Chapters 17 and 18

(In which Elizabeth spends some time in the Wilderness, discovers a really creepy tree, and gets discovered and threatened by a bee shepherd)

Seventeenth

    Elizabeth had only five minutes to change from her cooking-clothes into her serving ones, and that was being generous. Winnie had returned from market without half of the ingredients the dinner would require, so last-minute alterations to the menu had to be made, and what was supposed to have been Elizabeth’s free afternoon was instead spent in the kitchen, chopping and stirring to the sounds of Clara’s good-natured muttering, cursing the rationing and the shipping lines and the tides, all of which had stood in her way from presenting the dinner she really wanted to serve that evening.

     Her work-gloves would have to be washed after dinner; her evening-gloves, thankfully, she had mended the evening before, so they were good to go. She wouldn’t be doing the actual serving, Maisey would take care of that, but a few of the rooms had travelers with families, and she would have to occupy the children in the smaller dining room, stories and games so their parents could have an adult conversation in the fancy dining room next door.

     The Griff Inn had been her place of employment for the past three months, ever since she had stumbled into its foyer in search of food. Clara, her dark skin and wise eyes so beautiful and regal, had seen some promise beneath Elizabeth’s filthy exterior, and had taken her back to the Inn, offered her soap and clothes and, after an interview with Winnie, a job as a maid. Neither had questioned too deeply as to why Elizabeth always wore gloves; she had mumbled something about a curse, and that had been that. The matrons of the Inn had been kind enough to provide her with gloves for every occasion her job would require.

     Maisey was entering her room as Elizabeth was exiting. The girl was running late, but that was nothing new; she seemed to be perpetually in crisis mode, easily startled and distracted. The two maids performed similar work, but Maisey was assigned the later shifts in the inn, allowing her to sleep later and avoid the morning chores, but having to serve the guests who stumbled in to the Inn at ungodly hours. She was not much for conversation, though the silences they shared were rarely uncomfortable ones. The waif's questions were few, so Elizabeth felt the least she could do was to ignore the sobs that she heard at night through the thin wall separating their sleeping quarters. They had all endured pain in the days before they came to the Griff; there would be pain in the days ahead, as well. Not much point dwelling on it.

     Elizabeth yawned; it had already been a long day. Clara had poked her awake at four AM, to clean the mess from the guests’ revelry in the dining room, which had apparently gone quite late. Winnie had come downstairs an hour later and had taken her to help at the Public Market, weaving in and out of the vendors’ stalls, seeking out the cheapest and freshest meats and produce. Gossip was freely traded among the house-servants and restauranteurs, snippets of politics and economics overheard at the guests' or masters' tables the night before, keeping the working and serving class abreast of the overcurrent that only rarely dove deep enough to involve them directly.

Elizabeth kept her eyes open for wares from Central, but none were to be had that morning. The pickings were exceedingly slim all over the market today. Failing to find all that she needed, Winnie’s mood turned foul, and she cuffed Elizabeth on the shoulder for dropping a wrapped package of redfish onto the road, threatening to subtract the cost from her wages if the fish was unusable.

Winnie ventured to other markets in search of the remaining items on their list, while Elizabeth carted what they had bought back to the Inn, the guests already awake and clamoring for breakfast. Tip and Hale, the handyman and gardener, had been pressed into service and looked not too happy about it. But she knew they could perform adequately when called upon: the rule of the Griff was you did what the situation called for, whether you be maid or carpenter.

The Inn's employees were few; Clara and Winnie did as much work as the maids they kept, though Winnie would often feel the need to remind them that the time she spent engaged in and directing conversation among the guests was not nearly as relaxing as it seemed. It required constant political and psychological study, she explained, to make each guest feel as though she were on their side, without ever actually expressing any sort of opinion. It was the time spent at the table that brought the guests in, and brought them back, as much as the softness of the beds or the cleanliness of the privies, or the quality of the food. "Anyone can cook a meal," she would say, dodging blows from Clara, "It takes a true artist to make a Dinner."

The guests were travelers who could afford such lush accommodations as The Griff Inn: successful merchants and traders, government officials, the independently wealthy. Those who acted as though they were nobility, but, as far as she knew, titles were hard to come by under Silas's rule. Oh, she would overhear someone referred to in the third person as "So-and-so, Lord of Such-and-such land," but these seemed to be historical holdovers.

The maid position had become available when the old girl, Limping Anna, had run off to marry one of the inn’s guests. Winnie had been very candid about her disapproval of such acts. "Let's not have a repeat of that type of behavior. I don't want to get a slew of young bachelors through here, looking for companionship and getting all indignant when they find none. Hurts our reputation. If you want to find a beau, that's fine. But our guests are off-limits." Elizabeth didn’t think that would be a problem. She was in Aldergate to find a Guide, not a husband.

There was enough mindlessness in the tasks to allow her to get lost in her thoughts, interspersed with the challenges of getting all of her work done on time, and Elizabeth found the work satisfying. And, even if she wasn't entirely truthful about her history before the Inn, she still felt like the staff was a sort of family to her. Clara and Winnie were teaching her to read the spiral-language, though they did have a fair amount of books, both cookbooks and standard tales, that were written in English. Tip and Hale were full of stories about the Inn and the city and were delighted to share them with an eager ear. Even the guests were no more demanding than the rich in any other city. The neighborhood was affluent, the accommodations were clean and vermin-free, and she ate as well as any low-born girl in the city could hope to.

Aldergate had surprised her with its modern conveniences...well, not modern compared to what she had grown up with, exactly, but certainly more advanced than she expected. Her time in Priest's barn and in Foursmith had led her to believe that Edge's technology hadn't advanced past medieval times. But steam-powered conveyances, running water, and even electricity were common here, though the inn was outfitted with only gas lamps. The first time she had seen someone riding down the street on a bicycle she had almost burst into tears with joy and homesickness.

