Well, that part might actually have been true. I’d certainly never seen anyone else in Drachenburg dressed quite like me.
Usually, I liked that. But today it made a creeping, cold feeling trickle over my shoulder blades. Would the crown princess have taken me more seriously if I’d been dressed more like everyone else?
Greta tske’d between her teeth as she looked at me. ‘And you really thought you could go to work in a chocolate house? As if any of those fine places would ever let you through their doors!’
I ground my teeth together as I glared back at her, the words burning in my throat: they did!
For one brief, beautiful moment, I’d had everything I needed. I’d had my passion. I’d been surrounded by chocolate. I’d had a new home and a hoard, and I’d had Marina, too.
But as I looked into Greta’s pitying face, I remembered the smell of burning tarts and I knew she was right – just like my family had been right about me, too. I had been given everything I could want in my new body, and I had lost it all through my own unforgivable weakness.
I thought about the expression on Marina’s face when she had seen me sitting at the abandoned royal table … and at that memory, the final tiny breath of flame inside me flickered and died out.
That was what happened when I tried to look after important things myself.
Greta must have seen the defeat in my slumped shoulders.
‘Oh dear.’ Sighing, she patted my arm and reached down for her basket. ‘I know you’re a good girl really, at heart. Now, why don’t you just take this for me? That shouldn’t require any manners or common sense, so even you should be able to manage it, dear. And at least you’re strong, so that’s something. We’ll go home and have a nice cup of tea, and then I’ll start showing you how to do everything around the house. We already have a room waiting for you, you know – I just knew, somehow, that you’d come back in the end! Because, really, where else could you go?’
She smiled as she hooked the heavy basket around my unresisting arm. ‘Oh, don’t look so sad, Aventurine. I promise you’ll feel at home with us in no time! Soon you won’t even remember this past week and a half. It’ll be as if it never even happened!’
Smoke would have billowed up my throat at that, in the old days. But I had lost the right to defend myself today … and Greta wasn’t wrong after all.
I had nowhere else to go.
So I followed her down the road, my throat as hard as a column of un-ground sugar, and I felt the truth all through my body.
I didn’t deserve to call myself a dragon any more.
CHAPTER 16
At least being an unpaid maid was easy. All it took was shutting off my brain and my heart so I could do everything Greta wanted without letting myself think or feel anything at all.
I was good at following orders, after eleven days in Marina’s kitchen. I was strong enough that hard work didn’t bother me.
And the last thing I wanted was to let my brain or my heart take control of me ever again.
It was impossible to shut them off completely, though. At night, when I lay in the soft, sagging bed that Greta had given me, in my tiny, claustrophobic pink bedroom, with the rose-painted walls pressing in around me and the piled quilts doing their best to smother me, the remembered scent of roasting cocoa beans felt like a ghost in the room. I would grit my teeth and close my eyes, but I couldn’t forget that smell, or the feeling of rightness it had carried.
I still dreamed of running through endless dark and empty tunnels in my family’s mountain every night. But now my family’s voices weren’t the only ones I heard calling out to me. Marina’s voice sounded, too, firm and impatient, summoning me to my next task and setting me alight with hope … then disappearing, every time.
At every new turn in the tunnel, the scent of chocolate taunted me. But I could never, ever recapture its taste.
In the mornings I woke with my quilts kicked on to the floor and sweat trickling down my neck, no matter how chilly the room around me. My stomach felt as hollow as an empty shell, and the longing for my scale-cloth ached all through my bones.
Marina had probably tossed it out by now, just as she would have tossed me out if I’d stayed any longer. But I wished I’d taken the time to save my scale-cloth before I’d left. I might not be a dragon any more, but I was terribly, coldly afraid that without the pattern of my old scales to remind me, I would lose even the memory of flame. And then …
No.
Thoughts like that sent me leaping out of bed every morning, slamming a lid on my emotions the way I might have clamped a lid on a pot, until not even the tiniest shred of steam could escape into the air. After I’d woken to thoughts and feelings like that, it felt only right to spend the rest of the morning torturing myself with endless floor-scrubbing or dealing with chamber pots worse than I could ever have imagined.
Once, Friedrich tried to quietly offer me some money for the work I was doing, but Greta came into the room and caught him at it. Those coins went directly into her purse, and she lectured him for the next five minutes about his irresponsible, spendthrift nature. From then on he just avoided my eyes whenever he came across me.
But the truth was, I didn’t mind not being paid. What would I have used the money for anyway? In the human world, money was to be spent in shops, not slept on … and the last thing I wanted was to ever step out into the wider world again.
On my third full day of service, though, Greta forced me out of the house.
‘Come along,’ she said brightly as I finished the last of the chamber pots. ‘I’ll show you everything we need at the market, so you can take over the shopping, too.’
‘The river market?’ I was so horrified I accidentally let myself breathe in the rancid stench from the chamber pot I was cleaning. It made me gag, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the thought of running into Silke. Having her see me like this – !
I shuddered.
