Goody Murdo looked dismayed and Mistress Raspberry said, “We shouldn’t like to put you out. We’re quite accustomed to rough living and could share space on your floor. If you and your family usually sleep here…”
“Mercy, milady,” the woman replied, stopping halfway to the door. “We wouldn’t think of sleeping here. We have our own cottage, with proper iron bindings and—” Another look from her husband silenced her.
“Your Ladyship needn’t worry about us,” Murdo said. “We mind our own business and it would go well for you to do the same.”
The Honorable Carole and Princess Bronwyn were already yawning, and retired gratefully into the room assigned them. Lacking Jack’s natural instinct for intrigue, they seemed not to notice the ominous undercurrents in Murdo’s civil, if not friendly, behavior. The man reminded Jack of a local lord who had invited the gypsies to perform in a village of his specifically to take blame for the failure of the crops that year. Fortunately, some of the tribe had arrived late and spotted townsmen building a gallows, and his people had escaped in time. Now he noticed immediately the wooden bar which could be shoved across his door from the outside. There was no lock on the inside, so it was obviously meant to keep the occupant in, not to keep intruders out. But a good gypsy prided himself on being catlike. It was impossible to keep him out where he wished to go in and it was equally impossible to keep him in where he wished to go out. If Jack had not been so busy figuring how he could escape he would have been insulted. After all, how did these people know he was not what he seemed to be? He might very well not be planning a late visit to the castle in order to relieve the premises of some of the gold this country found so useless. But such a barrier as the bar would give him no trouble. He still had his dagger.
The room was simply but comfortably furnished with a bed covered by a worn blue blanket. Under the bed was a woven reed rug dyed brown and also an earthenware chamberpot. There was in addition a washstand with a basin and pitcher.
He lay down and covered himself with the blanket, and pretended to sleep. A short time later, the bar thunked down into the fastenings on his door, and he crept up to it, listening.
A debate was in progress.
“But what if she’th who she says?” a familiar squeaky voice he recognized as belonging to one of his first Frostingdungian acquaintances said. “We’ll all be executed!”
“She can’t be. Does she look like an Empress’s sister to you?”
“Well, no, except for the teeth.”
“Any ogress has them. She’s an adventuress, I tell you, and this time she’s ventured too far. Anyway, it’s not the likes of us that’s hurting her. We’re just feeding her and putting her up with the best we have available, as is our duty. No one could do better than that. If she gets damaged, it’s no more than’s happened to us and ours many a time, is it?”
“Oooh, but Oswy!” Goody Murdo’s voice interjected. “The Empress’s sister! Shouldn’t we… ?”
“How can you forget what happened to your own son and Cressida Pringle? It’s all very well to make things look nice for the Empress, but looking nice is not government. It’s about time the nobles realized what the rest of us are up against out here. Imagine that young drunkard taking all the soldiers with him when he went to the capital, leaving us with no protection. And us the chief port of Frostingdung! Besides, if she does turn out to be the Empress’s sister, who knows she’s here except her and us and that tin-toting giantess and those two dark brats of hers?” His laugh was unjovial.
“You don’t think they’re really five hundred year old midgets?”
“If they are, they have come to the wrong place if they want to live to be five hundred and one. Hurry now, curfew’s going to sound any minute and we’ve knives to sharpen yet tonight so we can see to the bird first thing in the morning.”
With grunts and scrapings of benches, squalling from the children and a smack here and there, the people left the hall, and the silence crept back in. It was punctured a moment later by an eerie blast from a deep-voiced horn. Jack took that to be curfew.
With an expertness that thrilled him, he stuck his dagger blade into the space between door and frame, pushed up until the blade met the hard wooden bar, and up further until the bar was parallel with the door. He pushed again and let himself out. The inn was dark, but the faint smell of burning lamp oil still hung in the room. He presumed Mistress Raspberry and Bronwyn and Carole were locked in their rooms as he was supposed to be, and with a bow to chivalry briefly considered unbolting them. He held his breath until the un-gypsyish urge passed. Bronwyn was better armed than he. Carole possessed magic and he had little doubt that Mistress Raspberry too was the possessor of certain arcane, and in this society, illegal assets. All of those ladies were far better equipped to take care of themselves, should they need to, than he.
