The Last Changeling (5 page)

ASPEN AWAKENS

S
he was beautiful. A silver goddess with a voice of gold. She didn't ask what tune Aspen was playing, and he'd never before heard the lyrics she sang. Had not even known the song
had
lyrics. But somehow they fit. No, they more than fit. They meshed. They melded. They grew into something greater than a song. Something that enraptured and captured and . . .

“Put me to sleep?” Aspen came to himself with a start. It must have all been a dream. He lay on a large, soft bed, richly surrounded by silken pillows of gold and silver.

I don't remember any goddess!
he thought desperately, sitting up.
I don't remember this bed. This place.
How long have I been dreaming?

Then he realized that he must be inside the players' wagon, the very place he had been trying to get to when everything had fallen apart.

The wagon!
The soldiers!

That's when he had an additional thought:
How far have we traveled?

He looked for a window to check the rate of their speed and saw a large one, which was very strange to him because castle windows are always mere arrow slits, built that way in case of an assault. This window overlooked a field of stunning flowers, and even stranger, they were not moving.

I don't remember fields of flowers
, he thought, still drowsy. And then he had a further thought:
The wagon must be as becalmed as a sailing ship on a breezeless ocean
.

He had never sailed on the ocean, though he had a vague memory of watching from a cliff-top far north of Astaeri Palace as a two-masted boat with an oddly round body headed for the northern islands. It was winter and his tiny hand clasped in his mother's firm grip was the only part of him that felt warm and protected from the cold, whipping wind.

His only other ocean memory was from a song. He began to sing it to himself, trying to recall where he'd heard it.

The water is wide, my dear,

The water is deep.

The strand is long, my dear,

But love will keep . . .

When he had first heard the song, he must have already lived a year in the Unseelie Court, still mourning the loss of his own family. A minstrel had performed for King Obs, a minstrel who had a strange wandering eye. The Border Lords had thrown bones at him and called him misfigured, but Aspen had thought the song pretty and sad at the same time, though he had only understood a small part of it. He felt terrible for the minstrel, who was clearly as out of place at the Unseelie Court as Aspen was. Jaunty had had to explain to him that the song was about the ocean and that a strand was a fancy Unseelie word for a beach.

Suddenly, he realized that there really
was
no breeze outside. It took him a minute more to realize that the flowers were part of a painting, a clever trompe l'oeil that depicted a window looking out onto a pasture full of blooming poppies.

Someone nearby cleared his throat.

Aspen turned his head. The three dwarfs stood by the far wall across from the flower painting, their beards almost hiding the concern in their faces. Plumping a pillow behind him was the stunning woman from his dream, who leaned closer as if to examine him. His heart stuttered in his chest and he looked away. Inside, he was repeating over and over, She is real! She is real!

There was a grey-eyed manservant hulking in the shadows behind her, probably a clerk by his manner and dress.

Finally, nearest to the bed and looking down at him, her mismatched eyes sparkling with anger or amusement or relief—maybe all three at once—was Snail.

“Hello,” he said, shooting her a weak smile. She nodded and he tried to guess whether they were in trouble.

Are we captured? Are we among friends? What happened outside?
He did not know which question to ask first, and anyway he certainly did not want to appear panicked in front of the beautiful singer, so instead he tried to sound nonchalant, casual, smooth. “I played a song.”

More slow than smooth, Your Serenity,
he thought.
Are you trying to live up to the dwarfs' description of you?
That much he remembered!
Dull as dust and dense as stone?

But Snail's face broke into a pleasant grin and she answered him as if he had dispensed the deepest of wisdoms. “Yes, Karl. You did.”

For a moment he could not remember who Karl was, but when he recalled that was his minstrel name, he smiled back.

“And the song was beautiful,” added the stunning woman. “It felt right for me to fit the words to your tune.”

Her words? My tune?
That was when Aspen fully realized that the dream was not a dream but something that had really happened.
Unless, of course, I am still asleep and dreaming.

Surreptitiously, he pinched his left pointer finger
.
It hurt. So—he was awake!

