The Star Shard (11 page)

Cymbril flipped to the back. The second-to-last page had just the two words "Forgive me"—and the very last page said only "I love you."

She closed the sad book and pushed it back across the countertop. Speaking clearly so as to be heard over Byrni, she asked, "Do you have skeleton keys, please?"

The shop-keeping skeleton flung up its hands in apparent delight and reached toward the ceiling. From behind a fringe of velvet curtain, it pulled down a taut cord that was tied across the booth's interior, like a clothesline. Clipped to the cord were hundreds and hundreds of keys.

Now the other skeleton—the bored one—hopped up and helped with the flourishing and bowing.

"Excuse me!" said Byrni as one of the skeletons jostled him. "The third rafter from the east end in the Arbles' loft is severely rotted and will need replacing before next spring to avoid dire consequences."

Cymbril peered in dismay at the enormous selection. She had hoped "skeleton key" referred to one precise thing. Her only hope, then, was to explain what she wanted it for.

"I need a key that will open a magical iron neck collar. A manacle. It's owned by Master Rombol, if that helps."

The second skeleton clapped and pranced in triumph. The first promptly unclipped a key and smacked it decisively onto the counter.

Cymbril blinked. Could it really be that easy?

As if sensing her doubt, the skeleton ducked behind the counter and came up with an iron collar that looked exactly like the one Loric wore, padlocked just the same. He thrust the key into the lock, turned it with a smart click, and the lock sprang open.

Cymbril glanced down at Miwa, who purred.

The skeleton held up two fingers.

"All right," Cymbril said. She drew two coins from her purse as the skeleton nestled the key into a key-size box of delicate wood and tied it up with red twine. It amazed Cymbril how dexterous the sharp, dry finger bones could be.

Cymbril slid her half-moons across the countertop, thanked the skeletons, and called a farewell to Byrni.

"Farewell until we meet again," he said, waving his gauntlet, and went right on with his sentence: "—which collects in a barrel at the southeast corner of the cottage."

Cymbril was turning to go when the skeleton plucked at her sleeve and dropped into her hand five golden stars, each fashioned with eight pointed rays and no bigger than her thumbnail. She gazed at them in perplexed wonder until she understood that this was her change. She'd paid with two moons and gotten back five stars.

I'll bet
these
have a constant value,
she thought. But then she noticed that the stars were twinkling, now brighter, now dimmer. She wondered if they'd vanish altogether on cloudy nights.

Smiling, she thanked the skeletons again and put the stars into her coin purse.

She felt happy and excited to have achieved success so far. But now Miwa trotted ahead hastily, and Cymbril had trouble keeping up. The crowd had thickened, and people bumped and brushed against her. Wary of pickpockets, she kept the key box clutched in her right fist and her left hand covering the purse on her wrist.

For the entertainment of the crowd, a man in a green-and-red suit stood on one hand, upside down atop a long pole. The bells on his pointed hat jingled as he kicked his feet in the air.

They don't have a singer,
Cymbril thought with satisfaction and a pang of wistfulness. Part of her felt it would be far more interesting to be the Nightingale of the Night Market. But a cage was a cage. She squeezed the box in her hand.

At the foot of a tree where candles glowed from niches in the bark, four people wearing cloaks and wide-brimmed hats squatted around a heap of moonmarket coins, dividing the money. One of the figures, a woman with rings in her ears and nose, glared up suspiciously. Hurrying onward, Cymbril thought the Night Market was no different in its essence from the daytime ones: buying and selling, and everything had a price. This one only seemed more attractive at first because she was a buyer, not a slave. When she ran out of coins, she would be worse off here than in her daily life. Here she didn't know the rules.

They rounded the end of a row of stalls, and Cymbril stopped with a gasp.

She was face-to-face with Brigit.

Wearing a green hooded cloak, leather breeches, and muddy boots, Brigit looked exactly as she had on the night she brought Loric to the Rake. Her gaze fixed itself on Cymbril, and a strange look of recognition crossed the woman's scarred, beautiful face. Slowly, Wildhair's messenger smiled. "Cymbril," she said.

