A Wicked Thing (5 page)

“I wish it were for such good reasons,” Sir Gregory said, “although I am delighted to see the princess, of course.” He bowed in her direction. “But I am afraid I must report a revolt. Last week, a group of peasants gathered outside the gates of my home, demanding food. I have none to give them, of course, none beyond what I need to feed my own family. But they would not listen. In the end, they knocked down the gate, killed one of my guards, and stole more than half the grain in my stores. My own men and the local soldiers have attempted to hunt down the culprits, but without harsh punishment, I am afraid that they will strike again.”

The king nodded. “I understand completely,” he said. “We cannot have this sort of thing going unpunished. I will send a cohort of soldiers back to Barton with you. They will find the culprits, and protect you and your family. In recompense for this crime, all men and women farming on your lands must give you
half of the food they gather in the next harvest, to compensate you for your loss. Anyone who protests will be executed.”

Aurora wanted to argue, to point out that that didn't make sense, that taking their food would make the problem worse. Her lips moved in the beginnings of a protest, but her voice did not cooperate. Not with so many people around, so many eyes watching.

“I will ensure the soldiers are ready to leave by nightfall,” the king said. Aurora bit her lip, her opportunity gone. “I wish I could invite you to remain and celebrate with us, Gregory, but I know you will be eager to return and protect your family.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” he said. “Thank you, Your Majesty.” With a deep bow to the king, he backed out of the room.

The third petitioner was an elderly woman with a mass of curly gray hair. She walked with her back bent double.

“Please, Your Majesty,” she said. “I have traveled all the way from Wutherton to speak to you.”

When Aurora had fallen asleep, Wutherton had been a tiny town, approximately a week's journey from the castle.

“I no longer feel safe in my home, Your Majesty. People in the town have been accusing me of witchcraft, blaming me for things I could have nothing to do with. The sickness has been with us this winter, and many children have died. I would never harm 'em, Your Majesty, never, but some people—they've convinced others. . . .”

The king leaned back, resting his elbows on the arms of the
throne. “And why do you think they've accused you?”

“I don't rightly know, Your Majesty,” she said. “I think maybe—I run an apothecary, gathering herbs for minor ailments, infection, and breathing difficulties and the like. I don't pretend to be a doctor or a healer, never have, just use the knowledge my mother gave me to help people and earn a living as I can. But some of the people in the town . . . they were angry I could not provide a cure. Why help nettle stings and soothe us to sleep, they said, when I cannot save their children? I wish I could help, I do, but I don't have the knowledge, and now—”

The king raised a hand to silence her. “You gather herbs? You do not look in the shape for it.”

“I did, Your Majesty, when I was young. Nowadays I have to hire apprentices to help me. The young things have good eyes, although they do sometimes dally about some. One of them succumbed as well, poor darling.”

The king nodded. “And you come here—why, exactly?”

“I—I was hoping you could offer your protection, Your Majesty. You know all about the evil people who hoard magic and threaten us all. If you said I was innocent, that it was just a sickness . . . maybe I could go home.”

“If I said? And why would I say that? You have nigh admitted your involvement.”

The woman stood completely still. “Your Majesty?”

“You gather herbs and mix potions—what is that but some subtle form of magic?”

“The plants have the magic, Your Majesty. I only mix them like my mother taught me.”

“And the apprentice who gathered the herbs for you fell sick from this curse too. Because the herbs poisoned her, perhaps? Or because she knew too much?”

The woman leaned away, shaking her head. Her eyes bulged. “No, Your Majesty! I would never do that. Never!”

The king glanced at Aurora. “Tell me, Aurora,” he said. “You are the most affected by magic out of those here. What would you see done with this woman?”

She swallowed. When she spoke, her voice was raspy, almost too soft to hear. “Nothing, Your Majesty,” she said.

“Nothing?”

“If she had magic, surely she would—she would use it to protect herself. Only an innocent person would come to plead for your help.”

“Or one who wished to appear innocent.” The king looked back at the shaking woman. “Do you hear that?” he said. “Our princess is touched by your tale. But just because you have charmed a sweet mind such as hers, does not mean you have succeeded.” He leaned forward, hands on his knees. “However, in honor of the princess's return, I have decided to be merciful. I will protect you, as you have asked. Room will be made in the dungeon for you. We shall see if these deaths end along with your disappearance. If they do—well, I would reassess how you speak to me, old woman. We will talk again.”

