Keys and Curses (Shadow Book 2)

by Nina Smith

  By the time Strike Pin had finished talking, they’d walked around the reservoir. The chute network hummed and groaned over their heads.

  Strike Pin raised a hand and waved at the leader of the next team waiting for a wagon to fill. “Nickel Barrel! This here’s Nikifor, he’s to work with you for a while.” He moved away, dropped his voice and gave rapid-fire directions Nikifor couldn’t hear.

  When they’d finished Nickel Barrel looked Nikifor up and down and jerked his head at the wagon traces, where eight fairies were lined up, waiting. “Fall in,” he said. “Give me any trouble and I’ll dip you in silver and use you for a statue.”

  The fairies snickered.

  Nikifor, wondering what kind of trouble they thought he’d give, took his place on the traces. Strike Pin hurried away.

  Silver gushed from the pipes and into the wagon. The acrid stench of it almost knocked him flat, but the fairies didn’t appear to notice at all. When Nickel Barrel raised an arm the team lifted the traces and step by step, inch by inch, dragged the impossibly heavy load away from the chutes and towards the fire-lit tunnel ahead of them.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Flower started awake at the sound of footsteps near her bed. She curled her fists around the corners of the ragged pillow, held her breath. She’d been waiting for the thump of Moon Trooper fists on her door. She would not flee. She had a job to do. At least, she’d had a job to do right up until she found Nikifor half-dead in a dingy basement under a hat shop. If she’d been waiting for the right moment to run, that had seemed like it.

  She slid a hand under the pillow in search of the knife she always kept handy, but it wasn’t there. Her empty fist curled. She’d wait until they got close. One right hook in the eye would give her a chance. Even better if she could break a nose.

  A new sound joined the footsteps. Humming. Some tune she didn’t recognise. She opened her eyes and wasn’t sure whether to breathe a sigh of relief or scream at the sight of a Freakin Fairy wandering about the room.

  She sat up.

  “Hello.” The woman looked her up and down, eyes bright with curiosity. She trimmed the oil lamp and brought the flame up high. The light bounced off silver dots painted in circles over her cheeks.

  “Who are you?” Flower rubbed her head. She felt like she’d been sleeping for a week. She slowly breathed out her tension when she remembered they had indeed found the Freakin Fairies before she went to sleep.

  “I’m Hairspring.” The woman picked up a bundle of clothes off the table. “They said your name was Flower. Why’d you get called that?”

  “I don’t know. How long have I been sleeping?”

  “Oh, just two days.”

  “Two days!” Flower nearly fell off the bed.

  “You must have needed it.” Hairspring dumped the clothes in her arms. “Here, put these on. It’s almost time for dinner.”

  Flower shook out the black leather tunic and pants and studied them in bemusement. They were covered with swirling silver patterns, just like the ones Hairspring herself wore. “You want me to dress like a Freakin Fairy?”

  “Well of course. You don’t want to upset people. Besides, you look like you fell off a barn roof in those old things. And we made you new ones especially, since you’re so unnaturally tall.”

  Flower glanced down at herself. Her long skirt was so ragged it barely covered her legs, and her shirt was full of tears from the bramble patch Nikifor had blundered them into a week ago. “Well,” she said, at a loss, “thanks.”

  “Here.” Hairspring handed her a comb. “Get dressed. I’ll be back for you soon.” She left the room.

  Flower eyed the clothes and sighed. She stripped, only to find her skirt falling apart in her hands. Fairy clothes would have to do. The pants were only a little bit short and the tunic fit well. She attacked her hair with the comb and tugged out the knots and leaves stuck in it before any well-meaning fairies could come in and offer to finish the job with a few dreadlocks. When she was happy with it she bound it into a single long plait and tied off the end with a rag from her skirt. Hairspring returned just as she slid her feet into her boots.

  “That’s much better,” Hairspring said. “From a distance you could pass as a giant Freakin Fairy. Come on now, I’ll take you down to the fire.”

