Spindle (Two Monarchies Sequence Book 1) (11 page)

Onepiece gave the mental equivalent of a shrug, his thoughts cartwheeling gleefully after a lone butterfly, the first to brave the blackened ground in search of flowers.

“You flatten your vowels,” said Luck, surprising Poly by attending. “You sound like you just stepped out of Ye Olde Civet.”

“I did just step out of Ye Olde Civet,” Poly told him.

“Well, you need to sound like you just stepped out of Mrs. Terry’s Finishing School for Elegant Young Ladies. Or better still, Trenthams.” Luck pursed his lips and added unexpectedly: “
Rounded tones, young gels! Rounded tones!
”

Poly stifled a giggle not entirely successfully, and protested: “That’s just silly! I’d sound like a courtier putting on airs!”

“That’s another thing,” nodded Luck. He sounded like he was warming to his subject. “Finished ladies are meant to sound flowery. You’re all blunt edges and vinegar.”

“Then I’ll have to be an
un
finished young lady,” said Poly, refusing to be ashamed. “Onepiece, do
not
eat that!”

Onepiece froze, a piece of matted and unidentifiable miscellany between his canines.
-poly want some?-

“No, Poly does
not
want some!” she said tartly. “Put it down, darling: you can have something nice later when we stop for the night. Look at it, it’s got amber all over it.”

Onepiece dithered for a moment before reluctantly dropping the clod of matted amber. As it blended into the blackened grass Poly heard him sigh mentally, but he trotted back to them cheerily enough, and she knew he was thinking about his promised treat.

“And keep the glove on,” said Luck, prompting Poly to realise that she’d been unconsciously tugging at the crossed laces of the glove, which had become uncomfortably tight. “People aren’t supposed to be able to absorb antimagic. I’d rather not have a little bird mentioning around the Capital that the foreign princess can absorb antimagic.”

“I’ve never heard of antimagic before,” Poly said, in accusatory tones.

Luck, unoffended, said: “They called it static magic, or something. It was new in your time, anyway: well, newly discovered.”

Poly frowned, her fingers unconsciously fiddling with something smooth and wooden in her pocket, and thought that static magic sounded vaguely familiar.

“I want to know why it curled around my arm,” she said broodingly.

“I want to know what you’re fiddling with,” said Luck, with one of his sharper, leaner looks. He grabbed her gloved wrist, half-tugging it from her pocket, and Poly applied the heel of her foot to his toes with some energy. It didn’t have as much effect barefoot, but Luck still yelled and let go: more, Poly thought after a startled moment, because Onepiece had attached himself to Luck’s heel with his tiny needled teeth than because of her attack.

“Yow! Ouch!” said Luck, attempting to fend off Onepiece with the foot that Poly had battered. “Get off, you miscreant mongrel! Poly! Yow. I forgot you have a habit of attacking me.”

Poly made a bubble with her outstretched arms. “Personal space! Do you assault every woman you meet?”

“No, just you,” said Luck agreeably, at last detaching Onepiece from his boot. Poly could hear a surprisingly proficient stream of invective aimed at Luck from the puppy’s usually sunny mind, and gave him a mental shake.

-Language, Onepiece!-

“You were fiddling with that spindle again, weren’t you?”

Poly sighed. Everything with Luck seemed to be a riddle. She ignored this one, and instead inquired: “When will we arrive?”

Luck blinked. “Arrive?”

“You said we were going to your village.”

“Oh. Did I? I suppose we must be, then. It’s on the edge of the forest, so don’t go wandering off.”

-
like
forest-
said Onepiece’s voice.

Luck eyed the puppy with disfavor. “You can wander off if you want, but I’d rather not have to rescue Poly from a wyvern or a gaggle of mandrake. Not to mention another bout of enchanted sleep.”

Poly considered mentioning that mandrake didn’t come in gaggles and weren’t likely to attack even if they
did
, but she had an idea that Luck’s village was likely to be less normal than most if only because he lived there.

Instead, she repeated: “When will we get there?”

“About sunset. If it hasn’t moved again.”

Oh, for pity’s sake!
thought Poly crossly. Who ever heard of a town that moved itself about?

Onepiece must have caught the emotion if not the sense of her thoughts, because he pranced up to her feet with the irreverent thought:
-wizards. all squirly brain. no sense-

“I’m not a wizard,” said Luck, shooting them both one of his sharper green looks.

