Spindle (Two Monarchies Sequence Book 1) (18 page)

“There are only three sets of four dances and then the games,” he said, watching her quizzically.

“Oh yes, the games,” Poly said faintly, aware that her years had betrayed her again but unsure of anything except that cards and scantily dressed women were apparently
not
a part of the gaming to which Michael was alluding. “What sort of games are they?”

Michael’s eyes glittered with excitement. “With Josie here it’ll be something in the Forest. Scavengers, most likely.”

There was that implied capital again, thought Poly. A gently undulating coil of hair slipped from her braid and tickled her ear in a bid for freedom, and she hastily tucked it behind her ear before Michael could notice it.

“Why the forest?”

“Well, it’s highly charged, dangerous, and has the added advantage of privacy,” he said, teasing her with his eyes.

“Oh,” said Poly, blinking. “You mean–”

“The games are too fast and competitive to allow much, but the younger ones sneak a kiss of two whenever they know Josie isn’t watching.”

“Just the younger ones?” asked Poly thoughtlessly, and blushed as his blue eyes laughed down at her.

“We can’t let the younger ones have all the fun, now can we, Miss Poly!”

Much to her relief, he offered her his arm and turned his attention toward the supper table, where Onepiece was half-hidden behind a tiny mountain of food. Poly bit her lips in amusement, and saw Michael grin.

“Will you play?” he asked her, when her blush had had a chance to subside. Poly was grateful for that.

“I haven’t really played that sort of game before.”

“Just remember, then, that as in dancing, the games mainly depend on which partner you have.”

Poly surprised herself by laughing. “You mean yourself!”

“Not to put too fine a point on it: yes. Come along, Miss Poly; you, me, and Onepiece will carry off the games in victory!”

Josie looked pleased to see her join the games and explained the rules in a stentorian voice, ostensibly for the benefit of everyone, but Poly felt the kindness toward herself. As far as she could tell, this particular game was something of a scavenger hunt, with an added element of piracy– namely, that any group could rob another of their carefully won prizes if they could do so by the use of trickery or first level magic. First level magic, Poly discovered, included small trickery, basic illusions, and any spells not directly affecting the other person.

There would be, added Josie with a gimlet eye on several young men in turn; No Question Of Violence. There was a suggestion of booing at the reminder, but most of the youthful participants replied with a rippling tide of mirth that ran through the crowd as it dispersed into the forest.

Fortunately, Michael was very familiar with the game, and a quick glance at the scavenger list didn’t dismay him as it did Poly. Onepiece didn’t care either way, Poly thought in fond amusement: he was snatching at nightflutters and glowbugs as they walked, disregarding frequent tumbles, and was as happy to be walking as searching.

As the little group wended their way toward the forest, they passed close by what Michael, earlier, had irreverently called the Ancienteers’ Table. Unsurprisingly, Luck was there, deep in conversation with Norris, the both of them surrounded by a clear wall of odd magic that had figures sprawled across its length and breadth. Occasionally, one of them would sweep away a figure or a group of figures, replacing them with quick, decisive strokes of the finger.

“Norris is the only one Luck can have a decent game with,” Michael told her in a low voice as they passed, and Poly, gazing a little closer, realised that Michael was right: it
was
a game.

“They’re splicing spells,” he added, catching her look of comprehension. He kept his voice soft, and it occurred to Poly that he didn’t particularly want to catch Luck’s attention. Agreeing on general principle, and wondering how many people were actually
afraid
of Luck as much as in awe of him, Poly turned a deaf ear to what she was fairly certain was Luck belatedly calling her name, and allowed herself to be swept away into the forest.

The forest was dark and cool and frightening. There was a moment of perfect stillness after they entered the canopy of trees, then Poly felt her hair slip sinuously from its braided bonds. Onepiece crowed with gleeful laughter, catching at the wafting locks with both sticky hands as they grew rapidly, and Michael said softly: “Magical.”

Poly would have agreed, feeling somehow more awake yet more perilously sleepy than she had since Luck woke her, but he wasn’t looking at the forest.

Into the stillness and wafting hair, she said: “I didn’t expect this.”

“You’re cursed.”

“Yes. A little bit.”

“It’s not broken yet.”

“No.”

“Your hair is growing,” he added, gingerly touching a strand that came within his reach.

“Yes. Sorry about that.”

Michael shook his head as if clearing it of the gently pervading mist that trailed the forest floor. “No. No, it’s beautiful. I think it might be attracting the Forest’s attention, though.”

