Waschbär made a derisive noise at this revelation. “That simply means they are busy elsewhere.”
“And if we chance upon your former comrades?” Bertie’s question was a bit garbled, posed around a mouthful of flatbread, spiced beef, and garlic sauce. They’d decided to break their fast while traveling, and she was doing her best to enjoy the sandwich, given it was the last food from the Caravanserai. “Should we let you do the talking?”
The sneak-thief set down his food, looking as though his appetite had fled into the hedgerow. “My hope is we’ll be able to avoid such an encounter.”
“I take it you didn’t part with the brigands on amicable terms.” Bertie hoped Peaseblossom wouldn’t catch her wiping her mouth on her sleeve. “What did you steal from them?”
“Freedom.” Waschbär lingered over the word as another might a mouthful of wine. “An unforgivable theft to such men and women.” His voice dropped a notch. “They have done far worse in their careers than plunder and pillage, though I tried to take no part in that. When I could stomach no more of their mercenary acts, I stole away in the dead of night, and I vowed I would never again deprive anyone of valuables they cherished.”
“That was when you decided to steal only unwanted things?”
“Yes.” Waschbär shifted, perhaps discomfited more by the memories than her question. “I took refuge in the bustle of the Caravanserai, but soon I was drawn beyond its walls to the White Cliffs and your father’s Aerie.”
“You took the scrimshaw medallion.” Bertie reached for it, twisting her fingers in the chain.
He confessed to the theft with a nod. “Once I would have lingered in the marketplace, rife as it was with gold pocket watches and velvet coin purses and fat money clips, but my newly made vow set me on a different path. I sought solace in the long road, traveling until my feet were sore, sleeping under the stars. Eventually, I reached a bustling city. A circuitous route left me in the alleyway behind your Théâtre Illuminata, and Fate led me to a window open in the Properties Department.”
“An open window, eh?” Cobweb fisted his hands on his hips. “I can just imagine who opened it!”
Bertie coughed, recalling the incident in which she’d tested the magical barriers of the theater by tossing the aforementioned fairy at the opening, resulting in a frizzling and a decided lack of underpants on his part. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
The sneak-thief didn’t notice the conversational footnote, his mind still following the narrative. “I couldn’t so much as touch a single item in the Properties Department, though I left the scrimshaw as a gift for your Mr. Hastings. What had drawn me to the theater in the first place yet beckoned, luring me down a long hallway and up a narrow staircase, to a glass-paned door.”
And then Bertie could guess the rest of the tale. “The unwanted thing that lured you there was in the Theater Manager’s office, wasn’t it?”
Waschbär shook his head. “Not one unwanted item, but two: the journal and the opal ring, both cleverly concealed in a hidden drawer of his desk.”
“The ring came from the theater as well?” Bertie frowned, not expecting that new puzzle piece. “With every mystery solved, another is born, it seems.” Looking down the road, she realized the other travelers had left the troupe in the dust, forging ahead while Waschbär told his tale. “The mechanical horses aren’t going to get us there in time, are they?”
Nate consulted the map. “We have enough time t’ reach th’ gates. Stow yer frettin’.”
Bertie leaned forward, putting her head on her knees. “I’m too tired to fret.”
“Ye can nap, if ye like.” Nate offered his shoulder for a pillow with a welcoming pat. “Rest yer head.”
“I’ve too much thinking to do to sleep. I need to conjure up a dazzling and brilliant performance for the Queen.” But every idea seemed more pebble than diamond, especially when Bertie admitted most of them were worries about Ariel: where he might be, whose company he might be keeping now, wondering if he’d care at all that they’d left the Caravanserai without him. Mimicking the mechanical horses, shiny brass gears in her head spun wildly with thoughts of him, each full revolution bringing her back to the beginning of her musings.
Did he scent that one-in-a-thousand wind and leave for good?
“Yer face is fair squinched up,” Nate noted. “An’ I don’t think it’s th’ sun in yer eyes.”
“It’s warm, isn’t it?” Bertie sidestepped the observation, hoping to compose her features and knowing she didn’t quite manage it.
