The Puppetmaster's Apprentice

by Lisa DeSelm

  “So, what about you?” Bran’s voice interrupts my memories.

  “What about me?”

  “You can’t keep ignoring the truth.”

  I look through the cupboard, blood rushing to my head. The sensation jolts me as it always does. I’m always surprised by how hot and immediately blood flows from one place to another in my body against my will.

  What does he mean? I’ve always been so careful.

  “When are you going to say something to Gephardt, get him to see reason? He can’t possibly go on like this. Both of you are exhausted. Gep doesn’t look good, Piro.”

  “He’s fine,” I say shakily, trying to convince myself as much. “We’re fine.”

  “Fine is for kettles of fish. You are not fine. Neither of you.”

  I rub my dry and bleary eyes, feeling the delicate clink of Prima’s legs against my cheek as I cradle her in my hand. It was past midnight when I left my father sound asleep at his workbench and tiptoed up to my room, too tired to prod him toward his own sleeping quarters. I’m just grateful he’s actually getting some sleep.

  “You know we have no choice, Bran. The Margrave won’t pay us until we deliver this next dozen. And with the money we’ve had to spend on paint and supplies … his quoted price will earn us a little overage, but still. My father must finish the soldiers. And I must help him.”

  “If only there were magic words you could utter to render all those pieces finished in a second,” Bran groans sleepily. “If only.”

  “People like us don’t have the luxury of magic,” I reply softly. “Not anymore. You know that.”

  “Who believes any of that hogwash anyways?” Bran asks. “Seems like it’s mostly superstitions. A bunch of old hearth tales, that’s all. There’s always a good lesson or a bit of truth in them, like the stories you perform in your wagon. But real spells? Words with power? It’s always struck me as funny that the Margraves are so fearful of such things.”

  My heart constricts at his words. Gephardt always asserted our Margrave is the strictest of them all; Erling considers it a great honor to lock up or burn any supposed conjurer. It was his great-grandfather who started the whole trouble in the first place, that first unruly king of Elinbruk who recklessly destroyed most of his family, nearly wiping out his line.

  Closer to home, the story of Old Josipa still rings in my ears. When I was just past what my father marked as my twelfth birthday, a Tavian healer known as Old Josipa was out gathering herbs, bits of bark and roots for her poultices and salves. A child happened to follow her and heard her chanting. The child came running back, telling all who would listen that the old woman was speaking to the earth. In return, plants rose up from the ground, their leaves leaping right into her basket.

  Even though the medicines Old Josipa collected were the very things needed to soothe a fever or calm an upset stomach, and she only used her magic for the good of others, it mattered not. When the child’s tale made its way to the Margrave’s ears, Old Josipa was seized and made an example, her poor body lashed to a pole and tossed on a burn pile like a dried shock of wheat. I’d had nightmares for months after, fearing that Old Josipa’s fate would someday be my own.

  I must have fallen quiet for too long, for the next thing I know, a hand extends toward me, breaching the empty space between our walls. I sit up and stare at it. Bran wiggles his fingers, and I instinctively drop the little ballerina and place my hand, callused and small, in his own eager and warm one.

  Looking at the spaces between our treasures, I can see only parts of Bran, mere slices of the fabric of his face, a strip of eyes shaded by serious brows and then below that, a firm and sympathetic mouth. He squeezes my hand and a flicker of heat trails up my arm. For a moment, he looks like he wants to say something, but isn’t sure how to form the words. Bran usually has no trouble finding words when he needs them.

  “Pirouette, I …”

  I watch him search for what comes next, very aware of his hand holding mine. I marvel that, in the two years since we first opened this cupboard, Bran has somehow become my dearest friend. I can’t imagine my days without his quick and easy smile, without noticing the way his hair curls up at his collar when his mother gets too busy to give him a haircut, and the way it looks endearingly ragged when one of his sisters does it for him. Bit by bit, like a scrap of sandpaper wearing away a rough edge, Bran has worn down my defenses, all the stiffness, shyness and quietude of my earlier years. By all accounts, he knows me best, at least, as much as you can know someone without truly knowing their past.

