The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry Read online

  “Oh, he’ll go on his own,” said one of the likely lads, and gave the donkey’s rump a pat. Before Delly had much of a chance to wonder what the hell that meant the coachman called out to his horses, and Winn and her horse set forth as well, and Delly’s little brown steed went ambling comfortably after Winn, as if he thought he’d figured out whom around here he ought to be taking his orders from.

  “Got my eye on you, you long-eared bastard,” Delly murmured to him, in what she hoped was a tone of convincingly firm warning.

  The donkey didn’t seem to take too much note of her, which, it turned out, was a sign of what was to come. Delly spent the first few minutes of the journey watching Winn, trying to figure out how it was that she got her horse to mind. There seemed to be some clicking of the mouth, and some pulling at the reins, and some other strange and subtle maneuvers. Delly attempted to imitate them, in a surreptitious way, but the results were disappointing: the donkey either ignored her entirely or stopped dead, gave her what Delly figured to be a reproachful look, and then started up with following Winn again.

  Within about an hour, Delly was thoroughly fucking sick of being on the back of a big scheming animal, and within two, her back was screaming at her almost as loudly as her poor sore ass. Her rump, that was: not the untrustworthy beast she was seated upon. That ass, at least, was still following Winn closely enough to allow Delly to make conversation. Delly, Mrs. Totham, and Ermintrude were all riding sidesaddle, but Winn was scandalously astride: the skirt of her riding habit was split, and she had some sort of loose-fitting trousers on beneath it. “Is it more comfortable, then, riding like that?”

  “Not a bit,” Winn said cheerfully. “Murder on the unmentionable areas. It keeps you steadier on the horse, though, so if I need to gallop off abruptly to enter into combat with some brigand, I won’t go toppling off the back end and land in a ditch, what?”

  “Suppose that sounds right,” Delly said, and then rode on in silence for a while. “Don’t see why we couldn’t have taken a damn train,” she muttered eventually.

  “I imagine because there would be no good way to secure the whole train,” Winn said. “We’d end up in separate compartments, for one thing, so we wouldn’t be able to see if anyone was getting close to Miss Wexin unless we stood up in the passage all night. That should also be why we’re mounted and not in a carriage of our own: we’ve got to keep eyes on her, and you can’t do that with walls in the way. Nothing to stop a murderer from disguising himself as a porter on a train, either. And she’s not meant to be around men, in any case. Can’t keep all of the men in Daeslund off of the rails just to maintain her seclusion, can we?”

  “Suppose not,” Delly said admiringly. Winn had a bit of decent enough thinkmeat between the ears. “How’d you learn all of this stuff?”

  “From my mother, mostly,” Winn said. “When I was a baby, she and Pop were still getting our household established, and her clan was short of money, so she picked up some bodyguarding work to help make ends meet.”

  “But,” Delly said. “And—begging your pardon—and begging your pardon for having begged your pardon once again after you having said you’d rather I not, as well”—she paused here to take a breath—“but if you’re—and this is only myself making bold assumptions—if you’re a member of the headmanship, or thereabouts, then why would you have to take a job like this? Didn’t seem too much to me like you looked too excited about the salary.”

  “Oh, I don’t have to,” Winn said. “It was this or go to university, and I can’t stand just sitting in a dreary classroom all day, staring at dull old books. I’d rather be out in the fresh air having a bit of excitement while I decide what I think that I ought to do with myself for the rest of my life.” Then she said, “Just so you know, it’s not really regulation hammerball to ask society types anything about money. Bit ginny, really. The more they have of it, the more ticklish they get about it. You’re better off dancing around it a bit and figuring out how much they’ve got by looking at their clothes.”

  “Oh,” Delly said, her face going red, and launched into her usual patter for when she’d gone and put her foot into it. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about behaving myself right, miss. My mother and father never had much to do with my raising, so I was forced to raise myself, with the regrettable results you see before you, miss.” Delly said that sort of thing all the time, to all sorts of people: it was a fine way to embarrass someone into letting slip whatever bad behavior they’d caught her in. It’d been a long, long time, though, since she was the one finding herself embarrassed by it, by how much of it was just a plain honest truth of a life that most sensible people thought was awful and shocking.

