Page 15

SAMPLING OF WARES

G isele was simply going to forget all about the dream, she had decided by the time the room had lightened enough to justify getting out of bed. As she placed her feet on the rug, the curtains pulled back, spilling golden sunrise into the room.

“Thank you,” she said to the ceiling, unsure where to address the house.

One could not be held responsible for things that one did in dreams, she reasoned as she performed her morning ablutions, careful not to touch the gold-inlaid taps with her bare hands.

Who wastes gold on such things! s he thought with increasing exasperation towards Malediction, who was presumably responsible for this nonsense.

Although, he was also presumably responsible for there being hot running water, which was a luxury she particularly appreciated after her days in the woods.

Still, the exasperation helped settle her nerves.

Var Hartmann had written that dreams were simply the mind’s way of working through the stresses of the waking world.

His thesis was that the actual scenarios presented in dreams should never be interpreted literally; dreams of falling, for example, did not reflect a fear of heights but should be interpreted as symbolising failure.

Using that logic, she had dreamed that Malediction was about to kiss her as a metaphor for surprise , her subconscious mind still coming to terms with how different the real Malediction was from what she’d expected.

Alternatively, she was an attention-starved spinster and the Malediction was a physically attractive man she’d spent her life fixated on.

It wasn’t that difficult to see why her subconscious had danced merrily down the path it had.

Mortifying, but not complicated. Honestly, it probably would have been odder if she hadn’t dreamed about the man .

She grimaced, but in any case, it didn’t matter. She wasn’t a hormonal teenager to let herself get addled by mere dreams.

The door creaked open behind her. Gisele whirled, but it was only Zingiber the cat. The house must have let him in.

I’m hungry , he commented as he trotted over to join her. Feed me.

“Can’t you ask the house?”

The house doesn’t listen to me. Zingiber leapt up beside her. The fae who lives here told it not to.

“Why would he do that?”

He didn’t like the half-eaten fish-heads appearing everywhere. I don’t see why. I would’ve eaten them all eventually. They smelled delicious! He’s very disagreeable.

Gisele smiled and ran a hand along Zingiber’s back. “I see,” she said. “I’ll feed you, then. Just let me get dressed first.”

But I’m staaaaarving , Zingiber whined, winding between her legs.

“Just a moment.” She donned a day dress and apron, suitable for rummaging through dusty libraries, and quickly braided her hair and pinned it into place. “Lead on.”

But as soon as they emerged from her room, she collided with her Malediction, who had just then rounded the corner. They each sprang back.

“My apologies, princess,” he said stiffly. He glared accusingly at the ceiling. “The house shifted the hallway with some abruptness. Good, ah, morning.”

“Good morning, my Malediction,” she said, to remind them both what he was, because even the brief contact had jerked through her like a shot of liqueur, sweet and hot, with the notes of his magic enveloping the entire hallway.

Malediction’s ears twitched, but he didn’t protest the appellation.

Had she sounded normal? Was her expression normal?

She’d had a lot of practice at masking what she was feeling; she hoped it was working now even as the memory of the dream made her lips burn.

“I was just taking Zingiber down to feed him.” Her own stomach chose that moment to growl. “And perhaps also myself.”

“I fed that cat not half an hour ago.”

Gisele shot Zingiber an outraged look. “You said you were starving!”

I am , the cat said placidly. You said you’d feed me.

“He’s just fed you!”

I don’t see how that’s relevant.

“Zingiber, you are utterly shameless. But let me escort you down, princess.” He offered her his arm, radiating tension. The Malediction of the waking world certainly wasn’t as enamoured of her company as the dream one.

“I’d rather not touch,” she said. “The magic?—”

But he was already nodding, his shoulders coming down with relief. “Of course, that’s perfectly sensible. This way.”

He led them downstairs, not to a breakfast parlour or the formal dining room from last night but back to the kitchen. Before she could question where they were going, he had stopped short, all his fur bristling and a literal growl emerging from his throat.

