The Seven Markets (8 page)

They’d met the sun on the third morning, touring every corner of the Market, every hidden alley, every street vendor with a folding table and goods to set upon it. They’d shopped, the Prince choosing an entire wardrobe for his new bride, dresses and shoes and blouses and boots and hats and cloaks and bags. All the clothing she could ever wear and more, some of it cut and sewn from fabrics the likes of which she’d never imagined.

That night, the last night of her first Market, they’d sat under the stars of an unfamiliar sky as the Prince described each of them in turn. He’d pointed up, identified the star by its inhabitants, and mused for a while about the color of the their sky or the taste of their water or the nature of their people.

“Will we go there?” she’d asked.

“Someday, my dear. But not just yet. I’ve been away from your lands for too long and wish to take in the changes for myself. This pleases you, I hope?”

“So long as we are together,” she’d said.

They’d ridden from the Market the following morning, before dawn, as they were bearing down on it even now. How much longer until they arrived? How much farther would they need to ride before Ellie saw three suns burning overhead instead of one? Would she feel the Market as it drew closer? Or would it surprise her, peeking over a ridge or a hill as if to say
hello, daughter, there you are.

They rode and Ellie thought of stars, hoping her Prince was finally ready to share them.

It was midday before they arrived, driving their horses hard right up to the stone gates. The Prince leapt to the ground, his mount shaking and glistening with a sickly sheen of perspiration. It groaned, staggering off blindly at an odd, uneven angle.

Ellie patted her own mount’s neck, whispering into its ear as she waited for Cutter to attend to her. She could dismount on her own—her life on the farm was still with her, in some ways—but she knew the Prince would disapprove. Better to wait. He was so cross from the slow journey; it was certainly better to wait. With a helping hand from the cook’s boy, Cutter assisted Ellie in returning her feet to the ground. She brushed the dust from her skirts and jacket and ran her fingers through her hair, smoothing the errant strands away from her face.

I must look a fright.

They would take rooms at the same inn as last time. There would be a bath and fresh clothes. Ellie wished she could blink her eyes and vanish, only to reappear once she’d had time to compose herself. It would not do for her to enter the Market looking as she did.

“The horses, sire?”

“Leave them,” the Prince said. “Let them graze or rot; we do not leave here by horseback.”

Cutter nodded and signaled for the horses to be taken away. Ellie noticed that his mount seemed to have fared best out of them all. The bodyguard was, among his many talents, an excellent rider. His mount looked fresh enough to make the same journey twice again.

“Come,” the Prince said, holding out a hand for her. She went to him, as was her wont, and when they touched she felt a shimmering pass over her. The Prince’s clothes were clean and pressed, his hair as perfectly coiffed as ever. The very picture of masculine beauty, the most startling man she’d ever beheld.

They entered the Market arm in arm, passing through the great stone gate as if trumpets sounded to announce their coming. Ellie caught a glimpse of her reflection in a window and was not surprised, standing with the Prince as she was, to see her jacket and skirts were as clean as the day the seamstress had delivered them. Her hair was as tidy as it had ever been.

Cutter followed behind, his men close at heel, ears tuned for the slightest utterance from the Prince’s lips. Ellie was aware of them the same way she might be aware of a small dog chasing after her feet, hopeful for attention and afraid, always afraid, of a scolding or a swat across the nose.

“It has been too long, hasn’t it?” The Prince shone at her side, raising his hand in a formal wave. “Too long away. So much has changed.”

Ellie agreed. She raised her own hand to match his wave, turning her wrist and keeping her elbow high.

“Second night, just in time for the ball.” He called over his shoulder at Cutter. “It is the second night, isn’t it? You haven’t made us so late we’ve missed the ball, have you, Cutter?”

“No, sire,” the bodyguard said. Ellie didn’t find his tone warm in the least.

“Then we shall visit the ball tonight. Would you fancy a dance, my dear?”

Ellie could barely contain her excitement. The memory of their first ball at the Market was still fresh and cherished in her mind.