Onepiece yipped and danced sideways toward Poly, who brazened out the look by demanding: “Why don’t you want people to know about the antimagic part of my arm?”

“There are three types of magic,” said Luck. Poly thought he was doing his usual side-step until he added: “One is common: two are rare. Antimagic is one of the rare ones.”

“I thought antimagic was–” Poly floundered and finished lamely: “I don’t know, sort of
not
magic. My arm
breaks
spells, doesn’t it?”

“Well, it is,” reiterated Luck unhelpfully. “And then there’s unmagic, which is just as tricky and even more powerful.”

Poly said gloomily: “I think you’re making it up. Unmagic! How ridiculous!”

Luck gave her a glassy look that made her flush and said: “Maybe they’ll ask you next time they name a variation. Magic is common enough, but antimagic and unmagic are rare. Antimagic affects magic, and unmagic affects them both; and when you’ve got all three together something, somewhere goes boom. Certain people in the Capital like things that go boom: that’s why I don’t want it to get about that I’m strolling through the village with someone capable of altering antimagic.”

“Oh.” Poly pondered the idea meditatively, and was faintly surprised to find that she agreed with Luck. She pulled the laces of her glove a little tighter. “What type of magic do enchanters have?”

“Normal magic. We have more than wizards, but it’s the same thing. I’m stuffed with it,” he added off-handedly. “Enchantresses are different: they tend to have antimagic rather than magic. Not you, though.”

“That’s because I’m not an enchantress,” Poly said. She was getting rather tired of correcting Luck. “What sort of people have unmagic?”

“No one
has
unmagic,” said Luck. “It just sort of floats about trying to cause trouble. But I’m beginning to rethink that, too.”

“Oh,” said Poly again, trying to look as if she understood. Luck’s explanations had a tendency to leave her more in the dark than she had been previously. She had her doubts as to whether Luck’s elucidation upon the distinctions between different types of magic was entirely accurate, but she didn’t know how to say so without offending him. With any luck the Capital would have a comprehensive library that could be placed at the disposal of a recently rescued princess, and Poly could make the study herself. She would have asked Luck to clarify what exactly he meant by ‘floating around causing trouble’, but his eyes had glazed and he was turning his head from side to side as if to pick out a landmark in the blackened expanse of battlefield.

Poly looked more closely, ignoring the flare of sudden bright magic from Luck, and thought that perhaps he
was
. There was a distinct lack of magic in the old battlefield, but if she looked very hard, Poly could see myriad fragments of magic that looked like the loose ends of a weaving at the far edges of the burnt grass. She remembered vaguely from early lessons with Lady Cimone that the land was undergirded with magic. Whatever her parents had done, they had done thoroughly: they’d cut a section of the mountain away from its very foundations.

“Will it join back again?” she asked Luck, watching the trailing threads of magic as they reached out wistfully.

Luck blinked at her and said: “It
has
moved. It was through and over two weeks ago, and now it’s under and side-slipped.”

“What a pity,” said Poly, matter-of-factly, for once able to follow Luck’s twisted trail of thought to the conclusion that the village wasn’t where he expected it to be. Apparently even Luck’s village found him irritating enough to hide from him. “Will the edges join again?”

“What edges?” Luck said, tilting his head back. “The village doesn’t have edges. It’s sort of spiral.”

“Not the village,” Poly said patiently. “The battlefield.”

Luck tucked his chin back in and walked on, this time angling them sharply to the left. “Don’t know. Can’t stop now, Poly, it’s still moving. No time to fiddle with magic.”

Poly’s lips twitched in appreciative amusement but she forbore to point out that she was not the culprit when it came to fiddling with magic. Instead, she gave her immediate attention to following Luck’s increasingly erratic lead.

Once they reached the edge of the battlefield and plunged into deep, sweet-smelling grass it became more erratic still as Luck followed cunning little scarves of the underlying land magic that dipped and danced and threaded between each other bewilderingly. Poly was careful to follow him closely, finding Onepiece’s sharp, startled warning of
-oopsiedaisy! country’s gone squirly-
unnecessary, since she had already discovered for herself that the land was twitching beneath them. She picked up the puppy, unwilling to run the risk of losing him in one of the more unexpected twitches, and touched some of the brilliant scarves of land magic as they passed them. A few were loose and came away in her fingers, more substantial than she expected, and Poly studied them curiously, wondering exactly where Luck had led her. They didn’t seem to be exactly walking through the hills as they had been, nor did it feel as though Luck had started a travel spell.

