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I understand why my mother favors her, then. This woman’s kind tongue is all the encouragement anyone needs. It’s not the words, so much as it is the fact that she seems to mean them.
“I don’t mind the color. It’s the curls I can’t abide.” I huff. “I don’t have time to brush for hours every day.”
“You don’t need to.” The servant shakes her head fervently. “I’ll talk to your mother about sending up a lotion for you to use instead of soap. Now mind, you’re to air dry your hair and tie it up before sleep, and apply the balm I’ll make for you nightly, yes? Your curls won’t need any brushing at all. Just run your fingers through them in the morning.”
If she’s telling the truth, her knowledge is worth her weight in gold. “Would it have any magik, that balm?”
She grins. “Only a smidgen. You don’t mind, do you?”
I hesitate.
I don’t have much against magik, but I don’t trust it either, as it’s often used against the interest of people like me.
That said, my hair’s one problem that can’t be fixed by mundane means. “I don’t mind.”
“Good, good. Now let’s make you shine.”
And she does just that.
CHAPTERNINETEEN
THE DANGERS OF THE NORTH
The duke’s hovercraft is the largest vehicle I’ve ever seen, let alone travelled in.
It flies silently through the darkening clouds, so steady I might have believed it to be in a building, immobile and on the firm ground, if not for the mesmerizing view out of the window.
I’ve never travelled outside of Magnapolis, and all of a sudden, I see the thick, green forests of Vanemir, then the glistening river marking the border of Flaur, and the endless fields of golden crops and luxuriant plains.
Soon we’re flying over the Silent Sea, seemingly calm from up high, though it owes its name to the number of ships that never come back to shore, sunk by its treacherous, unpredictable waters.
We’ve flown for under an hour when everything turns white.
I can’t deny that Ravelyn is beautiful—an endless horizon covered in snow. I squint, noticing smudges in the otherwise uniform view.
“Are those villages?” I wonder.
We’re a good fifty thousand feet in the air, so it’s hard to tell.
The duke rises from his armchair to join me at the window I’ve barely left since we took off.
I’m too nervous to sit.
“Mayhaps. We’re over the Silver Woods, not far from Ostrov. There are a few settlements around here. It’s hard to tell from above this time of the year—the snow covers the rooftops.”
We’re in the summer!“Is there any time of the year when the snow doesn’t?”
He chuckles. “We clean the snow off on Beltane. You’d be surprised at the change of scenery: the tiles are bright reds and blues and greens.”
I’m too surprised to comment one way or another. Ravelyn’s always been a bland, frozen realm in my mind, and I can’t reconcile my idea of it with the fact that its inhabitants like cheerful tiles, just like the houses in the lanes.
“We’re almost there. See those mountains right ahead?”
I have to focus, but in time I do distinguish the shape of five high mounts, set up in a circle.
“The castle is on one of those peaks?”
He shakes his head. “Not quite. It’s at the center.”
