Baldrik now considers me as one inspects a cow brought to market, his eyes dissecting me for future possibilities. “There’s always room in the von Eidle household for one more kitchen drudge or coal scuttler.”
“As I said, sir, I am fully trained to—”
“Tell me, girl,” he interrupts, “where is Gephardt? Is he gone? Has he fallen ill?”
I teeter on the edge of truth and lie, not knowing which way I will tip.
“No, sir. He’s fine! He—”
My words grind to a halt as a splinter punctures the arch of my foot. I bite down hard on my tongue, trying to keep from yelping and giving myself away.
“Has been mixing up some new lacquers for your soldiers’ boots,” my father’s voice booms behind me suddenly. “Dangerous work with those fumes,” he says gravely to Baldrik. “Don’t trust anyone else to do it but me.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. I feel bolstered by its warmth, and blink back my tears. “Not even my finest apprentice. Can’t risk her.”
Baldrik seems satisfied by my father’s sudden arrival, but he also seems to note the white-washed pallor of his cheeks and his fever-bright eyes.
“Well,” says the Margrave’s man, clearing his throat, “we don’t have to repeat to you, Puppetmaster Leiter, the importance of this order to us, nor the ramifications of any failures toward that end. Do we?”
My father shakes his head subserviently. I waver between hating the Margrave’s assistant and hating the fear on my father’s face. I’m not sure which is worse.
“Good. We’ll be by to collect them as soon as they’re done. No need to wait until you can deliver them.”
With a final flinty look at the both of us, Baldrik stalks from the shop, stooping to avoid a smack across the forehead from our broad doorframe.
A pity.
My father leans against the counter to support what I suspect are a pair of wobbly legs. I put my hand on his trembling arm.
“Don’t worry, Papa. We’ll finish in time. I was just going to get started when that vile man came in. I’ll work all day today, all night. We still have plenty of time if we just keep going.”
Papa sighs. “What would I do without you, Poppet?” He tweaks my chin affectionately. “Now, I am much better today … much better. Let me go put my apron on and I will join you.”
He leaves me, passing through the curtain into the workshop. I wait a moment making sure he’s busied himself before reaching down to slip the clog off my aching foot. A patch of red blooms on the arch of my wooden shoe.
You cannot afford to be so reckless, I berate myself.
Easing off my stocking and using my fingers as pliers, I wrench a splinter the size of a needle from my foot, teeth gritted all the while to keep from crying out. I’m grateful this one appeared in a place that’s easy enough to conceal. I’m not always so lucky.
For every falsehood that passes my lips, a splinter pierces my skin. They’ve appeared jutting out of my hand like a claw or piercing my cheek like a thorn trying to escape. I never know where they’ll surface. It’s a curse that’s difficult to hide, especially when all I’ve ever longed for was to blend in.
When I was newly made, what others mistook for shyness was me drinking in the language and the new faces, the strange customs of humanity. And it was me afraid of being caught in a lie, afraid of losing all I held dear, my short, wonderful life as a girl ending behind bars or in a pile of ashes.
Regretfully, I drop the splinter in my pocket. I keep each and every one, a reminder of the lies I’ve told, some innocent, some not so. I hide them, wrapped in a bit of cloth beneath my pillow. As a punishment, I force myself to revisit the past and remember whenever a new one is added to their number, mementos of my own cursed frailty.
I must be more careful.
What would become of us if we couldn’t fulfill the Margrave’s orders? I shudder to think of being indentured in the Margrave’s household in order to pay off our debts. Or of watching my father be dragged away to Wolfspire Keep, taken from Curio and his work—all the things he loves most. I cannot allow that to happen. Gephardt Leiter might be the puppetmaster, but I am Pirouette, a girl whose heart is made of stronger stuff than flesh and blood.
CHAPTER 5
SEVERAL DAYS LATER, I WAKE TO THE TEAKETTLE WHISTLING A sharp welcome from our little kitchen. Papa must be up already. He’s barely slept again, I think. I feel as though I’ve hardly passed a wink. Next door, the familiar hum and shuffle of eight Sorens moving about their kitchen and shop is unmistakable.
Groaning, I push back my coverlet and go to my small dormer. I watch the sun break over Tavia, a golden yolk shimmering slowly in a frying pan. This time of day, the brown peaks of thatched and tiled roofs glisten with dew. The streets yawn after a brief respite from the trample of hooves, boots, and rickety wheels.
The kettle whistles on, and I wonder if my father is already too absorbed in work to hear it. I fling open my ancient wardrobe and pluck a clean dress off a peg. Bran likes to tease me because I could have my pick of leftover fabrics from The Golden Needle, which he or the tailor could cleverly shape into pretty dresses for me, but I always choose the same color: green. I possess three dresses, two for everyday and one for special occasions. They’re all green.
“Make sure to give the girl some pockets, Bran,” the tailor noted when I ordered them. “Pockets are like pins and needles, you can never have too many! Especially if you’re a maker.”
Thanks to him, my green dresses were delivered with some very handy pockets, sewn so artfully the casual observer could hardly see them. But that was last year, back when I had time to think of such frivolities, before the Margrave arrived at our doorstep, arrayed in his carriage with the von Eidle crest emblazoned like a scorch mark upon the side.
I quickly shuck my nightgown and pull a clean dress over my head, in front of the mirror on the door of my wardrobe, an antiquated piece of glass that belonged to the woman who might have been my mother.
I sweep my bangs out of my eyes and hastily run a brush through my hair. I keep it nicked short, at least compared to the way most Tavian women wear theirs. Anytime it grows, which is rare since it grows as slow as moss, I feel compelled to cut it to my chin, leaving my neck and shoulders free to breathe. Having a wad of hair plaited or tied up on my head only makes my scalp ache. I swipe at a smudge of paint on my cheek, leftover from yesterday, and vow to take care of that with fresh water from the kettle that is still sounding its alarm.
“Papa! The kettle!” I yell, hoping he hears me and will take care of the incessant squeal.
I stare at my face in the glass a second longer, marveling at the fact that it exists. Large, dark eyes look out from under their rim of long eyelashes. A pair of eyebrows arch slightly over high cheekbones. A straight, long nose—a little too long for my liking. A small mouth, turned up slightly at the edges. But I can’t complain. A tree never considers such things; it’s needless, for its entire anatomy is the way that it breathes, eats, and drinks in the world.
I tear myself away from my own reflection and slip my feet into my work clogs, clattering down the stairs past my father’s small, empty bedroom and our little sitting room that we rarely find occasion to actually sit in. I burst into the kitchen to rescue the furious kettle from the stovetop. Papa is nowhere to be seen.