Page 53

HOW TO brIBE A HOUSE

T hey rushed upstairs to the unfinished room. Mal put his hand on the plain door, which still had no doorhandle. “Will you let us see what you’re making, Skymallow?”

The door remained shut.

Gisele placed her hand beside Mal’s. The wood felt slightly warmer than the surrounding house, and she could feel a faint vibration through her palm.

“It’s important,” she told the house. “We promise we won’t interfere with it. We just want to know what you’re making.”

The door continued in its closedness.

Mal took his hand off the door and eyed his recalcitrant house thoughtfully. “I have a lovely piece of purple heart down in my workshop, which I was thinking I could make a chess table from,” he said suggestively.

Again, no response. Mal set off towards his workshop anyway.

Gisele followed. “Are you… trying to bribe Skymallow?”

“Obviously.” His fingers brushed against one of the cracks. “It will help as well to give the house more energy, if I put labour into something specifically intended for it.”

But when they reached the door to his workshop, it slammed shut in front of their noses. Mal pulled on the handle, muscles straining in interesting ways, to no avail. He stood back and glared at it.

“Skymallow!” It was a parent’s exasperated remonstrance of a misbehaving child. “I’m trying to do nice things for you!”

“Maybe it doesn’t want to be bribed with woodwork,” Gisele suggested. “Maybe it wants something else.”

“I’ll get the pattern out for that star-shot mothfur gown I know you want,” Mal wheedled. “We’ll hire a brownie to do the fine stitching for you. A whole family of brownies.”

She swore she felt the house considering it, but when they reached the sewing room, they were blocked by a slammed door once again. Mal was distinctly ruffled.

“Houses are supposed to help their people!” he complained. There was a distinct cooling of temperature. “Oh, very well. But what is it that you do want, then?”

Gisele had been thinking about that too. “It cleared out the garden shed for me. Perhaps that was the hint.”

Mal froze. “Show me?”

She took him out to the garden, and he entered the space with wonder. “Skymallow,” he said, this time in praise. “You’ve made it so tidy! Oh, you clever thing!”

“I’ve been wondering about the tools, though? Did it make those too? Are they house-locked?”

Mal’s tail twitched. “Ah. No. They’re mine.

” He ran his fingers over the workbench.

“I started repairing my old tools from when I first set up the garden, and I made some additional purchases. I thought… well, you made me realise how badly I’d let it all run amok, and I thought you might…

In any case, it seems that Skymallow has moved them in here from my workshop. ”

“And these?” she picked up the gardening gloves, which clearly wouldn’t fit on Mal’s larger hands.

“Ah. Well. You were so interested in the garden. I thought you might like some. Skymallow cut the leather. I stitched.” His ears were twitching in an endearing way.

Impulsively, she hugged him. “Thank you,” she said.

His eyes shone star-bright when she released him. “I think you’re right that this is a hint. This is your area. I put myself at your disposal—where should we start?”

She surveyed the garden, mentally squaring it off. She was, she realised with some irony, excited. She’d wanted to take charge of the garden ever since she’d arrived, but it hadn’t seemed polite, as a guest. Now she had the perfect excuse.

When she turned back to Mal, she found him watching her with an odd, soft expression.

She swallowed. “We’ll start with cutting the trees and largest shrubs back.

We’ll do it in segments,” she told him, trying to hide her fluster.

“All the stone-fruit trees that have finished fruiting can be pruned now, but we’ll leave the others for winter. ”

Mal’s ears twitched, and she realised what she’d said.

“—which is approximately when we might hope to finish, if we’re lucky,” she quickly added, hoping she sounded as if that unconscious ‘we’ had been a deliberate joke. It worried her that she hadn’t been joking.

Mal threw himself into the work once she showed him what to do. Skymallow seemed happy, too, helpfully shifting the clippings into bigger piles and then eating them. Perhaps she was imagining it, but she swore she could feel the change in its energy levels too.