It was the electric lights that had beckoned to her, drawn her out of the woods with the promise of familiar comforts. She had stayed among the trees for as long as she could, fishing in the mountain streams and foraging for wild nuts and berries, sleeping under a lean-to she had constructed of pine boughs. But the loneliness had gotten to her. Loneliness and concern for her own safety.

Her early time in the forest was a blur, one day melting into the next. She had woken alone after the battle with the Servant. Alone among the tall pines, dressed in an unfamiliar gray shirt and pants in a style similar to what Grim had worn, with no idea how much time had passed. Her scalp was bandaged, wound with a long strip of a gauzy material, and stiff blood crusted her temple, with tenderness underneath. Dark bruises discolored the left side of her body.

In addition to the clothes, she had somehow acquired other new items: her bag, which lay next to her, had been packed with food, and a box of waterproof matches whose label was marked with text in English. There were also two waterskins, one half-full of a red, odorless fluid.

The forest was paper birch and dark evergreens, the white birch bark emerging from the ground like questing finger bones, the darker needles weaving a solemn tapestry background. Elizabeth sat waiting for voices, machines, footsteps...anything that would indicate whoever had packed her bag and bandaged her wounds was coming back. But no one ever did.

Those first few weeks were spent in survival: learning how to hunt and to forage, to trap fish and to guard her food against other forest creatures. For though she saw no other people, not for a long time, the woods were full of wildlife: squirrels and rabbits, snakes and birds. She even saw scat that she thought must have come from a bear, though thankfully she never saw the beast itself.

Elizabeth often though of Grim, and the events surrounding his death. The dark figure, the one that had been the impetus for her coming to Edge, was too similar to the one that had battled the Servant for it to be a coincidence. Grim had conjured it to save them, and had likely called its counterpart into Central as well, deceiving her, forcing her to choose to save her father from a danger that was only a hoax. She thought back to the play the Longshadow troupe had performed, to Penumbra's off-hand mention of her inability to--how had it been written?--"call the darkened shapes" to her.

And Grim's deathbed confession, that Priest had insisted that he return only with her in tow. So, the gatekeeper had manipulated Grim into effectively kidnapping her, and now was trying to blackmail her into murder. And the both of them had conveniently left off the part where even returning home would put a target on her back, drawing a Servant of her very own to Central, placing her family and friends at more risk than there had ever been in the first place.

What Grim had done was unforgivable. But there was a small part of her, a tiny, quiet part that wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. If he was willing to do this, to put himself at so much risk, as well as you, the voice intoned, then what he tasked you to do must be really important. Silas must be very much worth dethroning.

Elizabeth made a home in a flat, sheltered spot beneath the overhang of a rocky outcropping, arranging evergreen boughs into a wall to keep the weather out. She ranged through the forest, first finding areas with tall, ancient grey-barked trees whose leaves spread out like a dense ceiling, then others with rocky ground giving way to mountains, decorated only by scant scrubby ground covering. It was at these higher elevations that she could look out over the vastness of the woodland. It stretched for tens of miles, ending in what looked to be a settlement far in the west, and a blue-tinged flatness beyond that could be the ocean or a vast lake. But until the greenery concluded abruptly at these distant landmarks, it stood unbroken by roads or towns, unmarred by any influence of civilization.

But no matter how far she traveled through the forest, she found no sign of the Grand Road she had followed from Foursmith. Even at night, the regular lights of the great highway did not appear. She had no way of knowing how long she had been unconscious after the battle with the Servant, but it must have been a significant amount, if she had been transported so far.

She was grateful to be alive, of course. But the entire situation was troubling. She had no idea who had rescued her from the Servant. Who would have put in the effort to fight off the Servant, restock her supplies, carry her to this forest, but then abandon her?

She had grown used to her own noises and those of the forest, so much so that when her ears received evidence of others in the woods, it took her some time to recognize them. She became conscious of a crunchy background...the sound of feet shushing through the dead leaves of the forest floor. Too loud and patterned too regularly to be an animal.

The noise grew as the intruders closed in on her position. She did not think she was being hunted, there wasn't nearly enough stealth for that. Unless...she glanced around her, looking away from the noise but keeping a tree trunk between herself and its source. She couldn't see anything advancing on her from behind. Still, she would have to remember that, to keep her awareness in all directions, in case the most obvious noise was merely a distraction to hold her attention.

She held her breath as the group came into view: four people, all laden with Edge-style camping gear, all carrying weapons. Two men and two women. They looked haggard, as though they had traveled very far with little rest. One woman wore an eye patch, while tattoos covered the other's face and arms. One man was broad and muscular, with legs like tree-trunks, the other obese and greasy-looking. This last man had metal bracelets on each wrist that appeared to be broken handcuffs, for both had lengths of chain that dangled downward and ended in split links, as though recently sawed-through.

The four marched single-file through the center of the gully, the eye-patched woman in the lead, the muscular man in the rear. Though far from silent, none of them spoke, and their pace did not slow as they passed Elizabeth’s vantage point.

If this were a movie, she thought as she watched the train of harriers disappear into the distance, they would have stopped where I could see them, and one of them, maybe the fat man, would have explained what they were doing in the woods...running from the law, searching for someone who betrayed them, or on their way to their secret hideout. And maybe they'd give some backstory to the woods themselves, some sort of foreshadowing of a monster or ghost that haunts these woods.

Elizabeth considered tailing them. The more she knew about the group, the more she could assess the threat they posed. But in the end, the risk of detection was just too great. She returned to her camp.

She moved her belongings up into the high crook of a tree, a location easily accessible by climbing the densely arranged limbs but impossible to see from the ground. She also disassembled the boughs that composed her sleeping area; she had been leaving them up during the day, but would now build it anew each night.

