Part of Your World (Twisted Tales)(32)

But all the houses he passed looked the same; the flowers and plants were the same colors as the day before.

Yep, that grain storehouse is still the same. Same dry rot around the windows, same moldering timbers….

Wait a moment, that looks really bad. I’ll bet it smells terrible up close. Isn’t that where we keep the surplus grain? In case of blight or disaster? Good heavens, is it leaking? That could ruin everything. Why is that being allowed? I’d better look into that….

Oh, look, it’s that girl from the market who sells the sea beans. What’s she doing here? I used to know her mother….What was her name? Lucretia.

My word—look at that enormous guarded wagon driving up to the castle, with so many soldiers around it! What on earth are they delivering? I want to say…munitions? Yes! That’s it.

Wait—munitions? But why? I can’t quite…Why do we need…? This is all so bizarre.

Then it hit him.

There hadn’t been a physical change to himself or his sight; the veil or whatever it was, the charm, had been lifted from inside his head. It was like an old net, full of slime and dead shellfish and falling apart and utterly useless, had enshrouded his brain, and had just now been extracted by some clever doctor. He could think for the first time in years. He could react to the things around him. Generate opinions. Hold on to thoughts. He had changed, not his eyes.

That was reassuring, and having figured that out made him feel a bit better and more in control. He strode confidently into the castle. Grimsby was waiting just inside and in one fluid, habituated movement helped the prince spin out of his academic robe and into a very neatly tailored day jacket, dove grey with long tails.

“Thanks, Grims,” Eric said, continuing on to the lesser luncheon room and fluffing up his cravat. All he wanted to do was grab his old manservant—out of sight of the guards—and grill him about the past. He was the only one in the castle Eric could trust. But that would look odd, and until he got the lay of the land, he preferred to play along like still-bespelled Eric.

Princess Vanessa was already seated at the delicate golden table where they would dine together after meeting with the Metalworkers’ Guild. Thank goodness he didn’t have to greet her and take her arm and lead her in. He had very, very mixed feelings right now, but all the ones around her induced nausea.

“Good afternoon, Princess,” Eric said politely. She extended a gloved hand and he perfunctorily kissed the back of it, extending his lips so that only the furthest, tippiest bit, the part that often got chapped at sea, barely brushed the smooth fabric.

He noticed—and was unsure if this was the result of his new state of being—her dress: she wore an unusually demure pale blue day dress with less bustle than usual and understated lace ruffs at the wrists. Also a giant woolly muffler wrapped around her neck and shoulders. Oh, it matched, of course; it was a beautiful, expensive shade of blue and was fringed with the sort of exotic imported feathers that had long skinny shafts and little bouncing dots of color at the top that flashed in gold and iridescence. They obscured most of Vanessa’s face.

More luck, Eric thought.

“Bit of a nasty cold,” she whispered huskily. One delicate gloved hand went to her throat.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, settling down into his own seat. Parched from the dry air in the practice hall, he picked up a carafe and began to pour himself a glass of cava.

Then he stopped. Did he really want to be foggy headed? At all? After this…awakening?

He reached for the crystal decanter of water instead.

Vanessa watched him silently.

The suited and dour captains of the Metalworkers’ Guild stood before them, the symbol of their station gleaming here and there on their persons: silvery cane handles, the shining tips of their boots, simple rings, sashes with obscure buckles on them.

“If we may, Your Highness…” A short and stocky man stepped forward. He had a luxurious, well-trimmed beard, and if it weren’t for his modern tricorn hat, he would have looked exactly like a character out of one of Eric’s fairy tale books, one of the fair folk who actually dug the precious metals out of deep mines. “We don’t want to delay your lunch any further.”

“Very considerate,” Vanessa hissed. Without her normal, lilting tone, it sounded exactly as snarky and sarcastic as she probably meant. The man’s bushy eyebrows shot up, but of course he said nothing about it.

“T-to put it plainly,” he stuttered, “we…of course…support any and all military actions as planned and carried out by you, of course….It does keep us busy, after all. All the musket barrels…and mechanisms…and cannons…No shortage of work!”

Eric frowned. How much work did Tirulia’s metalworkers have, precisely, involved in the crafts of war? The only reason there were fortifications in the city at all were because Roman governors and then medieval kings had liked the surroundings for their vacations by the sea.

“The problem is supplies. Your…strategies have unfortunately angered some of our trading partners. And the pass in the north is now unsafe for shipping, especially cargo that could be seen as military.”

“I thought our mountains had some of the finest mines in the world,” Vanessa whispered, asking the question before Eric could pose it himself. His father had first shown him the location of the mines and quarries on a parchment map when he was a lad. The ink in which mountains were sketched, in little upside-down vees, was a dull black for iron and metallic orange for copper. That had fascinated young Eric—although he had wanted to put a dragon in there as well.