Foxheart (5 page)

“Oh, for the love of all the stars, would you please just stop talking?” Quicksilver smacked her spatula against the bed. “If you're going to whine about everything, I'll leave you right now, and I won't feel bad about it for a second.”

Sly Boots looked up, his cheeks streaked with tears. “Does that mean you're staying? You'll help me?”

“I have some conditions. First, when I steal us food, you must cook me things that taste delicious.”

Sly Boots nodded eagerly. “I'm an excellent cook.”

“You'd better be. Second, you must not complain, ever, not even once, while we're out on a job. And if you're really as hopeless as you say, and I decide to send you home, you can't complain then, either—not one whining, sniveling word.”

“I will only say cheerful, excited things.”

“As long as they aren't
too
cheerful,” said Quicksilver sternly.
“You can go too far in the opposite direction, you know.”

“But how far is too—”

“And third . . .” Quicksilver took a deep breath. “You must help me find information about the man who attacked my convent. He had a pack of wolves with him, and—”

“Like the Wolf King?” Sly Boots's eyes grew wide.

No.
It couldn't be the Wolf King. Because that meant . . . Quicksilver didn't know what that meant. “Would the Wolf King attack a convent full of little girls? That's a rather blasphemous thing to say.”

But it might have been the Wolf King,
a voice inside Quicksilver insisted.
And what then?
What
then
?

“Sorry,” said Sly Boots sheepishly.

“These wolves weren't like real wolves. They glowed and changed, like—”

“Like the ones I saw,” Sly Boots whispered. “Do you think it was a witch pretending to be the Wolf King? That'd be really clever. Pretending to be the Wolf King and getting into all these fancy places, maybe even a lord's castle, and then doing terrible things—”

“And my fourth condition,” said Quicksilver, “is that you may never again interrupt me, or I'll make Fox rip out your throat.”

Sly Boots frowned. “Who's Fox?”

Quicksilver gave a sharp whistle. From downstairs came the sound of the front door slamming open and something rapidly crashing up the stairs. Fox bounded into the bedroom and cornered Sly Boots with a growl.

Sly Boots threw himself back against the wall. “Is this yours?”

“Yes, and just so you know, I've trained him to kill on command.” Quicksilver whistled once more for Fox, and he trotted over to her, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. She held out her hand to Sly Boots. “Do we have a deal?”

Sly Boots hesitated for only a moment before slapping Quicksilver's hand. “We have a deal.”

“T
he first rule of thieving,” Quicksilver whispered the next morning, “is to always be aware of your body. That way you don't trip—say, over your own boots—and ruin a job.” She cleared her throat. “If you know what I mean.”

“Right. Be aware. Body. Got it.”

Quicksilver watched witheringly as Sly Boots struggled to adjust the long striped scarf about his neck with one hand while clinging to the church rooftop with the other. “Was it really necessary for you to wear that?” she asked.

“Was it necessary to climb onto the roof? It's cold up here!”

“The second rule of thieving is to survey the area from as high a point as possible, so nothing takes you by surprise.”

Sly Boots looked down at the ground and then quickly up, breathing fast. “We're going to fall and smash our heads open.”

“We won't if you listen to me instead of panicking. I've done this loads of times, trust me. Now come on.”

Quicksilver climbed farther up the shingled roof, her makeshift witch's cloak flapping in the wind. Sly Boots had loaned her a pair of his own boots; they were too big for her, brown and clunky, but she still scaled the roof with ease.

Sly Boots followed her much more slowly, muttering over and over, “Don't look down. Don't look down.”

At the top of the roof, Quicksilver lay flat and hooked her elbows over the peak. From here, she could see the entire town square. She could see what the people of Willow-on-the-River put into their market baskets—bolts of cloth, wrapped parcels of fish, sacks of apples and potatoes, stoppered bottles of all sizes, bunches of garlic cloves, sprigs of rosemary, wool blankets tied with twine, charms made of beads and colored glass, and carved wooden figurines.

And, Quicksilver observed, some of the figurines were wolves—painted black, gray, red, blue, brown, gold, and white.
One wolf for each of the seven Star Lands. Seven wolves for the Wolf King.