Maggie Light,
he thought suddenly. He was pleased he remembered her name.

Clambering off the bed, he gave Maggie Light a deep, courtly bow, though his legs were wobbly. “It was a bare collection of notes before you gave it wings.” He knew Snail would say he sounded like a toff, but there was no way to express his amazement at Maggie's singing in a commoner's plain speaking. “Your voice is . . . transcendent.”

The manservant spoke then. “Even magical, you might say.”

Aspen shook his head. He was born and bred to magic and had sensed no glamour while she sang. And besides . . .“How would you know magic, mud-man. You are a—”

“Yes,” the manservant interrupted in a stern voice that somehow stopped Aspen cold.

Belatedly, Aspen realized that traveling minstrels—unlike royalty—must have to deal with all species of peoples on a relatively even footing. And if those people had just saved his life, the footing was probably considerably
less
than even.

“I . . . um . . . apologize,” he stuttered, unsure of how to do it formally without sounding too toffly. “I have forgotten my manners. And—”

“And you're unused to dealing with my people as, well, people,” the manservant said, interrupting Aspen again. “Everyone to you is an animal or a manimal.” He held Aspen's gaze with his steel-grey eyes, daring him to contradict the statement. Aspen felt that the man was judging him, marking his pros and cons in a mental clerk's ledger. He did not think the man was wasting a lot of ink in the “pros” column.

“Um . . . yes . . . look . . . I . . .” Aspen sighed. He really didn't want to apologize to the clerk again. But he did not want to offend the touchy creature, either. Or make the stunning Maggie Light think less of him. “Perhaps, if I could just talk to your master, and thank him for his assistance, we could . . .” He trailed off as the clerk looked at him as if he were Dagmarra's spit drying in the dust outside the wagon.

Shaking his head, the clerk turned to the dwarfs. “Dagmarra. Boys. Let's get moving before the soldiers remember where they were going. And do what they remember they were planning to do.”

The dwarfs nodded and shuttled out. Thridi was last through the door, and Aspen thought he heard him mutter, “Dim-witted, you might say.”

The clerk then looked at Snail. “When you are done greeting your
minstrel,
your
wastrel
, perhaps we could have a word alone?” To Maggie he practically snarled, “I don't want to see him again.”

“Yes, Professor,” she said to his back as he stomped out of the room, making the sound of soldiers leading a man to his execution.

Aspen gaped at the door through which the dwarfs and the clerk had just exited. Then he looked at Maggie, who was frowning. It did not make her any less beautiful. Only then did he turn to Snail, who was glaring at him.

“Professor?” he said. “
That's
Professor Odds?”

“Yes,” Snail said grimly, “and odds are you weren't expecting someone like him.” She followed the professor out the door.

“I'm sorry,” Aspen said to no one in particular.

Maggie Light gave a soft giggle that burbled like a mountain brook. “Not yet you aren't, but I imagine you will be soon. He can do that to people.” She put a light hand on his shoulder. “Come, let's find you somewhere to stay, Popinjay.
This
room is already taken.”

SNAIL'S JOURNEY BEGINS

T
he professor slumped into a chair by a workbench in the small room. To the side of the workbench was a single bed, its covers pulled so tight, they almost seemed painted on.

The workbench itself was covered with small silvery beads and strands of wire. There were silver implements like nothing Snail had ever seen: odd pincers with tiny pointed ends, hefty scissors that looked as if they could shear through cold iron, and three sizes of hammers, each smaller than the last. A pair of very strange glasses lay to one side, with lenses as thick as winter ice.

Snail thought the professor might be a crafter who made jewelry to sell at their performances, not a magician at all. She'd seen no jewels on either the dwarf woman or Maggie Light, but that could mean nothing.
After all, midwives don't deliver their own babies
. How often had Mistress Softhands said so.

But, she told herself, some of those tools might be useful for midwives. She glanced again at the scissors, saw a small pair in silver that might be just the thing. And a pair of silver tongs small enough to fit this task. She wondered if she might ask the professor to borrow them in case . . .

