The man grinned in a way that was more teeth than eyes. “Have you not heard, traveler? The Queen of the Longest Night’s come for the king. He named his son Belin as his successor. They’re not even waiting for the first day of spring for the coronation.”
Ifra turned back to Violet. Had she heard that? She was petting the horse. “The king’s… dead?”
The man nodded. “Where’ve you come from?” He looked cautious, clearly noting the fairy horse and Violet’s appearance-Ifra wasn’t sure if her fairy blood was obvious.
“Everywhere,” Ifra said, trying to calm his shock.
“Everywhere is close kin to nowhere,” the man said. Ifra wasn’t sure what that meant. He numbly accepted the paper cone overflowing with fluffy white kernels, glistening with butter, handing over a coin in response.
“Is there an inn here?” he said, struggling to keep composed.
“The big two-story building there.”
Ifra hurried back to Violet, stomping down the snow. She grabbed a huge handful of popcorn and shot her gaze heavenward with delight.
“King Luka’s dead,” Ifra said. “This is bad.”
“Luka or Belin, why does it matter?”
“Because Luka wasn’t as cruel as Belin is. I hoped we’d have a little more time.” Ifra swallowed. “I don’t want to go back to him. I don’t want to serve him.”
“You never told me Belin was crueler than Luka! I’m supposed to marry someone who’s cruel?”
“Luka wasn’t cruel, but it doesn’t matter now, not really,” Ifra said. “He was sort of ruthless, but not cruel.”
“Well, what do we do?”
“I don’t know. I need to think. Let’s see if there are rooms at the inn.”
The inn doubled as some sort of restaurant or pub. Beyond the small foyer with a spiral staircase and an empty desk, an intricately carved entranceway led to a room warmly lit by hearth and candles, full of fairies, singing and stomping.
Ay di day
We’ll gather up our swords
Ay di day
We’ll gather up the hoards
Ay di day
We’ll take to the roads
Down with the rebel king!
Violet looked up at him, her eyes glittering with excitement.
A bird flew from the rafters and off into the pub. Ifra watched it land on a girl’s shoulder, and she glanced back at the foyer and mouthed “Oh!”
She walked in, stuffing a rag in the waistband of her apron. “Are you in need of a room? They say there’s a storm coming.”
“Yes. Please, if you have any.”
“We have a couple left on the second floor. Over the pub. I’m not sure you’ll get a wink of sleep at a time like this, but…” She shrugged.
“That’s fine.”
Violet suddenly burst out, “Are you really going to take to the roads and march on the king?”
The girl’s cheeks flushed. “Oh… no, no, they’re not serious.”
“I’m Violet-”
Ifra covered her mouth. “Let’s see our room first and then maybe we can come have a drink.”
The girl gave them an odd look for a moment, and then unlocked a drawer and gave him a ring with a key on it. “It’s the last one down the hall, on the right. Five silvers. Show them your key downstairs and your dinner is on the house.”
“Thank you.” Ifra hustled Violet upstairs, hissing in a whisper, “Why were you going to tell them who you are?”
“Why does it matter? They’re my future subjects, and they hate the king!” She rolled back and forth on her toes. The music was pounding through the floorboards. “You told me about the Green Hoods and all that, but I never realized what it would really be like-people singing about the king! I bet if I walked into that pub right now and said I was a Tanharrow, they’d start singing for me. Maybe they’d go with us.” She gasped. “Maybe we could show up with an army!”
“Maybe that’s a horrid idea,” said Ifra. “What do you think Belin will do to me if we show up with an army?” He unlocked the door. The room was spare but clean, with two quilts on the bed and a rag rug on the floor.
“That bed is far too small,” Violet said. “Don’t they have any rooms with a larger bed?”
“I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“But then I’ll be cold.” She glared up at him suddenly. “Are you ever going to kiss me again?”
Ifra stared at her a moment, and she stared right back, her brown eyes firm and even indignant.