Quicksilver pressed her cheek to the slanted roof, which was warm from the midmorning sun, and gazed north. Past the farmlands and rolling hills of her own kingdom, Lalunet, was the kingdom of Valteya. And past the cold mountains of Valteya was the even colder and more mountainous Far North. And there, somewhere, was the Black Castle, where the Wolf King lived. Many had traveled there, but none had returned. The Scrolls said the Wolf King was beautiful, and splendid, in that way that only kings can be. The sisters had explained that those explorers who braved the Far North in search of the Wolf King's castle never returned because they had found him, and been overcome with love for him, and agreed to stay and serve him in his great hunt.

Quicksilver had always believed this, as had every other child at the convent—and every other child in the Star Lands, she reckoned.

But now, looking north, where the barest shadowy hints of the Valteyan mountains reached toward the clouds, Quicksilver could think only of Mother Petra's terrified face.

She thought, as she had many times, about her parents—
no doubt traveling at the Wolf King's side, helping him hunt, offering him counsel. By serving the Wolf King, they were helping many, and by returning to Quicksilver, they would be helping only one small girl.

But if that horrible man at the convent
had
been the Wolf King, and he was somehow not what she had been taught—if he did indeed go about attacking orphans and old women—then such a person did not deserve her parents' help.

Her cheek pressed hard against the roof, Quicksilver whispered to the wind, “Come back. Leave him, and come back to me.”

Below, in the square, a familiar bark alerted Quicksilver to Fox. He was circling a market stall from which floated the mouthwatering scent of cooking meat.

“Are we going to do this or not?” Sly Boots hissed beside her. He clutched the shingles, his feet slipping and sliding to find purchase.

Quicksilver blinked. “Of course we are. Stop moving around so much. You're distracting me.”

“Are you crying?” Sly Boots scooted closer, his eyes wide. “What is it? Are we going to fall? Are we stuck? I knew it. We're stuck.” He pushed himself up and opened his mouth to scream. “Help!”

Quicksilver tugged him back down. “The third rule of thieving is you never,
ever
ask for help from non-thieves. You die before giving yourself away.”

“That's ridiculous! I don't want to die!”

“Look—I never need help, from anyone, so if you do as I say, you won't either, and then you won't have to worry about dying. Simple as that.” Quicksilver took a deep breath and turned away from the north, even though it was hard to do, for thoughts of her parents lingered.

“Now, in that stall over there,” she said, “is a woman selling some really excellent-smelling chicken—”

Sly Boots scrambled up to see, his scarf catching on the roof. “What about medicine for my parents? I see Reko's cart, right over there. They need a tonic for their fever.”

“Food first. Medicine later.” Quicksilver gritted her teeth. “You said Reko's on the lookout for you, so we'll work up to him. Now—”

Anastazia.

Quicksilver froze. “Did you hear that?”

Sly Boots looked around frantically. “Hear what? What is it? Did someone see us? Oh, stars, we're going to die. The magistrate will arrest us, and then we'll die.”

“No, it was—”

Anastazia.

It was impossible. Quicksilver was hearing things. There was a voice on the wind, a woman's voice, and it was saying her name, and that was impossible.

Anastazia.

Not her thieving name. Not Pig. Not Witch. Not Girl.

Anastazia
.
Her
real
name, which only her parents knew.

Quicksilver's head buzzed with sudden fear and hope.

She crawled across the roof, ignoring Sly Boots's cries, and climbed up the church belfry until she reached one of the high arched windows. From there she gazed north again, and this time she saw a figure on the village's northernmost bridge. The figure wore a dark cloak, and even from this distance, she could see that the figure was gazing up at the belfry, right where Quicksilver stood.

“W
hat is it?” asked Sly Boots, scooting his way across the roof toward the belfry. “Do you see something?”

“I . . . I don't know,” replied Quicksilver. “I suppose it's just a traveler.”

But Quicksilver knew, in her deepest heart, that this was no normal traveler. The sight of the stranger gave Quicksilver a chill, even with the sunlight shining down upon her. Something about the stranger seemed familiar—the way she moved, the shape of her hand holding the cloak at her throat.

Quicksilver climbed down from the belfry and perched
on a gargoyle shaped like a howling wolf. The stranger walked smoothly into town, cloak trailing through the mud, and when she reached the square, where the market bustled on, oblivious, the stranger found an unused stool and sat upon it.

And sat. And sat.

The stranger sat on this stool for such a long time that Quicksilver began to doubt her own memory. Had this person just arrived, or had she always been sitting there, on the south edge of the market, still and dark?

