Painted Devils, page 14
“Leave me alone,” he snarls.
“You promised you’d do this for me. Drink.”
He reluctantly downs the concoction. His face turns even redder, then the flush subsides. There’s less of a drunken slur when he speaks. “Saints and martyrs, Helga, did you have to throw water on me?”
“You wouldn’t ask if you could smell yourself.” Helga sits next to him. “What happened, little brother?”
Dieter rubs his face. “Supposed to play for the prince tonight. Some fancy dinner. If it went well, it’d be a steady gig performing at parties for at least another two months. It could have been my big break, but some hotshot bard is in town from down south and”—he flaps a hand—“tossed me aside. Just like Betze did, and now she’ll never…” He reaches for a sjoppen only to curse it when he sees it’s empty.
Then he finally looks up at me, standing awkwardly a few feet away.
“YOU,” he thunders.
“I’m getting that a lot today,” I say. “Where do I know you from?”
“You cost me my gig in Glockenberg,” Dieter accuses, pointing a shaking finger. “I never forget a redhead. You kept heckling me in the middle of a song.”
“I don’t remember that,” I lie, recalling it, in fact, with perfect clarity.
“You tried to take my lute. You said you were confiscating it on behalf of Glockenberg.”
“Are you sure it was me? There are a lot—”
“You said my singing was a public health hazard.”
I wince. “I was extremely incapacitated.”
“You said the Red Maid of the River would drown me herself if there was a repeat performance.”
“Does it help that that spectacularly backfired?” I offer, and start digging in my satchel for the cambric and the awl. “Speaking of…”
“No,” Dieter says, stone-cold.
I glance up at him. “No, it doesn’t help?”
“No, I’m not doing this … blood thing anymore.” He scowls. “Not for you.”
“Dieter!” Helga gets to her feet. “You promised!”
“She threw up on my stage! The innkeeper made me clean it!”
“I’ll—I’ll tell Aunt Katrin you were drunk before noon—”
“I was fired the next day!”
Helga puts a hand on the table in front of Dieter and leans in. For someone who looks to be a handspan shorter than him, she summons a remarkable amount of menace. “Do it, little brother,” she says slowly, “because I asked, for family.”
Dieter shrinks a little. His eyes flick over to me and narrow.
“If she pays my tab,” he says grudgingly.
“Agreed. You handle this part.” I try to hand the cambric and awl to Helga.
She shakes her head. “Call it a hunch, but I think you have to do it. Come back once you’ve settled up.”
I handle the tab, then return to collect. Dieter complains bitterly the whole time, claiming he won’t be able to play for a week despite the wound healing almost as soon as his fingertip presses to the cloth. Helga makes him down another flagon of water before we go, sternly ordering him to attend their brother’s wedding at the end of the month or face her wrath.
I listen with half an ear. Something’s sticking in my skull about all this, something I don’t have a clear picture of yet.
Helga found Dieter on her own yesterday and apparently got him to promise a drop of blood before he even met me. I’m certain that, without her bullying him just now, he’d have told me to piss off.
But Helga didn’t even want to go on this trip in the first place. And in my experience, help never—well, almost never—comes without an agenda.
So why is she helping me?
Familiar, spiteful notes rise behind us as we leave the Golden Bine. They, too, take a moment to place until I catch the lyrics trailing us out.
“Red maid, red maid, red maid o’ the river…”
Helga rolls her eyes so hard, it seems they ought to clank. “Asshole,” she says under her breath. “Come on, I’ll show you where the park is.”
THE SIXTH LIE
WORTH
Once upon a time, a girl set off into the great wide world, leaving behind everything she knew, bound for a new life …
For the fourth time.
The first had not been her choice, led into the midwinter woods by her mother and handed to Death and Fortune to do with her what they willed.
The second time, too, was not her choice, led by her godmothers to a castle and left to the whims of those who ruled it.