“Are you serious?” he said. “My master is now King Belin. You aren’t queen yet. He could change his mind about needing a Tanharrow on the throne. He could ask me to kill you. He could ask me to attack the Green Hoods, and I might take out an awful lot of them before they kill me. We have advantages, chances to win this, but we must be careful because there is a lot at stake. We have to consider what we’re doing. We can’t just charge into some town, tell everyone who you are, and get up an army.”
“But…”
“And you know what else? I am sick and tired of you being so ungrateful for everything that’s put before you. You complain about every meal and every bed you’re ever given, even when the people offering hardly have anything themselves. I am sorry-more sorry than I can ever express-about what happened with Erris and Celestina, and I know this is not an easy situation for you, but being a good queen isn’t about having everything handed to you on a silver platter. A good master wants his servants to be happy, and a good ruler wants the same for her subjects. There is give-and-take for the good of everyone.”
Violet sat down hard on the bed and started crying. Ifra stayed near the door. He probably shouldn’t talk to her like that. She likely would be queen, and his only hope of freedom, but, well, all the rules his tutor had drummed into his head clearly hadn’t been drummed hard enough.
“It’s not that I’m not grateful,” Violet snapped. “I just-” She broke off. More crying.
He was finding it increasingly uncomfortable to just stand there. “I’m going downstairs for some dinner. Join me when you feel better.”
The singing in the pub had ceased for the moment, but the talk was loud. Ifra found a table with two chairs and showed his key in return for a plate of roasted corn, sauerkraut and apples, squash soup with small red-speckled beans, and a cup of hard cider. The food smelled good enough to get his appetite going even as he fretted over Violet.
He really shouldn’t talk to her like that.
But, no, she needed to hear it. The Green Hoods deserved a good queen, and if he had destroyed Erris, the least he could do was put some sense into the last remaining Tanharrow.
I’m in way over my head.
He was halfway through the plate when Violet appeared in the doorway. She’d been wearing the same childish dress-gray with black velvet trim-for days. She kept her hair down now, not in bows, but she still looked like a lost child searching for her mother, although Ifra guessed the girl serving him was only a year or two older. Violet caught sight of him and edged over, slipping into the empty chair.
“I’m sorry, Ifra,” she said.
“It’s all right.”
“I never… realized… I don’t know.”
He spread his hands. “Join me for dinner.”
That put the ghost of a smile on her lips. “I will.”
The serving girl brought a plate of food right out to her. The room was even busier now-all the chairs were gone, the bar was full, and some people who had come in after their friends were just standing at tables, holding drinks and talking. Individual conversations were impossible to catch, but the names of Luka and Belin were on everyone’s lips.
“We need to make a plan,” Ifra said. “And we need to make it carefully. We know what we want. To find Erris, if we can. To put you on the throne. To get the fairies behind you. To get Belin out of the picture. But what does Belin want?”
Violet leaned in closer. She still had that spark of excitement in her eyes-probably a par
t of her still felt like she was in a story. “Well, it sounds like people aren’t too happy with him. He wants me so people won’t be as upset, but… he must also want to keep me from going anywhere or talking to anyone important.”
“Yes. And he’ll know that if you’re on the throne, you can give me orders.”
“Can I give orders that contradict his orders?”
“Sometimes jinn are bound to families, and if that happens, the person usually names a successor, like the eldest son, who takes precedence in giving commands. Luka named Belin as his successor to the throne, so I assume he’ll take precedence. But I really won’t know unless you gave me contradicting orders, because the commands will tug at me.” He frowned. “Try not to do it. I don’t want to get pulled in two different directions.”
“I’m going to try my best to seem like a stupid little girl who just wants dresses and cake. I’m good at that.”
“I bet.”
She gave him a withering look. “I suppose I will order you around anyway, in stupid ways. Like, ‘bring me my slippers!’ Make him think I don’t see you as anything but a slave. We don’t want him to know there’s anything between us.”