But despite her caution, she was taken by surprise when the return occurred. Her ears busied by the rush of the river as she stabbed at passing fish, she missed the sounds of thrashing through the surrounding underbrush, looking up just in time to see one of the harriers, stumbling blindly, breaking through the bracken.

It was one of the women, the one who had been wearing the eye patch, though it was gone, along with the rest of the woman's clothes. The skin of her chest and limbs was a patchwork of twisting scars over ropy muscles. Elizabeth jumped up, startled. The woman trained one blue eye on her, the empty eye-socket gaping and dark, and opened her mouth to speak...then her legs gave way, and she collapsed facedown on the rocky ground.

Elizabeth approached her slowly, keeping her left hand out in front of her like a shield, looking back and forth between the woman and the surrounding brush, in case one of the others lay in wait. She stood over the fallen woman and lifted her arm to feel for a pulse. It was there, but slow. And her skin felt...slick. Not with sweat, but with something thicker, more viscous. Elizabeth dropped the woman's wrist, exchanging this grip for one on the back of the woman’s neck, twisting it to see her face. Shallow, fresh scratches criss-crossed the cheeks and forehead, but the most alarming thing was a green vine, twine-like, strung tight from ear to nostril and disappearing within the two orifices. It formed a Y shape, with the third end dangling free, torn and ragged.

Despite her alarm, Elizabeth managed to rest the woman's head back down on the pebbly ground without dropping it. She looked at her own fingers, and the substance they had wiped from the woman’s skin. It was clear but tinged green, and as she examined it closer she could see small, darker-green linear structures within. They were squirmed and writhed, resembling tiny life seen beneath microscope slides. It smelled distinctly of rotting apples.

Inexplicably, vomit rose within her throat. Elizabeth clenched her esophagus shut, swallowing the disgust down. She stood up and backed away.

She heard the additional figures moving through the forest with enough time to hide herself before they emerged. The muscular man broke through the brush, accompanied by another person. Elizabeth was surprised to see that the second figure was not the tattooed woman, nor the fat man, but the eye-patched woman, the double of the one who lay on the ground, only clothed and with the eye patch neatly in place.

The two newcomers reached the unconscious body and, with the woman's help, the man hoisted it over his shoulder then turned and walked back through the woods. Neither gave any sign that they knew or cared that Elizabeth was watching.

The fallen woman was a stranger to her, and Elizabeth doubted there was much that she could do to help. But curiosity, if not civic duty, got the best of her. And, if this new development affected her ability to remain safely within these woods, she needed to know rather than sit and wait to become the next victim of...well, whatever was going on here.

Elizabeth tracked the trio for a half-hour, walking across the grade of the mountain. She kept her distance, their silhouettes at the edge of her line of sight, ready to turn and run at the slightest provocation. But, oblivious to her presence, the two figures never turned to see if they were being tracked.

They followed a narrow deer path into a portion of the forest unfamiliar to Elizabeth, one populated with old, thick-trunked giants with gray bark furred with moss. Even the lowest branches hung far above her head. Sound carried oddly, the birdsong sounding as though piped in on a distant radio station.

Elizabeth froze; she thought she had heard a voice. She watched the figures slowly moving away from her. Then it came again...not loud, not clear, but definitely not an animal noise. And not from her quarry. It seemed to originate from...everywhere? Were there hives of insects high among the branches? Possible, but this sound seemed to rise and fall like the inflections of speech.

As she crested the top of the deer path, the noise became acutely louder, its source obvious. The way had opened into a wide, bowl-shaped clearing, the only tree an immense willow at its center. The contrast between this valley and the density of the surrounding forest was disquieting...it was as if the bordering trees purposely gave the willow a wide berth.

The murmuring remained incomprehensible, but its volume had grown, remaining subtle and yet bordering on deafening. Elizabeth had the distinct impression that parts of the noise were beyond her ability to hear, that subsonic vibrations were unknowingly probing the depths of her bones.

This willow was the first one she'd seen since she came into Edge--the first since the one that lived in her father's yard. Its canopy was striking among the tall, straight trunks of the rest of the forest, its hanging leaves dense enough to resemble a wall. Its domed and seemingly solid shape looking like a house set deep in the woods, seeming more manmade than natural.

Elizabeth stood at the border of the valley, watching for the three harriers. The boughs of the willow could be hiding them completely from her view...them, and the other two travelers she had seen. With its great size, the tree could have held as many as ten or fifteen people, all without providing any outward hint of their existence.

She sidled down the slope, walking quickly but silently. Intertwining roots, surfacing and plunging beneath the soil, riddled the ground and wrapped around chunks of rock in strangleholds. The hanging branches swayed faintly in the breeze but, beyond this, no other movement was apparent.

Having made it as far as the greenery of the tree, she paused; the droning noise had grown still louder and had developed a scratching undertone, a whispering under the hum, like creatures beneath the ground were scrabbling at the soil. She glanced down, hoping she could catch some sort of glimpse under the dangling limbs, but they spilled onto the soil like poorly-measured curtains. She took a deep breath, reached forward, and parted the branches.

Light filtered through the leaves, making the ceiling and walls look like stained glass. Elizabeth saw no one within, so she stepped inside and let the branches fall closed behind her. The air in here was different somehow. Thicker. Intoxicating.

The tree was breathtakingly immense, its trunk at least six feet wide at the base. Deep fissures crackled the bark, light brown-gray on the most superficial parts, but delving to black within the crevices. Its roots extended like spokes from the center of a wheel, splitting the soil before diving beneath.

But size was not the willow's most striking feature. High up the trunk, at least twenty feet from the ground, the bark bulged outward in an awkward, man-sized gnarl. Not just man-sized, she realized, for at the top of the protuberance was a human face. A tattooed, feminine face. She saw the lips moving slowly, mechanically, matching the rises and falls of the whispering noise.

