White As Snow (Fairy Tale) (16 page)

Read White As Snow (Fairy Tale) Online

Authors: Tanith Lee

 
 
A spider in her web, she waited for him. Staggering, sottish, to bed, he did not know it.
‘The water clock which dripped in the annex of the hall had shown midnight. In the torch-gloom there were still songs. “We keep later hours at Korchlava,” he had said. But generally he had never been included in those.
On a narrow stair, a woman appeared. She was flinty sober, dressed as an upper servant of the house.
“You’re the man Cirpoz? My lady summons you.”
“Does she now.”
“None of that. She’s the queen.”
“What queen? The queen’s at Korchlava … Oh,
that
one.” Unease curdled him. He had met her, last evening, in the ruins of the elder palace. That thin ghost with frost on her hair.
“Come now. What could she want with me?”
But the woman turned and he had to follow her, for a queen summoned him and he was, in fact, a nobody.
When he entered her apartment, after all the heat and noise, it seemed winter-cold to him, and dim from its two or three candles. The witch—many named her that—sat in her chair. Three dark rings stared from her hand, but not so darkly as her gemstone eyes. She made his skin creep. The servant was gone. This one and he were all alone.
“Illustrious madam.” The apartment as well as dim and cold was not very luxurious. Better spread butter on his words. “This honor—”
“You know me, do you?” Her voice surprised him by its youth. It was a girl’s voice.
“Why madam, you’re the regal queen.”
“Am I? What will you do for me?”
His gorge rose. He had heard she frolicked, this hag.
“Wh—whatever—I’m able, madam.”
“Are you able,” she said, “to take away from me one who harms me?”
“I—what does your ladyness mean?”
In her web, the ice-spider with the girl’s voice looked at him with her five black eyes.
“There is a chit here at the palace who works against me. But she would be easy for you to lead away, out of this house. She’s only young, slender—no nuisance to you.”
“You mean—to kill her would be easy?”
His nerves had steadied. This task was not quite unknown to him. The other victims had been men. A woman should present no problem.
“Is she of high rank, madam?”
“No.”
The hag was very definite. He wondered if she lied.
“But—”
“She’s nothing. No one will miss her. Only I will notice her loss. I shall be grateful. But it must be now—tonight.”
There was something in the corner, gleaming faintly. He had taken it for the glimmer of a low-slung lamp. But then instinct made him see what it was. It was the legendary witch’s sorcerous mirror, standing open, reflecting all the room. And himself. Cirpoz edged from the mirror’s view.
“But am I to
kill
her, madam? Sometimes that can be quite awkward. Especially since I must then go off myself—and there’s my troop of dwarves to consider—”
“Do what you want. Violate her, give her to Draco. Feed her to savage beasts. Whatever you like.”
Then she sighed. She looked away from him.
He fawned: “Immaculate lady, I dislike that I must ask, but I may still need … some funds.”
“There,” she said. “That’s for you.”
“What, madam? What am I to have?”
“Your reward. There it is. It’s worth the fortune of your king. My father paid for it some hundreds of gold coins. He told me so. It was the talk of his castle.”
“But—what?—Where?”
“There. Before you.
That.
It’s heavy with silver, and has gold adornments. Fetch some servants to carry it, or your dwarves. Take it. I don’t want it any more.”
Yes, yes, she was insane. Nor did
he
want the mirror—but she was correct. It was worth a fortune. Were there even three such objects in all Draco’s wide kingdom? Perhaps Draco had forgotten it was here. Perhaps his other queen would like to have it?
Cirpoz said, throatily, “Tell me where to find this pest who upsets you so.”
When she described the room and the part of the palace he
would locate her in, Cirpoz. was reassured. It was nut an area where any important ones kept their apartments. He was glad to have been crafty.
Luckily for Cirpoz, he and his own slave were sufficiently strong that between them they shifted the glass. But by then he had closed the lid. He did nut want the mirror to snag his soul on its surface.
 
 
When the servant of Draco was gone, and his slave, Arpazia paced about the empty chamber. once by one, the two or three candles died.