  Papa long ago instilled in me the consequences of revealing my origin to anyone else; it would only endanger them as well as me. Of course, Bran’s heard the yarn my father told when, out of the blue, a quiet slip of a girl appeared at his side: my mother died in childbirth and I was sent away to be raised by my grandmother until I was old enough to join him in his shop. Gephardt repeated the fable so many times and with such confidence that my newly formed ears absorbed the words like truth, and I repeated it as my own. I’ve always paid a price for it. Whether it’s a misfiring of the magic that made me or a natural effect of my wooden origins, I’ve learned that anytime I tell a lie, there are consequences. Painful consequences.

  “Pirouette.” Bran nudges me. “You … you know that you can trust me, right? That I care about you, more than I have the words to say.”

  In spite of his sweetness, all I can think is that if Bran really knew, knew that something about me is both human and other, he would be afraid.

  Afraid for me.

  Afraid of me.

  I can’t bear that.

  Bran sighs again, circling the back of my hand with his thumb. My breath catches in my throat.

  “Just don’t forget that I’m here. Wooden soldiers or not. Margrave or not. Someday, I’ll have enough to strike out on my own, and you and Gephardt will never need worry about money. I’ll help, I’ll—”

  “Bran.”

  “We could be—”

  “Bran.” I cut him off, half-delighted and half-terrified of what he might say next.

  More than anything, I want a future with Bran, a chance to be loved the way the milliner loves the milkmaid, with a heart that feels full to the brim of happiness. But it always seems happiness only ever hovers near, a wisp of flame ready to vanish with my next breath. Bran deserves a girl who is fully human, not one whose very existence could condemn him to the Keep.

  He looks at me expectantly through the shelves, waiting.

  “This is just work,” I reassure him. “It’s not forever. Surely the Margrave and the duke will run out of room to hold all their toys. Soon our days will return to normal.”

  “Maybe, Piro,” he leans in, gripping my hand, “but normal or not, I want more than this for you.”

  I dare to read from the hungry look in his eyes that he wants more from me, too. My heart swells with something dangerous and thrilling.

  “Bran?” I ask, a smile on my lips, offering him the only thing I can right now: the comforting words that have closed every clandestine meeting between our cupboard since we were sixteen. “See you tomorrow. Same as always?”

  “Always,” he repeats softly, eyes shining in the candlelight.

  With regret, he releases my hand and waits for me to be the first to close the cupboard door. I shut it slowly, feeling the same sense of loss I always do when the knob locks into place. Placing my hand over the door, I leave it to rest, foolishly hoping to feel Bran’s pulse from the other side.

  My heart wants Bran Soren. I can’t deny it. But the danger of loving someone is that the closer you get, the more exposed you become. And just like a single lie will work itself out through my skin, I fear the truth will do the same, splintering apart anything good we might have. Far sharper than any lie, I’ve learned the truth has a way of coming out. Always.

  CHAPTER 4

  I BEGIN MY USUAL MORNING DUTIES BY TYING ON MY apron, unlatching the front door and dusting the shelves. Papa has
n’t come downstairs yet, he must still be asleep. I’m glad. I don’t like the feverish look in his eyes, the sweat I’ve seen beading his brow.

  I linger on the marionettes today with duster in hand, adjusting a crooked arm here, draping a tangled string more loosely there. Each one is so unique, so lovely, it almost pains me to look at them.

  “We are not so different, you and I,” one of my wise-bearded wizards advises when I tug his handle to make him sit up straight. The tip of his pointed hat knocks the shelf above. “You have strings, too,” he mumbles. “Strings you cannot see, but that move you all the same.”

  Thankfully, the wizard’s philosophizing is interrupted by raucous feet bursting through the door to the ring of doorbells. I turn to see the candlemaker’s twins: both boys, blond, impish and hardly able to contain themselves. They are regular visitors, but even so, I can only tell them apart on a good day. Their mother dresses them in different colored caps—Dieter in red and Gustav in green—but whether they keep to their correct color depends on their mood.

