“Pardon her, my lord,” the older goblin said.
“—who married my sister’s widower, was plotting to steal the remains of Ellara’s inheritance. The woman was out this evening, and didn’t come back for some time, and the man Ellara told me to wait for never arrived—well, it’s a long story, but in short, I would not be surprised if a man was poisoned tonight. A human spice merchant by the name of Mr. Hassari.”
“Where is Ellara?” I demanded. “She said she was going home!”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. I pretended to be asleep when her stepmother got home. I am excellent at pretending to be asleep. I thought, well….I wanted to see what she would do with me. I was hoping she might reveal more of her plot to me and I’d be able to catch her red-handed, spring to life and ensnare her with a spell. At that point, Ellara was still at the ball and would be for a while yet. Ravok, here, trailed us. And what did that woman do? She took me to the docks and started offering men money to take me on their ship and sail far away! So, Ravok quickly stepped in and claimed to be a captain, taking her coin.”
“You don’t know where Ellara is, do you?”
“No,” she said, looking ever so slightly annoyed that I didn’t want the details. “We rushed after her, back to the house, but she had a head start. When we arrived, they were all gone. It was a little after midnight. Ellara’s mice and spiders were frantic.”
“Mice and spiders?”
“She has her mother’s gift of communicating her will to animals.”
“That’s useful,” Wrindel said, still trying to sell me on her, I think.
“I tried to give chase—we went back to the docks in case she tried to put her on a ship—”
I’d heard enough. I held up a hand. To Wrindel, I said, “No ships can leave the harbor unless they have been thoroughly searched. The same with every carriage on the roads. I want every spare man to fan out into the city and look for her, and we also must see if we can find this Mr. Hassari.”
“Of course,” Wrindel said. This sort of thing invigorated him. “I’ll go to the docks myself, in fact. Some of the captains won’t like this at all, but I’ll bring a wine barrel down there. They can drink a good vintage while they wait for the search…”
“It’s all in how you present it, huh?” I told him.
But the jest barely concealed my concern.
I realized why I had never wanted to fall in love.
Love meant the potential for loss.
I thought I would never recover from losing Mother, Jiriel and Seldana. But now, all the long nights keeping watch outside their sick rooms, waiting for the worst, came rushing back to me across the years.
I could not lose Ellara.
Chapter Sixteen
Ellara
Mrs. Rennick and the two burly women who accompanied her—guards, I suppose, although I was not used to seeing women in that role—seemed positively gleeful to drag me around, now into what looked like an infirmary. A few low beds lined the wall, and there was a chair like one might see at the barber. They probably pulled out rotten teeth here or something.
Oh, goodness, pulling out teeth was a bad thought. Mrs. Rennick was muttering about me. “Goblins,” she said. “Too many built-in weapons.” She pinched one of my horns and then put her hand around it and shook it. “There’s no feeling in horns, isn’t that right?”
I’m not sure if she was asking me or her guards, and I wasn’t sure what to say, either.
“So we can just saw them off, then,” she said. “Can’t we?”
“I believe so,” one of the women said. “Deer lose their horns…don’t they?”
I started thrashing and trying to make noise. They seemed indifferent to my panic. Was there feeling in horns? I had never tried to saw one off before. Obviously. But I didn’t want to lose them. I would fight to the death, I thought. I was trying to be brave.
But fighting to the death was not really an option. They held me down easily, tying my arms and legs to the chair. Despite my inner will to fight, I was still not fully recovered from the blow to the head I had taken earlier. They had no trouble tightening the ropes around me. Mrs. Rennick went and got some other woman out of some fresh den of evil. This woman opened a cabinet and took out a saw, like the sort you might amputate a limb with.
“Mmmph!” I cried. Please! Please!
I felt a hand grip one of my horns and yank my head back, and a moment later, the saw bit into me. I didn’t feel pain, but I might as well have. Every drag of the serrated teeth across my horns dug straight into my heart. I felt the vibration through my skull, heard the rough grinding sound of it. At the end, there was a little snap and it was gone.
Six years of torment, and I had not broken. Now I was sobbing. I cried and cried as the woman ground through the next one.
The woman handed them to Mrs. Rennick, who held my horns in her hands, examining them like specimens. “I might use them for paperweights,” she said. “And now you look much more suitable for this establishment, don’t you?” She took the gag off me.
“You’re going to suffer for this!” I spat. “The prince will come looking for me!”
“We shall see.”
“I hope you rot in hell!”
“How princessly of you,” she said sarcastically. “I wonder if he’ll even recognize you if he saw you? Emala, why don’t you cut her hair?” She tilted her head at me. “It cuts down on the lice.”
I screamed at her, jerking in the chair, wanting to battle my way out of my bonds and fly at her neck.
“Scream all you like. No one will care. All the women here are well used to the sound of screaming. They don’t even hear it anymore.” She put her fingers to my jaw. “But those teeth! What do we do about them?”
“Muzzle her,” Emala said, taking shears to my curls and hacking at them without concern. “Until she has shown she can behave.”
Mrs. Rennick smiled. Sadistic bitch. No wonder my stepmother seemed well acquainted with her. By now I was starting to think that my shouting and struggling only made this more enjoyable for her.
“A good idea,” she said. “If anyone is looking for a goblin girl, they might glance right past you, with your elven face, and never know…”
I went silent, watching my hair fall around me in clumps. Hair would grow back. But I didn’t think my horns would. Tears fell silently from my eyes as Mrs. Rennick took out a leather muzzle and fitted it around my mouth and jaw. Straps on either side of my ears came together in the back with a tiny lock. It had just a little bit of give, so I could flex my jaw but not open it. I could speak in a muffled way, but I couldn’t even eat or drink until they allowed me to do so.
“I know you are upset. It’s nothing personal,” Mrs. Rennick said, answering the golden glare of my eyes. “You can’t help that you are of the low races. But if you show that you can work hard and are obedient, things will get better for you.”
I was untied from the chair, and got to my feet reluctantly.
“Follow me,” Mrs. Rennick said, picking up her lantern. “You can get a little sleep before the work day begins. You too,” she told her attendants.
I was a bit numb as I followed her down a cold stone hall. I was still barefoot, the chill seeping into my skin from my toes upward. The narrow hall led to a narrow stair, and to another narrow hall with a single window at the end. The window had bars on it. I wondered if it was because someone had tried to jump out. I heard snoring behind open doors, and a good bit of coughing and sniffing. Girls slept on straw-stuffed mattresses on the floor. Well, that was no worse than home.
This was a place for the poorest of the poor, the sort of women who would otherwise be on the street, and would be told they were lucky to have a bed at all. I knew every city had such places, but I had never seen with my own eyes how terrible conditions could be.
“Here you are,” Mrs. Rennick said, showing me to one of the doors. “This bed, here.” She pointed at a bed with a girl already in it. Many of t
he girls were shivering together two to a bed. My new bed mate was sleeping through all of this. She had long black hair—so much for lice—and a sharp face, her nose and chin both rather pointed. She had a silver collar around her neck and silver cuffs at her wrists. I wondered what that was about, but I couldn’t ask, and didn’t want to make conversation with Mrs. Rennick anyway.
I sat down on the mattress. Mrs. Rennick walked out. As soon as she was gone, I went to the window, which also had bars, but even a barred window was a portal to the same sky. I looked at the moon and then at the barren landscape hemmed in by tall stone walls and the iron gate. In the distance I could see the masts of the ships in the harbor.
My heart felt like it was falling out the window at the sight of this terrible place. I couldn’t even bear to touch what remained of my horns. Even Prince Ithrin could not make everything all right again, but…he would save me. Wouldn’t he? He had promised me. I just had to wait.
I finally climbed into bed. My feet were still cold. The muzzle around my jaw made me feel claustrophobic and on the verge of a panic attack. My bed mate slept soundly, occasionally making a low whimpering sound in her sleep, and I am not sure I slept at all.
Chapter Seventeen
Ithrin
In the wee hours of the morning, a messenger brought me a note from Wrindel.
A ship had just left the harbor before I came to give the order, and whose ship was it? The one that came from Cabria. We shall chase it down. I’m asking for aid from the merfolk. We’ll find her. Still looking for Mr. Hassari. —W.
I crumpled the note in my hand. I already had men fanned out around the city, searching every work house, brothel and orphanage where dirty dealings might be afoot, and posting signs offering a reward for a goblin girl.
But it wasn’t enough. I would have no rest until I found her. And there was something I could do that no one else would dare.
I drew the curtains and locked the doors, and cleared the cloth and flowers off the table where the servants brought my breakfast. I set it with the tools of my art: candles, a tin of candy to serve as an offering to the gods, and a scrying bowl.
I was twelve the first time I actually tried to summon the dead. It didn’t go very well. Nothing happened for the longest time, and then, finally, I heard a low, strange, male voice, saying, You could be close to them forever… I blew out the candles quickly and said the words to close the portal, shaken. I thought I might have summoned a demon.
Most boys would have been smart enough to quit there.
I, on the other hand, kept reading about spell work and sorcerers of old, smuggling books from the libraries of the palace mages, buying them in black markets in the city, passing coin under the dubious cover of a hooded cloak. Father must have known what I was up to, but he didn’t stop me. He was still pretty lost in drink and spending coin, dealing with his own loss, while Wrindel ran around the palace and even down to the ocean like a little hoodlum.
I learned how to focus, and connect with the spirits I wanted to speak to and not the darker shades of the underworld, although I could not entirely safeguard against their tempting voices. I felt the spirits of my lost loved ones, and sometimes I heard echoes of their voices.
Once, my mother’s face appeared in the scrying bowl. She told me to stop opening the channels, that it was time to move on.
But it was too late for me. I was no longer trying to speak to her one last time. Turning back the veil between the living and the dead was everything to me. It soothed my grief, but it also intrigued me and made me feel powerful.
“I must keep going,” I told her then. “But don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”
Now, I looked at the reflection of the candles on the water, and spoke the words that I knew by heart. The water rippled.
“Where is she?” I asked the spirits. “Where is Ellara?”
The candles flickered. This was normal. It took time to get answers. Sometimes I had to try different questions.
“Is the spirit of Mr. Hassari there?”
Nothing.
“Mr. Hassari, if you can hear me…I want to see justice done for your murder.”
The tin of candies tipped over. My skin rippled into goosebumps as the temperature dropped. The familiar sense of excitement and trepidation stirred my senses.
Ellara… To my surprise, I heard a voice that sounded female. Ellara!
“Who is there?” I asked.
I want to help protect her. I felt cold wind brush my arms.
Offers of power were suspicious, but…this spirit knew Ellara. “State your name,” I said. “How do you know Ellara?”
I am Elka. I am her mother. I have long watched over her, but I am not of your world any more, and there is only so much I can do beyond the veil. I could not protect her from its cruelties. Lend me your hands, young man, and I will use you as a channel to help Ellara. I beg you, on behalf of her father and myself, to help me save my daughter.
I saw a face in the water. The faces that appeared were never clear. The reflection rippled, the vision always elusive. Everything I could see and hear of the world beyond was never enough. It came in glimpses, blurs, shadows, whispers, distant cries.
But the face I saw looked just like Ellara herself.
Every spell book I had ever read said I should never accept an offer from a spirit.
This time, it seemed different.
I held out my hands, my palms open. “I swore I would do anything to protect Ellara. And I will.”
My hands went as cold as ice. The cold spread upward, all the way to my shoulders, and it was like plunging my arms into snow. At first, I felt very little, and then I felt pain. Needles of ice, barbs of cold—the magic rushed through my skin and I could not shake it off. I doubled over, clutching my hands together.
It will soon pass! The voice echoed in my ears.
Light flashed behind my eyes for a moment, and then the candles snuffed out and the room went briefly pitch black. I heard something that sounded like beating wings, and instinctively I covered my hands as I felt wind brush my face.
I heard a final whisper. Wait for me, daughter…
The darkness started to clear.
The room was bright now. Bright as day.
I rubbed my head in confusion. The sun was up. I must have passed out. The pain in my arms had receded. They felt a little numb now, and my skin was very pale. I had never felt magic so strong.
The tin of candies was empty now.
A sense of calm descended upon the room. It was over, everything normal again. But my hands were still ice cold, and almost completely white.
I stood up and pulled on a pair of gloves in a futile attempt to warm my hands. At least it hid how pale they were, like all the blood had drained out of me.
I walked downstairs to the main hall. The court was milling about now, whispering. Ellara had not yet been found.
Her aunt approached me with a strange expression. She walked up to me cautiously and her eyes looked up and down. “Prince Ithrin,” she said. “What do I sense?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Elka’s magic…? She works through you. I sense it.”
When I didn’t answer, she said, “What have you done? You spoke to her?”
“I believe so,” I admitted. “Sometimes I communicate with the spirits, but it is rare that one comes to me with such a clear message. I know that common wisdon says one should never accept help from the dead, but I couldn’t refuse Ellara’s mother.”
“No,” Kayska said. “I am glad you didn’t refuse her.” She kept looking at me, with a look of deliberation that put me on edge. “You do have some skill at the shadowed arts, don’t you? How interesting.”
Suddenly a guard entered the hall in a rush. “I’ve just spotted Prince Wrindel coming back,” he said. “And he’s riding fast.”
Chapter Eighteen
Ellara
By the time morning came, I had cried myself out.
I
was ready to do something drastic. For six years I had messed around with mice and spiders, trying to bring my stepfamily little moments of suffering.
Enough of that. I could not wait for Ithrin to rescue me. I was going to find a way out of this horrid place no matter what, and then I was going to find my stepmother and make her sorry she ever messed with me.
My bedmate seemed a little surprised to find me beside her, sitting bolt upright and glowering. “A new girl,” she said, wiping her eyes. “They’ve muzzled you. What a fucking pain. They did it to me in the beginning.” She quickly grinned, flashing her own fangs. “What are you?”
“A goblin,” I managed. The muzzle marred some of my consonants but she seemed to understand. “And you?”
“Wolvenfolk,” she said, in a voice that seemed dead of emotion, and a thick accent. “The elf bastards picked a fight with my mother’s clan. Said it was their territory, but it wasn’t. All the elders were killed, but they spared me because I was young. They brought the younger ones to an orphanage, brought me here. The collar and cuffs keep me from changing. I’ve been here three years. The work isn’t so bad, but Mrs. Rennick’s the biggest bitch who’s walked the earth.”
“So I’ve seen…”
I glanced around at the other girls—six of them, none probably older than twenty-five, and all of them as miserable as anyone I’d ever seen. A few humans and a faery, no elves to be seen, but maybe they stuck all of us who weren’t natives of Wyndyr in the same room. They started tucking the blankets around the mattresses and half-heartedly fluffing pillow that were beyond help. They all looked resigned. It was not a sight to muster my courage.
“What’s your story, goblin?” the wolfkin girl asked me. “Are you pregnant?”
“Goodness, no,” I said.
“A lot of girls are sent here because they’re pregnant,” she said. “By the wrong man.”
The Goblin Cinderella Page 9