High in the woods wolves howled, or it might have been some last drunken noise of games from Tusaj’s hall.
I want none of it any more. To go to the wild wood. To make fool’s spells with old woman. I don’t want to see her, anywhere. Never, never again
.
The girl who was Arpazia’s youth, the girl they called Candacis, or Coira,. Meeting her on the avenue of trees, they had clashed together, eyes and hearts and spirits. Each a blow to the other. To Arpazia, the worst blow?
But she recalled who Cirpoz was, and even though he had aged seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years, yet she knew him. How could she ever forget the one who hauled her up into the forest of war and led her through the camp to Draco? Let Cirpoz now take
this
girl, then. Let him lead
her
away to some doom. Or let him simply kill her and throw her white body, red with blood, into the black earth.
Arpazia walked round and round her chamber, now in the darkness. But if she spun her web or broke the threads of it, she did not know.
She is me. Take her away.
Take her away from me. Take her away and take the mirror away
.
She thought, cruelly,
Idiotic old crone, it will do you no service. You never learn
.
But still round and round she circled, like a wheel, or the dead stars, round and round, until the night was done.
 
 
Before the night was done, Ulvit came up from her own prayers lower on the terraces. Candacis had not accompanied her. Ulvit, thought that she would be sleeping, and did not try to rouse her. In the morning, when Ulvit woke, herself, she thought only that Candacis had gone out alone, and early, as sometimes she did. And so a long while passed before Ulvit knew Candacis had vanished from the palace. Perhaps others knew, who said nothing—stones in the walls, the lizards clamped by winter under the temple paving, the Oracle (which knew everything) not murmuring in the hill.
Ulvit did not make a stir, though she sought an interview with the prince—with some difficulty—and told him how the Princess Candacis was not to be found. Ulvit had already lost hold of the girl. It was not in her to be vocal with grief.
Besides, she and all her kind had known fate lay awaiting Draco’s daughter, if not how, or when. She was
Coira
, the Maiden, and had been offered to the King of the Dead. They were not wicked, Ulvit’s people, only, in their way,
religious.
The story had always been here: Demetra and her child who Hadz snatched and carried off. The gods might wish to reenact that story. Coira-Candacis had been shown, twice, in the wood, the second time as a queen. She was a sacrifice, perhaps. The Woods People had not connived. But they had opened the way. To hear now that Candacis, first in white, and then in green, had disappeared, would not astonish them.
As for Tusaj, like many just then, he nursed an aching head.
Surfacing from its stupor, the court at Belgra Demitu was only glad the dwarves, who had described their sins, and died for them, were no longer about.
As for Cirpoz, he was, of course, a nobody. Who would suspect him?
 
 
He had tapped on the door in the leaden remains of night. Tapped, until she came to see who was there. Not even a servant to protect her. And no one else near.
Cirpoz, who had watched her at the feast, envied her her place, fancied her, did not know Candacis in this slender pallid form, wrapped in night and a worn cloak, hair tied back in a plait.
He seized her at once, grinning at the facility of it, and with his big hand cut off her air until she slumped. She weighed nothing. A lot less than the bloody mirror. No one saw him take her away from that remote room and down to his wagon. Even the yard grooms were dead drunk. But the adventure and the freezing night had cleared Cirpoz’s clever, canny, crafty head.
There was a ramshackle hunter’s bothy along the hills, in the woods. He could store her there, tied up like a bitch-dog, till he had collected his dwarves and the mirror from his quarters.
She was young and wholesome. And perhaps she had talents; she must have, if she had enraged the queen. But that madwoman had not insisted on death. So he would not kill the girl. At least, not yet.
F
OR THE DREGS OF A NIGHT, AND half a morning, she was in the hut.
She did not think about whose hut it might have been—only asked herself if they might come back, discover her, and set her free. But the place was in bad repair. Even some of the roof was down, and the hearth long cold. And no one came, except for mice, and at last her captor, who returned in the sallow noon.
