A Shadow Bright and Burning (Kingdom on Fire #1)(70)

“Someone will,” he muttered.

I had to wonder, as they escorted Cellini off and I wiped my eyes, if someone else would attack. Even with my progress, I knew he was right. In a woman, pride was unforgivable.

—

“TAKE THREE DROPS OF THIS IN a glass of water,” Fenswick grumped, handing me a vial of bubbling golden liquid that changed to pink when I turned it upside down. He flapped his ears as I helped him off the bed. “Anything else troubling you?”



“I still have nightmares.” The R’hlem dreams hadn’t come to me as much since I’d gained control of my powers, but they did return.

“Well, keep chewing willow bark.” He waddled to the door, when a housemaid entered with a tray for me. She wrinkled her nose at Fenswick and walked straight into him, bowling him over. He got to his feet, dusting himself off.

“Be more careful,” he snapped. She set down the tray and swatted at him with a napkin.

“Disgusting little thing. Shoo,” she said, driving a hissing Fenswick from the room. I sat up.

“Don’t you dare treat him like that,” I cried.

The maid scowled. Why was tonight Lilly’s evening off? “Beg your pardon, miss, but it don’t hurt him none. They don’t feel things as we do.”

“He’s a person,” I said.

“No, he ain’t, miss, if you’ll pardon me.” She sniffed. “He’s a beast.”

Once, I might have agreed with her. Now, as she handed me my tray, all I could hear were Cellini’s hissed words: She’s not one of us.

—

AFTER LESSONS THE NEXT DAY, I took to the library to read about hobgoblins. We didn’t have many volumes, but I found one passage in A Compendium of Faerie (Laurence Puchner, 1798) that said: A Mandrake Root or moldy Onion can be most instrumental in welcoming a subject of the Dark Fae Queen into a home.



Agrippa’s kitchen didn’t contain a single mandrake root. However, I found an old onion with green bits sprouting on it. This would have to do. I took myself to Fenswick’s corner of the house. He lived inside a chest of drawers in an empty servant’s room.

I found him relaxed in the bottommost drawer, his ears tucked behind him as he attempted a doze. “What is it?” he said. “Can’t you let me rest?” He rubbed his eyes with two of his four paws.

“I wanted to give you this.” I handed over the onion. He took it like he’d never seen one before in his life. “I thought it might make you feel more at home?”

For a moment, his expression didn’t change. This had been a grave mistake. Then his ears parted to the side. His black eyes glistened. He hugged the onion to his chest, sniffled, and said, “I’ve been in this house six months, and no one’s…welcomed me yet.”

I’d no idea how a sprouty onion made one feel wanted, but there were many things I didn’t understand. “I’m glad to have been the first.”

“Why do you care?” His ears perked up.

“I suppose I know what it’s like to not quite belong.”

“You’re a lady sorcerer.”

“With the marks to prove it.” Touching a finger to a purplish bruise on my cheek, I made to leave.

“Er, wait. The willow bark doesn’t help with your bad dreams, does it?” Fenswick’s ears slid down his back.



“Not much.”

Later that night, I found a packet in a velvet pouch outside my door. It smelled of herbs and rose hips. A note, in a chubby, childish hand, read: For nightmares. Place under pillow.

From that night forward, I didn’t see R’hlem. He wasn’t missed.





My new boys’ clothes were a terrible fit. I had to roll the sleeves three times and tie a rope around my waist to hoist up the trousers, but racing across London rooftops was a job unsuitable for frocks. I lay on my belly and crawled forward. Hargrove pointed to the roof opposite us.

“Let’s see if you can place it…there,” he said, indicating the chimney stack. Careful to avoid tumbling, I pointed Porridge at my heart, twisted the stave while muttering a few key nonsense words, and then flung my arm toward the other rooftop. It worked. A vision of myself, a complete copy of my current trousered state, gazed back at me from the chimney’s base.

It was startling to see myself outside a mirror. My copy’s mouth hung wide open, like mine. I lost my balance and slipped toward the roof’s edge. Hargrove pulled me back by the collar of my coat, and the vision opposite us disappeared.

“Don’t be a bloody fool, girl. No need to go tipping your balance over a good reflection. Now I want to see you fly. Due south, aim for the edge of the ward. By the docks, where we had that pork pie last time.” With that, Hargrove swept his cloak around his body and floated into the sky. I’d be damned if he beat me. The last time I lost a race, I had to buy him a bottle of gin and massage his temples.



Summoning the wind, I took off across the rooftops and above the labyrinthine alleyways of London. How marvelous it was, to have a bird’s-eye view of the evening goings-on and lamp-lightings. I was glad to be able to stay this long. Agrippa had gone to Surrey overnight on business for the Order, and no one else felt the need to check on my whereabouts. I arrived at the meeting place and dropped gracefully to the ground.