I nod, gracious. “Can I help you?”
“I wished to offer my congratulations on your upcoming marriage,” he says very quickly, pushing his spectacles up a thin nose, “and to ask if it would not be too much trouble to take your statement tomorrow morning. The Penny Phantom has stolen from you in the past as well, have they not?”
“Indeed,” I say, and by that I mean I made sure everyone saw me wearing a couple of Gisele’s most valuable baubles, hosted the kind of party the Pfennigeist kept infiltrating, and then immediately sold the jewelry to my fence. “I will be happy to tell you everything I know,” I lie. Then I let a beatific smile unfurl over my face. Gisele’s face.
I know what that smile does to people. I was there the first time the enchanted pearls were strung around the real Gisele’s throat; I saw what they made her into. I saw the way her smile seemed to light up the room and break your heart all at once, in just the way you liked best.
Years ago, while I was mending Gisele’s winter cloak and she was off on a hunt in the woods, I refined a theory about desire. In the world I knew, there were three reasons a person would be wanted: for profit, pleasure, or power. If you could satisfy only one, they used you. Two, they saw you.
Three, they served you.
From what I can tell, the pearls complete the trinity. They find what you might want, what you didn’t know you wanted, and make you believe only the wearer can give it to you. You desire their friendship, their company, their approval, and for many, their bed.
And judging by Emeric’s faintly stunned look now, I surmise even a prefect of the Godly Courts is not immune.
The wheels of the coach clatter outside on the drive, and the manor door creaks open. That’s my cue. I toss a shallow curtsy Emeric’s way. “Prefect Conrad.”
As the door closes behind me, I catch an uneven “junior prefect.”
No, I don’t think he’ll be a problem.
The footman helps me into the Reigenbach-blue coach, and I glance to the corner. The satchel is there, ceramic jars clinking quietly as the coach rocks from my weight. I seat myself nearby, sweeping my skirts over it, and accept a steaming waterskin from the footman. It’s been filled with boiling water for heat, and I settle it on my lap as the door shuts, then draw a soft, heavy fur wrap over myself to make a cozy cocoon against the chill. It’s going to be a long ride back to Minkja, but at least it will give me time to think.
The coach lurches forward, and I burrow deeper into the fur.
The way I see it, I have three problems.
First: I don’t have enough money to leave right now. A thousand gilden is enough to last a spendthrift countess five months, a shrewd laborer five years. It’s enough to get me out of the Blessed Empire of Almandy, through one of the borders that isn’t a bloodbath, and it will buy . . . I don’t know what. A ship? A storefront? A farm? All that matters is that it will buy me a life far from here.
And it must be far, if I am to escape my godmothers. Far enough for them to lose their claim to me.
Death told me once that she and Fortune are different beyond our borders of the Blessed Empire. That the Low Gods and their believers are like rivers and valleys, each shaping the other over time. In other lands, she is a messenger, a black dog, a warrior queen; Fortune is a horn of plenty, an eightfold-goddess, a serpent-headed titan. They wear different forms, abide by different laws.
So maybe, outside the Blessed Empire, they will no longer be my godmothers. It’s the only way I can think to be free of them. Right now, I have just enough to get past the border as is, but I will be a commoner again, alone and friendless and without a penny to my name, and I know what happens to girls like that. I’d planned to solve this problem, with another theft, but . . .
Now that Adalbrecht’s on his way back, I have two weeks to handle the money issue and figure out how to flee from my second problem: Gisele’s husband-to-be.
Ordinarily, the only trouble with solving a problem like Adalbrecht would be deciding between arsenic and hemlock. But that route is cut off by my third problem: the prefects. Well, not Junior Prefect Milksop really, just the impending Prefect Klemens. A full-fledged prefect will be able to trace Adalbrecht’s murder back to me, and convene the Low Gods themselves to decide my punishment. I don’t think even Death or Fortune could save me then.
It’s a puzzle, like picking a lock, trying to nudge each of the tumblers just right until the way is clear. If I arrange a visit to another noble family . . . no, Gisele is too high-profile, especially with the upcoming wedding, and will surely be connected to the crime. If we host celebrations at Castle Reigenbach? That could be something . . .
It takes a moment for me to realize the coach isn’t moving anymore.
I peek out from the furs. The muted drumrolls of hoofbeats have fallen silent, and beyond the coach windows I only see pitch-black night, and torchlight sweeping down spruce boughs. My brow furrows with confusion. We’re deep into the forest of Eiswald, with no need to stop.
Then I see it.
The torchlight is steady, unmoving, like the flame itself has frozen. And if I look carefully, I can see the crumbling ash of my fortune taking a turn for the worse.
There’s no sound but my heartbeat rattling in my ears as the coach door slowly, quietly swings open.
Nothing is there.
Prickles run up the back of my neck. This could be the work of a grimling, a wicked, hungry spirit looking for a meal.
Then again, a grimling wouldn’t bother with these theatrics. I’ve dealt with two Low Gods since I was four; I know when one’s at work.
And if I’ve learned anything, it’s that there’s only one way to do business with a Low God: Get it over with as soon as possible. I roll my eyes, peel myself from my nest of fur, and draw my hood up against the cold as I climb out of the coach.
Sure enough, an inhuman figure towers in the road outside, wreathed in the forest’s mists, perhaps twice as tall as a man. The only reason my escort isn’t fleeing is that they don’t see her, or anything at all. Every rider, every soldier, every attendant has gone still, their torch flames stuck in place like lanterns of molten glass. That means whichever Low God this is, they’re at least powerful enough to halt time a moment.
That does not bode well.
This Low God has a bear skull for a head, twin red-tinged lights glowing in each eye socket. Two antlers branch from the crest of the skull, their tips blooming into blood-red leaves. A strange shadowy sphere floats between them. Long hair falls around the skull, parted perfectly down the middle, fading from jet-black roots to snow-white ends and laced with bands of scarlet hemp. Two gaunt human arms thrust from a heap of shifting pelts like ribs from a long-dead corpse’s jerkin, bone-pale everywhere but the joints, which blush an unnaturally deep crimson. A raven is perched on one of the branch-antlers, its eyes also glowing red.
Life and death, beast and vine, blood and bone, the teeth of a predator and the horns of prey. The goddess of this forest, then. Of course Eiswald is strong enough to hold time. Her woods reach nearly all the way to the border itself.
I curtsy with a bit more sincerity than I had for the junior prefect. “Eiswald. What—”
“Silence, thief.” It’s a howl, a hiss, a snarl all in one.
Oh, that can’t be good.
“It’s Lady Eiswald to the likes of you. Did you think you could come into my lands and take whatever you pleased? Did you think you would never pay?” Eiswald’s voice rises to a shriek. I blink and she’s suddenly closed the distance, looming taller than even the coach, eyes burning scarlet. “Did you think you could steal from mine?”