Sukey and I put on very sedate striped morning suits, mine in blue and hers in cream, and went to call on Miss Josine Valdecart. I carried a parasol with a nasty blade in the handle and a handkerchief filled with useful herbs. Sukey carried a basket filled with cold meat pies made with fairy vegetables, so while we looked very respectable, we smelled a bit like a sidewalk vendor. The Valdecart housekeeper noticed when she admitted us. She did not sniff haughtily, but her nose twitched.
Sukey put a gloved hand on the woman’s arm. “We mean no harm to those who live within,” she said, “and if it is within our power we will do none.”
“Nor to those who work within, either,” I said with a little glare at Sukey. We should never forget our roots so much as that. The distinction matters.
The housekeeper gave both of us a bemused look. “Well, I thank you, and my lady certainly will too. Is that the reason for your visit? To express your goodwill?”
“We were sent on this errand by a member of your lady’s family,” said Sukey.
The housekeeper’s smile thinned. “How nice. It wasn’t my lady’s aunt, Mistress—”
“A cousin,” I said. “A male cousin.”
“Ah.”
I took a chance. “A feckless male cousin.”
She nearly smiled. “Ah yes. In that case.”
The housekeeper ushered us into a parlor that had been recently and hastily redecorated. The materials were all the sorts of things purchased by people who are used to only the finest quality—we would not have scorned to have wallpaper by that maker in Madame’s house, though not, I think, in that sunshine-colored hue—but thrown together in something of a panic. Sukey sat down on the straw-colored divan. I chose a pale blue armchair and regretted it instantly: it was the sort of chair one put in a parlor to encourage importunate aunts to go home.
I was glad to have the excuse to get up again when Miss Josine Valdecart entered. She was taller than Sukey, almost as tall as I am, and she wore her hair in a tidy brown knot in the back of her head. I looked down: sensible shoes, sturdy, durable. Always a good sign.
“Miss Valdecart,” said Sukey. “Miss Brown and I are here to assist you. Our methods are not always orthodox, but I assure you we can effect your removal from the premises until persons of interest are no longer—”
She fumbled for a word, and I supplied, “Interested. Just give her the pie, Sukey.” Sukey pulled it out of the hamper with a clean linen handkerchief and attempted to hand it over to Miss Valdecart.
“I don’t think that’ll work,” said Miss Valdecart, eyeing the cold meat pie as though it was a hissing adder.
“If your cousin thought you could get yourself out of this, he’d not have sent us,” I said tartly.
“I suppose that’s true, although he is a bit dim,” she said, “but that’s only fairy vegetables, and it’s the Rust Lords who have taken an interest.”
Sukey took a step back, taking the pie with her. We looked at each other. We must have looked a pretty pair of fools then, trying to addle the Rust Lords themselves with pies.
“I’m sorry,” Miss Valdecart added humbly. “He means well. I don’t think he understands the gravity of the situation.”
Sukey recovered quickly. “If he did not, he wouldn’t have delivered you to our keeping. We will get you away from the Rust Lords. The pies will not do, but our lady teaches us much that is useful in a crisis, and she expects us to use what we know.”
The housekeeper spoke up. Miss Valdecart started, clearly having forgotten she was there. Sukey and I did not forget, but we did not expect what she said: “I could eat one of the pies.”
“Do you understand what we made them with?” Sukey asked gently.
The housekeeper bobbed her head. “Madam, I have lived in this city from birth. I know a fairy vegetable when I smell one.”
“And why would you eat of them?” I asked, less gently.
“If I had one and left the house, some of the Rust Lords might follow the blurred trail, just to see whose it was. Then there would be fewer for you to deal with.”
“Then we could make our escape to our lady’s house in the Underhill ways,” said Sukey. “Oh, brave soul. Well thought. I would ask if you knew what they might do to you if they caught you out, but as you say, you have lived here since your birth.”
“I know them well enough,” said the housekeeper. “And I am a member of the Yoke and Nail. I am beyond their destruction.”
“Brave soul,” I echoed, nearly against my will, for while that august society will keep a good servant from death at the hands of the great lords, it will not spare her torment.
The housekeeper looked at Sukey and me first. “Tell your lady,” she said distinctly, “that the daughters of the ones who sewed for her last time will not forget.”
I pursed my lips. Sukey said, “And she’ll know what that means?”
“She will know.” The housekeeper turned to her mistress. “Miss Josine, child, follow the paths that these two show to you, and if you must choose between trusting them and trusting your cousin—chose them.”
“But he—”
The housekeeper sighed. “Will you believe that I know more of their world than you do?”
“Yes,” said Miss Valdecart humbly.
“Very good. Trust them.”
“All right.”
The housekeeper took the pie from Sukey. “The ones who sewed for her last time,” she repeated.
“We will remember,” I said.
She bit down, then smiled around the mouthful. “I had forgotten how good these are, how savory and fine.”
“We do our best,” said Sukey.
“And we pray that it will be good enough this time,” said the housekeeper, taking another bite. “Give me a quarter of an hour. Then go.”
