So Silver Bright Page 9

“Naught I would say aloud, fer fear ye’d shove me back in th’ water.” Though it looked like he wanted to do much, much more—apparently she wasn’t the only one with her story written upon her features—Nate let go of her face and stepped back. “Ye need t’ change yer clothes again.”

  “Sudden dousings seem to be my specialty lately.” Bertie shivered from more than the cold. She retreated, as though the river’s clear currents were poison that would slough the skin from her bones, the lulling burble transformed into the tattling voices of Sedna’s minions. “Do you think the water will carry word of our whereabouts to the Sea Goddess?”

  Nate blanched. “We need t’ get away from th’ river right now. I should ha’e thought o’ that.” Taking her by the hand, he towed her through the trees separating them from the campfire, muttering all the while. “We need t’ douse th’ fire an’ pack th’ gear, move th’ campsite well away from th’ water—what in th’ name o’ all th’ hells?”

  Bertie had to step around him to see what had brought him to an abrupt halt. Waschbär and his ferret cohorts were conspicuously absent, and the unusual tranquility of the night was safeguarded by the fact that the four fairies’ mouths were gagged with rag-clots. Tied together and suspended precariously over the fire by a woman of Amazonian proportions, the fairies flailed their feet and squeaked incoherent warnings. Nate must have understood them better than she did.

  “Ha’e my back!”

  Nate drew his sword as he turned, trusting she would protect his blind side. Years of onstage sparring had honed Bertie’s fighting instincts, and she fell in behind him, fists raised. Thirty or so shadows approached from all sides: men and women both, dressed in shades of midnight and onyx, strapped with weapons from ankle to armpit, a few with gold teeth winking in wide smiles. The largest of them leapt at Nate, wielding a knife that flashed silver-red in the firelight.

  Taking advantage of Bertie’s distraction, a beefy-armed man twice her age and weight reached out and snagged her roughly by the elbow.

  “Mind your manners,” he admonished her with a leer.

  “Mind this,” Bertie countered as her solid right hook broke his nose with a sickly satisfying crunch. Before she could process the small victory, another arm clamped about her waist and a knife was laid alongside her neck. The world constricted to approximately six inches of incredibly, horrifyingly cold metal.

  “Don’t move, if you please, or I’ll slit your throat,” instructed a husky voice. Bertie’s captor swung her around to see a new opponent jab the butt end of a gnarled walking stick into Nate’s barely healed wound. With a roar, the pirate rushed him, and the two fell arse over teakettle into the dirt.

  “He’s a talented fighter,” Bertie’s dance partner murmured, his breath smelling of tooth rot and smoked meat. “Pity he didn’t teach you a trick or two.”

  There he’s very much mistaken.

  She followed the thought with an elbow to her captor’s gut and a well-placed stamp upon the tiny bones atop his foot. The man holding her hostage retaliated by grasping a handful of her wet silver hair and snapping her head back to expose her neck.

  Not, Bertie noted through the red haze of shock and pain at being handled in such a brutal fashion, the way any of the Players would have reacted.

  There will be no mustache twirling with this lot.

  “I ought to slit your throat and have done with it,” her attacker said, digging the tip of his blade in deep enough to bring a whimper to her lips, and the warm trickle that followed indicated he’d drawn blood. “Suppose you change my mind by calling off your hound?”

  “Nate,” Bertie croaked in compliance.

  Heeding her voice, he turned, giving his opponent the advantage. In seconds, the pirate was eating a mouthful of dirt, a boot grinding into his back. His struggles ceased the moment he saw the knife to Bertie’s throat, his body going deadly still as his gaze flickered around the clearing.

  By then Mustardseed had eaten through his gag. “We tried to warn you!”

  “But the big one got the drop on us!” Cobweb squeaked seconds later.

  “Shut up, you!” The lady brigand reeled the fairies into her hand and gave them a squeeze. Moth’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head with the pressure, and Peaseblossom’s face turned as pink as her namesake.

  Forgetting she was in no position to issue orders, Bertie barked, “Stop that!”

  The woman paused in her tender ministrations, eyes shifting to her Leader before her boa constrictor grip upon the fairies resumed.