  “No need to apologize,” Winn said firmly. “Or call me miss. I just thought I ought to pass on what I know to help you do well when you speak to the pretty misses up there in the coach, since we’re all meant to be working together. My pop always tells Mother what she ought to do when she’s in society, when she doesn’t know, and it saves everyone all sorts of trouble when she doesn’t go about telling Assemblors that she thinks their mothers ought to have treated them with a firmer hand when they were little boys. Casts a bit of a grim shadow over a party when your mother’s gone and insulted the papas of half the young gentlemen who’re meant to be filling out your dance card. Especially when I’ve already annoyed them by being taller than them and dancing with all of the prettiest girls in the room before they can manage it. Nothing worse than a party full of long-faced, short-legged gentlemen trying to kick your ankles while you ladle punch for the girls, what?”

  Delly laughed. She couldn’t help it. This Winn was some sort of a creature, all right. “Don’t suppose you have your eye on any of those girls to household?” Winn struck her as the independent-minded type of gull who’d much rather be the householder, even if it meant she had to find paying employment in order to provide for her lady. Delly, for her part, would much rather be the householded and be provided for: her lifetime of experience with fending for herself had firmly convinced her that independence was a wildly overrated virtue.

  Winn, interestingly, went pink. “No,” she said. “’Fraid the gulls mostly just like to dance with me because I lead well and don’t try any funny business.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that can be right,” Delly said, suddenly pleased to sense that she had finally gained the upper hand. “I’d dance with you, Winn, if I’d ever learned any steps.”

  Winn looked down at her, still pink, and smiled. “I could teach you a few of those, if you like.”

  “I would like that,” Delly said, meeting her gaze. She let that settle itself for a second before she moved on. Best not to come on too eager too fast and give the game away. “What was that you said about looking at the clothes to tell how much money someone has? I’ve never been any good at that. Girl comes by with enough ribbons stuck on and I figure her for the Queen of Awa.” This wasn’t, strictly speaking, an entirely pure and honest statement: Delly had a good enough eye for judging the means of a mark. She wanted to keep Winn talking to her, though, and this seemed like a fine enough way to manage it.

  It did the trick: Winn dove straight off into all sorts of details about colors and stitching and the thickness of the soles of a man’s shoes, about half of which was new and potentially interesting information to Delly. She filed it all away in the cluttered hatbox of her brain and focused as much as she could on listening to what Winn was saying without sliding right off of her ass and onto her ass. Then, once this well of conversation went dry, she started to pay attention to what was all around her. They were well out of the city center now, out in the endless suburbs, where all of the houses came in straight, narrow identical rows. Delly’d been out in a place like this once, to visit the home of a lady who’d acted for a few weeks like she’d like to household Delly as her daughter before Delly had gone and fucked that up. She’d hated the look of the place then, and she
hated this neighborhood now. There was unreality to it, like the cheap paper dolls the warden’s wife had handed Delly when she was little and waiting for her ma outside of the jail, so flimsy that you couldn’t get the dress to stay on the dolly without the whole thing wilting in your hand.

  Eventually they left the suburbs and started moving through what looked to Delly a hell of a lot like countryside. “This what they call nature, then?” she asked, staring at something that she figured must be a bale of hay.

  “Not how I see it,” Winn said, and started talking about the troll side of her family’s “summer village” and the bubbling streams and mountain air and wildflowers and all. That got them onto the topic of childhood, in general, and what games they had played with other children, specifically. This kept them occupied enough for an indeterminate span, until they came upon what Delly supposed must be what they called a quaint old-fashioned village, and Delly’s ass came to an abrupt halt outside of someplace with a sign outside that said the wounded hart.

  “What’s this?” Delly asked.