The third time, she did not so much leave her life as steal another. It was, and was not, her choice. There were other ways to survive, but she took the path that was open to her.
This fourth time would perhaps be different, perhaps be the last. It was wholly of her own choosing: She would leave Minkja and her friends there behind for now and follow her sweetheart to Helligbrücke. Once she arrived, they would seek out the family she’d lost, somehow, together.
The problem was, the girl did not quite know what to tell that family. How to face the mother who turned her out into the cold. How to ask if her mother regretted it, even once. How to say who she’d been, who she was now; she did not even know yet who she wanted to be. Years of pain had smelted her down to a knife, and only now was she relearning to touch others without drawing blood.
It was for the best, she supposed, that it would be a long ride to Helligbrücke.
She left with three strangers in a coach. Two departed in Okzberg. A mother and her damp-faced daughter took their place.
“Stop sniveling,” the mother ordered as they climbed into the coach. “You should feel lucky the convent will even take in a little sneak thief.”
Her daughter, wobble-mouthed and red-eyed, looked to be no more than thirteen. “But I don’t know anyone in Quedling.”
“Then you can’t make trouble there too.” The mother’s voice was hard. “You’re not to leave the cloisters anyway.”
The daughter said nothing.
“I warned you, but would you listen? Your sister helps with the store, your brother sends us flour from his mill, and what do you do? Steal and lie and bring grief to our door. I’ve had enough.”
No one in the coach said a word.
At the roadhouse that evening, the Minkja girl found herself drinking with the other passenger, an old soldier.
“Sad it is,” he said into his watery ale, “but it’s the way of the world. You want to live with others? You have to do more than take, you’ve got to bring something to the table. Sending her to a convent is kinder than turning her out into the street.”
The girl thought of a lantern at a crossroads on a midwinter night, and of all the things she’d taken. Of who she’d been at thirteen, with fresh scars on her back and a pitiless sinkhole growing in her heart.
She wondered again what she would tell her family when she met them.
What she would tell her sweetheart’s family, his friends, if she met them.
Whether they, too, would ask themselves if she did anything more than take.
When the coach reached Lüdz, the soldier got out and the mother and daughter remained. When they paid for the next leg of the trip, the girl from Minkja was careless in opening her own purse; she saw the Okzberg daughter’s eye catch on the rubies glistening inside.
It came as no surprise when, in the dead of night, she caught the daughter trying to ease that purse out from under her pillow.
“You’re not a very good thief,” the Minkja girl said dryly. But there was fear in the daughter’s eyes—fear and a pain the girl knew all too well.
They were, after all, what had worn her down into a knife.
She took five rubies and handed them to the daughter. “It’s not safe for you to carry more than this. Go to the temple of Fortune and tell them Vanja sent you. They’ll take you in, and you can start over, understand?”
I did not know what she had done to be exiled to a cloister; I could not say whether this was any better. I just knew that if someone had offered me a way out at thirteen, I would have taken it, instead of trying to cut my way free.
In the morning, when the mother found her daughter gone, she cursed and raged but shed tears only for the coin wasted on the trip. She didn’t even lift a finger to look. She just set about arranging for her ride back to Okzberg, muttering, “Good-for-nothing … ingrate … Little wretch was never worth the trouble.”
As our coach set off again, only a few days from Quedling, a relentless whisper of memory echoed louder and louder with each heartbeat—my own mother telling Death and Fortune, Whatever she touches falls to ruin.
And not for the first time, I wondered: What would I have to be, to be worth what followed?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE NEEDLE
Helga shows me the park. Then she shows me the nearby markets and the best bakeries, and effectively keeps me occupied until it’s almost noon. I suppose I’ve figured out this much about Helga: She’ll roundly deny doing anything for any purpose beyond self-interest, but that doesn’t mean I should believe her.
She leaves me on a bench by the park’s entrance with plenty of time to mull over what I want to say to Emeric. I’m angry he didn’t tell me about the end date on our relationship. Especially since, well, I’m not sure how I feel about losing my virginity to someone if we’re just breaking things off soon after. It feels like … being used.
