36. Traitor to the fae

Ada woke to an apricot sun, not yet fully risen. Dozy clouds still spotted the sky, fleeced and bloated, stealing the early day's warmth. Shadows shifted from beneath the door cracks, and Raeph's voice was as low as the creaking floorboards. Her room had no lock, but he did not enter, waiting only in the corridor until he heard the stirring of blankets, and then ghosted away.

She dressed quickly, tying up her shirt strings and tugging on her boots. Solen's silver dagger had rested on the dresser for the night, its moon face staring blankly up at the ceiling. Sifting through the drawers, Ada found a worn belt circled with ragged straps. She pulled off a handful of them, then threaded the belt around her waist and fitted the knife to a strap swinging by her hip.

When she was done, Ada plucked up her cloak from the bedsheets and swept a final look around the room. It appeared just as barren as it had when she had first entered, and aside from the rumpled blankets, nothing suggested anyone was living there. Only the green ribbon, still tied around her bedpost, marked that Ada had ever set foot inside the room. It hollowed her chest to see her phantom existence, so airy she may well have been a passing breeze. Her eyes settled on the discarded belt straps, and she gathered them into her palm.

It only took five more minutes to weave her hair into braids, then she gathered them together at the nape of her neck and secured them into a bun. It was nowhere near as intricate as the plaited crown Ada had worn around her head for the Spring Equinox celebrations, and harder still to accomplish without a mirror to guide her hands. But she knew the patterns, taught year after year by her mother until she had been old enough to do it for herself, though never quite as skillfully.

Escaped tendrils of hair fluttered over her cheeks as she hurried down the staircase, lightened here and there into golden threads by the sunshine. Raeph's eyes seemed to follow their rippling as she entered the taproom, but he wrenched his gaze away as she stepped towards him and Lark. The skin beneath his eyes was indigo, as if he hadn't had a moment's sleep the night before.

It didn't surprise Ada, as Raeph had disappeared into the night as soon as the sky had turned from navy to black. He hadn't returned, not even after Solen excused herself to bed in a half-drunken stupor, and Lark sat by the hearth tuning his lute, watching the candle wax burn down into puddles.

Ada had avoided Armestrong for most of the evening, listening to Solen's disjointed babbling, and then Lark's slow lullabies. But the woman had sought her out, cornering her by the bookcases as the dust swirled thick from its neglected shelves. Lark had only just left for bed, and Ada wondered why she hadn't made her own exit earlier in the evening. There had been something that had kept her lingering; a desire to stay by the door, or away from the one upstairs that would promise a quickened coming of tomorrow.

"The Hound wasn't lying, was he?" Armestrong asked. "There was a flower that had been casted upon. Magic from Min."

She finished with a statement, not a question, and Ada didn't dare to deny it.

"There was," she said. "But the Hound didn't follow Min. And she didn't take the flower with her when she swore to me she'd run back to the lyceum."

There was a long silence, and Ada could hear a pigeon coo into the night; the rustle of a nesting creature in the chimney. Eventually, Armestrong nodded. She scraped her fingers through the hair at her temples, strands of mottled grey, then walked back to lean across the bar as she slumped onto a stool.

Ada considered slipping up the staircase, but decided against it when the woman huffed a sigh. She balanced on a seat beside Armestrong, lacing her fingers together and waiting as the minutes drifted by. Not a word passed between them, but when her bones began to stiffen, Ada spoke again.

"I want to thank you, for delivering my message to Min. I'm sorry that it ended as dangerously as it did, but I'm glad she now knows that I'm going to try to help her." Ada paused, crossing and uncrossing her ankles. "I never thought she would come and find me."

Armestrong choked on a laugh. "Then you haven't known Min long enough. That girl would do anything if she thought it was for a noble cause."

Armestong had once spoken of the child as a songbird; curious, intrepid, unfit for a cage. It suited Min well, Ada thought, a bird with the freedom to fly and the yearning to sing.

"I meant it when I told you I wanted to keep her safe. I still do," Ada replied.