The king nodded to his guards, and one of them stepped forward to drag the woman away. She clawed at his hands, still shaking her head in disbelief, and when she turned to look at Aurora, terror filled her face. The terror settled in Aurora, too, a dreadful desperation that felt far more truthful than the king's dismissive anger. Aurora took another small step forward, watching the faces of the other onlookers. No one else seemed fazed. Some were fussing with their clothes, or fidgeting and whispering to the person next to them, as though this were a boring chore to withstand. Others were nodding in approval. The woman disappeared through the doors, and the king waved his hands to indicate that they should be closed behind her.

“I grow weary,” the king said. “And I must deal with the soldiers for Barton. Tell our other visitors that I will hear them tomorrow.” He stood up and strode out of the room. Iris beckoned for Aurora and Rodric to follow.

The antechamber felt close and too quiet after the grandeur of the throne room.

“I'm starving,” the king said as the brass doors closed. “I think lunch is in order.” He began to walk away, but Aurora found herself hurrying after him, questions bursting out of her.

“That woman,” she said. “What will happen to her?”

“If we find her guilty—and we will—then we'll burn that magic out of her. It is the only way we can know we'll be safe.”

Aurora's throat was dry. “And then—then you'll let her go?”
She knew it was an inane question, but she had to ask. She had to be sure.

The king laughed. “Such a sweet one, isn't she?” he said to the queen. “Of course we'll let her go. What's left of her, at least. I've never seen ashes walk very far, but there's a first time for everything! Especially when witches are involved.”

And, still chuckling, he strode away.

AURORA COULD NOT SLEEP THAT NIGHT.
Exhaustion burned her eyes, but every time she closed them, panic surged through her, the sense that she was drowning, smothered by the sheets, and her eyes would snap open again. The room was too small, too cold, too bare, the air stale and heavy on her tongue.

When she finally began to doze, the floor creaked, and blue eyes pierced through the dark. She sat up with a jolt, clutching the blankets to her chest. Nothing was there.

Aurora slipped out of bed. Her feet recoiled from the cold stone floor, but she pressed them down, savoring the shudder.
She pushed open the window and leaned out, letting the early spring breeze rustle through her hair. The chill pinched her cheeks.

The city seemed to glow, lights scattered across it like a reflection of the sky. Far below her, two girls ran along the street. She felt the sudden urge to run after them. To step outside, see the world she had fallen into, escape from these suffocating walls and breathe again.

Maybe if she saw it for herself, if she walked along the streets, she would start to understand what had happened to her kingdom while she slept. As she watched the lights glow across the city, she had to admit that she was hypnotized by their possibilities. Fascinated by the things she dreamed she might find.

Aurora doubted that anyone would recognize her from the brief glance of the day before, but she quickly changed into her plainest new dress, the one that seemed least likely to attract attention, and pulled a woolen cloak tightly around herself. Then she crept to the bedroom door and pushed it.

It was locked.

Aurora did not remember seeing a key or hearing a click, but the lock rattled when she pushed it again, holding the door in place. Sometime after Betsy had brought her supper, Aurora had been locked in.

Aurora swallowed her panic. She had been trapped behind many locked doors before. A single lock was much simpler than the heavy metal things that had once held her tower door in
place. But then, the explanation had been plain. Sensible, even. The door must be locked to keep her safe. What was the explanation now? Was the queen protecting her?

Or was she keeping a valuable asset in?

Aurora hurried to her dressing table and picked up a couple of hairpins.

Her parents had locked her in her bedroom when their paranoia got particularly excessive. When they decided that two locked doors were safer than one, and that one room was harder to break into than a whole tower. She had been locked in at night, and some parts of the days, away from the other rooms in her tower, from the library and the old playroom and her instruments and all her books.

In her boredom, in the claustrophobia that had seized her, opening the door had seemed like the perfect challenge. She had little else to do with her time. She moved books with details on locks from her library into her bedroom, but even with careful study, it had taken her the better part of a year to master the trick, so that she could perform it every try. She was not the most dexterous person. But eventually, she had learned.

By then, of course, her father had stopped locking her bedroom door. He told her, with a guilty expression on his face, that he believed her trustworthy enough to have the run of the tower. She knew better. It seemed too much like real imprisonment if she was confined to one room, and her father always had been a gentle sort of soul.

The lock clicked, and Aurora gave the door an experimental push. It slid open a few inches, and she peered out. The corridor was deserted. She hurried along it, and the next, slipping through the shadows by instinct until she reached the door to her tower. It was an imposing thing, with ornate swirls carved into the wood and several heavy locks and bars. The handle was cold in her hand, and she pulled hard, half expecting the door to resist.