Whatever danger Murdo hinted at didn’t seem to be direct or immediate, and probably the man only considered Jack’s companions as vulnerable to it because he thought of them as women and children. Hah!
The other reason Jack hesitated to touch the doors of his companions was for fear of waking them. The thought crossed his mind that they might not approve of his foraging plans for the evening. He would be back in a few hours, much enriched, and at that time he would waken them and tell them of the conversation he had overheard and together they would take pains to see to it that they and the Princess Anastasia remained whole and mobile enough to repair to the capital.
His conscience thus cleared, he ventured through the inn, out the front door—unbolted, which seemed more than a little strange—and into the road between the inn and its stable.
The stable was lit. Since Anastasia was probably not staying up reading, and would have been unable to light a candle even had their hosts been kind enough to provide her with one, he had to assume someone else was in the stable. A groom? Perhaps. At any rate, it would be a good idea to practice one’s somewhat rusty skulking skills again to determine who the person was and assure oneself of the Princess Anastasia’s safety before one set off on one’s own adventure. It occurred to him that if he could free her from the stable, she could stand guard outside the doors of Mistress Raspberry and Carole and Princess Bronwyn, unlocking the chambers if necessary, further freeing him mentally and physically to pursue his own interests.
A moon of useful fullness lit the night. By it, Jack saw that for people who valued iron so highly, the Frostingdungians used it liberally. The stable was banded in three places with strips of iron, one near the roof, one near the ground and one running all the way around the middle and across the door. As he drew close enough to notice this detail, he also heard an odd cackling and singing, and once a sharp bark.
“Do you mind terribly?” the voice of the Princess Anastasia asked. “I am trying to obtain my so-necessary beauty rest.”
He peeked through a gap between the double doors of the stable. The light from the door of the inn was a candle that lit the startled face of the little old woman he had seen hobbling away from his friends when he and the constabulary arrived. She peered curiously upward for a moment, shuddered slightly, and wagged her head from side to side, asking the splatter-coated tan and brown dog at her feet, “Can a body grow the opposite of deaf, Dragon? Or am I as addled as they say and hearing things in my dotage? Never mind. Shall we sing us another song? Or will you dance instead? Let’s have a dance, shall we? Up now, laddie. Up, I say.”
“And I say, Cease. That is a royal decree!” Anastasia hissed from on high. Though Jack couldn’t see her, he assumed she’d flown into the loft.
“Shhh, Dragon. Be still.” The old lady held up her hand and glanced around, furtively. The dog whined and she reached down absently and patted it, her eyes still searching the room. Finally, hunching her shoulders together as if expecting to take a knife between them, she hitched up her skirts and began climbing a rickety ladder.
Jack, who had the greatest respect for old ladies, since his grandmother co
uld still out-lie and out-fight every man in the tribe, tugged open the door and let himself inside. He meant to tell the woman not to trouble herself, that he would talk to Anastasia. But suddenly the dog flew at him, yapping and snapping furiously.
He stared silently at the animal, mesmerizing it with his hypnotic gypsy eyes, commanding it silently to be silent. It naturally obeyed, and he spoke soothingly to it in his native tongue. The dog sat down and cocked its head to one side, as if trying to think what exactly Jack could be saying and regretting it had never completely mastered the gypsy language. Then it thumped its tail and whined. He advanced upon it, still staring at it, holding out his hand and talking to it. It rose, wagging, to lick his palm.
The woman turned around on the ladder. “Eh?” she asked, and then, seeing jack, called to the dog. “Are you daft, Dragon? You ain’t supposed to lick ’im. You’re supposed to bite ’im. Kill!” The dog continued to lick Jack’s palm. The crone half-fell down the ladder, and hobbled toward Jack, muttering, “If you want a thing done right…”
“Do not blame your dog, Grandmother,” Jack said pleasantly. “I am irresistible to all animals.”
