“Oh,” the man said, his face changing. “Sorry, lady, didn’t know you were one of the Market people. I’m pied, you see.”
“You’re pie?”
He smiled. “Not Market, then. I’m a pied piper. We make the music for the Market, but we’re not Market people ourselves: We use magic. I can start a tune and make children, animals, or pretty young things follow me anywhere.”
Mae grabbed the two blossoms from her pocket and waved them under his nose. “That must be a useful skill. Where’s Trish?”
The piper grinned. “Didn’t mean anything by it,” he said. “Honestly, you’re not my type. And I haven’t seen Trish.”
Toby blew a bubble of saliva into Mae’s ear. “Great.”
The pied piper smiled mockingly at her pain and moved on.
Mae came to a decision. Sin was busy with a guy, but surely she could go knock on the door and Sin could tell her what to do with the kid. Sin didn’t seem the type to be easily embarrassed, and Alan had been waiting long enough.
She marched back in the direction from which she’d come, walking a good deal more carefully with Toby in her arms. Even so, she almost stumbled four times going downhill, and clutched at the baby too tight in panic. He made small crowing sounds whenever she did that. Either she was being mocked by a two-year-old or he was going to grow up to be a fan of danger sports.
Mae put one foot in front of the other, walking blind and burdened, and reached the shadowy gathering of wagons just in time to see Gerald knock on the door of Sin’s red wagon and be let in.
11
Caveat Emptor
Mae burst into a breakneck run for the wagon even as the door swung shut, the curtain billowing gently in the night air.
She had a hand on the door and a warning on her lips before it occurred to her that they were two girls alone, and once Gerald’s cover was blown he would have no reason to play nice.
And she was holding a baby. Sin wouldn’t thank her for carrying her little brother directly into the line of fire.
Okay, Mae thought. Back to the Market, alert them all there’s a magician in the wagon with the heir apparent, save Sin, and most important, get someone else to hold the baby.
Before she went, she wanted to check that Sin was all right.
She shifted Toby into the crook of her elbow and reached out with her free hand to twitch the curtain aside just a fraction.
There were lit candles floating in the bowl of rose petals and water.
Sin was standing by her bed, wrapped in red silk with black flowers and thorns stenciled on it. The silk looked fragile enough to tear at a movement, and there was plenty of potential for movement in the curves beneath.
For now she was still, dark red lips curved and dark eyes thoughtful.
All Mae could see of Gerald was his back and a sliver of his face as he tilted his head to look at Sin. His eye was lit by a gold gleam from the candles. “You said you wanted to talk.”
He took a step toward her, and she flowed toward him like a red silk river until she was pressed up against him, hand at the nape of his neck where his sandy hair curled. Gerald’s hand hesitated, wavering in midair, and then settled on her hip.
Sin laughed, her eyelids lowered as if she was sleepy, as if she’d just risen from bed and wanted to crawl right back in.
“Sure,” she murmured, throaty, and slid the red silk robe off both brown shoulders at once.
Then she grasped ivory handles and drew out long knives with the sleek sound of tearing silk. Before Gerald could take a step back, the blades were kissing behind his neck.
Sin said, “Let’s talk.”
Mae felt her lips curve into a grin. There was no need for a rescue mission after all. Apparently Sin had the situation under control.
That was when she felt the hand touch her shoulder.
She refused to let herself scream, clamping her jaw shut and whirling to face whatever was behind her. Her hand was suddenly cradling Toby’s head, her first strange impulse to shield it.
Behind her was Merris Cromwell, standing over her looking surprised and displeased, as if she’d caught Mae trespassing in her garden.
“There’s a magician in there,” Mae said, low.
“Cynthia has already notified me and lured the magician away from the Market,” Merris replied in her normal voice. “Why you feel torturing a magician might be appropriate entertainment for a toddler, I cannot imagine.”
“I did not know—”
“Well, now you do,” Merris said. “Could you perhaps remove the child from the vicinity before—”
The door to the wagon banged open, Gerald stumbling as Sin pushed him out and then followed close behind him, her knives at his back. She was striding easily until she saw Mae.
“What’s Toby doing here?”
Gerald’s eyes flashed to Mae’s face and then to the child in her arms. He had obviously absorbed something from the sudden tightness of Sin’s tone. He looked thoughtful.
“He was wandering,” said Mae. “I thought I should bring him back to you. Sorry to interrupt.”
“Yeah,” Sin said, kicking Gerald in the back of his knees so they buckled and he went down hard onto them in the dirt. “It’s a very special night.”
“Sin,” Gerald asked, “do you know who you are serving?” He jerked his head toward where Merris Cromwell stood with her face like a carving in stone. “Do you know who she is, the cold mistress of Mezentius House? Do you know what that means?”
Mae couldn’t help but remember the scream of that woman in Merris’s institute, being tortured by a demon that was living inside her husband and destroying him from the inside out. Merris made the relatives of the possessed people pay to have them restrained, and pay extra to stay with them and watch them die slowly.
Judging from what Mae had seen of Mezentius House, she made them pay a lot.