Poly shivered slightly, feeling the same aged depthlessness she had felt once in the castle before it collapsed into rubble. “Is that bad?”

“Well,” said Michael, sounding as if he were holding his breath; “I suppose it depends on how the Forest is feeling.”

“Capital letters again,” said Poly, surprising a low chuckle from him.

“I suppose so. No, it doesn’t have feelings exactly; but sometimes things happen to people who wander in the Forest alone. Is it safe for you to go on?”

“I don’t know,” said Poly helplessly. “Luck’s trying to break the curse completely, but so far we haven’t had much success.”

“How exciting! Have you tried starving it of magic? Can I try?”

The novelty of being
asked
before having an experiment performed on her made Poly smile as much as did Michael’s eagerness. “What about the list?”

“Oh well, we should give the others a fighting chance, after all! Miss Margaret cries so easily!”

Poly gave an involuntary giggle. “So I noticed! All right then. Go ahead.”

It looked like he was pulling on a thread, with two long, tapered fingers pinched and drawing away from her steadily; and at first Poly felt brighter and more awake than ever. Onepiece grimaced encouragingly at her from the grassy knoll he’d found to sit on and said: “Wakey-wakey.”

She felt so much better, in fact, that when the shaft of deadly fatigue pierced her heart, deadening her limbs, Poly slid bonelessly to the sweet-scented grass without time to feel more than cold surprise. For a moment there was silence, then a riot began over her head: howling, a quick, urgent voice, and a burst of potent magic that would have taken her breath away if she had had the energy to be impressed by it. Michael’s face swam hazily above her, and Poly thought she felt his fingers touch her face lightly, then there was another snap of magic, distinctly Luck-tinted, and Michael’s face disappeared.

This worried Poly distantly, and she tried to reach one sluggish hand out to him, but someone pushed the hand down impatiently.

“...and when I don’t try something, it’s because it won’t work,” said a voice of such coolness that Poly had difficulty in recognising it as Luck’s. She had the hazy impression that he was angry, which made her suddenly very much more concerned about Michael. A sharp, unpleasant smell assaulted her nose, sparking her mind and body into life, and Poly jerked her head away, suddenly wide awake.

“Michael? Are you all right?”

“He’s fine,” said Luck irritably, recapping the smelling salts. “I
called
you. Why didn’t you listen?”

Poly blinked. “Oh, you
are
there. I thought I was dreaming. It’s all right, Michael, you can let him go now.”

Onepiece, struggling furiously, was lowered gently to the grass, and made a joyous leap for Poly’s lap. Under stress he had reverted to his most familiar form, and she submitted ruefully to having her face licked before kissing the top of his head.

“I’m all right, darling,” she told him soothingly.

Michael, looking distinctly ashamed, said: “I’m sorry, Poly. I thought I had it.”

“It almost worked,” she said, with a half-shrug. “It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not,” Luck said. “I had the curse lulled and peaceful, and now you’ve started it thinking again. I
told
you not to go into the forest.”

“Yes, you did,” agreed Poly, able for once to acquiesce to one of his sweeping statements.

“Well, don’t do it again. The balance is tricky enough without you wandering into random pockets of magic. If you tip it any further I’ll have to kiss you again.”

“I won’t,” said Poly fervently, trying vainly to rise. Her hair was ridiculously long, and it had piled beneath her when she fell, making it a painful and difficult matter to sit up.

Michael’s eyes narrowed in amusement as he lifted her carefully to her feet. “Wait, did he just threaten you with a kiss?”

“Yes,” sighed Poly, gathering handfuls of grass-strewn hair to avoid stepping on it. “It’s a long story.”

“Poly, you’re not listening to me,” complained Luck. “And
you
. Next time, mind your own business. Only an idiot would try to starve a curse inside the most powerful magical focus in the two monarchies.”

Poly, gasping with indignation as much for her own sake as for Michael’s, said heatedly: “He was only trying to help! And it almost worked!”

“Rubbish; it played along until it had what it wanted. Now I suppose you want me to take you home.”

Poly eyed him frostily, but Michael said, as though he hadn’t noticed the rudeness: “I’ll walk you home, Miss Poly.”

She was about to categorically deny any desire to return home at all, when Luck grabbed her hand with an exasperated noise and did something tricky with the forest around them.

Poly, stupefied, found herself back in the library. She said furiously: “How could you be so rude!”