  Flower closed her eyes and counted to ten under her breath to keep from replying. Then she stooped to get through the doorway.

  It was late evening. The fading sunset turned the huts they passed a dark purple. Bats fluttered overhead and settled in the nearby trees. The leather proved to be a better insulation against the cold than her cotton shirt had, but she shivered anyway. The stone path they walked on was slick and wet from recent rain.

  Eyes peered from every window they passed. Fairy children, so tiny she could have picked up two in each arm, stared at her with big dark eyes. A little girl with a shock of tiny black dreadlocks ran over to Hairspring and tugged at her hand. “Aunty, aunty, is that a giant?”

  Hairspring scowled and swatted the air over her head. “Hush child! It’s not nice to make fun of tall people. Be off with you.”

  Flower couldn’t suppress her grin. Fairy adults might be deadlier than a swarm of bearflies, but the children could be unbearably cute.

  In the centre of the village the fairies all clustered around five small fires, eating soup from wooden bowls. She was glad to spot Nikifor alive and well in one of those groups, quietly bent toward the flames, the frenetic conversation of his companions passing right over his head. Even though he was hunched over in his usual antisocial way, his long hair was tidy and he didn’t look as sickly as he had two days ago.

  “This way.” Hairspring led her toward a larger fire over which a huge cauldron was suspended. She took a bowl from a pile underneath and ladled a thick, chunky stew into it.

  “Thank you.” Flower eyed the mixture doubtfully. She didn’t eat a great deal of meat, but her growling stomach apparently didn’t have a problem with it.

  “Come on.” Armed with her own bowl, Hairspring headed for a fire surrounded by a knot of women.

  Flower hurried after her. “I had hoped to see my friend.” “What’s your hurry? You’ll both be here for weeks. Besides, you can’t eat with the men.”

  “Why not?”

  “They have belching contests. It’s disgusting.” Hairspring pushed her way into the circle of women and dragged Flower down to sit next to her.

  Flower sat cross-legged on the cold ground and tasted the soup. It was so salty it almost made her hair stand on end, but she ate anyway.

  “This is Flower,” Hairspring announced between mouthfuls. “Flower these are my good friends, Skeleton Key, Tick Tick, Tock Tock, Bone Pin and Blood Knot.”

  Flower nodded to each woman, but was relieved when they didn’t show much interest in her. She wasn’t in the mood to talk with fairies right now. She kept her head down, finished her food and enjoyed the warmth of the flames while conversations about silver and old fights and tomorrow’s hunt drifted around her. Her eyes half-closed. The words dulled to a muted buzz when she put her bowl down and wrapped both hands around the key. Something was going on out there, somewhere beyond Quicksilver Forest, the cliffs, the ocean, maybe even beyond the borders of Shadow. The very world groaned, cracked, tore at itself.

  She let her awareness drop away. The key burned her fingers. Following the source of the sound took her straight to that girl.

  The girl sat cross-legged in the shade of an overloaded orange tree in a sunny, unkempt garden, her face screwed up in a scowl, her pen poised over a blank notebook.

  Flower sat next to her. She laid her hand on the girl’s forehead and spoke in a calm voice. “What’s holding you back, sweetie?”

  Energy pulsed and bubbled under her fingers. The girl had an idea for a story alright. It was so strong it was bursting to get out. Inspiration wasn’t the problem at all.

  The girl tapped the pen against her notebook. Several times she took a deep breat
h and touched it to the paper.

  “You can do it,” Flower urged. “Just start. Just write what’s in your head.”

  The girl abruptly hurled both pen and notebook to the ground. “This is freaking stupid!” She stormed to her feet and up three stairs to an enclosed veranda.

  Flower followed, her own frustration boiling over. “Hey! Hey you!” She knew perfectly well the girl couldn’t hear or feel her on any conscious level, but she grabbed her shoulder anyway.

  The girl spun around. “What the hell?”

  Flower let go of her. Her heart beat double time. “Can you hear me?”

  The girl looked right through her. She shook her head. “Fantastic. Now I’m going as nuts as my mother.”

