Page 37 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire
The uncertainty slips from his features to be replaced by his usual showman’s smile, but I saw it, clear as daylight.
“Let’s simply agree that you have your reasons for this journey, and I have mine,” he says.
I chew the inside of my lip. He knows my purpose, while I knownothing of his. The ghostly hand of unease brushes over my skin, but I nod. We do not need to understand each other to survive. Perhaps it’s better this way.
“Lead on,” I tell him.
The next stretch of our trek is uneventful, but my answers to his silly questions grow longer and have less bite. Neirin shares his court’s gossip. I tell him about the cost of bread and milk in the shop where I no longer work.
“You’ll not go back there, will you?” he asks.
“They wouldn’t have me.” I shrug. “The scandal of my vanishing will ruin my prospects—well, finish them off, really.”
“Tell me more about your village.”
I’m not used to being asked so many questions, nor being listened to. He collects all the answers I give as if they’re rare books he’s hungry to read. It’s strange but not unpleasant.
“All we have is a few shops, a pub and a mine, really.”
“A mine?” His voice piques with recognition, but of what, I don’t know.
“An underground tunnel system of sorts, where they dig up coal.”
“Those are vile places, are they not?”
I consider his question for a little too long, and when I answer, my face twitches. “They’re not pleasant, but we need them. Near enough every man in my valley worked down the mine. My dad started when he was a boy.”
Neirin hums low in his throat. “How sad.”
“People don’t work hard jobs here?”
“I—” His brows shoot up, then fall low, furrowing in thought. “I assume they don’t. We have magic; things don’t need to be as hard as all that. Well,someof us have magic, anyway.”
“There were servants in the palace whose work seemed no different from what I’ve seen at home.”
“They’re well paid.”
Maybe he thinks the teg are more evolved than humans—that their world is better—but it’s clear that there are still people at the top and people at the bottom. Neirin, though under the thumb of the king, is clearly closer to the top. I wouldn’t expect him to understand.
After a few hours, the forest grows darker, denser. The deeper we go, the higher the trees become, until any light disappears, and the weather turns angry, like the further we get from the palace, the less controlled the land becomes. Rain soaks through my coat and into my hair, but that’s nothing until the wind picks up. Roots stick up at jagged angles, ready to trip and break limbs. My newly sighted eyes search the forest for movement, for any sign of the teg. A yowl pierces the quiet, but all I catch is a glimpse of three white, feline tails attached to one body, disappearing behind a tree. It’s far larger than a house cat, and the tree’s too thin to hide it properly, but the creature vanishes entirely. It never rounds the other side.
Light finally appears on the horizon, beckoning us forward until we emerge from the forest into a small clearing. A cottage sits alone in the patch of dry, dying grass. The building is made of slate, with a thatched roof, a chimney billowing smoke and curtains drawn over every window. A large wooden door dominates the front of the building, bearing a heavy brass knocker shaped like an eagle’s claw.
The claw holds a glass eye. Or, at least, I think it’s glass—until the eye swivels to gaze upon me with a green iris that looks a little too like my own to be an accident. It’s gooey. Wet.
I flinch, but Neirin reaches for it without a second thought and drops the great brass weight like a stone.
The eye blinks. Barbed silence blankets the clearing. Even birds cease their singing. Then a long, dragging creak pierces the quiet, and the door opens by itself.
I start, and Neirin laughs. I let out a sharp breath and shove the door open further, even though that’s the very last thing I want to do. Neirin doesn’t get to see me scared. I take a firm step over thethreshold and sweep my arm to welcome him inside, as if it’s my own house.
Neirin bows, playing along, and follows me.
The cottage is a maze of tight corridors, sharp turns and walls that sit ill at ease with the uneven, groaning floors and ceilings. Shelves border every path, laden with trinkets and oddities: rabbits’ feet and fennel, stones and statues and parting glasses. Threadbare rugs from worlds away muffle our steps, and spices and herbs brew in the air, shaken loose from the bushels of dried plants that brush our heads. The very walls, it feels, are listening to us, and waiting.
“Peg?” Neirin calls.
The house shifts, adjusting to our presence, until a door creaks open at the end of the winding corridor. I almost lurch toward Neirin but manage to hold back, clenching my fists at my side instead. The scent of rancid, cooking meat leaks out, and my nose wrinkles. Neirin hisses, then rubs his hands together as if the skin is irritated.
