Foxheart (16 page)

T
hough she was rash, and impatient, and a tiny bit heartless, Quicksilver was not one to forget things, nor one to break promises (unless, of course, a promise was made in the course of thievery), and so she did not forget the promise she had made to Sly Boots.

After everyone had gone to sleep that night in Farrowtown, Quicksilver crept to Sly Boots's bed, Fox at her heels in dog form. Quicksilver placed her hand over Sly Boots's mouth and shook him.

“It's just me,” she hissed. “Get your shoes on. We're going out.”

“Out?” Sly Boots hopped around in his socks, pulling on his boots. “Where?”

“I told you we would steal medicine for your parents, and I meant it.”

Quicksilver led Sly Boots down the twisting stairs. The inn's front door creaked awfully, but when Quicksilver thought to Fox,
Whisper us,
Fox transformed himself into a wispy cloud that glowed faintly and bore the snout of a dog. In this form, Fox wrapped himself around the door and muffled the noise.

Outside, the air was still and warm. They wandered the streets of Farrowtown, keeping to the shadows while Quicksilver searched for a promising target.

“I thought you'd forgotten about that,” said Sly Boots, watching his feet. “About my parents, I mean.”

“I don't forget things,” Quicksilver replied.

“But Olli, and the coven . . . I don't know, I thought maybe you cared more about them than anything else back home. We could have just left them to the Rompus, but you went after them. You risked your
life
for them in that cave.”

Quicksilver bit down on the truth—that she had nearly been too late to save any of them, including Sly Boots—and then said calmly, “I'm a thief, not a murderer.”

“But . . . you left my parents to come to the past, and dragged me along with you.”

“I had to make a fast decision. Coming back to the past with Anastazia saved our lives.”

Sly Boots considered her carefully. “So you don't fancy Olli?”

“
Fancy?
Great stars, Boots. What does that have to do with anything? I've got no time for fancying people. I've got magic to learn and skeletons to find. Now are you going to help me rob this place, or aren't you?”

Sly Boots looked up at the narrow, crooked house in front of which Quicksilver had stopped. A wooden sign hanging above the stoop read THE CURIOSITY SHOP: APOTHECARY, ANCIENT RELICS, AND ANTIQUE APPRAISAL
.

“The place looks ready to fall over,” he said.

“Well, then, we'd better move quickly, hadn't we?”
Fox,
Quicksilver thought to Fox, who sat patiently beside her in dog form,
find us a way in.

I thought you'd never ask.
Fox transformed into his yellow mouse self. He squeezed under the front door, and then Quicksilver felt him climb up to the latch and unlock it. Quicksilver cracked open the door to slip inside, and then suddenly she and Sly Boots were wrapped in the warm, furry cloak of invisible Fox, Quicksilver's nose mashed against Sly Boots's chest.

“Fox,” she said through gritted teeth, “
if
you don't mind.”

“My apologies, master,” murmured Fox, adjusting his cloak so that Quicksilver could wiggle loose. She and Sly Boots crept through the shop's candlelit foyer, which was crowded with bulging crates and marble statues and dark tables weighed down by tall stacks of books.

“Remember,” whispered Quicksilver, “
I'm
the witch here. You're only the—”

“Only?”

“Fine. You're the monster. But when you do things without asking me first—”

“Chaos ensues, the order of magic is upset, and you yell at me.” Fox huffed, annoyed. “It's just I
knew
you were about to ask me to cloak you and Sly Boots, so I did it. It's called taking initiative, master. What if I'd waited for your instruction back in the Rompus's cave? We'd have been stomped flat.”

“Life-and-death situations are one thing,” said Quicksilver, “but when it comes to normal life situations, I'll thank you to wait until I say so—
ow!
”

Quicksilver rubbed her arm. The skeleton of the snowy hare, though tucked away in her pack, had apparently decided to announce its presence. A set of grinning, ghostly rabbit teeth hovered by Quicksilver's elbow and then faded away.

“What was that for, you horrible thing?” demanded Quicksilver.

“I don't think it likes that you two were fighting,” said Sly Boots.

“Of all the stupid things you've ever said, Sly Boots, that might be the most—”

The ghostly set of teeth reappeared and chomped down on Quicksilver's thumb.

Be nice to it,
Fox thought to her.
Isn't that what Anastazia said? It likes to be cared for.

Quicksilver forced a sweet smile and crooned to her pack, “What a nice skeleton you are. So polite and kindly. Of
course
we should not have been fighting. Of
course
we are all friends here, and love one another.”

A happy sigh drifted from the pouch holding the skeleton.

“I think it's working,” Sly Boots whispered.

Quicksilver showed him her thumb, from which the set of teeth still dangled. “Is it, now?”

“Didn't Anastazia say you should sing to it?”

Quicksilver closed her eyes in an attempt to find patience.

“Oh, yes,” added Fox in a suspiciously cheerful tone. “I do believe Anastazia said that exact thing.”

“Who's there?” called a voice. Still concealed within Fox's cloak, Quicksilver and Sly Boots turned to see a tiny, spectacled woman with short purple hair peeking down the stairs just ahead of them.

