I twist to look over my shoulder, but I can no longer see into the shop from here, and anyhow, the boy is gone. And I shouldn’t be staring.
“The Darkness,” I echo, turning back to the carriage.
“You’ve never seen what it does,” Melly says, the words not quite a question.
“No.” We only ever lost a few children to the snatchers, and only one of them returned—and he fled into the plains to escape the Darkness. I never saw anything like the look of this boy, whole and handsome and utterly hollow. This is why the Blessing is necessary—to protect children who escape the snatchers from losing the very light of their minds and spirits.
We clamber up into the carriage. I sit quietly, my thoughts caught on the memory of the boy, his hands gone still around the peas, his eyes unseeing. This is the other side of what the snatchers do, and the sight of it both sickens and enrages me. How dare the snatchers destroy our youth even after they have escaped? How can our only answer be a blessing that steals our children’s memory—instead of a way to finally stop the snatchers themselves?
I’ve allowed the last two days to slip by without thinking too much about the snatchers, about the questions I promised myself I’d ask. It seemed wise to settle in first and then broach the subject. But I cannot shake the image of the boy. Tonight, when Filadon joins us for dinner, I’ll ask.
Chapter
8
Filadon arrives just barely in time for dinner, sliding into his seat at the table—no low table with cushions to rest upon here!—just as the maid brings out the meal.
“How was your day, my love?” he asks, leaning over to brush a kiss on Melly’s cheek.
She blushes, the brown of her skin warming with a faint rose undertone. “You do see that Rae is here, don’t you?”
Filadon turns to me with exaggerated surprise. “Rae! Wherever did you come from?”
“The country,” I say helpfully.
“Oh hush, you,” Melly says, swatting his arm. “Rae and I had a lovely day, thank you for asking. We spent the morning shopping and the afternoon with the seamstress, and by tomorrow the first of her new outfits should be arriving.”
“I am impressed,” Filadon says. “With the first of the wedding festivities less than a week away, you must have been very persuasive to manage to order a whole wardrobe. Everyone must be ordering clothes.”
“You know she’s always had a soft spot for me,” Melly says. “Now she likes Rae too.”
“She was very kind,” I chime in. Melly’s promise to pay extra for a rush delivery did not go amiss either.
“And how did you find the city today?” Filadon asks, as he did yesterday.
“Lovely and chaotic and busier than Spring Fair,” I say. “But I saw one thing—a boy, actually.”
“Ah,” Melly says at the same moment Filadon says, “Oh?”
“Melly says he was touched by the Darkness.”
Filadon looks at me, his gaze oddly intent. “I see. You’ve never met such a child before?”
“No.”
“It’s a tragedy,” he says with a slight tilt of his head, as if waiting for me to go on.
“I wondered,” I say carefully, “what the soldiers here do to stop the snatchers—if anyone is investigating them. I thought you might know.”
“Would I?”
I shrug. “If anyone could stop them, I assume it would be the high marshal, or the royal family themselves. Do they—are they aware of the snatchers?”
Filadon smiles, a quick, sharp grin that is bright teeth and brighter eyes. His words are strangely at odds with that look. “An excellent question, Rae. By and large, the court believes the snatchers to be a figment of the commoners’ imagination—a sort of bogeyman to scare children into behaving, and explain away the fate of runaways.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“And yet, it is what the court believes.”
“How do they explain the Darkness, then?”
“The natural result of a sudden illness, or a blow to the head. Or”—he shrugs—“a purportedly magical bogeyman to complement the snatchers. If one doesn’t frighten you, the other will.”
“Someone has to do something,” I say, desperation warring with disbelief. How can the nobles discount this reality so completely? “We lost another girl in Sheltershorn. She didn’t run away. She was stolen and couldn’t be traced—her father tried a mage in one of the cities he rode to. Niya tried within an hour of the girl’s disappearance. The snatchers aren’t some collective delusion. They’re real.”
“We know,” Melly says quietly.
I turn to her, trying to tamp down my emotions, but that fierce anger at Seri’s loss, that grief is still there, its claws buried beneath my skin along with the memory of Ani’s pain. “Then why does no one believe you? At least enough to look into it? If they investigate, they can’t help but find the truth of it.”
Filadon weaves his fingers together and rests his chin upon them. “Melly can’t,” he says conversationally. “The court only listens to what they want to hear from whom they want to hear it. If she brings it up, it’s her common background speaking, not her intelligence or knowledge or ability.”
Melly nods, her expression hard. I wonder how often her perspective is discounted because of her background. I haven’t even met the court and I’m already livid with them.
Filadon sighs. “And I . . . don’t have quite as much power as you might think.”
“You’re a lord,” I say, but it’s almost a question.
Filadon smiles briefly. “I am, and I have a friendship with the prince many are jealous of, but in return I gain very little. He does not shower me with gifts and rewards, nor do I expect them. Which means, in the court, that my worth is improved only so much. I am still just a lord with a small holding of little interest to anyone but myself.”
“The prince won’t listen to you?”
“He might,” Filadon concedes. “But until now, he’s been far too wrapped up in greater concerns—dangers he dared not turn his back on.”
It’s probably too soon to ask if the true princess has any thoughts on the subject, given her time living in the city. She’s only been at court for a week or two now.
“I’ll think about this,” Filadon says, turning back to his meal. “Perhaps we can discuss it again in a few days.”
“I’d appreciate that,” I say, aware that I am asking a lot of him. Melly shoots me a grateful smile and turns the conversation to Filadon’s day, spent in company with the prince and his betrothed.
After dinner, I retire to my room only to be called back a few minutes later by Melly, who gently reminds me of the cobbler’s impending visit, coming to measure me for slippers to match all my outfits.
“Oh,” I manage, and force a smile.
I commission shoes once a year and I hate it. Baba and I ride two days east to the nearest large town on the Kharite Road. There, a cobbler measures my feet, taking into account the turn of my left ankle and heel such that I walk on the outside of my foot rather than the sole. This affects the way the sole of the shoe itself must be shaped, as well as the overall shoe. After much muttering and grumbling, the cobbler provides us with a pair of riding boots, a pair of daily use slippers, and one set of fancy embroidered slippers, all at a relatively outrageous price. He’s the only cobbler who has been able to make shoes that don’t hurt me.