Seventh Bride

by T. Kingfisher

  The hedgehog shrugged, but then reached out and put a gentle paw on the back of her hand. It looked at her solemnly. Its eyes were dark and kind, and held hers for a long moment.

  Its sympathy was oddly steadying. Rhea squared her shoulders and nodded. “Okay. I can handle this.” She paused. “Are you sure you’re a hedgehog?”

  It threw its paws in the air and huffed in evident disgust, before returning to the safety of her pocket.

  She stood up and took a step forward, then stopped as if she’d run into an iron bar. A thought had occurred to her, and not a pleasant one. She held the pocket open and looked down at the hedgehog.

  “If I did go back—is there something on the road behind me?”

  The hedgehog nodded.

  “Something bad.”

  The hedgehog made a kind of grabbing, swooping gesture with both paws in front of its chest. Rhea couldn’t quite make out what it was meant to show—there are limits to the expressiveness of hedgehog feet, particularly when they are on their backs in somebody’s pocket—but when the hedgehog then rolled into a tight ball, she got the gist well enough.

  “Ah.”

  She let the pocket fall closed. She didn’t look over her shoulder, even though the skin between her shoulderblades was crawling. Looking over her shoulder could not possibly help matters.

  She walked forward, under the arch. Overhead, the two bird-golems held each other tightly, and the third one stared off into the forest and clicked its dead claws against the iron.

  Click…click…click…

  She entered the courtyard of Lord Crevan’s house.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The fountain threw spray ten feet in the air. The patter of water on the basin was too much like the click of dried leaves on the white road for comfort.

  The figure of a winged woman stood atop the fountain, wings extended. Rhea had seen statues of winged people before—the churchyard had several angels carved on top of tombstones—but unlike the angels, the wings of the figure on the fountain sagged exhaustedly.

  Rhea gave the fountain a wide berth. She was cold and miserable and scared, and being wet wouldn’t help in the least.

  A broad cobblestone circle led around the fountain, probably suitable for carriages, if one ever came up the white road. It seemed unlikely. There was moss growing between the stones, and plants grew in a thick tangle around the edges. Late flowers bloomed in what was clearly some kind of garden, although their cheerful colors were bleached by the moonlight.

  “Those are black-eyed susans,” Rhea told the hedgehog. “And ploughman’s wort and love-choke and asters. I don’t think evil people grow black-eyed susans, do they?”

  The hedgehog was not inclined to comment on the gardening habits of evil people.

  There was a door.

  It should have been a large and impressive door, perhaps something like the great carved church doors, but it wasn’t. It was just a door. There was a short flight of steps, shallow and elegant, but the door at the top was dark wood, with only a little carving around the door handle. The handle itself was brass, and looked no more complicated than the door handle on the burgher’s door back in the village.

  Rhea walked up the steps. No dead birds challenged her. Nothing jumped out of the clumps of black-eyed susans to eat her. The stone angel did not come down from the fountain to carry her off, although honestly, being carried off by an angel did not seem like that terrible a fate at the moment.

  She set her hand on the door knocker.

  This is a murderer’s house, whispered the dead bird in her memory.

  Rhea gritted her teeth and rapped the knocker sharply against the wood.

  The door opened.

  At first, Rhea thought the woman who had opened it was wearing some kind of high laced collar. Then the woman stepped back and the light spilled over her.

  Black leather thongs crossed and re-crossed over the woman’s throat in a tight lacing. Down the center ran a stark purple scar, a river of jagged tissue running from the underside of her chin to the hollow at her collarbone. The thongs were punched through holes in the skin, and they looked as if they had been anchored deep.

  There was a long, long moment when Rhea nearly broke and ran. Never mind whatever thing had followed her down the white road, never mind Lord Crevan’s rank or what her parents might do—this was too much. Rhea’s sanity was a fundamentally solid thing—she had never in fifteen years had cause to question it—but this was one shock too many, and something inside her head was whining like a dog.

  She took a deep breath, then another, and said in a high voice, “Lord Crevan sent for me. He—he said to come—he said this was his house—”

  The woman looked at her in silence.