The day was thankfully overcast, but Gisele still donned her large straw hat.

Purple bees buzzed lazily, moving on with reluctance as she clipped back the lavender they were feasting on.

Tiny jewel-bright skinks scattered when she began turning over a garden bed next to their chosen sunbathing spot, only to slowly creep back. Overhead, a hawk circled.

It was difficult not to get distracted watching Mal.

He’d rolled up his sleeves, exposing the tanned skin of his forearms, which felt like it ought to count as a forbidden act.

His autumn hair glinted in the sunlight as he moved.

And oh, did he move. He bounded his way up trees, retractable claws giving him an unfairly good grip.

They broke for lunch. Gisele swallowed down glass after glass of cold water and wished it might cool other urges as well.

It was well into the afternoon when she felt Apfela’s return, or rather, Skymallow’s reaction to it. A shiver passed through the garden like a cold wind.

Exchanging glances, they put down their tools and began towards the other end of the orchard, but they had gone only a few paces when Apfela appeared, carrying Nissa.

If Gisele hadn’t already realised Apfela’s strength, she would have then because Apfela made it look effortless even though she was striding with great speed, her mouth a grim line.

Gisele’s heart stopped because Nissa’s eyes were closed, her clothing bloodstained.

“I found her deep in the forest. The trees told me where to find her,” Apfela said. Her attention was on Mal, who’d gone very still, and there was a defiance to her, as if she truly expected him to try to throw them out.

“Bring her inside,” Mal said.

Gisele hurried to open the kitchen door. “How is she hurt?”

“Something’s mangled her leg well and truly. It needs proper care. She’s lost a lot of blood,” Apfela said, laying the girl out on the long kitchen table. Sure enough, a shawl that Gisele recognised as belonging to Apfela had been bound tightly around Nissa’s left foot. Blood had soaked through.

Gisele was reminded of the Leafling Sisters as she and Apfela went to work.

Mal brought Nissa a cushion for her head and then stood back, his awkward desire to help mingling with his lack of knowledge of how to do so.

Gisele set him to making tea on the basis that that couldn’t do any harm and might eventually do someone some good.

When she removed Apfela’s makeshift bandage, she gasped. ‘Mangled’ was right. Something with enormous teeth had bitten deeply, and the wound was swollen and oozing. Gisele felt the area carefully, trying to work out whether any bones were broken.

Nissa came to with a gasp.

Apfela’s voice was immediate and steady. “You’re safe, girl; you’re safe.”

Nissa looked around wildly. “Where am I?”

“In my house,” Gisele told her because it seemed the most reassuring way to phrase it with Nissa looking so panicked.

Nissa fixed on Gisele’s face. “Your house? What about the Malediction?”

“He’s becoming resigned to sharing. You are welcome, Niressa,” Mal added, more formally.

Nissa blinked. A current of… something passed between them, connected to Skymallow. Guestright?

“What happened?” Gisele asked.

Nissa grimaced. “Fucking hunters is what happened.” She flung out the obscenity with a spark of her usual fierceness, and relief flooded Gisele; the girl’s spirit remained uncowed despite her injury.

But even Nissa’s attempt at stony indifference faltered a few times as Gisele cleaned her ankle.

Gisele and Apfela between them kept up a steady stream of questions, attempting to distract her.

The story came out as they tended the wounds, in between winces. Nissa had been deep in the woods when a pair of fae had come upon her, demanding she tell them whether she’d seen a fae with one gold eye, one blue.

Gisele sucked in a breath and heard Mal do the same.

“So of course I told them I wasn’t their minion and it wasn’t my job to search on their behalf,” Nissa complained, and Gisele could well imagine her sharp-tongued response. “They set a syphon-hound on me!”

“They drain energy,” Mal supplied softly. His face was white.

“It got a good bite out of me before I jumped into the stream to escape.” Nissa looked dispassionately at her leg. “I’ll have a decent scar, I expect.”

