Her throat, in addition to closing up to the size of a piece of spaghetti, was now slick and dry as summer-dusted glass.
“Got to be careful. You start talking about Biel’y, people get nervous.” He brushed past her, dropped down in the chair to the left. Reached for one steam-fuming drink, and poured it down in a long swallow. “Gah. Nasty.”
Cami’s boots were still wet with melting snow. His tracks and hers showed up dark on the threadbare, flower-patterned carpet.
“Before I forget.” He dug in his jacket pocket. “Something for you. Since the pin broke. You seemed awful worried about it.”
She lowered herself down in the other chair. “I f-felt b-bad. S-s-since you—”
“I’m not broken up about it. But I figured I’d get you something else, pretty girl. Here.”
It was a velvet bag, deep black, the nap worn in a few places. She opened it gingerly, and the shimmersilk spilled out. Opalescent, charm-woven by Waste-witches, the rumor ran—it was pretty rare. The threads were fine, but strong as iron, and the lacework of it could be doubled, turned over itself to make a belt, opened for a shawl. She’d never actually held shimmersilk before.
It made even fey-woven lace look coarse and ugly. Her small wondering sigh was lost under the thumping from below. “W-wow,” she breathed. “H-how d-d-did you—” She was just about to ask how did you afford it, stopped herself. “Th-thank y-you.”
For a bare moment, he grinned without anger, shyly ducking his head. “I saw it in a pawnshop, thought it belonged to you. Took a couple paychecks, but it’s worth it.” He eyed the second drink. “You want that? It’s called a minotaur. Rat-tooth gin, strawberry juice, and cornswell charm. Just the thing for nerves.”
“N-no. Th-thank you, Tor.” His name managed to wring its way free of her lips, whole and undamaged.
“You’re welcome. I . . . Mithrus. I like you.” Did he look uncomfortable? Maybe just a little. He grabbed the second drink, bolted it too. Steam drenched his face for a moment; he wiped it away with his free hand and set the second glass down. The gleam in his hand was the door-key, he set it on the table, pushed it with a fingertip until it was on her side. “Okay, so. Biel’y.”
The shimmersilk slid through her hands. It had tassels, made of smoky floss. Nobody at school had one.
Ruby would just die.
“I only know a l-little,” she hedged. Wait. Did he just say he liked me?
“Look, I was an orphan. I didn’t know. Sometimes it happens, one of them gets lost and grows up outside the cult.”
It’s a cult? There were a lot of them around, leftovers from the Age of Iron, coalescing around charmers gone bad, or Twists with charisma. You couldn’t swing a hexed cat in some provinces without hitting a cult or two. Papa said that even some branches of the Family, like the Stregare, used to be worshipped sometimes, back before the Reeve.
Papa’s gone. A chill touched her back. The shimmersilk was cool, like supple living metal against her sweating fingers. It was waking up, coming alive in her hands as her Potential filled it with heat. Music thumped away below, the beat changing a fraction, becoming more insistent. “Okay.” I didn’t think there were cults here in New Haven, though.
“I’m not one of them,” he persisted.
She nodded. Her braid bumped against the back of her coat. She was beginning to warm up a little. Maybe she should have had the other drink. A buzz would probably help right about now. “I b-believe you.”
Maybe it was the dimness, but he suddenly looked years older. “Well, don’t. Biel’y lie. That’s the first lesson about them—don’t ever trust one who says they’re not, especially a man. Once the Queen gets hold of them, they’ll do anything, say anything, to get her what she wants.”
Her hands cramped. The shimmersilk bit, its thin threads able to slice flesh if enough pressure was applied. She had to force her fingers to relax. “The Queen.” It was a bare, numb-lipped whisper.
An answering whisper, from the well of darkness her nightmares hid inside. You are nobody. You are nothing.
“The White Queen.” Tor was pale. Sweat stuck his messy black hair to his forehead. “The boys serve her, they grow into her huntsmen. The women serve her too, if they come in from outside. But the girls . . . she takes them.” He wet his lips, a quick darting motion of his tongue. “It’s old magic, older than the Reeve or the Age of Iron. Didn’t anyone ever tell you this ghost story?”
“N-no.” Not until now. “They t-talk around the edges. B-but not out l-loud.”
“Sometimes she takes in orphans. There are some kids born into the cult, born underground where they live, like Twists. If they’re not Twisted, if they’re not jacks, if they’re plain human or charmer, they’re kept.” He shuddered. “The born-below boy babies are special huntsmen. Her Okhotniki.” The word was funny, swallowed into the back of his throat, almost French but not quite. “The girls . . . when they’re six . . . it’s not pretty.”
How old are you, bambina? Where is your momma, your poppa?
Tor’s black eyes glazed. He stared at the empty fireplace like he could see the story he was telling played out in its shadowed depths. “Sometimes, only sometimes, the White Queen consents to her most favored Okhotnik. Sometimes after that there’s a baby, and sometimes, only sometimes, a special baby girl born. A princess. When she’s six, the Queen takes her. Then the Queen’s renewed, not just for a little while like with the other girls, but for a hundred years or more.”
“R-r-renewed?” Her hand stole toward the key.
“Oh, yeah.” He blinked furiously, like there was something in his eyes. “It’s not easy, being the Queen. She gets . . . hungry.” He shuddered again. “That’s why there’s huntsmen. They, and the Okhotniki, bring her things. To . . . eat.”
Oh, God. The cold was all through her now. The music below mounted another frenetic notch, a vibration running through the floor and the chair, rising up her spine.
This one’s heart is fiery.
You were dead. She ate the heart.
The apple, cut in half, its seeds forming a star. A flat medallion, sparking, a red stone in the middle—the only one with a jewel, because she was the Queen.
The others had medallions too, but they were plain. Plain silver, not-quite-round.
“You h-had one,” she whispered. “A n-n-n-necklace.” A huntsman. Bringing her things to eat.
“Since I was in the orphanage. I was an orphan,” he said. He was shaking now, his hands clamped on the chair’s arms. “I was—”
But whatever he would have said next was drowned in a crashing from below. The music rose on feedback-laced squeal, and the screaming started.
Cami grabbed for the key. Her fingers scraped the table, draped in shimmersilk, and Tor’s eyes rolled up into his head. Under the sudden chaos from below, the sound of the chair’s arms cracking as he heaved at them, struggling against something invisible, was only guessed-at, not heard.
She let out a high-pitched cry, lost under a wave of cracking that shuddered through the frame of the nightclub, and bolted for the door, the shimmersilk waving like seaweed as she ran.