  Rhea thrust out her hand with the silver ring on it, as if it were a token of safe passage.

  The woman looked at it. She nodded, but said nothing.

  Of course. She can’t possibly speak, not with that scar—how did she even survive? It would be a mortal wound on anyone, a scar like that.

  Maybe it was a mortal wound.

  Maybe she’s like the golems.

  She couldn’t quite deal with that thought, so she set it aside again.

  The woman beckoned. Her face was marked with pain and irritation, the hard lines running like knife wounds down from the sides of her nose.

  “I—”

  The lines deepened as the woman frowned, and she made a deeper gesture, waving Rhea inside, clearly annoyed. The hedgehog shifted restlessly in Rhea’s pocket.

  Rhea stepped inside.

  The woman pushed the door shut behind her.

  It was warmer inside, but not by very much. The door opened onto a long balcony running the length of another, much larger room beneath it. It must be built into the side of an unsuspected hillside, or perhaps the room had been excavated like a root cellar.

  The floor below was laid with a black and grey checkerboard of tiles and swam before her eyes.

  The silent woman gave Rhea a sharp nod, and another beckoning gesture, then turned on her heel. Rhea scurried after her. The floor was carpeted with thick red rugs, and their feet made a soft sloughing sound: uff chuff uff chuff uff chuff…

  She’s taking me to Lord Crevan.

  Oh lord, she didn’t know if she could deal with Crevan. She was exhausted and, she suddenly realized, ravenously hungry. The hedgehog was probably hungry too. Of course, it would want slugs, and Lord Crevan’s pantry was unlikely to have those, although if he was a sorcerer, maybe he did. Sorcerers had lots of nasty things lying around, didn’t they? Slugs and bugs and worms and dragon blood and…

  uff chuff uff chuff uff chuff

  The woman turned down a hallway that led off the balcony.

  I’m going to see him and I’m going to babble like an idiot, or scream or cry or something horrible. I know I am.

  The silent woman stopped before a door and pulled it open. Rhea braced herself.

  The room was a tiny chamber, perhaps six feet on a side, with a bed, a basin, and a small wooden chest. The woman pointed to Rhea, then to the bed, and turned to leave.

  Relief struck her so strongly that she felt weak in the knees. She didn’t have to face Crevan tonight. She could rest.

  She was so overcome that the door had almost closed before she called “Wait! Hang on—wait!” She pulled it open again.

  The silent woman gave a tiny sigh and gazed upwards, much like Rhea’s mother did when praying for strength.

  “I’m really hungry,” said Rhea apologetically. “I didn’t eat—I mean, dinner was—ah—”

  The woman looked at her and shook her head—not a negative shake but a how are you so stupid shake—and then turned and walked back the way they had come. Rhea hurried after her.

  They went through another door, then another, and down a flight of stairs, and then they were crossing the enormous hall. The giant tiles were hard underfoot, and Rhea could feel the cold through the soles of her boots. The
woman was moving hurriedly now, almost running, and Rhea could barely keep up.

  And then there was a noise.

  It sounded like the end of the world, like the great church bell being crushed by the millstone, a noise of screaming metal and grinding gears. It was the loudest sound Rhea had ever heard. She let out a shriek and almost fell.

  The silent woman halted in her tracks, reached out, and grabbed Rhea by the scruff of the neck as if she were a kitten.

  Rhea started to squirm, but the woman hauled back on her collar and dragged her close.

  Then the floor fell away.

  Rhea watched the stone tiles drop out of sight. They fell away into nothingness, into some dark abyss, first a few, then more and more, while that horrible grinding clangor came again and again until her head rang with it.

  The silent woman stood behind her, holding Rhea up by the back of her shirt, a far more solid presence than the floor. The tile they stood on was one of only a handful remaining, seemingly suspended over nothing. The walls led straight down into an enormous chasm, wallpaper and baseboards hovering absurdly over sheer stone cliffs.

