Anya had opened her eyes and watched his drawing with fascination. Though he’d done this countless times, under the audience of countless eyes, Anya’s attention left him oddly self-conscious. Especially as he removed his gloves, revealing the king’s mark on his palm, to cup the completed spell, so as not to dirty a petri dish.
Her attention fixed on his lips as he blew onto it, then on the spell as his breath transformed it into sparkling ruby grains.
“A bit of water,” he explained as he pulled out a vial. With his thumb, he uncorked it, then moistened the glittering dust in his palm, forming a thick paste, mixing it with his forefinger. He dipped his first two fingers into it and scooped up some of the spell, then held them aloft, waiting for her nod of assent.When she did – with only a slight hesitation, closing her eyes – he stroked his magic-covered fingers along her jaw.
As his fingers met her skin, she inhaled sharply – from the cold water, he assumed. Then, as he streaked the other side of her face, she sighed softly with relief. The dark red magic seeped into her skin, disappearing as it did its work. He let his fingers linger on her jaw, tracing her upper gum softly with his thumb, feeling for the spell’s success.
Her eyes shot open. He tensed, afraid he had hurt her.
But it was not pain he saw in her eyes, or cold. It almost seemed – no, that was absurd. Surprise. Merely surprise.
Quickly, he pulled his fingers away. There was still another spell to pen.
He scooped the remainder of the spell from his hand with a leaf, then cleaned his palm with grain alcohol. The last of the spell seeped into the earth, disappearing as it had on Anya’s cheek.
“I’m sorry about them,” he said, busying himself with a paraglyph to fix her tongue before the blood in the pen’s chamber congealed. This one was far less complicated, and he knew it by heart – Sabina had played this prank before. But strange as the affliction was, he worried whether his spell would have any effect at all. He may have to repeat it several times and must be sparing with his blood.
“It was meant to punish me more than you,” he continued. “They’ve run dry of tricks to toy with me, and you were the shiniest new object. They don’t mean to be cruel. They just… can’t help it. Tongue, please.”
She opened her mouth wide, and he did his best not to flinch at her bizarre appendage.
Anya did flinch as he sprinkled a bit of the powder onto her waiting tongue. Almost instantly, it shrank back to its usual shape and color, a lovely cherry red.
“Foul,” she said, spitting onto the ground. Then added, bashfully, if that were possible, “Thank you.”
Rather than answer, he nodded, pulling out a glass bottle of water he kept to clean out his pen. After this, he would need to refill it, and soon. Keeping a clean pen was essential. He’d seen no streams nearby, but he was sure the others had brought barrels of distilled water along with them; he’d have to use theirs.
For a long while, Anya watched him work in silence, drawing the water into the pen as he did his blood, then ejecting it into the dirt, over and over until the water coming out of the pen ran crystal clear.
Anya broke the silence. “I meant what I said back there. All they do is play. In the city, everything’s a game. Playing for your seat at the head of the table, or any seat at all.”
Sy said nothing, pulling a soft cloth from his kit to clean and dry the gold nib. His wrist ached; a sure sign he had been pressing too hard. He would need to check the nib for splaying.
“People like them think no one else exists. We’re all just shadows in the glow of their light. We don’t exist until they need us. We serve our purpose, their purpose. Then we disappear completely until their need shines a light upon us once more.”
A shadow to others’ light. A duller color, a complement. Life itself a game, a never-ending, brutal game, where loss meant empty suffering, and the prize was the penalty of playing.
That was how Anya saw her life, saw herself. Saw him. She a shadow, and he a cruel, indifferent light. No – she’d saidwe. She was trying to tell him something, to let him into a place he didn’t want to be. A dark place, where shadows lived. A place he’d escaped. Was escaping.
He was not a shadow. He would not be a shadow.
“I don’t believe we have as much in common as you suppose.” He capped his pen.
A sharp, bitter laugh escaped her. “No. No, perhaps not.”
Her laughter irritated him. “For example, only one of us is a missing heiress.”
“No.” The scornful arrogance had evaporated. “Not anymore.”
Something in her certainty unnerved him. “You could surely have reclaimed your lands once you came of age. Now.”
“If I tried, the king would have me arrested on the spot for twenty years of poaching,” she said. At his surprised expression, she laughed again. “What, you think the benevolent ruler grants us the use of his forest freely? No, the city’s gentleman hunters may hunt on their estates, or pay the crown handsomely to come to the country with their hounds and their horses, but most who live here could never hopeto afford the tax. Feeding ourselves, clothing ourselves, taking barely a drop of all this,” she said, throwing an arm toward the endless sea of trees, “is stealing from the crown. Fuck, so is housing ourselves. Johanna’s home –myhome – is built on the king’s land without a permit. I believe I would even need a permit for my fucking chickens.”
“I…was unaware,” he admitted. Neither was he aware of the tax, nor of the king’s reach, that grasping paw extending far beyond his palace, extracting all it could, showering the streets – the streets visible from the palace windows, at least – with gold.
“No one who lives out here cares a lick about poaching, because for us, it isn’t. She never said, but I think it’s why Johanna settled here in the first place. Whether they believe the tales or not, more than a few foresters have gone missing, and it’s big and dark and not worth the risk, so they hardly ever set foot this way.” She lifted a dismissive shoulder, then folded her arms over her chest. “You asked before why anyone would live here. Well, there you have it.”
“The last place for a hunter to make a living without being forced to give it all away,” he concluded. And the living she made wasn’t much of one. But it was hers.