And I don’t like that we started off talking about why I was upset, but then it turned into me defending myself. Even though he’s right: I did leave him first. And I’ve assumed the worst of him—something that hurt when he did it to me just yesterday. But what else am I supposed to think?
It all feels like too many pans crowded on a stove, some smoking, some boiling over, all too hot to touch. Still, I can at least look at it from above now, instead of trying to talk with one hand in the fire.
The noon bells toll as my stomach growls. Helga and I did stop for some sweet buns, but I didn’t have a proper breakfast, and the smell of sizzling wurst is wafting from a nearby food stall.
By the time bells chime for the quarter-hour, I’m very aware of how hungry I am, my legs swinging impatiently on the bench to keep the early April cold from locking them stiff. There’s still no sign of Emeric. It’s not like him to be this late.
That not-assuming-the-worst thing is getting more and more difficult.
I make myself think about the goblet instead. Or rather, how I’m going to sell Emeric on the idea that I have to steal it because a saint asked me to. Emeric did say he’d try to persuade the prince to return it, but … Saint Willehalm appeared to me.
It’s just odd that Prince Ludwig invited Emeric in despite having stolen property on the grounds. Apparently Ludwig’s even hiring performers for the dinner—
Wait. No. Not just tonight, but at least the next two months, Dieter said.
The two months it would take to get the goblet back through the authority of the Kathedra. The prince knows he’ll have the goblet that long no matter what.
It’s a trial run, I realize. He’s testing whether a prefect can sniff out the genuine article, but he won’t surrender it no matter what. If he gets caught, he can claim it was a mix-up with the cleaning and use the paperwork to keep it in his custody for months. If he doesn’t get caught … Saint Willehalm will be waiting a long, long time.
And either way, I’d bet every last ruby that Ludwig will throw nonstop parties to show off his acquisition until Alt-Aschel twists his arm.
If we want to get into the library before midsummer, we’ll need more than Emeric asking nicely.
My mind starts lining up the picks for this lock all too easily as I gnaw on the tip of a thumb. I’ve robbed backwater manors that posed more of a challenge, really, when the Pfennigeist was haunting Bóern. It’s the sabbath, so any servants from the House of the High won’t be working, and that means the hunting lodge is likely scrambling to cover staff shortages for tonight’s big dinner. (Not to mention hiring for the next two months.) If I can get in, Emeric can keep the prince distracted for me, and the goblet will be gone before Ludwig is any the wiser. I just need Emeric to play along.
The bells ring out for the half-hour.
Where is he? This isn’t like Emeric. He’d feed his own notebooks to swine before being even a minute late.
The worst-assumption road starts veering in a completely different direction.
Adalbrecht was the last aristocrat to invite prefects to his lands mid-felony, but it was to kill Hubert Klemens for the contract mark inked into his skin. Maybe the prince has sinister intent for Emeric.
Suddenly I can’t shake the memory of the dead man’s tattoo sewn into Adalbrecht’s back, the Scarlet Maiden spearing Emeric through the throat—
I’m on my feet before I can help it. I barely know where I am, but I do remember passing the prefect outpost on our way here, and I can make it back there easily enough. It’s embarrassing; it feels almost like groveling to come to him instead of meeting on neutral ground, but it’s better than letting my own mind terrorize me until he arrives.
I’m nearly at the outpost when an awfully familiar voice carries around a corner: “… supposed to do about it.”
I whirl around, yanking up my cloak’s hood, and shift to the hunched shuffle of an old woman picking her way down the street. The reflection in a nearby windowpane shows me what’s going on over my shoulder.
I see Emeric and Vikram emerging from an alley and heading for the prefect outpost. They both carry half-eaten food-stall wurst rolls. It’s harder to eavesdrop as they walk farther away, but I catch one last scrap: “… Vanja’s problem.”