“Books, Poly!” said Luck, throwing books willy-nilly over his shoulder from one of the bookcases she had tidied just before they left.

“Not those ones! There’s one on the desk and another on the foot-step. Luck, did you leave Onepiece behind?”

“This isn’t the right one,” Luck said, tossing the book that she’d left on the foot-step. “The dog gets in the way; it’s better off with your sweetheart. Yes, this one is right.”

Declining to comment on the appellation of ‘sweetheart’, Poly insisted again: “How could you be so rude to Michael?”

Luck absently threw his top hat toward the desk, missed, and abandoned it heedlessly to the dust. “Who? Oh, the idiot. He shouldn’t stick his nose into my business.”

“It isn’t your business, it’s mine,” argued Poly, snatching up the top hat with more than necessary violence and resisting the urge to hurl it at him. A pearly gleam in the depths of the top hat caught her eye, and she was engaged in carefully tugging out its source from the inner band when a knock at the front door faintly penetrated the library. Poly tucked the spellpaper into her pocket (some things evidently hadn’t changed, because it was clearly recognisable) and rather thankfully went to answer the door.

When she opened it, she was greeted by Michael’s mischievous face. “Lost something?” he inquired. Onepiece, looking sulky, was tucked under one of his arms.

Poly tried to apologise, but Michael became so ridiculous that she soon found herself laughing instead. Onepiece was handed over only on a promise to dance with Michael at the next happening, and Poly was able to go to bed with the pleasant feeling that not quite all was wrong with the world.

Chapter Ten

Poly woke the next morning to uncomfortable heat and a distinct feeling of claustrophobia. To add to her discomfort there was a tiny, sharp elbow digging into her ear, which suggested that Onepiece had turned boy some time after he curled up on her pillow but hadn’t moved from the pillow. One of his legs was dangling over the side of the bed, but the other had managed to work its way under the covers. The rest of him was wrapped snugly in what seemed to be...
hair
.

“Good grief!” groaned Poly, giving up the attempt to lift her head from the pillow after one painful effort.

“Oh, you are awake,” said Luck, making her squeak in surprise. He was stretched out at the foot of her bed with an open book in one hand, his boots only
just
off the quilted blanket– and that, thought Poly crossly, must be why she couldn’t move her legs. “I wouldn’t try that again if I were you: it’s lashed underneath the boards.”

“Yes, I thought it might be. What do I do?”

“Lie very still, I suppose. Poly, the curse is being sneaky again, but I think you might have been sneakier.”

Onepiece stirred and murmured: “Tosh,” but that was more likely to be because it was his favourite word than because he’d understood Luck. Poly was left wondering if she agreed with the sentiment.

“I knew there was something niggling away in the back of my mind,” continued Luck, disregarding Onepiece’s sleepy mutterings. “Your hair is too helpful: it’s keeping the curse at bay by growing. Even if you’d pumped all your magic into it, it shouldn’t be that clever.”

“How does growing keep the curse at bay?” asked Poly. She’d given up trying to explain yet
again
to Luck that she didn’t have magic,
hadn’t
had magic,
wouldn’t ever
have magic. His reiteration was insidious enough that Poly thought she might just come to believe him, in the end.

“It’s using up all the power the curse is putting out: that’s why you woke up by yourself this morning. Every time the curse pumps out more power your hair starts to grow.”

“My hair is feeding on the curse?”

“No. Well, yes, sort of. Don’t go wandering off today, Poly; I need to check a few things.”

Poly looked at him warily, feeling distinctly less safe now that she was lashed in place. “You mean you want to run more experiments on me. Well, you can’t: I’m going to tea with Annie.”

“Who’s Annie?”

“Michael’s Ma.”

“Oh. No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“There’s no time for tea, we have more important things to do.”

“I didn’t mean right now,” said Poly, unable to repress the twinkle in her eye. “Darling, must you stick your elbow into my ear?”

There was a muttering from Onepiece, then the pressure was removed from her left ear and a warm little arm curled around her neck in what closely resembled a choke hold. Poly, beginning to feel more than a little claustrophobic, said plaintively: “Luck, you’re sitting on my legs.”

“The dog’s sitting on your neck,” he objected, looking mildly indignant.

“Yes, but he’s not as heavy as you are. Luck, can’t you do something about all this hair?”

Luck glanced up from his book. “What? I suppose so.”

Poly bit back the remark that if he
could
, why had he been sitting on her legs for the past quarter hour, and said as patiently as she knew how: “Then will you do so, please?”