Was there something between them? Ifra couldn’t stop looking at her, even when she was acting spoiled. Maybe even especially then. Not that she ought to just get away with it. “Maybe there won’t be, after all of that,” he said.
She briefly stuck out her tongue. “What about Nimira?”
“What about her?”
“She and Erris were going to look for Erris’s real body in the fairy kingdom. What if she tries to come after us now? Celestina-if she’s all right-she… she’ll be worried about me too. I know she will. She’s sort of a mother hen sometimes.”
“I don’t know.” Ifra ran his fingers through his hair. So many personalities to keep track of, and how was he supposed to anticipate what they all would do? “How would she even make it through the fairy gate? We didn’t have any trouble, but that’s because of me. Would Nimira be able to pass as a trader?”
“I don’t know, but I think she’s pretty clever.”
“Maybe we can send her a letter,” he said. “Tell her what our plans are, so she’ll hopefully wait it out. I think she’d only be disruptive at the moment.”
“Yes.”
Violet trailed off. A man with a flute and a girl with a fiddle had walked in the door, playing as they went, which prompted the reappearance of several drums and rattles that had been set aside earlier in favor of eating. Conversation turned impossible, unless they wanted to scream directly into each other’s ears. Everyone joined in the old songs about the Green Hoods, songs about heroes hanging, revenge, rebellion.
Ifra felt vaguely nervous, comparing this raucous gathering to the stately hall of Telmirra-they seemed worlds apart. Belin didn’t even seem to know how discontented the border folk were, or maybe he simply didn’t care.
Please, please don’t send me to crush these people. Ifra couldn’t even mention these fears to Violet. It was too awful to contemplate.
Violet leaned close enough to shout into his ear. “This is so exciting! Think what they’d say if they knew I was here!” Before he could respond, she added, “Don’t worry! I won’t.” She sat back, hands clapping.
A young man approached her, his cheeks flushed. “Care to dance, miss?”
She glanced at Ifra.
“Go ahead,” he said, too fast, seized by an impulse to push her away, to show himself he didn’t care. She gave him a slightly impish look and then took the proffered hand. The young man whirled her into the heart of the crowd, packed in the once-open space in the middle of the floor between tables.
The fairy men dressed quite a bit differently from the humans of Cernan. They didn’t shy from color. Dark blue and forest green coats whirled and bobbed in the firelight, while other men had stripped to shirtsleeves and embroidered vests. Violet’s clothes still looked out of place-too drab and too fussy in the wrong sort of way-buttons and puffs and flounces. But her heart belonged here, Ifra could tell. She looked far away from her concerns, smiling, hair flying, cheeks full of high color.
Ifra finished his cider and stood. He started clapping with the rest. When Violet saw him, she beamed and took her leave from the young man, slipping between two other couples and offering her hand to Ifra. Her best smile seemed to be for him alone.
Ifra took her hand, pulling her against him-you couldn’t move in the room unless you were close, but he wanted her there, in any case. They fell into step, feet stumbling because neither really knew how to dance. Of course, Ifra had never heard music like this before, but it reminded him of the dances he’d seen at the bazaar. Drums needed no language.
When the song was done, Violet grabbed his collar and dropped a kiss on his lips. She laughed and went back to her own unfinished cider. Someone had taken their chairs during the song. A new song began with all the wobble of a newborn animal, and then someone came in with an accordion and threw everything off. The musicians were arguing about what to do next.
Violet looked at him over the rim of her cup. Her chest was heaving from the exertion of the dance, although she was trying to play coy.
He slipped an arm around her waist. She put down the cup. He kissed her this time, and hard. She pulled him to her-much more boldly than he expected a girl to move.
“What kind of books have you been reading all these years?” he said.
She clung to him, spoke into his ear. “I just-I’ve been sick forever, and once I got better, I thought then I’d die, because I wanted to experience everything so much. I wanted the whole world. And when I saw you…”
She sat atop the table, drew him closer and kept kissing. No one even seemed to notice them. The music had finally found its way again. A faint haze of tobacco hovered in the room.
