Spindle (Two Monarchies Sequence Book 1) Read online

  A quick glance through the window on her way to the kitchen showed fewer supplicants today, for which Poly was thankful. There was no sign of Josie in the kitchen, but there was a pot of porridge sitting on a potholder that was laced with a Keep Warm spell.

  Poly sat Onepiece at the table and turned to fetch the bowls and spoons, her stomach growling. By the time she turned back around, Onepiece was using his fingers to stealthily scoop porridge into his mouth with great dispatch, one eye on her and another on the gremlin that was crawling out of his pocket and making for the pot at top speed.

  He gave a wordless howl when she took the pot away and cleaned his hands, but when she gave him his own bowl and a spoon, he used them with enough proficiency to make her think that he’d merely been too hungry to wait for her. If Poly wasn’t mistaken, he was also dexterous enough to feed the gremlin from his spoon once or twice when he thought she wasn’t looking.

  Luck wandered into the kitchen while they were still eating, his eyes distant and slightly gold. Between sitting on her bed earlier that morning and the present, he had changed his shirt for a slightly less shabby one, though his trousers were as dusty as ever; and his advent into the kitchen seemed to be for no other purpose than to vaguely watch Poly and Onepiece eat. Onepiece made a rude noise at him that sent splotches of porridge pattering onto Luck’s hitherto clean tabletop and prompted a brief, narrower look from Luck, but Poly smiled at him and asked more in resignation than eagerness whether they would be travelling on again this week.

  Luck gave her the long, sideways look that always made her feel like he was thinking something very different to what he was speaking, and said surprisingly: “Don’t you like it here?”

  Poly was slightly ashamed to find that her first thought was of blue-eyed Michael. “Of course I do! But I thought you had to take me to the Capital to get your books.”

  “Well. Yes.”

  “Then–”

  “Well, I can’t pass you off to the Council with a curse dangling from you,” Luck said irritably. “They don’t like messy ends there. Not unless they’re the ones making them.”

  “Oh. What will they do with me?”

  “Huh,” said Luck; and his face was suddenly blank. “I didn’t think of that. They’ll probably try to win your endorsement, just to get the Royalists off their backs.”

  The idea of anyone campaigning to put another Persephone on the throne struck Poly as dryly humorous.

  “Of course, the Old Parrasians will probably try to assassinate you,” added Luck, with what Poly found to be a distinct lack of concern. “Heaven knows what Black Velvet will do, but it’ll be something subtle and annoying.”

  “But I don’t want the throne!”

  Luck shrugged. “Try and make them believe that. The Old Parrasians are a rabid bunch of war-mongers and the Council’s full of only slightly less rabid fungus-feeders. And that’s reckoning without the Royalists.”

  “It sounds just like home,” sighed Poly, feeling as though she had gone from the kiln to the furnace. She looked askance at Luck and asked: “How did you get mixed up in all this? And who are all these people?”

  “I’m not mixed up in anything; I just want my books.”

  “I suppose that explains the bomb, then.”

  “What? Huh. Maybe we should let someone try to kill you again.”

  “No!” interrupted Onepiece, scowling inexpertly but ferociously at Luck. “No killing Poly!”

  “It’s all right, darling: no one is trying to kill me. Luck, how would that help?”

  “Well, we’d be waiting for them this time. We might learn something useful.”

  “Or I might be dead,” suggested Poly, giving Onepiece a hard look until he ceased to wobble his spoon threatening at Luck and began eating his porridge again.

  “Rubbish,” said Luck. “I wouldn’t let them kill you.”

  “That makes me feel much better,” Poly assured him.

  “Not kill Poly!” Onepiece muttered into his porridge, sulkily this time. “I will bite.”

  “I’m capable of looking after Poly without your help, dog,” said Luck. “How many people are outside, Poly?”

  “A few. Not as many as yesterday.”

  “Huh. Good. Poly, where’s your spindle?”

  Poly blinked, confused, and Luck’s head tilted consideringly. “You’ve forgotten it again, haven’t you?”

  “No, of course not!” Poly said sharply, feeling fed up. There was a faint fuzziness at the back of her mind that worried her. Why did Luck always speak in riddles? And why was he asking about a spindle?

