The hapless clerk assigned to this task got as far as setting up a table. The young man, in his innocence, clearly expected the ladies to wait patiently while he unpacked the silks and arranged the fabrics in a pleasing display. As soon as he opened the first box, he was swarmed by the eager, squealing throng. The poor boy’s arms flailed desperately as he struggled to remain upright before he disappeared completely, engulfed in a sea of petticoats.
Scutcheons were everywhere, frantically trying to keep order. One private made the mistake of trying to get between two stout dames fighting over a length of lace and ended up being scratched and bitten. I saw no sign of Commander Crushington, but I doubted that even his fierce demeanor could have gained control over these ravening hordes of women.
There was nothing like the prospect of wedding a handsome prince to rouse something feral in the bosom of the demurest maidens and their ambitious mamas. If I could have hung back and watched from a safe distance, I might have found the whole thing amusing, especially if I’d had Mal with me to enjoy this melee over fabric and furbelows.
Alas! If I wanted to reach the food markets, I was obliged to fling myself into the very heart of this insanity. Fortifying myself with a deep breath, I took the plunge, struggling for every inch of pavement that I gained. I was a slender person, but I still had to balance my basket on top of my head in order to squeeze through the thicket of savage shoppers. My toes were trampled and I was stabbed in the rib cage with something—I believe it was some dowager’s parasol. My basket tumbled from my grasp, but there was no hope of retrieving it. If I had tried to bend down to find it, I would have ended up flattened like one of those hot cakes that bakers smack thin with their spatulas.
By the time I reached the other end of the street, I was panting like a swimmer who had finally fought free of a powerful undertow. The area where the foodstuffs were sold appeared like a veritable haven. I staggered toward it, grateful to find these shops as empty as I would have expected at this time of day.
Unfortunately, I was about to encounter yet another unpleasant consequence of this royal ball madness—greed. My intention had been to splurge on a plump pullet, as though a fine chicken dinner might somehow console my stepsisters for their disappointment over the ball. A ridiculous ploy, I knew, but it was the best that I could devise.
I swiftly discovered that even providing this small treat was impossible when I entered the poultry shop and Mr. Barclay quoted me the price of a small hen.
“What!” I cried. “That is almost quadruple of what you were charging last week!”
Mr. Barclay shrugged his bony shoulders. He was a scrawny man whose neck skin sagged like a rooster’s wattle. “Prices can’t stay the same forever, miss.”
“Why? Have your hens started laying golden eggs?”
He crowed out a laugh, displaying the gap between his front teeth. “No, miss. If that was the case, I’d keep all the hens for myself.”
“That must be what you are planning to do if you charge these prices. Is there a poultry shortage that I don’t know about?”
“No, but I expect there will be. With this year’s royal ball being a much larger and grander affair, I fancy the palace will be ready to buy up all the chicken I can supply and at any price I name.” He hooked his thumbs beneath his apron straps and looked so smug, I wanted to smack him.
“This ball is a one-night affair. Do you think that makes it worth offending your regular customers?”
“You are hardly a regular customer. If I make enough money from this ball, maybe I can retire. Do you know how much I hate chickens? All that squawking and the smell! Plucking them clean is disgusting work. That is why I have decided to start charging more for that as well. So if you want your hen killed, dressed and stuffed with cornbread, that’ll cost you extra.”
I wanted to tell Barclay what he could do with his stuffing, but I just glared at him and stalked out of the shop. I soon discovered that he was not the only merchant determined to exploit this opportunity. The butcher, the greengrocer, the baker and even the spice seller had all hiked their prices as well. And the stupid ball was still an entire month away.
As I trudged from the cheese shop, empty-handed, I muttered, “We are all going to starve.” I immediately chided myself for being as melodramatic as Amy.
Of course we would not starve. We could always fall back on the one constant supply of cheap food in the kingdom, the great body of water that bordered Misty Bottoms—Conger River, so called because it teemed with a variety of eels.