  Though they’d been tiny, fluttering menaces for all the years Bertie had known them, she had never before stopped to consider what delicate bones her friends must have: hollow, like a bird’s, and snapped as easily as campfire kindling. Their struggles began to subside, most likely due to lack of oxygen, and Bertie’s fears reached up her throat to similarly choke her. “Make her stop; she’ll kill them!”

  “Nothing wrong with a bit of incentive, is there?” With his hands still gripping Bertie’s hair, the brigands’ Leader dragged her closer to the fire.

  She wished she could spit in his eye but was fairly certain that, if she attempted it, all she’d do is spatter her own face and perhaps enrage her captor enough to make good his throat-slitting threat. “Just take what you want and go.”

  “Thank you kindly, we’ll do just that,” he responded, “the moment you give us the journal.”

  Bertie stiffened, wishing she could lie but knowing her utter lack of guile would appear upon her face. Still, she attempted it. “What journal?”

  “Don’t play coy. You were seen with it in the Caravanserai.”

  Damn. She’d only taken it from Waschbär’s pack for a few seconds, but apparently that had been enough.

  That didn’t mean she would admit it, though. “You must be mistaking me for someone else with silver hair.” The lie felt slick on Bertie’s mouth and added another thin layer to her new mask.

  The man holding her didn’t speak, didn’t smile, giving no warning before he released her hair and used that same hand to slap her hard across the face. A rippling cascade of pain accompanied the fresh batch of starry tears that fell through Bertie’s field of vision, the diamond-brilliant bits pouring from her eyes and pattering into the dirt at her feet.

  “Coo, would you look at that?” The lady brigand started to move forward.

  “Remember what we were hired to do, if you please,” the Leader snarled at her, and the woman leapt back as though scorched. When he returned his attention to Bertie, his features were fragmented into kaleidoscope patterns by her tears. “Perhaps you’d like to consider the difference between stubborn and stupid now?”

  “Don’t tell him a damn thing—” Nate started to protest before the dirt filled his mouth once more. Not settling for the mud gargle, the brigand standing atop him pulled back his boot and kicked Nate hard in the ribs, just where Bertie’s arrow had hit him. Curling over himself, the pirate groaned and went deathly pale.

  “Bertie!” Her name was a fire engine’s wail on Mustardseed’s and Cobweb’s lips as the lady brigand held their boots to the flames. Moth was goggle-eyed with fear, and Peaseblossom had passed out completely, hanging limp from her bindings. Even when the tips of her tiny wings began to curl up and smoke at the edges, her eyelids didn’t so much as flutter.

  Bile boiled up the back of Bertie’s throat, and she blurted, “It’s in Waschbär’s knapsack!”

  Her confession prompted the Leader to hold up one finger, and the female brigand lifted the fairies infinitesimally. Tiny droplets of sweat rolled down the sides of the boys’ faces, dropping onto the fire with minute sizzles. Peaseblossom still didn’t move. Bertie couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, and she couldn’t answer when the Leader put his nose inches from her own and murmured, “So the hairy little turncoat now travels with you. That’s an interesting development.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A Fair Hot Wench in Flame-Colour’d Taffeta

  “Did you
not part on good terms then?” Bertie demanded with as much insolence as she could muster under the circumstances, which lay somewhere between not much and none at all.

  A single nod of his head brought the fairies back within flames’ reach.

  “I’m the one asking the questions right now,” the brigands’ Leader said, his voice hardly audible over the crackle of the fire and Bertie’s heartbeat hammering in her ears. “Just where might his knapsack be?”

  “Atop the caravan,” she managed, but just barely.

  “Unlikely that the sneak-thief would part with his treasures, and yet you’ve little to gain by lying to me right now.” The Leader jerked his chin, and three brigands scaled the sides of the troupe’s conveyance with the stealth of ninja assassins. Tossing the travel-scarred bag from person to person, they delivered it with impossible speed to their Leader, who held it out to Bertie. “If you please.”

  She wanted to sound as defiant and rude as the fairies at their worst, but couldn’t manage it, not with three sets of pleading eyes upon her. Not with Peaseblossom looking like a rose petal crushed under a careless foot. “Why me?”

  “In case you’ve any tricks up your dainty sleeve.”