  “What—how—oh god—what—” Rhea could hear herself babbling between those terrible sounds, and then she couldn’t even babble anymore and could only pant like a frightened animal.

  In her pocket, the hedgehog was curled into an agonizingly tight ball.

  A long time later, the noise stopped.

  What was that? How is this happening? Is this sorcery?

  What is holding us up?

  And far more importantly How do we get down!?

  It was a very large tile, but it seemed very small with two people (and one hedgehog) standing on it. The other tiles hanging in the air were empty, except for one that had an end-table with a vase of flowers on it.

  The abyss underneath was endless and very, very black.

  Oh, Lady of Stones, if I fall in there I’ll have time to pray and confess my sins before I hit the bottom.

  This was not as comforting a thought as one might wish.

  “How do we get down?” whispered Rhea. She hadn’t meant to whisper, but she couldn’t speak any louder.

  The silent woman sighed again.

  There was another noise—this one grinding, ratcheting, like the millworks starting up—and then a tile flew upwards out of the abyss and snapped into place in absolutely empty air.

  I’ve gone mad, said Rhea conversationally to herself. The hedgehog was probably a warning sign. The saints only know what I’ve really got in my pocket.

  Another tile popped up, only a few feet beyond, and then another, and then they were all rising, like fish surfacing in a pond when you throw breadcrumbs into the water. They fitted themselves together, each of them in the right place, black bordered by grey and grey by black, and then there was a tile fitting into their tile, and another, and then the noise stopped and the whole floor was intact.

  The silent woman dropped Rhea’s collar, and strode out across the floor.

  It took Rhea a minute longer to gather up her courage. She put a foot on the next tile and tested it worriedly.

  What if they fall?

  Her guide had reached the far doorway and was waiting impatiently.

  How could she take a step? What if—

  What if they fall again and I’m still standing here?

  Rhea crossed the vast floor in less than three seconds flat.

  The silent woman snorted, and pushed the door open.

  Rhea stepped inside—surely the floor in here could not fall? No, of course it couldn’t, there was an enormous table and a chopping block and all those things would have fallen into the abyss as well.

  The room was a kitchen, built to a scale that befitted the size of the house. There was a gigantic hearth with fire irons around it, and a brick oven that radiated heat. Pots and pans hung on nails overhead, and another doorway stood open, leading to what was presumably a courtyard with a pump. Cool night air came in through the doorway, cutting the heat from the banked hearth and the oven.

  Two women sat at the table. One was enormously fat, and one was very pale and had a bandage wrapped around her eyes.

  “Good heavens!” said the fat woman, looking towards the doorway. “At this hour, too?”

  “The floor,” said Rhea, hearing her voice rising hysterically. “The floor! It—did you see—does it—it fell, and—”

  “Happens every night at midnight,” said the fat woman matter-of-factly. “And sometimes at a quarter after four in the afternoon, although not always. Depends on her mood, I should think.”

  “The—four in the afternoon—her?”

  The silent woman made a wordless sound of contempt and shut the door. Rhea could hear her shoes clicking on the tiles as she strode away.

  “Her,” said the fat woman. “The clock-wife.”

  Rhea said “Oh,” as if that explained things, which it didn’t in the slightest.

  “Have a seat, honey,” said the fat woman, rising to her feet. Rhea saw that she was not merely heavy but tall as well, and powerfully built across the shoulders. “You’ve had a shock, and probably a long walk on top of it. Let me fry you a bit of supper.”

  “That would be wonderful,” said Rhea, sitting down, while half of her mind gibbered about the floor, what had happened to the floor, the world was not a place where things like the floor falling away and then coming back two minutes later happened—and the other half had smelled ham and was ravenously hungry and felt the floor could wait.

  “Is it her?” asked the woman with the bandaged eyes. Her skin was much paler than anyone in the village, and she had wispy white-blond hair. “Maria, is it her?”

  The big woman—Maria—was chopping up a potato and tossing it into a skillet with grease and bacon.

  “I’m guessing it’s her, yes,” said Maria. “Got Himself’s ring on. Ask her yourself, she’s right here.”

