Keys and Curses (Shadow Book 2) (21 page)

“You didn’t tell me that!”

“No. I thought you’d probably yell at me. Go and keep an eye on Shazza, I’ll deal with the fairies until we can figure out a way to get rid of all this silver. Then we can hide them in the wagons.”

Flower turned on her heel and marched back to the prison cart, muttering under her breath all the way. Really, this was just too much. She and Nikifor had been doing perfectly fine on their own, joining up with a dissident and a pack of Bloomin Fairies had been a terrible idea. Fitz was going to get them all killed, if the fairies didn’t manage it first. This had to be the most insane thing she’d ever done. She just hoped the king would understand when it was all over. He wasn’t exactly known for understanding treason, but surely the circumstances in this case were exceptional.

Mudface and Nikifor were on the ledge at the back of the silver wagon that was hitched to the prison cart. Flower sat down next to them. “Impossible,” she said. “Just impossible.”

Mudface looked at her, shrugged and returned to her book, which she was poring over between puzzled glances at Shazza.

Nikifor muttered something about helping Fitz and hurried away. Flower scowled after him and wondered what made Fitz’s company so much better than hers.

“He your boyfriend? Cos if he is I think he’s scared of you.”

Flower transferred her scowl to Shazza, who sat behind the bars watching Nikifor’s retreat with intense interest. “Not that it’s any of your business, but he’s not my boyfriend, and you’re going to learn to be scared of me too if you don’t shut up.”

“Scared of a has-been muse? Just you wait till I get out of here.”

Flower looked pointedly at the swollen, livid bruising on Shazza’s nose. “I’m counting the seconds. Perhaps while we wait I could give you a black eye to match your big ugly broken nose.”

Shazza’s lower lip trembled. “I’m not ugly!”

A small hand curled around Flower’s arm. She turned her attention to Mudface, glad of the distraction.

Mudface pushed her book onto Flower’s lap. “Look.”

“What am I looking at?” The question died on Flower’s lips almost as soon as she’d spoken it. There on the page in front of her was a chalk drawing of Shazza. “Did you draw this Mudface? It’s incredibly good.”

Mudface nodded. “I drew it.” She paused and counted on her fingers. “Three pumpkin harvests ago.”

“What?” Flower glanced from Mudface to Shazza. “Has she been in your village before?”

Mudface shook her head.

“Then how did you know what she looked like?”

Mudface shrugged. “I know lots of things since I was dead.” She pointed at the opposite page. “You read.”

Flower studied the pictograms, but they didn’t make any sense. “What do you mean, an experiment on a human went wrong? What human? What experiment?”

Mudface tilted her head toward Shazza and spoke in patient tones. “Her. She was first, she went wrong.”

Shazza shifted forward, paying close attention to the conversation. “What’s that little troll saying?”

“She’s not a troll, she’s a Bloomin Fairy. Now be quiet.” Flower returned her attention to the book. “I still don’t understand, Mudface. What are you trying to say? What kind of book is this you’ve written?”

“All the things I know since I was dead,” Mudface said.

Flower turned the page and looked at a picture of a machine that appeared to be strung together with muse keys. She froze in horror. “What’s this?”

“Bad machine. Looking for you and Nikifor.”

Flower quickly turned the page again. She didn’t like the way Mudface made the very hairs on her arms stand on end sometimes. She leafed through several more pages of pictures of people she didn’t recognise, then stopped and bit her lip. She brushed her fingers over a picture of Krysta, perfect in detail except for the green hair, right down to the hockey stick over her shoulder and the scowl on her face. She looked at the pictograms. “Girl with weird hair starts a revolution. Might save Shadow.” She mouthed the words silently, acutely aware of Shazza’s attention on her. She looked sidelong at Mudface, but the girl just sat there, perfectly composed, waiting expectantly for her to say something.

Flower looked back at the picture of Krysta. “Her? Really?” She had trouble articulating anything else, because she couldn’t quite get past the fact the Bloomin Fairy sitting next to her apparently really did know things. Things that could get her killed.

“Can I see?” Shazza’s voice was plaintive. “Please?”

Flower frowned at her. “No.”

“But I’m in it. I want to see!”

That was a good point. Flower turned her attention to thinking about a problem she could comprehend. She levelled her gaze at Shazza. “If Mudface gives her permission, I will allow you to see,” she said. “But first you must answer some questions for me.”

Shazza’s mouth settled into its accustomed sulky lines. “I’m not saying where the quicksilver’s going. That hoof man already tried that one on me.”

“No.” Flower kept her voice low, calm and musical, like she always did when diplomacy was called for. “It’s you I want to know about. Is that alright?”

Shazza inched forward again. “I s’pose.”

“What’s your name?”

“Shazza, I told you that.”

“Shazza is not a name. What’s your proper name?”

Shazza frowned and bit her lip. “Hang on, I know this one. I just have to remember. It’s–it’s Sh–no wait! I’ve got it!” She looked triumphant. “Sharon Brown.”

“Sharon Brown.” Flower felt a flicker of excitement. She hadn’t encountered false muses in Shadow City, whether because they kept away from her or not she didn’t know, but discovering their existence had been a very personal affront. The opportunity to talk to one like this was unprecedented. She wanted to know all she could. “Sharon have you always been a false muse?”

Shazza narrowed her eyes. “I’m a real muse.”

Flower made an impatient noise. “No you’re not, but never mind all that. I want to know what you were before.”

“Before what?”

“Before you started coming and going in puffs of smoke. Were you a fairy?”

“Fairy!” Shazza sneered. “I was human, stupid.”

So Mudface’s book was right. Not only that, there had to be much more to this story. “If you were a human you must have lived in Dream.”

“Of course I did.”

“What happened? How’d you end up here?”

