I carry Awela up the two steps to our front door in a hurry, reaching for the handle.
“Is Calon Merrick at home?”
I jump at the overloud voice, turning to see what is obviously one of the king’s men striding up, his long cobalt coat fixed with gold-plated buttons, his smart blue cap trimmed with gold to match. A tall oilcloth satchel hangs over one shoulder, and he’s somewhere between my father’s age and my own seventeen years. He has dark brown skin, which speaks of Saeth descent.
“I’m Owen Merrick,” I reply. “My father isn’t here right now. You’ve come for the star charts?”
The king’s man’s eyes flick between me and my baby sister with obvious distaste. He taps his ears, and I realize he must have put wax in them, to protect against the tree sirens’ song—he can’t hear me.
I open the door and wave him inside. He steps through, but only takes the wax out when the door is shut firmly behind him. His eyes flick uneasily to the wood outside the kitchen window. “I’m here for the charts.”
“I’ll fetch them,” I promise. “Just a moment.” I set the kettle on the stove while I find Awela a cloth diaper and a clean nightgown. She scampers about, shrieking. The king’s man frowns, pressing his back against the wall by the fireplace because he physically can’t get any farther away from her.
I scowl at him when he’s not looking—does he suppose he sprang from his mother’s womb as fully grown and thoroughly dull as he is now?
I leave him with a cup of tea at the kitchen table and carry Awela up to the observatory with me to collect the month’s star charts. Ordinarily I wouldn’t take her, but there’s no chance in hell I’m leaving her downstairs with that dullard.
“Don’t touch anything, little one,” I instruct with great futility as I set her down in the middle of the observatory. For a few moments she stares around her with huge, fascinated eyes, and then the next instant she’s racing round the room in circles, shrieking with mad delight.
The charts are in bundles on the bookcase beside the telescope. I gather them under my arms and manage to herd Awela out of the room in front of me.
She half tumbles down the stairs—it’s past time for her nap.
“Here they are,” I tell the king’s man, piling the charts on the table for him to examine.
I give Awela some milk and sit with her at the table; she nestles into me.
The king’s man takes each chart from its casing and gives it a cursory glance before putting it back. He’s clearly new to this job—King Elynion normally sends the same few servants to collect the charts and bring my father’s payment, and I’ve never seen this man before. I can also tell by the way his eyes dart around the star charts that he doesn’t actually know how to read them.
“Everything appears to be in order,” he says when he’s perused the last one.
I don’t call his bluff. I’m annoyed that he hasn’t even touched his tea, leaving it to go cold at his elbow. I shouldn’t have wasted it on him.
Outside, the clouds break, and rain slants hard past the window. Awela is half asleep in my arms.
“Your father’s payment, as agreed upon.” The king’s man takes a blue velvet pouch from an inner pocket, and sets it on the table with a faint clink of metal. “You can count it, if you wish, but be quick about it. I want to be back in the village by nightfall.”
Nightfall isn’t for hours, but I see how his gaze travels once more to the window, to the shadow of the wood that lies just beyond his view. I wonder if he’s ever laid eyes on it before today.
“I don’t know how you stand it,” he says in an undertone. “I don’t know how you sleep at night, so near her wood. So near her.”
The Gwydden. Few say her name aloud, but everyone thinks it: the witch who rules the wood, powerful enough to bend the things of God to her own will, just as she bends her daughters, the tree sirens. She wields them like weapons, commanding them to sing, to lure men and women into the wood and devour them.
“We don’t bother her.” I shrug, attempting nonchalance. “She doesn’t bother us. But I don’t need to count the money. I trust His Majesty.”
Awela rubs her eyes and I stand, hefting her up against my shoulder. The king’s man stands too, awkwardly bundling the star charts and stuffing them into his oilcloth satchel. The satchel is deep, but a good third of the charts still poke out the top. He studies me for a moment, as if debating whether or not to say something. “Do you know why he does it? His Majesty, I mean. Why he pays your father for these charts every month?”
I shrug. This man really must be new. None of the other servants the king has sent to us ever questioned him in such a way. “If my father knows, he’s never told me. But I’m sure you know the importance of—”
“Secrecy.” The man scowls at me. “I’m not a simpleton. Just wondered if you knew. That’s all.”
Personally, I like to imagine King Elynion as a bit of a scientist, that he keeps his hobby to himself to avoid appearing superstitious. If the people of Tarian knew their king consulted the stars on a monthly basis—whatever his real reason—they would distrust him. He’s their hero, their champion against the Gwydden and her wood. If they thought he was seeking his future in the stars, they might whisper of magic; they might begin to think he was no different than the witch and her monstrous daughters. There is a thin line, after all, between magic and science.
The king’s man hesitates at the door, pulling two lumps of wax from his pocket but not putting them back in his ears yet. He clearly doesn’t relish the thought of going outside, even if the alternative means staying in here with me and Awela.
“Just seems like a waste of coin,” he says. “It could be going to the railroad.”
Awela lays her head against my neck, yawning. The tree sirens’ song is slipping through the cracks in the stones and into the house now. I might be stuck with the king’s man for a while—I don’t know that he can resist the pull, even through the wax. “What’s wrong with the railroad? It’s been running smoothly for a year now.”
The king’s man grimaces. “It was until the wood grew up around the tracks.”
“It did what?” I stare, shocked.
“Just west of your village, the train to Saeth runs almost entirely through the wood. Been that way since the winter.”
“Since the winter?” I’m repeating things stupidly, but I don’t care. Horror grips me. Along with the telegraph lines, the railroad is one of King Elynion’s crowning achievements, making travel swift and safe across Tarian, strengthening ties with our neighboring country and trade partner, Saeth. When he built it, the wood was miles away, the tracks running over long stretches of grassy plain. And now … “How is that possible?”
“The wood witch grows stronger, year by year. I’m surprised she hasn’t tumbled down that wall of yours.” He glances out the window. “But it’s worse than you know. The tracks in the forest are being torn up. The metal is twisted, the railroad ties ripped from the ground and set to stand upright like the trees they once were and hung with garlands of flowers. No matter they were never her trees;we brought all the lumber in from Saeth—His Majesty plays by the rules. It happens at random, delaying whole shipments. We have to repair sections of track nearly every week now. There will be trouble with Saeth if we can’t sort it out.”