Blackbringer (8 page)

Magpie grimaced and listened to the commotion of faeries and creatures in the Ring. “Come on, then,” she said to the brothers. “Let’s do this skiving thing so we can get on with what we came for.”

“Ye’ll be great, Mags,” said Pup, tossing a tentacle over her shoulders as he hopped along by her side. They came round the corner of a caravan and nearly collided with a small group of faeries coming the other way. “Hoy!” cried Pup, swerving to avoid putting out a gent’s eye with his beak.

There was a mild commotion as they stumbled over one another, but Magpie had stopped dead in her tracks and was standing before a tall young lady, her head tilted up to stare at her. It was the lady from the tower window, the one with the golden circlet. Magpie stared at her and at her crown. Unlike her own circlet, this was no human’s earring. It looked exactly like the one Bellatrix wore in all the statues. Then Magpie noticed the lady’s tunic and knew from its shimmer it could be naught but real firedrake scales—impossible to come by since the creatures went extinct. Her eyes moved to the lady’s face. Exquisite features, a sweet smile with a twist of amusement at each corner.

“Blessings!” said the lady in a rich, musical voice. “What a small warrior!”

The gents at her sides laughed. “Aye, Lady,” said one. “I fear this must be our Bellatrix! A far cry from the huntress.”

“Indeed, it should be you upon the stage,” fawned the other gent. “Then we would all have an excuse to gaze at your loveliness for hours together!”

But the lady smiled at Magpie and said, “You wrong the pretty child, sirs. She does my ancestress great credit.”

“Ancestress?” repeated Magpie.

The lady said, “Aye, my great foremother, Bellatrix.”

The gents looked at Magpie as if they expected her to collapse into a curtsy at the revelation, but she only squinted and said flatly, “Blither. Bellatrix left no heirs.”

Again the lady laughed her lovely tinkling laugh. “Oh, but she did, as you see.”

One of the gents cut in, “Hasn’t word spread to the world? You can carry the news, gypsy, when you go away. Tell them Lady Vesper, many-greats-granddaughter of the warrior princess, is come to Dreamdark.”

Magpie snorted. “Come from where?” she asked. “And with what for proof?”

The gents, both frocked in frippery to rival the lady’s, their hair fragrant with pomade, gaped at Magpie. One managed to say in a voice choked with shock, “Lady Vesper needn’t defend her claim to a ragamuffin!”

Maniac, who’d come to fetch them to the stage, puffed up at once. “Ragamuffin!” he cried. “Ye don’t call Mags names!”

“Nay, gents, nay, birds,” said the lady with a look of imperturbable sweetness. “Don’t scuffle on my account. I know how it sounds.” She knelt before Magpie and took her hands in her own. “It was a shock to me as well when my grand-dame told me, just before she crossed to the Moonlit Gardens. She showed me where the ladies of our lineage had long hidden Bellatrix’s crown.” She inclined her head, and as the sunlight rippled over the circlet’s surface it had the look of molten gold, and there was something else. A pattern like living glyphs sparkled around it then faded again, like a secret. Magpie blinked. There could be no doubt the crown was forged in a Djinn’s fire. “And her tunic,” continued Vesper, brushing her fingertips over the scales. “These are my greatest treasures, and they belong in Dreamdark, as do I.”

Magpie felt a surprising rush of longing to believe her. She looked at her, so beautiful, so like the warrior princess, and it seemed right that such a lady should exist in this place. She might have stepped from a legend.

There had been a time when the Djinn strode the world in splendor, winking new creatures into being and reaching up to arrange the stars into patterns in the heavens. Faeries had been different then, not only beautiful, but powerful. Magpie’s longing for such times was a deep and wrenching ache, and looking into Lady Vesper’s eyes she felt the ache begin to give way to a bloom of possibility.

One of the gents was speaking. “And besides the crown,” he said, “m’lady has records discovered in the crypts of Chijal Ev showing Bellatrix’s descendants back twenty-five thousand years, and the elders of Dreamdark have studied it—”

Magpie blinked. “Chijal Ev?” she repeated. “The temple of the Iblis?”

“Aye,” said Vesper fondly. “Home of my early life.”

“You grew up at the temple?”

“Aye.”

“And you’re saying
Bellatrix
lived there after the wars?”

Vesper nodded. “A long quiet life, until she passed to the Gardens.”