  “Is she pretty, Maria?”

  Rhea blinked.

  Maria sighed and said “She’s young, Sylvie. Young, and not bad-looking, but she’s no great beauty. Not like you were, dear.” Over the frail woman’s head, she mouthed, Sorry.

  Rhea wondered if she should be annoyed, and decided that the potatoes were much more important.

  “Oh,” said Sylvie. “Oh, that’s fine then. Not that it matters.” She folded her hands together, and Rhea was suddenly quite sure that it mattered very much.

  “Egg with your potatoes, dear?”

  “Oh yes, please,” said Rhea.

  “Not that it matters,” said Sylvie again, more loudly. And then, hesitantly, “You—you have a nice voice, dear.”

  “Err. Thank you,” said Rhea. She looked worriedly at Maria, who glanced over at Sylvie and rolled her eyes heavenward.

  “She has a nice voice,” Sylvie told Maria.

  “It’s not nice to talk about her as if she’s not here,” said Maria. “What’s your name, child?”

  “Um. Rhea.”

  “Good name, that,” said the fat woman approvingly. “Queen of the old gods. A strong name.”

  “It’s important to be strong,” said Sylvie. “It’s better to be strong than—that is—” She stopped. Had she not been wearing the blindfold-like bandage, Rhea thought she would have been staring at her hands. “It’s bad to be vain,” she said finally.

  She’s mad, thought Rhea. Or if not quite mad, she’s at least a little touched in the head. Worse than the conjure wife, anyway.

  Maria must be the cook, and I guess that means the woman with the throat wound is the butler? Maybe? And Sylvie…maybe she’s a former servant? Or a relative of Maria’s?

  “You’ll have to forgive Sylvie,” said Maria, thumping a plate of potatoes, eggs, and bits of ham down on the table in front of Rhea. “Which is not to say that she ought to be forgiven, but you’re probably going to be here awhile, and it’s just easier if we all make our peace with each other.”

  Rhea would have forgiven anyone anything at that po
int if they came bearing potatoes, but a prickly wiggling in her pocket reminded her of her manners. “Um,” she said again, reaching into her skirt. “I have a hedgehog.”

  “So you do,” said Maria, eyeing it dubiously. “I suppose it’s hungry, too?”

  The hedgehog managed to indicate that it could eat, yes.

  Maria opened a cupboard and began rummaging through it. “I’m out of slugs,” she said over her shoulder. “There are plenty out in the garden, and your services would be much appreciated there, Master—or Mistress—Hedgehog, but for now…”

  She dumped a handful of raisins out on the table next to the hedgehog. It picked one up in its paws, nodded graciously to Maria, and tucked in.

  “Useful creatures, hedgehogs,” said Maria. “Is it your familiar, then?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Rhea, who had been applying herself to the potatoes. “We only just met. And I’m not magicky.”

  She glanced at the hedgehog. The hedgehog shook its head.

  “Well, you never know,” said Maria, wiping her hands on her apron and settling down into her chair. “I had a familiar once. Old she-bear, size of a cow by the time—well, never mind. She’s still out there. Bears are nigh-impossible to kill once they get that size. Death’s too scared to come looking for them.”

  Sylvie stirred restlessly, as if about to say something, and Maria patted her hand firmly. The blind woman—surely she was blind?—settled back into her chair.

  She had a familiar? Lord Crevan’s cook had a familiar?

  “So you’re Rhea. Well, I’m Maria,” said the cook. “And this is Sylvie, as you heard, and the grim old bat who brought you in is Ingeth.”

  “Are—are you Lord Crevan’s servants?” asked Rhea timidly.

  Maria laughed then, a rich, rollicking belly laugh that filled up the kitchen and rang the pots and pans.

  “Oh, no, no, no,” said Sylvie, shaking her head. Wispy hair flew.

  “Bless your heart,” Maria said, wiping her eyes. “Servants indeed. No, my child. We’re Lord Crevan’s wives.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Wuh-what? Wives?”