Sin grabbed a fistful of Gerald’s sandy hair and held her long knives clasped in one fist, both blades sharp against Gerald’s throat.
“I lived a month last summer in that house,” she said, soft. “My mother died there. I know who I serve.”
Gerald looked in Merris’s direction, ignoring the knives that shifted dangerously as he moved.
“I’d like to offer you an opportunity,” he said. “Send them all away, and we can talk. I have some things to say that you might find interesting.”
“If he continues to talk like a door-to-door salesman,” Merris said to Sin, “cut his throat.”
Sin smiled. “With pleasure.”
Merris’s voice had been deep and measured, completely without emotion as far as Mae could see, but Sin’s glance upward was at once fond and pleased, as if she had just been praised by an adored teacher.
“You trust her,” Gerald said. “That’s nice. Be nicer if she trusted you, of course.”
“Shut your mouth,” Sin snapped.
Gerald did no such thing. “Did she tell you when the pain started, Sin?” he asked, voice soft and impossible to stop as the wind blowing in from the sea. “Did she tell you what the doctors said? Do you know how sick she is?”
It might not have worked, if Sin hadn’t been looking at Merris.
Mae, watching Sin and Gerald, did not see Merris’s face, but she saw the change that swept over Sin’s.
Gerald struck.
He seized the moment of indecision and broke backward, rising to his feet and into Sin’s body. He knocked her off her feet and whirled on her, magic streaming from his palms in two bursts of light.
She made a small, choked sound and hit the ground hard.
“Well,” said Gerald, wheeling on Merris, his hands still blazing with power. “I imagine you’ll be willing to talk now.”
Mae was holding Toby so hard he was whimpering softly in her ear. She looked desperately at Merris.
Merris was smiling.
Gerald collapsed on the ground with a knife in his back.
“You always say you want to talk,” Alan said, walking out of the shadows of the hills with a new throwing knife already in hand. “And then you attack people. It doesn’t make me feel very chatty.”
From the night-dark grass, Gerald let out a low groan and then twisted, raising himself up on one hand. He pulled out the knife and let it drop, bloody, to the ground.
“I might point out that she was the one who pulled her weapons on me,” he said.
Alan stopped by Sin where she lay in a tangle of torn silk gone gray in the moonlight, mouth pulled tight in agony but trying to sit up. He offered her his free hand; she glared up at him and shook her head. Alan shrugged and limped forward to Gerald.
“You invaded our market for purposes of your own,” Alan told Gerald. “You did not ask permission. You trespassed, and you thought you could do so without fear of retribution because you’re stronger than we are.”
“I am stronger than you are,” said Gerald. “I took down your precious brother, didn’t I? You have no idea what I can do to you.”
He rose slowly to his feet, slivers of magic glinting through his fingers as if he was running gold coins through his hands and they were catching the light. There was a snick as Alan popped his left wrist sheath and suddenly had knives in both hands, and one of them lifted to Gerald’s throat.
Gerald laughed. “And a knife won’t stop me.”
Mae didn’t see Sin move. The first thing she saw was Sin standing pressed up against Gerald’s back and lacing her knives with Alan’s, until it looked like Gerald was wearing a sharp-edged and gleaming collar that caught moonlight and drove him to his knees, held him afraid to move.
The first thing she heard was Sin saying in Gerald’s ear, “How many knives will? Because we have a selection.”
Alan looked into Sin’s eyes and gave a small nod.
“Deal with one of us and the other one cuts your throat,” he said. He looked like a young priest, serious and well-meaning, and then he flicked his wrist casually and Gerald’s head was pushed back against Sin’s knives. “If you want to strike, be very sure you’re fast enough. Or maybe you can tell us what the hell you meant about Merris.”
“What have you done to her?” Sin demanded.
“I didn’t do a thing,” Gerald said. “It’s just one of those things that happen … that come creeping into your body like an intruder, like a mindless demon. Bone cancer. Too advanced for any of your small magics. I guess you could try having Alan’s demon cure it: His magic’s about as subtle as a battering ram, and the disease is bound up with every bone, threaded throughout every part of her body. At least when he shattered her into a thousand pieces, it would be quick.”
“No demon is going to lay a hand on her!”
“Then she’ll die slowly,” said Gerald. “You ready to lose her? Ready to lead the Market?”
When Sin spoke, it was not to Gerald.
“Is it true?”
“Yes,” Merris said distantly.
Mae couldn’t look at Merris. It was almost too much to look at Sin.
“Why,” said Sin, and her voice trembled, “why did you not tell me?”
The knives in her hands trembled too, and Alan’s voice lashed out in a command. “Hold fast!”
“Don’t you dare give me orders, you filthy traitor,” Sin snarled, her dark eyes narrowing. Her knives did not tremble again.
There was something rising in Gerald, like the wind rising as it came in from the sea and sent chills rushing down Mae’s neck.
Toby began to cry, a long, thin, despairing sound. Mae rocked him and pleaded with him quietly, desperately afraid that he was going to distract Sin at exactly the wrong moment.
There were flashes of magic running through all of Gerald’s skin now, not just his hands: like veins of gold in rock, like the sun’s rays painted faint across the sky.