The Thief Queen's Daughter (10 page)

T
ELL ME,” COMMANDED THE GOLDEN WOMAN.

Her voice was soft and clear, with a low music in it, like the song of the wind on an especially dark night. It sounded like it came from another place, another time.

It was also as sharp and deadly as the weapons in Mr. Coates’s shop.

From behind the tent walls Ven could hear his friends panicking, calling to him and to each other. Their voices were muffled by the fabric as they stumbled around in the dark.

“Please,” he said, his throat tight and dry in her grasp. “I don’t know what you mean. Please let me go.”

The tall woman’s deadly grip tightened, choking off the air in his throat.

“Where did you see it?”

Ven’s mind was starting to darken. He felt like he was about to pass out. He struggled to remain conscious, fearing what would happen to him and to his friends if he didn’t.

“The stone?” he asked woozily.

The golden eyes narrowed.

Ven did not know what to say, but he knew that his life was hanging in the balance now. He decided that a woman who could see the future could also tell if he was lying, so he took his chances with the truth.

“I—I saw something—inside—a Rover’s box—” he stammered, his voice coming out in a rasp. He struggled to breathe, but each breath hurt worse. “It was a—a—thin stone—or something like it—sort of gray—with what looked like a picture of a keyhole on it. It—it sparkled—the same way your tent did—when we first—came in—”

“Where?”
the woman demanded again.

“At the—crossroads,” Ven whispered. “Outside—Kingston. The box is closed—now—and buried.”

The air rushed back into his lungs as the woman released him.

Ven’s hand went to his neck. He rubbed his throat, trying to soothe the sting out of it.

The tall golden woman turned away for a moment, and extended her hand. In it was a thin tablet of stone, about the size of Ven’s palm. It was inscribed with the same symbol that was on the flag above her tent, an eye with a star in the iris.

“Give this to the others,” she ordered. “Tell them to go find food. Give this to the soup seller, and they will not have to pay.”

Ven looked down at the stone in his hand and blinked. “Uh—”

“You came here for answers,” the woman said. “You will not be able to hear them spoken above their noise. Tell your friends to wait for you at the fountain when they are done.”

“For—for how long?”

“If you still have not come when the warning bell rings, they should make their way out of the gate,” said the tall golden woman. “If you still wish to know what you came here to learn, send them away. Now.”

“All right,” Ven said.

The woman held the tent flap open.

Ven stepped out into the darkness of the outer tunnel and held up the glowing stone. “Char, Clem,” he called quickly. “Saeli, Nick, here!”

A moment later all four of his friends appeared, the girls from the left, the boys from the right.

“Blimey, Ven, what happened to you?” Char demanded. “Let’s get the heck out of here.”

“Calm down,” Ven said. “I’m not done with my reading. Here, take this to the food vendors and get that early noon-meal you’ve been craving. If you show it to them, you won’t have to pay.”

The cook’s mate shook his head in disbelief. “I was wrong,” he said. “I must’ve bought a dream and didn’t know it. This one’s a doozy. Wake me up.”

A vertical line of light appeared in the tent wall in front of them. Ven took hold of the flap and opened it easily. The blindingly bright light of day spilled into the dark tent.

“Go on,” he said. “Meet me at the fountain when you’re done. If you hear the warning bell, and I’m not back, get out of the Market, and tell Mrs. Snodgrass what happened to me.”

One by one, his friends filed out of the opening, looking back at him nervously. Char went through last.

“You sure about this?” he asked.

“No,” said Ven. “But go anyway. And take this.” He handed Char the wrapped gauntlet, then dropped the tent flap and was back in the darkness once more.

In the center of the tent, the glow returned, joined by more tiny lights. The tent flap in front of him opened, allowing him into the inner chamber. Ven came inside.

The golden woman now sat behind a table made of glass, with smaller movable tables above it, also of glass. All around her inner chamber were candles of different heights, their wicks gleaming with warm flame, releasing a woody scent into the air. The odor of the candles made the thickness that had been hovering in Ven’s head disappear, leaving his mind clear.

Beside the table was an hourglass taller than Ven, filled with pure white sand. Ven had seen hourglasses many times, but this one was far larger and more strangely shaped than any he had ever encountered. From the upper bowl a long thin pipe of sorts protruded, like the spout on a teakettle.

In front of the table was a plain black stool made of wood.

“Sit,” said the woman.

Ven bowed as politely as he could, considering he had been dangling from her grasp, choking to death, a few moments before.

“First, before I do, are you in fact Madame Sharra? I need to be accurate for my journal.”