‘It feels like we’ve gone
deeper
,’
she said to Onepiece, curling the loose, fluttering pieces of magic around her fingers, where they coiled silkily and seemed to cling to her skin.

-forest magic-
said Onepiece in suspicious tones, sniffing loudly at air that was somehow richer than it had been.
-all forest underneath. sneaky sneaky forest pretending to be hills-

‘Oh.’
Poly looked around dubiously and almost lost sight of a faintly hazy Luck, which was worrisome enough to prompt her to cling to his coat-pocket. There was no reason for him to be disappearing in clear country without a tree in sight. Luck reached back and grabbed her hand without taking his eyes off the seething countryside, leaving Poly rather relieved. At least this time he didn’t seem to find it necessary to haul her along at break-neck speed.

The countryside was still curling at the corners of her eyes by the time the last sun disappeared over the horizon. Poly let Onepiece out of her pocket to pee behind a clump of wildflowers, but she wasn’t comfortable until he was back in sight. And when Luck went to sleep for the night, close enough that Poly’s hair tried to curl around him too, Poly didn’t quibble about the matter of Personal Space. For once, Luck’s obnoxious proximity was comforting.

Chapter Seven

As late morning merged into afternoon the next day, Luck’s village sprang out of the grasslands, complete with a darkening of trees behind it. It came upon them suddenly enough to startle Poly, who couldn’t rid herself of the idea that it had been waiting, crouched out of sight on purpose to make her jump. The
squirly
ness that Onepiece had complained of was all but gone and the countryside now seemed less rarified and dangerously magical. Poly still sensed a lingering oddity at the corners of her eyes, but Luck seemed more relaxed and even Onepiece poked his nose out of her pocket to gaze around in obvious approval.

Luck beat a summons on the gate that boomed around them with such unabashed clarity that it must have been amplified by magical means, but the sound had scarcely faded when he forced the gates open himself, with a massive crack of gold-lightening magic that split the enchantments in two.

Through the open gates, Poly saw the gatekeeper approaching on the run. He looked more resigned than afraid, prompting her to think that this was an impatience that Luck had been guilty of on more than one occasion. When he saw them he stopped running altogether.

“They’ll have heard it,” he said to Luck, when he came within earshot, jerking his thumb toward the centre of the village. It sounded, thought Poly, like a warning.

“Can’t be helped,” said Luck, ignoring the fact that it could have been helped with just a moment’s patience. Poly, struggling to keep up, noticed that he had lengthened his stride and found herself impressed: whoever
they
were,
they
had Luck on the run.

She wasn’t long left in suspense: even as the gatekeeper ushered them along the main street, curtains had begun to flutter; and before long the streets were flooded with excited villagers, who, for reasons best known to themselves, seemed actually
glad
to see Luck.

There was such a babble of voices that Poly couldn’t make out any individual remarks addressed to Luck, but from the sheer amount of bowing and eyelash batting that seemed to be going on, she concluded that most of the addresses could be shuffled under either of the twin headings: “Oh, Powerful and Lofty Enchanter, how good to see you again,” and “Oh, Intriguing and Handsome Enchanter, how good to see you again.”

She was vastly amused to be the subject of more than one venomous look, since Luck had forgotten to let go of her hand and couldn’t be brought to realise as much no matter how she tugged; and slightly discomforted to find that she herself was attracting not a few admiring looks from the young male populace.

Poly wasn’t used to being looked at admiringly: she was used to padding silently at the edges of society and avoiding any kind of looks, admiring or otherwise. Fortunately for the quiet blush she could feel making its way into her cheeks, a determined dash on Luck’s part drove them through the crowd and into a house without any more ado.

Poly, bewildered in the sudden silence, said: “Good grief, they act as though you’re one of the Immortals! Anyone would think you’d been patriarch for hundreds of years!”

“Well,” said Luck apologetically; “That’s probably because I
am.
”

More unbalanced still, Poly found that now she was the one clutching Luck’s hand, and hurriedly let go. “Immortal or a patriarch?”

“Not exactly immortal,” Luck admitted. “I’ll die. Eventually. Maybe. I’ve been the village enchanter for about a hundred and twenty years or so.”

Poly gazed at him for a long moment, but all she could find to say was: “You’re still only half as old as me, then.”

