the music.
I’m not the kind of girl who spends a lot of time in bars making goo-goo eyes at the minstrels—well, unless they’re extremely cute. Music has never interested me; I hear nothing but a bunch of notes put together in silly patterns. I always thought it was a fey thing, until I met a bunch of genuine fey folk and found out that they like a good old singalong as much as the next creature. Being tone disinterested is just a Bounty thing.
When I heard the first strains of that music though, there in the snowfields of gods-knew-where, I took it all back. This music was the most amazing substance I had ever taken in through my ears. It was like chocolate and melted marshmallows and good sex and the top ten happiest moments of your life, all rolled into one glorious combination of sounds.
It made me want to dance.
I hurried forward, and Georginne moved with me. We could see each other while we were both invisible, don’t ask me how or why. Her little brown eyes glowed with something fierce and beautiful and I didn’t doubt that my eyes were the same. I didn’t care.
We burst out of the silver and gold trees, finally, and saw where the music was coming from. A huge glass pavilion, beautiful and improbable, sat upon the snow. It was draped with silk ribbons and winter-blooming red roses, and it was so beautiful that for a moment I just had to stand and stare.
Dancers moved across the pavilion floor in elegant patterns, with swirling fabrics and glittering shoes. I wanted to be one of them.
Georginne went first. She was such a meek little thing that part of me had thought that she, of all of us, was the least likely to be corrupted. But her carpet bag fell from one hand, and her shoe sack fell from the other. A few slippers spilled out into the snow. She ran forward, pulling off her invisibility slippers as she ran, then her fur-making shoes, until she was on the glass steps of the dancing pavilion in her original student courtesan outfit, pigtails askew. She kicked off her schoolgirl shoes, and her fishnet stockings, and stepped barefoot up on to the glass.
I saw what had lured her in. A line of dancing shoes stood waiting at the very edge of the dance floor. Georginne hesitated for one long moment, but only to choose which slippers she most wanted to slide on to her feet. One pair of shimmering silver shoes later, she was on the floor, clad in a silver gown that matched her shoes. A partner had been waiting for her, a dark man in a silver, princely costume, whose face I could not see no matter which way he turned. Georginne was lost in the swirling pattern of the dance.
Part of me knew this was bad and wrong and stupid. Even as the music bubbled up inside me, I knew that I was being tempted, and that if I followed Georginne on to the dance floor, I would be lost too.
I went anyway. Hey, there was a free frock on offer.
On my way to the glass pavilion, I tripped over one of Georginne’s spilled shoes. I shouldn’t have; it was nowhere near me. Perhaps it reached out and grabbed my foot? Stupid. Anyway, I landed awkwardly in the snow and for one shocked and insensibly frosty moment, the spell was broken. The shoe was a small leather thing, slightly lopsided and too small for a human foot. It looked like something my grandfather would wear. A hobgoblin shoe. In that stunned moment of freedom, I scooped up the shoe and stuffed it inside my gymslip, managing to lodge it in my breast-band.
Then the music had me again, and I didn’t care. I tore up those glass steps, yanking off my other shoes and flinging them all over the place in my haste. At the edge of the pavilion, the dancing slippers were waiting for me. I picked red ones, ruby red. Don’t ask me why. I never wear red, it’s totally not my colour. When your hair is mousy and your eyes are muddy green, bright scarlet doesn’t just wash you out, it throws you out with the wash water.
Nevertheless, I chose ruby slippers, and before I had moved three steps on that dance floor, I was clad in a whispering, swishing ballgown in that same vivid blood-jewel colour, and a dark prince swept me into the dance. His suit was ruby red too, and he wore rubies in his earlobes and at the curve of his throat.
He was beautiful, and he was mine. I gazed into his eyes. He gazed back into mine. Even in that moment, I couldn’t see his face.
We danced, and it would break your heart to see how well we did it. I’d never managed such effortless grace before, not while negotiating dance steps and music and someone else’s arms and feet. I usually mess up at least one of the three.
We were dancing like we were born to it, like we were the dance champions of the world, like it was easy. I felt like a goddess—hell, I felt like a courtesan. I loved the dance and I loved him and I loved the music. Happy, happy, happy.
Until I saw him, and suddenly my dance partner seemed a little bit less perfect.
