Except the Queen (33 page)

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L
ATER THAT NIGHT, ALONE AT
my kitchen table, I retrieved my letter to Serana and reread it. It was stinging, true enough—but a fair complaint. Still I did not want this to be the last words on the matter, so finished it with more temperance.

A
t first I fought the earth, hardly damaging it with the shovel. Then I cursed the earth in the old tongue, the crows screaming back at me. But finally I surrendered to the earth, lying down in the small rutted lanes I had dug and letting the smells overwhelm me.

What smells? Sharp growing things, more white than green. Little mealy-smelling worms and the musty rankness of mole somewhere beneath. The tang of broken rootlets, the freshness of water still unmuddied running deep.

It was as if the earth herself cleansed me. I waited till no one but the crows were looking, knelt there and pissed a long stream. Now I was part of the earth, and it me.

When I stood, shaking myself all over like a dog, bits of old grass and globules of dirt and little stones scattered off me.

“That’ll do, boy,” the Jack said. “Go off and get your lunch.”

I scraped my boot casually over the stream I’d just made, covering it thoroughly, before walking away. I set my shoulders to show how little I cared what he thought, then went back to the house where I grabbed something to eat, first washing because the old woman told me to. Old women seem obsessed with cleanliness. First Auntie Em and now this one.

That was when I heard the girl. Not for the first time. But this time I heard her clearly. The dog had said her name. “Mistress. Take me with you.” But she’d left the dog behind. Still she was no mistress of mine, but something more. I didn’t know yet what. I could hear her going out of the door.

I put my head under the water tap, letting the water rain down on it. Then I shook like the dog I am, before taking off after her. I didn’t mean to catch up, just to follow. She was bent over, her shoulders hunched against a wind that was not blowing, a hood over her head. I still didn’t know what she looked like. I hadn’t yet seen her face.

The water through my hair had cleansed my ears and had cleaned away the dirt smell. And now I had her scent, a light perfume on the wind. It had heather for solitude, and some other tangle I couldn’t quite make out.

I began to whistle the tune, not to make her turn, but to make her remember me. She shrugged deeper into the hooded jacket, and by this I knew she’d heard, but she didn’t turn around.

So I stopped whistling and followed silently, from afar. If she looked back, all she would see would be a boy her age, walking along the street, behind but not behind her.
Too far for fear.
I am a tracker, not a killer. It’s my father who kills. And I was far from him now. Safe from his whistle. Safe to do what I wanted: my bidding, not his.

I crossed the street to put her off the scent.

She walked now with more determination, as if each step closer to where she was going gave her strength. We were well into the bowels of the city. The smell of buses and cars was overwhelming. I breathed shallowly.

The sun being out, she shrugged off the hood and I was startled to see the color of her hair. It was like an evening sky. I had not expected that from her scent. But still I had it in my nose now. I would know her anywhere.

Watching the back of her night-sky head move, I almost missed what her hands were doing as she stood in front of a storefront, making a strewing motion. She
looked left and right but not behind where I was standing, then turned abruptly into an alley on the side of the storefront, disappearing into its depths.

I crossed the street to the storefront and drew a deep breath. On the doorjamb she’d left a scattering of protection herbs.
That
was a tangle I hadn’t expected: comfrey, thyme, verbena, Saint-John’s-wort. But there was something else, some strong bitter smell. It made my nose itch. And then I had it: peony, a shield against fairy mischief.

Why here?

I looked at the store window, the curtains drawn against the light. The name of the place was scrawled across the window in bloodred letters: H
AWK:
O
RIGINAL
T
ATTOOS
. I put a hand on the window and tried to look in, and suddenly I was overwhelmed by a scent that I should have picked up before.

“No!” I said it aloud. And then again to myself.
“No!”
The herbs had overlaid the smell of him, had disguised it enough that I was almost fooled. I couldn’t tell how old the scent was, but there was no denying it. Father’s smell is the iron of blood and the dry odor of agaric and aminita; it’s musk and mallow, root and worm. I gagged at the thought that he was here. Had been here before me. Had sought her but not found her. I grew warm with indignation. So, he was not as good a hunter as me. Perhaps there was still time to warn her of the danger.

I turned away from the window and padded into the alley following after the girl. She was waiting in the dark and I still had so much of the protection herbs up my nose, and my father’s odious scent, that I missed her standing there until I bumped into her.

“Who are you and why are you following me?” She stood with her hands on her hips, unafraid. Her face . . . her face was glorious, shining. There was an old scar over her eyebrow. I longed to touch it.

“Me?” I squeaked. “Following you.”

