Lottie had never seen Fife as hysterical as this. She barely avoided getting conked in the head by one of his flailing feet. Clearly, the one person who best knew what to do in this situation was in no position to help. She sucked in a cold breath, steeled herself, and approached the bloodied circle of grass.
Adelaide gasped. “Lottie, no! Don’t touch—”
Lottie knelt beside the motionless body. She could make out legs, curled inward, and shoulders, hunched tightly together. After another steadying breath, she pushed at the shoulders until the body lurched onto its back, revealing the wisp’s face.
Lottie recognized him. He was one of the Wisp Guard. She had seen him before, patrolling the pergola and the surrounding wood. Lottie wondered if he had simply been doing his duty when the whitecaps attacked.
Then she felt it. The wisp’s thumb brushed her wrist, ever so slightly.
“He’s still alive!” she cried to the others.
Frantically, Lottie pushed away the wisp’s heavy cloak. Something sharp caught at the hem. Lottie tugged it back to reveal a large spearhead, made of black metal, lodged into the wisp’s side. Her hands came back slick with blood.
Fife hovered her side. He was no longer in hysterics, but he was still shaking badly.
“This can’t have happened long ago,” he said, “or he would’ve lost all his blood by now. Come on, Spool.”
Fife held a yellow kingfisher. The genga was quivering, clearly unnerved by the bloody tableau before it. Fife stroked her back reassuringly. Spool gave a nervous twitter, then puffed up her chest and, with a cough, produced a filmy vial from her beak. Hurriedly, Fife unstoppered the vial and poured its contents—Piskie Juice—on the wisp’s wound.
“What else do we do?” Lottie asked. “Should we try to take the spear out?”
“NO!” Fife threw himself between Lottie and the body. “Oberon, Lottie, that is the very last thing you want to do.”
“Well, I don’t know!” Lottie said, feeling panic seize her for the first time. “I’m not a healer apprentice like you!”
“Yeah, well you’re an actual healer!”
Lottie shrank at Fife’s words. Tears pricked her eyes. He was right: if anyone should be useful at a time like this, it was her. Healing was her keen, yet here she was, stooped next to a wisp who desperately needed healing, and she could do nothing. What good were her stupid lessons now?
“You shouldn’t even be touching him,” Fife said, too distracted to notice Lottie’s wet eyes. “You being half-human.”
“What’s that supposed to—”
Lottie was interrupted by the arrival of Cynbel and several members of the Wisp Guard. Oliver was leading them. Hastily, Lottie blotted her eyes.
“He’s still alive,” she said, as two of the guards pulled her and Fife from the body. “He needs help right away.”
A flutter of white wings zipped past.
“Keats will fetch Father,” Oliver said. “He’ll know what to do. Lottie, your hands. Fife, her hands!”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Fife said, uncorking yet another filmy vial that Spool had produced. “Ada, make yourself useful, would you? Get her cleaned up with this.”
Though she looked terrified to come anywhere near the bloodied body, Adelaide snatched the vial from Fife.
“Come on,” she said, tugging Lottie’s shoulder. “Get away from them. You too, Eliot. It’s not safe for you.”
Lottie stumbled after Adelaide to a clean patch of grass, where Adelaide sat her down and ordered her to hold out her hands.
“Keep them cupped tight,” she instructed. “Don’t move. Just let the salve do its work.”
Then Adelaide poured out the contents of the vial—something sludgy and teal-colored. The sludge moved in strange ways across Lottie’s skin, crawling up against the tug of gravity. It sizzled, but it did not burn, and as it slowly evaporated, it left her skin entirely clean of wisp blood.
“You okay?” Eliot asked, his hand on Lottie’s knee. “Does it hurt?”
“No,” she said, “but, Adelaide, what do you mean, it isn’t safe? What’s wrong with wisp blood?”
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you? Wisp blood makes humans fall into deep sleep. Too much, and—”
Cynbel’s shouts drowned out the rest of Adelaide’s words.
“Take him to the infirmary immediately!” he was barking to the other wisps.
