Page 13 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire
I hold her gaze for a moment. I think of the thousands of ways we’ve devised to be remembered after death. Marble statues, lengthy poems, street names. Mausoleums like the Branshaws’, where generations of great men lie, plumped with embalming fluid, still trying to stay the forward march of time. There truly is no greater prize for a people made of slow-rotting flesh and grave dirt.
“Ceridwen will ask for immortality so that we can stay together,” Morgen says.
I fix her with a hard stare. “And your king needs a champion because…?”
“Y Lle Tywyll.” Morgen balances her chin on her folded arms.
“The Dark Place?”
She nods, and rivulets of water splatter my shoes. “No one knows what it is. It’s seeping into the land. Fairies die when we go down there, so the king needs humans—and Duw, don’t ask me why, I can see your mouth moving already, I don’t know. All I know is that one of the worst tricksters in the land sold Ceridwen some snake oil about becoming the champion and winning her immortality.”
“A trickster?” I say. “Like a pwca?”
She opens her mouth, closes it again, like she’s wrestling with a lump stuck in her throat. It doesn’t make it out. She only winces and shrugs.
“Something like that.”
I’m again filled with a slow-boiling anger. Ceridwen should know better than to involve herself in the games of our supposedbetters; she’s warned me as much when I’ve tried to challenge John Branshaw. I hesitate at the water’s edge, looking around at the endless forest. Going west has led me to Morgen, but whether the King’s Road is in the same direction, I have no idea.
“Which way?” I ask.
Morgen points across the river. North, then.
“I’m not swimming it.”
“I’m not asking you to. There’s a bridge a little over that way—I’ll swim alongside you until you reach it, but after that”—Morgen exhales through her nose—“I can’t follow. The path is too far from water. But you have a sharp thing, stolen from your sister. Ceridwen says you have another very sharp thing in your head, though I’m yet to see evidence. Use both.”
I turn over my hand and look at Ceridwen’s ring on my finger, drawing a tight breath.
It finally hits me: my sister has an entire secret life. I expect my rage to simmer higher, but it’s sadness I find, deep in the pit of my stomach. A seeping misery that grows at the knowledge that Ceridwen did not share herself with me when I offered up everything to her on a chipped and overused plate.
Morgen observes my silence with a tilted head. “You remind me of Ceridwen, but something in your face—”
“My nose is bigger,” I bite off. “I’ve been told.”
Morgen frowns. “I was going to say your mouth is crueler.”
I offer a smile that’s more like a grimace. “That’s been said about my tongue, too.”
Morgen pushes off from the bank and begins swimming with a slow elegance, then looks back. She expects me to follow her and I do, with a plan ticking away like a clock in my head—one that does not involve trusting my sister’s secret lover.
6
y celwyddog yn y goeden
(THE LIAR IN THE TREE)
We part at the bridge. It’s little more than a few rocks that have landed too close together, wobbling beneath my feet and coated with enough algae to make each step unpleasantly slippery. Morgen bobs in the water and points a webbed hand toward the dark wall of trees.
“The King’s Road is a few minutes’ walk that way. Stay on it. You’ll be at the court in a day’s time, providing you stop and rest just the once. The king will then send you on to Y Lle Tywyll.”
Her other hand shoots up and clasps my boot. I think she’s going to pull me in, but when I look down, she only stares up at me with wide, pale eyes.
“She won’t be far ahead.You must go after her.”
That part of my task had been unspoken. I knew from the moment Morgen said Ceridwen had taken this stupid challenge I would be going in after her.
“Bring her back to me.”
