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Fuck. Heads turned around me, too many of them to keep count; conversations stilled with ominous swiftness.Fae gold.Stone or mud, enchanted to fool mortals but guaranteed to turn back to worthless dust the next morning – hadn’t we all heard the stories about it? Only now did I realise the myth didn’t make the least sense, not if yellow magic could just as easily turn earth into gold permanently … but good gods, how was I going to convince a horde of sceptical humans of that?
It wouldn’t help me anyway. Halbert’s pawn would just accuse me of using yellow magic instead, and that was equally forbidden.
‘Wait,’ the pipe-smoking merchant said, every trace of his scruffy grin vanished as he looked back and forth between me and the bearded man closing in on us. ‘You’re thefae girl?’
Was there any sense in denying it?
‘Um, yes.’ The glares around me were too sharp. Why in hell had I sent Alyra away – why had I been so stupidly thoughtless to venture so far away from the White Hall on my own? ‘But thegold is true gold, on my word. The consuls asked me not to use magic, so—’
‘Isawit,’ my accuser bellowed again, drowning out my stammered defence.Deliberatelydrawing attention, I realised – making sure that every single person in our vicinity knew exactly what was going on. ‘Those werepebblesyou pulled from your purse. How dare you come here and dupe our honest traders! Is that how you repay our hospitality?’
Oh,fuck.
What to do? What to say? I could tell them I was unable to use yellow magic without draining the colour elsewhere, and since no such thing had happened, clearly I had to be innocent – but I knew how much the average human knew about magic. My argument would have to come with a lecture, and no one would care about it. Which meant …
I had to use what they knew.
I had to use allIhad known, a few feeble months ago.
‘The light must have fooled you,’ I said, and bless years upon years of pretending I was doing just fine; it came out with all the slightly amused surprise of a spotless conscience. My mind was a whirlwind, combing through twenty years of human memories. ‘Why in the world would I come here and start using fae tricks against you all of a sudden? I’m trying tofightthem, not spread their evil.’
Disconcerted murmurs thickened around me. Bystanders inched backwards, ushering their children out of my reach. It left me and my accuser opposite each other, five feet between us, like professional wrestlers about to pounce on each other; only the merchant and his half-wrapped astrolabe remained close, caught with us within the bounds of that artificial arena. The gold lay before him, untouched.
‘I know a pebble when I see one, Miss,’ the broad-shouldered man growled, and around him, the whispers seemed to agree –surely no one could mistake that fat, gleaming gold for stone if it hadn’tbeenstone a minute ago?
As Halbert had imagined, no doubt. After all, who would hand over the city’s resources to a suspected liar and thief?
If I hadn’t been so furious, I might have appreciated the ingenuity of it.
‘Well,’ the merchant started, calloused hands pulling the first linen strip off the astrolabe. Ready to put it back between his wares. Ready to send me off. ‘In that case—’
Oh, damn it all.
I took the leap.
‘Does anyone have any iron to hand, then?’ I interrupted, making sure to weave just a hint of laughter into my voice.A silly misunderstanding, I willed my tone to say.We’ll have it cleared up in a moment. ‘Just a little bit will do – a nail or a key is plenty.’
Several dozen pairs of dumbfounded eyes stared back at me mutely.
‘Oh, come on.’ I threw a guileless glance around – the height of righteous innocence. I almost started believing myself. ‘Someone must have some iron on them, yes? There’s no reason why we should stand here bickering if we can very easily put the accusation to the test.’
‘Iron …’ a young woman whispered behind me, loud enough to be heard by most of the group. ‘Because it blocks fae magic?’
As I had once believed. As we hadallbelieved, betting our lives on that stupid ward around the island.
‘Yes, of course,’ I said brightly. ‘Best way to distinguish fae gold from true gold – didn’t you know?’
Andthatthey could accept. I could see it in the nods around me, hesitant but without much suspicion: close enough to common human wisdom, to the rules of the world as they knew it. My opponent had gone quiet – stunned into paralysis. Did heknow that I was lying through my teeth, or did he believe in the anti-magic properties of iron himself?
Either way, he had to know what was about to happen.
‘I’ve got a key!’ a red-haired young man announced with the triumphant aplomb of an investigator solving a murder, holding out the object in question. ‘Pure iron, I’m pretty sure!’
‘Wonderful,’ I said and beamed at him. ‘Would you mind just tapping it against the coins a couple of times? If they’re enchanted, that should break the spell immediately.’
I could not have wished for a better assistant: he fulfilled the task with a theatrical exaggeration that drew some sniggers from the audience even before the iron made contact, touching key to gold with a dramatic flourish and a loud clink. And a second touch. A third. The gold continued to gleam smooth and buttery in the sunlight, spectacularly unaffected.
‘That settles it, doesn’t it?’ I said before my opponent could speak a word, and it was all I could do to keep looking like I hadn’t worried for a minute as the murmurs around me turned relieved and approving. ‘Must have been the light.’