“He chose not t’ come wi’ us, ye realize?”
“I don’t want to talk about that right now.” Would that she could have managed the statement with greater conviction! “And I didn’t say a thing about Ariel.”
“Ye didn’t need to.” It was almost as though he chose the shortest words possible, pounding them into the wood of the caravan with a voice like a hammer. “Yer every thought crosses yer face. What caused such a thing?”
I should tell him about trading the mask.
Though she wanted no falsehoods between them, secrets were not the same thing as lies, and some part of her desperately needed a secret right now, however small. Bertie hugged it close to her, clinging to it as a child would a stuffed bear or a blanket when the night-light failed and the floorboards creaked. Something brushed over her nose, and she thought it a spiderweb or a bit of mist before realizing the secret had surfaced upon her skin, forming the thinnest of barriers between her soul and the outside world.
Because she wouldn’t lie to Nate, she changed the subject. “The herb-seller said Sedna is tracking me through the water like a shark.”
He shuddered. “Th’ last thing we need is the Sea Goddess givin’ chase just now.” Nate glanced about them, eyes trained upon the landscape the way he might scan the seas for an incoming squall. “Though there’s not much chance o’ her manifestin’ in th’ middle o’ this dusty road.” He spoke with conviction, but under that ran a murky green thread of fear.
“Was she awful to you?” The moment she spoke, Bertie wanted to take the words back and eat them, no matter how vile they tasted. Nate flinched away from the question as though she’d slapped him hard; indeed, his cheeks reddened and something horrible to look upon filled his eyes. Before he could speak, she hastened to set things to rights. “Let’s strike a bargain and not speak of Ariel or Sedna again today.”
Adjusting the reins with visible relief, Nate nodded. “What would ye speak of instead?”
“Anything else. Shoes and ships and ceiling wax—”
“Oh, aye,” he said, picking up the rhyme, “an’ will ye give a cabbage t’ th’ Queen?”
The idea teased a laugh from Bertie. “Not a fitting gift. I’ll try to think of something other than leafy produce.” Then, their heads filled with conjuring tricks, silk flowers, and rabbits pulled from top hats, they fell into the sort of conversation they might have had months ago back at the theater, their words wandering over the landscape just as the caravan did. It was only when Bertie’s stomach growled that she realized the sun hung low in the sky, a glowing pink spotlight aimed at their backs.
“My thoughts exactly.” Nate guided the caravan off the road near a bend in the river.
“We can’t stop now,” Bertie protested, despite the fact that after more than a full day’s journey, her backside was aching numb.
“That’s enough fer now, considerin’ we didn’t sleep at all last night.” The pirate matched her, wince for wince, when he clambered down. “Everyone off afore I chuck ye overboard.”
The fairies and Waschbär descended, indefatigable and in good cheer, the former frolicking in the grass like winged puppies and the latter dismounting the conveyance as though it were no more than a hobbyhorse. The sneak-thief turned out his pockets, thus displacing Pip Pip and Cheerio, who tumbled one over the other with squeaks and bites.
“Mind th’ vermin,” Nate said, lifting one booted foot as they gambol
ed past him.
Three of the four fairies and Waschbär immediately sought out the nearest trees to relieve themselves. A bit more decorous, Peaseblossom emerged from a nearby thicket a moment later, twisting her little tunic about her hips and looking disconcerted.
“I’d forgotten what it was like on the open road. I think the Lost Boys must have had an easier time of it than Wendy.”
Bertie did her best not to laugh. “You’re going to wish we’d stayed at the Caravanserai when we’re sleeping on the ground tonight instead of in a feather bed.”
“Don’t speak of the Caravanserai,” Mustardseed said with a groan. “I miss the food already.”
“Aye, well, if ye want t’ eat anytime soon, we’d best get t’ it,” Nate observed with a glance at the sky. “Waschbär, ye see t’ th’ fire an’ I’ll tend t’ dinner.”