“At Chijal Ev?” Magpie felt the bloom of possibility wilting. The gent had said Vesper possessed ancestral records unearthed from the crypts of Chijal Ev, but Magpie and her parents and grandmother had discovered and excavated those crypts themselves! If there had been even a hint or a runestone that mentioned Bellatrix, they would have found it. There had been nothing of the sort.

“And when did you leave there, lady?” Magpie asked with a frown.

“I arrived in Dreamdark last moon, at long last.”

Magpie squinted at her. “So recently? Strange we didn’t meet in Ismoroth in the snows, then. We performed there for the Stormlash clan at the winter festival and stayed some weeks.”

“Ah, the winter festival, how lovely,” said Vesper, but something cold and hard flickered in her gaze. “Lords Winterkill and Brambling,” she said without turning to the gents, “won’t you go and find us a seat for the play?”

“Aye, my jewel,” said one.

“Your wish, my sweet,” said the other.

They left, and Vesper turned to Magpie. “So, you’ve traveled to Ismoroth, have you? That’s far for a little lass to go, is it not? Across oceans? Who are you, sprout?”

“Magpie Windwitch, Lady. But who are you
. . . really
?”

“I am exactly who I wish,” Vesper said gently, “and irkmeat little lasses would do well to show proper respect while they’re in my wood.”

“Irkmeat!” hooted Pup, slapping Pigeon with his wing. “Irkmeat! I like that!”

“Your
wood?” said Magpie, incredulous. “Dreamdark?”

“Mags! Birds!” cried Bertram from the backstage door. “Get yer feathers over here, now!”

“Calm yer pepper, irkmeat!” Pup called back. “We’re coming!” But Magpie didn’t move. “Come on, Mags,” he started to say, but Pigeon hushed him, seeing the look that blazed between the lady and the lass.

Vesper said in her honeyed voice, “You heard the bird, little one. Go on, take your phony crown and your preposterous skirt—”

“Eh!” protested Pup, and Magpie’s hands flew to her feathers.

“Go and play at Bellatrix,” Vesper went on. “But remember as you speak her lines who wears her real crown, and practice your curtsies, lass. If we meet again I shall expect to see the very best you can muster.”

“I’ll never curtsy for you,” Magpie said in a low, seething voice.

“And no one will be surprised, will they, if a savage doesn’t curtsy for the queen?”

“Savage?” growled Maniac.

“Aye, a little savage who doesn’t know herself from a crow and wears their stink as proudly as her own. Really, you reek of cigarillos!” She wrinkled her nose and pretended to fan away a bad smell. “Surely that’s just one hazard of slumming with low creatures.” Her gaze fell with disdain on Maniac, Pup, and Pigeon, and Magpie felt a sudden flash of fury.

It tingled like a chill down her arms and she saw curls of light unwind from her fingertips. They spun with lazy grace toward Vesper and wreathed round her head. Alarmed, Magpie clasped her fingers into fists and shoved them behind her back. The lights faded away, and Vesper seemed not to have noticed them.

Bewildered, Magpie could only think to snap, “My brothers smoke cheroots, not cigarillos!” as she turned away. But she stopped when she saw the looks on the crows’ faces.

“Jacksmoke . . . ,” whispered Pigeon, still staring at Vesper.

Magpie glanced back over her shoulder and the first thing she saw was the look of confusion on the lady’s face. Then she noticed Vesper’s hair. “Oh,” she said.

Vesper’s hands fluttered to her head and jerked away. Her hair was writhing. “There. Are. Worms. In. My. Hair,” she gasped between deep breaths as a look of horror spread over her face.

But she was wrong. Biting her lip, Magpie stared. Where a moment ago had been shining, perfumed black hair, now there were living worms, rooted at the scalp and wriggling. Lady Vesper didn’t have worms in her hair. She had worms
instead of
hair.

“Get them off!” she cried.

“Um—” Magpie said.

“Um?”
Vesper hissed at her. “Whatever you’ve done, minx, undo it now or you’ll wish you’d never breathed Dreamdark air!”

But Magpie had no idea what she’d done. She stared at her fists, clasping them tighter to quell the faint tingling, and shrugged helplessly.

The lady spun wildly around. “I mustn’t be seen like this!” she said, and paused to fix Magpie with a vicious glare. “The day you next look into my eyes will go badly for you, do you hear me, savage?” A worm made an effort to explore her nostril and her hands flew to her face. She cried out in disgust and spread her wings and whirled suddenly away into the shadow of the trees.

Magpie turned to look at the birds, who were still staring, - gape-beaked.