Gisele craned around him to see what had caused this reaction and found a large, ash-grey hen resting sedately in front of the stove. It tilted its head inquisitively and clucked.

“Get out!” Malediction growled.

The hen clucked again, but when he strode towards it radiating menace, it got to its feet, though more as if it were humouring him than anything else.

He pulled open the door to the garden. “Out!”

Clucking disapproval, the hen waddled outside, though it didn’t go far, settling down for a dust bath almost immediately. Malediction glared at it before slamming the door shut.

“How did a chicken get into the kitchen?” Gisele wondered.

“That was an erdhenne,” Malediction said grimly. “Not exactly a pest, but it still shouldn’t have gotten past the wards. I thought I’d adjusted them to account for your presence yesterday, but they’re still fizzing this morning.”

“Fizzing?”

“A highly technical magical term. Hopefully it’s just a matter of a few more tweaks,” he said lightly, but she could tell that he was deeply worried. He gave himself a shake. “Do you like eggs?” he asked, striding over to the pantry door.

“Yes,” she said, increasingly puzzled as he pulled out fresh bread and a thick sausage.

“Black pudding? Mushrooms?”

“Yes, but…are you cooking?”

He looked up in surprise. “Is that an issue?”

“No, it’s just that I thought the house made last night’s dinner?” It had certainly appeared magically out of the dumbwaiter, and he’d said there weren’t any servants.

He shook his head. “The house is not to be trusted with cooking. I experimented in the early days, but it’s too small-scale and with too many variables, some of which are on fire,” he said with a smile.

“It can bring you up food from the pantry, but if you ask it to make you a pie, you’ll end up with a singed kitchen and an inedible mess. ”

A few drawers rattled an objection, and Malediction ran a soothing hand across the bench. “You’re very good at many other things,” he told the house. “No one expects houses to cook.”

Gisele couldn’t stop staring at his long fingers, moving so surely across the surface. She swallowed. “Um. So. You do all the cooking?”

“Some of it. There’s an excellent chef at the inn in the nearest village. She made last night’s dinner. We have an arrangement.” He drew her attention to the dumbwaiter. “There’s a fetch-spell on it that she can activate on her end.”

It seemed like a lot of effort to avoid having a cook working in the house. She sat down at the kitchen table while he began to pull ingredients from the adjoining pantry and larder rooms. The house helpfully opened cupboards for him, the pair of them partners in an odd but practised dance.

“Why don’t you want servants in the house?” she asked.

“The fewer different people come in and out, the easier it is on the wards.” He wasn’t lying, but she had the sense it wasn’t the whole truth either. She thought of his paranoia yesterday about being overheard in the garden.

“Are you worried about your enemy sending people to spy on you?” she hazarded.

He carefully continued whisking eggs. “If he knew where I was, he wouldn’t send people; he would come himself. But people don’t have to be spies to gossip, and gossip travels. I cannot risk word of me reaching him, not when I am this powerless.” Butter sizzled as it melted in the frying pan.

He did not seem very powerless, with a magic house dripping in gold. She pointed this out.

He shrugged. “Skymallow’s magic is its own, but it is a young siden, so it relies on my help.

I am fae; some minor magic remains in my blood and bones even with the loss of the greater magics.

The house supplies the main power for the wards; I merely direct it.

If I had my full powers, I could easily reinforce the wards to make them hold against any amount of going in or out.

As it is, I am forced to repurpose gold magic into wards, which is not something it is well suited to. ”

“Wait, you still have the ability to spin straw into gold? How is that not a greater magic?” With all this talk of being without his power, she’d been assuming his excessive decor must come from gold pre-dating the bargain.

He blinked. “It’s wrapped up in the bargain; straw into gold in exchange for keeping my true name safe, so I still retain that power even when all my other greater powers have gone. If I had the rest of my powers, I could defend myself properly.”