Sir Silversword, champion of the Mocklore Empire, danced with a faceless dark princess every bit as glamorous and effortless as my own faceless dark prince. She wore green, from her silk gown to her emerald slippers, and something inside me went a little bit green when I saw her. In a brief, intense moment, I wanted him more than I wanted my dark prince.
Ungrateful, or what?
For a moment, I felt something sharp and leathery inside my bodice, like a body twinge. It was enough to make me change my steps, push the dance in a different direction. My prince followed obediently. What a man!
As we swirled and glided past Silversword and his green lady, I reached out a fraction—just an itty bit—and touched his hand, where it rested on her shoulder.
His hand shuddered for a moment, and then caught hold of mine. The manoeuvre was done expertly, before I could even say ‘may I cut in?’
Dancing was made for the swapping of partners. My dark prince in his ruby suit and the dark princess in green moved into each other’s arms, and I was in Silversword’s, without much effort at all.
It was a good place to be. Nice to be looking into the eyes of someone with a face. It occurred to me that if he was Sir Silversword, he had been knighted. I’d never danced with a knight before. Ma Fortuna would be so proud.
Silversword looked better in a formal suit than he had in his trashy festival clothes, or the courtesan boy outfit. The black dye had vanished from his hair, leaving it a nice dark blond. His eyes were grey. Emerald green was so not his colour, but he still looked pretty spiffy. My green knight.
We danced, and that was all that mattered.
But we had spoiled the perfectly arranged pattern of colours, and it wasn’t long before we came to the attention of the artistic mind behind this little display. I’d like to say that I had done it deliberately, to goad the queen bee out of her hive, but I hadn’t really considered any consequences other than being held in the arms of the most interesting man in this whole winter wonderland.
Call it a happy accident.
The music stopped. To be strictly accurate, the music stopped only for me. I stood still, and Silversword politely stood still too, but his head and fingers still moved to the rhythm of the music that I could no longer hear. Around me, the couples continued to step and whirl each other around in formal patterns. Eliander the freckle-faced hero swung past in a bright sapphire suit with a sapphire girl in his arms. A few moments later, Chas the assassin glided past, his girl shimmering in midnight silk and jet beading to match his dramatically black outfit. Even grim, hostile little Fredo the priest was dancing with a strangely neutral expression on his face. He didn’t suit the purple he was drenched in, but the faceless woman in his arms shone with amethysts.
All three of the boys—all four if I had bothered to look at Silversword’s feet—wore dancing shoes, equivalents of the ones on my own feet, on Demi’s and Georginne’s. I couldn’t help wondering where the mistress of this place had her shoes made—did she have a shoe-mistress of her own, churning out magic slippers by the bucket load?
I would be able to ask
her for myself, soon enough. Silversword and I stayed still, though he still held me loosely in his arms as if we were dancing.
Not only the music had stopped for me. I could no longer hear the sound of dancing slippers ringing against that shiny glass floor. I heard nothing but a single set of stiletto heels, clicking menacingly towards me.
Oh, help. Was it too late to pretend I was another dancing sheep? Part of me longed to hear that music again and drown myself in it. The hobgoblin shoe poked itself forcefully into my left breast, reminding me who I was and why I was here.
Because I was fourteen different kinds of idiot.
The dance changed. They were still swirling and parading and quick-quick-slowing and the rest, but instead of dancing in a series of circles, they fell back to form two distinct avenues.
As the last couple—Demi in a rose-quartz dress and her matching pink prince—drew back, I finally saw what all the fuss was about. The Faerie Quene flowed across the floor of the glass pavilion, a floating mass of amber jewels and golden silk. I couldn’t tell where the threatening clip-clop of heels was coming from, because her feet did not move. She moved like she was liquid, like elegance made into a wine and spilled slowly across the glass floor.
The Faerie Quene had been banished in the same year I was born, so I had never seen her in the flesh. Every portrait or statue of her portrayed a different woman, as if the artists had seen her face, body and style in entirely contrasting ways.
Nevertheless, the first thing I was sure of as this creature’s grace and beauty smacked me between the eyes was that this was not the Faerie Quene. There was no hint of fey about her, no scent of grass or moonlight. There was no breath of magic in her presence, for all that she was moving like a goddess with a diploma from the Courtesan Academy.
And just like that, I knew what she was.
I had no allies, no one to help me save the day; certainly no one to ride to my rescue. As the mistress of the glass pavilion poured towards me, I curled my fingernails hard into the back of Silversword’s hand.
Mocklore Box Set (Mocklore Chronicles) Page 95