“What’s that?” said Cornelius. I held it out for him to get a proper sniff.
“Pig, I think,” he said, with the air of a connoisseur. I knew it. I marched back to the throne room and found Sylvester hunched over on the throne with his elbows on his knees, glaring straight ahead.
“I was told to give you these,” I said. I held the bag of pig hearts out to show him. He barely gave it a glance.
“Useless. The man was a fool to be fobbed off with such.” He sighed. “Which reminds me. Our visitor bought my last potion. We may have to go out.”
“Goout?” I imagined sitting beside him as he rolled into another village in his grand carriage, watching him snatch up another unsuspecting maiden. Did he really expect me to help him gather up hearts?
“To the market,” he said, much to my relief.
“What do you need from the market that you can’t magic up at home? The fruit bowl fills itself quick as blinking if I so much as think about an apple.”
“Some things can’t be magicked,” he said. “Or lose their efficacy if you try.”
“Like what?”
“Certain herbs, tinctures ... Even the magical food needs to be supplemented with the real stuff from time to time. Eating nothing but magic tends to make one a bit sickly over time.”
“Is that why you lot come out to get those things from the villages?” I had thought it was just a pretense.
“Sometimes.”
“But I thought all you needed for your magic was a heart.”
To my surprise, he seemed uncomfortable. He conjured one of his little fireballs and started flickering it between his fingers, as practiced as a street magician. “Well, that’s notallwe need,” he said, rather sharply.
He straightened up suddenly, his clothes shimmering around him, and quick as blinking, he seemed dressed for travel: the heavy, many-caped cloak he now wore looked to be made of leather, and his boots were sturdier and squarer of toe than the ones he usually sported. (I had noticed that he had a particular vanity about his shoes, which were often the most extravagant part of his dress.) “You will accompany me to the market,” he said, still short in tone.
To fetch and carry, I supposed. I looked down at my clothes. Even though the fabric was richer than anything I owned back home, they weren’t best suited to a city outing.
As if reading my mind, the sorcerer made a gesture with one hand, and I felt the garments scramble around my body like cats after a mouse. The metallic scent of magic filled my lungs.
In a panic, I yelped and tried to hold the fabric down to cover myself as best I could, but I needn’t have worried—as quickly as the old clothes slithered off my body and raced away like shadows, new ones spiraled up my legs like vines and wrapped themselves around me, leaving no room for nakedness in between.
“You could have warned me!” I snapped. The new garments were heavy, made of something like velvet but with a finer nap, warm and close-fitting. Glancing down, I could see a row of gold buttons and some intricate embroidery on the placket.
I wondered how much of a fright I looked—a butcher’s daughter dressed up like a fine lady. There were no mirrors in the sorcerer’s House other than the one in his sister’s boudoir, and none had been provided me—perhaps because they were the last things I would wish for.
The sorcerer seemed satisfied with my appearance, however. “Come,” he said simply, and swept past me in a gust of cinnamon and copper-scented air, into the dark corridor.
Giddy from the magic and the nearness of him, I could only follow, tripping over my new fancy skirt as I did so.
Outside was fresh and biting and bracing, with a wind full of city smells and the humming of city noise. I hadn’t realized how flat my senses had become inside the magical House, how deadened and dimmed.
Now, more than ever, I realized that nothing it produced was really real, andherewas the real stuff, the dazzling, stinking mess of it, ready to be swallowed down and spat back up with each breath.
The sorcerer looked back at me curiously. I must have looked like a landed fish, gasping and gulping there on the pavement.
“Come along,” he said, and turned on his heel.
I followed at a slight distance, struggling to match his pace. He noticed, I think, because he slowed a little, which made me feel like a dog trotting after his master.
I had enjoyed my anonymity in the city, but there was none of that now as I trailed behind the sorcerer. Eyes stared first at him, lingering on his beautiful face and fine clothes, and then passed to me, and widened.
I felt their gaze hot on my cheeks, and I kept my head down. I dreaded looking up and seeing pity on any face, even just one. I was pitiable, no doubt about that, but I didn’t want to be reminded of it.
“Keep up,” the sorcerer said over his shoulder. I made a face at his back.
