Chapter Five

Business Deals and Enchantments

"Have you ever thought of the fact that only truly good people can be forced to commit murder?" the groom, Eddy, asked the master of the stables, a wizened old man known only as Call.

"What ARE you prattling on about, ye fool?" Call demanded sourly, rubbing his gnarled hand over tired eyes as he was forced, once again, to move his attention from his important work to the dithering of this fool boy he'd been made to hire without credentials.

Eddy continued on, blissfully unaware of his master's distaste for frivolity.

"I mean, think about it! A good person will kill when asked if someone they care about is threatened or something. They might even die to carry out the task, just to save this person. But a bad person will care more for his own skin! It's brilliant! I need to write this down." He immediately ceased rubbing down the horse and dove into the little room near the stable doors.

"Get back out here and work, you useless ninny. A bad person'll kill if'n HE's threatened, it works easily enough. Stop your nattering, and do what you're being paid to do."

Duly chastened, Eddy slumped back out. His attempt to get out of his work was once again foiled. He wasn't a bad boy, just lazy, and he held more preference for writing than using his hands and body for more worthy purposes, like shoveling stalls and getting kicked when some crazed horse took a grudge against him.

He took up the brush again and moved it in circles across the black mare's flank. She rolled her eyes back to get a good look at him but otherwise ignored him as she munched on her grain.

Call leaned back wearily, his eyes tired from the letters that seemed to get smaller every time he looked at them. I'm getting old, he thought wryly, and I have no one to take over once I'm gone. That'll leave the choosing up to the King, and God bless him, he don't know a thing about horses.

He eyed Eddy and shuddered when he thought of the damage that boy could do with a little power. Not out of vindictiveness or anything so dark, but just out of simple stupidity. Then a flicker of pink drew his attention, and he grinned widely as the tiny princess toddled in, her feet moving faster than her body could keep up with.

"Where here's the beautiful little darlin' herself. And how are you, Mistress Kiias?" He bobbed in a quick bow. She giggled and waved her fist in the air. He accepted the coin she tucked into his palm and regarded her seriously.

"And what would you be wanting to buy with this, my darlin'?" he asked curiously.

"I want to buy a horse," she stated with a stubborn scrunch of her face. Call glanced down at the metal that might have bought a fourth of a horseshoe and smiled kindly.

"Oh, is that right, then? I tell you, my princess, you'll be needin' a lot more than that if you want one of these beasties." He waved his hand to indicate the marvelous creatures in his stable. She turned and looked up at the big black that had hung his big head down over the door of his stall. When she looked back at Call, her eyes were slightly sad and he was charmed. "But I tell you what. You give me this here coin, and I'll put it in my little magic box in me office. If you come back here in ten years, it will have become enough to buy you a very big horse."

"How?" she asked, though she also wanted to protest the amount of time he had put on the deal. But her curiosity was the more pressing matter.

"It's like this. Each year, every coin in that box will turn into two coins, so when you come back at an age when your parents'll be more inclined to let you swing a leg over one of these here animals, you'll have, oh, about one thousand and eight coins. That's a lot of money, ain't it?"

Call was much smarter than he let on, which was why the king had chosen him as the master of more than just the stables.

Kiias seemed to be going over his words in her head, and she nodded tentatively. He nodded along with her and straightened, the stooped posture making his backache.

"And I'll bet that when you're ready to get a nice horse, Starrun here will have a nice grandson you can have." He patted the horse's neck and looked back down to Kiias.

"Thank you," she said quietly, shuffling her little feet. She peeked up at him. "Will my mummy let me? I heard that she hates horses."

Call raised a scruffy eyebrow. "Did you, then? Why do you want to ride a horse if you know how scared your mum is?"

Kiias scowled. "'Cause mummy's scared of anything that's...that's..."

"Risky?"

"Yeah, risky! She's always making me come inside before I want to, and she all loud when I fall and get a hurt. A cut. She never let's me do anything worth doing."

"Do you like to get hurt?"

"No. But the risk is part of the fun." She scuffed her pretty shoes on the dirt and then hopped up on a bench. Call noticed Eddy resting against the stall door.

"Eh! Eddy, get back to work. I'll be gutted if ye think ye can get away with that," he barked, striding over and cuffing the young man on the back of the head. Eddy yelped, and Kiias watched in fascination.

"Is he lazy? Ima says all the servants are lazy 'cept for her."

Call chuckled. "Naw. Eddy ain't a servant. He's a worker. They're different. You can hit 'em for being lazy."

"The big lady who does the laundry hits people for being lazy."

"Well, yeah. I suppose she does. But no, he's not lazy, just not used to working all the time. He'll do fine once he's 'ere for long enough." Call shrugged his stooped shoulders. His joints were aching again. He squinted at the grey sky outside. "Looks like rain, my princess. You should be getting' back to yer Ima. Otherwise she might make you take a bath if you have to go runnin' through the mud."

Kiias grimaced and looked outside. Miserably, she nodded in agreement. Then she was smiling. "Thank you, Master Call. For the horsie." And with that, she scampered off. He grinned after her.