Someone stifled a giggle, but Luck said approvingly: “Yes. I knew you’d understand!”

“Well, I don’t,” Poly said positively, and this time someone definitely laughed.

“Luck, let the poor girl sit down!” said a comfortably fat voice. To Poly’s relief the voice was neither adoring nor awed.

She turned her head and found that beside the gatekeeper, who had managed to slip in with them, the room contained another two people. One was a young, scowling girl with chestnut hair. The other was the owner of the fat voice: plump, but not as plump as her voice had led Poly to believe. Her brown hair, which was confined in an entirely sensible bun, was touched with a shade of red. She pulled a chair forward for Poly in a self-possessed way that made her think that this house belonged to her, but Luck was throwing his travel stained overcoat carelessly over a pile of what appeared to be assorted rubbish, and Poly couldn’t picture this neat, bustling woman allowing that kind of mess in her own household. No, it was more likely that this was Luck’s housekeeper.

“I’m Josie,” said the woman, confirming the guess. “Norris, my husband: he keeps the gate. And Margaret, our girl. You must be my newest niece.”

Poly smiled mechanically at Margaret, who stared back in unsmiling challenge–good grief, not another of Luck’s bevy!–and with more warmth at Norris, who had a slow, curling smile that wrinkled the corners of his eyes.

“I don’t mean to pry,” said Josie, with sharp black eyes that suggested that she
did
mean to, and would enjoy doing so: “But should I be welcoming the son of my niece, or a young nephew? The neighbours will ask.”

“I told you she was fiendishly knowing,” observed Luck dispassionately, appearing for a moment through a doorway before disappearing again.

The sharp look was friendly enough, and Poly had no qualms about drawing Onepiece out of her apron pocket. She was rather surprised that Josie had noticed the puppy.

-food?-
said Onepiece hopefully, prompting another sharp look from Josie.

“A nephew, I think,” Poly said, silently promising:
-Food later-
to Onepiece. “Will it matter–”

“No,” said Josie. “We’ve more than a few
talented
children in the village, pet. It comes with being so close to the forest, or course.”

“Of course,” echoed Poly, wondering what exactly the forest had to do with the matter. Still, if Onepiece’s predilection for trotting about in the guise of a small puppy could pass without comment, it would be a very good thing. Poly had been surprised to find within herself the deep, furious determination that Onepiece would be a little boy again, little by excruciating little. If Luck could be persuaded to stay still for just a few days, she was certain that the village was the very place to do it.

Someone asked in a flat voice: “Where’s she going to sleep?”

Poly’s eyes involuntarily went to Margaret, who had spoken and was now watching her with mingled dislike and suspicion.

“There’s no room in my bed,” the girl added, tilting her chin just slightly when Josie’s thoughtful gaze turned on her.

“She can sleep in mine,” said Luck, breezing back into the conversation carelessly. There was a moment’s startled silence when all eyes turned on him in various astonishment and horror, before he added: “It’s still here somewhere: that tricky wire thing with a mattress.”

“The one you use when you’re up all hours working on a spell,” nodded Josie. She wasn’t quite twinkling, but when her eyes met Poly’s over Margaret’s head, there was a brief second of shared, amused frustration. Josie, it would seem, had been putting up with Luck for quite some time.

“You can set it up in Margaret’s room,” she said, in a brisk tone that permitted no argument from either Poly or Margaret. Poly wouldn’t have argued in any case, but Margaret, she was sure, would have if she
could
have. “Norris, you’d best be off to the gatehouse again.”

Norris did as he was told, too, but with a quiet amusement in his deep grey eyes that suggested he did so entirely under his own volition. Perhaps he did: Poly had an idea that despite appearances, he was no more under the thumb than Luck was. Before he left, he tugged a tangle of tubing and wire from one of Luck’s piles of rubbish with casual force and propped it against the same pile with a wink in Poly’s direction. She smiled back gladly at him, feeling less overwhelmed, and picked it up before Josie had to tell Margaret to do so. The girl would have done it, but she would have hated Poly just that much more.

Poly sighed, remembering just the same look in Persephone’s eyes.

-bite?-
suggested Onepiece. His tiny hackles had gone up and she could feel his stomach vibrating with a silent growl.
-sharpshiny eyes. puckleberry mouth. not nice to poly-

-Be nice-
Poly told him, but she felt comforted. She followed Margaret down a pokey hall that made her feel giddy, and Onepiece sneeze, and firmly shouldered open the door that the other girl would have carelessly let swing shut in her face.