Further up the shaft, offset on the circumference of the trunk, a similar bulging occurred, and then another and another. Each had a series of rises and depressions at their tops in the unmistakable contours of human features. And high within the branches at the top of the tree, she saw dark shapes contrasted against the bright green. Body-shapes. Hanging, unmoving.

Elizabeth jumped as something touched her shoulder, and she swiveled to see one of the ends of the branches had settled there, with a light pressure that gradually increased, in waves, like the crescendo of a massage. The incoherent whispering flooded her head, melting into words that tugged on the edge of familiarity, tickling at the primordial neurons deep within her brain. The murmuring became more intense, and fear as elemental as instinct gripped her heart in a spindly grasp. The willow's tendril snaked around her neck, joined by a second, then a third.

Her left hand struck out, moving of its own accord and slicing through the offending branches. Elizabeth ran for the leaf-wall. This tree was a great wrongness, she knew it with every fiber of her being. She had to get out of this part of the forest, get out of these woodlands. It would only be a matter of time before the tree lured her in, absorbed her into its shell the way those poor souls had been. She didn't know how she knew this, how her knowledge came so instantly and unquestionably. She only knew the clock was ticking.

The leaves congregated, thickening to prevent her exit. She had thought they looked like a wall, but now they were acting like one as well. She pushed and shoved at them, but they pushed back, and clung to her hand with a parasitic sucking. She twisted her wrist, snapping the twigs, and cut wide swaths of the branches with her left hand, finally severing enough to break free, frantically brushing the leaves off her skin and clothes. Elizabeth scrambled up the grade of the clearing and plunged into the forest, praying that these trees would help to shield her from the willow.

As she ran, the whispering, momentarily silenced when she amputated the branches, found its way into her ears again; she turned to be sure she wasn't being pursued and felt the sudden sickening lurch of shifting gravity. She misjudged the angle of the hill’s descent and came down awkwardly on her ankle, twisting and folding it underneath her leg from her forward momentum. A pain zipped up her leg from her foot, joined by a shuddering jolt as her hip struck the ground. She rolled down the hill, colliding with jutting rocks and broken tree trunks until she finally skidded to a stop. She raised her head, and her stomach listed again; she had stopped mere inches from a ten-foot drop to irregular, rocky ground.

Elizabeth gathered herself. She couldn't run, but she could walk, and found a fallen branch to serve as a crutch; it would also function as a weapon, if it came to that. She oriented to her new surroundings, set out for home, and reached her campsite after an hour of painful marching. Climbing the tree wouldbe impossible with her swollen ankle, but she was able to knock her bag down from the tree where she had stashed it, and, after filling the waterskins from the stream, struck back out into the woods.

She headed for the settlement she had seen in the distance. It was late in the day to be starting such a long journey, but the more miles she could put between herself and that--she couldn't call it a tree, it was as much a tree as she was--that thing, the safer she would feel. She hadn't heard anyone following her, nor had she seen anyone when she looked down from the high points of her flight. But she had seen how easily the muscular man had carried the fallen woman; she dared not risk a physical encounter with someone that strong, not with her injury. Best to stay on the move until exhaustion stopped her.

The moonlight replaced the light of dusk, and she hobbled onward in the dimness. She bound the ankle with the winding gauze that had patched her now-healed head wound. Each time she considered halting for the night, she imagined the willow branch coiling on her shoulder, slithering around her throat, pulling her up to the highest boughs as gravity choked out her life while she kicked and struggled. She walked long into the night, using the moon high overhead to navigate her way.

It took three days to reach the edge of the forest, three days of hard walking with stops only for cat-naps. Her ankle throbbed constantly and turned an angry red. She wished she had some aspirin for her injuries; she had read it could be harvested from willow bark, but the thought made her shudder. She would deal with the pain.

The woodland ended abruptly, culminating in farmland with the first buildings of the city some miles beyond. She spent a day hiding at the farmland’s edge, stealing food from the fields and letting her ankle heal. Unattended clothes hung off a line, a pair of summer dresses that would fit her well. There were gloves in a shed, and was able to cleanse herself with a barrel of rainwater.

Cleaner, hunger satiated, and full of purpose, Elizabeth started for the city. She had needed the time in the woods, she realized that now...needed the time to right herself, to prepare herself for the task ahead, and also to grieve. To allow herself to forgive Grim for what he had done.

The road to the city gradually transitioned from hard-packed dirt to cobblestones, much as the way into Foursmith had. She was passed by farmers' carts laden with produce, but none stopped to offer her a ride. But her ankle had drastically improved, and the walk to the city gates proved to be less difficult than she feared.

She had no set plan for how she would survive in the city, other than to look for a market or shop where goods from Central were sold, and tracking their source. She followed the flow of traffic, not bothering to keep track of the twists and turns she took, gaping like a country rube at the electric lights and steam-powered machinery. She had not known Edge would have such things, or how much she had missed the sight of technology, even that of decades and centuries past.

An entrancing smell drew her attention: cinnamon rolls, she was sure of it. Just like her mother used to make, though she doubted Edge had the Pillsbury instant kind. The aroma led her to the front of a hotel; the placard that hung over the door was adorned with a lion-eagle hybrid, and the letters read, in English, "The Griff Inn."

The front door was held open, with lavishly dressed men and women brushing past without seeming to see her. With wordless grunts, they nudged her aside as they oversaw drivers unloading their luggage from grand carriages. Elizabeth felt a tap on her shoulder and turned slowly, anticipating a clout or a stern word for blocking the entrance of such a fancy lodging house.

