Painted devils, p.1
Painted Devils, page 1
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To the wicked girls,
The hard truth about shooting for the moon is, when you miss, you don’t always land among the stars. Sometimes all that slows the fall are the thorns.
The good news is: The sun won’t see you coming.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is a story about many things, but especially, love. There are discussions of physical intimacy, abusive environments, and the road to loving yourself when you have spent so long walking a path of thorns. I can’t say if this will bring comfort, only that it is brought with care. In the end, this is a story of love—so above all, care for yourself.
A child’s eye fears the painted devil, but an elder wields the brush.
—Almanic proverb
PART ONE:
RED
PROPHETS
THE SEVENTH LIE
FAITH
Once upon a time, a bride fled into the night on a steed spun from starlight. The clouds were her road, and her veil tangled in the constellations, tearing away until her golden bridal crown tumbled into the chasm below.
The bride watched it fall, and she told herself she was free.
* * *
Once upon a time, a princess made a desperate and terrible oath. She would marry no one, she swore, until they conquered the terrors of the deep and brought her a lost golden crown.
The princess spoke the words as a wall between herself and the world. And she told herself no one would be foolish enough to die trying to climb it.
* * *
Once upon a time, a wicked maid came to a village in the hawthorn-dark hills.
It was a frosty night, not in the full clutch of winter’s jaws but with the fangs of that cold beast still gnawing at tree and stone. Only a mere slip of moon remained to wink slyly at the wicked maid as she stumbled down the rocky road. Bright crimson glistened through fingers pressed to her shuddering chest.
You see, the wicked maid was most atrociously drunk.
Three weeks had passed since she’d left the march of Bóern at the start of the new year, bound for her lover’s home city of Helligbrücke.
It had been two weeks since she’d reached the outskirts of a town called Quedling in the principality of Lüdheid, only a few days’ travel from Helligbrücke, and stopped there.
When her party went on, her message went with them, a folded parchment addressed, in shaky hand, to one Emeric Conrad.
The wicked maid’s message went on to Helligbrücke. The wicked maid did not.
Instead, she had wandered into the rolling wheat-velveted hills of the Haarzlands. And for the past two weeks, she had kept wandering.
By now, the letter surely would have reached her lover. He would know she wasn’t coming to Helligbrücke. Not yet. Not … like this.
Not when she wasn’t enough.
She told herself she had to be more than a thief and a liar, more than a faithless servant, more than a wayward daughter. That she could make herself something more.
Two weeks before tonight, the wicked maid had said as much in her letter.
One week, six days, thirteen hours, and forty-three minutes before tonight, she had realized she’d made a tremendous mistake. But the carriage had already left, the letter was gone, and the cold truth remained: She was not enough.
And since then, she had wandered all ’round the Haarzlands, searching in vain like a mournful ghost and learning the hard way that there are few honest trades for a thief.
Tonight, she’d had quite a lot to drink, for she had quite a lot to drown. It was not long before she became soused well past the point of belligerence and sallied boldly into insensibility. She had already been evicted from the nearest inn after first scathingly denouncing the tavern minstrel’s performance, then putting on her own show of how many meals she could vomit onto the stage. She had attempted to pay off the innkeeper in rubies, but the man had no use for her “bits of red glass.” She had threatened to bring the wrath of Death and Fortune down upon the town in revenge. (Her godmothers, still acclimating to their daughter’s newest flavor of bullshit, politely declined to visit their wrath upon the town.)
And so the wicked maid found herself staggering into the neighboring village well after midnight, clutching a rucksack full of rubies and looking for somewhere to lay her head. To encourage the townsfolk to open their doors to her, she was bawling the tragic ballad that she’d previously roasted the tavern minstrel for at the top of her lungs. It was not particularly effective.
Like many, many things that had befallen her, what happened next was preventable to the point of being self-inflicted.
“Red-handed maid, red-blooded maaaaid, red was the maid o’ the river,” the horrible girl sang, like a cat in a territory dispute. She reached a plain wooden bridge over a brook that ran sluggish and frigid, little more than a trickle of slush this time of year. “Lost was your hoooome, lost was your looooooooooove, lost was … was … Oh, scheit, what rhymes with—”
The wicked maid, preoccupied as she was with her quest for one of myriad words that rhymes with river, found herself abruptly ambushed by the planks of the bridge. She was not certain how they had managed to get the drop on her, only that one moment she was maintaining a respectful and professional distance from the ground, and the next she was intimately acquainted with the woodgrain.
The fall knocked the wind out of her. It took a moment to register a brittle skitter-patter of something spilling over wooden planks, and by the time she did, it was far too late.
Her gutted bag of rubies lay before her, only a meager blood splatter remaining on the bridge; the rest were rolling merrily over the edges of the planks. As she watched, one fell with a self-satisfied plink into the water below.