“Who is that?” whispered Sly Boots loudly, poking his head over the roof's peak. “Quicksilver?”

“Not now, Boots,” said Quicksilver, climbing down the side of the church, using the stone wall's intricate carvings of wolves as handholds. Though Quicksilver could hear an increasingly unhappy Sly Boots calling after her, she ignored him. There was something much more important to puzzle out, now that she could see better:

Beside the stranger sat a dog with a small pack tied to his chest, and the dog looked remarkably like Fox.

He was older than Fox, his chin shaggy with white whiskers, his coat grayed. But she could not ignore the resemblance—there were his alert brown eyes. There was his torn left ear.

Quicksilver's Fox hurried over, even the slow-roasting chicken forgotten. He put himself in front of Quicksilver and growled at the stranger and her dog, his teeth bared.

“It's all right, Fox,” whispered Quicksilver, although she could not be sure that it was.

A young boy in a tasseled linen shirt, passing by with a small bag of potatoes slung over his shoulder, glanced at the stranger, then glanced again, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise.

“Who are you?” the boy asked. He examined the stranger from head to toe and made a face. “You're ugly.”

“And you are very unpleasant,” said the stranger, in a voice warm and smooth as sleep. The stranger peeked out from her hood. Her strong, steady voice did not match her lined face, nor the chalky white skin flaking at the corners of her mouth.

“What of it?” demanded the boy.

The stranger shrugged. “Just an observation. Perhaps you'd be happier if you had something . . . pretty in your life?”

And with that, the stranger bent to scrape her knobby fingers across the ground. From the cracked cobblestones, she pulled a bouquet of purple and yellow flowers and presented it to the boy with a flourish.

The boy gasped, a grin spreading across his face. He ran
across the square, calling excitedly for his mother.

With a tired
whuff
, the old dog pulled a lumpy hat from beneath the stranger's cloak and laid it on the ground.

“Did you see that, Fox?” whispered Quicksilver. “She's good. She slipped those flowers out from her sleeve, I know she did. I've done something like that
before myself. Remember when I dragged that garden snake out of my prayer robe and Sister Marketta fainted?”

Fox backed away from the stranger, whining uncertainly. He nudged Quicksilver's arm, but she did not budge.

Soon a crowd gathered around the stranger to watch her draw coins out of ears and frightened-looking rabbits out of coat pockets. She juggled ten apples at once, and threw her voice to make it sound as though she was speaking to the crowd from inside the church, and she turned water into milk using a special cup she withdrew from her cloak.

The villagers indulged her, tossing coins into her hat and exchanging smiles over the heads of their children. It was benevolent, innocent “magic,” these tricks—sleight of hand, misdirection. Nothing to be concerned about. And did you see? She has perfectly respectable red hair, and it's graying with age, like a normal person's would. It's a wonder she's even still alive, by the looks of her face.

No, no witches here.

Quicksilver watched the stranger all morning, crouched in the shadows around the church. Sometime after the lunch hour, Sly Boots found her, his scarf half torn and his face dotted with scrapes.

“I got myself down, thank you very much.” He slumped against the church wall, flinging an arm over his eyes. “I thought I was going to die. Perhaps I have died. Are we up in the stars now? Did you die too?”

“Sly Boots,” whispered Quicksilver, “watch her dog for a while and tell me what you see. Not the stranger, don't watch her, or her tricks. Just watch the dog.”

Sly Boots groaned and pulled himself upright. Then he sat up straighter.

“That dog,” Sly Boots breathed. “It's stealing things. It's . . . it's moving so quickly . . . like—”

“Like the lit-up animals you saw with the witches in the woods?” Quicksilver interrupted. “Like the wolves at my convent.”

As they watched, the old dog vanished in a soft flash of light. It then reappeared behind a man wearing a red cotton vest. The dog pulled a purse heavy with coins from his pocket and then disappeared again, with that same soft flash that could easily
have been mistaken for a shift in the clouds, had you not been paying close enough attention.

The man in the red vest absently brushed his coat, as if scratching an itch, and applauded along with everyone else.

The old dog reappeared at the stranger's side, nudging the stolen purse beneath the ragged hem of her cloak.

Sly Boots grabbed Quicksilver's arm. “Do you think—?”

Quicksilver shook him off. “I can't be sure. But we've got to talk to her. Maybe she knows about the wolves, and your parents too.”