  “You know what you want to write!” Flower burst out. “It’s dangerous to block it all off like you’re doing, you’re going to cause problems!”

  The girl turned on her heel and slammed through a bent and rusted screen door.

  “Stupid ignorant humans!” Flower backed away. No human had ever sensed her that strongly. No human could sense her that strongly. And she couldn’t find out who the girl was until she put her pen to paper.

  She sighed, opened her eyes and found it was full dark and all the women were gone. Coalfire sat across the flames, regarding her with that peculiarly intense stare of his.

  Flower shook herself. “I’m sorry, did you say something? Where’d Hairspring go?”

  Coalfire shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t pry into what the women get up to.”

  “Oh.” Flower moved closer to the fire and reached her hands out to the warmth.

  “She tried to rouse you for at least an hour before she fetched me,” he added. “I’ve sat here an hour since.”

  Flower’s cheeks grew warm. “Oh dear. I didn’t realise. I can’t always control it-”

  “You go to Dream to inspire writers.” Coalfire leaned forward on his staff. The goat skull reflected the firelight.

  She nodded. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Dangerous business that.” Coalfire gave a dry cough. “Lot of damage you muses have done.”

  “It would be a lot more dangerous and a lot more damaging should we not do our job.” Flower tried to hide her flush of anger. Always this same argument, from all the fairies, just because the king had made one mistake three thousand years ago and inspired the vampires that had plagued Shadow ever since.

  Well, two mistakes, if you took millions of human lives lost to a bomb he’d inspired into account, but he’d said sorry enough times for that. “Just imagine what would happen if humans found no outlet for their dreams and ideas. Imagine what that would do to the two worlds!”

  “So you say.” Coalfire made an impatient gesture. “Why are you really here, Muse?”

  “I told you. Nikifor needed your help.”

  “Yes, yes, and your office was locked and people are missing and you want to find the muse king. Now tell me why you’re really here.”

  Flower blinked, utterly mystified.

  “Fine.” Coalfire poked at the fire with his staff. “If you won’t tell me that, tell me what’s been happening in Shadow City.”

  She stared moodily into the flames. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Why don’t you want to tell me?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought everything was fine. I mean, there were rumours, but there are always rumours, and we’ve had peace since the king drove out the vampires and set up the Guild to govern.”

  “Your king drove out the vamps? That’s not what I heard.”

  Flower glared. “What did you hear?”

  “I heard he took a Bloody Fairy from her tribe and used her to steal a weapon. They drove out the vamps together, and she killed the vamp king. Now I’m not saying I think Bloody Fairies are anything more than a ditsy waste of good oxygen, but it’s far more likely a fairy did the driving than that other streak of misery.”

  “It’s true,” Flower conceded. “There was a fairy. I knew her and liked her.” She frowned and massaged her temples, suddenly not feeling so sure. “I think. I think I knew her. Maybe I’m thinking of something else.”

  Coalfire kept up his piercing stare. “Come on, Muse, Hippy Ishtar is the most famous fairy in Shadow. If I know Bloody Fairies, there’ll still be a pack of them running around trying to avenge her death. Did you know her or didn’t you?”

  “I don’t remember right now.” Frustrated, Flower changed the subject. “Why do you hate my king so much? He’s only ever worked for the good of Shadow.”

  Coalfire snorted. “King Pierus has only ever worked for the good of King Pierus. Now focus, Muse, and tell me about the disappearances.”

  Flower mentally went over the list. The last numbers she’d received were burned into her mind. “Forty-six Bloody Fairies from various settlements,” she said. “Eighty-eight Bloomin Fairies at last count. Two forest people from the Green Dragon tribe.” She took a deep breath and raised her eyes to Coalfire’s. “Four thousand and eighty three muses unaccounted for. If you must know, that’s why I’m here, and that’s why I must seek out my king.” She tried to keep her voice steady. “Nikifor and I were the last muses I could find in the city. As to the rest of Shadow, I don’t know.”