“Gorm, Mags, what’d ye do to her?” breathed Pigeon.

She shook her head and looked again to her fingers, wiggling them hesitantly. “I don’t know!”

“Jacksmoke, feathers,” said Calypso, coming up behind them. “En’t ye heard me calling ye? It’s curtain time!” He saw the looks on their faces and stopped short. “What did ye do, ’Pie?” he instantly asked.

“Why do you assume I did something?”

“Well, did ye?”

“Aye,” she admitted in a woeful voice.

“She turned some lady’s hair into worms!” Pup broke in breathlessly, hopping from foot to foot. “Ye should’ve seen it!”

Calypso’s eyes widened.

“It’ll be trouble,” said Pigeon, glancing around nervously. “Trouble!”

“I didn’t mean to—” Magpie began, but just then one of the pomaded gents poked his head around the caravan.

“Little gypsy, do you know where the queen has gone?”

“Queen?” croaked Calypso, shooting Magpie a quizzical glance. “Since when has Dreamdark had a queen?”

“Since last moon, crow. Isn’t it fine? A new queen in Alabaster Palace! Spread the news when you go. Tell everyone!” cried the gent, ducking away again.

“Ach, ’Pie! Tell me ye didn’t—” Calypso began, turning back to her, but where Magpie had been there was only a human earring lying on the moss and a stir in the air from her hasty passage. Magpie had fled.

The epic of Bellatrix had been put into verse by Magpie’s father, Robin, years ago, years even before he had met Kite. In his wildest daydreams as a young poet he had never imagined that one day it would be performed all around the world. And certainly, not in his weirdest fit of whimsy had he imagined it would be performed by crows! But then, nor had he dreamt he would elope with the daughter of the West Wind but that had come to pass, and many a stranger thing too.

Besides, crows have a flair for the dramatic.

“The moon . . . ,” Calypso, as King Valerian, opened the play, “whispers o’er the waters; come north and meet thy fate. Daughter, come forth and listen well, for destiny does you await.”

When a crow hopped out onstage wearing a lady’s wig, the audience burst into laughter. Maniac shuffled his feet and glowered out at them, which only made them laugh harder. “Aye, Father,” he began, pitching his coarse voice high. “Destiny is the wind that carries me. . . .”

Hiding on a high branch by the river Wendling, Magpie could hear faint laughter coming from the Ring. Her cheeks burned. Maniac would not be pleased with her! She was ashamed of herself. With a crow as Bellatrix the epic became a comedy, and in the very shadow of Alabaster Palace, no less. Her hero deserved better, and so did Maniac. But she was still shaking from what had happened. Just thinking of that supposed
. . . queen . . .
brought a new surge of fury.

The vixen had insulted her crows! Magpie fidgeted with the feathers of her skirt. They did smell like cigars, she had to admit, just like the crows did themselves. They also held a hint of wood smoke from their campfires, and the tang of rainy skies, and the strong coffee they favored in the morning. The feathers smelled like her crows, her family, and she felt more comfortable in them than in her own unpredictable skin!

She watched her fingers warily. No more lights, no traceries, but something did shimmer in her peripheral vision and she squeezed her eyes shut in frustration.

When she opened them again and looked around she realized she must be near the old linden tree where as a wee babe she had been so cozy. Suddenly she wanted to see her old house very badly, and she gave herself a push with her wings and went drifting slowly along the curve of the river, looking at all the trees, wondering if she would know it when she saw it.

She did. Years were like days to such an ancient being, and it looked just the same, its massive trunk, its canopy of palest green leaves. Whoever lived here now was sure to be at the Ring with everyone else, Magpie thought, so with a quick glance around she stole in among the leaves, just to get a glimpse of the bright red door. But when she came to the spot on the trunk where it should have been she saw nothing but bark. She circled round and found no door and nary a window, and just when she was thinking she’d come to the wrong tree, a small dull glint caught her eye. She looked closer, reached out, and touched the little smooth spot protruding from the wood. It was brass.

It was a doorknob.

Magpie backed away on her wings and sank onto a branch. She understood. When a tree gives itself to be a faerie’s home it expands to make rooms and corridors that flow within its living shape. And as it opens, so can it choose to close. The linden had closed, and the only sign her house had ever been here at all was a small protrusion of brass. Magpie dropped her face into her hands. It had been those little rooms that her mind conjured up to give any meaning to the word
home,
and now it was as if they’d never been.