Then she had to laugh at herself. Tongs. Just what a midwife always needs. But these are much too tiny to fit around a baby's head, whether elf or brownie. Besides, who would be giving birth here—
Maggie Light? The dwarf woman?
Besides, I don't wish to reveal who I really am.

But, in fact, all the new tools were tempting. Her fingers itched to try each one.

“That
friend
of yours!” Professor Odds's voice dripped with sarcasm that slashed through her reverie. “That so-called Karl . . .”

“Just Karl, sir. Not So-called Karl,” Snail said, trying to make light of it. Hoping she was succeeding.

“Do you think a professor is fooled by such a Karl-less name? I'm trained to identify such improbables. I have degrees in it. I would take odds against it. In fact, as Odds, I
am
against it.”

Snail's head was spinning. She couldn't tell if he was speaking sense or nonsense. Or both at once.

Hardly noticing her response, the professor continued. “He is no doubt called Prince Balersterei Meddlesome IV, or some such nonsense. Karl does not suit him. The plainness of it. The short, sharp shock of it. He should be wearing a high-sounding name and a high-fashion suit. Not the way he talks, all hoity and toity, all furbelows, falsettos, and false-set-tos. And tiresome beyond measure.” He rubbed his right eye.

“He's not like that at all,” Snail said, though she knew that sometimes he was. But they'd rescued each other so often, she and Aspen, that defending him was the very least she could do.

“I have performed for and dined with his kind for years now,” Odds said, his voice harsh with the criticism. “It never gets easier. They all think that who they were born to gives them the right to . . .”

Snail had to stop herself from shuddering. Such talk could get them all imprisoned, or put to the flames. She tried again, keeping her tone mild. “That is not how I know him, sir. And he thinks his rank . . .” She bit her lips and added hastily, “Whatever that rank is . . . that it means he has to act nobly.”

The professor's lips drew together as if he'd suddenly tasted a sour piece of fruit. “Don't keep addressing me as
sir
, child. Professor will do nicely, thank you. After all, it's
my
rank. And I got it the hard way.” He smiled slyly. “I earned it!”

“Professor,” said Snail, but she spoke it the way people at the Unseelie Court did, with a certain amount of casual disdain that was not lost on Odds at all, “I think you are mistaking Karl.”

He smiled slowly, as if deliberately ignoring her small insolence, and said, “Then there is a huge gap, a crevasse, a cavern between how he thinks he should act and how he actually does.”

Snail wasn't sure what he was talking about.
Crevasse
was not a word she'd ever heard before. But she could tell from his tone what he meant. “He was the Hos—” she began, and then paused. Wouldn't it be better to keep that information to herself? Or should she just trust the professor, despite his remarks about Prince Aspen? About toffs in general? After all, except for Aspen she felt the same way about them. And Odds
had
magicked the two of them away from the soldiers. With Maggie Light's help, of course. Surely he meant no harm to the prince or to her.

But suddenly her mind whirled with alternatives: The professor could be waiting to sell them both to the highest bidder. He could want to turn them in to the king himself on his own terms, maybe get himself a higher rank by doing so.
He could be willing to bide his time and wreak vengeance on both courts—since clearly he doesn't like toffs. He could use Aspen to . . . to . . .
Here her imagination stopped working and she ran out of possibilities.

That was when she realized this strange man was in fact truly strange, an actual
stranger
to them. She'd no idea
what
he thought or
how
he thought. But since, all her life, everything she'd ever heard about the Seelie folk was how twisty and untrustworthy they were, in the end she thought it was best to say nothing at all.

Odds turned his steely eyes on her. “Karl was
what
?” he asked, his voice low, soothing.

She didn't dare keep looking at those steel-colored eyes. She'd already seen the things he could do with them. Instead she hastily glanced down at the floor. “He was the host—the host—of a rival troop of soldiers at his . . . um . . . great hall and things went badly. So the other soldiers are looking to punish him. Us. Thank you for helping.” She didn't dare let him see the lies fully exposed in her eyes, in the hot flush on her cheeks. She was not practiced in lying.

