“Shoo!” I said, hardly looking up. Ravens scared away the songbirds that nested in our bushes, and Emma and I made every effort to return the favor.
My unease faded in the warm sun and the sight of March and May scrambling on top of the logs. From a distance, the only way to tell them apart was the pattern of white splotches on their otherwise pink skin; May had one that went over her left cheek and half her nose. Their curly black hair was identical, as was the gap between their front teeth, and their startlingly fiendish eyebrows. They looked like a pair of cupids who had decided they liked shooting people with real arrows better. They were horrible. I loved them so much.
But I couldn’t forget that the prince was coming, and apprehension lapped restlessly at the dark shores of my subconscious.
The raven croaked again.
This time I did look up. The raven turned its head to and fro, eyeing my frown. It ruffled its feathers and hopped smartly along the branch. When it emerged into the light, my breath caught in my throat. Its back had a red sheen, and it seemed to me its eyes were an unusual color.
I lunged into a swift curtsy and then dove inside, torn between hoping the raven wasn’t the prince after all and the knowledge that if that was the case, I’d just curtsied at and promptly fled from a bird. The loose kitchen door went thud, thud, thud behind me.
A fourth thud sounded, but it wasn’t the door banging. It was a knock.
“Come in!” I called back. I looked around, and wished I hadn’t.
At random, I seized a pot and shoved it into the washbasin. I’m not sure whether it was even dirty. But that was all I had time to do before the door swung open again and the autumn prince stepped inside. The doorframe was made for average-sized humans, and he had to duck to avoid hitting his head on the lintel.
“Good afternoon, Isobel,” he said, and gave me a courtly bow.
I’d never had a fair one in my kitchen before. It was a small room with rough stone walls, floorboards so worn with age they sagged in the middle, and one high window that let in a bit of light, just enough to draw special attention to the stack of unwashed dishes beside the cupboard and the sad-looking lump of peat still smoldering in our little chest-height hearth.
Meanwhile the prince looked as though he’d just stepped from a gilded carriage drawn by half a dozen white stallions. I didn’t well remember what he’d been wearing the day before, but if it had looked like this, I would have. His close-fitting dark silk coat nearly brushed the ground behind his boots, cloaklike, lined with copper-colored velvet. He wore a matching copper circlet on his brow, and though his wild hair seemed to have developed a life of its own and swallowed much of the circlet, I made out that it was shaped like intertwined leaves and speckled green with verdigris. He had a raven-shaped cloak pin attached to his collar, no doubt a relic from a previous era. The sword from the day before still hung at his waist.
Yes, there he was, standing mere inches from a moldy onion skin I hadn’t swept up that morning.
I had already violated the standards of etiquette. What I said next needed to be thoughtful and poised. I blurted out instead, “What happens if you can’t bow back?”
Occupying himself while I mustered myself, the prince had turned to stare intently at a ladle. Now, he stared at me instead. What are you? his mystified amethyst eyes seemed to say. “I don’t believe I understand.”
The saggy floorboards were bound to give way eventually. Maybe they’d do me a favor and make it happen now.
“If someone bows or curtsies at you, and you aren’t able to return it right away,” I heard myself explain.
Understanding lit his expression, and his familiar half-smile reappeared. He leaned toward me and met my eyes as though confiding a great secret. Perhaps he was. “It’s terribly uncomfortable,” he said quietly. “We have to look for whoever did it until we find them, and can’t think about anything else in the meantime.”
Oh. “I suppose I just did that. I’m sorry.”
He straightened, seeming to forget about me in an instant. “Finding you was my pleasure,” he said warmly, though rather distantly, and picked up a meat skewer. “Is this a weapon?”
I carefully took the skewer from him and set it back down. “Not by design, no.”
“I see,” he said, and before I could stop him he crossed the kitchen in three great strides to inspect a skillet hanging from a nail in the wall. “This is almost certainly a weapon.”
“It isn’t . . .” This was the most tongue-tied I’d ever been in the presence of a fair one. “Well—it can be utilized as one, certainly, but it’s for cooking.” He looked around at me. “Craft to make food,” I clarified, because his eyebrows were drawn together in polite consternation verging on alarm.
“Yes, I know what cooking is,” he said. “I was merely astonished that so many tools of your Craft can double as armaments. Is there anything you humans don’t use to kill one another?”
“Probably not,” I admitted.
“How peculiar.” He paused to look around at the ceiling. Disquieted by what he might choose to comment on next, I cleared my throat and curtsied.
With a slight frown, he turned around and bowed back.
“Ordinarily I take clients in the parlor, which is this way. Should we get started? I wouldn’t like to take too much of your time.”
“Yes, certainly,” he replied, but as we walked through the hall he continued glancing upward, and soon halted altogether to place his hand against the white plaster wall. I stopped too and waited for him to finish with a tight smile on my face, which was really more of a means of keeping myself from screaming in exasperation.
“There’s a very strong enchantment on this house, and an odd one at that,” he remarked finally.
“Yes.” I started walking again, relieved to hear the swish of his coat follow. “It was the first thing I worked toward when I began painting these portraits—it took me an entire year to earn. No fair one—”
“May harm an inhabitant within this house’s walls so long as you live,” he finished at a murmur. “Impressive work. Gadfly’s?”
I nodded, resisting the urge to look over my shoulder. As the parlor’s distinct smell rolled over me I adopted a more formal tone out of habit. “I’ve enjoyed his patronage for years. May I ask why you think it’s odd?”
“I’ve never seen an enchantment like it before. Nor would I have expected something like this of Gadfly.”
Now it was my turn to almost come to a dead halt. I kept myself moving with a physical effort, entered the parlor, and went about mechanically arranging the charcoal I’d need for the day’s sketch. Had the enchantment gone bad? Had I said something wrong to Gadfly all those years ago, left an accidental loophole in the terms of our arrangement? The possibility was so sickening my hands and feet started going numb.
“As a prince, I could destroy most enchantments if I wished,” he went on, still looking around at something I couldn’t see. “But when I said this one was strong, I meant it. It’s far beyond even my power. Gadfly must have spent a great deal of energy to achieve such a working, which is out of the ordinary, since I’ve never seen him so much as get up out of a chair unless he had to. He must enjoy your Craft immensely. I’m beginning to understand why he was so persistent in recommending I have a portrait done.”