How could I have left so blithely, leaving my dreadful scribble of a note, and not think about my Da lonesome at home, getting his own tea of an evening and drinking it by himself, while the room darkened, and the fire died? Did Basil ever send my letter to Da?
Well, I knew the answer. I had been more concerned with ridding myself of the pain of the sorcerer’s enchantment than I had been with doing the right thing by my Da. That bloody sorcerer and his bloody spell, intentional or not.
A teaspoonful of early-morning light had started to trickle in through a grate high in the wall, just enough to show me that I was in a stone room—probably the palace dungeon, as I had thought.
I had imagined dungeons as dank and noisome places, but this room didn’t even smell damp. It was dry and stale, the air unmoving. Sawdust coated the floor, but it seemed fresh and swept, for the most part.
To my horror, something shuffled about in the sawdust on the other side of the room. A rat? I shivered. I’d seen my share of rats in the shop, of course, but I hated the things. The thought of little pink feet scampering over me while I was chained up—well, it made the urge to urinate even more pressing, I can tell you.
I peered into the darkness, however, and could just make out another figure—not shackled, as I was, but sitting in the dust with their knees drawn up to their chest, which is what had made them difficult to discern at first.
It was the feet I had heard rustling in the sawdust. I could see them squirming about, toes white with cold. A fellow prisoner, I guessed, and I wondered how they had stayed so still all that time. Someone who was used to remaining quiet and unnoticed, I supposed.
“Who are you?” I asked, loudly enough that the sound of my own voice startled me.
The shuffling stopped. The feet drew in closer to the body again. I wondered why the other prisoner was not chained, as I was.
My senses had been deadened by my time spent asleep—if you could call it that—but they stirred enough now for me to smell the sweet stink of body odor coming off my roommate. It mingled with my own nervous sweat and the mustiness of the sawdust to create a cocktail of scents that, if I had to bottle and label it, I would have called, “Fear.”
“Don’t be frightened,” I said helplessly, having no idea whether the figure was frightened or not, as I couldn’t see their face.Iwas frightened, however, and I suppose I was trying to comfort myself.
The other prisoner shuffled themselves forward a little on their bottom, just enough for the dim light from the tiny window to illuminate them.
It was a girl, as far as I could tell. I’m not much good at judging the ages of sprouts, as I think I’ve said before, but if I had to take a guess, I would say she was perhaps seven or eight years old, judging from the level of wary intelligence in her eyes, but undernourished enough that she could have passed for five. She had a small, heart-shaped face surrounding big eyes, with petals of darkness underneath them, and skinny ankles protruded from her grubby, oversized dress.
The girl looked over at me without much interest, seemingly so resigned to her fate that she didn’t even look frightened. I was just one more potential threat in a lifetime of potential threats, and her flat stare told me I was by no means the worst of them.
“Why are you here?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine that such a waif could have committed much of a crime. Stealing food from a market stall, maybe, or picking pockets—that would be the extent of it. Certainly nothing bad enough to warrant being locked up in the palace dungeon.
She kept her mouth pressed shut and did not answer me, but her filthy toes twitched a little. The nails on them were ragged. Their uneven edges caught the light, what little of it there was.
“I’m Foss,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“Millie,” she said, so quietly that I almost didn’t catch it.
“And what are you doing here, Millie?”
“Theytold me to wait,” she said, placing a sinister emphasis onthey.
“Who arethey?” I asked.
She did not answer.
“Do your parents know where you are?” I tried.
“I don’t have any,” she said.
She was a street urchin, it was clear. That haunted little face and the ragged clothes; that elderly way of shrugging off fear and resigning yourself to your fate.
A terrible thought occurred to me. I remembered the portrait hanging in the sorcerer’s room and the face of a little boy who had that same air of old-soul resignation about him.
“When did you come here, Millie?” I asked.
Another shrug. “I’m not sure. They bring me food sometimes.”
I tried to tell myself I was jumping to conclusions, that she could be here for any number of reasons, but it made terrible sense, after what the sorcerer had told me. Easy enough for the king to buy another child off the streets, or lure one in with the promise of food and a place to sleep, as he might have bought the boy in Sylvester’s portrait.
I didn’t know what dark alchemy turned these gaunt, hollow-eyed children into gorgeous magic-workers, but it seemed like none of the child itself survived the process. Quiet, world-weary Millie would die, essentially, and a beautiful sorceress would be born from her ashes.