So did Greta. ‘You think I would ever dream of setting foot at the river market?’ she demanded. ‘No respectable woman would ever shop there! Those ruffians sleep in tents out by their tables, did you know that? Right there on the mud, and who knows where they come from? I wouldn’t trust them for an instant! No, I’m talking about the proper market.’
Oh. My shoulders relaxed and I bent back over my disgusting chore.
At least Greta’s market sounded boring enough to be safe.
When we stepped outside ten minutes later, though, I sucked in my breath as if a scab had just been pulled off from my skin. The sun felt too bright. There were shifting colours everywhere and people filling the street with their chatter and their movement. Smells floated down the street from every direction, and the air tasted frighteningly fresh, crisp and cold and full of possibilities that didn’t belong to me. Not any more.
I backed towards the doorway, still holding the market basket along with Greta’s shopping list. ‘Maybe I should stay here and –’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Greta snapped, and started off ahead of me. ‘You look perfectly respectable nowadays. Now that I can trust you to behave sensibly, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be the one who does the shopping from now on. It’ll give me time to get some proper sewing done, for once! Friedrich needs new carpet slippers, you know, and I’m sick to death of our old tablecloth. I want to embroider a new one, to show all the ladies who visit me. And there are at least a dozen social calls I should have made by now that I put off just to help you settle in, so really, the least you could do is help me, too. Hurry up, Aventurine!’
I did. I was wearing a loose, drab, mud-brown dress that had belonged to Greta’s last maid, as well as an even darker brown bonnet that hid my hair. With the market basket in my hand, I blended in exactly with the stream of other humans on the street. Even the sharpest-eyed predator flying overhead could never have picked me out of the herd.
So there was no reason at all for me to feel more alone than I ever had before.
By the time w
e’d reached the market, though, my skin had finally settled back into itself, after the first rawness of exposure to the outside world. At least no one was likely to be watching me now, and there was no one here who knew about my humiliation. Marina got all of her supplies from a big spice-scented market hall that catered only to the restaurants and cafes in town. And the market that Greta led me to now, in the bright, shiny centre of the second district, was a world away from the slippery, sucking mud of the riverbank where Silke’s brother worked. There was no one who knew me in this crowded open square full of polished wooden stalls and bustling women in busy groups, all arguing over the finest fabrics and the freshest vegetables for their families.
All I had to do was trot after Greta and hold her basket as it grew heavier and heavier around my arm … and try not to listen to the whispers surging all around me.
‘… My cousin said in his last letter that he saw two of those monsters flying together, not ten miles from his farm! He said they flew back and forth for hours.’
‘Horrible creatures! Those battle mages ought to march out to the mountains and take care of them before they can do any real damage. That’s what I think!’
‘Oh, absolutely. Exterminate them like the vermin they are!’
Don’t think about it, I chanted to myself. Just don’t think!
I gritted my blunt human teeth and cleared my head until I could think of nothing, nothing at all … not even when I spotted a flock of black-robed battle mages ahead, striding self-importantly through the crowd and leaving an awestruck wake behind them.
My family would eat those stupid battle mages if they tried anything … and there was nothing I could do about it anyway.
But what was happening in my family’s mountain without me?
Five minutes later Greta caught sight of someone over my head. ‘Oh. Oh! I can hardly believe it!’ She lifted herself up on tiptoe to wave across the crowd. ‘Aventurine, I’m going to leave you to do the rest of the shopping yourself. I don’t know how on earth she’s managed it, but – well, that’s one of my oldest friends, and believe it or not, she’s walking arm in arm with a cousin of the lord mayor himself! I have to go and say hello. Maybe we can even take tea together!’
My mouth had gone dry at the words ‘the lord mayor’.
‘I don’t want –’
‘Oh no, don’t worry, you don’t have to come along,’ Greta said. ‘Trust me, no one wants to meet my maid!’ She let out a high trill of laughter. ‘I hope you didn’t think that I’d be buying tea for you! No, I’m going to teach you how to make it yourself, once I trust that you might be ready. I’m sure, with a little practice, you’ll learn to be competent enough – at least when no one important is around to taste it.’
How my tail would have lashed at that, if I’d still been a dragon! If she only knew everything that I’d learned and done in Marina’s kitchen …
But I remembered burned tarts, and my shoulders slumped. I accepted the coins that she counted out for me, and I set off alone, with the heavy wicker basket hanging over my arm, as Greta hurried towards her friend.
I was standing in line at a cheese stall a few minutes later when I felt something brush against my arm. I jerked away, slapping a protective hand against the hidden pocket in my dress where Greta’s coins were kept …
And then I recognised Silke’s laughter.
‘The look on your face!’ she said. ‘Thieves beware. I see she’s finally let you out of your prison?’
‘What?’ I jerked around as the line shuffled forward without me.
It was utterly bizarre to see Silke standing here in Greta’s market square: my old life had suddenly been transplanted into my new one, and the two didn’t fit together at all. I felt dizzy at the sight of her, so close and so real, making the memory of the last few days feel almost dream-like. She stood with her thumbs planted in her pockets, watching me keenly through her clever dark eyes and wearing a green jacket and trousers that might have actually looked conservative … if only she was a boy.