It swung open with a creak, and Aurora darted inside. When she closed the door behind her, the darkness became so thick that she could not tell where the walls ended and the air began. She bent down and groped in front of her until her hands brushed stone, then began to trace up and down, left and right with her fingertips. Somewhere, she had scratched a tiny star into the wall, marking the exact block she needed.

There. She pried her fingernails into the gap between the stones and tugged. The scraping set her teeth on edge, but the stone came loose, then the one next to it, and the one after that, until a small crawl space appeared.

It had been her escape route. She had spent years exploring every inch of her tower, hunting down secrets, but this one had been the hardest won, and by far the best. Every time the castle walls pressed too close around her, she would wrench the bricks free and crawl out into the forest, enchanted by the risk, the thrill of endless space. The tunnel had been built on purpose, she had told herself every time a voice insisted she should tell her
father about its existence. He had included it in the tower himself, so that if anything terrible happened, she could slip out into the forest and escape. No one could see it from the outside. No one else could move the bricks. It was safe. So she told herself.

Now she paused at the edge of the space. Was this how Celestine had entered her tower, all those years ago? Through the tunnel that Aurora had kept secret, convinced that the freedom it offered was worth the risk? She swayed for a moment, staring in the blackness, and then shoved the thought aside. It was too late for those kinds of questions and regrets.

She wriggled inside. Dust clung to her clothes and her knees, but before she had crawled a few feet, the floor sloped downward, creating a narrow corridor she could stand in if she crouched. The tunnel was pitch black, apart from the occasional glint of light peeking in through the cracks in the stone. Cobwebs snatched at her hair, and there was a scuttling noise she did not want to think about, but her groping hands knew the way well, and soon fresh air fluttered at her face.

The exit was still open, covered with little more than ivy and grass and a few loose stones. She scraped at them with her nails, fighting her way through, and then she was outside, crouched on a slope that led onto the street.

She stepped onto the cobbled road, and her feet curled around the uneven stones. The streets wove in and out with no apparent logic, and Aurora followed them blindly, chasing the sound of activity and the distant movement of others. A century ago, she
had always been too scared to visit the nearby town, certain that someone would recognize her. The same fear prickled the inside of her stomach now, the dreadful, thrilling feeling that she was doing something dangerous and forbidden, but she walked on, not entirely sure what she was looking for.

The larger roads near the castle were lit by lanterns, hanging from the walls like eyes gleaming in the dark. Not magic, she knew, but something like it, some strange power that let the fire burn bright and bold. The same power, perhaps, that held together this cramped, sprawling, impossible city. The buildings climbed on top of one another, chasing up into the darkness, and ropes hung from window to window, clothes fluttering underneath. Even at this late hour, the city was alive with people, pausing at market stalls, leaning against walls to chat and laugh, hurrying about their business. The smell of food filled the air, escaping from windows, wafting from a few stalls she passed.

One market holder caught her eye and began to yell. “Fabric!” he said. “Beautiful fabric, all the way from Eko.” He held up a length of red material, too stiff and too shiny to be of true quality. His stall was illuminated by a lamp overhead, and the fabric glimmered in the dim light. “Worth its weight in gold, but I can cut a deal for a pretty lady like yourself. Two silver coins for a ream. Can't say fairer than that!”

“Don't listen to him,” shouted a woman from across the way. She held up another length of fabric, green and translucent. “He buys his fabric in Alyssinia, tries to scam everyone.
But this stuff—this stuff is from Vanhelm. Inspired by the color of dragon eyes, it is.”

“Sorry,” she blurted, and she hurried away, her eyes fixed on the ground. Small paving stones covered the street, gray with dust. A groove had been worn into the brick. Another ran parallel to it, a few feet away.

“Move, girl!”

Something clattered toward her, and she jerked aside. A horse cantered past, held to a carriage with steel bars and a gleaming harness. The carriage itself was almost square, black lined with bronze, with a single lamp swinging ahead of it, and another behind. A man sat on the roof, whipping the reins.

The wheels ran through the ruts in the road, spitting dust in Aurora's face. She stepped back, coughing, then turned aside and ducked into a side street, away from the crowds.

There was no market here, only shuttered windows, hanging laundry, and the occasional person leaning against the walls. Not a trace remained of the forest that had stood here a hundred years ago, but some of the houses had boxes of flowers and plants hanging below their windows. Private patches of green amid the never-ending stone and dust.