The woman facing her was dark-skinned, someone she would have labeled African-American if either of those words had any meaning in this place, and wore a simple dress, cornflower blue trimmed with white. Her hair was finger-length, kinked into a black crown. She was the most striking person Elizabeth had seen since coming to Edge, radiant and regal. She spoke with the brogue of the Caribbean Isles; distracted as Elizabeth was by the accent and her beauty, it took three repetitions before the girl understood what she was saying. "Are you here for the job?"

"Job?,” Elziabeth repeated dumbly.

The woman nodded, exasperated, and pointed to an ornately scripted sign that sat in the window. The text upon it was written in unfamiliar characters: neither English nor the spiral lettering. Elizabeth recognized an opportunity when she saw one. “Yes,” she said with as much confidence as she could muster. “I am here for the job.”

The woman opened the door of the inn and with a wave of her arm, ushered Elizabeth through.

Eighteenth

Elizabeth was granted one day each week to do as she wished, to sleep late and lounge about or to go explore the city; she always chose the latter. She visited museums full of paintings and sculpture, toured libraries stocked with books in varying languages (some of which she could actually read), and attended street fairs. But, when she got the chance, she would always browse through the public markets, hunting for vendors with a stock of items that came from Central.

Or rather, items that reportedly came from Central. There were a fair amount of craftsmen whose livelihood came from fashioning things in the style of her world, and passing them off as genuine. Vendors who only moments before had been welcoming and warm would become shifty-eyed when she inquired for details of how and when their wares made the passage into Edge. Many of them would make up place-names, she was sure, to explain their origins...unless, as one merchant claimed, the "Great City-State of Jordache Gap" was known throughout Central for its manufacture of the finest blue jeans.

Not once was she given the name or whereabouts of a Guide. This could have been because the vendors were frauds. But it also could have been because they had a vested interest in maintaining the secrecy of their sources, lest another seller cut into their business.

Nor had she found any clues about how exactly a Guide was able to get things from Central without drawing a Servant into Edge. The vendors clammed up well before she could direct the conversation onto this subject, and none of the books she found had any information that was useful, or even consistent. Elizabeth did find a series of books intended for a juvenile reader that starred a clan of Guides known as the Lostlanders...but these were clearly written as fantasy, as the heroes were rescuing Kings and Popes of Central and returning to Edge with priceless, jewel-encrusted vases and statues as rewards.

Despite her attempts at guile, her search had not gone unnoticed. Now, even when she visited a merchant for the first time, he or she would act as though forewarned of Elizabeth’s arrival, faces turning unfriendly as soon as she appeared. Maybe it was because she never bought anything, or because she scoffed at the most obvious forgeries or the merchants’ ignorance of the uses of the few genuine-seeming items. More than once, a merchant threatened to have her escorted out of the market if she refused to leave their booth.

Clara and Winnie suspected she was not originally from Edge; she wasn't sure what exactly had tipped them off, but her employer's didn't treat her like a liability. On the contrary, this seemed to make her more intriguing to them, and they went out of their way to provide explanations for the customs of Aldergate, and of Edge in general. Their reading lessons in particular were indispensable, and Elizabeth thought it would not be long before a greater number of books in the libraries became interpretable.

The books she found, both in the city's libraries and those on the shelves of the sitting room of the inn, were filled with stories of the adventures of Eliza and Silas. But, just as Flint had warned her, the particulars of the tales lacked consistency, and many directly contradicted the others. For example, the deaths of Jonathan Evenfall and Penumbra: a major plot point in the play she had watched, and yet both characters appeared in tales that occurred after Eliza's travels through the Obscure Sea. Some even listed them as members of the attack force in Eliza’s last battle, when The Debris assaulted the High Keep of the Watchmaker.

There was also no consensus on Eliza's eventual end, with some stories stating she was killed by Silas or The Watchmaker, others that she was granted permission to leave Edge and go home. And still others suggested more fantastical ends: that she had gone to live in the stars, for example, or that she had been turned into an island that wandered the sea, appearing only to those who needed it most.

Whether these stories were true or not seemed irrelevant; they were Edge's shared heritage, pillars of their cultural history. Elizabeth could still hear Priest’s calm indignation: "You don't get to know the truth." She guessed that was always true with historical figures. The stories people know are the ones history allows them to know.

*****

The courtyard of the inn had been opened so guests could enjoy the unseasonable warmth, and Elizabeth had been tasked with attending to the needs of the lounging patrons. She had been handed a tray of tea and scones to be delivered to a man named Lang, a returning guest whom she hadn't yet met. Though she gathered from Clara's tone that he was a frequent and well-respected client.

The mistress had fussed with the placement of the pastries, arranging them into a pleasing spiral, then stopped and looked Elizabeth in the eye. "You don't have any fear of insects, do you, Elsie?"

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. "I don't think so, Miss Clara."

"No problems with being stung or bit?"

"I don't like it, but I...well, I don't think anyone does, Miss Clara. I've had my share of bites and stings, and I've survived alright." She thought back to one particular episode in childhood, when she happened on an underground bees' nest and received several painful welts on her arms and legs. "Do we have a hive that needs to be removed?"

Clara's mouth contorted into a wry smile. "No. Just...well, you can take Lang his tray now, Elsie. Afterwards there's rooms upstairs that need t'be prepared for tonight’s guests."

The courtyard was a wide area bordered by the backs of neighboring buildings, all claiming their portion of the yard, with the archer’s statue at the center considered neutral and shared territory. The section closest to the inn had a few wooden benches and tables; only one was occupied, by a gray-haired man with his back to her, sitting in the sun with his feet propped up on a chair and his head hanging over a book.

A humming static filled the air. Elizabeth was startled, and it was a split-second of untethered panic before she understood why: it sounded like the willow's grove, like the noise that preceded the insistent whispering that invaded her skull. She still heard it in the darkest recesses of her sleep.

Elizabeth craned her neck as she walked, searching for the source. She couldn't recall any similar droning noise in the courtyard in days past. Could the people from the woods have tracked her down somehow?