“Will do!” The sneak-thief took a small hand ax into the trees. When he returned, he carried a stack of logs, each as long and as fat as his forearm. With his usual speed and dexterity, he scraped back the grass, clearing a place for a fire.
The fairies sorted through the food supplies, tossing down flour and salt and the side of bacon. Bertie sliced off pieces of the smoked-and-salted pork while Nate committed the curious alchemy of baking ship’s biscuits, rubbing white fat into salted flour and transforming the crumbling mass into small rounds of dough. Peaseblossom had to search the entire caravan to find the necessary pans, but soon bacon frizzled in one skillet and biscuits in another. There was also dried fruit, a wheel of sharp cheese, and a stone jar of pink pickles the fairies thought might be either radishes or beets.
It was full dark by the time they sat down to eat, but they did so by lantern light with good appetite and humor. The metal plates Peaseblossom had unearthed were so thin that when Bertie drew her fingernail about the edge of hers, it sang an odd melody, the vibration of which settled into the empty space at the back of her throat. Bone-tired and her belly full, she thought she could have fallen asleep in the grass quite happily.
“It was a good meal and heartily enjoyed, more so for the company than the viands,” was Waschbär’s cheerful contribution as he lolled against a well-placed rock, a biscuit clasped in one paw and the ferrets balanced upon the other.
Cobweb looked at him askance. “That didn’t stop you shoveling in those viands with remarkable speed! I lost track of how many biscuits you ate!”
“If biscuits were stories,” Bertie said, fixing her gaze upon the fire, “I’d bake a pan of piping hot fables right this second.”
“Do fables have jam filling?” Moth wanted to know. “Or chocolate?”
“I think it’s allegories that have jam filling,” Mustardseed said. “And maybe parables.”
Not thinking it possible, Bertie realized she still had room for dessert. “Is there any more cake?”
Rummaging in the nearest hamper, Peaseblossom turned up the other half of the chocolate cake. “Here you go.”
Bertie broke off a piece and offered it to Nate. Ducking his head, he surprised her by taking the bite not with his hand, but his mouth.
“Ahem!” Peaseblossom said, clearing her throat so hard she dislodged a bit of dessert along with her disapproval.
“Ye ought t’ see t’ that cough,” was Nate’s cavalier response. “Before it settles in yer lungs an’ th’ pneumonia takes ye.”
“I don’t have pneumonia—”
“Bronchitis, then.”
“We have forks,” Peaseblossom said, the sternest governess there ever was, “should you require one.”
“I’m fine wi’ her fingers, seein’ as my hands are completely preoccupied wi’ tendin’ th’ fire.”
“I’ll say the same to you as I said to Ariel,” the fairy lectured the pirate. “You’ll mind your manners and be respectful, or you’ll have to answer to me!”
Bertie said nothing, but when she offered Nate another bite of cake, she let her fingers linger about his mouth, encouraging the second kiss in as many minutes. With her mask left behind as payment to Serefina, she couldn’t hide her sudden longing to inhale the scents of soap and ocean on his clothes, to feel the heat radiating from his chest. The third piece of cake she fed him came with a tiny grazing of his teeth across her finger, and she was a sailor’s knot nearly undone.
He must have seen it written upon her face, for something flickered over his own features: a promise, perhaps, mixed with determination and some flavor of triumph. Mumbling something about a pressing thirst, Bertie scrambled to her feet, grasped a lantern, and fled. A narrow stretch of grass and a tiny copse of trees separated the campfire and the river, which burbled a pleasant welcome to her. Rinsing the worst of the frosting off, she left her hands in the cold current until her fingers began to go numb. Even then, the places where Nate had kissed her burned like a firebrand.
“Are ye all right?” Of course he’d followed.
Still kneeling, Bertie didn’t turn as she splashed the bracing water on her face. “Just needed a bit of a rinse. The chocolate—”
“It’s not th’ chocolate troublin’ ye.” Nate stepped toward her, brow knit, and pulled her to her feet. Tiny fireflies gathered about them, glowing with soft pink light and emitting an oddly happy humming noise.