For a long moment, all the wicked maid did was stare at the carnage of her fortune. She was sober enough to fathom the measure of what she’d just lost; she was drunk enough to tap into that special booze-fueled kind of despair.
So she did what any rational person would do, having cut herself off from her loved ones, failed to find gainful employ after two straight weeks of searching, and then drunkenly ejected most of her personal wealth into a river in the wee hours of what could generously be called the butthole of winter.
She gave up.
She lay facedown on the dung-stained boards of the bridge and cried. She cried like a routed general. She cried like a jilted bride. She cried like a two-year-old who has been told they cannot eat rocks.
This was, admittedly, not her proudest moment. But can you blame her?
(I mean, you can, and you should. Saints and martyrs, I certainly do. Brace yourself: It’s only going to get worse from here.)
When she had cried herself out, she didn’t get up, not for a while. At first, she was just marinating in her own miserable failures; it’s mandatory with these kinds of things. But eventually, she made a decision.
The whole “honest living” idea was a noble goal. And maybe it would work later, somewhere else. But those rubies were her safety net. Her easy way out if things went bad. She had to get them back.
More critically, she had to do it without freezing to death in the river or being apprehended by villagers, who almost certainly would claim the rubies for their own.
She gathered up the handful of stones she had left, then stole into the nearest available barn, sneaking around drowsy sheep to curl up in the straw for warmth. She tried not to think of two months ago, when she’d had a soft, cozy bed in Castle Reigenbach. It was even harder not to think of one month ago, when she’d had a bed in an inn, friends who would laugh with her at her own folly, and a boy who might have shared that bed if she’d asked. It was impossible not to think of Emeric now, of where she might be if only she’d kept her word.
If Emeric were here, he could have pulled her rubies out of the icy water with a splash of witch-ash oil and a wry smile. If Ragne were here, she would have done something horrifying and helpful, like turn herself into a fish, swallow all the rubies, then horf them back up for the wicked maid onshore.
But the maid had to do this herself. She had to be more than who she was.
The chill kept her awake as she plotted a lie that could save her. Then, when the dark beyond the clapboards began to ease, she tiptoed out again.
Later, she would learn that she’d stowed away in the barn of the man who, at the grudging crack of dawn, found her wading in the frigid creek. He was a sheep farmer named Udo Ros, come to fetch water for his flock.
“Strange girl,” he said, setting his wooden pails on the bank, “whatever you lost, it’s not worth the chill you’ll catch.”
The wicked maid shook her head, donning a look of wide-eyed wonder. “I had a vision in my dream last night,” s
The man gave her a narrow look. That was good; better to win over a skeptic than a known dupe. That would give her more credibility later.
“Might you lend me a pail, good sir? I would hate to drop any.” The girl lifted her cupped palms, in which she’d pooled all her remaining rubies.
Udo Ros’s eyes nearly fell out of his head. Unlike the innkeeper, he knew precious stones when he saw them.
It was the inverse of the game the terrible girl had played in Minkja, masquerading as the princess Gisele to hide her jewel heists. That game had worked because she’d shown people what they expected to see: a princess or her maid.
This, on the other hand, was the opposite: credible because it was impossible. Even a mere handful of rubies was still far, far too many for a bedraggled traveler to carry. It could only be a miracle.
Udo held out a bucket. “You saw a maid in red?”
She nodded, taking care to let the rubies sparkle bewitchingly in the morning light as she tipped them in. “She said she lost something long ago.” (I’ll be honest: I didn’t remember much else from the ballad, only that the man playing it should have been charged with murdering a lute.) “Do you know of her, the scarlet maiden?”
The rubies skated across the bottom of the bucket as he handed it to her. “There’s a song,” the shepherd said shortly, frowning in thought. “How many stones did you see in the brook?”
The girl made a show of rubbing her stiff red fingers for warmth. “Dozens. Hundreds, maybe. But the blessing—”
“Yes, yes,” he interrupted, waving a hand. “I don’t know much about visions and dreams, strange girl, but it’s clear there’s a Low God’s summons here, and I know better than to shirk it.”
Within the hour, the horrible girl had a steaming mug of broth between her mitts and a nice view from the bank as the hardier townsfolk took shifts fishing for her rubies. It was too early in the year for snowmelt, so the waters were no higher than Udo’s knees, but the bitter cold drove each villager out before too long. That was no matter; others splashed in to take their place while the previous scavengers warmed by a fire. Udo had gathered enough of the town to make much quicker work than if the girl had tried to find every stone herself.
As for the maid, she just stationed herself by the bucket and answered questions as she collected rubies: She was but a poor woodcutter’s daughter from Bóern who’d set off to seek her fortune after her parents died. She had dreamed of a noble maiden in a fine red gown who promised blessings on the village, and no more could she say. (You have to keep these lies simple. They’ll catch you in the details.) She did not know how many rubies there were, so they would need to be diligent and try to find every last one.
