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“Fuck off.”
“Ah, much better then. Good, good. And your magic?”
“It’s there,” I say, even though I’m not sure. “But barely.”
“Well... we have time. The King has used the gold you spun for him to pay Qedron and Messava. He won’t need more for a few weeks.”
I choke on the water I was swallowing. “He did what with the gold?”
“Paid a debt to our allies,” she says, frowning slightly.
“I thought he would put it in the vault.”
“Well, the conquest of Rimilon occupied more resources than he thought... you know, it really isn’t any of your business.”
I start laughing. I can’t hold it back—maybe it’s the strain of the past several days. I laugh until I wheeze, and then I cough until my lungs ache.
Lady Kessalif stares at me as if I’ve gone insane, then cautiously backs away and leaves the room, closing the door. I have better hearing than humans do, and I overhear her tell the servant outside to visit the palace physician and ask him to send a sleeping powder for me.
She thinks I’ve lost my mind. And maybe I have, because when the King finds out why I’m laughing, he won’t think it’s funny. If I’m lucky, he’ll kill me on the spot. If I’m not, he’ll torture me thoroughly before ending my life.
I thought I’d have more time, especially if he stored the bobbins of gold in the palace vaults until it could be melted down and stamped into coin or shaped into bars. But he gave it to his allies, to pay his debts.
Which is going to result in serious disappointment for all parties in just a few days—maybe a bit longer if I’m lucky. I’ve transformed wood into silver before, but not straw into gold, so I’m not certain of the time frame.
I imagine the look on the King’s face when he finds out, and I burst into laughter again. I laugh until my weakened stomach revolts and I throw up in the basin beside my bed. And when the servant brings the sleeping powder, I’m still laughing.
24
The journey to the Sanctuary takes longer than I anticipated. I teach Bede every Elvensign word and phrase I know, and then the Elvish women teach us both more signs. Then Bede and I play rhyming games with Lannau and Enthel, who teach us the meter and rhythm of Elven poetry forms, including the limericks they use for most common spells. Enthel brought along sheets of brown paper and a handful of pencils, so we play a game of intersecting words, and then a game where one of us draws and the others must guess the word or phrase associated with the drawing. When we tire of that, Enthel makes us all look out of the carriage windows and try to spot the items on a list she has made—things like grain silos, broken fences, wheelbarrows, white cows with brown spots, weathervanes, that sort of thing. Eventually I grow too bored to play, utterly sick of sitting in the carriage.
We spend the first night in a tiny roadside inn with no bathtubs and musty-smelling sheets. When we go downstairs for breakfast the next morning, there’s a “Wanted” poster with a bountiful ransom promised for my capture. It appears the King is so eager to repay me for stealing his concubines that he’s willing to risk any loss of goodwill among the people just to get his hands on me again.
The sketch is a good one, recognizable as me, so Lannau and the carriage driver hustle me and Bede out the back door of the inn while Enthel purchases greasy breakfast bundles for us to take along.
“What if the carriage driver turns me in?” I whisper to Lannau, later that morning, once we’re well underway.
“He won’t,” she says casually. “He’s been spelled to ensure his loyalty. Can’t be too careful. Men are not to be trusted.”
We spend the second day huddled in the carriage, leaning against each other and trying to doze while it rattles over rutted lanes.
“The journey would be shorter if there weren’t so many patrols to avoid,” Lannau says once, pointedly, when I complain about the bumpy, circuitous route we’re taking.
Of course the patrols are my fault. They’re looking for me, or for other concubines who might be traveling away from Giltos. So I quit complaining.
After that, the hours melt together into an endless, amorphous stream. It seems as if I’ve been on the road forever, sealed into the grimy confines of my traveling clothes, condemned to the reek of my own sweaty feet and ripe armpits. What I wouldn’t give for a hot bath, a square meal, and a comfortable bed.
“We’d better risk another stop at an inn before we reach the Riddenwold,” I tell our guides. “We can’t meet the Elves looking like this—smelling like this.”
“It’s true, Enthel,” says Lannau, looking over at her partner. “Their human odor is overpowering. We need to preserve our magic for the journey into the forest, but we could spare a little. If we work together, we can veil the sight of an innkeeper and a few guests long enough to get these two upstairs to a room with a bathtub.”
Enthel sniffs delicately. “We’d better try. It’s a matter of survival, I’d say. And I could use a bath myself. I’m beginning to smell, too.”
“Nonsense, love. All I smell is your usual fragrance.” Lannau leans nearer and nips a kiss from her wife’s mouth.
That night, I’m finally able to wash multiple days’ worth of travel grime from my body. Bede bathes too, and then the wives share a bath. They take one bed, while Bede and I take the other.
I wake in the night to tiny, soft, wet sounds, and as my eyes adjust, I see Enthel on her back, knees arched and spread. Lannau’s face is buried between her wife’s thighs.