By then, Candacis had worked her hands free of the thick coarse rope with which he had bound them. She had reached just beyond the door, and was sawing at the cord on her ankles with a jagged stone. He had not taken many chances, but if he had been delayed, she might have got away. When she saw the wagon grinding up among the trees, a panic-stricken fury had made her go on at the cord, right up until the moment when he stood over her.
Almost petulantly Cirpoz said, “Couldn’t you keep still five minutes, eh? You’ve made your wrists bleed. That was my best rope, and you’ve messed it for me. I should give you a whipping.”
As a further precaution, he had sold off his slave in the town. So he would have to manage all this alone.
Then she was somehow standing, and facing him with the jagged stone. She said nothing. Her nearly expressionless face said it all. She was strange-tooking—eerie. Did she have
unnatural
powers?
“There, but I won’t, won’t whip you. That’s not how I am. I’m not rough, but a king’s man.”
Since he was saving her, for now. he had left her some wine, and his own second cloak to keep her warm. If she had drunk any of the wine he was not certain. He finished it himself, letting her stand there, awkward from her tied ankles, weapon-stone wavering, until she lowered it.
“Throw that way. Away, or do I put out your light again?” said the unrough courtier.
It seemed she judged then if he or she would get the better of the fight, and sensibly decided it would be him. She dropped the shard on the ground. She made no protest either when he tied her hands together once more. “Just for luck.” he merrily said. He picked her up and carried her to the wagon. “What’s your name?”
Candacis said nothing.
“Oh, a haughty one, are you? Well, I can make a name for you, if you like. Let me think—Blackhair will do. Know who gave you to me, do you, Blackhair? A forceful female person. And I’m to take you far away from here, since you annoyed her so.”
Then he opened the flap of the wagon and shoveled Candacis inside, like a bundle of yarn.
There were rugs on the floor, but the brief fall stunned her a little. She lay feeling a gray nausea for several moments, during which she was aware that the wagon had started up. Cirpoz had two horses, not of the best. She heard them trundling back down the slope, and the wheels jangled over tree roots.
Soon Candacis became conscious that there was other life, besides her own, keeping very still in the wagon’s back.
She smelled it first, human flesh shut warm in heavy garments,
hair washed in soap or combed with spices. Then she heard them
breathing.
Candacis turned her head and looked.
She met two dark eyes in a great rutted face, a face young and old at once, sane and demented at once. She saw the body under the face. A small giant’s head had been fixed on the physique of a big muscular child.
“Mistress, that’s my bed you’re lying on,” said Greedy, curtly.
Candacis made a rapid, fishlike movement and pushed herself away. Hand-tied, she still struggled up, until her back rested against the side of the wagon. Greedy instantly resumed his spot on the rugs, pulled a pillow under his shaggy head, and went at once to sleep.
But by then, Candacis could see others, and their twelve gleaming wolves’ eyes.
Of courses she had heard there were dwarves at the palace; they had been talked of everywhere. But she had not happened to meet them, and by the hour of their play she had left Tusaj’s hall.
Candacis was schooled in the malignity and probing uninterest of others. To Ulvit’s care and company she had been gracious and nor unreceptive—but even so she could never fully have accepted them. Finding in the wood that she could not trust Ulvit either had not appalled Candacis, if perhaps it made her unhappy. She loved none, wanted to love none, expected no love, had forgotten what love was. Enemies might find her unfathomable. Cirpoz did, but was too slow to know it.
Now she was only afraid and subdued. As she glanced at the dwarves, the dwarvixens, it was without alarm or recoil. Having noted them, and seen they were not actually about to attack her, she looked away again—and seemed to fold herself away behind some veil.
Perhaps the dwarves themselves recognized this devastating matter-of-factness. She was essentially prosaic under duress, and so were they.
Presently Tickle spoke.
“This isn’t a large wagon, mistress. We keep our own space. There is a pot behind that curtain for the functions.”
Want said, in her low whining chant, “Mistress couldn’t help getting on Greedy’s bed-rug. She was thrown on it.”
“So mistress was,” said Tickle.