  “Where is it, then?”

  “It’s– it’s–”

  “Never mind,” said Luck, lunging at her with surprising speed. “I know where it is.”

  He pulled a spindle out of her pocket and brandished it at her.

  Poly, belatedly, said: “Hey!” She had, in fact, forgotten all about the spindle– couldn’t remember putting such a thing in her pocket. However, that was no excuse for Luck to turn out her pockets.

  “I thought so. Hold out your hand, Poly.”

  “Why?” Poly asked, suspiciously, curling the fingers of both hands.

  “You can leave your glove on, I don’t want the antimagic one.”

  “Luck–”

  “Hand, Poly. Hand. Oh, never mind.”

  Poly found herself with one hand in Luck’s, the spindle curled between her fingers and palm. “Let me go!”

  “Sit still, Poly; I’m working on something.”

  Poly drew in a deep breath, counted to ten very carefully in her head, and relaxed both her hand and the warm glow of antimagic that had begun to fizz in her left arm. This prompted Luck to look at her with faint surprise and something else that made Poly protest defensively: “Well, you would have done it anyway, so why should I waste time struggling?”

  Luck’s eyes went glassy and just a little bit gold. “Concentrate, Poly. When was the last time you thought about the castle?”

  “The castle?” repeated Poly in surprise. Out of all the things she had come to expect from Luck’s experiments, a conversation reminiscing on castle life was not one. Truth to tell, it had been some days since she’d thought of anyone from the castle, besides fleeting thoughts of Mordion or Persephone. It had faded into the colourless backdrop of her old life, thrust out by the invasive and unignorable presence that was Luck; and in a quieter manner by the dog-boy who was at present looking at her with oddly anxious eyes.

  “A few days, I suppose.”

  “Don’t need castle,” muttered Onepiece, sotto voce. “Have dog and wizard now.”

  “Huh,” said Luck, his eyes glassier and more golden than ever. “Tell me about the king and queen.”

  Poly opened her mouth to reply, remembered that as far as Luck knew, the king and queen were her parents, and shut it again. At length she ventured: “As a ruling couple or as parents?”

  “Ah, I forgot: that won’t help. Tell me about the people instead.”

  “Well, there was Lady Cimone.”

  “Strapping, stern, matronly woman? We met. Very capable woman, that.”

  “Yes,” said Poly, sighing faintly. Lady Cimone was one of the few things Poly did miss about castle life. “She knew ancient Glausian, Parrasian, and three dialects of Lacunan.”

  “Waste of time,” said Luck. “There are spells for that.”

  “Yes, but learning them makes you think,” said Poly; or at least, she thought she said it. Life had become somehow soft around the edges and a little bit confusing. It took her some time to realise that she’d fallen asleep, and by then, someone was already shaking her shoulder.

  “Lady? Lady, are you well?”

  “Yes, just sleepy,” yawned Poly. She rubbed at her eyes, aware that she didn’t recognise the voice but unable to see who it was. It was a nice voice, all velvet and deep and perhaps dangerous; and she wasn’t really surprised when she opened her eyes to find a face just as beautiful and perhaps danger
ous bent over her in concern.

  “Crooked wizard!” said Onepiece’s voice from the general vicinity of her lap. Poly looked down, her hand unconsciously reaching to pat him briefly on the head, and found that Onepiece had wound himself, moss-like, around her torso, and was sitting in her lap.

  “Tricksy tricks and leaves!” he continued, indignantly.

  The dark face that had been bent over her smiled in amusement. “Has Luck been up to his tricks again?”

  “I must be a less pleasant companion than I thought,” murmured Poly, too interested in the fact that this person had called Luck by his name instead of the honorific ‘wizard’ to be more than wearily annoyed that Luck had been experimenting on her again. She wondered briefly if he had put a sleep spell on her himself, or if castle memories had triggered the curse again, and lent only a perfunctory ear to the stranger’s politely charming reply that she couldn’t be.