Deeper and deeper into the Market they went. And she could feel the Prince’s agitation and impatience radiating off of him like the heat from a baker’s oven. They came to the inn he’d brought her to all those years ago. She and the Prince stood back while Cutter negotiated for their rooms and tended to the matter of their luggage, meals, and other trivialities.

“See her upstairs,” the Prince said. “I have business.”

He left without another word.

In the Prince’s absence, the glamour that had hidden Ellie’s disheveled state faded in short order. She examined herself in a tall, gilded mirror. Still the same, unlined face. The same nut-brown hair and opal eyes. The same slender shoulders, coltish legs, and slim hips. In all their years of travel, no matter where they visited or what they found there, no matter her clothes or adornments, it was always the same Ellie looking back in the mirror.

“My love,” she said, fingering the blood-red gem that hung evermore, a second beating heart, around her neck.

She ran a bath, marveling, as she always did, at the simple miracle of running water. She’d beheld wonders with the Prince, seen skies alight with brilliant color, oceans rising up to take the shapes of men. She’d taken every marvel in stride but somehow the act of turning a knob or pulling a chain and summoning water, fresh and clear, never ceased to amaze her.

She added oils and scented powders to her bath. She washed her hair, rinsing it and combing it out. There would not be the slightest hint of road on her when she saw her love again.

A folded towel drawn from a nearby shelf provided Ellie with a headrest. She lay back, covered in lavender and honey-scented bubbles, and closed her eyes. She might have dozed but for the Prince, who she knew would not be long with a ball to prepare for. Still, she soaked much longer than she’d intended, emerging from the still-steaming waters of the tub red as a beet, her fingers wrinkled like a congress of tiny, disagreeable old men.

As she dried, there came a knock on the door. Ellie called to her visitor and Cutter peered in at her.

“My lady,” he said. “I apologize for the interruption.”

“Of course not. Your timing is impeccable.”

He bowed his head.

“My Prince will expect much of me tonight, Cutter.”

“I anticipated, my lady. If I may?”

He pushed the door further open and let in two girls, younger in appearance than herself, and a tall man with stringy golden hair and tanned skin. His eyes narrowed to a razor’s edge as he examined Ellie in her bathrobe with her hair still wringing wet.

“Splendid, splendid,” the tall man said. “Yes, yes.”

Cutter bowed again, excusing himself.

The tall man directed Ellie to stand in the middle of the room. His assistants removed her bathrobe and retreated to let their master work.

“Your Prince,” he said after a long silence. “How does he feel about blue?”

“It is one of his favored colors,” Ellie said.

“Light or dark?”

“Light like the sky or dark like the sea. He says it brings out the sparkles in my eyes.”

He leaned close so their noses were almost touching.

“Yes, yes. It will be blue, then.”

One of the assistants rushed forward with a bolt of cloth. If she’d hurled it out the window and up into the sky it would have been lost at once in the brilliance of the day. The colors were so close Ellie could see clouds drifting in a breeze that was not there.

“Unless my lady objects?”

The Prince would approve; Ellie said as much.

“Splendid.” He produced a measuring tape from a hidden pocket and quickly fitted Ellie for her new gown. He called out measurements to one of the assistants. When he was finished he instructed them to return Ellie’s bathrobe. “Don’t want you to catch a chill while I’m working,” he said.

Ellie sat at her dressing table, sipping a cup of tea she did not remember steeping or asking for. One of the assistants—she had a hard time telling them apart and suspected they might be twins—set to work on her hair. The other attended the tall man, handing over pins and thread when asked, acting as an impromptu mannequin when needed.

It came to Ellie, watching him work, that the tall man’s name was Sartha and that his hands had crafted the garments her Prince had worn the first time they’d met. His assistants she could not name, but somehow this did not bother her. She had the sense it would not bother them either. The one who’d styled her hair and was now applying gentle brushstrokes of makeup to her face Ellie named Esme after a nymph they’d encountered long ago. The second assistant she named Resme, after the nymph’s younger sister.

“Come,” Sartha said, holding out a hand. “Let us see how we did today, shall we?”