She did not know why the Scarlet Maiden chose her.
By early afternoon, the village—Hagendorn, she was told—had salvaged enough rubies to satisfy the terrible girl. When twenty minutes went by without anyone finding another, she decided the next would be the last, clutching the bucket to her chest.
Udo was the one to find it, splashing back to pass the stone to her. What the people of Hagendorn saw next was fairly typical for a minor miracle and about the best the wicked maid could do with the kind of hangover she was nursing.
She dropped the ruby into the bucket. (It was not the ruby.) There was a small bang and a puff of crimson smoke. (Joniza Ardîm, the bard of Castle Reigenbach, gave me some of her flash powders before I left.) When the villagers crowded around to look, the rubies had all vanished. (Of course they had; I’d been skimming them into my rucksack all along.)
“Surely,” the wicked maid cried, “the Scarlet Maiden’s favor is upon this town!”
She had to give Hagendorn credit: There were plenty of gaping yokels but also plenty of doubtful looks. Not that it mattered. She had every intention of blessing herself right out of this village posthaste, then finding a real bed in a place with a population, at minimum, in the triple digits.
Then someone let out a shout of alarm, pointing to the nearby roof of Udo’s house. An ember had escaped the smoking chimney and fallen to the thatch. A tongue of flame licked up from the straw, coy and deadly.
Udo took the bucket from the wicked maid, scrambling into the shallow brook, but everyone on the shore knew it would not be enough. Nothing would. The thatch was good as tinder, the timbers of his walls kindling and firewood. The best they could hope for would be to save the barn.
Udo was about to lose everything, and they could only watch.
Then—
A bough bent on a great fir tree beside Udo’s house. A heap of watery snow plopped onto the thatch in just the right spot, dousing the fire in a trice and leaving naught but a crooked finger of steam.
That alone might not have been enough to do it. Enough to let the wicked maid leave Hagendorn unscathed, probably, but not enough for … what followed.
What really sold it was a young boy running up to one of the women only a moment later, calling, “Mami, come quick! The milch-cow’s had twins!”
Every eye turned to the wicked maid, each glittering with the same wonder as Udo’s when she’d first held up the fistful of impossible rubies.
She did a surreptitious check for the glimmers of Godmother Fortune’s handiwork but saw none. This was all pure chance.
“The Scarlet Maiden’s blessing!”
“The Scarlet Maiden!”
The girl didn’t know who started the cheer, but it rose faster and more ferociously than the flame in the thatch. Udo’s hand landed on her shoulder. She looked up.
“Would you like to stay for dinner?” he asked.
* * *
At the time, it seemed a simple enough of a lie. There was no harm in giving Hagendorn that bit of comfort, the illusion of a benevolent god in hard country. I saw the light in their faces, I saw hope.
I knew I was lying when I told myself: It would not matter who, or what, they believed.
CHAPTER ONE
THE MIRACLE OF THE BRIDGE
Let me state one thing up front: I wasn’t trying to start a cult.
I know that may be hard to buy. Especially given that I’m currently squinting into a tin mirror and painting stark red diamonds onto my face, robed head to toe in equally stark red, and hurrying to finish before the last dregs of sunset swirl down the drain.
And given that the minute I exit my little half hut, I’ll see pilgrims and penitents and devotees all decked in red, chanting around the shabby wooden bridge now festooned in garlands of anything that blooms crimson.
And given that, when they see me, everyone in Hagendorn will hail me as the Scarlet Maiden’s prophet.
But the important thing is that I didn’t do any of that on purpose, so technically none of it’s my fault.
It’s been a strange two months since the Miracle of the Bridge. (That’s what they’re calling it now.) And you have to understand, I stayed only because they asked.
At first, Udo Ros just wanted to make sure I had somewhere safe and dry to spend the night before I went on my way. But the next morning, Leni’s little girl toddled off while Leni was boiling ashes for lye. There were two sets of footprints in the snow: Leni’s daughter’s and those of a waldskrot, one of the nastier Mossfolk of the forest. When waldskrotchen lead a child away, the child rarely makes it back. Well … not in one piece.
Yet Leni’s girl was found safe and sound at the edge of the woods, giggling under a rare holly thicket. Waldskrot blood was splashed new-leaf green on the snow and on the spiked fronds; its trail vanished under the hedge. Just above, dangling like a bribe, hung plump clusters of shockingly scarlet berries.
After that, the villagers of Hagendorn would not hear of my leaving. Not when I’d brought the blessing of a prodigal Low God, and not when there was a chance it might follow me out. Never mind that we all know waldskrotchen are stupid enough to run right into a holly bush, or that the red berries were in season.