The explanation revealed itself as she walked around to the table at which the guest--Lang, she presumed—was sitting. She started to murmur a greeting, but it caught in her throat when she saw a writhing mass encrusting one of the pages of the book he held. "Are they...they're not reading that?" she blurted.

One half of the tome was overrun with bees, what had to be a hundred of them, all climbing over each other. Periodically, one would leap up for a short, spiraling flight before settling back among its brethren. As she peered closer, the hum that rose from the man's lap grew as though asking a question, then returned to its baseline. Elizabeth moved around the table, placing it between herself and the swarm, and set the tray down.

The man looked up and raised an eyebrow. "Oh, I sort of doubt it. They've read it before, and it honestly doesn't seem good enough to read twice."

That seemed an awfully off-hand response for the situation. "Are they your...pets? Like, do you command them?"

That elicited a broad, crooked grin from the man. His hair was solid grey, long and slicked back from his forehead, but his face youthful and not unhandsome. He peered at her over half-glasses. "We have an understanding. I saved their queen's life once, so they all sort of look to me for advice. I'm like a bigger brother to them. Or an uncle." He paused as if considering his statement. "That's quite good, actually. I'm like the Queen's shiftless brother, and they think they have to at least go through the motions of pleasing me, though I have no real power." He again hesitated. "That's the best summary of our relationship I've come up with."

"So...they travel with you? They leave their queen?"

"Oh, my no. She stays in my traveling bag. We've got a bit of a symbiotic relationship going. I get bodyguards and companions, and her majesty gets to sample nectar from far and wide. I think she's trying to cultivate some new sort of honey and needs to catalogue different ingredients." He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I'm going to insist the concoction gets named after me. It's the least she can do, and it's not like people are going to call it whatever word she comes up with in that waggle-dance language of theirs."

Elizabeth suspected this man was at least half insane, but then, he did have bees packed densely on his reading material. He returned his gaze to the page held open with his thumb; when he finished it, he gave the book a little shake, and the bees moved en masse to the opposite page, allowing him to continue reading.

She gave a little curtsy and stepped towards the back door to the Inn. Clara still wore her half-smile when Elizabeth returned to the kitchen. "Met the Hive, did you? No stinging for your troubles?"

Elizabeth grinned sheepishly, picking up a peeler and settling down next to a basket of potatoes. "I was a bit surprised, I'll admit. But don't the other guests complain about having bees stay in the inn?"

Winnie, dressed in her going-about-town clothes, had come into the kitchen while Elizabeth was outside. She paused in her pinning up of her hair. "Oh, the bees don't cause too much trouble,” she said, removing hairpins from between her lips. “We give him the corner suite so the humming doesn't disturb anyone. But I don't know that anyone would be doing much complaining, anyway. Mister Lang has some powerful friends. We are committed to keeping political neutrality here at The Griff, my dear," Winnie paused for emphasis, "so we do more listening than we do advising. But Mister Lang has been seen lately with some members of a revolutionary faction."

"Man's smart as a whip," Clara interjected, looking up from her carrot peeling. "I've known him for years, even 'fore he started keeping with those bees. If he's taking up with the underground, they must be growing strong. He's not the type to back losing causes."

Elizabeth was intrigued. "Underground? Revolutionary? I thought all of that ended with Eliza's Debris."

Clara and Winnie exchanged a knowing glance. Winnie cleared her throat. "Elsie, we know you're not entirely...familiar with our ways here. Aldergate was one of the cities that opposed the rule of The Watchmaker. One of the lucky ones that wasn't disappeared, like Hound's Tooth and the Keep were. We've always had a bit of an independent streak in Aldergate. Don't like outside government telling us what to do."

Clara took over. "Was a bit of an uprising here a few years back, protesting a new tax. Started out peaceful, then some drunken fool started lighting fires, breaking windows. The Black Company swarmed them, came outta nowhere and subdued the whole lot, took them to Pendulum for a closed trial and locked them up, so the story goes, though no one's heard anything from them in the five years since. May have been executed, for all we know."

"So now you've got an armload of powerful men in The Gate," Winnie continued, "with fire in their bellies and money to spend, and few or no heirs to spend it on. That's a dangerous combination."

"So there's been some rumbling--no overt motions, mind you, but just some hints here and there--that these sons of the Gate may be quietly stockpiling weapons, training an army on the side."

Elizabeth considered this. "Do you think a war is coming?"

The two of them looked grim. "We hope not, Elsie. War is good for some businesses, but not for ours. It disrupts travel, hotels get conscripted for use without proper payment, things get damaged. Oh, and people get killed, obviously," Winnie added.

Clara looked at her sincerely. "We've got no love for Silas or for his Black Guard. We do hate the taxes and some of the laws. But they keep order, which is not to be ignored. It's a fine thing, even as far from the capitol as we are, to be able to walk the streets at night and be safe from cutthroats. The Gate's history, back before we bended to The Watchmaker, was that of a bit of a rough town. We've come a long way."

"So why do you let Lang stay here? Why give him the finest room and stock it with flowers for his pets?"

"The same reason we let high officials from the Black Company stay here: he pays." Winnie sat down on a stool at the kitchen worktable, careful to keep her dress-sleeves away from the vegetable remnants piling on its surface. "We could be opportunists, of course, and make a stand against whichever faction seems to be out of fate's favor, and that might get us more business and favorable interpretations of the tax laws. But that would only last as long as the wind blows in that direction, and people's memories are long. As soon as fate shifted, the party that had been out of favor would do everything they could to shut us down.

"Staying neutral might not get you friends, but it also doesn't make you enemies. We could be doing better, to be sure, but we could also be doing a lot worse. You can count on the hands of two fingers the number of businesses in this city that are run by two women alone, yet here we have one of the most respected inns in Aldergate."

