Panic welled up within her and crashed around like a wild animal. Her eyes darted around, searching desperately for an answer or an escape. She saw light, blue and cold at her feet. The sight calmed her, not because it was a welcome development, but because it was an explanation. She’d been trapped by magic, some sort of snare obscured by the unshoveled snow.
This calm was tempered with a new shock of fear as she heard the door open behind her. I can still hear. I can still see. I can breathe. These truths were something to hold onto to keep the wild animal calm, and her thoughts somewhere near rational. The familiar and expected voice sounded pleased when it finally spoke. Ossertine sounded as imperious as ever.
“A pleasant afternoon, thief. Won’t you join me inside for a cup of cider? Or warm milk, perhaps?”
The world shifted around Skate. She was off the ground and moving backward. Into Ossertine’s house. No one had grabbed her, and this, too, was a familiar sensation; it felt exactly as it had the night she’d tried to jump out of Belamy’s window and been caught by his magic. Ossertine had magic of her own, it seemed.
The door, her escape, closed in front of her when she landed back on the ground, like a statue picked up and shifted. She maintained her standing position, but she couldn’t be sure if that was because of Ossertine’s magic or her own stance. She did not see the burlap bag anymore.
“Let’s have a look at you, then, shall we?” Ossertine moved in front of Skate, surprise and recognition evident on her face. “Why, you’re Belamy’s pet urchin, aren’t you? I’d never have recognized you without your ratty…clothes. Well, get seated and you can calmly explain why I shouldn’t hand you over to the Guard for flogging or whatever it is they do to children who take what’s not theirs from their betters.”
Before Skate could even begin to try to respond, her view shifted again. The rest of Ossertine’s narrow living room opened up in her field of vision. There was a thud as the back of her foot caught the small table in front of the cushioned sofa she was being forced onto, and the pain made her want to cry out, more from surprise than the actual discomfort. All she could manage was a sharp expulsion of breath.
“My apologies. I’m not used to guests that I need to arrange like this.” Ossertine walked into view from Skate’s left and smirked as she continued past her out of sight once more. Skate could do nothing but stare ahead and wait. She decided to take stock of her surroundings as much as she could, one sense at a time.
She started with the least helpful: taste. There was little to know from it since she had no control over tongue or mouth. All she could taste was salt and dryness; shock and fear had scoured all else away.
Smell was more helpful: other than the dusty odor from the last time she’d been here, she caught a surprisingly comforting aroma. Ossertine was making coffee, and the warm dark flavor of the beans had wafted into the living room. It was accompanied by a sweeter smell she didn’t recognize but found no less appetizing.
Feeling, too, gave her something to work through. She was no longer in her awkward standing position, but had been placed like a doll into an unassuming and polite sitting posture. Other than the dull intermittent throbbing of her leg, she was comfortable.
While the smell of coffee and sweetness got stronger, Skate moved on to the big senses: seeing and hearing. Sound was not hampered as her vision was, but there was little to hear. There was the clinking of glasses and the sound of liquid pouring from the kitchen, an occasional pop from the crackling fire, and the rush of blood pounding in her ears.
With her least inhibited tool unable to discern more, she scanned the room. Being prevented from moving her head a hair’s breadth in any direction, she nevertheless found plenty to see. The closed door she’d bolted out of over a week ago had not changed, though she supposed Ossertine could have placed some new traps around it. The table in front of her had likewise been here before, a delicately designed thing with thin curving legs and intricate patterns etched along the sides. On it were two oil lamps not yet lit. Most of the light in the room came from the fireplace to her right. Skate could only see the very edge of the hearth, and even that took considerable straining. She assumed the painting she’d had to move was back in place behind her, covering the small passage into Ossertine’s hidden library. In front of her were the woman’s more common books and a much larger painting.
The thing was massive, taking up all the space between the two rows of bookshelves from floor to ceiling. Skate’d seen it before, of course, but had paid it no mind. She’d been here for books, not art. Now, however, she found herself engrossed in its examination.
Its principal figure was a long-faced man clad in metal armor from head to toe. It was neither chain mail nor the scaled armor meant to mimic the body of fish, but the full plate mail worn only by strong knights on horseback. Such armor was absurdly heavy and cumbersome, which made it ill-suited to someone without a mount, as this fellow seemed to be. Nevertheless, the long-faced man wore it well, unconcerned with the five stone of metal weight. Emblazoned on his chest was a design that she didn’t recognize, but she knew the type well enough to pick it out as heraldry. It was a black bird of prey in flight, talons extended and beak gaping downward in a permanent silent shriek. It was set against a blue field which itself was bounded by a gold-and-black border. Full plate armor was expensive, worth hundreds of scepts; an art piece like what the man was wearing would have been worth many thousands.
He bore no shield before him, but carried a blade and polearm. He glared and gestured with his blade off toward the side of the painting. There, a horde of shadows was charging toward him, eyes red and full of hate and teeth long and bared in snarls and bites. Nothing else about the figures was given any definition, with the effect being that of a dark blob of teeth and eyes opposing the armored man. To the right of the painting behind the man stood a high hill, and perched at its top sat a magnificent walled city, shining with white and yellow light—a contrast to the dark forces on the other side of the man. In the middle where he stood, the bright and dark intermingled in the sky as roiling gray clouds.
The hand that did not hold the blade held a spear upright—or rather, downright. He was standing atop something she’d at first mistaken for a nondescript mound of earth, but the spear was imbedded into it and drew red from where it struck. The mound of earth was actually some great slain beast of sinuous scaled body rolled in on itself. Where the man had struck looked like its neck, since its pointed, monstrous head was nearby and still attached.
Skate had no idea what specific event this was referring to, but the meaning of the painting was clear enough to her: the brave warrior in the middle had slain some monster and fought off an army of enemies alone to defend a city.
Art theft, particularly that of paintings, wasn’t encouraged by Boss Marshall, so Skate knew little about the value of the thing in front of her. “They’re too easy to ruin, and they’re a pain to hock,” he’d told her once, when she’d first started working for him. “They’re too easy to trace, see? If some Lord Tiddlewinks buys some Lady Bumfart’s stolen masterpiece, he’s gonna want to display it, and word gets around that he had to have gotten it from a thief. And that comes back to us, eventually, doesn’t it?” This one looked well done enough to her, but that didn’t mean it was worth anything. Why Ossertine had this particular piece of art was anybody’s guess, but she was obviously quite proud of the piece, considering how prominently it was displayed in her home.