“There’s bread in that crock,” said Stormy. He did not raise his eyes, put out and embarrassed by the human woman’s unwanted proximity. “And water in that leather bottle, if you have a thirst, mistress.”
Then the girl answered. “Thank you,” she said.
But she did not stir.
“Her wrists are all bloody,” whined Want, uncomfortably.
“Shut your row,” said Soporo.
“When he gets angry, master lays about,” Want insisted.
“Not with you, though,” snarled Soporo. “It’s I and Greedy-guts and Stormy gets it, and Tickle. So stitch up.”
Want whined again.
Soporo suddenly began to sing in a robust baritone that rocked the bumping wagon.
Under that, Candacis heard the other dwarvixen, she with the green eyes, hiss, “Mistress is pretty. She’s pretty nearly as me.”
Cirpoz naturally had not discussed his plans with the dwarves. They only knew this female human superior, tossed in here, was a slave. That meant, apparently, they could not avoid her, since she had been slung almost down to their level. They would make the best of it. Greedy had needed to assert his rights, and Tickle to explain the wagon-code. Jealous Vinka was simply marveling that something properly human could aspire to her own inferior-thus-exquisite charms.
The girl kept quite still. She did not shut her eyes, or sleep, but she blinked rarely. You could just make out that she breathed. She did not utilize the pot, though once Soporo did, rattling its lid, whistling, and splashing like a dray horse. Tickle sewed a seam in the half-light. Sometimes Greedy farted odorlessly in slumber..
Stormy scowled at a wooden pipe he was shaping with a blunt knife. Want and Vinka sputtered at each other or to themselves.
Only Proud stared frequently at the girl. He was quite sorry for her—Cirpoz’s slave, as they were, but without their unique stamina.
Just as Candacis (Blackhair) did not crawl to use the pot, so she did not take any water or bread and cheese.
Later, when a white sun leered through a hole in the sky, Cirpoz stopped, fed the horses and checked on his cache in the wagon.
“Don’t you touch her,” he now admonished the dwarves. He grinned at Vinka. “Don’t you
scratch
her, you bitch. She’s my property.”
He seemed never to have thought they might abscond from the wagon’s back, when it went as tardily as now it did. Where would they go? It was winter after all, and there were wolves about. In fact, the dwarves thought much as he did. They were indifferent to the world they must serve, being so deeply thrust beneath it.
While the wagon was at a standstill, however, the girl somehow got herself out. Her ankle cord had slightly loosened and she succeeded in hobbling behind a tree.
“What are you up to? Come back here, you curse of a girl—” But Cirpoz knew she had only gone to relieve herself. He chuckled, amused by her feminine handicap, needing to squat with tied ankles, clinging with bound hands to some low branch.
He offered her beer when she came back.
She drank a mouthful. Then she let him take the flask back. She sat down by a wheel. Once Cirpoz was ready to go on, he lifted her and pushed her in the wagon again.
“If you behave, I’ll untie you tonight.”
As the trek resumed, Tickle’s slabby face was tucked down into her collar. It was Vinka who announced, “He’ll have her. He’ll fuck her.”
“Stitch up,” said Soporo, but idly.
Stormy shook himself and got to his feet. He was used to the difficulty of balancing, and went and stood over Candacis who was Blackhair. “Mistress, you must see to yourself. We can’t help you.”
When she did not respond, he said again, “We can’t help.”
“I didn’t ask your help,” Blackhair said in a voice like a thin white slap.
“Some might,” said Stormy stubbornly. “Some have. But we’re nothing. Can do nothing.” And he wondered why he said any of this.
Want began to croon.
Surprised at himself, Stormy sat down.
It was Proud who murmured, “Poor pale thing. She can’t bear it. How can she?”
But Stormy believed she could bear it. Somehow she had attracted his superfluous apology or excuse.
“Let it alone,” he said. “Let her be.”
Through the late afternoon as the wagon gurned on, looking out between the flaps, they saw the woods intensify to forest. It was now black-dark and dead-cold. They wrapped themselves further in their rugs and mothy furs, and Vinka went on with her wordless malediction.