Sly Boots nudged Quicksilver. “We never shut the door!”

It was true—the front door stood ajar behind them. Quicksilver crept back toward it, pulling Sly Boots with her, and quietly kicked the door closed. Then they stood in silence while Fox's cloak swirled slowly around them.

The woman squinted about the hallway and inspected the door's handle. Quicksilver, Fox, and Sly Boots flattened themselves against the wall between a suit of armor and a tall blue cactus crowned with white flowers.

Finally the woman shook her head and retreated back up the stairs. “The children's books are at it again,” she muttered to herself.

“Well?” Sly Boots asked, once she was gone. “Shall I sing to it, or do you prefer walking around with skeleton teeth hanging off your thumb?”

And so, as Fox ushered them invisibly through the house—which was undoubtedly spelled in some way, for it was much larger on the inside than it appeared to be from the outside—Sly Boots sang all twenty-two stanzas of “The Thief Dagvendr and His Many
Nearly Perilous Encounters with Death.” Soon Quicksilver's pack was as quiet and warm as a basket of baby bunnies.

“Fox, let me out,” said Quicksilver.

“Whatever for?” Sly Boots asked.

“I just want to try something,” Quicksilver explained. “Take the pack, Boots, and keep singing to the bones. Fox, help him get up to the roof. I'll meet you there.”

“But the medicine—”

“I can steal it much easier on my own.”

Master?
Fox questioned. Quicksilver felt a soft paw on her arm.

Go on. Trust me?

You know I do,
said Fox, and licked her cheek.

Licking cheeks isn't very dignified for a monster, is it, Fox?

We must always respect our heritage.
Mine is about licking things and chasing sticks.

Once they had gone, Quicksilver felt a weight lift off her shoulders. No pack, no Sly Boots, no Fox. No magic. She was alone and free and light as a leaf.

She moved silently through the apothecary stores, darting up and down ladders, climbing dusty shelves lined with mortar and pestles, squeezing between stacks of heavy burlap sacks that smelled of herbs. A box of empty vials nearly toppled as she
brushed by them. She passed closed doors; from behind them came the sounds of people snoring, but Quicksilver moved so quietly that no one came out to stop her. And with no Fox to hide her, she felt rather thrillingly exposed, as she had when sneaking through the convent, magic-less and solid as any human.

By the time she'd navigated her way up through the house's five floors, through the cramped, cluttered attic, and out onto the roof, Quicksilver felt ready to crow with joy.

“There you are!” Sly Boots whispered, hurrying through the roof's forest of chimneys with the pack full of bones in his arms. “It's about time! Why'd you leave us like that? Do you know how creepy it is, sitting in the dark and singing to a skeleton?”

I did it, Fox
, Quicksilver thought to Fox, who was foraging through the rooftop garden.
I stole things all on my own. Even without you, I'm still a good thief.

Of course you are.
Fox trotted over to her with a fat carrot in his mouth.
You always were. But may I remind you, master, it would have all happened much more efficiently, had I been with you.

“Here, Boots, make sure I've got everything.” Quicksilver emptied her pockets to show them the medicines she had stolen—jars of ground crumwort, stoppered bottles of essence of moxbane, tied packets of dried weatherwurst.

Sly Boots stared at it all with wide eyes. “But how did you know what to steal? I didn't tell you, but it's all here! This is exactly what I need!”

“The fourth rule of thieving is to always notice everything around you,” Quicksilver explained, with not a little puff to her chest. “You never know when it might come in useful. Your parents' bedroom back home was full of these things—empty bottles and such, of course, but . . .”

Sly Boots gazed up at Quicksilver, and Quicksilver uncomfortably observed how the stars reflected in his eyes. It was not an altogether terrible sight.

“Stop staring,” she said shortly. “It makes you look funny.”

“You're the best thief in all the Star Lands, Quicksilver,” he declared.

The words were exactly what she wanted to hear. Feeling generous, she patted his shoulder. “I know. Now, let's get back before you have to start singing again. I'm not sure my thumb could survive that twice in one night.”

“I'll help you carry these,” Sly Boots asked, reaching for the medicine.

Quicksilver slapped his hands away. “No. They stay with me.”

His eyes narrowed. “And why is that?”

“So I know you won't leave me.”

Sly Boots blinked, looking rather baffled. Fox stopped munching his carrot and lifted one furry eyebrow.

Quicksilver blushed furiously. She hadn't meant to say that, but now, of course, it was too late, and she was left standing there looking like the biggest fool there ever was.

Sly Boots laughed. “Why would I leave you?” he asked. “Without you and Anastazia, I can't get back home.”

“Right. You're absolutely right.”

“So . . .”

“So just stop talking to me, how about that?” Quicksilver shoved the medicines into her pack, in the pouch that held their food and coin, making sure to avoid Sly Boots's steady gaze.

Making sure not to think about the convent girls, and the sisters, and her parents, and all the other pieces of her life that she'd already lost.

Thinking about such things made her pause, and think too much, and hurt. Not to mention say things that she shouldn't. And if she were to become a truly great witch thief, she would need to keep her heart hard.