“Yes,” Anastasia called down. “If they attempt to resist him, he has ways of enforcing his charm. I should know.”
The old lady stopped in her tracks and looked from Jack to the loft, then leaned forward and jerked her thumb upward, cocking her head inquisitively while eying Jack. He smiled and shrugged.
“That is only the Princess Anastasia having her little joke with you, old one.”
“The Princess who?” the old lady asked.
“The swan. She is the Princess Anastasia. You must have seen her today on the beach, before you ran away.”
Anastasia swept down upon them, glared haughtily at the old woman and seemed to find upon landing that her ruffled feathers took considerable preening to smooth.
“Ah, the swan!” the old slave said. “She would be a princess, wouldn’t she?” She waggled a finger under Anastasia’s beak. “You see here, my beauty, if you’re a fine lady you’d best change yourself back to your real self if you wish to live. Folk around here are meat-starved and…”
Suddenly a long wavering cry pierced the night. The crone’s chin snapped up to hug her upper lip and her head trembled a little, as if she were making a conscious effort not to look around her.
“What’s that?” Jack asked.
She waited until the cry died away before answering, then said with a sly smile, “That? Why, that be one of the reasons folk here are meat-hungry. But mind me, beauty, you’d do well to change to your real self again.”
“My dear woman, this has been my real self for the last two decades, and I shall tolerate no impertinence to my person in this guise or any other.”
“The old one only gives you warning, Your Highness,” Jack told her. “Those men who have housed us are indeed hungry ones.”
“You’re the witch’s boy, then, are you?” the crone asked, watching him keenly. “Did Murdo send you here to sleep?”
“No. We are all roomed at the inn but—”
“Are you?” She giggled again, but now he heard that it was not from amusement that she laughed, but nervousness. “Oh, that Murdo thinks he’s a sly dog, but you be slier, eh, lad? Saw your doom,” she said, exaggerating the word by booming the o’s comically but he still didn’t feel she was amused. “And escaped it, did you?”
“I did unlock the door and decide to—er, have a look about,” Jack admitted. “But as for doom…” he shrugged. “As soon as I have completed my errands tonight, I shall accompany my friends away from here. But I think first the Princess Anastasia should join them.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so!” the old woman replied, still giggling but also in earnest. She whispered from between cupped hands, but loudly enough to be heard in the inn. “Curfew’s blown, you know.”
“My dear grandmother, I am a gypsy and not of your people. Your curfew does not concern me.”
“That’s talkin’ daft, boy.” She waggled a finger at him, but stopped whispering to say in a suddenly sober tone, “Curfew concerns everyone.”
“Why are you here then?” He pointed to her bracelet. “Even if you are a slave, they surely do not require that you sleep in the stable.”
“They’d do worse than that if my master’d stand for it,” she said. “An ill-bred, ill-tempered, and ugly lot they are. But no, I come to the stable to be with Dragon. He’s the last dog in Suleskeria, and master says he’s mine to keep. But the housekeeper won’t let me keep him at the castle. Also I’m afraid if I’m not here to leave with him in the morning, Murdo and the other Dungies’ll eat him, or feed him to them just to spite the master and me.”
“Feed him to whom?” Anastasia asked.
The old lady pointed her chin towards the door. “Them. What’s outside now. What would get you if you was where Murdo thinks you are, boy, and what will get your fine lady friends, I fear.”
Jack had left the door open a crack when he entered. As the woman pointed to the door, she spotted the opening and sprang forward, crying, “Fool! You’ve killed us all.”
Though Jack didn’t know why she was so upset, he sprinted ahead of her to shut it and thereby apologize for his unwitting laxness. As he touched the wood, the moonlight caught briefly something curdled and red, and finger-long teeth shot from the redness and snapped at his face. He slammed the door, and heard a splintering and the cry again, and collapsed against the inside of the door before suddenly springing up again to search for a bolt.