“I don’t think he should be moved,” said Fife. “If you just wait for Mr. Wilfer, he’ll tell you the same—”
“Quiet, halfling,” Cynbel said. “You’re no healer.”
“I’m telling you,” Fife argued. “He shouldn’t be moved. He’s losing too much blood as it is.”
“Take him,” Cynbel ordered the guards.
Four floating wisps hauled up the body. As they did so, blood gushed from the wisp’s chest and spattered to the ground. They carried him off, leaving a trail of white in their wake, and Lottie remembered the line of poetry Oliver had quoted days earlier: paint the ground with snowy blood.
“As for you,” said Cynbel, turning on Fife. “You keep forgetting that your place in these woods is precarious. Wilfer may have authority here, but you do not.”
Fife floated to Cynbel’s eye level, his face purple with anger. “You seem to keep forgetting that I’m a Dulcet.”
Cynbel smiled without humor. “You may be a Dulcet, but you will never have authority over me. Go tell ghost stories with the other children.”
As Cynbel floated away, Fife called him a long, sibilant word Lottie did not recognize but that caused Adelaide to gasp.
“What?” said Fife, shrugging. “That’s precisely what he is.”
Oliver’s brow was stitched in troubled thought, his eyes a deep yellow.
“Fife,” he said. “Whitecaps are supposed to drain their victims of blood, right?”
Fife nodded.
“Drain them entirely?” Oliver said.
Again, Fife nodded.
“What are you saying?” Lottie asked Oliver. “You don’t think this was whitecaps?”
Fife didn’t look too happy with this development.
“Who else could’ve done it?” he asked. “Who else would kill some random wisp on Autumntide?”
“I don’t know,” said Oliver, “but you yourself said the wound had to be recent, and it’s been nighttime for a while. The whitecaps are only supposed to come out in the day.”
“They could’ve overslept.”
“What about the spearhead?” said Lottie. “It was in the wisp’s side. Do whitecaps use weapons like that?”
Fife licked his lips. “The stories say they just use their bare teeth.”
“Four rows of teeth, right?” Lottie said. “Wouldn’t that leave marks all over the wisp’s body? I didn’t see any.”
“Who else would want to kill a wisp guard?” asked Eliot. “Does this kind of thing happen a lot?”
Eliot looked nervous. The color had gone out of his face. Lottie hadn’t seen him so pale since back in September, when he had been gravely ill. She wrapped her hand around his.
“Of course not,” she said, looking to Fife for confirmation. “Does it?”
“Wisps are dying here all the time,” said Fife, “but from Plague, not murder.”
“Why are we still standing around?” Adelaide nodded uneasily at the bloodstained grass. “It smells foul, and I feel terrible. And for all we know, whatever attacked the wisp could still be close by.”
“Ada’s right,” said Oliver. “We shouldn’t be here.”
Together, they headed for the pergola, following the bloody trail the Wisp Guard had left behind. Eliot, whose mittened hand was still entwined with Lottie’s, gave a sudden cough. Then another, dry and staggered. Then another.
“Eliot?” said Lottie. “Are you okay?”
Eliot nodded, but he coughed again, a series of jagged barks. Then, just as quickly as it had come on, the attack subsided.
“I’m fine,” he said, wip
ing at his watering eyes. He smiled sheepishly at the others. “Just swallowed the wrong way. It’s the cold air, that’s all.”
They continued on their way, but Lottie didn’t stop staring at Eliot. She knew those coughs.
She knew it wasn’t just the cold air.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Tailor of the Wisps
THE CONGREGATION of wisps was gone from the glass pergola. The table sat vacant, strewn with half-drunk cups of spiced cider. Only a few black-cloaked wisps remained, and they stood at a distance, speaking in low tones. The air was full of jittery unrest.
“Shouldn’t we get inside, too?” said Adelaide, casting a nervous look around.
“Why ever do you want to go inside?” Fife asked. “What is there to hide from? I thought whitecaps were make-believe.”
Adelaide paled. “I didn’t say it was a whitecap. I just think we should be in our yews, where it’s safe.”
“Fife,” said Oliver. “Look.”
He pointed to a wisp guard floating at the entrance of the pergola. The guard was staring straight at Fife.