The room was white and cheerful: and, for the most part, tidy. Poly wondered if Margaret was naturally tidy or if Josie made inspections, and in the middle of wondering came to the sudden, startling conclusion that they were no longer in Luck’s house. There were two circumstances that led to the conclusion. The first, that the view from the window was now distinctly the gatehouse, was immediately noticeable. Poly, remembering the stride of Luck’s long legs, knew that they had left the gatehouse behind very quickly once the village had been breached. The second and more disturbing sign that all was not quite correct, was that the doorway, once shouldered through and closed, lay flush with the wall and showed no signs of any actual opening. When Poly examined it more closely, she saw that the doorway had been drawn–and not particularly well drawn–on the wallpaper with a stick of charcoal. Even the round knob was a swirl of hastily scribbled black charcoal. When Poly finished studying it she found that Margaret was smirking at her. She felt a flicker of amusement: Margaret evidently thought she had scored a point.

She reached curiously for the drawn-in doorknob, feeling it somehow round and solid in her hand just as Margaret said: “It’s only one way. Luck doesn’t like people wandering– Oh! You can’t– How did you do that?”

Her voice was angry, and Poly, who had automatically turned the doorknob that she found in her hand, gazed ruefully at the open door. Well,
that
had done a mischief.

“Magic likes me,” she said.

“Magic doesn’t
like
people,” returned Margaret, her eyes hard and angry.

Poly silently closed the door again and began to puzzle out the wire bed in one corner of the room, while Margaret fidgeted in the silence.

Finally, the girl said abruptly: “How did you meet Luck, anyway?” The tone of her voice seemed to suggest that it had been an engineered meeting.

Poly dismissed her first, wildly incendiary instinct to tell Margaret that she and Luck had first met when he kissed her awake, and said merely: “Oh, it’s a long story. Luck was passing by when I happened to need some help, that’s all. He’s taking me to the Capital.”

“What about the dog?”

“He’s not really a dog,” Poly said, scruffing Onepiece’s ears.

“I know
that
. Why is he travelling with
you
?”

Poly blinked, startled. “I don’t quite know. Luck bought him at a dirty little town and I somehow adopted him.”

“Luck does that,” said Margaret, shrugging. “Buys things that interest him and then throws them away when he’s solved them or gets bored with them.”

“I suppose it’s a good thing Luck gave Onepiece to me, then,” remarked Poly, amused both by Margaret’s proprietary knowledge and the toss of the head that accompanied it. Between Luck, Onepiece, and now Margaret, she was beginning to feel as though she was running a nursery.

She felt a tinge of unease from Onepiece’s pocket, and heard the thread of a thought from him that asked a garbled question.

-No, darling-
she said, in as firm of a voice as she could project.
-I promise I won’t get bored with you. And I would never give you away like a parcel of goods: who would protect me then?-

There was an immediate buoyancy from the puppy, who demanded to be let down so that he could thoroughly sniff out the room– in order, thought Poly with a small, half-frowning smile, to assure himself that no dangers attended her.

“You can change back into a boy after dinner,” she told him, this time aloud, and Onepiece paused mid-sniff, considering the idea. Poly added enticingly: “Then you can check the windows as well, and maybe try to walk a few steps.”

Onepiece huffed a breath through his nose and said:
-dinner? yesyesyes-

Poly didn’t see Luck again until dinner time. Margaret stuck to her like a furry-bean to skerry fleece, less for the love of her company than, Poly suspected, the determination to prevent Poly wandering back within reach of Luck. She was cheerfully untroubled by this state of affairs, quite ready to enjoy a holiday from Luck’s startling and quite often dangerous company, and ruthlessly used Margaret as her guide to wander up and down the village. Luck had described it as ‘sort of spiral’, but Poly came to the conclusion that Luck had either not wandered the boundaries of the village in quite some time, or that his long years of service had addled his brains. The village seemed to resemble nothing so much as a crooked dog-leg. From what Poly could see in the distance, the impressive wall bounding the front of the village extended only partway around it. The rest seemed to be bordered merely by forest, prompting her to wonder exactly what use a wall and gate were if they didn’t surround a village entirely. When she mentioned as much to Margaret, the girl looked at her in as much surprise as disdain.