“Ain’t one,” the crone said. “But with the door closed, the iron’ll keep ’em out.”
“I begin to understand the currency system here,” he said, mopping his abruptly moist brow. “Where did that come from?”
“If you could see it, from the sea,” she said. “The nets stop most of them. They’re terrible afraid of the nets. But if you couldn’t see it, ’twas a hidebehind. They can’t be seen or heard, mostly. You just feel ’em. Till they get you, that is. Come,” she said, and crooked a gnarled finger at him, leading him through an empty horse stall. She searched the wall with her fingertips for a moment, then told him, “When I says look, look quick. They’ll find the hole in a thrice if we leave it open that long.”
With her thumb and forefinger she grasped a protrusion and pulled forth a knot from its hole. “Look!” she said, and shoved him at the hole. Jack looked.
The night was filled with horrors. Not all were as bad as the thing at the door, or the one the lookout had spotted from shipboard, but misshapen creatures of all description waddled forth on flippers and fins, bloody tentacles and legs. Most hung outside the nets which formed a sort of sea wall. But aside from the sea creatures, there were others.
Several of them sailed in the air.
“What are the flying things?” he asked.
“Fliers,” she said. “They sting.”
They were as large as bats and the moon glinted off spear-like projections from their noses.
“I hope they kill you at once,” Jack said, shivering.
“They don’t kill you at all,” she said. “You kill yourself. The sting is powerful itchy. I’ve seen grown men flay the hides from themselves with their nails before their friends could tie ’em up. Even tied up, they’ll die from trying to scratch if you don’t soak ’em in oil.” She giggled again.
The moon glinted clearly on the whitewashed walls of the inn across the way. The thatch on the roof crawled. It wavered and faded and folded back into place, rippling the moonlight. Unconsciously, he stepped back and made horns of his fingers. The woman shoved him back and put her own eye to the knot.
“Ah, the hidebehinds are at work. I hope you weren’t over fond of the lassies.”
“I—what?” Something about that blinking roof was worse than all of the sea-born horrors he could see plainly.
“You’ll not be seeing them again if the hidebehinds get them. And they will, in that building. No iron,
you know.”
* * *
“Bron—Bronwyn,” Carole sat straight up, shaking. Overhead, something shivered and paced across the ceiling. “Bronwyn! Wake up.”
“Wha—” the Princess opened one eye and reached for her shield. The girls shared a narrow bed and Carole had to lay half on top of her cousin to get any room at all. This had not especially bothered Bronwyn. Carole wasn’t very big and didn’t move around much, but this jouncing up and down and yelling in the middle of the night had to stop. “What a wunnerful time to wake up,” she mumbled, hoisting the shield across both of them.
“Look up there.”
“Where?”
“There!”
“What is it? I can see everything very clearly.” It was pitch dark.
“I don’t know. You can’t really see anything—but you can sort of follow the tracks with your finger.” She demonstrated, arching her finger to trace an invisible line above them.
“But there’s nothing there,” Bronwyn yawned. “Certainly nothing that can scare—YiiIKES!” Something had snuck around, and without seeing anything they both knew it had come across the ceiling and down the wall and under the bed and up the side to sneak in under Bronwyn’s shield and grab them. Bronwyn was on her feet in no time, whirling with the effort to keep her shield in front of her. Silent laughter jeered at her, and unseen fingers tugged at her shift and tweaked her hair and pinched her. Carole, without realizing she had done so, had rolled out of bed to cringe at her cousin’s feet.
Had Bronwyn been wearing her armor, it would have rattled like a kettle full of stones, her knees and elbows shook so. Solid foes she was prepared to fight, and even those with magical powers—but ones who ducked out of sight just when you thought you were about to face them, who attacked from the rear, who taunted the corners of your eyes and writhed quickly across your vision, solid enough to pinch but too fleeting to see, these were enough to daunt the bravest warrior.
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