The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(6)
A knock sounded on the storeroom door. For an instant, Blue thought it might be Ana, late but still ready to do her job, but then a woman on the other side of the wall said firmly, “Open for the princess.”
Papa set his dust cloth aside and obliged, smiling as he said, “Princess Nessa, how lovely to see you. Come right in.”
Nessa threw herself into Papa’s arms, giving him a fierce hug. One of the princess’s guards stepped into the storeroom, stationing herself against the doorway that led to the shop floor, while the other two took up their posts in the alley outside. Papa returned Nessa’s hug, patted her on the back a few times, and then let her go.
“I have to get back to the shop floor and open up for the afternoon customers.” Papa’s smile encompassed both girls. “When you have a break in your session, come see me. I brought fresh-baked cookies in with me today. Nutmeg wafers. Your favorite.”
Nessa’s face lit up, and Papa laughed as he left to reopen the store.
The twelve-year-old princess was already taller than Blue, though that was hardly an accomplishment given Blue’s small stature. Nessa’s body still held the gangly awkwardness of youth but was growing into the type of athletic gracefulness that her older brother, Kellan, may he fall off his horse, was known for. Today, the princess’s hair was done up in intricate twists with strips of yellow ribbon woven throughout, and her yellow dress glowed against her brown skin like a beam of sunlight. Nessa’s hands moved quickly, drawing together in fists at her chest and then pushing out toward Blue as she smiled, wide and joyful.
How are you?
“I’m good,” Blue said, though it wasn’t quite true. The deliveries were still waiting for someone to take them, and the memory of the woman sentenced to death on the stage lingered at the back of her thoughts like poison.
But it was impossible not to respond to Nessa’s smile. Impossible to refuse her friendship, something Blue had learned years ago when the young princess decided she liked spending time with Blue more than she liked her tutors and their constant efforts to figure out why she could produce sound but couldn’t move her mouth correctly to form words.
Nessa’s hands moved again. Excited! I have news.
“What is it?” Blue’s hands moved as well. She’d always thought it was polite to use Nessa’s form of communicating as much as possible. Some of the signs were a language the scholars in Akram had developed for citizens who were deaf or had speech difficulties. Some of them were Nessa-specific signs that the princess had come up with on her own.
Nessa raised her hands as if placing a crown on her head and then lowered them to gently bang her fists twice against her chest. Kellan.
Blue’s lip curled.
Coming home from school today. His carriage arrives soon.
“How . . . nice.” Blue turned to tie a square of cloth over the mouth of the glass jar that held the queen’s medicine.
Nessa laughed, a full-bodied sound that filled the stockroom with warmth. Blue raised a brow at her.
Kellan is my favorite. He’d be your favorite too if you gave him a chance.
Blue would rather suck on an entire bucket full of unripe shirellas than spend time with the insufferable, full-of-himself, rules-don’t-apply-to-me Kellan, but she wasn’t going to say any of that to Nessa. Instead, she said, “I’m glad you’ll get to spend time with him this summer. We’re going to have a short lesson today because Ana didn’t show up to do the deliveries, so I’m going to have to do them myself.”
I can help.
“I hardly think your mother would approve of you making shop deliveries, even with your guards in tow. Besides, I know you want to get back to the castle to see Kellan, may a wagon run over his”—she caught Nessa’s eye—“um . . . enemies. Now gather up some bolla root, thorn fern, and essence of lyllis. I’m going to show you how to safely brew a batch of poison.”
An hour flew by, with Nessa competently handling the ingredients and judging when the brew had coalesced enough to be transferred into glass jars for safekeeping. Once the princess and her guards left to return to the castle, Blue placed the deliveries in a large canvas tote and set off into the Gaillard quarter to bring the goods to the shop’s customers.
A thick blanket of early summer heat shimmered against the cobblestone streets as Blue scanned the alley behind the shop for any children old enough to handle deliveries. The alley was empty. She sighed as she hoisted the tote over her shoulder and started walking.
She’d known it was a long shot. Most of the older homeless children who lived in the alleys and back streets of Falaise de la Mer were skilled at finding odd jobs each day or would take up begging on their favorite corners until the magistrate’s guards chased them away. It was rare to find one of them still looking for work this late in the day.
She hated that they had to look for work at all.
The farther one got from the main roads with their pretty buildings and clean-swept cobblestones, the more the sordid truth about Falaise de la Mer and its head families became apparent. Some streets were full of ramshackle homes that were falling down around the people living in them. Some were full of children whose parents were gone—jailed by the magistrates, killed by the brokers who ran a host of dangerous, illegal enterprises throughout the city for being unable to pay their debts, or dead of starvation.
A familiar pulse of anger galvanized Blue as she hurried down the wide, gracious street that ran in front of the Mortar & Pestle, ignoring the gentle rustle of the iron bells that hung from every doorway to warn the city if Marielle the wraith, imprisoned in the wilds far to the west, returned.