She left us without any fuss, though Miss Valdecart stretched a hand out wistfully after her. “Well,” said Miss Valdecart, “you may as well call me Josine, if you know of the Rust Lords. That, I should think, would be at least as good as a personal introduction.”
“I am Sukey, and this is Lucy,” said Sukey. I nodded briefly.
“Shall we take the back stairs?” asked Josine. “Or—there is a garden that—”
“We will not need doors, my dear,” said Sukey, smiling kindly. “Not the way we’re going.”
I didn’t have time for kind smiles, as I was already treading out the carpet to prepare a gate into the Underhill ways. In any case I often didn’t make the time for kind smiles even when there were not faerie realms to gently invade.
3. Underhill Ways
Madame is quick from place to place. Madame knows. The places that will not lie still from one second to another make paths for her, smooth and easy and quiet, so quiet. The cave walls of the Underhill have the grain of wood, oak and kingwood, but they are not wood. The wood-like grain swirls and twists around us. Wood is kinder to human voices. Sukey and I have been known to sing on the paths, which makes them a little bumpier, just a little, and/but the bumps are much easier to bear than the quiet.
On this occasion, we sang as cheerfully as we could manage, though the Underhill ways tend to twist our harmonies into something more melancholy. We are used to the sadness that comes of mortal feet in fairy lands, but I suspected Josine was not. Soon I had my suspicions confirmed.
“I have never,” said Josine a bit breathlessly, “never, never been here before.”
“I expect not,” I said.
“How did you—I saw the glowing gate,” she said.
“The gate of bone,” I supplied.
“How did you get that to come to you?”
I winced; she had hit the nail precisely on the head. I had not created a gate, I had summoned it, with my footsteps and my words and my will. But it
, too, had a will, more of a will than I was comfortable with in something that was not supposed to be living, or not any more.
So did the ground under my feet.
“Madame teaches many things,” said Sukey, letting me off the hook for the moment. “It’s convenient for her if her assistants are able to act with substantial independence.”
“How do your parents feel about that?” asked Josine.
Then it was my turn to let Sukey off the hook. “We are not either of us in a circumstance where our parents have had a great deal of interest in our doings for some years now. Before we came to Madame’s service.”
Josine shook her head wonderingly. “I have been chaperoned every moment. Nearly every moment.” She scrambled over a hillock in the path, created by our conversation as the gentler bumps were by our singing. “I have barely been outside our own lands except in a carriage on the way to friends’ houses.”
I held my hand up for silence, and Josine stopped talking without needing an explanation. I whistled down the path in the silence. The whistle came back almost right. Almost. I frowned. I couldn’t pinpoint quite what was wrong with it. I glanced back at Sukey, and she put an arm around Josine, able to guide her without noise. I whistled again. The echo sounded normal.
I turned to them and shrugged. “I can’t find anything wrong right now. But a minute ago—there was something. I don’t know.”
“Maybe best not to go home for a bit,” said Sukey.
Staying Underhill had its risks. We were not alone there, and as well as Madame had taught us the Underhill ways, they could still warp around us. But on the other hand, if our ruse had not worked with the Rust Lords leaving the Valdecart home, better to find it out now than to be trapped Underhill surrounded by Rust Lords, or even by the more easily thwarted fairykind.
* * * *
I found a cavern where we could wait and shielded it against magic eyes. Its walls were pressurized carbon, and it glistened with moisture. Most people do not see caverns full of wet diamonds in their lifetimes. The Underhill ways are filled with many stranger things, and my first reaction was annoyance that we would have to sit on such a hard, wet surface or remain standing. But Josine’s eyes were wide, her lips slightly parted.
“Like it, do you?” I asked.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“What did you do to anger the Rust Lords, a little homebody like you?” I continued.
“They’re not angry,” she said softly, running a finger along the dripping gem and then wiping the water on the hem of her dress.
“Then why are you running from them?”
“They’re not angry,” she repeated, and for a moment I was about to demand that she answer my question. Then I saw the point.
“They like you too well.”
“Too well indeed,” said Josine.
“And how did they find out how well they like you, if you’re as much a homebody as that?” I said. “How does a girl who’s still impressed with a diamond cave, who’s chaperoned all the time and barely off her own family’s lands, come to the attention of the Rust Lords?”
She ducked her head. “There was a masquerade with my cousin. It was more of a romp than I am permitted to attend, lest I—”
“Lest you ruin your chances of a brilliant match,” said Sukey, very dryly. “We are aware of how these things work, though we don’t live them.”
Josine peered at her a bit anxiously. I think she had decided that Sukey was the nice one, and might have been rethinking her assessment. “There was a masquerade?” I prompted.
“My cousin feels sorry for me,” said Josine. “Felt sorry, at least. Now he feels guilty, I suppose. But he always thought it was a shame I wasn’t permitted out more. He remembers when we were children, how I was just as brave as he was and just as quick with a spell, and he doesn’t…he didn’t see any reason why they should treat me like an invalid.”
“But he does now?” said Sukey.