Aurora took one turn, and then another, always heading downhill, following the curve of the streets, until they were so narrow that she could reach out and touch the walls on either side with her fingertips. Voices bounced out of the windows, laughter and chatter and the occasional shout. When Aurora
glanced over her shoulder, only the tips of the castle towers were in sight.

A few people idled around a tatty building that jutted out of an alley. The Dancing Unicorn, the sign said. Aurora doubted that real unicorns were as fat and ungainly as the picture suggested. A woman's voice floated on the breeze as Aurora paused. She was singing, haunting notes that rose and fell like a sigh. The sound seemed to slip into Aurora's veins, as soft and delicate as silk. She had heard court singers and performers before, at the few celebrations she had attended as a child, and she played the harp herself in a clumsy, tentative sort of way, but she had never heard anything like this, nothing that sounded so raw and naked and sweet.

The music lingered in the air, tugging on some unknown part of her, the hollowness that had filled her ever since she awoke. She peered through the entrance and saw a large crowd of people, all moving, talking, laughing, dancing together. The rush of chatter made her pause, glance around warily, but there were so many people here that she truly was invisible. She could slip in, have a taste of that music, and no one would know.

She raised her chin and walked tentatively through the door.

The room inside was low and cramped, the air spiced with smoke. Lanterns hung from the rafters, swaying back and forth in time with the steps of the crowd, throwing scattered patches of the room into shadow. Mismatched furniture filled most of the floor—torn armchairs and stools of different colors and
tables that rocked, seemingly without provocation—except for the space near the stage where people danced. And the people . . . they filled every inch, talking, playing games, dancing, arguing in more languages than Aurora could imagine. Several people around Aurora's age stood behind a roughly cut bar, and more were scurrying around, laughing and joking and ferrying drinks.

On the stage at the far end of the room, a tall girl played an alien instrument of wood and strings. She had a willowy look about her, with long black hair hanging over small, sharp eyes and pale brown skin. Half of her face was in shadow, the lines of her cheekbones sharpened by the distant lanterns. She swayed as she sang, her eyes closed against the hot buzz of the room. The music ached with a desire that Aurora could not name, a longing that loosened the knots in her stomach. She took a few steps toward the girl, weaving between the tables, letting the atmosphere of the place, the notes on the air, soak into her skin.

“Aurora—” Her name stuck out of the chatter as clearly as a shout. The speaker was an older woman, talking to a man who might have been her husband. She had a loud voice and animated hands, acting out every word with gestures and nods. “It's a miracle, is what it is,” she said. “An absolute miracle. I told Maureen, I told her, I will never forget this day. I won't, and neither will she, I bet. I never thought, in my lifetime—” The woman stopped and looked up at Aurora. Her smile was almost toothless, welcoming. “Can I help you, dear?”

“Oh.” Aurora's heart fluttered and warmth rushed into her cheeks. “No. I'm sorry.”

“No need to be sorry, dear. Pull up a chair if you like. We were just talking about the ceremony.”

“The—ceremony?”

“With the princess,” the woman added, as though Aurora was rather slow. “Sleeping Beauty. Surely you saw it.”

Aurora's stomach twisted. “I missed it,” she said.

“Missed it?”

Aurora jerked her chin in an awkward imitation of a nod. She wanted to ask the woman to tell her about it, to spill every detail, share what she thought of the princess. But the words would not move off her tongue.

“Young people these days,” the woman said to the man who might be her husband. “I've been waiting all my life for this, and these young things miss it. Tristan!” A boy, cleaning off a table a few paces away, looked up. “I've found you a friend.”

The boy had scruffy brown hair and a lazy smile, like he was enjoying a joke that he hadn't yet shared. He walked over to them, balancing a tray of mugs in his hand. “A friend, Dolores?”

“Someone to get rid of that sullen look you've been wearing all night.”

“It's not sullen! It's deep.”

“Deep nonsense if you ask me. It's not like you.” The woman shook her head. “How anyone can be miserable at a time like this, I really don't know. But don't you worry. I've found the
only other person in Petrichor, if not all of Alyssinia, who missed the show. You can commiserate with each other, or complain, or whatever you young folk like to do.”

He looked at Aurora, and there was a little hitch in his smile, as though something were tugging down at the corner of his lips. Aurora forced herself to look him in the eye, her heart pounding. Then his smile grew again, and he gave her a casual nod. “Glad to have you in the club.”