Page 79 of The Stolen Heir

Oak pauses to purchase some explosives. “Just in case,” he reassures me.

“Dear lady,” says a faerie, coming toward us from a shop that sells jewels. He has the eyes of a snake and a forked tongue that darts out when he speaks. “This hairpin looks as though it were made for you.”

It’s beautiful, woven gold and silver in the shape of a bird, a single green bead in its mouth. Had it been in a display, my eyes would have passed over it as one of a dozen unobtainable things. But as he holds it out, I can’t help imagining it as mine.

“I have no money and little to trade,” I tell him regretfully, shaking my head.

The shopkeeper’s gaze goes to Oak. I think he believes the prince is my lover.

Oak plays the part, reaching out his hand for the pin. “How much is it? And will you take silver, or must it be the last wish of my heart?”

“Silver is excellent.” The shopkeeper smiles as Oak fishes through his bag for some coins.

Part of me wants to demur, but I let him buy it, and then I let him use it to pin back my hair. His fingers on my neck are warm. It’s only when he lets go that I shiver.

He gives me a steady look. “I hope you’re not about to tell me that you hate it and you were just being polite.”

“I don’t hate it,” I say softly. “And I am not polite.”

He laughs at that. “A delightful quality.”

I admire the hairpin in every reflective surface we pass.

We cross a wide lawn where a puppet show is under way. Folk are gathered around a curtained box, watching an intricate paper cutout of a crow seem to fly above a mill. I spot a few human children and pause to wonder if they are changelings.

The crow puppet sweeps down to a painted papier-mâché tree. The hidden operator moves a pole, and the crow’s beak opens and closes.

The bird sings:

Ca-caw, ca-caw,

My mother she killed me,

My father he ate me,

My sister gathered my bones,

And buried them beneath the apple tree.

Behold! I hatched as a young crow.

Ca-caw, ca-caw, how beautiful a bird am I.

I stop to watch. It turns out that the miller loves the song so much that he gives the crow a millstone in order to hear it again. And when the bird flies home, he drops the stone onto his stepmother’s head and kills her.

The crowd is still clapping when I realize that Oak has gone on to the blacksmith shop. I arrive in time to see the bushy-eyebrowed smith returning from the back with what appears to be a metal-and-glass box, designed to display its contents. It is golden-footed and empty.

“What is that?” I ask as he carefully places it into his bag.

“A reliquary,” he says. “Enchanted to keep whatever is inside forever preserved. It’s much like the one that contained Mab’s bones. I sent ahead Titch to commission it.”

“And that’s for—”

He signals me away from the shop. Together we walk toward the pier. “A deer heart,” he says. “Because that’s what I am going to bring Lady Nore. In a fancy reliquary, she won’t know the difference for some amount of time, hopefully enough for us to be able to accomplish our goal and get you close to her.”

“A deer heart?” I echo.

“That’s what I am bringing north. A trick. Sleight of hand, like the coin.”