I’d had recourse to the snigglers far more often than I or my family liked, even though I had grown quite ingenious in the many ways to prepare eels. Eel pie, eel ragout, creamed lampreys, eel fricassee. I could probably contrive another new recipe but the thought of eel again for supper left me completely dispirited.
My hair was coming undone, straggling about my cheeks. I had lost my basket, the hem of my dress was torn, and my rib felt bruised where that horrid old lady had poked me. I do not often give way to lachrymose emotions, but I felt so tired and overwhelmed by everything, I could have sunk down in the middle of the street and cried.
I forced myself to trudge onward. I managed to avoid the worst of the crowds by squeezing down a narrow alleyway between the Silk Emporium and the ribbon vendors. I emerged into the area of town behind Quad Hall, the old grey stone building that housed all the municipal governing departments. Covered in ivy, it resembled a small castle with four round towers. Somewhere behind those forbidding walls, Commander Crushington would have his office. It was likely situated near the Scutcheon barracks and the steel doors that led to the jail where the unfortunate Farmer Grey would be held, awaiting his punishment.
I was, thankfully, not familiar with that part of Quad Hall. I was regrettably too well acquainted with the Exchequer Tower, where you went to pay your taxes unless you wanted the king’s revenue collectors to come hammering at your front door. Even when it was not Collection Day, townsfolk tended to creep past the Exchequer Tower as though fearful of waking a sleeping giant.
I was surprised to see a cheerful-looking crowd queued up outside the tower door until I remembered this was where the tickets to the ball were being sold. Unlike the unruly mobs outside the shops, the crowd here milled about as docilely as a flock of sheep lined up to be fleeced. As vendors moved among the waiting crowd, selling ices and sugar nuts, everyone was laughing and chattering as though it was some sort of holiday.
I spotted Fortescue Bafton and his sister near the front of the line. Florence Bafton looked disheveled but smugly triumphant as she displayed the blue silk she had purchased to several other girls I recognized as some of my stepsisters’ friends. Amy and Netta should have been among them, instead of at home weeping into their pillows.
The thought did nothing to improve my mood. Ducking my head down, I slunk past the queue, in no humor to be hailed by Mr. Bafton or anyone else I happened to know. I made it, reaching the next point of the building, which contained the Ministry of Registrars. This was where one went to register births, marriages, deaths and apply for licenses to set up shopkeeping or practice magic.
It was also the tower that contained the infamous Aura Chamber, invented by the king’s chief sorcerer, Mercato. This device measured and recorded each citizen’s aura and stored it in the city’s archives. It first came into use about seventeen years ago, when every subject was required to register their aura on pain of fines or imprisonment.
It was for the good of the realm, King August had insisted. This registry would not only help protect his loyal subjects from criminal elements, but would also aid in tracing children who strayed and became lost.
The decree came not long after my mother’s death and obliged my grieving father to emerge from the house and take me with him to be registered. I had never been on an outing with only my father before. Even though he looked pale, unshaven and somber, he was out of his library and with me. I remember clinging to his hand and skipping along beside
him, excited by the prospect of seeing this amazing Aura Chamber everyone was talking about.
But when we came within view of the line outside the Registry Tower, my father balked. He pivoted about, hustling me back toward home. When I realized I was not to have my turn in the magic chamber, I burst into tears, wailing.
“B-but everyone has got to have their aura collected. Mal’s grandmother even took him. It is for our safety. Don’t you care if I get lost, Papa?”
My father stopped and hunkered down beside me, awkwardly brushing my tears away. He gave me one of his odd, sad smiles. “You will never get lost, Ella. You are far too clever for that. The only way you will ever disappear is because you wish to do so.”
His words confused me, but I was so pleased to discover my father thought I was clever that I stopped crying and beamed at him. At the age of seven, I could not imagine any reason I would want to disappear.