“Thank you,” Mal said abruptly. “For not telling them where I was.”

Nissa gave him a cutting look. “I didn’t do it for you .”

He acknowledged the truth of this with a nod. “Nonetheless. Your injuries are because you defended my secret, and I am in your debt.” He took a breath. “Your stream is under the house’s protection within Skymallow’s bounds; you are welcome there.”

“We are not relegating Nissa to a stream,” Gisele said flatly. “Particularly not while she’s injured. She can have a bedroom. There’s one on the ground floor that leads directly out to the water, if you like.”

Nissa’s wariness was in full force, her desire for independence clashing with her yearning to belong. And isn’t that a familiar conflict ? Gisele wondered with uncomfortable empathy.

“For goodness’ sake, girl,” Apfela said. “Don’t let him get off that easily. Demand he tell you what secret you were defending as well.”

Gisele could have hugged Apfela for framing it that way as Nissa straightened, reassured that she wasn’t accepting Mal’s charity. “Yes. The stream is mine. And the apple-woman is right; you must tell me what was worth my bleeding for.”

Gisele watched Mal’s face, wondering how he’d react to this demand, he who had held everything so close for so long.

He was less agitated than she expected, a kind of calm acceptance settling over his features.

The same careful feeling came through the bond as when he’d realised the loss of his gold magic. Surely that was worrying ?

Mal drew in a deep breath. “Yes. I should tell you both. Although, this is at least as much Gisele’s story as mine—” He cocked his head at Gisele, and she realised he was waiting for her permission.

The very concept was disorienting. Unlike him with his layers of secrets, she’d grown up in a world where everybody knew her story, or at least a version of it.

She’d liked the fact that the meadow folk hadn’t, she realised. They’d been able to see her without her ominous narrative baggage. Would they treat her differently once they knew the whole story? But she nodded at Mal. “They should know.”

Only she knew how terrified he was as he told the story in its most concise form. Not even a tail twitch gave him away otherwise.

Nissa and Apfela listened with a surprising lack of interruptions. She’d thought she understood the significance of Mal losing his true name, but that was before she saw how the others reacted to it. They both recoiled as if Mal had revealed a bloodied, amputated limb.

“It’s not catching,” Gisele said grimly, stepping closer to Mal’s side without conscious thought, her hand finding his. Mal’s expression remained perfectly steady, but his fingers gripped hers like a lifeline. She gave Apfela a very speaking look.

Apfela had the grace to look shame-faced but only until she rearranged her expression in order to express several silent adjectives of her own at the sight of their joined hands. You sure that’s wise, after that tale of how he wronged you?

Gisele ignored the question, spoken or otherwise.

“He’s lucky to have such a staunch defender,” Apfela said after a pause.

“I am,” Mal said firmly. “The upshot is, because of that loss, I don’t have any greater magic to offer.”

Apfela’s eyes narrowed. “That goldwork you do is greater magic.”

Mal shook his head, his hand tightening on Gisele’s.

“That magic is gone now, too. But in any case, it’s not a magic suited to defence.

” He carefully didn’t specify exactly how he’d lost his gold magic but continued the story without a quiver.

He similarly glossed over his past relationship with Avern, except for the fact that they were enemies, and wrapped up with the information about the hunting spell.

“Of course you turn out to be useless in a crisis,” Apfela said pointedly.

Gisele thought it wisest to move on. “In any case, the house is building a new room that might help, but it needs more energy to finish it. That’s what we’re currently working on—bribing it to show us what it’s up to.”

“That is our problem to solve. It would be safest for the both of you to leave here, and sooner rather than later,” Mal put in quickly.

Nissa straightened. “I will not relinquish my debt-payment so easily,” she said haughtily and as if she hadn’t had to be mildly bullied into accepting it only moments before.

A muscle in Mal’s jaw twitched as if he were struggling with the same irony.

“I’m not being driven out of my orchard again,” Apfela agreed.