Ellie rose, sparing a glance at her now-unfamiliar face in the grand mirror. She was a stranger to herself. Her cheekbones were more pronounced, her eyes at once brightened and oddly deeper, as if one might lose himself staring into them. Her hair rose in an impossible pile of curls and waves. Esme had worked a miracle with her plain hair, transforming it into a living thing, a halo of dark, moving flame.

“Your right arm. Now your left. Deep breath and then exhale, please. Hold.”

She froze in place as he adjusted the gown around her. He frowned, dove in with a needle and thread, adjusting the dagged sleeve so it matched its sibling, coming to a point where Ellie’s knuckle met the base of her longest finger on each hand.

Ellie allowed him to work almost without interruption. He’d satisfied himself with the length of the gown, the complicated lacing on the back, the shoulders and the sleeves. The hips accentuated her form in a startling fashion, tricking Ellie once again, in the mirror, into thinking the girl looking out at her was a stranger.

When he moved to enhance her bustline, moving the blood-red gem aside, Ellie jerked back and rose a hand to caution him.

“My dear?”

“Have a care, sir.”

A curious expression passed over his face.

He is recalling my lack of modesty when he’d first arrived and asking what this sudden shyness might be.

“It is not for me,” she said.

“No?”

“I am the Prince’s. I beg you to have a care.”

He studied her expression, searching for falsehood and finding none.

“Your necklace?” he said. “I’m afraid it does not match the color well. I was hoping we could—”

“The gem will not come off, but that was not my concern. For some, for some men I mean to say, it may not be . . . safe.”

Sartha roared with laughter. “I assure you, my dear, your virtue is at no risk in my presence.”

“Even so. You have been kind and labored hard and I would not have you come to any harm it is in my power to prevent.”

He thought a moment before asking her to spin the necklace so the gem hung down her back, nestled and slumbering in her cascade of hair. Next he summoned Esme and Resme and directed them in the final adjustments to her gown.

“I’m still not happy with the color,” he said, when they were complete.

“My necklace?”

“Yes.”

Ellie found the stranger again in the mirror. She concentrated on the shimmering red eye at the center of the girl’s chest. She thought of the Prince and how pleased he would be to see her arrive in such finery. It beat in time with her own heart; first a deeper red, then nearly black, then lightening to blue. When she let it rest between her breasts, the gem was the same shade of blue as her gown.

Ellie danced. The orchestra played and the Prince twirled her and dipped her and lifted her. His stamina was, as always, unending. And she matched him step for step and move for move. When the music sped up, they flung their arms and kicked their feet. When it slowed down, the dance floor dropped away and they floated through the night air under the watchful gaze of a dozen moons. It was the perfect night, the perfect homecoming after nearly a century of travel.

Until the shooting started.

It was during an airwaltz. Slow reeds and soft strings as the Prince held her in his arms. The wilds of Ellie’s hair swam, weightless, through the star-filled sky of the ballroom. She felt the Prince’s satisfaction, his enjoyment, as they turned in space. He’d always been fond of dancing. It was one of the first things she’d learned about him.

The assassin dove down at them, appearing overhead with a bang and a flash of light. He was hooded, dressed all in black, with a long, tattered scarf tied around his neck, streaming behind him as he flew. In one hand, the assassin gripped the bone handle of a curved blade that reached back past his elbow. An oiled pistol stared at them from his other hand, an angry red eye flickering as he fired again and again.

The Prince, nonplussed, twirled Ellie away in a dervish of movement. She gasped and soared through the air over the ballroom, coming to a rest next to a bearded couple by the far wall.

He sidestepped, placing himself outside the arc of the assassin’s blade. The way he moved, one might forget his feet were so far from solid ground.

“Revenge!” The assassin’s voice was choked with incoherent rage. He struck the ground, rolling to absorb the impact, and was back on his feet instantly. He slashed up at the air, missing the Prince’s feet as he danced once more out of range.

“Revenge!” The assassin raised his pistol, leading the Prince as he danced across the ballroom, waiting for the inevitable moment when he would need to pause and rebound off a wall.

With a wail of inchoate fury the assassin fired his weapon again and again. Bursts of golden energy erupted across the ballroom, zeroing in on the Prince for the split second he hung, exposed and vulnerable, in midair.