“I'll kill her,” said Sly Boots, in a voice so deadly it stole Quicksilver's attention. She placed a hand on each of his shoulders.

“You will do nothing of the sort,” she said. “Are you stupid? If you kill her, we won't be able to ask her any questions. Plus, if she is a . . . well, you know. If she is, you probably wouldn't be able to kill her, and then you'd end up just like your parents, wouldn't you?”

The hard light faded from Sly Boots's eyes. His shoulders slumped, and he was the same mopey, clumsy boy she had met the day before. “I suppose you're right.”

“Of course I am. Now—”

Anastazia.

Quicksilver spun around, searching for the voice on the wind and finding instead that the village square was empty, the market closed, and the world cold and dark with night.

“Wh-what?” Sly Boots threw himself back against the wall of the church, his eyes round as two moons. “What happened? What . . . where . . . ?”

“I believe the word you're searching for is
when
,” said a low, even voice. The stranger appeared before Quicksilver in a swirl of light. The light became dog-shaped, and then the old dog materialized beside her. When Fox, disoriented, swayed on his feet, the old dog appeared to
smile
at him.

It was not a particularly nice smile.

Quicksilver glared up at the stranger's shadowed face. “Who are you?”

“An interesting question, Anastazia—”

“My name's Quicksilver,” said Quicksilver sharply. “I answer to no other name.”

The stranger knelt and lowered her hood. Quicksilver could not help but flinch at her grotesquely marred face—her bulbous, scarred nose, her mottled skin. “An interesting question,” she said again, ignoring Quicksilver. “But I don't think it's really the
question you want to ask, is it?” Her eyes twinkled. “Odd and wonderful, how we land on the same name every time. Some things, I suppose, never change.”

Sly Boots tugged on Quicksilver's coat. “Let's run. She's worked some kind of magic on us. Where are we? Have we gone mad? Oh, stars help us. . . .”

The stranger quirked an eyebrow. “The boy's not wrong. Who is he, by the way? I've never met him before. He's new.”

“How do you know . . .” Quicksilver's voice shook and then gave out. She reached for Fox, and he bumped his cold nose against her palm.

“Yes, little thief? How do I know what?”

Quicksilver looked into the stranger's eyes and saw that they were violet as the near moon. Bright and sharp, they did not look as old as the rest of her, and there was something about those eyes—the shape of them, their mischievous light—that struck Quicksilver as familiar.

Something uneasy fluttered in her stomach. “How did you do this? How did you make it—”

“How did I make it night?” The stranger waved her hand carelessly at the stars. “Even I can't do that much. It was a simple spell that kept you and your breathless little friend immobile
and hidden for a time, until I was ready to meet you.” The stranger's eyes cut to Fox; the corner of her mouth twitched into something like a frown. “And your dog, of course.”

“Teach me,” Quicksilver blurted, though it was not what she had meant to ask:
Who are you? Why do you care about me and Sly Boots?

How do you know my real name?

“Quicksilver,” Sly Boots hissed, “what are you
doing
?”

The stranger smiled. “Why should I teach you anything at all?”

Quicksilver's words spilled out before she could stop them. “I'm the best thief in all the Star Lands.”

“Then why should you need me?”

Quicksilver wished Sly Boots were not hovering quite so close, and that he would stop whispering, “What'll we do, what'll we
do
?” over and over.

“Because I want to
really
be the best thief,” said Quicksilver, flushing, “and not just say I am. Because I want to find out what happened with those wolves.”

Because,
whispered her deepest heart,
I want to find my parents, and maybe magic will help me do it.

She squared her jaw and tried to imitate the haughtiest of
Adele's expressions. “Because I'm not afraid of witches.”

The stranger's smile was slow and horrid, revealing crooked black-and-yellow teeth. “Not yet, you aren't.”

Sly Boots squeaked something unintelligible.

“Well?” Quicksilver insisted, though her throat was dry and Fox would not stop whimpering. “Will you do it?”

“I will, and this very night too,” said the stranger, “if you can tell me this one thing.” The stranger leaned close, and her breath smelled not of rot, but of snow—crisp and clean. “How do I know your real name, little thief? Tell me, in three guesses' time, and I'll teach you everything you want to know, and more.”

Then she stood, returned to her stool, arranged her cloak about her in voluminous folds of night, and waited.