Armestrong heaved another sigh, pitching herself down from the stool and pacing to the hearth. She reached for two clay bowls stacked by the fireplace, stabbing a fork into a cooling skillet layered with sliced courgettes and tomatoes. She brought the bowls back to the bar, sliding one in front of Ada as she sagged back onto her stool. None of the bandits had eaten much for dinner, and none had suggested that it might have been a skittish anxiety that had swept away their appetites. Even Ada had sensed the chill in the air, the promise that whatever happened the following day would leave no route for return.

"I know you meant it," Armestrong said, stabbing her fork into the limp vegetables. "Plus, there are few brave enough to flash around magic in front of a Hound just to save a little girl."

Armestrong didn't ask where the flower had ended up, but the press of it against Ada's ribs demanded attention. She shifted in the cloak instead and reached for her bowl. Though Armestrong still avoided her gaze, the air around them had settled, almost thawing to their first meeting in the attic.

Embolden, Ada chanced a question. "When the Hound was at the door, you told him to try and smell the magic. What did you mean?"

Armestrong tensed, and for a moment, Ada feared she had shattered their peace.

"It's strange to think how little you know. How you've even been able to survive here without knowing." Armestrong murmured.

The darkness pressed in, wrapping them in a clandestine night. She continued, "You speak of magic, but you don't fully understand the word. It comes in kinds, categorised by type and power. First is common magic, that exists in a reserve that any fae can access through dealings and namings and such. It's vast but thin."

Ada nodded, remembering Min telling her about common magic in the caravan. She thought about a gauzy layer of magic filmed across the world, tinging the air and mixing with the earth. If it had touched upon Ada, she hadn't felt a thing.

"Then there is agrestal magic, created through plants, botany, and herbalism, which are combined together and cast upon to transfigure and transmute. Yes, it can do a great number of things, which is enough for most, but its limits lie where ours do: in life and death. You cannot kill or birth with agrestal magic, though with sanguinary, you can. Even in the old days, sanguinary was forbidden, not that many were strong enough in magic to perform it anyway. It can only be cast with blood, fresh from the living to deal with the dead."

Ada shuddered. Min had hinted at her skill in agrestal magic, but had made no mention at all of sanguinary.

"Blood magic?" Ada whispered.

"Exactly that," Armestrong said. "It's so potent that the very magic of it can be sensed, not only its effects. When the Lady first commanded to punish those who cast magic, sanguinary was naturally where she began. She trained her guards to sense it, or smell it, to be exact. The most adept learnt to trace magic through the city, sniffing down the streets like bloodhounds."

A sickening thought burrowed into Ada's mind. "Can they scent the magic on Min?"

"I doubt it. Magic's been rare for decades. Many of the new Hounds have probably never been trained in it, and those who have are likely preoccupied in tracking the Stone Circle." Armestrong's lips thinned into a line. "Why? Did Min seem worried?"

"No, not about magic," Ada replied, then frowned. "She was only worried about... Well, she seemed nervous about Raeph. She said I shouldn't trust him."

Armestrong didn't reply, instead picking up her fork and piercing another sliver of courgette. But that only served to panic Ada further, more questions rising unbidden from her throat. "Where does he go during the nights? Doesn't he ever sleep?"

"He sleeps at dawn. It's not too difficult to catch a few hours before the sunlight strikes bright."

"Is he that dedicated to the bandit's dream of the city without its ruler?"

There were no stars to be seen from the window, and the moon had been lost amongst a creeping fog. Beyond the front door, Wysthaven had vanished, and the world existed entirely within Armestrong's dust-dredged pub.

The woman shook her head.

"Not like the others. Not like any of us city folk." Armestrong's eyes finally flickered up to meet Ada's. "He's in the Lady's service."

The room seemed to rock, cobwebs from the bookshelves shrouding Ada's eyes in checkered grey. She scarcely heard her own words as she whispered, "He's a Hound?"

"Not a hound," Armestrong had replied. "He's a wolf."

Now, hours later in the speckled morning, Raeph opened the back door of the Bonneville, and Ada watched his black-clad shoulders spark onyx in the rising sun. Traitor, Florentin had spat at him outside of his caravan. Traitor to the city, to fae-kind, to magic. Not a hound, but a wolf.