“Always a pleasure, if a measured one,” mumbled the professor, “not quite a quart but more than a cup.” He turned away as if he didn't believe her or else really didn't care. But as long as Odds was hiding them from harm—at least from
some
harm—she thought she should try and be nice to him.

“Those are very interesting tools,” she said, changing the subject. It was an awkward shift and she was sure he had known at once what she was trying to do, but she kept at it anyway, pointing to several hammers and a clamp, but never at the ones she had a real interest in, for fear of giving herself away completely.

“You like tools?” he asked quickly.

That
surprised her
,
and then she thought,
He spoke
too
quickly
.

“I . . . I liked to watch the cook boys polishing the master chef's knives and forks and things,” she said, “when we were fed after a performance.”
That was smooth
, she thought, and warming to her story, she added, “My. . . um . . . da was a . . . a . . .” her mind went blank for a moment trying to conjure up this pretend father and then she had it. “The town blacksmith. And he had a lot of . . . um . . . tools, too. Smithing tools.” She took a deep breath, knowing that while she'd started well enough, things were now going badly. “And my mam, well she was a midwife.” She could tell him that without saying she herself was a midwife's apprentice and still be on firmer ground. “And Mam, she had lovely tools. Small hand tongs for the breach babes, and soft linen ropes to help pull out a tardy infant, and silver scissors like those there . . .” she pointed to the professor's table. She saw he was staring intently at her face and, blushing, she finished with a rush. “But I didn't want to be a blacksmith or a birther so I ran away to the city to join a troop of roaming players and there . . .”

“There you met our toff, who decided to take you with him on the road,” Odds said. “A pretty enough story if it were true. But . . .”

And just as he was going to uncover her true occupation—she was sure of it—the floor gave a sudden jolt, the walls began to creak ominously, and Snail almost lost her footing.

“Ah,” said Professor Odds, raising his right hand with the pointing finger straight up and the other fingers curled. “We have begun.” He pronounced the words like a wizard's incantation, and at that, the players' long cart started to move.

Snail glanced around for a window to see exactly where they were going, but there was none. Not even an arrow slit.
Perhaps another peephole?
If there was one here, she couldn't identify it.
Besides, I can't just walk up to the wall and search for one, can I? I can't be that obvious.

“What
have
we begun, professor?” she asked, hoping it sounded innocent and not desperate.

“We have begun the beginning of your journey and the end of mine; the first step of many and the last step of even more. Our journey home,” he said.

Home?
It was the last place in the world she wanted to go. All that awaited her there was a dungeon and death. But how could she tell him that?

From what he'd said so far, she'd have laid odds herself that he didn't care what she thought at all.

• • •

T
HE
DOOR
OF
the professor's room opened and Maggie Light came through, gliding in that unforced way that continued to astonish Snail.

“I have put the boy in with the twins,” she told the professor. “The bowser is already complaining. It is past time, I think, to give it a bath and brush its teeth.”

“Let
Karl
do that when we stop for the night,” said the professor, emphasizing the prince's new name with such disdain, Snail knew he wasn't going to let the matter go.

“I'll gladly do it,” said Snail quickly, happy to have something else to talk about. “In my . . . um . . . profession, we know how to clean things.” And then she realized she'd given away half of what she'd already told him. He would guess now that she was, like her make-believe mother, a birther after all.

“A bowser,” the professor said dryly, as if he'd noticed nothing, “is not a thing but rather an animate rug. It herds
things.
And this one is not fond of females. Best leave it to the
host
.” He emphasized the last word, which made Snail understand that he hadn't been fooled for even an instant by what she'd considered her quick thinking.

I am
such
a bad liar
, she thought.
Besides, I can always help the prince bathe the bowser when no one is paying us any attention
.

It was the last thought she had before the cart began to shudder and shake so badly, it was as if the road had suddenly developed contractions and was about to give birth.