The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(18)
Pepperell’s ear twitched.
Blue pulled a pink dress off a hook in her closet and slid it over her head. “Demanding breakfast at the crack of dawn is also rude. But neither of those is half as rude as cleaning your hindquarters on my sheets.”
Pepperell sneezed on Blue’s pillow.
“You are incorrigible.” Mindful of Grand-mère’s efforts to style her hair over the weekend, Blue uncorked her homemade almond oil, poured a coin-size amount in her palm, and rubbed her hands together. Carefully, she worked the oil into her scalp between the small rows of twists Grand-mère had put into the front portion of her hair. The rest of her hair was a riot of tangled black curls. She put more oil on her hands and ran her fingers through her curls, coaxing them into a halo of corkscrews that just brushed her shoulders.
Blue yawned as she made her way down the farmhouse’s narrow hallway, her boots tapping against the scarred wooden floor. She’d have to hurry through breakfast. Hurry through the list of potions she needed to make at the shop. And then, if she still hadn’t found a replacement for Ana, hurry through the deliveries so she could return to the shop and work on the formula for turning lead into gold.
She was getting closer. The night before, she’d produced a lump of metal that glowed golden yellow under the lamplight. Unfortunately, it had seams of dull gray running through it. Still, it gave her hope that soon she’d be able to put her project in motion.
And once that was accomplished, she’d turn the city over to find Ana, apologize if her enthusiasm had scared the girl away, and see if she could gently convince the child to move into Blue’s new shelter.
The day flew by in a haze of potions, deliveries, and cleaning the storeroom to Papa’s exacting standards. At one point, Dinah Chauveau entered the shop to purchase a few ointments. Blue overheard her asking Papa if they’d notified the magistrate yet about someone paying with fake gold, and had a moment of blind panic when Papa froze. She hadn’t told him about trying to pay with the gold at the market, and that had been a mistake. He didn’t have a story ready, and he’d had no idea the head of the Chauveau family had taken an interest. After several agonizing beats of silence, Papa smiled and assured Lady Chauveau that all was handled, but the look he gave Blue after Dinah left the shop promised a difficult discussion ahead of her once she got home that evening.
But before Blue could go home for the evening, she had to handle a task she’d been avoiding. Ana hadn’t shown again, and Blue knew it was past time to find a new person for the job.
The cathedral’s heavy iron bells were tolling an hour far past Blue’s usual dinnertime when she finally set aside her experiments. Five failures. Two that looked nearly like gold until you turned them over and saw veins of lead running across the surface.
And one that was a solid yellow throughout, though slightly harder than true gold.
She’d done it. Or very nearly. Hopefully, all she had to do was repeat the process the following night, fine-tune the pressure, the heat, and the inclusion of khravllin, a rare mineral from the faraway kingdom of Eldr, and she would have gold.
Blue locked the shop door, drew her summer cloak close against the chilly evening breeze, and bounced in place for a moment, excitement bubbling through her.
Countless hours of work. Of failure. Of having to pick her confidence up off the ground and convince herself to try again. And it was all about to be worth it. She couldn’t wait to tell Papa.
But first, she was going to solve the problem of replacing Ana.
Turning north instead of west toward the road that led out of the city and to the farmhouse, Blue kept to the edges of the streets. Above her, fire crackled merrily in the torch lamps that were hung along the road, orange light pooling on the sidewalk beneath their iron poles. Carriages moved briskly, lanterns swinging from the coachman’s perch, as their occupants went to dinner parties or dances or whatever it was wealthy people did when the sun went down.
Blue wasn’t interested in the wealthy side of the Gaillard quarter. The children she was hoping to hire spread far and wide throughout the city during the day, begging, stealing, and working odd jobs, but at night, they returned to the crowded, dirty warren of streets that snaked their way through the city’s heart.
Three blocks later, she turned left and began walking briskly. The buildings grew closer together, their fences leaning inward in places, their exteriors cracking here and there. The torch lamps grew few and far between, and a whisper of unease skated up Blue’s spine.
Papa was not going to be happy with her, but it was too late to turn back now. She was already well within the neighborhoods of aging homes and old buildings that were now used for storage, for less than legal businesses run by brokers, or for shelter by people who had nowhere else to go.
Hopefully, she could quickly find one of the shelters and hire someone. She’d prefer to hire one of the children who already worked for the shops around hers. She knew them and trusted them, and surely at least one of them had time in the day to do deliveries for her shop as well.
Lost in her thoughts as she scanned a street corner by the distant light of the stars, she pulled up short when a shout echoed from the street to her right, followed instantly by cheers. Turning, she found a crowd gathered on both sides of the street. A square was roped off on the street itself, and a lantern hung from each of the square’s corners. A broker in a striped top hat and matching dress coat stood at one corner calling loudly for bets as two young men entered the ring, stripped to the waist. One of them wore a black mask tied over the upper half of his face, leaving only his eyes visible.