A baleful moon rose early in gaps of sky.
Greedy woke, stood, pissed out the wagon’s back. leaving a starry trail for the moon to flitter on.
Candacis, behind her lowered eyes, sat thinking.
She had been shocked utterly by her abduction—she had only, opened the door that night because she thought some woman had come for Ulvit’s help, some herbal or other medical request. She had believed Death had her. Half aware as they descended, she thought Death carried her under the earth. And in the cold hut, she had tried to escape, but all the while known it was too late.
But he had said, had he not, that Ulvit had arranged this. The forceful “she” of the captor’s tale—who else but Ulvit. and the pagan wood? Candacis had “annoyed” them. Now she thought of this, and the true shock pulled her under. Round and round she went with it, and round and round. She would have paced about. too, if she had not been tethered and the area so constricted.
D
EEP IN THE HIGH FOREST WAS an inn.
It appeared out of the darkness, glowing red like a luminous vegetable.
Cirpoz emitted a string of joyful oaths.
The wagon grumbled into the yard just before they shut the gate. “Wolves,”explained the innkeeper, standing to oversee the operation, the heavy bars let down.
By now the moon had set. Yet the black trees had a vibrating sheen from the cold. The yard was slick with ice.
As the dwarves got down and filed demurely into the inn, gaped and pointed at on all sides, Cirpoz undid the girl’s cords.
“Will I trust you? One hint of michief and I’ll tie you up out here, I’ll
chain
you—see you undo
that
—and you can freeze all night. Well?”
“I’ll do what you say.”
He ushered her before him. As the blast of heat hit them from the inn door, she half-missed her step. Cirpoz grabbed her arm viciously. “No games.”
 
 
They ate supper in a corner of the inn hall. It was decked with a few drying evergreens left from Midwinter-Mass. The dwarves and the girl were given bread, broth, and beer. Cirpoz ate a roast and a hedgehog pie, and drank ale.
Some of the other occupants of the hall demanded to know if the dwarves would do any tricks. “There is a thing they do, most entertaining. Maybe tomorrow.” Then Cirpoz added winningly to the landlord, “Something off your charges, maybe, if they amuse your guests? They lastly performed for the palace at Belgra. They’re of some standard.”
The innkeeper grunted churlishly.
Disgruntled, Cirpoz noticed the girl had wasted most of her food.
“Pernickety appetite,” he said to her as they went upstairs, “you’re not at the palace, here.” She must, despite her threadbare cloak, have been a maid or waiting-woman of the better kind. But being refined would be no use to her now.
He had tipped one of the inn boys to keep a lookout for his wagon and the horses. His coins and small goods he had brought in with him, but the other thing, Cirpoz concluded, was well concealed and besides, far too heavy for thieves to shift without planning and noise. (Even the dwarves had not been aware of it, sat there on top of it, as it lay packed under the rugs.) In a way, Cirpoz was still not happy with the witch’s mirror. If he dragged it to the city, the king might not want it after all. It could be better to attempt a sale outside Korchlava, in some partially sophisticated place where they would be impressed by the mirror but not frightened of it.
He had never meant to travel at this time of year. That madwoman had left him no choice.
Cirpoz had secured two rooms adjacent to each other. He hurried the dwarves into one, little more than a cupboard, then pushed the girl into the larger chamber, followed her, and shut the door.
“Well, now. Well, now.” He had dawdled enough.
She would know what came next. Belgra was a lax, lewd place—why should she mind? He was not, he thought, such a bad bargain.
Casually he began to remove his outer garments, then he inspected the bed, an old wooden one which would creak. “Let’s hope they’ve got no bugs in it.” It did no harm to be friendly, if they were to keep each other warm.
But she had not come over to the bed. She stood by the brazier, in which the wood was almost burned through.
“Come here. It’s cozier in here.”
She gave him such a look it peeled his eyeballs. God’s testicles, like some lord’s wife.
Cirpoz glowered. “Need a smack, do you? I’m the king’s man. I served him through five campaigns. I’ve had better than you, Blackhair, and thought nothing of it.”