That of course has changed. There have been many moments when I have been so overwhelmed, I have wished I could simply vanish and today was turning out to be one of them.
Leaving Quad Hall behind me, I reached the fountain burbling in the middle of the town square. I bent down to splash the cool water over my face until I felt somewhat revived. This great fountain with its soothing sprays of water used to be one of my favorite places in the kingdom when I was a child. Back in those days, there had been an enormous statue erected in the center depicting my heroine, Queen Anthea the Magnificently Wise.
The ten-foot sculpture had been commissioned to commemorate Queen Anthea’s role in ending the Endorean War before it ever began. She had formed a secret alliance with the enemy queen and they had amassed an army of women from both kingdoms. When the day for battle dawned, Queen Anthea led her considerable force of mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, aunts and grandmothers right down the middle of the field between the two opposing armies, thus preventing them from getting off a single cannon shot.
The women dispersed among their menfolk, coaxing, cajoling and in many cases seizing them by the ear until the foot soldiers all threw down their arms and headed back home. Soon there was no one left but the two pipsqueak kings and some fat, old generals. When they realized if they wanted a war, they were going to have to do the fighting themselves, they slunk homeward as well.
Thereinafter, Queen Anthea browbeat her son, the king and his council into enacting a law that no man would ever be able to go to war without written permission from his mother. The kingdom enjoyed a long period of peace until a plague swept through Arcady, killing the young king, his wife and infant son.
The aging Queen Anthea was obliged to surrender her crown to a distant cousin when he marched into the kingdom at the head of his army and thus the reign of the Helavalerians began. Some said (and I tended to agree with them) that Arcady had never prospered since that ill-fated day Cuthbert the first claimed the throne. He immediately did away with all of Queen Anthea’s wise laws and embarked on a series of disastrous wars that nearly left the treasury bankrupt. Thankfully, our present king, August, was not as bellicose as his ancestor. Except for a few minor skirmishes with the Goblin Raiders, Arcady once again knew peace, mostly because wars are expensive and August was too much of a miser to fund an army.
Several years ago, when the statue of the magnificent Anthea was damaged in a storm, King August used it as an excuse to tear the sculpture down and erect another in its place. What now loomed over me represented the cause of much of my present misery, Prince Florian. It was a decent likeness of the heir to the throne, depicting his strapping, muscular frame and flowing locks of hair. His sword clutched in one hand, his shield in the other, he looked almost noble instead of the dolt that he truly was.
I had never actually met the prince, but I had heard many tales of Florian’s idiocy, most of the stories acquired from my wandering minstrel. Harper had often been called to entertain at the palace. Afterward, he would reduce me to tears of laughter by imitating the way Florian liked to toss his thick mane and the prince’s braying laugh.
Of course that was all before Harper simply reduced me to tears. Peering down at my unhappy reflection in the fountain waters, I trailed my fingers through it as though I could erase all memories of my faithless bard.
Harper had proved to be so false, I might have been inclined to think that his stories about the prince were all lies. But I had caught a glimpse of Florian those rare times he had ridden through town and he gave the impression of a man fond of gazing into his mirror. The way he liked to whip back his golden mane led Mal to dub our prince the “hair apparent.” But he never says this too loudly because these days you can be heavily fined for mocking a member of the royal family.
Of course, there might be a touch of envy on Mal’s part because all the Hawkridge men suffer from the curse of prematurely receding hairlines. Even though Mal was only a few months older than me, he had little more than side fringes of hair remaining.
The mere thought of my friend was enough to bring the smile back to my lips. I knew that if there was one person in the kingdom whom I could count upon to remain sane and aloof from all of this royal ball madness, it was Malcolm Hawkridge. My longing to be with my friend was so acute, I turned away from Midtown and raced down the hill to Misty Bottoms.