Much to her relief, he said: “I suppose so,” again, amiably enough; and slid off the bed.

“The dog will have to move.”

“
Sleepy
,” said Onepiece firmly, clinging tighter to Poly’s neck; then, surprisedly: “Hair!”

His mouth made puffing noises at the strands that were spread across his face, and two little arms windmilled, making knots in Poly’s hair.

Poly heroically bore the tugging, though she opened her mouth once to warn Onepiece that he was about to fall off the bed; but gathered from the startled ‘Whoops!’ and a thump that her warning had been too late.

There was silence for a brief moment while Poly tried unsuccessfully to disentangle her arms from the piles of hair, expecting to hear a sniffle or a whine break the silence. Then there was a grating rattle that informed her Onepiece was laughing, and Luck said: “Stop wriggling, Poly; the dog’s fine. It’s found the gremlins.”

Poly, left staring at the ceiling without the luxury of being able to turn her head more than minimally to the left or the right, was obliged to accept this remark in good faith; though the muted chuckles and a few, throaty ‘
yik yiks
’ from Onepiece as he scrabbled beneath the bed seemed to bear it out. She hoped the gremlins didn’t have anything that was catching.

Before long, Poly’s unrelieved view of the ceiling was broken by the close-up view of Luck’s shabby waistcoat and untied cravat as he bent over her. He had changed back into his clothes of the previous day. Unfortunately, it seemed that he hadn’t taken the time to have them washed. She tried not to notice the jam stain on his waistcoat, and that his cuffs were still torn from his encounter with the gremlins, but when a more malodourous stain of possibly chemical origins passed by her nose just a little too close for comfort, Poly said: “Doesn’t Josie wash your clothes?”

“Yes, she does, blast her,” said Luck’s voice, somewhere above her head. There was a slight tug at the crown of her head, and Poly felt a sudden lightness. It wasn’t enough to allow her to move her head, but it did take the pressure off slightly. Below the bed, Onepiece sneezed, and a chorus of strongly disapproving little voices said: “
Yiketty yuk!
”

Luck added, in the voice of injury: “Every time I get a set of clothes properly worn in and comfortable she waylays me and makes me give them up. Interfering woman.”

“How awful for you.”

“Don’t be facetious, Poly; it doesn’t suit you.”

There was another tug, and a corresponding lightness somewhere in the vicinity of her left ear. Poly tried craning her neck to see what Luck was doing, and the spotty waistcoat disappeared, to be replaced by Luck’s face, eyes narrow and golden.

“Don’t wriggle, Poly. I don’t want to accidentally take off your ear.”

“My
ear
? What are you doing?”

“Barham recommends separation and immediate cauterization,” said Luck, displaying an impressively long tear in the waistcoat beneath his arm as he levered Poly’s shoulder to turn her on her side.

“Cauterization of
what
?” demanded Poly, alarmed at the mention of searing immediately after the subject of her ears had been brought up.

“It’s the balance that’s the important thing: all of this is excess, so it doesn’t matter if it comes off, but the original ratio of magic to hair has to remain the same. Balance, Poly.”

As if I’m his apprentice,
thought Poly, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. “Luck, what are you cauterizing? Are you burning my hair?”

“What? Of course not. That would be counterproductive.”

Poly said: “Ow!” to a pinch at the nape of her neck, and found herself tumbling irresistibly onto her face in a coil of soft hair.

“Huh,” said Luck, hauling her back. “That was easier than I thought it would be. You weren’t particularly fond of your hair, were you? Only it’s a bit short now.”

“Not particularly,” said Poly, wondering if Luck’s haircut would prove to be any neater than Persephone’s had been. She gave a slight, cautious shake of her head, and heavy strands fell away in sleek coils, leaving her feeling rather light-headed and weightless. When she ran her fingers crisply through it, her hair was sitting reasonably neatly just below her ears, and had curled under slightly to tickle them.

“Oh!” she said in surprise. “That turned out better than I expected. Why didn’t it hurt this time?”

“Because I’m not an idiot,” said Luck, busily gathering up hair. As fast as he gathered it, more was disappearing over the other side of the bed, and Poly thought that it was still as lively as ever until she saw the tiny, pale fingers and glittering eyes that peeped between the strands. The gremlin saw her: one slender finger was briefly placed over a toothy smile, and a crafty look was directed toward Luck. Poly looked away hastily, trying not to smile.

