by Lisa Henry
AT NIGHT the wind howled through the narrow streets of Anhaga, rattling the shutters of the Three Fishes. Harry, who had started off on the side of the bed closest to the window, somehow migrated to the other side and curled up like a pill bug against Min’s back. Min lay awake for some time. He thought once that he heard the echo of hoofbeats in the street and the sound of voices that held the cadence of strange music. He told himself it was the wind, but a shiver still ran up his spine. It took a long time for sleep to claim him.
THE SUN rolled in on the mist, sinking into it and shrouding the village in salt-sharp droplets that seemed to hang in the air and cling to Min’s stubble when he pushed the shutters open to greet the day. Across the square, the drab curtain in the hedgewitch’s window sagged under the weight of the damp. Shop doors and shutters were being thrown open up and down the square, the barrage of noise swallowed in the heavy mist. Horses clopped into the square, pulling squealing carts behind them. The carters leaned heavily on the brakes as they navigated the steep streets that fed onto the square.
Min shivered in the cold but left the shutters open when he went to dress. What was the appropriate wardrobe for a reeve? Hopefully not too dissimilar from that of a scoundrel and a thief. Min tugged on a clean linen shirt and buttoned a blue tunic over it. Countless lovers had told him before that blue brought out his eyes, and who was Min to go against popular opinion like that? He knew he was handsome enough to be vain about it. Fortunately he had Harry to keep his conceit in check.
“How do I look?” he preened, shoving the bundle of blankets that was his nephew.
Harry appeared, squinting, his face creased and his hair doing wild things. He looked Min up and down and grunted. “Like you’re trying too hard to get laid.”
“I never have to try hard,” Min reminded him. “Now hurry up and get dressed. We’re going to meet our hedgewitch today.”
Harry rolled out of bed in a flurry of scrawny limbs and a shock of blond hair. He climbed into his pants and tugged his shirt and tunic on. Harry didn’t have the eye for color Min did, despite Min’s best efforts to educate him. His yellow shirt and black tunic, both worn a size too large for his frame, made him look like a sloppy bumblebee. One day the boy might grow into himself, but today was not that day.
Min’s gaze caught on the curse mark on Harry’s cheek.
He hoped, if their luck held, to see that day.
Harry pulled the hood of his tunic up and then grumbled and muttered to himself as Min led the way downstairs. They didn’t stop in the taproom of the Three Fishes but headed out into the square instead. The air was heavy and tasted like salt. Min drew a breath, gazed around the square, and followed his growling stomach toward the scent of hot bread. The sign hanging over the door of the nearby bakery showed either a rye loaf or a mildewed one.
Min dug into his purse and dropped a few coins into Harry’s hand. He did enjoy being generous with the Sabadines’ money.
“Keep your eye out, kid,” he said.
Harry nodded and slunk away.
Min visited the bakery first and bought a round roll of bread. He picked at it while he made a slow, curious circuit of the square and eventually doubled back to a cart selling elvers cooked in oil and garlic. Min stood in the street and ate a bowl and wished his mother was here in Anhaga to see him eating elvers like they were a cheap street food. She would seethe with jealousy. Also, if she were here to get tormented and killed by the fae, Min would be totally fine with that.
Slowly, the mist began to dissipate.
Min cleaned his bowl with the remainder of his bread and watched the square come alive with people. He smiled and nodded at those not too wary to meet the gaze of a reeve, or of a stranger, or whichever one it was they found they liked less. He was close to Kallick Sparrow’s green front door—close enough to see the paint peeling away like scales—when it opened and the hedgewitch stepped outside.
An unremarkable man. A brown dog, Harry would consider him. A long face with a longer nose, skin sagging with age. Loose folds of it hanging from his jowls like a chicken’s wattle. He was balding, and what little hair remained on his crown was gray. He wore a green kirtle that was stained with wear.
“Good day, Kallick,” a woman said in passing.