"I never figured you for one who would suffer children," Eddy muttered. "Don't you need patience for that? And a heart?" This last was said almost inaudibly, but Call heard it and cuffed Eddy again.

"The princess don't need to be suffered. That's the difference between the two of youse." He clumped back into his office and slammed the door. After flipping the coin into the box, he sank down in his chair and pulled out the draw full of records. He selected a pad and ran his finger halfway down the sheet before finding his place. Carefully, he wrote down his latest business transaction.

'Princess, offspring of Starrun, one thousand eight copper crowns.'

Call then sighed, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes, sinking into sleep that would refresh his tired bones.

Kiias settled on the cold stone floor in one of the corridors on the third floor and played with her paints and wax pencils. The parchment she was drawing on was dry and old, but she didn't notice the quality or care about perfection. She simply enjoyed seeing all those colors swirling together, although most often they became an ugly brown.

Perhaps she should be more discriminating in which colors she put together. She smeared some blue paint across the top in a solid line and then painted out the clouds in her sky. Another solid line, this time of green, went along the bottom. She painted a few red flowers, then wondered why the picture looked wrong.

The princess went and peeked out of a window, standing on her tiptoes and straining. She saw what she had done wrong in her picture, went back to her spot, sat and painted more blue until it reached down and touched the green. Kiias leaned back to study the effect and nodded. That was right.

She tried to draw a pretty rainbow over the blue, but the colors mixed unpleasantly. Frowning in frustration, she shoved it away and started anew on another sheet. This time she drew the ground, then the rainbow, then the sky, and finally the clouds.

It looked much better.

She tried to envision herself there, but grew bored because she was unable to do so. Kiias took the stone around her neck in her hands and concentrated again. She had lately discovered, that if she held the stone in her hands, she could see things with her imagination with a great deal more clarity. This time, though, she wasn't the only one in this magical place she thought her mind had created.

She saw someone she recognized as Thia, who had been around a lot until a long time ago, and then she'd just been gone and Ima had come. Kiias remembered that well, because Ima had been so much nicer than Thia. Thia was standing across from a man and shouting at him. Suddenly they weren't in the pretty place of the princess' imagination. Now they were in a boring, dull brown room with four walls and a door.

"You gave her three babies," Thia screeched. "It is MY turn. I want babies."

"You never wanted babies before," the man said, anger breaking through a relatively calm voice. "Gods, Thia. You made me wait forever. I got MARRIED. I have a FAMILY. I can't leave them because you've suddenly lost all of your prospects."

Her tone changed to one Kiias recognized as what she herself had always used to get something she really wanted. "But Colin, you know I've always loved you. I was just trying to be worthy of you, so we could have a good life together."

"Thia, I wouldn't have cared if your only job was to feed the pigs for slaughter. I told you that. Often. That isn't why. You just aren't the girl I thought you were."

"But I love you, Colin. You know I do." Thia ran her hand up Colin's chest and hooked it over his shoulder. His face was twisted into something Kiias supposed was pain. She drew him down and kissed him. Fascinated, the princess continued to watch, wondering how she had conjured up this scene.

Kiias was back in the third-floor corridor. There was no sensation of motion. She was, quite simply, back sitting in front of her paints. A little disoriented, she tapped the stone. It revealed nothing. She tucked it back in her dress and continued to draw.

Her fifth birthday was celebrated seven weeks later. A giant cake was created in the kitchen, a "culinary masterpiece" that would probably mostly end up on her face or down the front of her dress. She couldn't understand why she wasn't allowed to dive into it. It looked ever so soft, and so far all she had gotten this morning was bored.

Nobody had arrived yet, and even at her young age, she knew it would take forever for the people to slowly trickle in to the celebration. She estimated she would be put down for a nap before they had all arrived, and that knowledge made her cranky. She bonked Ima on the head with a stick and imperiously wriggled in the old woman's arms.

"Bad, princess. No bop," Ima muttered. She did shuffle faster, though, and that was all that Kiias had wanted. Giggling, she watched the trees virtually blur. That was no, of course, due to the "extreme speed" at which Ima was speeding, but rather was owed to the fact that Kiias was waggling her head as if possessed to make it seem as if she were flying very fast.

All it did was give her a headache, so she burst into tears and wailed directly into Ima's ear. Ima winced and forced herself not to roll her eyes. The poor dear had a right to be upset. These big bashes were never actually for the benefit of the child, but rather a diplomatic opportunity to gather all the nobles together under the guise of joviality.

There would most likely end up being shouting matches between the blue-blooded on matters about which they felt strongly. Such as whether taxes should be used to repair the main road that led into the capital. Or whether the Great Ball should be held at Duke Vargus' fortress or that of the esteemed Duchess Loft. Or why, exactly, the young Miss Chartreuse had been hiding under the stairs with Sir Reginald, the young rake whose mother had despaired of ever teaching him propriety.

Ima hated these functions, but nobody asked the opinions of the hag childcare professional.