Gisele chewed on that. It always came back to gold, didn’t it? “Can you turn things back from gold?”

He shook his head. “The transformation only works one way.”

“And it’s always permanent?”

He studied her, but she kept her expression blank. “Yes,” he said slowly.

That didn’t help her understand what had happened back in Isshia any better. “So that’s what the sorcerer you’re hiding from wants? Your gold magic?”

The line of his shoulders tightened, and a bolt of… apprehension? Guilt? shot through her, gone before she could pin it down. “He wants the use of my greatest power. He will take me back to his court, imprison me, and make sure that my power will be under his control.”

“Oh. That does sound fairly terrible,” she allowed, grudgingly. “Must you keep coming up with these somewhat sympathetic explanations?”

His dark mood lifted in an instant. “Would it be better if I’d cursed you out of pure malice?”

“Yes. If you’d been a completely evil sorcerer, I could have left you to die yesterday with a clear conscience.”

He smiled faintly as he tipped the eggs into the frying pan. “Extremely reasonable, but also then there would be no one here to make you breakfast. A small consolation?”

“I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve sampled your wares.”

He laughed, warm and touchable, his cat-ears perked in delight. A pang went through her, a kind of pained pleasure. From the outside it might look as if they were friends, as if she were a normal person who had handsome, charming friends and ate breakfast in kitchens with them.

He served up eggs scrambled with finely chopped parsley on thick slices of toast, with mushrooms and fried black pudding.

“Let me know if my wares please you,” he said, his voice a little rougher than usual, and her terrible gutter-bred mind helpfully drew up the memory of how he’d sounded in the dream and interpreted the words entirely inappropriately.

She kept her gaze focused on her plate, unable to keep the heat from rising in her cheeks. “This smells delicious. Thank you.”

“No thanks are necessary; I am your host. It is my duty to provide for you while you reside here. That is guestright, a tradition as ancient as Faerie.” He’d gone all stiffly formal again.

They ate in awkward silence. The food was as delicious as it had smelled, but her stomach had tied itself into knots that made it difficult to properly appreciate it.

“I’ve been thinking about your comb,” he offered.

“Perhaps I was too hasty writing it off last night. I tried every spell I could work on the tree, but my powers are, as previously discussed, limited”—his ears flicked in distaste—“but since you have fae magic too, there’s a ritual spell we might try that requires more power than I can muster on my own.

Only, I can’t remember exactly where I put it, so we might need to have a hunt—” He broke off, head canting. “What’s wrong?”

Gisele didn’t think she’d given any sign of her increasing agitation, but then perhaps she didn’t have to with that damned connection running between them. She made herself consciously un-tense her muscles. “What exactly would this ritual require? I don’t know how to use my magic.”

His gaze was far too sharp. “You’re afraid of it.”

“Of course I’m afraid of it! Fae magic is the reason I’m cursed!” That wasn’t the only reason for her fear, or even the main one, but it was the one she could most easily discuss.

He canted his head to the side. “I promise this ritual will not turn into an accidental life-long curse.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t make light of it.”

His eyebrows went up. “I’m not. That’s why I promised; I thought you would appreciate the reassurance.”

“I am in fact now less reassured, having not considered there was any possibility of spawning further curses from this.”

A smile twitched at his mouth. “Ah. I see the issue. Will it be more or less reassuring if I tell you that I cannot see how any curse could result from this spell, even if it fails? In theory, the worst possible outcome is that my name isn’t connected to the comb, in which case no secrets will be compelled from it, in which case we will be in roughly the same position we are now.

” He was still watching her as if trying to unpick her secrets.

“This ritual won’t require any knowledge of spellcasting from you, just power. I’ll direct it.”

She put her hands flat on the table and took a deep, calming breath. “Very well. What were you saying before about needing to hunt for it?”

His smile grew a bit sheepish. “Ah. Well, it’s definitely somewhere in my library. It might take me a little while to locate it, is all.”