“I have a knack,” Josine said apologetically. “I…it’s something I know I can do, not something I know how to do, if that makes any sense. It just happens.”
“What just happens?”
“I put things right again,” she said.
Sukey and I looked at each other. “You reverse time?” Sukey asked, hiding her skepticism much better than I would have.
“No! I…they say you can’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together again,” said Josine. “About eggs and things? They teach it to children because it’s true, there’s no use crying over spilt milk and you can’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together again, because he’s an egg, and smashed eggs don’t work that way.”
I suppose Sukey was scowling in thought. I know I was. The word Josine was looking for was “entropy.” There were professors who came to Madame’s, as everyone came to Madame’s, and she insisted that they treat us, me and Sukey in particular but the others as well, as people, equals. For professors, treating someone as your equal means telling them at great length what you are figuring out, or what you might figure out soon, or what you think you’ve just figured out a minute ago if you didn’t get the math wrong. They soon found out that people who manage a whorehouse, not to mention the whores themselves, are very, very keen on not getting the math wrong.
And what one of them was figuring out was called entropy.
It was exactly what Josine was talking about, things falling apart, some things only happening one direction and not another. It was the Rust Lords’ greatest joy and their greatest power. And here Josine was saying she was able to reverse it, but they weren’t angry with her at all, and that didn’t make much sense to me.
While I was thinking all this, a plover walked across the cavern entrance, picking and pecking its little speckled brown head, as casual as a bird could be. Sukey frowned, and I did a quick spell to see through illusions and shifted shapes. It was really a plover, hatched and grown. Sukey and I looked at each other.
“Oh, a little bird,” said Josine. “Is it a fairy bird?”
I looked at her, astonished. I could not imagine that someone could say that and not make me want to take off my lovely, well-made boot and beat her with it. How twee would someone have to be to ask me to look at the sweet little fairy birdies when we were trying to shield her from some of the most deeply unpleasant forces of magic allowed within city gates? Not very twee, apparently, as Josine could manage to make it sound matter-of-fact.
“No, it’s just a plover,” I said. Josine nodded as though this was an ordinary occurrence. I got up from my dampish seat and watched the plover as it went.
“As you said,” said Sukey, sounding concerned, “just a plover.”
“And where do we find plovers?”
“Along the seashore,” said Josine with hearty good cheer.
I looked over my shoulder. Sukey did not look nearly so cheerful.
“Along the…seashore,” she repeated.
The diamond cavern was damp, but we had not thought anything of that; the weather of the Underhill ways can be capricious and is certainly mysterious to the likes of us. But we both knew that there ought not to be a seashore or anything a plover could mistake for one within several miles of where we were standing.
I followed the plover. Sukey and Josine followed me. The plover was oblivious. I motioned them to wait when we got to the line where my protections from magical spying would give out, and I kept going.
Someone—or something—or the Underhill itself—had plunked an ocean down where we wanted to go.
Up until that moment, I had not been sure that we wanted to leave right away, and I was willing to stick around in the diamond cavern and talk to Josine some more about what, exactly, had happened at this masquerade ball she so foolishly attended, so that the Rust Lords would be interested in her. But the very mi
nute I saw that misplaced ocean, I felt sure that we had to go, back to Madame’s and as soon as possible. I hurried back to Sukey and Josine. The plover, presumably, hurried on to whatever it is plovers find worth hurrying for.
“Unexpected ocean,” I said. I saw the whites of Josine’s eyes, and I was briefly amused that she seemed to think I had gone off my nut.
“Oh dear,” said Sukey faintly.
“We can’t stay.”
“Not if they’re handing out oceans without marking the spot first,” I agreed.
“I’ll stay with the—with Josine for a moment,” said Sukey.
“And I’ll call Jenny,” I said, finishing her thought. “All right.”
I took off my boots very carefully, button by button, and then my stockings. I handed them to Sukey along with my parasol. She accepted them with equanimity though Josine stared. Next I shimmied my petticoats from under my dress, until I had only dress and shift to contend with. This stopped Josine’s staring; she politely averted her gaze.
I left them standing there, Sukey folding up my petticoats with her customary tidiness. I hitched my skirts up under my arms and waded knee-deep into the misplaced sea. I had not gone wading or swimming in the lakes often since joining Madame’s staff, as it is not a thing a person of the class I now belong to will do.
But as a child I frolicked like a young otter with my poor cousins, so I knew how to stand steady in the currents, and I knew the different ways lakes could feel under my toes. I didn’t imagine seas were much different: there were the standard sandy bottoms, and the mossy rocky bottoms, and the pointy rocky bottoms, and the sucking muddy bottoms. All of the rocks and soil under water have been harassed and harried by water, and they feel it.
Here, I couldn’t feel individual rocks at all. It was unweathered stone, such as I would expect to find under my feet in a cave that had never touched the sea. It was not particularly comfortable to walk upon barefoot, and I was not as confident of my footing. So up to the knees would have to do.
The Witch and Warlock MEGAPACK ®: 25 Tales of Magic-Users Page 57