  “Looks like an early luncheon to me,” Winn said, and hopped right off of her horse like it was easy as could be, and held out a hand for Delly to help her slide off of her ass without injuring any of the asses involved in the maneuver.

  Once her two feet were firmly rooted upon the dirty ground, with which she was most comfortable and accustomed, Winn gave her a quick course in how to hand her donkey over to a stable boy, who would provide for its needs—the beast fixed her with a glare for her trouble that positively bristled with ill intent—before they footed their way into the inn. The Fine Misses had already gone through ahead of them and passed through a door at the back of the place, probably to some nice private room with lace tablecloths where the Finest Miss could lift her seclusionary veil to nibble at little cakes without the fear of a working person seeing her face. Delly proposed this charming scene to Winn, who gave a delicate snort.

  “I don’t know if it’s quite as nose-up as all that. She’s not supposed to be distracted by men in her seclusion, and there’s a specimen or two of those hereabouts. Not the type that I’d think would be too tempting to the young lady inclined toward chaste and virtuous whatsit prior to her wedding day, though. If a gull was plagued by carnal thoughts at the sight of some poor fellow mopping the floors in a roadside inn, I’d think she might want to reconsider entering into the constricting bonds of matrimony in the first place, what?”

  Ermintrude was trying to catch Delly’s eye: wanting her to sit with her so she’d be spared having to eat alone with her mother. Delly made a quick mental calculation. She was focusing on her prospect, sure enough, but she’d been riding with Winn for hours, and it was always better to give a mark a second to breathe if you were in it for a long game. That being settled in her mind, she gave Winn her sweetest smile and wriggled her way into a seat next to young Ermintrude. “It looks to me as if you’re quite the equestrian young lady, Miss Ermintrude.”

  Ermintrude looked pleased, then shrugged like it didn’t matter. “My sisters taught me.”

  “Are those the ones that also work as stagecoach guards, then?” Delly asked, and then settled into asking Ermintrude polite questions about her family and her personal interests as plates of chicken and buttered turnips were delivered to each of them, presumably at the command of the Fine Misses. Winn, Delly was interested to note, took up speaking with Mrs. Totham about birds with every indication of genuine interest in the feathered subject. Her mam being distracted, Ermintrude leaned in closer toward Delly and whispered, “Do you like the theater?”

  “Oh, sure,” Delly said immediately. “Always like to go see a good music-hall act. I’m partial to a bit of juggling, myself. And contortionists. It’s always nice to see a young lady exert herself in a bit of healthy contortion. It makes my poor aching back feel better just looking at it.”

  Ermintrude leaned in closer, as if preparing to share a confidence, and said, “I like the sen bloods. I’ve gone to loads and loads of them. Do you ever go?”

  “Er, once in a while,” said Delly, who didn’t particularly see the point of the things. She didn’t much enjoy getting jammed in with a great lot of drunken young boys jeering at the stage while a stout middle-aged lady from West Leiscourt pretended to be a sixteen-year-old virgin and some disreputable fellow with a mustache pretended to stab her to death. “Haven’t been for years, really. Any good ones showing?”

  Ermintrude developed a decidedly fanatical gleam in her eye and began to describe to Delly, in great detail, one play about a fairy headman who kept dispatching his human wives with an axe and burying them under the floorboards in his castle so that they would rise again as his ghostly mistresses, followed by another in which the story of two young lovers ended in one stabbing and several long and agonizing deaths by poison, and another in which a brave troll was shot, then stabbed, then shot again before summarily rending her enemy into pieces, an event that apparently in this production involved some model limbs and great gouts of blood spurting out from behind a conveniently located boulder.

  Delly gave the remaining bits of chicken on her plate a mournful glance—she would have had the appetite to eat it, once, but that time was buried somewhere along with the ghost mistresses under the floorboards now—and said, “That all does sound as if it must have a very exciting influence upon the viewer, Miss Ermintrude.”

  “It does,” Ermintrude said. Then she added, with a frown, “Except the one that I saw about a cloved woman. It wasn’t at all realistic.”