Miwa spat violently and practically flew to the high limb of a tree, where she clung flat and growling.

Cymbril saw that at least ten of the cowled riders accompanied Brigit, though they were all on foot now. Gripping handles of looped rope, the men were pulling a box on wheels. It was as large as a carriage, though it had no door, windows, or driver's seat, and it was wrapped around and around with ropes, chains, and iron bands.

Stepping close, Brigit reached out with a gloved hand and touched Cymbril's face. "You've grown," Brigit said. Something flickered in her eyes, and she laughed once, through her nose.

Then she ruffled Cymbril's hair, and, keeping a hand on her sword hilt, she led her men onward.

Cymbril stumbled back out of their way, retreating against the tree trunk, and watched as they took the giant box deeper into the market. They were coming in with it, not going out.
She's brought us something else,
Cymbril thought.

And she knows me.

She stood still until the procession was lost among the crowd. When Miwa climbed down from the tree, Cymbril smoothed the cat's fur back into place. "You look like a puffer fish," Cymbril told her.

Miwa led the way again, turning left, then right, then left again past a tent that flashed brilliantly, as if lightning were striking inside it, over and over. Ahead, Cymbril saw the viny arch, its berries shining in the torch light. Miwa had led her back to the stairway. The cat waited on the lowest step, peering at Cymbril.

"I can't go yet," Cymbril told her, shaken though she was. "I don't have everything I came for."

Miwa made a displeased yowl and bounded two steps higher.

"Go on if you want," Cymbril said. "I have to buy one more thing."

She turned back toward the crowds and tents, wondering how she could find the right place. Well, asking had worked once. She began to search for someone who looked fairly safe—or at least less dangerous than most.

A few women cradling bundles in their arms were lined up at a shop window beneath a sign that read: "
HANGELINGS EXCHANGED—ALL DEALS FINAL.
" The bundles wriggled and thrashed, and from within the booth came a chorus of wailing and snarling that did not sound good.

Miwa returned, moaning and getting underfoot, determined to herd Cymbril out of the market. When Cymbril clucked her tongue in exasperation and marched toward the nearest booth, Miwa hissed and hurried off in a new direction, lashing her tail.

"Thank you," Cymbril muttered, and followed her.

They passed along the main thoroughfare. It was impossible to see much of anything but the strange Night Marketgoers, shrouded and hooded, winged and furry, some with claws, some with tails twining out from beneath their hems. The aromas of hot food and spices mingled with incense and the odor of wild beasts. Some of the night folk regarded Cymbril surreptitiously or took no notice at all. Some stopped in their tracks to gawk.

So I don't blend in anywhere,
she thought. Her shining hair and olive-gold skin set her apart from the Rake folk, and her humanness made her stand out among the Night Marketgoers.

Ahead Miwa turned into a side avenue of fewer shops and less traffic. Leaving the throngs behind, Cymbril followed between two rows of trunks to a round enclosure like a forest clearing.

Four archways allowed entrance through a ring of trees and walls of lattice fence. Roses bloomed all over the trellises—large, heavy-looking roses that mysteriously thrived without the sun. Inside the fence, four tree trunks leaned together, the spaces between them chinked with rocks and mud to form a hut crowned with bare, stubby branches. Moss and leaves spread underfoot, with only limbs above. This was entirely a forest clearing, with no vestige of the Thunder Rake.

Purple light flickered inside the hut. Its single window was the counter of yet another shop. Miwa growled again, her head low.

Cymbril stooped to pet the cat. "I'll be as careful as I can," she whispered, not liking the look of the place herself. But Loric had assured her that she was in no danger as long as she came to do business. Gathering her courage, she stepped through the fence and crossed the glade, her slippers crinkling the leaves. There was a chill here, the hint of autumn coming behind the summer that was young in the rest of the land.

She stood before the counter, a board with fire-blackened edges laid across the window's stone sill. Inside, she saw a curtained doorway and crowded shelves of jars, bottles, a balance and weights, lidded boxes, and a few urns. The unearthly purple light wavered on the walls. Cymbril couldn't find the light's source. It was a warmthless glow with no lamp to cast it. The shop had a simple herbal smell like that of any kitchen's spice shelf.