Chapter 4
The area known as Misty Bottoms rested at the southernmost tip of Arcady near the border. It was situated on the Conger River and was usually bathed in a mist rising off the turgid waters. Some days, the mist could be so thick, one could not see two footsteps ahead. The Bottoms was such a twisted warren of lanes and narrow alleys, it would be quite easy to get lost in the fog, even for those familiar with the area.
That afternoon, nothing but the usual grey pall hung over the Bottoms. I made my way down Eel Splitch Lane, past a row of defeated-looking cottages, their windows boarded over to avoid paying the extra tax; many of them with their thatched roofs appearing in danger of collapse. I wrinkled my nose at the foul odor that permeated the air here, something that smelled like a combination of rotting fish and boiled cabbage. The stench was even worse in the winter when the cottage dwellers burned peat made from the compressed dung of mating mountain elks, otherwise known in the vulgar parlance as “frap.”
Mal assured me that the Bottoms dwellers grew accustomed to the smell after a while. It saddened me that anyone should have to become used to living in such dismal conditions. I was terrified to think that someday my family and I might well end up here—or somewhere even worse.
As miserable as the Bottoms were, at least these folk still had a roof over their heads. The king’s council had passed an edict making it illegal to be homeless. As King August had decreed, “It only makes the good citizens of our kingdom uncomfortable to look at beggars and truly if these miscreants had been more industrious and thrifty, they would not have ended up in such a sorry state.”
Consequently, any vagrants were rounded up by the Border Scutcheons and exiled out into the swampland and uncharted forest beyond the river. What ultimately became of these wretched individuals no one knew.
As I followed the twists of the lane, the smell of fish grew stronger, the closer I got to the river. I stifled a shriek when something large and black skittered past my skirts. I tried to imagine it was nothing more than a scrawny cat with a hairless tail.
The lane was largely empty at this hour of day. Folks in the Bottoms tended to retire to their homes well before dark and bolt their doors. What individuals I passed looked as worn and ragged as their homes. A few gave me sidelong hostile glares but for the most part, kept their heads down.
I did the same until I chanced upon someone I knew. My stomach knotted at the sight of the hunchbacked man with pointy features and a dandelion shock of white hair. He ran a small curio shop and was known as a purchaser of goods, especially from those desperate to acquire funds. I had had occasion to visit his establishment far too often, not a happy memory, but I forced a stiff smile to my lips.
“Good
afternoon, Master Fugitate.”
He responded with a grunt. “Shop’s closed for today, miss. So if you are bringing me something to sell—”
“I am not.”
He grunted again and brushed past me. I never took Withypole Fugitate’s surliness amiss because I knew the reason for it. Mal believed that Withypole was one of the fairy folk. Most of them had been driven out of the kingdom a long time ago by the king’s harsh regulations regarding the practice of magic and his ruinous tax on wings. Those few who stubbornly chose to remain were at pains to disguise these prominent appendages. Fugitate did so by crushing his into a sack and making it appear as if he had a hump beneath his shirt. I knew nothing about what it would be like to have wings, but I suspected that being obliged to compress them must be rather painful. Hence Fugitate’s constant state of ill humor.
I quickened my steps, turning down another lane, up an alley and cutting across a narrow field where the burned-out remains of several cottages stood. It was a longer and more roundabout route Mal had shown me to avoid going past the Winking Goblin, a dark, smoky tavern that tended to be frequented by some rather rough characters.
I caught a glimmering of the river at the end of the next thoroughfare, which was wide enough that it almost merited the name of street. It was in fact called Rock Gunnel Street and Mal’s place was located in the middle of it, tucked between a chandlery and an old house whose upper stories were built in such crooked fashion, it resembled a layer cake constructed by a drunken pastry chef.
Mal’s shop was constructed of weather-worn clapboards and had a dingy bow window and green door. A sign creaking on rusty chains hung from the upper story. The placard depicted a predatory bird with spread wings and hook talons. Painted beneath was the shop’s name, the Hawk’s Nest.