  Bertie wrenched open the bag. Rummaging about in search of the silk-wrapped notebook, her fingertips brushed over the heavy ring set with an opal and a glass vial containing sand before her hand closed around the wicked-sharp blade of the obsidian knife.

  Telltale murderous thoughts must have flickered over Bertie’s features. The brigands’ Leader clasped her wrist and twisted the weapon from her grasp before she could finish entertaining the thought of plunging it into his right eye. The stone sliver landed in the grass alongside her diamond-tears, its crimson ribbon trailing away with an eerie suggestion of blood spilled.

  “Our little mouse thinks to attack the lion,” he said, prompting a slosh of laughter from his cohorts. “Try again.”

  This time, Bertie extracted the journal on the first try. “Take it and be damned—” Before she could finish, before she could so much as blink, it was gone from her hands.

  “Such a small thing to be so very wanted.” The brigand Leader removed the protective silk to confirm his quarry. Tucking the journal into an unseen pocket, he let the scrap of fabric flutter to the ground.

  “It was certainly an unwanted thing when Waschbär took it,” Bertie said with a flare of temper. In response, the lady brigand lowered the fairies until the campfire flames tickled their toes. As the boys screeched, Bertie wished she could make their captors spontaneously combust. “Unlike some, he follows a code of honor!”

  “But how charming that you think of him so highly!” the Leader chortled with true amusement, the sort reserved for a child who insists the grass is purple and the clouds made of cotton candy. “I would have the location of our former comrade.”

  “Believe me when I say I haven’t the foggiest clue where he’s gone.” She might have said much more and peppered the diatribe with curses, save the barest stirring of the wind caused Bertie’s breath to catch in her throat.

  Ariel?

  After a long moment, it blew again, breeze enough to fan the fire and move the hair along the nape of her neck. And how she wished for him to manifest, to appear overhead like some avenging angel intent upon smiting …

  Lots and lots of smiting!

  … except this time, the wind was merely the wind, no precursor to the air elemental’s entrance. Moments passed before Bertie realized that he wasn’t coming, that he hadn’t somehow sensed she was in danger and raced to her side. Her disappointment brought more pain than the brigand’s second deliberate blow to her cheek.

  “As you said yourself,” she said with a choking sort of sob, “there’s no use lying to you right now.”

  After a long moment, the Leader nodded to his companions. The woman holding the fairies dropped them, thankfully not into the fire, but onto a patch of weeds. The man responsible for wounding Nate took the pirate’s sword as his prize. The others rushed forward to gather the “diamonds” from the dirt and strip the boxes and bags from the caravan. Bertie made no sound of protest when they pulled out Valentijn’s parting gift of clothing, nor when they found what remained of the Mistress of Revels’s gold coin belt, nor when the fairies’ hatbox theater was pitched atop the fire with malicious glee. Within minutes, the cart stood as barren as a vulture-pecked carcass, and Bertie was left holding only Waschbär’s knapsack.

  “Oughtn’t we have that as well?” the lady brigand suggested with a greedy gleam in her eye.

  “The contents are unwanted things, even by the likes of us,” the Leader responded with a mocking sort of bow. “We got what we came for. It’s time to take our leave.”

  Their exit was something to behold, for they didn’t so much depart as melt into the night, disappearing around trees and ducking between the places rendered silver by moonlight. The Players at the theater couldn’t have managed better, not even with their trapdoors and folding screens, but Bertie didn’t pause to appreciate the subtle dexterity of it. Instead, she leapt forward to scoop up the fairies in both hands.

  “Stop wiggling!” Something in her voice prompted the boys to obey. Releasing them from the twine was the easy bit; seeing Peaseblossom laying limp in her palm after the boys flitted free was not.

  Subdued by the sight of their fallen comrade, Mustardseed, Moth, and Cobweb landed on Bertie’s shoulders, neither pleading nor screeching their concerns. As she lifted Peaseblossom to her cheek, the boys pulled their elfin caps off, leaving their hair to poke in every which direction. Cobweb sniffed mightily, Mustardseed didn’t even heed the tears already rolling down his cheeks, and Moth twisted his little hat so hard that he ripped it right in two.

  “Oh, Pease.” Bertie stroked a finger over her tiny friend. “Don’t be—” She couldn’t say it. Saying it might make it so.

