She huffed an impatient breath. “More boring than sitting in your chair all day?”
“I like my chair,” he said.
“Well, you brought that ugly housekeeper girl back from somewhere, so you must have visited at least one. But one heart isn’t enough. Father has given you a lot of leeway with your training, but he expects you to produce nearly enough as the rest of us by now.”
“I told you, I didn’tbringher here. She just showed up.”
“You mean you haven’t taken anything from herat all?” The sorceress sat up, and her voice became shrill. “Sylvester, she’s living in yourhouse. You don’t even have to leave your belovedchair. At least haveoneheart to show Father at the next meeting. It might be enough to keep him happy. For now.”
“Foss’sheart?” he said, as if startled at the thought. I bit my lip hard as he said my name.
“Well, she’s right here,” said the sorceress. “It would be convenient. And a start.”
He sighed and tapped his fingers on the arm of the throne.
“You don’t have to take it all at once, if you don’t want to,” she said. “Sometimes it’s useful to have one around in case of need. Like Colin, here. But you can’t leave it intact for too long. Just take a little at a time, like sips from a glass. She’ll barely notice.”
I couldn’t see Colin from my angle—just his shadow—but as far as I could tell, he hadn’t moved.
“Of course, it could be shriveled already,” said the sorceress. “It goes one of two ways, with the ugly girls. It’s either ripe and ready, because no one else has picked it, or it’s dried up and bitter. Either way, it’s a lot better than nothing.”
“Look, just leave me alone, all right? I’ll go to one of the villages tomorrow. Or the next day.”
“Not good enough, Sylvester.” She stood with a rustle of skirts. “We’re in a crisis. We need more from everyone, you included. And start with the girl, for goodness’ sake. You need something to show the king.”
As you can imagine, I wasn’t rightly excited to be seen by either the sorceress or the sorcerer after hearing all that, nor would I put it past her to poke her sharp nails through my skin and pull out my heart like the stone of an apricot as soon as she emerged.
I scuttled away as quickly as I could back to the kitchen, where the kettle whistled at me reproachfully, as if to say, “I told you so.”
I stood by the stove and sipped my own tea as I thought about what I had overheard. Well, that had been enlightening. The sorcerer clearly had no idea he had captured me in any way, a thought that was both a relief and a torment. I was just a burr that had caught on his cloak; an accident, like the babes the unmarried women went to the hedge-witch to flush out back home.
One thing had me addled. He had told his sister that he didn’t have my heart, and he had seemed sincere, but I had definitely been hooked, or I wouldn’t have come here at all. So, did that mean that whatever portion of it had clung to him was knocking about here someplace, unbeknownst to him? Or was my heart whole, and I was simply under another spell of some kind? Or was he lying? I had no reason to trust him, after all.
To my surprise, a few minutes after I had closeted myself in the kitchen, the sorceress’s mushroomlike servant wandered in. He looked around the room with a glazed, slack-jawed look, and then his gaze landed on me. He didn’t speak.
“What?” I snapped after a moment.
He moved his tongue in his mouth for a moment before speaking, as if he had to remind himself how it worked.
“My lady requires an herbal tea,” he managed.
The kitchen table gave me a nudge, and I turned to see that a black cabinet had installed itself on one wall. I sighed and tromped over to it, hauling open the door to see rows of herbs neatly bundled with twine and hanging on little hooks inside. Of course.
I gathered them and filled the kettle to boil water, flicking my eyes to the servant now and again. When he wasn’t moving or speaking, he was oddly lifeless, like a toy that needed the key in its back wound up.
“So, you live with the sorceress,” I said, pretending to have trouble with the string binding the herbs in order to delay him. He didn’t answer. “What’s your name?”
“Colin,” he said, after a long pause.
“I’m Foss. Where are you from?”
Another long pause. “I don’t remember.”
I could have made a cup of tea several times over by then, but I was affecting clumsiness. “How did you come to work for the sorceress, then?” I said, putting on the chatty manner of all the twittery housewives I had served in the butcher’s shop.
He blinked. His blink was slow, like a reptile’s. He barely seemed awake. My skin crawled. Is this what would happen to me, if most of my heart was taken away?
I poured the tea into a black china cup as fine as a beetle’s wing case and moved close to him to place it in his hands. As I stood right before him, close enough to see the freckles across his nose, I whispered, “Do you need help?”