“Don’t mess with me, or I’ll . . .”

“Sounds like fun,” I began to regain some measure of control over my voice. “But my old aunt, the one I’m
staying with in the upstairs apartment, would probably kill me. She’s got me on a tight leash.”

“She’s your aunt?”

“She and her sister, Auntie Em.”

“You’re full of shit, you know that?” She stepped away from me, anger flashing in her eyes. Green with threads of gold. Her skin was pale as snow beneath a cap of coal-colored hair. “Just back the fuck up, asshole.” She fingered something in her pocket. I could smell the sweetness of fey silver, taste the metal in the air. There was the sharp scent of fear about her but she wouldn’t show it. Not she. She braced, ready.

Dogs jump, men coax
, I thought. “Hey,
really
, I’m staying with my aunt who lives upstairs from you. I saw you leave and figured I could, maybe, you know meet someone a little bit younger than my aunt who must be a gazillion years old.”

“What’s her name?”

“Sophia Underhill.” Good thing I’d glanced at Auntie Em’s letters.

“What’s her apartment look like?”

She wasn’t going to give up her suspicions easily, this one.

“Red chair, rugs, kitchen table, crystals hanging in the window. Do I need to say more?”

“You’re the guy in the garden.”

“Yes,” I answered, though it pained me to be thought of as a gardener.

“Was that you playing the fiddle the last couple of nights?”

I smiled, just wide enough to charm not to threaten. “It was me.” I stopped myself from bowing to her, but only just. “Have I kept you up?” I knew full well that my fiddle brought her much-needed sleep. It was her dreams I’d felt touching the strings like rosin.

She stared a long time, considering me in silence. I let her gaze and didn’t turn away.

“You’ve got your clothes on inside out.” I pointed at the tag on her hood. “Who are you hiding from?”

Thin brows arched above the flashing green eyes. “How do you know about that?”

Before I could answer, a door slammed open farther down the alley and the scent of blood and Greenwood sap filled my nostrils. Wrong. The smell was all wrong and I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed her and pulled her down behind a pile of stacked trash, its odor rank but at least honest. I put my finger to her lips as she tightened into a ball.

“Who’s there?” a voice called and I could hear the spell of command. It was easy enough for my kind to resist. But not the girl. “Show yourself, or I cut you to the quick,” came the warning. She’d never make it against one like that.

So I stood and waved my arms, to distract him. I stepped out, away from the trash. A dog learns how to cower. A dog learns how to beg.

“Hey, don’t get all twisted, man,” I said in a whining voice. “I’m just scrounging for something to eat. I don’t have any money, man. Thought I’d check out the trash.”

“Come closer, let me look at you.” To play the game, I must obey, making my thoughts murk and mud. I shuffled forward, not meeting his eyes, but staring somewhere in the hollow of his white throat.

I knew what he was, Highborn and full of himself, but he would scarce know me in this form. In this gormless shape. Perhaps I should piss myself to make him feel more powerful. But he gave me a measured look, snarled “Bugger off,” unlocked the back door and disappeared inside.

I sauntered over to the trash where the girl waited, crouched and hidden. As I approached, I saw the flash of silver in her upraised fist, twin points protruding like fangs between the fingers. The air stank of nightshade and arsenic.

“Poison or not, you’ll need far more than that to kill a Highborn,” I chided. “It won’t do more than wound him. And make him really angry. Come on.” I extended my hand. “Let’s go back to my aunt’s where it’s safe.”

She bit her lip, but took my hand and stood up. Wariness lay like a harness on her shoulders, washed her skin with a peppery smell. But she was steady. Resolute. I admired that.

“Let me help,” I offered, suddenly glad of the chance to betray my father’s will.

“Maybe,” she answered, pulling up her hood, then shoving her hands into her pockets. “Play your fiddle again tonight, and I’ll sleep on it.”

It’s enough
, I thought as I trotted beside her.
A good beginning
. I began to hope, always the wrong thing to do. Hope only ends in disaster.

Y
ou would think that five days of peace, alone and without my scare-bird worries, would have been enough for me to recover my equilibrium, but I worried my way through every hour of the five.

Would the boy remain on the bus? Would he get off at the right place? Would he find his way to Meteora? Did my letter get to her in time? Would she curse me for sending him? Was he the right boy? The wrong boy? Did he have naught to do with this knot?

These and other questions buzzed in my head and when—on the fifth day—a letter came from Meteora, I was forced to write another back at once. At least to share my worries. I wrote my first thoughts quickly and left the unfinished letter on the mantel: