“I’m still working it through myself,” he says. “I was at sea when I was cursed, you know. The moment it took place, I was suddenly much more interested in getting away from the sea than I was in all the”—he waves a hand—“details.”
“Ohno,” I breathe, horrified. “Was itawful?”
“Words can’t begin to do it justice,” he says, cheerfully.
“Then tell me what she said; I won’t ask what you did. Just tell me what she said and we can figure it out.”
I cross my arms over the back of my chair and watch him. He seems suddenly uncomfortable. “I’d rather not,” he says, not meeting my eye. “Yet.”
“You’re just affecting mystery for the sake of mystery,” I suggest. I close my eyes, and the darkness is very nice. I open them again. “Admit it.”
“Mmm,” he says, which strikes me as a very comfortable sort of noise for a person to make, a bit like a purr, sort of low and rumbling, conveying rather a lot of information.
“I’m not at all sleepy,” I say to the fire, shifting in my chair so that I’m sort of curled up, my head on one arm. “But you clearly are. You shouldn’t stay here; my mother would be very disapproving.”
My eyes aren’t closing; the room isn’t spinning; I’m only the slightest bit drowsy.
“Yes, I imagine you’re not meant to spend too much time in close quarters with eligible men,” he says, agreeably. Nice of him to be so understanding.
“Nothing about you is eligible,” I murmur.
“You wound me,” he says, and his voice is so deep I feel I can sink into it and sleep for a year. “I’m eligible for prison in one of the eight kingdoms, at least.”
“Probably for stealing cobwebs,” I murmur. I close my eyes for a moment; the fire is warm and red behind my eyelids. The cat’s back on my lap—I can feel her weight, even though she looks like she’s still on his—and everything is quite pleasant.
My last thought is that I hope he has the good manners to leave before he falls asleep.
Chapter 30
I have a cracking headache when I wake up the next morning, in addition to a stiff neck. I had, it seems, fallen asleep in my chair. The gray light of early morning filters through my little room; the fire in the grate is nothing but ashes, dash it all. I’m alone; the cat and the pirate are gone and so, I discover after a little investigation, is the bottle. At least I’d been expecting that.
He’s left another of his curious little braided tokens behind. Perhaps he’s out of seashells and hasn’t got anything but time to braid and wheat to braid with now. I push aside the odd sense of loss I feel; one of us covered me in a blanket at some point, which I fold up and set on my bed. My stomach does a peculiar kind of dipping swoop at the thought of him draping it over me, so I brush the image away and make myself a cup of tea, and get ready for the day. The rain has become little more than a light fog. I retrieve my clothes from outside, wondering what on earth I’d been thinking of last night when I took them off, and decide I’dbetter not indulge in more than a ladylike thimbleful of mead at a time from now on, lest I make such perilous decisions again.
Finally, hair braided, freshly attired and feeling surprisingly restricted by my clothes, I head out into the store and flip over the enchanted rock. It’s early; I can’t expect anyone to come by for ages. The tea’s helped my headache and the crick in my neck from sleeping at an odd angle. This, I tell myself, is one of the reasons why my parents are so careful about drink. It was fun while it lasted, but my recollections of the night before are a bit fuzzy. Did I truly stand outside, naked, in the rain? Did I spend the evening having dinner with a pirate? While not wearingunderclothes?
Despite my ebbing headache and sore neck, I find myself feeling energetic, and decide to start tackling the ground floor of the bookshop. The three floors above are clean and neat and tidy, and really only just need to be restocked. But thegroundfloor: It was crowded when I first set foot in the bookstore, all those weeks ago; now it’s positivelycrammedwith books. Every shelf is full to bursting, with books piled haphazardly on any reasonably horizontal space, hastily applied nontoppling spells the only thing keeping the entire place from being an absolute death trap. Any stock that hasn’t sold from the table sales Driz and Sasha have been running has piled up in corners and along the sideboards, and the stairs leading to the first floor have books piled up on either side, so that customers have to make their way up and down very carefully, navigating a narrow passage between piles. Yes, this is what I’ll start working on today.
By the time Sasha finishes school and drops by, I’ve spent hours moving things around—primarily, de-spelling rickety piles and moving them into new, less rickety piles. Sasha brightens immediately when she sees what I’m about, drops her bag,and dives in. By the end of the afternoon, I’m not sure we’ve accomplished anything other than rearranging piles into larger, sturdier piles, but it feels like a start. The next day being a Friday and, ideally, a sunny one, Sasha promises to come back, set up tables outside, and hopefully rid us of some of our piles. She also promises to drop by the Inn of the Four Princes and ask Driz and maybe Hamish to come by before she goes. Maybe see if Yenny can lend us a trumpeter or two.
Once she’s gone, however, I find myself again at loose ends. I decide to spend the evening going through what books about curses the pirate didn’t steal, noting down salient points of interest about my curse and his curse, and doing some comparing. Bash was right, of course, that I’ve been writing things down, but not in any systematic fashion, just in the letters I send (and do not send) to Honey.
I spend a pleasant evening before the fire, going through my never-to-be-sent correspondence, pulling out various facts, and listing them on a fresh sheet of paper. There’s not much there, so I promise myself I’ll quiz him more directly next time he comes by to steal things, and go to bed feeling, if not wholly satisfied, at least reasonably confident that I’ve got a few things under control.
This, of course, is how ironic curses work. Careless of me to forget.
Driz and Sasha do come by the next morning, Driz bringing Hamish and Yenny with him, and the four set out tables and begin displaying books. Yenny offers the use of his fanfare trumpeters to drum up customers, but I decide not to risk the wrath of my neighbors and decline. By the early afternoon we’ve clearedtwo piles (of many; the absence doesn’t affect the mess much), sold three nonpile books to actual, inside-the-shop customers, and astonished Yenny with the truth of the amount of dirt, dust, and mess that accompanies commerce that isn’t related to royal sheep, each of which has its own personal attendant. The pirate shows up and, irritated with my continued and inescapable blushing in his presence, I tell him to go do something useful. He instead takes up his seat on the stairs, lounging among the piles of books, close enough that I can see him. This despite my loud suggestion that he betake himself to the third floor. I notice that he’s doodling on a scrap of paper; when I pull it away from him, I find he’s drawn a fish.
Things are just starting to wind down when the door bursts open, a gust of wind rustling the pages of every open book nearby. I’m bent over a pile, trying to decide what to do with a seventy-seven-year-old copy ofMoriboar’s Remedies for Pustules, Ague and Warts, and it startles me enough that I stumble backward, hard enough to knock against an overstuffed bookcase, making it wobble alarmingly. I barely have time to think about how I haven’t yet re-spelled all the stacks of books and the bookcases in the hall before I hear the strident tones of Ternis, prince of the Endless Light.
“Your Most Serene Highness!” he shouts, shading his eyes as he tries to spot me.
“Prince Ternis,” I manage to exhale. I shoot a look at the stairs, hoping against hope that the pirate has betaken himself away when I wasn’t paying attention. Alas, he’s still there, grinning at me. I turn back to Ternis. My eyes adjust to the light coming in from the still-open door; naturally, Sasha and the other princes are there as well. Wonderful. Maybe, eventually, one prince—justone—will kiss me without anyone else around.
“Madam, I have arrived!” he announces—rather unnecessarily, I think uncharitably. “The moment, the very instant, we received your parents’ desperate missive, my parents and I knew I must attend in all haste. Our royal steward immediately went about readying my trunks and the carriage of state, which I was to take to the royal port of Porto, where the flagship of our royal navy awaited, my own standards run up the masts, naturally. I was settled in the royal cabin, and while my trunks were unpacked, the ship’s crew was made ready; a twenty-cannon salute was performed from the port side—seaside, you understand; left, that is to say, not theport of Portoside, naturally—”
Ternis, as my sister likes to put it, is a talker. He doesn’t seem to be saying much, so I take the opportunity to dust my dress off and straighten my hair. Finally, with a deep breath, I stand up and face him.
“…the noble and, indeed, ennobling act of our extraordinary union…”