  Delly was spared from having to formulate a reasonable response to that sudden twist in Ermintrude’s standards of theater criticism by the Fine Misses sweeping back through the room to return to their carriage. The rest of their group trailed after them and scrambled back onto their respective horrible animals, and after a brief interlude of everyone trying to convincingly pretend that they were too ladylike to curse over encounters with bloody-minded beasts or newly formed blisters, they were off.

  Delly and Winn were riding together at the back again, and they had a bit of a quiet jaw to recount their meals with Mother and Daughter Totham. It turned out that Winn knew a thing or two about the birds in the northern hill counties they were traveling toward, courtesy of her own mother, so she and Mrs. Totham had gotten along all right. Delly relayed the plots of Ermintrude’s sen bloods, which made Winn laugh. They kept chatting off and on as they rode, sometimes coming up with topics to try to amuse each other, sometimes lapsing into a silence that was, if not altogether comfortable, also not particularly bothersome.

  During the quiet interludes, Delly looked about herself, enjoying the change of scenery. Everything looked like the pastoral prints her landlady had hanging in the bar. Delly could practically taste the gin. She was staring at a cow and pondering whether the beast was likely to be more or less of a nasty-minded and deceitful personage than the average horse when she heard a startled screech from up ahead.

  Winn, next to her, said, “What in the—fiddle-faddle is that blinkin’ thing?” and pulled a pistol out of her riding habit before kicking her horse into a gallop and charging forward into the chaos. Delly thought she would like just as well to hang back and figure out what in the releft was going on before she plunged headlong into it, but it was no good: the donkey, true to its wretched nature, went stubbornly galloping after Winn. Delly clung desperately to the pommel of her saddle and felt fairly certain that she would at any moment be forced to encounter her no-doubt deeply disappointed ancestors among the releft. If she didn’t die from being kicked off of this donkey, she would almost certainly be killed by the massive mechanical spider currently advancing upon her employer’s carriage.

  4

  Wherein Dellaria Is Frightened, Injured, and Astounded, and Intensifies Her Flirtatious Efforts to Some Good Effect

  The thing that was currently advancing upon Miss Wexin’s carriage was among the worst things tha
t Dellaria had ever been unfortunate enough to clap her eyes upon. It was something like a bucket if buckets were lobsters, and something like a lobster if lobsters were murderous. It creaked and clanked and groaned its way toward the carriage as if it had been constructed out of rusty scraps, but it advanced at such a horrible speed that it seemed certain that whatever wizard had called the vile thing into being was as rich in viciousness as they were poor in building material of any quality. It was, in short, absolutely fucking awful, a fact that did nothing to stop Delly’s wretched steed from barreling straight toward it in pursuit of the equally wretched Winnifer, who as she drew closer had begun to fire at the thing with her pistol.

  This all, Delly thought, was really not the fucking ticket. Then things only grew worse, as ahead of her Ermintrude leapt off of the back of her horse with far greater force than a young girl should ever be able to naturally achieve, and, in midair, began to transform. There was a great rending of fabric, a rain of frills, and a horrid twisting of flesh, and in the next instant, the great white tusked pig that stood at the center of the road gave a loud growl and charged.

  At this, Delly’s ass, which had previously been so determined to follow Winn to the very brink, decided to think better of its policy and dart in the opposite direction and away from whatever the fuck was happening before them. This, as far as Delly was concerned, wasn’t on the damn afternoon’s playbill: she couldn’t be caught running away from the action like a coward before she’d had so much as a single free supper out of the venture. She hauled hard at the bridle, which, though it didn’t stop the beast, seemed to slow it down for a moment, at which point she tried to emulate Ermintrude by leaping off of its back.

  This went about as well as a reasonable person might imagine. Delly leapt, and her foot got caught in the stirrup. She went crashing into the ground, tearing up her hands and giving her nose a good wallop, and was like to be dragged to an inelegationary death when she remembered that she was a fire witch and melted through the stirrup the instant before the donkey bolted off in sheer terror.