“Come!” calls another. “We have the finest jackets in a hundred leagues. Green as poison. Red as blood. Black as the heart of the King of Elfhame.”
Oak stops to purchase cheese wrapped in wax paper, a half dozen apples, and two loaves of bread. He also gets us warmer clothes, along with hats and gloves. Rope, new packs, and a grappling hook, the tines of which fold down like the tentacles of a squid skimming through water.
We pass a fletcher, selling barrels of arrows with different feathers affixed to the ends. Crows and sparrows, even those from a wren. Pass a display of gowns in beetle-bright green, saffron, and pomegranate red. A stall with bouquets of drying herbs hanging upside down, beside seedpods. Then a bookseller, shelves of old tomes and empty, freshly bound books open to creamy pages waiting to be written in. One stall over, an alchemist displays a shelf of poisons, including poisoned ink. A row of oddly shaped skulls sits alongside them.
Oak pauses to purchase some explosives. “Just in case,” he reassures me.
“Dear lady,” says a faerie, coming toward us from a shop that sells jewels. He has the eyes of a snake and a forked tongue that darts out when he speaks. “This hairpin looks as though it were made for you.”
It’s beautiful, woven gold and silver in the shape of a bird, a single green bead in its mouth. Had it been in a display, my eyes would have passed over it as one of a dozen unobtainable things. But as he holds it out, I can’t help imagining it as mine.
“I have no money and little to trade,” I tell him regretfully, shaking my head.
The shopkeeper’s gaze goes to Oak. I think he believes the prince is my lover.
Oak plays the part, reaching out his hand for the pin. “How much is it? And will you take silver, or must it be the last wish of my heart?”
“Silver is excellent.” The shopkeeper smiles as Oak fishes through his bag for some coins.
Part of me wants to demur, but I let him buy it, and then I let him use it to pin back my hair. His fingers on my neck are warm. It’s only when he lets go that I shiver.
He gives me a steady look. “I hope you’re not about to tell me that you hate it and you were just being polite.”
“I don’t hate it,” I say softly. “And I am not polite.”
He laughs at that. “A delightful quality.”
I admire the hairpin in every reflective surface we pass.
We cross a wide lawn where a puppet show is under way. Folk are gathered around a curtained box, watching an intricate paper cutout of a crow seem to fly above a mill. I spot a few human children and pause to wonder if they are changelings.
The crow puppet sweeps down to a painted papier-m?ché tree. The hidden operator moves a pole, and the crow’s beak opens and closes.
The bird sings:
Ca-caw, ca-caw,
My mother she killed me,
My father he ate me,
My sister gathered my bones,
And buried them beneath the apple tree.
Behold! I hatched as a young crow.
Ca-caw, ca-caw, how beautiful a bird am I.
I stop to watch. It turns out that the miller loves the song so much that he gives the crow a millstone in order to hear it again. And when the bird flies home, he drops the stone onto his stepmother’s head and kills her.
The crowd is still clapping when I realize that Oak has gone on to the blacksmith shop. I arrive in time to see the bushy-eyebrowed smith returning from the back with what appears to be a metal-and-glass box, designed to display its contents. It is golden-footed and empty.
“What is that?” I ask as he carefully places it into his bag.
“A reliquary,” he says. “Enchanted to keep whatever is inside forever preserved. It’s much like the one that contained Mab’s bones. I sent ahead Titch to commission it.”
“And that’s for—”
He signals me away from the shop. Together we walk toward the pier. “A deer heart,” he says. “Because that’s what I am going to bring Lady Nore. In a fancy reliquary, she won’t know the difference for some amount of time, hopefully enough for us to be able to accomplish our goal and get you close to her.”
“A deer heart?” I echo.
“That’s what I am bringing north. A trick. Sleight of hand, like the coin.”
I smile up at him, believing, for once, that we are on the same side.
When we come to the edge of the water, we find Tiernan still haggling with three goblins. One has golden hair and a pointy chin, the second has black hair and bushy eyebrows, and the third has very large ears and no hair on his head at all. The hairless one has a skin of wine and stares at me with the seriousness of the very drunk. He is passing his booze back and forth with a redheaded giant, who sits on the pier, dangling enormous feet in the sea.
The black-haired goblin holds up a silver-handled knife and tests its weight. “What else have you got?”
There is a small pile of treasure on a nearby boulder—a fat pearl, at least sixteen pieces of gold, and a stone that might be an emerald.
“You overestimate the value of what you’re selling,” says Tiernan.
The drunk goblin laughs uproariously.
In the water is a boat carved in the shape of a cormorant. At the front, the long curve of its neck makes it appear rampant, and the wings rise on either side, protecting those resting in the hull. It’s beautifully made, and if I squint, I can see that it’s also magical.
“Ahhhh,” says the golden-haired goblin to Oak as we approach. “You must explain to your friend here that he cannot purchase one of our finest crafts with a few trinkets.”
Tiernan is obviously frustrated. “We’ve come to a price, but I’m a little short of it, that’s all. Now that you’re here, we can make up the difference and go.”
Whatever his reason for believing he would be better at negotiation than Oak, he’s mistaken. It’s not in his nature to dress up the truth, or slither around it.
The golden-haired goblin looks at us expectantly. “We would like the remainder of our payment now, please.”
Oak reaches into his bag and pulls out several more gold coins, as well as a handful of silver ones. “Is this enough?”
“We’ll have your rings,” says the golden-haired goblin, pointing at the three encircling Oak’s fingers.
I am not sure if they have any significance, but I suppose they mustn’t since Oak heaves a sigh and starts to twist them off. Not only that, but he places his circlet beside them. Surely a crown is enough payment.
The golden-haired goblin shakes his head.
I see the shift of the prince’s smile. Honey-tongued. “Mayhap your boat is too beautiful for our needs. We need seaworthy and little more.”
Two of the goblins exchange glances. “Our craft is as seaworthy as they come,” says the black-haired one.
“And yet, one might weep to see such a beautiful vessel as this battling the elements.” Oak’s expression turns thoughtful. “Perhaps you have something less fine you could sell us.”
At this the black-haired goblin sniffs, offended. “We do not make ugly things.”
“No, no,” Oak says, acting as if he’s disappointed. “Of course not.”
I twig his game. “Maybe we should seek a boat elsewhere,” I suggest.