"What we're trying to say, Elsie, is if you don't poke a sleeping bear, it might just let you keep walking by. We may have feelings about Silas, and about the revolution, but we have stronger feelings for our inn. It's the only affiliation we truly need."

That brought the conversation to an end. Winnie and squeezed Clara affectionately on the shoulder, then went back to preparing for her morning out. Elizabeth finished peeling the potatoes in silence, then excused herself to see if Lang had finished his breakfast in the courtyard.

Lang remained deep in his book but had dragged his table and chair across the courtyard, following the march of the sunlight. He had his book propped on his lap so Elizabeth could read the spiral letters on the cover: A History of the Black Guard.

Lang caught her peeking. "Just learning what I can about our fine peacekeepers, my dear. Familiarity breeds compassion."

"I thought the phrase was that it breeds contempt."

"Really?" He looked astonished. "I have never heard that, though I suppose it is true in some situations. Not with our beloved constabulary, of course, nor with Silas's guard." He cocked an eyebrow. "I understand some of their leaders stay at this inn when they come through Aldergate."

"I haven't the pleasure of meeting any, sir."

He sat up. "Oh, come now. I'm sure one or two of the Guard's finest have been privileged guests since you started here...when was it, dear? And I don't think I caught your name."

"Three months, sir. And I am called Elsie."

"Elsie, then. Surely you have seen one or two officers in the months you have been here."

She had, of course, seen more than one or two; had cleaned their rooms, watched their children, served several men that Clara and Winnie had identified as officials of the Guard. But they had also cautioned her against discussing the business of one guest with another.

"I certainly may have sir, but they did not identify themselves as such."

"Ah. The mistresses of the Griff are teaching you well." He laid a finger across the length of his nose, tapping it in thought. "Well then, if I am not prying too deeply, where may I ask does Miss Elsie hail from?"

She went to her stock response. "I was raised in the House of Warren, beyond the Obscure Sea."

"A wayfarer! Doubtless with heaps of stories to tell regarding your many travels to Aldergate from...the House of Warren, you said? Like Silas's fabled surname in Central? His," he paused dramatically, "...and Eliza's?"

"I believe so, sir." Dammit, she swore inwardly, why had she used her own name?

"I myself have traveled on the Sea Obscure. Admittedly, I do not know all of its islands and routes. But I have to apologize, as I have not heard of the illustrious House of Warren. On what island does it lay?"

"I also have to apologize, sir," she stammered. "I was young when I was brought from there. I spent most of my early years at sea, and the sailors did not share navigation maps with the maids. I believe it is beyond the Island of Isadore, but I am far from sure." She stepped back, picking up the tray and the empty plates. "I must be getting back to the kitchen with this. Will you be requiring anything else?"

"Not right now....Elsie." The beat between her name and the rest of the sentence was palpable. He made a show of too-long eye contact, then re-opened his book. The bees had made rest on his chest and abdomen, but now returned to their perches on the page.

She had only made it two steps before he spoke. "The bees like you. They say you smell like a tree." She turned, but Lang had not moved. Elizabeth thought this statement had to number among the stranger compliments she had ever received.

He spoke without looking up. "They also say it's a shame about your hand."

She wished she wasn't carrying the tray; she wanted to hide her arms behind her back. "Oh, you mean my hands? They must be talking about the curse. On my hands. I--I can't show them."

"No, they specifically said 'hand'...nothing about a curse...let me see..." He watched the bees' gyrations intently. "Sorry...there isn't a word in Bee for every situation...all I can get is 'shines unlike water.' So, anyway, it's a shame that your hand shines unlike water. I suppose. According to my friends, here."

Throughout his speech, Lang never reestablished eye contact, his eyes instead moving around the page of his book. Elizabeth spun away, wanting to end this conversation as quickly as possible.

"Metal, is it?" She froze, remaining turned so he could not see the look of fear on her face. "It isn't all that difficult to deduce, you know. You keep your hands hidden, you've affected a Central accent, you lie about your origins with places that don't exist, and you give them names only a fool wouldn't connect to the legends. And you're certainly the right age to be swayed by that kind of romantic nonsense.

Lang cleared his throat. "You know, my dear, if this came out, it could make things...difficult for your employers. A number of guests would surely be uncomfortable knowing that such a rabble-rouser would have easy access to their baggage, their documents...their children."

Elizabeth set the tray on a nearby table and walked back to him. The bees had left the book and once again were crawling over his shoulders, forming vibrating epaulets. "What do you want?" she whispered.

"What I want is to know what you're doing here. Who you're really working for." His voice was low, his lips barely moving. “I know you’re not with the revolution. So who have you thrown in with?”

She swallowed hard. "I'm working for the inn. For Clara and Winnie. No one else."

He removed his glasses, fogging them with his breath before cleaning them on his sleeve. "There are hundreds of jobs in this city for a girl your age, with your apparent upbringing." She started to interrupt, but his look silenced her. "You're obviously educated, girl. And your employers have nothing but glowing words about you. I have little doubt you could have gotten work in a shop, or at the market, or with one of the greater houses of Aldergate. But you chose to work..." he swept his hand across the view of the inn, "...here. The illustrious Griff Inn, known to all as neutral ground for Black Guard and revolutionaries alike. You can't seriously expect me to swallow that you're working here for any reason other than to gather intelligence. Unless..." He stood, revealing himself as much taller than he appeared when sitting, at least a head taller than her father.

"Unless...?"

"Unless you're not a spy at all." One of his eyebrows shot upwards, and he tilted his head for dramatic effect. "Unless you're an assassin."

Elizabeth’s heart dropped. This was hitting too close to home. "I am not any of the things you think I am. This," she waved her left hand, "Was an accident. That's all. Just a stupid mistake."