Shazza curled her hands around the bars and pressed her face to them, oddly wistful. “I ran away from home,” she said. “It was dumb really, but I was pretty hammered that day.”

Flower wasn’t sure what she meant by hammered, but she didn’t interrupt.

A smile curved Shazza’s lips. “That’s when I met him. See, I went to this party with my boyfriend Davo, but then he tried to swap me for a carton of beer. So I smashed an empty beer bottle on his head, took all the smokes and his car and I pissed right off. Of course then the radiator blew in the middle of the freeway, so there I was walking down this stupid freeway trying to find an exit, everyone’s beeping at me, and then suddenly there he was.”

“There who was?” Flower couldn’t help but be both wildly curious and apprehensive.

Shazza gave her an incredulous look. “The king, who do you think it was? He just appeared out of nowhere and asked if I wanted a whole new life in a world where I could be important and respected.”

“What? No wait.” Flower held up her hands. “The king? The muse king?”

“No, the king of the Bloody Fairies, you idiot, of course it was the muse king! Who else makes the muses?”

“King Pierus does not make muses.” Flower forced the outraged words through stiff lips. “He guides us and lights our way. We are born, not made.”

“That’s the old order, maybe,” Shazza said. “It’s all different now. You’re obsolete. Only we truly serve the king.”

Flower’s voice rose a notch, even though she tried to keep it even. Honestly, keeping the king’s reputation unbesmirched lately was next to impossible. So many lies. “Whoever took you out of Dream cannot possibly be the real king. He must have been an imposter. My king would never commit such a travesty!”

Shazza smirked. “See, that’s why your lot have all been retired. Too stuck on the old ways. Can’t be trusted anymore.”

Flower’s voice rose to a squeak. “Retired? I’ll show you retired!”

A pat on the arm from Mudface distracted her. The fairy slowly shook her head. She put a finger to her lips, then pointed at Shazza. “Story,” she said.

Flower took a deep breath to calm herself. “You’re right.” A second deep breath, to make sure her simmering temper was quite contained. “Sharon, what happened after you met this person?”

Shazza shifted into a more comfortable position, more than happy to keep the limelight as long as she could. “He seemed kind of old, even though he looked young, but like I said I was pretty hammered and really mad, so I agreed. Next thing I know he takes my hand and we step through this, like, hole in the air and I’m outside a busted-up castle with all these roses around it.”

“And then?”

“And then none of your business!” Shazza pressed up against the bars again. “I told you where I came from. Now show me the book.”

Flower sighed. The false muse was quite right, she’d kept up her end of the bargain. “Mudface,” she said.

Mudface leafed back to the page about Shazza and held up the book for her to see.

Shazza looked at it for a long time.  “Hey,” she finally said. “What are you gonna do with that book? Get it published?”

Mudface nodded, her eyes big and intent.

“Would that make me, like, famous?”

Mudface shrugged.

“Couldn’t you change my bit to something cooler? I know who’s in charge of the Shadow City Press, you know, I could get this printed.”

Mudface regarded her silently, but she appeared to be thinking about it.

“Absolutely not,” Flower said. “Out of the question. Shadow City Press is run by the Guild, they’d never allow it. Mudface, trust me, you don’t want Moon Troopers breathing down your neck any more than they already are.”

Shazza let go of the bars and sat in the middle of the cage, but her eyes never left Mudface’s book.

Up ahead there was a shout. Fairies scrambled onto wagons to hold on tight. Flower bent around to look and saw the Lord of the Gourd’s platform being secured onto the top of the first wagon. She had an awful vision of the old woman tumbling into the silver in her sleep. She returned to her seat, gripped the wagon tight and tried to tell herself it wouldn’t happen.

The wagons lumbered into slow, ponderous movement.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A steep granite cliff shot through with veins of pink and black quartz towered over the road. The forest atop it peered over the edge, silent, watchful, alive. Green paddocks rippled away to the west like vast lakes. Mountains smudged the distant horizon. Bright, cold blue skies swept clear and open as though winter was a dream.

Too open.

It wasn’t that Nikifor didn’t like open spaces. He wanted nothing more than to be outdoors like this, in vast empty spaces where the Tormentor could not suffocate him with walls and shadows; but right now they were as exposed as if they’d been parading into Shadow City stark naked. Attack could come from the sky at any time.

The machine that hunted Flower nagged at him. All she had to do was put her key back together and give it a way to find them. It was inevitable she would, but he didn’t dare speak to her about it. She’d been in a foul mood for days.

“You look troubled,” Fitz said.

Nikifor glanced up from his feet. They walked ahead of the wagons, leading the first team of mules down the long white road. The Bloomin Fairies clung to the sides of the wagon, chattering and yelling at each other. They’d finally settled down around the silver after a few pointed suggestions from Fitz about what might happen to fairies who fell in. “I’m not convinced this is the wisest course of action,” Nikifor finally said. “The false muses will be hunting for us.”

“It’s not really a wise course of action at all.”

“But you-”

Fitz raised a hand for silence. “I just don’t see any other way of getting us into Shadow City to find the door into Dream we need. Taking this many Bloomin Fairies anywhere is a risky venture, even less into the mouth of the Guild, but sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight. Nobody will be looking for us here.”

Nikifor wasn’t convinced. Still, they’d been walking almost the whole day without seeing so much as a dot in the sky. It was possible they could make it.

“We’ll arrive in Shadow City some time after nightfall,” Fitz said.

Nikifor stopped walking. The mules and wagons trundled on past him.

Fitz went back to him. “What’s the matter?”

“So soon?” Nikifor couldn’t account for the fear that squeezed his innards. “I thought we were days away.”

Fitz gestured up the road. “We already came the short way to meet the quicksilver route. At this pace we’ll make the city in under five hours.”