“Just what we need, to be eaten alive by mosquitoes.” Bertie swatted at them, but the winged things looped about her shoulders, tracing rosy hearts upon her skin. Mortified, she squeezed her eyes shut and wished either for bug repellent or for a hole to open up and swallow her.
When neither manifested, Nate tilted his head to one side. “Yer silence is like calm water before a squall.”
“Complaints, complaints. You said someday you’d have silence from me.” It had been the same day they’d reenacted the tango, the same day he’d been kidnapped.
“Well then, mayhap it’s time t’ collect on th’ quiet.”
Though Bertie was expecting the kiss, she wasn’t expecting the rest of the world to fall away from her. As her eyes closed again, the silence he wanted spread through her until the river, the caravan, and the rest of the troupe faded into a darkness deeper than a blackout, leaving only the two of them. With nothing and no one to stop them this time, Bertie wrapped herself about him.
Chocolate cake be damned—I want him for dessert.
Shoving her fingers through Nate’s hair, Bertie snapped the leather string holding back his plait. Flickering broken-glass bits of lantern light caressed his jaw, licked over the stubble on his chin, which Bertie realized belatedly accounted for the stinging around her own mouth. When she kissed him again, Nate’s hands gripped the back of her sweater, almost as though he’d like to tear it from her, but the next second he made an incoherent noise into her mouth. Bertie felt his balance shift wildly, then he staggered, and they both fell.
They landed in the river before Bertie could so much as squeak out a protest. It was deeper than it looked, and significantly colder than the shore eddies she’d used to wash her hands. With the frigid water working its way into her underwear, it was easy enough to picture ice-fed streams funneling down from snowcapped mountainsides.
Up to his armpits, Nate shoved the dripping strands of hair from his face. “A rock turned under my foot, curse it t’ th’ seventh ring o’ hell.”
Gasping, Bertie flopped over like a fish and headed for the shore. “I would have thought you’d have better balance, being a mariner.”
“Forgive me, it’s been some time since I kissed a lass aboard a storm-rocked ship.”
“How long, exactly?” Her teeth had started to chatter, but even the castanet clatter couldn’t disguise the snort of laughter that escaped. It was beyond comprehension that she was amused by the sudden and thorough dunking, but it had been most effective in dousing the fire inside her—for the moment, anyway—permitting a cooler and wetter head to prevail. Offering Nate her hand, she pulled him up and out of the swift-flowing stream. “Perhaps it was for the best.”
“An’ what d’ye mean b
y that?” Linen shirt dripping and leather breeches soaked several shades darker than they ought to be, Nate shook his head like a dog after a bath.
“I just meant that there are things to consider before anything else happens between us.” Trying to not stare at his mouth, Bertie could feel a flush nearly set her face on fire.
“Such as?” His hands were about her waist now, at once insistent and undemanding.
“Such as being responsible.”
He hesitated then asked, “Ye mean th’ chance o’ children?”
“Aye, children.” Mimicking his accent, Bertie couldn’t resist putting him in the spotlight. “Do tell, have you left one of those planted in someone’s belly before?” She jabbed him in the midsection and summoned a bit of King Lear. “‘She grew round-womb’d, and had, indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed.’”
Nate held up his hand, the one marked to match her own. “If it’s a husband ye want, a husband ye have.”
Bertie’s left hand sought out his right so that their handfasting scars met furrow to furrow, and she laced her fingers through his. “I don’t want a husband, nor a baby.” She didn’t mention Serefina’s desire for a child-not-born, nor the flask among the medicines that would have served to keep her safe from the other sort of offspring.
“What about Ariel?” Nate asked softly. “D’ye want him?”
“We didn’t leave him behind; he chose not to come with us. I am determined not to spare him a thought.”
“Mayhap that’s what ye want t’ believe, but that’s not th’ story yer face tells.” He brought up his other hand, thumb tracing her jaw with a gentle motion intended to erase all thoughts of his rival from her head.
“What story is it telling, then?” Bertie didn’t like the idea that there were stories without words; words were unpredictable enough, but this new alternative was even more dangerous.