‘How did you find me?’ I demanded.
Silke shrugged, bouncing on her heels. ‘I knew she’d have to let you out at some point. When I saw the two of you setting off today with a market basket, it wasn’t exactly difficult to guess the rest.’
‘But …’ I stopped, biting my tongue.
Silke’s smirk intensified, though, just as if I’d let the rest of my foolish question escape. ‘Didn’t you realise? I can figure out anything that’s going on in this city. I’ve known where you were for over a day now; I just hadn’t worked out a way in yet.’
‘But why were you even trying?’ I asked.
Silke blinked. Her smile slipped. ‘Sorry?’
I shook my head impatiently and moved out of the line, forcing her back so that I could get safely away from the women waiting behind me. I couldn’t bear for this conversation to be repeated back to Greta.
We were a full three feet away and hidden in the shifting crowd before I hissed, ‘Why were you looking for me in the first place? If you’re still hunting for your payment, you must know I can’t get it for you.’ My stomach soured as I imagined it. ‘Horst and Marina won’t care what I say. Not any more.’
At my first words, Silke’s face had gone completely blank. Now, though, her eyes narrowed. ‘Is that what you really think?’
Well, I might not have been a dragon any more, but that didn’t mean I was completely pathetic … and it was just stupid to roll over in front of a predator and show them your vulnerable underbelly. So I stuck my jaw out and didn’t answer.
‘Wherever it is that you come from, Aventurine,’ said Silke, ‘I think things must be done pretty strangely. Because I’m not pretending that money isn’t important … but around here, there’s such a thing as friendship, too.’
My shoulders hunched. I eyed her warily, through slitted eyes, holding Greta’s basket tight against my stomach.
I didn’t need to be told that I wasn’t Silke’s friend after what had happened at the Chocolate Heart, ruining all the effects of her clever handbill. If she’d tracked me down just to tell me that, she had wasted her time.
I didn’t need human friends anyway. I didn’t need anyone.
She looked at me and sighed. ‘Are you honestly telling me that you’d rather be a maid than an apprentice chocolatier?’
Now that really was a question too stupid to deserve an answer.
Silke said, ‘How much is she paying you, anyway? Anything at all? Because the gossip I heard was that she’s been bragging to all her friends about how clever she’s been, getting a stupid country girl to be her servant and do all her dirty work for free.’
My teeth clenched, but I didn’t answer.
‘Fine.’ Silke flung up her hands. ‘I give in! You’re clearly having a wonderful time in your new life. Scrubbing floors was probably what you were born to do. Who even likes the taste of chocolate anyway?’ She tilted her head to one side, her eyes bright. ‘But about that payment that you promised me all those days ago …’
I unclamped my jaw just enough to grind out, ‘I don’t have enough money to pay you myself.’
‘I know,’ Silke said, with creamy satisfaction. ‘So you’ll have to do something different for me instead, won’t you?’ She jerked one thumb over her shoulder. ‘Come with me. It’ll only take you five minutes, and your new employer won’t even notice. She’s off fraternising with the lord mayor’s cousin right now, sucking up with all her might. I saw them heading towards the most expensive tea room in this district, so they’ll be gone for at least half an hour. Now’s your chance to pay your debt in private and be all hers from then on, for evermore.’
I hesitated. Silke was definitely up to something.
‘Come on!’ Silke took another step backwards, beckoning for me to follow. ‘Do you really want me harassing you for payment every time she sends you to the market from now on? This is your chance to be free! You’ll never see me – or be reminded of your o
ld apprenticeship – ever again. Just exactly the way you want it. Right?’
My stomach twisted in a sudden shock of pain, and I jerked my head down to hide my expression. ‘Fine!’ I said tightly. I adjusted my grip on the basket and started after her, keeping my head lowered and my emotions tightly compressed as we wove through the busy crowd.
I was working so hard not to feel, and not to think, that it took me a moment to realise, a few minutes later, that Silke had finally come to a stop. I stumbled to a halt two steps past her and saw, with an uneasy lurch of my stomach, that she had a mischievous smirk on her face. We were outside the main bulk of the market by then, past the final wooden stall and not far from a big stone fountain with a statue in the middle. Bracing myself, I lifted my head and looked around, hunting for clues.
The crowd had thinned out, but there were still plenty of people on this side of the square. A street cook’s oven stood ten feet away, producing hot crêpes that sent the sweet smells of sugar and cooking strawberries and bananas swirling into the fresh cold air. Pigeons pecked around the large colourful tiles on the ground, trilling and clucking as they chased after crumbs. People sat alone or in groups along the wide stone rim of the fountain, chatting to their friends and eating their crêpes …
And in the middle of it all, alone and watching me from her seat on the rim of the fountain, sat Marina.
She crossed her arms.
‘Hello, Aventurine.’
CHAPTER 17
Silke grabbed my arm before I could move.
She didn’t have to. My whole body felt as if it had been turned to stone, just like the fountain where Marina sat. I couldn’t have run away again even if I’d wanted to.
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