Flat against the wall beside the door stood a girl, one hand clapped to her mouth as if holding in a scream. She might have been thirteen, all willow wands and ribs in a chambermaid’s dress and apron. He didn’t recognize her, which was odd because he knew all the maids by name.
“Gods leave me—” she said, in a tiny, breathless voice “—that was the curse everyone’s talking about!” She sidled toward the open door, eyes wide and white.
“Don’t worry. It isn’t contagious.”
“Almost killed that Caris lady — stay away!” she cried, as he started toward her.
He stopped.
She fixed him with eyes determined but full of fear. After several heartbeats, she said, “You don’t recognize me.”
He looked closer. Nothing about her mousy hair or somber mouth triggered his memory, though there was something familiar about her.
“Lyla,” she said.
He exhaled slowly, his eyes searching hers.
“You won me from my master in the card game today. You freed me.”
“Of course!” He saw her then. How young she seemed without the paint and skin hugging dress. I see Mother Ganner got you some new clothes.”
Her eyes dipped to his nakedness and bobbed back up. “You want I should fetch you some, too? The cold don’t do you no favors.”
Harric let out a laugh of surprise. He was bare as an egg to his toes. “I’m—ah—it’s been quite a night.” He grabbed his trousers from the floor and threw them on.
As he synched up the bastard belt, she edged the rest of the way to the door, stopping only when she stood with a foot on the top step, ready to bolt. But she did not leave. She swallowed hard, as if steeling herself to speak. “I ain’t here to thank you. I’m here to pay my debt.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“My freedom ain’t worth nothing?”
Harric shrugged into his shirt. “That’s not what I mean. My payment was watching the expression on the face of your Wesite master as you burned the deed to your bondage. Anyway, I’m a dead man, and death cancels debts.”
“You don’t have to die today. I can tell you how to beat that curse. That’s how I aim to pay my debt.” She took a step forward, determination giving her courage.
Harric suppressed a roll of his eyes. “Another sure-fire cure for curses? Look, I’ve watched all the other victims of my mother’s curses, and they tried every counter curse they could find. None of them worked. Didn’t even delay their deaths. Just made them look pathetic. So, thank you, but if you don’t mind…” He gestured to the door to usher her out, but she stamped her foot, making a surprisingly loud bang. Her eyes blazed, wilting any remaining fear in them.
“Look, Lyla—”
“You better listen or you’re gonna be dead by sunset. You survived that fog, didn’t you? Her doom didn’t claim you. Why do you think that is?”
“The doom has till sunset.”
She put her hands on her hips as if addressing a particularly dense or stubborn child. “And this crawly talky fog was just normal weather around here? That doom came for you this morning, but you survived and I know why.”
Harric blinked. “So do I: because Caris intervened.”
“Hah! You Northies wouldn’t know magic if it fell from the sky and hit you. Answer me this: All them other cursed folk had friends to help them. Mother Ganner told me all about it. But did any of them survive the fog?”
Harric frowned. She had a point. The fog had come for Davos that spring on the foretold day, and Davos had a hired company of bodyguards to protect him; the fog slipped right past and did its work all the same. Gravin’s day came shortly after, and he encircled his cabin with a posse of witch hunters who by morning were all strangled or decapitated with Gravin. Why had Harric alone survived?
Lyla stepped toward him, eyes bright and earnest. “It was the power of your nineteenth Naming Day, Master Harric. That’s what I’m here to show you. You know about the Naming Day? You know about the Proof?”
Harric grimaced. “The apprentice proof? Not really. Some kind of South-Isle magical superstition, I think.”
She glared. “That superstition just saved your life, and it’ll keep you alive past sunset if you make your Proof today.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m here to explain it, ain’t I? The nineteenth naming day is called the Day of Proof because it’s the day a prentice proves he’s a master by doing something only a master can do. Once he proves that, he’s free, and his master has no power over him. See?”