For witches, Anastazia had said—and thieves, Quicksilver knew from her own experience—were better off alone.

T
he next day, the group left Farrowtown and followed the Kivi Road west into the kingdom of Belrike. After some weeks of traveling, Olli explained, they would arrive at the impassable western mountains, and though reportedly everyone who had attempted to cross the mountains had died doing so, they seemed to by all accounts last longer and, in general, have a better time of things if they started out on this particular footpath at the base of Mount Korkaya.

“That's the most disturbing explanation about why to go somewhere that I've ever heard,” Quicksilver told Olli. “When people start out here, they live a
little
longer than
other people—but still end up dying anyway! Hooray!”

Fox and Sly Boots laughed, but Olli seemed neither amused nor offended. He simply kept his eyes on the road and, in a much more serious tone than he typically used, said, “I don't know where else to lead my people, Quix. The Wolf King hunts the witches of the Star Lands, so it makes sense that we should go elsewhere, even if the way is impossible. Otherwise we should stay here and die. Is that what you'd prefer?”

Quicksilver had nothing to say to that, and, frowning, fell back to walk alongside Anastazia.

“My people,”
Anastazia muttered, loudly enough for Olli to hear. “Pah! Some people they are, most of them running scared when things get hard. One little Rompus, one little roast over a fire, and away they go! Do you think,
Quix
, they'll stand by him deep in the mountains, in the brutal claws of winter? Or what about when the Wolf King tracks them down? Will they help their beloved leader fight, or will they run away in a panic and leave him for dead?”

Olli's shoulders tensed, and his mouth became a hard line. He hurried to catch up with Freja and Lukaas. Pulka, perched on his shoulder, glared back at Quicksilver and Anastazia with sharp purple eyes.

“Why do you have to be so mean to him?” Quicksilver
demanded. “He's not doing anything wrong.”

“I'm trying to do him a bit of good, make him see how foolish he is before it's too late,” said Anastazia. “We'll leave them, tomorrow, just like we'd planned to before this whole Rompus ruckus began. When we're with them, we're harder to hide, slower to move.”

Quicksilver kicked a pebble out of her path, startling Fox, who had been tracking a quail.

“Well, I think that's a grand idea,” said Sly Boots loftily. “We could have been a lot farther along without them, you know, if they hadn't distracted us. Maybe you could have even tried some time-traveling magic by now—”

“Oh, shut it about time travel, Sly Boots,” Quicksilver snapped. “You're just jealous because Olli's funny, and kind, and brave, and you're just a—a nobody! You're not a witch, and you're not a thief. You're just a boy.”

Fox looked up from his sniffing.
That was harsh.

Quicksilver glared at the ground, her cheeks flaming.
It's the truth!

I think you're still worried about losing him
.
Master, I mean this with all due respect, but . . . not everyone is going to be like your parents.

Fox, that is one thing we will never—
never
—talk about. Do you understand me? My parents are not your concern.

Silence, and then Fox thought quietly,
As you wish, master.

Steeling herself, Quicksilver lifted her gaze back to Sly Boots. It was remarkable, how his face had changed, how it hardened and closed like a door slamming shut on a bright room, leaving everything else in darkness.

“I'm a nobody, eh?” he said quietly, and then stormed ahead down the road before Quicksilver had a chance to say anything more.

“Well done,” Anastazia murmured, squeezing Quicksilver's shoulder. “We don't need him. We don't need anybody. If we play this right, we can leave him behind, too. He'll only slow us down, just like the others.”

Quicksilver nodded but said nothing. She hadn't meant to shout at Sly Boots like that. Only last night they had enjoyed stolen sugar cakes on the roof of the Laughing Farmer, their pockets bulging with goods from the apothecary, before finally crawling back into bed at dawn.

And now . . .

We're not actually going to leave him behind, are we?
Fox asked quietly.

Perhaps it would be best if we did,
Quicksilver responded.
I'm afraid I'm a splendid thief but a terrible friend.

Well, so is he. Always going on and on about his parents, as though you aren't in fact doing your best to learn magic and help him—

“What was that?” Anastazia asked.

Quicksilver realized she must have said something aloud. “I said, I'm no good at being someone's friend.”

Anastazia laughed. “Well, thank the stars for that! What do friends ever do but get in the way? The only people a witch can trust are herself and her monster.”

Did you feel that?
Fox asked, pausing at Quicksilver's side.

F
eel what?
Quicksilver glanced around. They had stopped beneath a towering tree with a white trunk and leaves as blue as lightning.

Someone's here
. The fur on Fox's back stood up.

But Quicksilver saw nothing out of the ordinary.

We're not alone,
Fox insisted, and at that moment, darkness flitted across Quicksilver. Looking up, she saw a strange shadow darting through the leaves overhead. There were two, and they moved like birds might, wheeling about through the branches before perching on one to leer down at her. They were both human shaped, but only somewhat. Their bodies swirled like trails of smoke, and their shifting faces wore horrible, hungry grins.

“Anastazia.” Quicksilver tugged on her older self's sleeve—but then the howls began.

It was too late for warnings.

The Wolf King had arrived.