The hedgewitch blinked his dun-colored eyes and jerked his head in a nod. The corners of his mouth quirked up in a smile not unlike rictus. His voice, when he spoke, sounded like it had been pushed through bellows. “Good day.”
Min stepped toward Kallick. “Sir?”
The hedgewitch stopped, his expression almost totally blank for a moment before a long blink brought it back into focus. He tilted his head to look Min up and down. “Who are you?”
“Aramin Decourcey,” Min said, hoping a name that sounded as impressive as his was some form of currency in a place like Anhaga. He then balanced the truth with a lie. “I am a reeve.”
The hedgewitch’s blank gaze flicked over him again.
“Heron recommended I seek you out,” Min continued. “I came from the south yesterday. I was in the saddle all day and am suffering chaffing.”
Kallick’s gaze met his and yet somehow failed to connect. “The cure will cost you a quadrans. Be waiting in the square at noon. I will bring it to you.”
“I could collect if from your house, if that is more convenient,” Min offered.
“No,” Kallick said. He turned his head, gaze falling on something on the other side of the square, and stepped away from Min. “Good day.”
“Good day.” Min watched him walk away, an uneasy weight settling in the pit of his stomach. There was something very strange about Kallick the hedgewitch. Something about the way he moved and spoke, his reactions just a fraction too slow, too perfunctory. Something hollow and cold.
Min was halfway back to the Three Fishes when he felt it: the warm frisson of magic prickling his skin like an unasked question. Fucking Gifted, always poking around where they weren’t invited. Min pretended not to notice. Kallick’s interest may have been simple curiosity. Few strangers came to Anhaga, after all. And Min was as uninteresting as a blank slate and unthreatening as a kitten. Kallick wouldn’t find even a hint of magic in him.
Min headed inside the Three Fishes and climbed the stairs. Harry was sitting on a stool by the window, his feet up on the sill.
“Well?” Min asked.
“He’s buying bread,” Harry announced. “Just an ordinary, boring old man buying bread and milk, but something about him stinks like a three-day-old fish.”
“I thought so too.”
“What now?” Harry asked.
“We watch,” Min said.
Harry nodded and scratched idly at the curse mark on his cheek.
THE NIGHT drew in, cold and close.
The hedgewitch’s salve sat unused in a little clay pot on the table by the bed. Min wasn’t stupid enough to ignore every instinct in him that warned him not to trust Kallick.
Harry was red-cheeked and bleary-eyed from too much beer. He sat cross-legged on the bed, squinting at the pages of a book. He followed the crowded lines of text with a bitten-down fingernail for a few minutes and then shut the book. “What’s the plan, Min? You know if you don’t start doing reeve things soon, they’ll all begin to wonder about us.”
“Reeve things?”
Harry wrinkled his nose and shrugged his skinny shoulders. “Inspecting things? Counting things?”
Apparently Harry was as vague on the details as Min. It wasn’t as though either of them had ever paid taxes or intended to.
Min took one of the stools out from under the table and moved it close to the window. He sat and regarded the closed shutters quietly for a moment and then reached out and unlatched them.
“Min?” Harry’s voice wavered, hardly a whisper.
Min pushed the shutters open, just wide enough that he had a narrow view of the square and of Kallick’s house. The sky was cloudless and the moonlight was bright. Kallick’s window was open, the
curtain flapping in a desultory way. The square was empty except for a few seagulls inspecting the rough cobbles for scraps and a thin black cat that streaked across the open space before being swallowed by the darkness of the houses. In front of every doorway Min could make out, except Kallick’s, sat a saucer, or a mug, or some other small container that caught the shine of the moonlight. Min thought of Heron’s daughter, carrying jugs of milk out into the square before night fell.
“Min!” Harry hissed in an undertone, scrambling off the bed and rummaging through his satchel. He sat up clasping the little bundle of rowan twigs he’d been given in Pran, holding them in front of him as though they were a shield or perhaps a weapon.
Min watched the square.
It was hours before anything happened. The night air, sharp with the taste of salt, pinched cold into Min’s cheeks. Harry had long since fallen asleep, forsaking the bed for the comparative security of keeping his back to the wall and keeping Min between himself and the open window. He’d dozed off with his head resting on Min’s thigh, one hand still clutching the rowan. Min sat in the darkness of the room, watching the moonlight illuminate the square, watching that curtain flap-flap-flap in the breeze. He listened to the sound of the ocean below the village, the tiny waves breaking endlessly against the shore, the rhythmic push and pull that lulled him ever closer to sleep.
Min had slipped deeper than he realized when the clip of hoof beats on cobblestones and the jangle of trappings ringing like bells jolted him properly awake. His heart pounded fast as the riders approached his narrow field of vision.
They were luminous. More luminous than the moonlight should accord. Riders on pale horses. Some walked too. Tall and lean and sharp-featured. Min thought he saw both men and women, but such a distinction seemed petty. They were beautiful and terrible at the same time. They were the sickening moment right before the dream twists into a nightmare.
Min watched as the fae paused in front of Kallick’s house. He heard them speak in a language he didn’t recognize but resonated deeply in the part of his mind he usually reserved for music. One of the riders dismounted and approached Kallick’s door. He raised a hand to it—
A flash of blue light sent him stumbling back.
Holy fuck. Kallick had warded his house against the fae. That was… that was impossible! Surely it was impossible. Min wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it for himself. He scarcely believed it as it was.
The voices of the fae took on a harsher note, and Min leaned away from the window, suddenly afraid of being seen. He heard them move on again, hooves clopping and trappings jingling, and sat for a long time without moving. When Min finally looked out on the square again, it was empty.
“I DON’T like this plan,” Harry said the next morning as they wandered the street behind the square. Behind Kallick’s house. “This is a shit plan.”
Min’s gaze slid over the curse mark on the boy’s cheek. “It’s the only plan we’ve got, kid.”
The thing with kidnapping—and Min was by no means an expert, despite his mother’s insistence he’d stolen Harry—was that it was a crime best carried out under the cover of darkness. Except in Anhaga, of course, where the fae walked the streets at night. Min didn’t want to attract the attention of the fae, but he also didn’t want to attract the attention of the townsfolk who set up in the square every morning at a little past dawn and stayed all day.
As far as they could tell, Kallick’s house had no exit into the back street. It meant Min would have to go in the front door and out the same way. And it meant he had to be leaving, with Kazimir Sabadine tucked under his arm, before dawn. Which meant entering the house at night when the fae were still abroad. Which meant that Harry’s assessment of the plan was entirely accurate.
“I’ll go in an hour before dawn,” Min said. “The fae were long gone by then last night.”
He stepped around a mound of rubbish that had been dumped in the narrow street. It stank of rotting fish. A cloud of excited flies hovered over it.
“Last night they were,” Harry said, “but how do you know it’s the same every night?”
Min didn’t. But he also didn’t have much of a choice. Usually he liked to take his time to study his mark, to note patterns, to note opportunities, and to consider all of his options, but every night the moon rose meant another day closer to Harry’s death. Min needed to act now.
“Harry,” Min said, and put a hand on his shoulder. “We don’t have time.”
For a moment he thought Harry would say something typically blunt, but abruptly his blue eyes filled with tears and he looked younger than his sixteen years. “I’m sorry, Min.”
“I know,” Min said and pulled him into a hug. “I know you are, Harry.”
He couldn’t help looking around him just to make sure—even if nobody in Anhaga knew them—that this spontaneous expression of affection went unwitnessed. Min had a reputation to uphold, after all.
Chapter 5
THE FAE came at night, moving through Anhaga wreathed in the strange, ghostly light they carried with them. Min watched through a crack in the shutters as they again stopped at Kallick Sparrow’s door and were again repulsed by whatever wards the man had worked. It was powerful magic that belonged more to the dark arcana of the sorcerers than to the nature charms of simple hedgewitches. It unsettled Min, but no more than anything else that had come before. The sooner he and Harry were back in Amberwich, the sooner Min could pluck the Sabadines free like the burrowing ticks they were. And then he intended to spend a lifetime dreaming up ways, both magnificent and petty, of fucking them over for hurting Harry.
In the hour before dawn, Min prepared. He slung the bag carrying the iron shackles over his shoulder and tucked his knife into his belt. Min had always felt that simplicity was the key to a successful plan, although it was a philosophy formed as much by laziness as anything else. He’d unhooked the collar from the cuffs, given there were two of the Gifted to deal with in the hedgewitch’s house.
“Get packed,” Min said to Harry in a low voice. “Have the horses ready to leave before dawn.”
Harry nodded. He was wearing his rowan twigs tucked into the laces of his shirt. “Be safe,” he said.
Min forced a smile. “You too, kid. Watch you don’t let one of them kick you in the skull.”
“Would hardly make a fucking dent,” Harry said, lifting his chin.
Min grinned at him, checked the weight of the satchel wouldn’t pull him off-balance, and then pushed the shutters open and climbed out the window.
The windowsill was damp and slippery and the footholds were few and far between, but Min had always been surefooted. He dropped to the ground, the iron in his satchel clinking, and looked around the moonlit square. Fear froze him for a moment—what if the fae returned?—but he was out in the open now with no choice but to move.
He straightened up and darted across the square.
The strange itch and tingle of magic crawled over his skin as he reached Kallick’s door and ran his fingers down the peeling paint.
The lock was flimsy, and Min made easy work of it with his knife. Typical of the Gifted. They never did expect attack via such mundane methods as a broken lock. Arrogant fuckers.
Min pushed open the door of Kallick’s house and stepped inside.
It was dark and smelled of dust and damp and pungent unidentifiable herbs. Min blinked for a moment, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. The room he was in appeared to be a storefront, with a counter dividing it and shelves against the back wall. There was a doorway behind the counter that Min assumed led into the rest of the house. With any luck he could head upstairs and find where Kazimir Sabadine was sleeping, without even waking his master. Of course, Min should have known better than to count on luck.
“Who are you?” a creaky voice wheezed, and Min saw the shape of the hedgewitch looming up in the doorway.
Min squinted at him in the gloom, brushing his hand against the knife in his belt just
to reassure himself it was still there. Min wasn’t a violent person by nature. He preferred flight to fight every time. But he knew how to snap and bite if he was cornered.
Kallick raised his hand to make some sign, and a faint green light illuminated the room. It flickered briefly and then grew stronger, bathing Kallick in its glow. The old man’s saggy face was blank. “Aramin Decourcey,” he said in a monotone.
“The very same,” Min said, and wondered if there was any way he could actually bargain with the old man.
“What do you want?”
“I want your prentice,” Min said. “His family sent me to bring him home.”
A flicker of some unknowable emotion passed over Kallick’s face, and he raised his hand again. A ball of light appeared in his palm. Fire.
“Now that’s very impressive for a hedgewitch,” Min commented, dodging as the hedgewitch flung the fire toward him. Too impressive for a hedgewitch, in all honesty, but it made no difference to Min if the man was a hedgewitch or a wizard, or a mage, or a sorcerer. The hierarchy of the Gifted was pure semantics to Min, although it rankled that the Sabadines had lied to him. No common hedgewitch should be able to create fire.
Except if the Sabadines had lied, then so had Aiode Nettle. And it wasn’t as though Min trusted her or anything—he trusted nobody; it saved time and inevitable disappointment—but he couldn’t think of any reason she would lie. Which meant that whatever was going on with Kallick Sparrow, his fellow Gifted were just as much in the dark.
The ball of fire hit the wall behind Min and vanished into nothing.
Kallick raised his hand again.
Min lunged forward. So few of the Gifted expected a physical attack. He hit Kallick with his shoulder, hard, and the old man stumbled backward. Min caught his wrist and dragged his hand back down before he could pull some more magic out of the air, and then they were falling. Min heard the crack of Kallick’s skull as they hit the floor together.