She leaned toward the counter, not touching it, trying to see more of the interior on either side. The shopkeeper must be in the back, behind the curtain. Cymbril supposed she should call out but felt suddenly fearful of breaking the silence. The impulse rose in her to leave with the skeleton key and count the evening a success.

Behind her, she saw Miwa hiding outside the trellis, the cat's green eyes just visible through the vines.

Yes,
Cymbril thought,
I think I'll go now.

Turning for a final glance into the shop, she yelped.

Just on the counter's other side, two ancient women sat in chairs
—the
women, the sisters with three eyes between them: Atymnia and Fennella. This was their shop, at the heart of their Night Market. How they'd come to be settled there in a single instant, Cymbril couldn't guess. Needles of ice prickled her spine. They still wore yellow, but not the dingy hue they wore beneath the sun. Their scarves shone with the fire in the eyes of wolves.

The Eye Women spoke one after the other, their words nearly overlapping, as if their minds were intertwined.

"She's come."

"The songstress."

"The chick."

"The Thrush."

"The finder."

"The one who sees."

"With coins in her purse."

"To buy."

"To buy of us, sister."

And both dissolved into laughter, a dry and tiny sound, like spiders coughing:
Ith, ith, ith, ith, ith.

"F-fair evening," Cymbril stammered. "I've come to buy Nixielixir."

The two withered heads turned toward each other. Then came the laughter again:
Ith, ith, ith.

"The elixir of Nixies—"

"—under the sea."

"Beauty she seeks."

"Skin like moonlight under the waves."

"Hair that billows in the watery wind, thirty fathoms below."

"Eyes like stars and the wells of the Deep."

"Beauty that hardens the heart like coral."

"But not for herself."

"No, surely, not for herself."

Ith, ith, ith.

Ith, ith, ith, ith, ith.

Cymbril didn't know what to make of the flood of words. As she gazed back and forth between them, she was sure the third eye traveled. The sisters' faces squinted and twisted as they spoke. First one would widen her eyes, exposing two red-veined orbs with ink-black irises. And yet, in the next heartbeat, the same woman had one eye closed and shriveled, and her sister had two eyes. Now right, now left, without using their hands, they passed the shared eye back and forth as they seemed to pass their single mind. Cymbril had the awful notion that it was not the eye that wandered to and fro, but the emptiness of the socket—a hollow well, a black pit of loss that the crones traded and cherished, each desiring to wear it in her head.

With a fearsome suddenness, the sister on the left pounced to her feet and set a small stoppered bottle on the counter. It stood there glinting in the purple light, the dark liquid inside swirling from the motion that had brought it there.

Cymbril stared. There had been no hunting among shelves. She could only conclude that the woman had known beforehand exactly what Cymbril had wanted to buy.

"The price—" said the old woman.

"The moon is half-past full," said her sister.

"So the cost is dearer."

"Six coins."

"Six coins it must be."

Now there was no laughing.

Cymbril nodded, in no mind to question or haggle. She pulled open her coin purse and began to count.

Her heart sank. "I don't have six." She felt around inside the purse, hoping she'd miscounted. But there'd been only seven coins to start with. Two for the skeleton key, with change back, and one to the doorman. She didn't have nearly enough.

Now the other sister had risen and loomed over the counter.

"Not six?" asked one.

"Not six?" demanded the other.

"How many?"

"How much?"

Their wrinkled faces writhed and bunched, staring and squinting.

With a start, Cymbril saw the fat frog beside her, gazing up with reproach.

She took a breath. "I ... I have four coins. And five stars." She lined up the coins and the stars on the countertop, shaking the purse to be sure she'd missed nothing.

Once more the sisters swiveled their heads to peer at each other. Then the three eyes blazed at Cymbril.

One sister snatched the bottle, and Cymbril was sure she meant to take it away. But instead, she held it out while the other sister scooped up the coins and stars.

"The sale is made," said the first, wiggling the bottle until Cymbril took it.

"The difference is exacted," said the other.

Cymbril knew enough of marketing to question what she'd heard. "What's been exacted?"