The thin golden woman smiled slightly for the first time, and nodded once.

“Thank you,” Ven said. He sat down on the black stool before the table.

“What do you seek to know?” Madame Sharra asked. Her dark gold eyes glinted in the dim light.

Ven thought about what Mr. Coates had said. “What can you tell me?” he asked in return.

The fortune-teller smiled more broadly. She nodded at the hourglass. “Touch the upper bowl,” she directed.

Ven reached out and let his hand come to rest on the hourglass. It was warm and felt tingly beneath his fingers. Then he put his hand back in his lap.

Madame Sharra took hold of the hourglass by the golden handle at the thinnest part of the middle. She shook it slightly, then turned it as if she were going to flip it over. Instead, she poured a generous amount of sand from it onto the glass table through the spout. Then she passed her hand over it.

Before Ven’s eyes, the sand took on the shape of an eye.

“Someone is watching you,”

Madame Sharra said.

“Well, yes,” Ven said, trying not to sound disrespectful. “We’re in a thieves’ market. Apparently everyone is watching everyone.”

The golden-eyed woman did not break her gaze away from his. Instead, she passed her hand over the sand again, and this time it took on the shape of a bird.

“Someone is watching you
from afar,
” she said pointedly.

“Oh! You mean the albatross! Yes. That bird is very odd—she’s been following me since my birthday, all the way from Vaarn,” Ven said. He started to explain to the fortune-teller about how the albatross saved him from the sea by flying in great circles around him when he was adrift, but then shut his mouth quickly. Mr. Coates’s words came back to him.

I would not
ask
Sharra anything, lad. A lot of people do, and I imagine she learns a great deal more than she needs to that way. I would see what she has to say to you first before you tell her too much.

The fortune-teller shook her head.

“The bird is just a messenger, the eyes of someone else far away,” she said in her dusky voice.

For a moment the only sound inside the dark tent was the whispering of the candle flames.

When Ven could speak again, his voice was higher than it usually was.

“Who—who is watching me?”

Madame Sharra passed her hand over the sand one more time. The bird pattern broke into many tiny such patterns, then disappeared, but no new image emerged. The sand settled into formless swirls once more. She exhaled.

“The sand’s power is at its end for you. If you wish to know more, you will have to ask the deck. That will require a gold crown.” Her brows drew together when she saw how white Ven’s face had become. “What do you fear?”

“What—what does the person who is watching want from me?” Ven asked, his voice still shaking. “Am I in danger?”

The fortune-teller shrugged slightly. “Has the bird done more to help you, or harm you?”

Ven considered. “The albatross has done
nothing
to harm me,” he said after a moment. “Everything she’s done has helped me in some way. She saved me from drowning by alerting Amar—” He stopped. “She’s just helped me, never harmed me, at least as far as I know.”

Madame Sharra nodded. “Then either the person who sent the bird is trying to protect you, or wants to keep you alive until he can kill you himself. Or herself.”

“Great,” Ven muttered.

“Do you wish me to read the scales for you?” Madame Sharra asked, brushing the sand into a small pile. She snapped her fingers, and the sand caught fire, then vanished in a puff of smoke.

Ven’s dismay vanished with it as his curiosity roared back, making him itch.

“Scales?” he asked.

The fortune-teller took hold of the two movable pieces of glass and swung them carefully into place above the glass table.

“The gold crown rests in your left hand, palm up, on this surface,” she instructed as she moved the first glass piece into place. “Your open right hand rests here, palm down.” She positioned the second piece below his hand. “Here they must remain. You may not touch the scales with anything except your breath. If you do not heed this warning, you are risking a tear in the fabric of the world. And your life. Do you understand?”

Ven hesitated. He was not certain that anything was worth the risks Madame Sharra had just stated, but his insatiable need to know the answers won out.
I can hold my hands still,
he thought.
It can’t be
that
hard.

“Yes,” he said finally.

“The gold crown,” said the fortune-teller.

“Oh! Yes, sorry.” Ven dug into his pocket for the small leather wallet. To his relief his money was still there.
Thank you, Mr. Coates,
he thought, wondering if the black felt circle was still on his back. He put his left hand, with the gold crown in the palm, on the left piece of glass over the table, and let his right hand rest on the other piece.

Madame Sharra closed her eyes.

A breeze whistled in from beneath the drapes of the tent, snuffing the candle flames. It rustled through Ven’s hair, making him suddenly cold, even on this warm summer day.

In the darkness Ven could see nothing but the faint golden glow that Madame Sharra herself gave off.

Until she spread her hands across the glass table beneath where his own rested.