  “Is the puppetmaster here? I’ve saved all my penny francs, Miss Pirouette,” the-boy-who-should-be-Dieter says breathlessly.

  “He’s saved them all. For weeks and weeks. We need some more wooden men, for our battalion,” adds Gustav.

  “We’re preparing for a great battle,” Dieter says seriously, his blond sheaf of hair bobbing in his eyes.

  “Are you?” I reply. “That sounds quite dangerous. And who are we fighting this time?”

  “Dragons, Miss Pirouette,” Gustav—at least I think it’s Gustav—pipes up. “There are loads of them here in Tavia. They’ve escaped from the high mountains in Brylov, didn’t you know? And if we aren’t careful to watch for them, Father says we’ll all be burned to a crisp.”

  “A crisp!” his brother adds knowingly.

  “Indeed. Well, I know the puppetmaster would love nothing more than to help you fight off those pesky dragons, but since he’s resting at the moment, will those do?”

  I point to the toy soldiers on a low shelf, each with a tiny face and cap and weapon to bear.

  “Now, soldiers can be useful in battle, but don’t forget, so can a dragon!” I whirl around with a roar, having freed a black dragon marionette from its hooks. I dangle it menacingly over the boys’ heads.

  They erupt in shrieks and giggles as I make a tiny spray of wooden flames spew forth from the dragon’s mouth through a lever my father carved in the beast’s neck. While the boys busy themselves on the floor deciding which soldiers their few precious coins will secure, I return the dragon to its hooks and continue dusting. The bells jingle again. It promises to be a busy day.

  “One moment!” I call, my back to the door, righting a chess piece from where it had been knocked over.

  A male throat clears impatiently behind me. The rudeness sets my cheeks to steaming.

  “Yes, I said just a moment—”

  I whirl around to see the Margrave’s steward, the one who lingered near my wagon on market day, a tall, horse-faced man called Baldrik. He has to hunch to fit through our door. He’s been to Curio several times now, but always deals with my father. In fact, since the day he arrived in his carriage to bestow his first order of soldiers upon our humble shop, we’ve seen neither hide nor hair of the Margrave himself.

  “What can I do for you, sir?” I ask stiffly, rubbing at my apron with the duster, dispensing dust from the shelves all over myself.

  “Here to check accounts,” he says briskly. “Margrave von Eidle is eager to complete his latest order, and if our accounts are correct, we are still short eight soldiers.” He sniffs, his square jaw and lips grinding like a bull chewing its cud. “Our accounts are always correct.”

  The man always speaks as if he were the mouthpiece of the Margrave himself, joined to the noble household by some holy union. It’s always “we need this” and “we think that. “And here he is again, checking up on us, as if we are making mud pies instead of constructing complex pieces of art. I hide my distaste for Baldrik and his master’s errand by plastering a smile on my face. The twins eye him suspiciously from the corner.

  “Certainly,” I say pleasantly, forcing myself to walk calmly to the ledger. Ceremoniously, I heave the curling, leather-bound book on the counter and flip it open to a page marked by a long strip of ribbon so worn it’s nearly transparent. I trace my finger down the entries, hunting the one he’s asking about. It’s the last one on the ledger, one of the only new orders we’ve listed in weeks.

  “Yes, you’ll see right here we have eight soldiers left to complete, as you mentioned, in this most recent order of a dozen. But we’ll surely have them finished by Margrave von Eidle’s deadline, which isn’t for another two weeks.”

  Baldrik shifts around heavily on his feet, which wobble as if they are unaccustomed to supporting such an immense, ungainly apparatus. He looks down at me with scorn.

  “We’d like to speak to the puppetmaster himself, girl. Make sure he is aware that this order must take precedence over any other work. The Margrave won’t brook any delays.”

  “He’s not down in the workshop at the moment, but I can assure you he has been laboring day and night to complete the Margrave’s order.”

  The twins now stand behind the large man, squabbling about which one of them should get to hold the prized fistful of soldiers.