“Okay. But how does that apply to me? I’m not an apprentice any more. I quit two years before my training was complete, when Mother’s madness got so—” His voice strained. He swallowed and shrugged. “She chose this day for my doom because it’s the day I would have completed her training. Her way of saying I brought it on myself.”
“It doesn’t matter if you quit. You still know what she taught you, so you can still Prove it.” She studied Harric from the corners of her eyes. “I asked Mother Ganner if your mama prenticed you as a witch, but she said your mama was never a witch. Said she was a lady of the court who went mad from visions of the future, but that your mama taught you how to be a courtier. Did I learn that right?”
Harric snorted. “Partly.”
She nodded. “All right then, for your Proof you have to pick a courtly art of hers — something only a master could do — and show you can perform it like a master. When you do that, you break her power over you. See?”
“And this ‘Proof,’ if I perform it, will somehow break my mother’s curse, too?”
“Stop smiling at me like I’m some tickle-brained peasant. The curse is part of her power, ain’t it? So, promise.”
Something sparked to life in Harric. A tiny fluttering deep in his soul.
Break her curse and live? Live to see the sunrise again? Live to embrace Caris? To dream— NO. He snuffed it savagely. Her dooms always come true. To hope now would only make him pathetic, scrambling after every witch charm and counter potion, right when he needed to face it like a man.
But the spark wouldn’t snuff. It grew. He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t ignore the fact that for the first time ever, one of his mother’s dooms had stumbled, which meant there was hope. And the little spark seemed to know it, expanding from a glimmer to an unquenchable conflagration that reduced his defensive walls to ashes.
Lyla wore a tiny smile. An eyebrow rose in question.
“All right,” he said, through grinding teeth. “You’d better be right about this.”
She nodded, evidently satisfied this qualified as acceptance. “I am right.” She took a tentative step forward, a flash of mischief in her eye. “What art will you perform for your Proof, Master Courtier? Fencing, feasting, or foining?”
Harric gave a barren smile. “You forgot feigning. I learned all those things, but my real training was of more…secret skills to serve our Queen.”
“It can’t be a secret if it’s your Proof, so you have to tell me.”
He took a deep breath, trying in vain to calm the turmoil in his chest. This was madness. Could he truly defeat his doom? What if he failed?
She arched an eyebrow. “Well?”
“I’ll make my Proof in the art of the con. That’s my strongest suit.”
“I knew it! She trained you as a trickster. That’s how you beat my master in poker. It’s probably how she kept her magic secret all those years.”
He gave a non-committal shrug. “Sadly, all of Gallows Ferry saw me trick your master. The whole outpost will be alert to anything I try now. If I want to con anyone today, I’ll have to focus on new emigrants passing through the market.”
“How many cons could your mother do in a day?”
“Nineteen was her best.”
“Then for your Proof you’ll need twenty.”
He felt the bottom drop from his stomach. Nineteen had been a lucky day for his mother. Her best before that had been twelve.
“You can do it, Master Harric. You can. I saw how good you are.”
Harric nodded. He’d done well against her master, but he’d also been reckless. He didn’t think he’d be alive the next day, so he hadn’t cared if he made enemies. When her former master learned he still lived, they wouldn’t wait for his curse to finish the job, but look for a chance to kill him themselves.
“So promise you’ll make your Proof.”
He nodded. “All right. But if this goes wrong you should probably know I’m going to haunt you.”
“I’ll bury you on an island so your ghost can’t cross the water.”
He laughed and reached out to take her hand, but she jumped back as if he shoved a rat in her face. Whirling, she flew down the stairs, but stopped at the landing and looked back. “You can do it. Don’t forget you promised.”
“I won’t,” he said, more to himself than her, for she had turned and continued her flight down the stairs.
He closed the door and laid his forehead against its painted wood.
His heart, which had calmed after the nightmare in the fog, begun to flutter again like a frightened bird in his rib cage. Twenty cons. In an outpost full of enemies and people who knew to watch him. He chuckled grimly. “I’m dead already.”
“Doomed,” said his mother, behind him. “There’s a difference.”
*************************************
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