When Phineas straightened, his eyes shone in a way I recognized all too well. No—“recognized” wasn’t the right word. I dreaded it. He shyly brushed a lock of hair away from his forehead as my heart sank, and sank, and sank. Please, I thought, not again.
“Miss Isobel, would you mind taking a look at my Craft? I know I’m not like you,” he added in a rush, scrambling to keep his nerve, “but Master Hartford’s been encouraging me—it’s why he took me on—and I’ve practiced all these years.” He held a painting to his chest, self-consciously concealing the front side as though it weren’t a canvas but his very soul he feared exposing. I knew the feeling intimately, which didn’t make what came next any easier.
“I’d be more than happy to,” I replied. At least I had a great deal of experience in faking a smile.
He handed it to me, and I turned the frame over, exposing a landscape to the shop’s dim light. Relief flooded me. Thank god, it wasn’t a portrait. I must sound horribly arrogant saying so, but my Craft was held in such high esteem that the fair folk wouldn’t commission anyone else until I was dead and gone—and until they actually realized I was dead and gone, which might take several additional decades. I despaired for every new portrait artist cropping up in the wake of my fame. Perhaps Phineas stood a chance.
“This is very good,” I told him honestly, passing his painting back. “You have an excellent grasp of color and composition. Keep practicing, but even in the meantime”—I hesitated—“you might be able to sell your Craft.”
His cheeks flushed, and he grew an inch taller right in front of me. My relief went cold. Often, the part that followed was worse. I braced myself as he asked the exact question I feared. “Could you . . . do you think you could refer one of your patrons to me, miss?”
My gaze wandered back to the window, where Mrs. Firth herself was arranging a new dress for Firth & Maester’s shopfront display. When I was young, I had thought her a fair one for certain. She possessed flawless skin, a voice sweeter than a songbird’s call, and a tumble of chestnut curls too lustrous to be natural. She had to be verging on fifty but barely looked a day over twenty. Only later, when I learned to read glamours, did I realize my mistake. And as the years passed I grew disenchanted with enchantments, which were just as much a lie. No matter how cleverly they were worded, all but the most mundane, practical spells soured with age. Those that weren’t cleverly worded ruined lives. In exchange for her twenty-two-inch waist, Mrs. Firth couldn’t speak any word beginning with a vowel. Last October the Confectionary’s head baker had accidentally bargained away three decades of his life for bluer eyes, and left his wife a widow. Yet still the allure of wealth and beauty swept Whimsy along, with a vision of the Green Well hovering at the very end like the promise of heaven itself.
Sensing my reluctance, Phineas hastened to add, “Not anyone important, mind. That Swallowtail looks like he might be the right sort of fair one. I see him in town sometimes, buying Craft on the street. And they always say fair folk of the spring court are kinder in their dealings.”
The truth of the matter was that no fair one was kind, whatever house they came from. They only pretended to be. The thought of Swallowtail coming within ten yards of Phineas made me taste bile. He wasn’t the worst fair one I’d met by any stretch of the imagination, but he’d twist words until he convinced the poor boy to bargain away his firstborn child for fewer pimples.
“Phineas . . . you’re probably aware my Craft means I spent more time with fair folk than anyone else in Whimsy.” I met his eyes across the counter. His face fell; he was doubtless thinking I was about to turn him down, but I forged onward through his unhappiness. “So believe me when I say that if you want to deal with them, you must be careful. Not being able to lie doesn’t make them honest. They’ll try to deceive you at every turn. If something they offer sounds too good to be true, it is. The enchantment’s wording must leave no room for mischief. None.”
He brightened so much I feared all my efforts were in vain. “Does that mean you’re going to recommend me?”
“Maybe, but not Swallowtail. Don’t trade with him until you’ve learned their habits.” Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I glimpsed out of the corner of my eye a man emerging from Firth & Maester’s. Gadfly. Of course that was where he would have gone for his embroidery. Though I must have been nearly invisible standing inside the dark shop across the way, he looked unerringly toward me, beamed, and raised a hand in greeting. Everyone on the street—including the gaggle of young women who’d been waiting for him outside—eagerly craned their necks to find out who was important enough to merit his attention.