“Where are you going?”
“Scheit!” I jump again, rattling the vanity. When I look back to the bed, Ragne doesn’t seem the least bit contrite. “Out,” I say shortly. “On business. Stay here and don’t talk to anyone.”
“Why not?”
“Because animals don’t talk.” I start lacing up my boots.
“Or you do not listen.” There’s a rustle and a suspicious quiet. “Can I talk to people like this?”
When I look up, there’s a human girl sprawled over the coverlet, her skin pale as bone, her slit-pupiled red eyes glowing at me from beneath an uneven mess of black hair. Somehow Ragne looks my age and ancient at the same time. She’s also as naked as the day she was born.
(I’m assuming she was born. For all I know, she was conjured out of cobwebs and a goat heart.)
“No.” I avert my eyes, patience wearing threadbare. “You absolutely cannot talk to anyone like that. We wear clothes.”
“Not all the time.” Ragne sits up. “You are uncomfortable?”
It’s not that she’s nude—I used to bathe with the other servant women in Castle Falbirg. But I knew them most of my life. I have no idea what to do with someone who bares themselves without hesitation. Without fear.
I point to a dresser. “Either change back or put some clothes on. There are nightgowns in the bottom drawer.”
By the time my boots are laced, she’s wearing a nightgown . . . as pants. Her feet stick out of the sleeves, the bottom hem hiked up to her neck. Ragne wiggles her toes at me. “Better?”
At this rate, if I leave her here, she’s just as likely to wander into the hall wearing only a girdle for a hat. “No. Fine. You can come with, if you change into an animal—a small one—and if you keep your mouth shut.”
Ragne clamps her teeth together with a click.
“I meant no talking,” I tell her. “Not unless we’re alone, understand?”
She nods and vanishes, the nightgown crumpling to the floor. A moment later, a black squirrel emerges from the fabric, scrabbles up my cloak, and rolls into a ball in the hood. I try not to shudder as I let myself out of the bedroom and slip into one of the servant stairways.
First, I head down to the kitchens and get grits and honey for Poldi. Once those are left on the hearth in the bedroom, it doesn’t take long for me to fetch the satchel from the coach (my lady forgot her toiletries) and pass through the main gate (my lady needs an urgent order placed with a seamstress for the wedding). The guards even light my lantern and offer a splash of schnapps to keep me warm. I politely decline.
They also offer a small dagger with the seal of the margrave’s guard in the hilt. That I accept.
Minkja is many things: a city, a dream, a promise kept, a promise broken. But it is never safe, and least of all by night.
The guards of Castle Reigenbach have earned their easy posts through valor and commendation. Adalbrecht is much, much less discerning with the Minkja guard; he lets his army’s washouts work off debts or sentences by handing them a cudgel, a uniform, and the nickname of “Wolfhünden.” Then he lets them off the leash.
In letter, they keep the peace. In spirit, they’re just a gang with a stupid name. (“Wolfhounds”? Groundbreaking.) They’ve fingers in every flavor of Minkjan crime, from poppy-dust to protection rackets. You want your rival’s bakery to go up in flames? Wolfhünden. You want a city council member to slip on a bridge and vanish into the Yssar? A Wolfhunder will provide.
And if the Wolfhünden find out I’ve stolen and fenced nearly a thousand gilden worth of jewelry in the last year without paying them a “protection fee” . . . well, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about the curse anymore.
I see the looks the gatehouse guards trade as I tuck the dagger into my boot. (Ironically the boot that already has a hidden knife, but they don’t need to know that.)
“Stay clear of Lähl, Marthe,” one finally urges. “Or we’ll never see you again.”
I want to scowl at them—what kind of business would a lady like Gisele have in Lähl?—but instead I bob a curtsy. “I’m staying within the High Wall, thank you.”
That appeases them only a little, but it doesn’t matter. I have to offload the Eisendorf jewelry before Adalbrecht arrives tomorrow. And the illusion of Gisele . . . well, she is a demanding mistress.
With my knife and my lantern and my satchel of stolen jewels, I leave the castle behind.
CHAPTER FIVE
Dealing Clean
Minkja isn’t so much a city as a hostile architectural takeover. It once was little more than a sleepy monastery and a handful of farmers who traded wool and wheat for mead and cheese among themselves, and everyone was satisfied with the arrangement.
At some point in the forging of the Blessed Empire, the Reigenbach family looked at the long arm of the shoal-thorny Yssar River and saw an opportunity in its few safe crossings. That was how the city within the High Wall came to be, with its crowded rows of milky stucco walls, scrolls of trim, and frost- silvered timbers. The buildings fan out from busy plazas the way fungus shelves sprout on stumps, stripes within stripes of brown and white climbing as high as they can. The skyline is capped off with dark ruffles of shingled roofs so crowded they almost threaten to spill over the High Wall.
And as a matter of fact, Minkja did just that a century or two ago. Houses and inns and muddy lanes began congealing beyond the wall until the Reigenbachs were forced to fence off the city yet again. On a clear day, from Castle Reigenbach you can see old Minkja within the High Wall, young Minkja within the Low Wall, then the farmlands beyond that, and finally the blue snow-capped wall of the Alderbirgs to the south.
Tonight, though, there is only fog and shadow beyond the High Wall.
I hurry through the dark, down the crest of the hill Castle Reigenbach perches on, and over the High Bridge that straddles the Yssar, pulling my cloak tighter against the frigid spray of the churning waterfall below. The High Bridge continues on as the eastern Hoenstratz viaduct, a kind of stone land bridge built to let traders march right over Minkja’s winding alleys and straight to the markets they need.
I, however, need to get on Minkja’s level. I cut down a brick staircase and skirt the Göttermarkt, where candles burn in the windows of mismatched temples ringing the broad plaza. A few sakretwaren stalls are still open to peddle votives, offerings, and assorted charms to anyone seeking divine assistance at this decidedly ungodly hour. Many also sell witch-ash to those seeking to take matters into their own hands.
Magic is a deadly thing, though, and even deadlier for the desperate. Witches take their power by the dose. They collect bones, fur, and anything else shed by Low Gods, spirits, or grimlingen, burn it to ash, and add a pinch to their tea when poultices and rituals won’t suffice. (It also doesn’t have to be tea. There’s a streetwitch in the Obarmarkt infamous for her witch-ash pastries.)
But it’s not the domain of humans, and too much witch-ash poisons the mind and body both. Powerful enchantments, like the one on the pearls, require the workings of a warlock. Instead of witch-ash, warlocks draw on the power of a spirit bound to them, usually with some nasty caveats. Back in Castle Falbirg, the resident bard, Joniza, always spoke of them with equal parts pity and mistrust.