“I did, and we will. Later. For now, you get to help me dispose of that car up on the road.”
Yemi scoffed. “I don’t drive.”
“Of course you don’t. When has any royal possessed a single practical skill?” she asked. Yemi opened her mouth to give an indignant answer, but Selah plunked her teacup back into the sink and outed her cigar in a glass tray. “Come on. Bring your spear.”
Yemi grudgingly did as she was told, following Selah out into the sun through the western courtyard. Live vines unfurled themselves in their wake as if closing a door behind them. The sky was vast and blue, and the air smelled of damp earth, clean after the storm. They passed a small vegetable garden and trudged up a hill to where the soldiers’ car remained from the night before. The roads they crossed were clear, save for an old man biking a wagon of green melons to some distant place beyond the blooming canola fields that stretchedforever in every direction. He nodded courteously as he pedaled past. If he recognized either of them, he didn’t show it.
Yemi hesitated with the driver’s-side door open and swallowed her irritation while Selah waited for her to speak. “You’ll forgive me if I feel like I’m being toyed with,” Yemi said in the forced polite tone of a queen. “I don’t know what about my situation would indicate I have the time for errands.”
“Relationships with witches are transactional,” Selah said. “No witch worth her salt will offer you anything for free. I promised your mother I would do everything in my power to help you. If I give you the answers you want now, you’ll leave before I’ve done my job.”
“But if you already made a deal with my mother, why all of this?”
“Our deal was for me to help you. What you want, this meeting, is a harmful thing. But if you and I strike a trade of our own, I’m inclined to give it to you anyway.”
“So I help you get rid of the car, and we’re done? You’ll tell me where to find Ursla?”
Selah gave her a familiar deadpan gaze but didn’t answer. “Get in.”
“Where are we going?”
Selah turned and pointed at the opposite end of the lake, the house there so far away that it shimmered like a mirage.
Eager to be done with this, Yemi dropped herself into the driver’s seat of the packard and stared quizzically at the pedals, knobs, and buttons meant to control it. The wheel she was familiar with, having watched Moss navigate it thousands of times over the years. She wondered now about his fate back at the palace, her guilt over not having tried harder to find him sitting like a rock in her throat.
Selah talked her through the mechanics of the clutch, the gearshift, the order of operations required to move them more than a shuddering inch at a time. The witch even laughed out loud once and apologized when Yemi scowled at her for it. Eventually, she decided the problem was with braking and accelerating, and all this would be much easier if she stuck to a gravity-aided slide down the slope of the driveway.
“Ha!” she cried triumphantly when the car picked up enough speed to cause a breeze through the open window. The steering part was much less fraught as they entered the trail and let inertia guide them.
“Good. Just keep to the path. If you can stay out of both the lake and my living room, this will have been a success,” Selah said, stifling a chortle.
The trail was bumpy and unrefined. Yemi’s confidence in the pedals eventually graduated from a wary tap to a steady pressure, and they moved along at what she considered an impressive clip. On her left, the lake glittered a blue reflection of the sky. The curious fish and odd frog made ripples of their own or rustled in the reeds beside it. There was no sign of the fabled magic-making, no ethereal beasts sunning themselves on the banks. Still, the scene was peaceful, and Yemi allowed herself to be taken with it.
The house emerged around a bend, a looming structure of water-stained clapboard slats intermingled with strips of scrap metal as if it had been burned down a couple of times and rebuilt with whatever was around. Heaps of apparent junk framed a dark, cavernous garage and lined the path to the front door. Yemi didn’t so much stop as prematurely turn off the car and allow it to coast gently into a pile of firewood.
She huffed a victorious breath—victoriousmeaning no one had died—and ignored Selah’s gaping as she got out of the car. The day was warm, but the air here smelled of brick and hearth. And there was a music to it, between the rhythmic hammering of something unseen and the tinkling of colorful glass bottles swaying in the few surrounding trees.
“Javid,” Selah sang as they made their way to the house. Yemi looked for signs of movement in the small windows and poked at shrapnel littering the ground with the base of her father’s spear.
“Who’s that?” a grizzled voice called from the garage.
“Selah, beloved. I bring a guest and a gift.”
They entered the garage and were met with stifling heat. A wiryold man stood silhouetted before a kiln and hammered sparks from a strip of glowing iron against an anvil.
“Not in the mood for entertaining today,” he grunted.
“We won’t be long,” Selah said pleasantly. “You remember Yemaya Blackgate?”
Javid stopped his hammer mid-swing. “Blackgate?” He squinted in Yemi’s direction. “Didn’t know they were still making those.”
“Have we met?” Yemi asked, wondering if she should have taken offense.
“Not formally, no. I was the royal blacksmith, but you hadn’t come into the world yet when they shoved me out.” The old man approached, wiping sweat from his face and sinewy arms with a shop cloth he then tucked into a back pocket. Yemi could now see his eyes were pale, almost milky as he inspected her. His skin was the color of tanned leather, and the joints of his fingers were swollen as he lifted her chin and tilted it to the side. “Yes, you’re Donovan’s daughter alright. Supposed to be queen now, ain’tcha? Where’s the fanfare?”
Yemi looked at Selah for a hint of what to say. Was it possible that he hadn’t heard?
“Well, if this the guest, where’s the gift?” he snapped before she could respond.
