He smiled faintly and cupped her cheek.
“Papa always said I was lovely like my mother. Was he lying?”
Ifra shook his head. If he could have spoken, he would have told her that it didn’t really matter. Violet might not look like the girls who would have been called lovely back home, but he couldn’t seem to stop looking at her.
“Belin doesn’t like me,” she said. “I need to act like a queen if he’s going to marry me, but I don’t want to marry him. Neither of us wants to marry the other. It’s stupid.” She put her hand over his again. “Will you stay here? I’ll let them in if you promise to stay here.”
He nodded, and she let him open the door, but he knew he couldn’t stay near her forever.
Chapter 24
Ordorio asked the Lady to remove the spell on Violet so we would not forget our mission, and we set off with clear skies and the faintest hint of spring, as if you could sense the snow loosening up a bit. We skirted around Cernan for obvious reasons, sleeping in unoccupied buildings, managing to find a house most nights. Many people wintered farther south, and with a bit of summoning, Annalie’s spirits could unlock the doors. We were a little giddy and panicked, breaking into empty homes, poking around the dusty parlors of strangers. We didn’t dare light candles, in case a passerby saw a light in the window and wondered, so the rooms were gloomy and spooky. But Annalie wasn’t afraid of the dark, and my heat magic almost tricked me into thinking we had the company of a fire.
After all the talk of the fairy gate, I rather expected something majestic and imposing, but instead the wooden wall was more like a country fort-built about ten feet tall from sturdy logs, with a row of spikes on the top. Two human men in military uniforms with rifles stood at the gate. Horses were tethered nearby in front of a two-story log house and stable where I supposed the guards lived. On the other side of the gate, we could hear faint music and clanging and clopping, suggesting more civilization on the fairy side of things.
The guards looked a little surprised at our approach. The blond one spoke. “What brings two young ladies on foot and empty-handed to the gate? You can’t be traders. I hope you aren’t chasing fairy husbands. It’s just glamour, you know.” He sounded almost flirtatious-they weren’t much older than we were.
I decided not to grant an answer, I just handed him my letter from Karstor with the ambassador of magic’s seal. The guard looked at it a moment with raised eyebrows, and the darker and quieter guard peered over his shoulder. He held it up to the sun. Then he lifted a horn that hung from a nail in the wall and blew. I looked frantically at Annalie-were we in trouble?
“That’s to let the fairy folk know someone’s coming through on our end,” the dark-haired guard assured me.
Set within the heavy, double-doored gate that was clearly for the passage of carts and carriages was a smaller door, and the guards opened this one for us. I heard one of them whisper something excited about “spies” to the other. My heart was beating at an alarming rate. Ifra’s letter had instructed us carefully:
Would these be the right fairies?
A hamlet sprung up around the fairy side of the gate-the guard house, a general store, and a small inn, all with brightly painted signs and doors. Two guards were waiting, and not just any guards. These men were so beautiful, their hair shining gold and copper, their skin so clear and their eyes so bright, that I didn’t want to trust them.
Just glamour, the human guards said. I had always assumed glamour was for making things more beautiful, but now I understood it could play another role-making things intimidating.
They wore green hoods, however, so when they asked me to state my business, I mumbled, “Ay di day… we’ll gather up our swords.” The words sounded very silly, especially with two unnaturally beautiful men staring at me.
“What’s that? Speak up, girl.” The red-haired fairy had the rugged bulk of someone who would be comfortable wielding a battle axe, although he only had a sword at his side. I was sure he’d heard enough of what I said the first time that he clearly wasn’t a Green Hood. Or maybe Ifra had led me astray. I wasn’t sure what to do.
“Please, sir,” Annalie said. “Our-our husbands are traders and we’re looking for them.”
“Do you have permits to trade here?”
“We have a letter from the ambassador of magic,” I ventured. Ordorio hadn’t thought it would work for passage into the fairy kingdom, but I wasn’t sure what we had to lose at this point.
“We don’t care about a letter from
As he spoke, a man-also in a green hood-had stepped out of the general store with a sack of potatoes, and now he was walking our way. “Why, is that Nirima?” he said, quite as if he knew me, except that he had my name slightly wrong.
He was a fairy too, of course, but I didn’t think he had any glamour. He wasn’t particularly good-looking, with a cut on his chin, maybe from shaving or maybe from something more… wild, with a very lean face and a mischievous air. I wasn’t sure if I could trust him, either, but I said, “Yes, that’s me.”
“Are they with you?” the fairy guard said.
“That’s right, my friend.”
“What’s your business with them?”
“I’m escorting them down south to work as teachers.”
“Yes,” Annalie said. “That’s where our husbands work as traders.”
We all nodded, and then I wished we hadn’t
“It’s just a couple of girls,” the blond fairy said. He looked rather bored and had taken a pouch from his pocket, maybe tobacco or snuff-he had the look of someone wishing for indulgence.
“Hmph,” the red-haired fairy said, but he stepped aside and let us pass.
“Let’s be on our way, girls,” the man said, grinning. He led us down the path, past the inn-not much activity there at the moment besides the sign swaying in the breeze and a woman selling pickled vegetables from the back of a colorfully painted carriage.
I had always imagined the fairy lands to be lush and green, but of course even fairy gardens went to bed for the winter, and this place looked just like Cernan, except that the buildings all had the brightly painted accents, and the fairy clothes were brighter too. The man walking beside us had a red coat under his green cloak.
“How did you know my name?” I whispered.
“I’m one of the Green Hoods, milady Nirima. The word traveled among our numbers that you might be coming.”
“It’s-it’s actually Nimira,” I said, shy at correcting him. “And this is Annalie. Thank you for helping us with the guard.”
“Not at all. My apologies about your name! I’ve always been terrible with them. I’m Rowan, by the way.” He bowed slightly to each of us, without breaking his stride. “I’ll explain more once we’re away from the village. We should move out and off the roads as quickly as possible, but we’ll wait until we’re out of sight and we’ve crossed the bridge.”
I glanced around nervously, and then forced myself to look ahead, thankful for the hood obscuring my face. It was probably obvious I was a human, and I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself.
The path winding through the forest sloped down to a small bridge crossing a creek that was running fast and swollen from melting snow. Once we’d passed, Rowan motioned us off the path.
“Hungry?” Rowan took what looked like meat jerky from a pouch at his waist and handed it back to us.
“Oh, yes,” Annalie said. We’d eaten the last of our dried fish the previous afternoon, and now we were down to dried fruits and corn cakes.