"Time for a nice nap, eh?"

"No, Ima. Bad Ima." She hit her again. Ima snatched the stick and snapped it in two with one hand. Wide-eyed, Kiias was quiet the whole way back. Ima berated herself for losing her temper, but she doubted there was anyone who knew the princess who hadn't become aggravated at one point. She was a handful. That's all there was to it.

"So, now. Naptime. Your party will be very close when you wake up. Sleeping makes the time pass faster, dear. I'm sure that with that bright mind you'll have figured that out. And I thought we talked about you talking like a baby. You're five years old, and you need to stop falling back on talking like you're one."

Kiias scowled. "Ima, I don't want to sleep. I'm not tired. Mummy said the party would start soon."

"Mummy lied," Ima sighed. Kiias gaped and her expression then settled into one of perpetual disagreeableness.

Once the princess was safely abed, Ima stationed herself outside of her chambers and glanced down at her palm, where a large splinter from the stick had lodged in her palm. She eased it out and winced, opening her hand wider and rubbing at the spot of blood that appeared on her palm. When she touched it, the blood was drawn back under her flesh and, almost imperceptively, the skin of her hand reached out and wove the tiny tear shut.

She sighed. She shouldn't have lost her temper.

Once again, a fairy had come unannounced, probably making up for the missed opportunities involving the princess' christening and the involvement of unsavory curses. It was one of the original three, of which there were now two, and Zahja did not even bear the façade of geniality and goodwill. The caste to her face was sour, and while she might usually appear young and vivacious (if, indeed, fairies are ever vivacious, which is doubtful) she now resembled a somewhat unpleasant creature that might have dwelled under a bridge or deep in a swamp.

Her red hair, the color of polished copper, was like a sunburst about her face, framing angry gray eyes and a sourly twisted mouth. Of course, Cartha's disappearance would have severely affected the fairies' attitudes towards humans, Selsa thought, since the rash Woods-lady had been the younger sister of the queen. It was unfortunate that Cartha had lacked the detachment and experience of the older Woodsfolk.

Selsa made a note to herself to keep an eye on the angry fairy. She settled down beside Copan and tried to see where Kiias and Ima had gotten to. They finally emerged from one of the side entrances and settled down at the table without fanfare, a fact that soothed Selsa's fears immensely. She took the chance to glance once more at Zahja.

Zahja had not noticed the arrival of the princess. She continued to glare at the nobles along the table.

The time came to serve the cake, and that was when the fairy finally noticed that the princess was seated at the table. Selsa watched in consternation as the fairy straightened in her chair.

It was inauspicious, and very unlucky indeed, that Kiias chose that moment to express all her displeasure at the dullness proceedings. She threw her cake away from her and it hit one of the many Counts in the chest. With a bellow, he rose, as the other nobles struggled to keep straight faces. They did not have to pretend, though, when she began screeching and messing their places at the table.

She had actually bitten one of the Duchesses on the ankle before Zahja rose ominously. Selsa followed suit, watching her in consternation as the Woods-lady pointed one shaking finger at the child. She looked directly at Selsa.

"It seems you have a horrible child on your hands that you could not hope to control," she said icily. "I believe I may be of some aid to you there."

Selsa leapt forward but was halted in mid-stride by some unseen force, leaving her eyes rolling in panic. It froze everyone in the room, and a gold sheen fell over those present, as if they were lit individually by their own suns. Zahja smiled a smile, devoid of amusement, that held the glimmer of what she would become, and swung her gaze back to the frozen child.

All who attended could hear what she said. "Until you can see the destruction you wreak, until you can control that which you know not you wield, until your mind reflects the age you bear, you will not awaken. This spell cannot be removed, once caste, it becomes the recipient."

The streak of magic was a pale, pale blue that ponderously wrapped around the terrified child and crept into her skin. When the flickering string finally wound around the irises of her eyes and sank into pupils, Kiias sank down to the floor.

She lay as if dead.

The queen screamed and tore herself out of stasis. The king bellowed and the nobles were crying out in alarm. Selsa knelt by her fallen child, then turned her eyes toward Zahja, who flinched at the capability for violence within them.

"Take it off."

"I cannot."

Selsa let out an animal sound.

"You are gone," she spat, rising and stalking towards the Woods-lady. "You are not allowed within the borders of Roviserro. If you are seen within this kingdom, you will be killed on sight. You have until tonight at midnight to be gone forever. Your kin are no longer welcome. Any Woodsfolk who come to this castle will be thrown into the prison and left to rot." At this last word, her voice rose to a shriek.

Zahja did not appear to have fully thought out what she had intended to do. She backed up in alarm. "My queen, this is a benefit, you could not control her..."

"You do NOT take the place of a parent in the case of a tantrum. Does a passing woman beat the child of another woman simply because it cries? No. Leave! Now! Or I will have you beheaded here and now."

Zahja looked to the king, who looked no less furious, and with a flash, Zahja had fled.

Selsa collapsed by her daughter once more and sobbed.