“Emotional significance?”
“That’s right. Resonance is the strongest of the three laws. Touching someone with a random cursed object isn’t as powerful as, say, painting a curse on their favorite hat, which can work from a distance.”
Archer pulled Lew’s broad-brimmed hat off his head. “So you could paint something on this that would affect Lew clear on the other side of town?”
“Correct.” Briar touched the thin strip of red silk encircling the hat’s crown. “The stronger the emotional connection—the resonance—between the object and the person, the greater the distance can be between them. If it were a shirt he’d only worn a few times and didn’t care about, it probably wouldn’t work unless I could actually see him.”
Fascinated, Archer barely paid attention to the crowds as they ambled down a busy street lined with inns and taverns. He knew about the different types of art mages: curse painters, voice mages, and fortune scribes. They could do some of the same magic, like burning or moving things, but their abilities had limits. He’d never heard of the three laws, though, and he hadn’t realized how much a curse painter could do from afar.
“So these scrap curses can work with any object and any person as long as they’re touching?”
“Right.”
“Can other people use them, or does the curse painter have to be the one to touch the scrap to the victim?”
Briar gave him a bemused look, as if she could tell exactly where his thoughts had turned. “Anyone can use them, though obviously you wouldn’t want to touch the scrap with your bare skin or you’d wind up cursing yourself. But if I wanted to put you to sleep, and I didn’t have anything of yours, I could leave a scrap curse where I was sure you’d pick it up.”
“Huh.” A slow grin spread across Archer’s face at the thought of everything he could do with a stash of pre-painted curses.
Busy imagining all the fantastical possibilities, Archer accidentally jostled a broad-shouldered young man with a comically large mustache—a mustache he had seen Nat carefully applying to his face with paste that morning. The sight of one of his crew in disguise reminded Archer they had work to do.
He flipped Lew’s hat back onto his head. “Let’s take a room at the Dandelion. Unless we’ll end up with vomiting fits?”
“That one should be safe,” Briar said, “at least from me.”
The Dandelion Inn was a ramshackle place tucked between two larger establishments, and it appeared to be suffering from the competition. Only a quarter of the tables in the common room were full, even at the lunch hour. The innkeeper handed a brass room key across her desk listlessly, as if she didn’t care whether or not they returned it.
The room, located up a rickety staircase, wasn’t much bigger than the hollowed-out oak back at their camp, and it smelled of moist wool and despair. As soon as they were inside, Archer tossed his hat on the lumpy bed and began to take off his clothes.
Briar stiffened. “What are you doing?”
“Hand over your baby,” Archer said. “Jemma stuck a few things in there for me.”
Briar narrowed her eyes, and again Archer couldn’t tell if she was poised to fight or flee. She yanked the bundle of rags out from beneath her dress and tossed it to him across the cramped room. She turned away as he tugged his coarse woolen shirt off over his head.
Archer chuckled. “Didn’t figure you for a prude, Miss Painter.”
Briar snorted, keeping her back to him.
He pulled a new shirt over his head, this one made of fine—albeit wrinkled—silk. He used the rough farmer’s shirt to scrub the mud off his boots and breeches. Finally, he splashed some water from the washbasin onto his hair, slicking it back until it shined. In all that time, Briar didn’t once turn to look at him. Archer felt a little disappointed by that.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” he announced. “Don’t open the door for anyone but me.”
Briar spun around. “Wait! Where are you going?”
“I’m off to see a man about a dog. We’ll head to the market as soon as I return.”
“But—”
“Don’t forget to rest your swollen feet, darling.”
Archer closed the door before Briar could object further. He was gambling that she would actually listen and remain in the room. She couldn’t accompany him to his meeting, and it would be a good test of her trustworthiness before he risked taking her on the job. He needed to know she wouldn’t run off at the first opportunity. Besides, the whole team was in town in various guises. They would keep an eye out for her.
He slipped out through the common room without the innkeeper so much as looking up from her desk and set off, adopting the saunter of a man with too much money and not nearly enough sense. He needed to drop in on his old friend Kurt at his favorite tavern to see if he would help with a missing piece of the plan. It shouldn’t take more than an hour.
Chapter 7
Briar marched back and forth across the tiny room, debating how much longer she should wait. Archer had been gone for nearly four hours. Afternoon light slanted sharply through the leaded windows, illuminating a patch of the threadbare bedspread. The market would close at sundown. If Archer didn’t return soon, they would be stuck there overnight. Briar didn’t like the idea of sharing that lumpy little bed with him, though she supposed it would be better than the floor.
The memory of the smooth plane of Archer’s back popped into her head unbidden. She’d snuck a glance at him as he’d changed his shirt, though she didn’t think he’d noticed.
Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself severely. She tugged her hair out of the tight bun, letting it fall loose over her shoulders, and rubbed