“Anyway, I told you: it’s the balance.”

“Yes, you said that,” agreed Poly, disentangling herself from heavy loops of hair. “I still don’t know what you mean.”

Luck shot her an irritable look. “That’s because you don’t pay attention when I’m trying to teach you things.”

“What a whopper!” said Margaret, yawning. She was watching them both with interest, and Poly wondered when she’d woken up. “As Michael says: Pot. Kettle. Black. Why are you in my bedroom again, Luck? And is that
hair
?”

“A
lot
of hair,” agreed Poly, surreptitiously sweeping more strands of the stuff to the floor for the gremlins. Goodness knew what they wanted with it: perhaps they had nests in the walls that needed lining. She curled a few of the hairs around her fingers, expecting to feel the same silky life her hair had always had, but they were brittle and dead. She dropped them with a fastidious grimace, and then felt almost mechanically for the amber beads and the hermit’s feather that now always swung below her right ear.

“Still there,” said Luck, watching her with distant eyes. “They’ve shrunk, though.”

“Your hair is still growing,” Margaret said helpfully. She had evidently decided that Luck in the bedroom was going to be a regular occurrence, and was brushing out her own hair without embarrassment in nothing but her chemise. “Will it keep doing that?”

“Probably,” said Luck, just as Poly said hastily: “No!”

But grow it did, and by the time Poly was dressed, her hair was once more halfway down her back, shifting and whispering in the quietness of the hall to Onepiece’s great delight. He trotted after her more steadily than usual with a hank of it curled in one long, skinny hand, and though the growth slowed down after that, her hair remained more lively than usual and she didn’t attempt to plait it.

A quick glance through the window on her way to the kitchen showed fewer supplicants today, for which Poly was thankful. There was no sign of Josie in the kitchen, but there was a pot of porridge sitting on a potholder that was laced with a Keep Warm spell.

Poly sat Onepiece at the table and turned to fetch the bowls and spoons, her stomach growling. By the time she turned back around, Onepiece was using his fingers to stealthily scoop porridge into his mouth with great dispatch, one eye on her and another on the gremlin that was crawling out of his pocket and making for the pot at top speed.

He gave a wordless howl when she took the pot away and cleaned his hands, but when she gave him his own bowl and a spoon, he used them with enough proficiency to make her think that he’d merely been too hungry to wait for her. If Poly wasn’t mistaken, he was also dexterous enough to feed the gremlin from his spoon once or twice when he thought she wasn’t looking.

Luck wandered into the kitchen while they were still eating, his eyes distant and slightly gold. Between sitting on her bed earlier that morning and the present, he had changed his shirt for a slightly less shabby one, though his trousers were as dusty as ever; and his advent into the kitchen seemed to be for no other purpose than to vaguely watch Poly and Onepiece eat. Onepiece made a rude noise at him that sent splotches of porridge pattering onto Luck’s hitherto clean tabletop and prompted a brief, narrower look from Luck, but Poly smiled at him and asked more in resignation than eagerness whether they would be travelling on again this week.

Luck gave her the long, sideways look that always made her feel like he was thinking something very different to what he was speaking, and said surprisingly: “Don’t you like it here?”

Poly was slightly ashamed to find that her first thought was of blue-eyed Michael. “Of course I do! But I thought you had to take me to the Capital to get your books.”

“Well. Yes.”

“Then–”

“Well, I can’t pass you off to the Council with a curse dangling from you,” Luck said irritably. “They don’t like messy ends there. Not unless they’re the ones making them.”

“Oh. What will they do with me?”

“Huh,” said Luck; and his face was suddenly blank. “I didn’t think of that. They’ll probably try to win your endorsement, just to get the Royalists off their backs.”

The idea of anyone campaigning to put another Persephone on the throne struck Poly as dryly humorous.

“Of course, the Old Parrasians will probably try to assassinate you,” added Luck, with what Poly found to be a distinct lack of concern. “Heaven knows what Black Velvet will do, but it’ll be something subtle and annoying.”

“But I don’t want the throne!”

Luck shrugged. “Try and make
them
believe that. The Old Parrasians are a rabid bunch of war-mongers and the Council’s full of only slightly less rabid fungus-feeders. And that’s reckoning without the Royalists.”

“It sounds just like home,” sighed Poly, feeling as though she had gone from the kiln to the furnace. She looked askance at Luck and asked: “How did you get mixed up in all this? And who are all these people?”