“Son of Silvia,” she called. “Your presence is requested in the Royal Bower.”
For a moment, Fife looked confused. Then his face hardened into a sneer.
“Oh, is it?” he said, hands on his hips. “Fancy that.”
“You and your friends,” said the guard, who either had not picked up on Fife’s unpleasantness or did not think it worthy of attention. “The Wilfers, the Heir of Fiske, and the human. You have all been summoned to appear before the Seamstress and the Tailor. Come.”
Fife looked ready to argue. He looked ready to refuse.
“Come on, Fife,” Oliver said. “Don’t be difficult. Not at a time like this.”
“I wasn’t going to,” muttered Fife, which everyone knew was a lie.
They followed the guard into the pergola. She led them down its long hallway, passing courtyard after courtyard. The River Lissome flowed alongside them, cutting a path through the center of the glass floor, and the soft splash of moving water echoed against the walls.
“Should we be freaking out?” Eliot whispered to Lottie.
“I don’t know,” she whispered back.
She had no idea what the Seamstress and Tailor could possibly want from the five of them at a time like this, but she had a creeping suspicion it couldn’t be anything good.
They reached the threshold of the Royal Bower. Its frosted glass doors were closed.
“Wait here,” the guard instructed before slipping inside and shutting them out.
“All that sneaking around for nothing,” said Eliot.
“Can you hear anything?” Fife asked Adelaide.
“I’m trying,” she said, closing her eyes. “Hold on.”
After a long silence, she said, “Father is there, too. It’s the three of them. That must’ve been why Father didn’t answer Keats, Oliver. They’re talking about—” Her eyes fluttered open. She looked at Lottie. “They’re talking about you.”
“What about me?” Lottie asked, startled.
“It’s about your keen. The Tailor is asking Father about it. About if it can be used to cure the wisps. Here. Take a listen for yourself, if you’d like.”
“How—?” Lottie began, but she then remembered what Adelaide had said the day before about transference.
“I need your hands,” said Adelaide. “Both of them.”
Lottie held out her hands. Without hesitation, Adelaide took hold of them and pressed her thumbs deep into the centers of Lottie’s palms.
“Be quiet,” she said. “Concentrate.”
Lottie did just that.
The voices sidled into her head, growing louder, and louder still. The first words she could clearly distinguish were Mr. Wilfer’s.
“. . . an impossibility. Believe me, there is no sprite better qualified to assess her innate abilities.”
“Such a high opinion of yourself, Moritasgus.”
This voice Lottie did not recognize. It sounded dusty, as though it had just been brought out of storage after a long period of disuse. This, she reasoned, must be the Tailor.
“What I say is true.” Mr. Wilfer sounded angry. “I cannot help that you are displeased with it.”
“We have discussed it before, Lyre,” said a glassy, childlike voice—Silvia’s. “The girl is of no use to us. Moritasgus is doing all he can to find a—”
“Is he?” interrupted the Tailor. “I don’t know what spell these sprites have cast over you, Silvia, but I will not be taken in so easily. What does he have to show for himself after a month of eating our food, sleeping under our protection?”
“Medicine cannot be rushed,” said Mr. Wilfer. “I swore my best efforts to your sister, and I always honor my oaths.”
“Really? Will you honor your oath to us the same as you did to Starkling?”
“Enough!” cried Silvia.
There was silence.
Then Mr. Wilfer spoke again. It sounded like he was choosing each word carefully. “I will tell you what I told Silvia: I’ve been training the girl this full month through. She’s started the sharpening process extremely late. Even if she continues to train at an accelerated pace, I don’t believe she will ever be able to heal the masses. Her keen is rare, yes, and covetable. But it is limited. From what I can tell, she can only heal on a case-by-case basis, and only then if she’s developed an empathetic connection to the patient.”
“Then what good is she to us?” said the Tailor. “To any of us? Heir of Fiske, indeed. She might as well belong to one of the worthless houses—a Spivey, or an Outeridge. I’ll tell you what the trouble is: she’s been contaminated by human blood.”
“Without human blood,” said Mr. Wilfer, “she would never have developed such a unique gift.”