  A hand clamped down upon her shoulder, but the rasp of Nate’s voice accompanied it. “Steady there.” He had his other hand pressed to his side, and his face was more than a bit bloodied by the brawl. “She’s not—”

  “No.” Bertie shook her head until she was dizzy. “She can’t be.” But the slight movement caused Peaseblossom’s singed wings to crumble to ash.

  “Shouldn’t someone clap?” Mustardseed asked, wiping his eyes and nose on his sleeve. “Clap if we believe?”

  “Clap if you think it will do any damn good,” Bertie said, cupping her hand around Peaseblossom. “But if the fire took her from us, the fire can jolly well give her back.”

  Easier if the fire was a person from whom she could wring such a favor. Bertie reached into Waschbär’s bag, stirring its contents with her hand until she located the opal ring. Turning toward the dying red and gold flames, she tried to imagine the woman who would wear a piece of jewelry such as this. Once sparked, a story not her own poured out of her mouth with the hiss and pop of the burning wood:

  Lava-born, she waits in the heart of a great volcano. Bloodred toe shoes adorn her feet, salamanders slide down her skin to encircle her throat and form a glowing necklace, and her eyes glitter black from edge to edge.

  * * *

  Someone else had put pen to paper to write the description, and a whiff of thin silk and wood, of whiskey and cigarette smoke accompanied it. Before Bertie could place the scents, so tantalizing in their familiarity, the suggestion of a woman emerged from the opal. No more than a wisp of smoke, the curious apparition instantly wavered and began to dissipate. Bertie hastily fed the image bits of her soul: meaningless memories that were oak twigs and dry pine needles, painful ones that were sap-covered branches eagerly devoured by the flames. Though she didn’t want to recall the Scrimshander, Bertie nevertheless conjured the memory of flight, of gliding with him upon the wind, the feel of feathers upon her arms, and the ability to soar from the darkness as a bird. Nearly intoxicated by the remembrance, she called the winds to her, directed them at the woman standing before her.

  Strengthened, the
fire-dancer took several hesitant steps until she stood in the very heart of the campfire. Midsummer lightning suddenly filled the night sky, and apple trees encircled the campsite. Everything burned, from the boughs overhead to the shiny volcanic pebbles that skittered underfoot to the tiny scrap of light, a bit of iridescent nothing with glowing wings that sat upon the fire-dancer’s shoulder.

  “This isn’t some ungodly vision, is it?” Bertie, still cradling Peaseblossom’s limp form, whispered to Nate. “You see her, don’t you?”

  “Aye, I can see her.” Nate didn’t sound at all happy about it, not that Bertie could blame him. “An’ Peaseblossom, too.”

  That was all the confirmation Bertie needed. She held out her hand to the newcomer, though the rolling heat exuding from the woman curled the tiny hairs upon Bertie’s arm. “Please give back my friend.”

  The fire-dancer stood, quiet, unmoving save for the softly flaming tendrils of hair that snaked over her shoulders.

  Recalling the ring, Bertie held it out. “I would trade something for her—”

  With an ear-piercing shriek, the fire-dancer leapt out of the flames, enveloping everyone in a cloud of smoke and cinders and ash. Burning fingers grasped at the ring, scrabbling over Bertie’s skin; pain spread up her arm, as though a blacksmith had replaced her very bones with glowing iron rods.

  But the tiny lustrous thing on the fire-dancer’s shoulder was now within reach. Bertie snatched at Peaseblossom’s shimmering doppelgänger while the air swirling about her thickened, gray and choking—

  I seem to have a knack for asphyxiating.…

  —and just when she thought she might suck the smoke into her lungs and die, Bertie summoned the magic of sap running through tree veins, clapped her hands together, and forced the fairy’s soul back into her body. An explosion of light and heat and color knocked Bertie flat on her backside, arms akimbo, rendered nearly deaf and blind for several agonizing seconds.

  “Pease?” The name was a gasp as Bertie’s lungs yet burned. A moment later, a tiny ball of light traveling at approximately one hundred miles per hour hit her directly in the chest. Embracing a fully restored Peaseblossom, Bertie wished there was a way to hug her friend harder without squashing her flat, then gently grasped the fairy and raised her to nose level. “Don’t you ever die on me again!”