The Stolen Heir by Holly Black

“You do like cruel women,” I say.

“Then there was Violet, a pixie. I wrote her terrible poetry about how I adored her. Unfortunately, she adored duels and would get into trouble so that I would have to fight for her honor. And even more unfortunately, neither my sister nor my father bothered to teach me how to sword fight for show.”

I thought of the dead-eyed expression on his face before his bout with the ogre and Tiernan’s angry words.

“That resulted in my accidentally killing a person she liked better than me.”

“Oh,” I say. “That is three levels of unfortunate.”

“Then there was Sibi, who wanted to run away from Court with me, but as soon as we went, hated it and wept until I took her home. And Loana, a mermaid, who found my lack of a tail unbearable but tried to drown me anyway, because she found it equally unbearable that I would ever love another.”

The way he tells these stories makes me recall how he’s told me many painful things before. Some people laugh in the face of death. He laughs in the face of despair. “How old were you?”

“Fifteen, with the mermaid,” he said. “And nearly three years later, I must surely be wiser.”

“Surely,” I say, wondering if he was. Wondering if I wanted him to be.

The threshold of Undry Market is announced by two trees leaning toward each other, their branches entangled. As we duck beneath, what had previously been scraps of song and spots of color lose their disguise and the entire panoply comes into view. Shops and stalls fill the clearing. The air is rich with perfumes, honey wines, and grilled fruits. We pass a tented area with lutes and harps, the vendor trying to call to us over the sound of one of his instruments recounting a terrible tale of how it was made.

As we walk, I see that the market stretches down to a rocky area near the shoreline, where a pier has been built out into the waves. A single ship bobs at the end of it. I wonder if that is what Tiernan is trying to buy from the goblins.

Then I am distracted by the hammering of smiths and a smattering of song. There is a forge not far from where we are standing, one with a display of swords in the front. And beside that, a maypole and a few dancers going around it, winding the ribbons. A stall selling cloaks in all the colors of the sky, from the first blush of dawn to deep as midnight and spangled with stars. A bakeshop hawking braided breads, their shining crusts decorated with herbs and flowers.

“Don’t have gold?” calls an antlered shopkeeper. “Pay with a lock of hair, a year of your life, a dream you wish to never have again.”

“Come!” calls another. “We have the finest jackets in a hundred leagues. Green as poison. Red as blood. Black as the heart of the King of Elfhame.”

Oak stops to purchase cheese wrapped in wax paper, a half dozen apples, and two loaves of bread. He also gets us warmer clothes, along with hats and gloves. Rope, new packs, and a grappling hook, the tines of which fold down like the tentacles of a squid skimming through water.

We pass a fletcher, selling barrels of arrows with different feathers affixed to the ends. Crows and sparrows, even those from a wren. Pass a display of gowns in beetle-bright green, saffron, and pomegranate red. A stall with bouquets of drying herbs hanging upside down, beside seedpods. Then a bookseller, shelves of old tomes and empty, freshly bound books open to creamy pages waiting to be written in. One stall over, an alchemist displays a shelf of poisons, including poisoned ink. A row of oddly shaped skulls sits alongside them.

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,