The cart driver came round to the back to let down the gate, and I jumped down frog legged. I kept up the tale of my sick aunt, although I knew by now that he didn’t believe me. He stared into my face from under beetled brows but did not question me out loud. Why should he care if I was running away, or had got myself into mischief? “Be careful,” was all he said.
I was picking bits of hay out of my clothes for a good hour afterward.
So. The city. It wasn’t anywhere near as frightening as I had imagined—not because it wasn’t enormous, loud, and stinking, because it was all three of those things, but because its enormousness meant I was near invisible. No one gave me so much as a glance.
I wandered upward, because that was the only way I knew to go, scratching at the hay rash on my arms and legs, and had a good look at the place as I went. I knew the city was meant to be full of cutpurses and murderers, but I had no purse to cut and, honestly, being murdered might at that point have been a relief, so I didn’t trouble myself overly.
At first, I was in the outskirts, where the poorer people lived; I could tell. The roads all sloped upward, and if I squinted, I could see greenery and white walls farther uphill. The king was in his castle at the very top of the hill, and everyone else spiraled out neatly in their correct order, nobles and sorceresses and merchants and poor folk, down to the beggars who squatted right against the city’s outer walls.
As I climbed, the smell of shite about the lower levels gave way to the scent of fruit from the trees that lined the streets, and of the city’s blooming flowers that clambered over every wall, great fat things with too many petals, like women wearing all their best clothes at once.
The uphill wasn’t kind to my tired legs, but the pulling at my ribs drew me forward, like a toddler hanging onto my hand and dragging me on to show me a favorite toy. The pull became more and more enthusiastic as we drew closer. I was panting already from the climb, and this didn’t help.
About halfway up, where the houses were neat but small, I came upon a pebbled market square. I didn’t look too closely at the items for sale, because I was so preoccupied with my journey to the sorcerer, but there were definitely more frills and furbelows and sparklies than there would be at the market back home. There didn’t seem to be any shortage of produce either, and I wondered about what I had overheard in the pub about the magic-workers and their orders.
A man sitting at a stall covered with scrolls and papers and a sign saying “Letters Read and Written,” peered at me over his wire-rimmed spectacles. Before I could walk over to him, though, there was a commotion in the middle of the market that immediately threw the whole place into chaos. A crowd clustered all about something in its center, drawing yet more people as they spotted the drama and wanted to join in.
Folks were the same everywhere, it seemed: willing to postpone just about anything to get a bit of gossip. I wanted a rest, and so I propped myself against a dried-up stone fountain and watched the show.
There was a lot of scuffling and grunting from the group. The crowd parted for a moment to show two men fighting in the center, with their arms on each other’s shoulders, staring, red-faced and panting, into one another’s eyes as each tried to wrestle free. They looked like two sweethearts clenched in a dance.
Some of the spectators were egging them on, others begging them to stop. It was the usual drama you’d see outside a pub any day of the week. Or so I thought.
“Gerroff!” one of the men was saying indistinctly through his puffed-up lips. He must have taken a punch or two.
“Gimme!” said the other.
I watched with interest to see what trifling object they were fighting over. One of the men had his fist tightly clasped at his side, and so probably had the thing, whatever it was. The crowd was milling about so much that it was hard to see.
“It’s not yours!” said the first man, sounding like a child whose favorite toy had been taken away. They wrestled again, and the crowd shouted around them, and something came skittering out of the second man’s hand across the cobblestones. It made its way almost to my feet, as if seeking the one spot of calm in all the chaos. I could almost see it shaking its head.Can you believe all that fuss?it was saying.
No one seemed to notice that the object of all that bother had made its escape. The crowd still cheered the two on as if they were in a boxing match. I bent down and picked up the Thing.
It was wizened as a peach pit and about the same size, but softer, misshapen. Clearly pickled or dried. Some kind of preserved fruit, maybe? It reminded me of something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. There was a faint squish to it between my fingers, and it gave off a dry puff of powder when squeezed.
I had no idea why it was important, but no one had noticed it was missing. And if it was worth a street brawl, maybe it would help me barter, bargain, or bribe. I put the thing in my skirt pocket and glanced at the commotion, which had not halted a bit.
I almost wanted to stay and see their reactions when their precious object was found missing, but the urge to find the sorcerer tugged me on and upward, through the spiraling streets.
Higher up I went, and higher still. The houses here were whitewashed, with glass windows and wrought-iron gates through which I saw gardens or tiled floors. These gave way to even larger buildings, made of stone, with great doors twice the height of a man, and offering no glimpses inside at all, as if the valuables within made the houses close themselves up all tight and unfriendly.
I had expected that the houses would grow grander and larger as I wound my way up to the palace—and they did—but they also became stranger. No longer whitewashed plaster or stone, they were instead of odd, outlandish materials, strangely colored.
One looked to be made all of mirror; another of a smooth, flatly gleaming green stone. One was stained glass, patterned all over with birds and foliage; and another was luminescent and pearly, which yielded gently to my fingers when I dared to touch it, like the faint ripeness of a plum. These were magic materials, clearly, which meant I was getting close.
When I came to the sorcerer’s house, I knew it at once. It was made of that same black, shiny stuff as his carriage had been, smooth as glass. When I ran my hand over the wall, it left no grease or fingerprints, despite my hands being dirty and slippery with sweat.
So. I was here at last. I plumped myself down for a moment, my back against the shining wall, to catch my breath. There were few passersby up here, and they walked with urgency, barely glancing left or right and certainly not down at the girl in the gutter, so I felt safe enough taking a breather. I was proud of myself, I have to say, for making it all the way to the city by myself—a journey that so few from my village had ever taken.
When I felt well enough to stand, I made my way along the shining black to what looked like the gate. It was set flush into the wall, with no knob or knocker or anything announcing its presence, except a line as thin as a hair that traced its outline.
I probably wouldn’t even have noticed the door if it hadn’t been for the spell on me, which was practically jumping up and down by now, so eager was it to get inside. I was all set to rap my knuckles against the door, but it swung open as I approached, making no sound at all, the gap just wide enough for me to squeeze through.
The door was a good three feet thick, it turned out, all in that same featureless black stone. I found myself standing in an open-air space and staring at another door across the way, this one leading into the house itself.
The sorcerer either had a great love of that black stuff or very little imagination, or both, because everything out here was made out of it: the courtyard tiles, the fountains (although the water appeared to be of the usual sort), the house itself with its great front door.
He’d set dark jewels here and there—they never could resist a shiny, these magic-workers—but for the most part, it was that same expressionless, smooth, smothering blackness.