  “You don’t know Luck very well, do you?” she remarked, still somewhat sleepily. Certainly the curse had been triggered again: that must have been what Luck was testing for. So Mordion had been clever enough to make sure that every time she remembered something from the castle, the curse was triggered again. Evidently, thought Poly bitterly, it hadn’t been enough to curse her. He’d planned and replanned for every possible event, including her awakening.

  The stranger laughed. “You mean he doesn’t find anyone congenial company.”

  “That’s right,” Poly agreed. Her mind was slowly but surely waking up, and it now seemed odd to find a stranger leaning over her in Luck’s kitchen. “Are you looking for Luck? He’s receiving, but I think he’s in the library.”

  “Workroom, actually,” said the other. “He sent me to wake you. I’m Ronin, by the way.”

  “Poly.”

  “Josie’s, um, niece.”

  Did no one believe the story? wondered Poly a little tartly. The whole thing seemed to have been a colossal waste of time. She nodded and introduced Onepiece by way of distraction, unwilling to explain to Ronin the true state of affairs.

  Onepiece said: “Yes,” with great precision, though whether this was because he approved of the introduction or merely wished to say it, Poly wasn’t sure.

  Ronin said a more convincing “Charmed”, making an elegant half-bow that included Poly.

  When she asked what brought him to visit Luck, he held up a lightly spelled hat and added: “A faulty spell. I can’t think where I went wrong, but I must have done something: instead of warding off rain, it attracts it. I only have to step out of the house on a cloudy day to make it rain.”

  Poly tried to hide her smile, but fortunately, Ronin was perfectly cheerful about his backwards spell.

  “Oh well, at least you won’t have to wait long,” she told him. “Luck will fix it in a trice.”

  “That only makes matters worse,” Ronin said gloomily; but he was still smiling. “I’ve seen you out and about with Josie’s Margaret, haven’t I, Miss Poly?”

  “More than likely. We’ve been restocking my wardrobe with the latest fashions the village has to offer.”

  He gave her an amused look that suggested village fashions were far from high fashion, and said thoughtfully: “Pert girl, Margaret. Sharp and clever, and she’s the darling of the village.”

  “She’s been very nice to me,” said Poly, feeling obscurely as though she needed to defend Margaret.

  “I’m glad to hear it. I would have thought–” he stopped, gave a barely discernible half-smile, and said: “She doesn’t take competition very well.”

  Poly shrugged uncomfortably and repeated: “She’s been very nice to me.”

  “Michael seems very fond of you.”

  “Does he?” Poly unwrapped Onepiece’s skinny arms from her waist, hiding a small, pleased smile.

  “Oh yes. He was busy fending off enquiries about you when I passed him last night: nearly every boy at Mistress Pritchard’s wanted to know if you had a sweetheart, or what your schedule was for today. Michael and Margaret were like two dogs guarding a bone.”

  The charm of novelty, thought Poly, too surprised to do more than methodically wipe Onepiece’s porridgey face clean. She’d seen it happen at the castle with visiting luminaries, whose meteoric rise in popularity had always grated on Persephone unbearably. She hadn’t expected it to happen to her. It did make her wonder, however, in a small, uncomfortable part of her mind, whether Margaret would still be friendly in a day or two.

  Ronin opened the kitchen door for them with as much easy grace as if he owned the house, and Luck looked up, sharp and glittering and interested. Poly wondered exactly what he’d been up to. He was alone, and although the front door set carefully ajar suggested that he had just seen off another supplicant, Poly suspected that, for reasons of his own, he’d been waiting for herself and Ronin.

  Onepiece sneezed and Luck’s eyes flickered to the puppy, then became green and glassy once again.

  “The dog can stay in the corner,” he said. “Poly, fix Ronin’s spell; it’s not hard.”

  Poly almost asked, tartly, just what he would be doing while she did his job; but she found she could see what he was doing, clear and glistening, on the bench in front of him. Something that looked like magic but didn’t seem to quite be magic. Whatever it was, Ronin didn’t seem to be able to see it, so Poly took heed of the blanker-than-usual stare that Luck turned on her and pretended not to see it either.

  Instead, she accepted Ronin’s hat, turning it over in her hands to find the weak spot and listening with an indulgent ear to Onepiece’s proud reiterations in her head that he could -fix it, fix it, fix it, easy-peasy-

  “The dog stays in the corner,” repeated Luck, without glancing at them.