His words from this morning burn like bile: You had no problem leaving me.
First my heart sinks. Then blood rushes to my head.
There’s no getting around it. I can’t even pretend that he forgot or lost track of time. He just chose to leave me on my own.
I feel almost unmoored. Even though I keep worrying about the other shoe dropping with Emeric, I wasn’t really prepared for him to choose cruelty. But making me wait on him like a pathetic little fool—letting me hope—
Inchoate, explosive fury overthrows me. I want him to hurt so he learns to never hurt me again.
I don’t even think, just spin on a heel, swipe an apple of horse dung out of a gutter, and throw it as hard as I can. It hits him on the shoulder in a tiny, foul explosion of brown.
That’s about when my brain kicks in again and I realize throwing feces at a prefect (aspirant) was probably not the brightest move.
A confused shout follows me as I bolt around the corner he and Vikram just came from. It leads to a tidy but cramped little alley—more of a polite distance between two buildings. I don’t know if they saw me; I’m not going to risk a foot chase either way. There are decent handholds in the lane’s timber- and stonework, and I definitely scaled worse in my Pfennigeist days. I scramble up the wall until I reach a balcony, then climb it and a window gable until I reach the roof. It’s lamentably steep, built to shed snow, so I scuttle along until I reach a roof with an easier slope. Then, satisfied I’m not being followed, I plop down on the shingles and try to collect myself.
Emphasis on try.
My sight streaks with tears once more. I still have Helga’s hankie, which is even more valuable because, as it turns out, you can’t throw dung at someone without getting shit on your own hand. I mop my face with my clean palm and wipe my other on the wooden shingles as best I can, only to curse when I pick up a splinter. Then I tip my head back and stare into the cloud-patched sky, wishing I could fall into it, if only to feel something uncomplicated.
I don’t know how to fix this. I hate that I don’t. I hate that I want to hurt him. I hate that he keeps hurting me. I want to go back to that final night in Minkja, when I cared for him and he cared for me and it was as simple as that.
All I had to do was follow him to Helligbrücke. All I had to do was trust he’d still want me.
But I ruined it, and now, here we are.
I scrub my face again with the hankie, angry with the both of us, as bells let out one lonely toll for the hour. Whether I like it or not, I still have to get Saint Willehalm’s goblet, and tonight’s going to be my best chance. I just have to do it without Emeric seeing.
Which means I can’t do this as a needle, moved by a saint’s hand.
I’m going to have to do this as a ghost.
* * *
“Marthe,” I tell the guardsman at the rear gate of the royal hunting lodge, hefting a basket of produce. “From the greengrocer? I have a delivery for Cook Grett.”
The guardsman eyes me suspiciously in the early evening light. Emeric should arrive in an hour, so I anticipated some wariness. “Bit late for that. You got an order?”
I give him a handwritten list on a scrap of parchment. “She said His Highness set the menu only this morning.”
He scans it, still frowning. I know the list will pass muster, because I pickpocketed it off a scullery maid I tailed around the produce market a few hours ago. The maid was full of all sorts of interesting stories for her friends at the stalls: A renowned prefect is coming to dinner tonight, poor Grett the cook is in over her head, the steward is in a hiring frenzy to keep up with the months of parties the prinz-wahl has in store, and so much more gossip. Each insight is as good as a lockpick when it comes to breaking in.
The guard hands back the list and waves me on. “Be quick about your business.”
“Yes, sir,” I lie, and trot over the shallow stone bridge, heading for the kitchens. One thing I learned from burgling the rich is that architectural innovation tends to be reserved for upper stories. Kitchens, larders, laundry—they’re always low to the ground and in the rear, so important people don’t have to see how the sausage gets made.
Sure enough, I can hear a chaotic clatter of pans and frantic voices as I approach an open door near the cellars, where light and steam are spilling out. I make sure my hair’s completely covered by my cap and kerchief, then quickly empty my basket into the slop trough and discard it in a discreet corner.