  Baldrik huffs impatiently, irritated by me and the two small boys. “Call him at once, we prefer to speak with the master himself, not his dusting wench.”

  Blood rises to my face at his insult, the sensation of roots drawing up water.

  “I am the puppetmaster’s apprentice,” I say, unable to hide the edge that slides into my voice. “And if I may repeat myself, he is unavailable. But as his apprentice, let me assure you, we will complete this order, just as we have all the others the Margrave has so generously given us.”

  Baldrik looks past me, through the open curtain behind the counter to the workshop beyond.

  “We don’t want your assurances, girl, we want to hear from the puppetmaster himself. Call him out.”

  “He’s not in the workshop,” I repeat flatly, not wanting to show any weakness by admitting that my father is still upstairs in bed. It galls me to think of waking him, as though he were a servant at this horrid man’s beck and call.

  Baldrik places a pair of gloved hands the size of garden rakes onto the counter.

  “Where is he?”

  “Indisposed. But, I assure you, the Margrave’s order—”

  “Miss Pirouette? We’re all done!” Gustav announces loudly, trying to be heard over the demands of the steward.

  “Will be carried out to the letter—every last wooden one of them—and not a day late,” Balkdrik barks.

  “Yes, sir. We just finished another soldier last night,” I reply with forced optimism.

  A small fist appears at the edge of the counter and a set of questionably clean hands pushes six soldiers up to the ledger. Baldrik looks at Dieter like he’s ready to swat the small boy away like a fly. Then he leans even farther over the counter, scrutinizing my face closely. The man smells of pipe smoke and something sour beneath. “Gephardt Leiter is always in his workshop this time of day. He is a man of regular habits.”

  “Boys, leave your pennies on the counter. You’re all set.” I wink at them and they scamper out the door, leaving a pile of warm penny francs behind, new soldiers shoved into bulging pockets. I feel slightly less brave without them here, left to face this particular dragon alone.

  “If your master isn’t capable of completing this order, other measures must be taken. He knows the consequences. The Margrave has been exceedingly generous with him and this little hovel of a workshop. If he is not able to proceed as planned—well, we hate to think of what will become of him. And,” he says, punctuating the threat with a long, tapered finger upon the ledger, “of you …”

  Baldrik now considers me as one inspects a cow brought to market, his eyes dissecting me for fu
ture possibilities. “There’s always room in the von Eidle household for one more kitchen drudge or coal scuttler.”

  “As I said, sir, I am fully trained to—”

  “Tell me, girl,” he interrupts, “where is Gephardt? Is he gone? Has he fallen ill?”

  I teeter on the edge of truth and lie, not knowing which way I will tip.

  “No, sir. He’s fine! He—”

  My words grind to a halt as a splinter punctures the arch of my foot. I bite down hard on my tongue, trying to keep from yelping and giving myself away.

  “Has been mixing up some new lacquers for your soldiers’ boots,” my father’s voice booms behind me suddenly. “Dangerous work with those fumes,” he says gravely to Baldrik. “Don’t trust anyone else to do it but me.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. I feel bolstered by its warmth, and blink back my tears. “Not even my finest apprentice. Can’t risk her.”

  Baldrik seems satisfied by my father’s sudden arrival, but he also seems to note the white-washed pallor of his cheeks and his fever-bright eyes.

  “Well,” says the Margrave’s man, clearing his throat, “we don’t have to repeat to you, Puppetmaster Leiter, the importance of this order to us, nor the ramifications of any failures toward that end. Do we?”

  My father shakes his head subserviently. I waver between hating the Margrave’s assistant and hating the fear on my father’s face. I’m not sure which is worse.

  “Good. We’ll be by to collect them as soon as they’re done. No need to wait until you can deliver them.”

  With a final flinty look at the both of us, Baldrik stalks from the shop, stooping to avoid a smack across the forehead from our broad doorframe.

  A pity.

  My father leans against the counter to support what I suspect are a pair of wobbly legs. I put my hand on his trembling arm.