Outside was just as much of a shock as it had been earlier, but the nighttime smells were different from the day’s—at once stronger and more mysterious. I took a cautious breath. Despite bracing against it, I could tell already the heartsickness was setting in.
Not too badly, as yet. I could feel it nagging at me, like a child tugging at my skirts, but it was ignorable, not the all-encompassing, whole-body ailment it had been back in the village, thank the gods. I had a little time before it would set in again in full, it seemed.
I unfolded the paper.Oyster Lane.I had no map of the city and no way to find my path other than to ask the strangers who passed me in their hundreds—even at night, the city was bustling—and so I summoned up my courage and did so. I did not tell them the exact house for which I was searching, for fear it would have meaning to them, but I found that the street I sought was down in the lower reaches of the city, by the river, where the beggars sprawled against the outer walls.
Part of me enjoyed this expedition—and liked this new Foss. The sheer variety of faces that filled every street and alleyway made me realize how little feeling like the plainest girl in my tiny village mattered. I was just one more face in a crowd, and though far from the best of them, I was also a long way from being the worst.
It made me wonder whether I was really as bad as I had feared, or whether the whispers about my mother’s death had made me feel ugly and wrong out of proportion to the reality of myself.
Here, where no one knew that story, I in no way stood out from anyone else on the street. I found I liked being away from the gossip and the stares of people who had known me since I was a sprout, who knew every detail of my history and my family’s history, who thought they could predict all my movements and see my life spooling out ahead of me as clear and inevitable as a fairy story told so often that your mouth finds its shape without thought.
Here, no one cared anything about my life, much less had any visions for it. At home, all I’d had to look forward to was working in the shop and taking care of Da until he finally passed on, then running the place myself until I was too old and gray and had to take on an apprentice—or perhaps marry a widower who had passed the age of being fussy about trim figures and pretty faces, and only wished for someone to make his tea of an evening.
I shuddered to think of it, and then immediately felt guilt twist in my gut. How could I feel this surge of gladness at a life away from Da, who had loved and cherished and protected me since I was born? Aside from a wet-nurse right after my mother passed, he had refused to take on any help to care for me and did it all himself—all the nappies and nighttime wakings, all the hair-braiding and bandaging scuffed knees that came later.
And now I was enjoying a life without him, while he worried about me? I should be ashamed of myself.
I did not want to walk for too long, lest my time run out, and so I paid for a pony cart to take me down. The driver set me down as close to my destination as I dared, since I did not want anyone to know exactly where I was going.
I found myself almost by the city walls in a dank row of houses beside a river that smelled as badly as old Dav’s fish stand.
The heartsickness was a larger presence now, twisting my guts as though I had eaten something that disagreed with me. I hoped that my relative closeness to the sorcerer would keep it from becoming debilitating before I had a chance to learn what I could.
I was no idiot, whatever else I might have been. Nothing going on in an alley like this could be good. But my feet were killing my lower half, and the exquisite pain in my chest from being away from the sorcerer was starting to niggle at my upper half, and I had to do something if I didn’t want to live in his House forever, making his meals and drooling over his pretty cheekbones. So I found the right door and knocked.
The man who answered was the scribe from the market—Basil.
“You came,” he said, as if that weren’t obvious. He darted a look down the street, first one way and then the other. I tried not to roll my eyes. If this was nothing more than some sort of secret society devoted to rumor and speculation about the magic-workers (I refused to give them capital letters, even in my thoughts), I would be tempted to turn on my heel and march back up the hill. My borrowed time was too precious to waste.
He creaked open the door to reveal a room that had probably been a tavern once, with a long, low counter and wooden stools around a handful of tables, the ubiquitous royal portrait glaring down from above the bar. Some of the stools had been drawn into a circle. On the counter were cups, a small pitcher of wine, and some plates of bread and dried fish.
Secret society, just as I had feared. If I had braved the possibility of another bad bout of heartsickness just for a gossip circle, I’d feel like a fool.
Basil indicated a spare stool, and I sat, happy to take the weight from my feet. The others stared at me. There was a sense of wariness, even of fear.
“This is ...” said the scribe and flapped a hand at me.
“Foss. Foss Butcher,” I said.
“Foss. She came to me in the market this morning. Came directly to my stall, as if she had beenledto it ...”
Oh no. One of those. If he started talking about fate or destiny, I was out.
“... and asked me about the Magic-Workers, and what they do with the ...”
“Hearts,” someone else whispered. All the faces were frightened. It was an odd mix of people, old and young. One woman was very richly dressed, richer even than my House-made clothes, while one youth was ragged, and the rest ran the gamut. I counted nine people, in all.
“There are more of our number,” said Basil, indicating the group. “Not all could come tonight. There are certain ...restrictionsthat come from our ... shared condition.”
Questions were popping up in my head like bubbles in broth.
“What do you mean,shared condition?” I asked. The older lady with the fancy clothing cupped her face in her hands and started to weep. And I do meanweep, not cry. Crying was a low-bred thing to do, but weeping was higher-pitched, and involved a lace handkerchief and small, ladylike sniffs.
“It is a terrible affliction,” said Basil, “and yet there are those worse off than us.”
“You must be similarly affected,” said the rich lady, raising her face to me. I saw her slight wince as she allowed her well-bred eyes to rest on my face. She settled on staring at my left ear as she spoke. “Or you would not have come here.”
“Afflicted? Affected?” I looked around. I felt a strange shame about the sorcerer—strange because it had been in no way my own fault that I was connected to him, nor was it my fault that I ... loved ... him, but everything in me rebelled against the humiliation of it. I wasn’t eager to talk to these strangers about it.