He considered. "Let me fill in the blanks, then. Don't tell me if I'm wrong. I love a good game of Backstory." He closed his eyes, rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers. "You...were a firebrand in your younger days. But you didn't start out that way. Silas took something from you...a family member, or a friend. Or your family's lands." He cracked one eye open. "The Warren vineyards, say...home to centuries of momentous vintages, turned to ash beneath the flames of an onslaught by the Black Company. This part, these details, are all conjecture, by the way." His eye snapped shut as though they had been slammed. "You were on the run, and befriended someone. A man. Handsome and dangerous, with revolutionary ideals. He noted your passing resemblance to the figure of Eliza of old, and convinced you to visit a freelancing Weaver. Persuaded you that your losses were meaningful ones, prophetically speaking. That you were the one the uprising was waiting for, that you would lead them all to victory against the dreaded Pretender. 
"Then he broke your heart."

"You're having fun with this." Her words came out icier than intended.

His lashes parted, just enough breaking of his narrative to chide her interruption. "Quiet, child. There is a master at work.

"He filled you with fire, convinced you to undertake the transformation, to become the forbidden likeness of Eliza. Maybe he downplayed the outcast it would make you, maybe he--ah, yes, this makes sense. He used it to isolate you, to make you believe that only he could protect you from Silas and the Guard. And then he betrayed you. Maybe not dramatically so, clearly not fatally...maybe he just got tired of you. And cast you out. Or just disappeared.

"And here you are. Older and wiser, with no interest in the tides of revolution. But saddled for the rest of your life with evidence of a crime committed when you were too young to understand what you were signing on for. You've concocted that silly curse story to keep people from prying, and it's worked...so far, anyway." He stretched, finished with his tale. "How did I do?"

There was a portion of Elizabeth that wanted to shut him down, that hated him for his presumption that he could know her story at a glance, that wanted to rub his nose in the inaccuracy of it all. But, the wiser part of her insisted, Lang had just provided her with a ready-made narrative, all the more believable because it hadn't come from her own mouth. He was already signed up for this story, ready to run with it, and his obvious overconfidence in his own intelligence meant he would defend this version of events against anyone who questioned it. He may have just made himself into her biggest ally. Surely the truth was more dangerous than Lang's version, and would be harder to prove.

She feigned defeat, slumping her shoulders and conjuring up scant tears to rim her eyes. She cast her glance at the ground. "You're right," she whispered, "His name was Horace."

He smiled, a victorious, wolfish grin. "There, that wasn't so hard now, was it? Not when your whole life is laid bare in front of you. I have to say, the fallen, jaded revolutionary character is not without its charm, girl. The bright-eyed zealot has its place, but, for a big job? Give me someone who's been around the block." He stepped towards her. "I have...friends who could make good use of you. You do look the part, you know. Hair too short, but that's easily remedied." 

"Use? What use would they have of me?

"You know who I am, don't you? Winnie told you?" She nodded. "And you know the circles I run in." Again, she nodded. "Then, let us just say that I have friends who have been unhappy with certain people in high places. These people, these friends of mine, think that those in power have gotten an awful lot of mileage out of some legends and a few magic tricks, which they have shored up with a few displays of brutal power. They think that, if the tables were turned, they could actually do a much better job running things.

"My friends know that the people of Aldergate--well, to be fair, most of the people of Edge--are more superstitious than not. Just ask your average person on the street...we believe our ancestors walked with Gods, met them and spoke with them and were directly ruled by them. We believe a parlor magician and two children from Central were able to overthrow a theocracy. I mean, if it was the plot of a book, you would cast it away without finishing it, it's so unbelievable."

"You don't think any of those things actually happened?"

"What I think is that a government was toppled, one that was run by priests and other religious leaders, and replaced with a dictator. That much certainly happened. But I think the fantastic parts of the story are just too fantastic to believe. Don't get me wrong, I know there are things the Weavers can do that others cannot. I know there is magic in Edge, I just have doubts as to the intensity of its power. It's relatively easy to use sleight of hand to convince a large group of ignorant people that something magical has happened, and from there to turn the stories of that event into a legend." He paused, looking pointedly at her gloved left hand, a grin splitting his face. "This is something we can use to our advantage. Why let the other side have all the fun?"

"You want me to impersonate Eliza." She was almost choking on the irony of it.

"I don't want you to do anything except agree to speak with some friends of mine. Not yet. Do this, and your secret remains between us, unknown to both your employers and the Black Guard."

He nodded towards her left hand, encased within her work-glove. "Of course, I will need to see it first, to determine if the workmanship is of good enough quality for their uses. You can drop this silly pretense about a curse. Honestly, the provincial superstitions that persist within this city..."

"Not here." The courtyard had too many windows; too many eyes from the neighboring buildings, not to mention Clara or Winnie could come out at any time. If she took off her gloves and someone witnessed it, they would think she was trying to curse him. At best.

"You're careful. I like that. Shows you've been considerate regarding your secrets. At a later time, then." He stretched, scattering the bees into a tornado of activity about his head and shoulders. "When is your next time off?"

"Two days from now."

"Very good. I'll call on you the night before to inspect your...alteration. I'll wake you up."

He seemed awfully confident. "Won't you alert Clara or Winnie? Or the other maid?"

He chuckled. "I'm awfully quiet when I want to be. I don't always travel with such a buzzing entourage."

He left the courtyard, a trail of yellow and black disturbing the air behind him, like the wake of a ship through the ocean.

Elizabeth gathered up the remains of Lang's tea and carried it back into the Inn. She left it in a sink with the rest of the morning's dirty dishes, wordlessly moving through the kitchen. Clara called out to remind her of the rooms that needed re-setting, then to ask if she was all right. But she couldn't bring herself to respond. Not when she was so unsure if what she had agreed to was an act of loyalty, or one of treachery.