  Onepiece gave the suspicion of a growl in his gruff human voice. Much to Poly’s surprise, however, he obeyed Luck without any other argument, settling down in a corner with various off-cuts of magic and a lone, vociferous gremlin who seemed to be egging him on to build something noxious.

  “An interesting child,” said Ronin, a question hidden in the deep velvet of his voice.

  Poly said: “Yes,” noncommittally, straightening out the wrong patches in the hat spell and weaving them new. And then, feeling that she’d been rather prickly this morning, she added: “He’s only just learning to be human again. He’s my ah, brother.”

  “Mum,” said Onepiece from his corner, crossly. Poly felt Ronin’s amused eyes on her and thought ruefully that between Luck and Onepiece, she wouldn’t have a shred of reputation left by the time they travelled on to the Capital.

  “He’s a little confused,” she said, meeting that amused look without a blink. “He lost his mother when he was very young. Your hat is finished.”

  Luck snatched it with a superfluous: “Let me see” before Ronin could take it, and Poly wondered if she had merely imagined something clear and fiery being done to the hat in the blink of an eye.

  “Huh,” said Luck, flipping the hat with one hand to inspect the other side of the brim. He tossed it back to Ronin. “Well done, Poly. Send in the next person.”

  “Well, you don’t need to sound so surprised,” said Poly; but she showed Ronin out anyway. He gave her a smile and one last elegant bow, sweeping back gracefully with his newly fixed hat spell, and jauntily strolled down the main street. Further down, Michael was sweeping a shop-front porch with his apron tied on sideways: she caught his eyes and was treated to a swift, mad little dance in which Michael’s broom nearly went through the front window. Poly was still laughing when Luck poked his head around the door, his eyes gold and a little bit narrow, and said: “Stop flirting, Poly. Send in the next one.”

  The line of villagers had dwindled to nothing by early afternoon. The earliest callers had been the serious ones, mostly complaining of field work that needed to be redone– power loss, some of them called it. Others said no, it was as if their spells were routinely being pulled sideways by something that they couldn’t trace. Poly began to think that she ha
dn’t been wrong about the faint skewed feel to the village’s magic, and Luck’s eyes became narrower and greener with each supplicant.

  Most of the later callers were young, presumably marriageable females, much to Poly’s amusement. They came, bewitching smiles in place, for reasons as varied and creative as cursed shoes to charming away a single, nonexistent freckle. Poly gave full marks to the freckle girl–who, to her appreciative wonder, sat with an upturned face to Luck’s close scrutiny and blinked heavy-lashed eyes dewily at him–but she would have been better pleased if the young girls had not also been accompanied by a fair assortment of males, who were becoming less tongue-tied and more persistent in their attempts to catch her attention.

  Perhaps it was due to the lingering effects of the freckle girl’s purple eyes that Poly was able to slip away shortly after, towing Onepiece and his resident gremlin. If so, she was very grateful.

  When she passed Michael’s storefront, hoping to catch a glimpse of him again, she was further pleased to find that she would have his escort instead: it was Michael’s half-day.

  “So we’ve managed to abscond with you at last!” said his voice. There was a flurry of movement as Michael leapt the front railing, apron over shoulder, and landed with a flourish and a bow. He was trailing threads and tiny triangular off-cuts of blue cotton.

  “Did I impress you, Miss Poly?”

  “Oh yes, I’m terribly impressed. I don’t think the man behind the counter thought much of it, though.”

  Michael grimaced comically, ducking out of sight of the store-owner’s glare. “He’s merely jealous of my physical prowess.”

  “Oh, is that what it is?”

  “It must be: who could be angry at this face? Hurry along, Miss Poly, or he’ll be after me to clean the dust from his front window.”

  So Poly hurried along, giggling at Michael’s nonsense while Onepiece perched on her hip and made popping noises in her ear. Before long they had arrived at a small, clean-scrubbed cottage that Poly recognised without Michael’s unnecessarily flamboyant gestures, by the simple fact that Annie was in the front garden planting seeds.