It was only later, much later, after they had danced again and kissed again, had danced some more, after he had carried a half-drunk and entirely exhausted Violet to bed, that he realized he too had moved far away from his concerns. That night, he had not been a jinn, with all the responsibilities it entailed.
He had been, simply, Ifra.
And a very, very happy Ifra, at that.
Chapter 21
Every day, I waited to hear the sound of the train whistle on the winter air. Annalie managed to communicate with Karstor through spirit channels and was told he was sending a doctor as soon as possible. Mostly, I heard nothing but branches cracking from the ice, or the wind moaning at the windows. February storms kept the train from running, and even on pleasant days I imagined that Cernan, the last stop on the route, was hardly a priority for the men clearing the tracks.
Celestina grew better by inches. She still couldn’t move much or get out of bed without help, but she could sit propped up on pillows without too much pain, making it easier for her to read. Whenever I came to bring her food, however, I usually found her sleeping or simply staring at the ceiling.
I tried to cheer her up, but I couldn’t seem to summon the strength for it when I badly needed cheering up myself.
How I missed Erris and his jokes. Sometimes it had irritated me, but now I realized how much I loved him for it too. When he had been trapped at a piano, only able to communicate with our system for matching letters to the piano keys, he had still tried to make light of the situation and cheer me up. I wouldn’t be able to do that. I was sure. I couldn’t even imagine what sort of bottomless despair would come over me in those conditions. There was something so wonderfully normal about a joke, so that even though our relationship had been almost entirely unconventional, I could forget about clockwork gears and fairy royalty, and see him only as himself.
But he was gone, and the only thing to do, really, was work. Annalie did nearly all the caretaking for Celestina, but she wasn’t a good cook, so I managed that. Annalie brought Celestina trays of food and cups of tea, dumped her chamber pot, made poultices for the swelling and bruising, helped her change clothes.
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I baked bread, chopped vegetables and stirred stews, and washed endless dishes. Neither Annalie nor I had ever known a life entirely devoid of servants. We could manage the simple things easily enough, but we certainly didn’t know how to wash clothes, and at some point it had to be done. I took notes from Celestina’s instructions.
First we gathered snow to melt, and then we had to heat the water. I didn’t realize how much I could sweat in the dead of winter until it came time to stir the clothes, standing over the hot water. Annalie and I took turns pounding and moving the stick around in the tub, then pulling the clothes out.
We’d hardly gotten anywhere, and we were both panting and aching. Celestina always did the hardest work in the house, even little things like grating potatoes for potato pancakes or kneading bread. She did it so automatically that I’d never thought about it before.
Celestina’s bell rang from upstairs. She needed something.
Annalie started to laugh, in a spent way. “Ohhh, not now. How do poor women ever manage, with so many things to do and babies?”
“I really don’t know.”
“And there are two of us!” Annalie groaned. “But I really don’t want to go up there.”
“I’ll go…”
“No, no, I’ll do it. I know you don’t like nursing. But maybe you can start taking the whites out and putting the darks in.”
“Do you think the whites are clean?”
“I have no earthly idea, but they’re as clean as they’ll get.”
While Annalie disappeared up the stairs, I hooked the sodden clothes on the end of the stick. My arms were shaky from exertion, and the clothes seemed to weigh tons. A nightgown slipped off the stick and fell on the already wet floor. I cursed and hurriedly dropped the rest of the clothes into the wooden tub. Scalding drops of water splashed on my arms. I bent to pick up the nightgown, back muscles screaming, and slipped it in with the rest.
There were still more clothes to be moved. Still the dark clothes to pound. Then the washboard, then rinsing and wringing, and then hanging it all to dry. I had the paper with all the horrid instructions right in front of me, the ink bleeding because along with everything else, it had gotten wet.
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