Something about her made him—more than angry—edgy, unsettled. Would he be able to want her? She was too thin, and carried herself (even during the time she was tied) proudly, and gracefully as a dancer.
He left the bed and veered toward her. She should have a crack across the skull. See what that did.
Candacis saw him wheeling toward her. She understood if she ran for the door, even if she reached it ahead of him, no one at the inn would assist her. And beyond the inn lay the forest, turned to black diamond, where starving wolves moved in packs and homicidal bears woke at a footfall.
A virgin, she knew what Cirpoz intended. Educated paganly, she had learned a great deal about the act of love, if nothing of love itself.
Candacis had learned spells, too, the words to say over plants when plucked and potions as she prepared them. And amuletic phrases—against snakes, beasts, men—
They slipped out along her tongue now, simply like air.
“
Blackest wish turn white like snow,
Bloodiest wish like blood outflow.
”
“What? What are you mumbling?” He had stopped, irritated yet cautious. “Are you an enchantress, you black-haired strumpet?”
“No. I am King Draco’s legal daughter by his first queen,” said the girl slowly and clearly, as if she told herself not him.
Cirpoz roared with overdone humor. “
You?”
Then he caught hold of her and, in the way of countless million others, she readied her nails to tear at him. In that second he saw her as if never before had he done so. In Christ’s mercy—she was the image of the madwoman, the queen at Belgra. Her daughter? Yes—she might be. “Who are you, you say?”
“Draco’s daughter. Candacis.”
“At Midwinter Feast—where did you sit in the hall?”
She sensed exactly how he crumbled to bits before her. calm with her dying horror, she said, “The prince’s table.”
“In a dark red dress.”
“In a dark green dress.”
“Green … trimmed with fur,” he added, “and a white ring on your hair twined by gold …”
Nearly lightly, to help him, she added, “And a long veil.”
Cirpoz. had let her go. He stumbled back, mouthing at her. “Why—why—why didn’t you tell me who you are—”
She looked away from him. She had never told him because she had assumed that, like most of them, he had not known her by sight and so would not believe her.
Now, by magic perhaps, suddenly he did know.
“Ah—lady—I was treacherously misled into this—that
woman
—”
Candacis (no longer Blackhair) did not of course say what she thought now, that no one would care that he had carried her off for violence and rape.
“That—woman—a fiend—I’d heard as much, I should have guessed—”
He rambled, wringing his big, hideous hands which had caused her so much harm and had meant to give her more.
Candacis thought, stolidly, curiously,
How ever did Ulvit get money to bribe him to do this to me? She must have paid the other way, what he wanted now
.
But he was beginning to think too. Not wanting quite to name the queen to the queen’s daughter, in case there might be some other blunder. “A foul and evil slut—ah, I mean no offense, lady. I didn’t know you—you’ve seen I didn’t know. But she—well, oh, well … What shall 1 do? I must take you home to Belgra.”
Licking his lips as if to lick off his crime. Thinking,
The madwoman, perhaps she’ll tell them I stole this royal girl away for my own ends. The prince’s favorite she was, too, you could see at the feast, sister or
not. I can’t go back with her: And if I let the girl go, what will she tell them herself? Princess Candacis. What will she want them to do to me if they catch me up?
Candacis saw one of the hideous hands flap down on to the hilt of his knife. She saw it before he even thought what he did. Then his hand slipped off the hilt again.
I can’t kill her
in here. I’ll say I’ll conduct her home. Then in the woods—leave the corpse for the wolves—get away, back up to the mountains—
“The child of her own body,” he muttered. “Addled, damned bitch—”
The muttering made no sense to Candacis, she did not attend. She was still considering how his hand had gone to his knife. “Oh,” he was saying now, “take the bed, I beg you, madam. You must be tired out. I’ll sleep with the seven deformities next door. Will I get someone to bring you something—hot water, wine—?”
Unknown to either of them, the other side of the wall beyond the bed was lined with ears.