  Coalfire nodded slowly. “It was wise of you to leave,” he said. Then, after a pause, “eight hundred and three Freakin Fairies.”

  Flower stiffened. “How many?”

  “Eight hundred and three. Three from this village. Eight hundred from the next.”

  An insect chirped at the edge of the village. Trees rustled. Shadows crept in around them like monsters from the closet. Too many missing souls, disappeared into a yawning, unknown chasm. In Shadow City she used to wake in the night, cold as ice, listening for the voices of the missing demanding to know why she wasn’t looking for them.

  “When?” she whispered.

  “Our people went on a hunting party a month ago and never came back. Two weeks ago a messenger was sent to the Silver clan. He found the village empty. Everybody gone.”

  Flower shuddered. “Did you send a message to the Guild?”

  Coalfire squinted at her in puzzled amusement. “Did you?”

  She sighed. “Point taken.”

  Muse and fairy looked into the fire and contemplated empty villages.

  Flower broke the silence first. Repeating the mantra aloud made her feel better. “I must find my king. He will know what to do.”

  Coalfire rolled his eyes. “Just like a muse. How do you know he’s not behind the disappearances himself?”

  “Because he disappeared first!”

  “Then how do you expect to find him, if you can’t find the others?”

  Flower knitted her fingers together. It was hard to put her fears into words. Dragging Nikifor halfway across Shadow had been easy in comparison to thinking about just why she’d had to do the dragging. “I fear someone else has taken control of the Guild, Coalfire. Someone who means my king and all of us grave harm. I promise you I will get to the bottom of this.”

  “How? With the help of your friend? He has the brains of a shelled pea and the constitution of a duck.”

  “Nikifor is a very young muse,” Flower said. “Something terrible happened to him, and he’s never been the same since. But you misjudge him. He’s strong and I intend for him to recover.”

  “How young?”

  “He’s only sixty-five.”

  Coalfire counted on his fingers, screwed up his face and stared into space for all of thirty seconds before he gave up. “What’s that in fairy years?”

  “About twenty three.”

  “I never met a muse that young. Are they all like that? How old are you?”

  “Three hundred and eighty.”

  “In fairy years.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Twenty three and a half.”

  Coalfire chuckled. “Really. Alright Muse, in the morning you’ll be on scout duty with Hairspring. Can’t have you s
itting idle. And if any strangers approach, you’re to make yourself scarce, you hear me? I can’t pass you off as an oversized fairy and if you’re the only muse not missing, you’re bound to draw trouble.”

  With that, he stood and walked away from the fire.

  Flower sat and watched the flames dance until the leather of her tunic was so hot it felt like it was melting. No matter which way she tried to figure it out, how in Shadow things had got like this in the first place completely escaped her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Nikifor was more than happy to dress like a Freakin Fairy. The heavy leather trousers and tunic kept out the cold above and protected his skin from the quicksilver that sometimes spilled from the wagons below, threatening to make a statue of anything in its path.

  He didn’t have to worry about the cold in the mines. The endless task of dragging the wagons from the reservoir, through the upward-sloping tunnels and out to the roads kept him quite warm enough. After the wagons reached the road they were covered, hitched to sturdy donkeys and sent off on the long trip to Shadow City. He spent a couple of seconds each trip watching the wagons leave, wondering just what he’d left behind in Shadow City, before the others prodded him to go back underground.

  On the first day the labour tired him and left his clothes soaked with sweat. On the second day every muscle ached so badly he could barely lift the cart. By the third day he’d grown used to the task and the fairies on his team grumbled because they had to pick up their pace to keep up with him.

  There wasn’t much time for thinking about anything, but for a few moments here and there Nikifor was aware he felt better than he had in a long time. It was easy to pretend he was one of the fairies, with no greater purpose in life than to drag silver from the bowels of the earth. It was easy to pretend he didn’t feel the dark shadow that lurked behind his shoulder.

  Strike Pin filled in a few details from his missing memories on the third evening, when they were all huddled around the fire eating after a hard day’s work.