“Unique? It is little better than useless.”
“Would you call your own nephew useless?”
“Certainly not. I have no nephew.”
Silence followed, then was broken by Silvia’s irritated voice.
“What is it, Wren? Have you fetched them?”
“Yes, m’lady,” said the voice of the wisp guard. “They’re just outside.”
Lottie pulled her hands out of Adelaide’s.
“That’s enough,” she said. “I don’t need to hear more.”
“What’s wrong?” asked Eliot. “What did they say?”
“Nothing,” she said. “It’s nothing.”
Adelaide had heard everything, Lottie realized, embarrassment hitting her like a hot splash of water. She expected Adelaide to look smug, but she didn’t. She looked sad. She looked sorry, as though she had been the one to tell Lottie that her keen was little better than useless.
“Lottie—” she whispered.
The doors to the Royal Bower swung open. The guard named Wren reappeared and motioned them to walk through.
“The Seamstress and Tailor will see you now,” she said.
They entered the bower. Lottie had not set foot in this place since her first visit to Limn, when she, Oliver, Fife, and Adelaide had been on the run from the Southerly Guard. Some things were as she remembered them: the large weeping willow, its bark and leaves a pure white; the gauze awnings overhead; the vastness of the bower. But something had changed. Maybe it was that Silvia did not look anywhere near as regal as she had that first meeting. She floated before the willow tree some six feet in the air, reclining as though she were lounging upon a sofa, drumming her fingers along her jaw like an impatient child. Mr. Wilfer stood at the tree’s base, arms folded and brow darkened.
Next to Silvia floated a tall, thin figure with the longest black hair Lottie had yet seen on a wisp. His chin was sharp, his cheekbones high, and his nose bent in two separate places. It was a severe countenance, made more severe by its frigid eyes. Lottie had never before been so vividly reminded of how inhuman the wisps were. Unlike his sister, the Tailor of the Wisps sat in midair with perfect posture, the same as if there had been a
solid throne, not mere air, at his back.
Despite the fright Lottie felt at the sight of Lyre Dulcet, she could still see it: he looked very much like Fife. Or rather, she thought, Fife looked very much like his uncle.
“Curtsy,” a voice hissed.
Lottie realized she’d been staring far too long at the Tailor of the Wisps. Adelaide was bent low in a delicate curtsy, her eyes burning up at Lottie, urging her to do the same. On her other side, Oliver was bowing, and even Eliot was making his own sloppy attempt at a show of reverence. Lottie grabbed the edges of her periwinkle coat and stooped into her own curtsy. When she rose, she noticed Fife standing cross-armed, defiant. His lack of deference hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“What do you mean by this?” Lyre demanded of him. Lottie saw spittle fly from his mouth as he spoke.
“I’m a Dulcet, same as you,” said Fife. “And I’m a sprite, which means I don’t owe you a bow.”
“Your friends, too, are no wisps, yet they have appropriately chosen to show veneration to their hosts.”
“Oh, but you’re not my host, Uncle,” Fife said, smiling. “You’re family.”
Silvia stopped drumming her fingers. She was looking hard at Fife, her eyes watering. “Cynbel has informed us that you were the one to find the body,” she said.
“We all did,” said Fife. “And believe me, I wish we hadn’t. It was a nasty sight. You’re going to have to find me a therapist, Mother.”
“The Guard think it was the work of whitecaps,” Silvia went on. “Cynbel, however, reports that the guard’s body was pierced by a spear. Is that true?”
“Yeah,” said Fife. “I told you, it was nasty.”
“See?” Silvia said to her brother. “That is not in keeping with whitecap behavior.”
“That’s what I was saying,” Oliver whispered excitedly to Eliot.
“What does that mean?” asked Lottie.
“It may mean nothing,” said Silvia. “Whitecaps are not known for their consistency or cleanliness. But if the guard yet lives, we may find out more about his attacker.”
“Shouldn’t Mr. Wilfer be helping him?” asked Fife.
Lyre’s face darkened. “Are you suggesting, child, that we wisps cannot tend to our own wounded?”
The Doorway and the Deep Page 5