 
 
Soporo had been the first to listen at the wall. Carnality, in almost any form, even coercive, aroused him. He had wanted to hear Cirpoz and the girl have sex, rape or not.
This disgusted Proud, who struck him. They tussled, tumbling on the floor—but all very quietly, so not to alert Cirpoz.
In the end it was Vinka, her sharpest ear at the plaster, only inquisitive, who drew their joint attention.
“
He’s afraid.
”
Then they all came to try to hear. Even Want, who had been closing off her hearing with pillows. Even Stormy, frowning, and Tickle with a bemused shake of her orange hair, and Greedy in midyawn.
“Why is he? Has he gone daft?” Want, hopeful, bothered.
“Is it witchcraft? She looks a witch.” Soporo still erect.
Only Stormy and Jealous Vinka heard enough of their master’s
jabber to piece it together. At least, Vinka did not trouble. But Stormy moved abruptly away.
“Lie down,” he told them. “He’ll be coming in.”
They scudded to obey. Under their coverings they lay, curled up tight or stretched rigid. Soporo played with himself, grew bored, and left off. Only Greedy fell asleep.
Cirpoz did not arrive after all.
“What’s he doing now?” whispered Proud. “Has he had her or not?”
“No. She’s the king’s daughter,” said Stormy, unaccountably angry for once, like his name.
“What king?”
“The king at Korchlava.”
Kings meant little to them. Or king’s daughters. Everyone stood higher and meant less than they.
In the black stillness, not a noise now from the other room, and from the night outside not even the yell of a wolf.
“He wants to kill her. I can tell from his voice.”
“Why that, Stormy?” Proud, astounded.
“Think, you fool.”
“I am no fool. Not I. I’ve thought. I’m just as foxed.”
Soporo whispered, “He stole her and treated her like his dray, but she’s royal. If the prince at Belgra finds out,
he’ll
be for it.”
“Ah.”
Stormy said, “Shut up. He’s coming.”
The other door opened, then their door, and Cirpoz was in their cupboard.
Through the pitch dark they felt him looking round at them, hating them, loathing them. Then he was gone again.
“Where’s he off to?”
“Down the stair—listen.”
“To the shittery?”
“Somewhere. Anywhere but where she is.”
Stormy lay on his back. In the dark he could see hallucinatory
flames, which softly coiled to and fro. He watched them, brooding. Cirpoz, whatever he did tonight, would murder the girl tomorrow. It was easy, out in the forest, to do things like that.
What do I care?
She was not his race or kind.
Stormy thought of Cirpoz carefully. Of the horses and wagon with its store of money and treasure-trove of stuff Cirpoz had stolen or earned—normally under false pretenses. Stormy thought of the forest and the wolves, and the six others lying in the dark with him, especially intelligent Tickle and spite-full Vinka, and Soporo, with his brazen fists. Who might also be thinking somewhat as Stormy was.
Something tugged and teased at Stormy. But why? She was nothing, a human. Oh, but perhaps it
was
sorcery, some spell she had cast—with that verse she had sung out at Cirpoz. Perhaps it was only that. By morning, Stormy decided, he would have slept it off.
 
 
Cirpoz, having dozed by the inn fire, was up early and surly, and soon had his wagon hitched ready. He ate his breakfast bread standing, and offered nothing to the dwarves, or to the girl. “We should be off, Princess, get you home. There’s edibles in the wagon—” He did not mean to waste any more extra food on her. Especially now, when she would not need it beyond midday.
Though jumpy and ill-humored, he observed nothing odd about the dwarves. They seemed the same as always to him, misshapen, monstrous, potentially lucrative, obedient, and uninvolved.
The inn gate had been opened.
By day, the forest was only discouraging. But in the frosted mud by the wall, even Cirpoz made out wolf tracks.
 
 
“We’ll have a stop here, Lady. Rest half an hour. Come out when you’re ready, for some air.” He spoke coaxingly. Obviously he had not tied her up this time. But she sat where she had yesterday,
speechless and quite negative. No wonder he had not recognized her, until it was almost too late. She had no spirit, less than any slave.

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