New Laid Egg

Knock, knock.

The second monster felt her heart call to her, deep in the hollow place in her chest. A tug and an ache.

She stretched her leg out into a shaft of sunlight, feeling the tension in the calf and the arch of the foot. She leaned back on her pillow, her hair tickled her shoulders.

Her ceremonial gown hung ready over the dresser, a spangled ghost of misty grey chiffon and silk, dripping with pearls.

Today was going to be glorious.

Knock, Knock.

The monster ignored the sound. Her heart anticipated her, still locked in its glass prison in the locked dresser downstairs. A quiet dove, trembling. She could feel it calling to her, but not in words, it had nothing to say. It was not yet in her body. She was still free for one more day.

Today, she could do what she wanted.

She stretched again, enjoying the tension across her spine, her shoulders and arms, fingers reaching down by her hips, the tightness in the back of her calves, the length of the toes, pressed into the softness of the air.

Her heart was waiting for her, but the morning sun was yet low in the sky, there was plenty of time to play.

"Come in," she purred, The words unravelling on her tongue like honeycomb.

A servant girl stood in the hallway, starched black gown, white pinafore, silly little hat with white lace flounces. A new girl. It was always a new girl, they never lasted.

"I brought your breakfast, Miss."

The girl’s voice was tiny. Come in now, little one; there’s no need to be afraid. The monster watched from the bed with narrowed eyes. There was nowhere for the girl to go until she was dismissed. No need to hurry things.

"Shall I leave it here for you, Miss?"

The girl was shifting towards the door

"Put it on the nightstand, please."

The monster controlled her voice. A warm and welcoming voice. There is power in a voice, Mother had said. The right voice may summon armies.

The girl set the tray down next to the bed. A bowl of apples. A decanter of water. A razor-sharp knife, bright and silver. The sunlight pierced the decanter and broke into tumbled shards that cavorted across the bedclothes.

"May I leave it for you, Miss?"

The monster ignored her. She took her time stretching out her fingers and toes. She lifted the knife and felt the tip of it with her index finger.

"May I go now, Miss?" the girl said again, shuffling her feet, eyes flitting over and over towards the door.

"I don’t remember your name," said the monster, putting sugar into her voice. A sweet voice, like honey. A sweet voice lets you take what you want. A sweet voice makes them trust you.

"Jessamy, miss."

"Do you know what day it is today, Jessamy?"

"Miss, it's your sixteenth."

The monster selected an apple from the bowl and used the knife to shave away a piece of the rosy skin, revealing the white beneath. The knife was keen; it slipped through the flesh so very easily. She speared a piece with the tip of her blade, placed it between her sharp white teeth, and bit.

"There will be a special breakfast, just for me," she said. "I will eat a new-laid egg. I will have my first glass of wine. Do you know what gift my Father will give to me today, Jessamy?"

"Miss, I don't want to say it."

"I will receive a box, the most beautiful rosewood box, inlaid with ivory and pearl, and in the box will be my own true heart, isn't that delightful?"

"Yes, Miss."

"You know Jessamy," the monster continued, layering her voice with sugar. "Now that it comes to it, I'm not altogether sure I want it. Maybe I will leave it in its box, at least for now. Do you have a heart Jessamy, underneath your skin?"

"Miss, may I go now?"

"No, you may not. You have to do what I say, or I'll tell my father and he'll tell the magistrate, and then bad things will happen to you and the people you like."

The girl didn't move. There was fear there, but a flicker of something else, defiance maybe? Oh that wouldn't do at all.

"What does it look like, I wonder? Your heart? Can you dig it out with a knife? I do suppose that’s what happens in a war, all those swords flying around. People with bits hanging off them. Take the heart out, and the person dies. That’s the usual way of it, isn’t it, but not for me."

"Miss, I..."

The monster ignored her. "I have been told that a heart can make a person feel things. I understand that sometimes when a person hurts another person, their two hearts talk to one another secretly, and the pain somehow bounces back on the person who did it, like one heart reflects the pain in another. Say, for example, I were to squish this knife into you right now, right through the eyeball or something, my heart would make me feel a piece of the pain. Is that true Jessamy? It seems like it would take some of the fun out of life, don’t you think?"

She shaved another piece of apple, using the point of the blade to place the white flesh in her mouth. She pressed the tip of her tongue against the point. She felt a little blush of pain and the sweet-salt taste of blood. A little thrill ran through her.

Father would be angry if she hurt the girl. There would be an argument and consequences. It wasn't a day for fighting, with the dress hanging over the rail and the box downstairs waiting for her. Still, there were more subtle games to play. Games that left no marks.

"Do you like apples, Jessamy?"

The girl remained silent.

"I asked you a question Jessamy, no need to be afraid of me." More sugar in the voice, a gentle voice, eyes wide and innocent, brow clear. Kind words from a good kind person. It was easy to pretend, mother had shown her how.

"Yes, Miss. I like them."

"Here, you have the rest. I’m not hungry."

The monster swallowed her mouthful, then tossed the half-eaten apple into the fireplace.

"Go on then, eat it up."

"But Miss, it's black with ash."

The girl shifted her feet, eyes fixed on the floor.

"Don’t make me wait for you."

"But miss, I haven't cleaned out the grate yet."

"Oh, well, I’m sure we have time. Why don’t you do that now? That way I get a lovely clean grate and you get your breakfast." A reasonable voice for a reasonable request. Nothing surprising.

The girl shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. It was a pleasant enough game for the morning. The sun was so very warm and there was still plenty of time before she had to go down.

"You’re not crying, are you, Jessamy?"

The girl began to shuffle very slowly towards the fireplace.

"Go on, go get it, no, no, don't wash it, I'll need the water for my face."

The girl crouched by the grate, picking through the cold ashes. The rosy apple was caked in grey powder. The monster listened to the crispy, choking, sobbing sounds as the girl chewed the lumps of charcoal.

It was a pleasant enough game for the morning.

The monster paused at the top of the grand sweep of the staircase. The house was silent. No one greeted her as she padded down the stairs into the wide hallway. Her silk slippers made no sound on the marble tiles. Her dress was perfect. The sun poured down through the rose window and pooled in quiet rainbows.

There were no guests. The front doors were locked against the morning. She frowned, was she early? There should be a dozen guests invited from the town, the Ombudsman and the magistrate, here to watch her special morning. She would frown at them and swish her skirts and they would tell her what a pretty thing she was.

Silent in her slippers, she pushed open the banquet room door. At the end of the table, Father sat alone, dressed in evening clothes as though he had not slept. His hair was a mess. There was no one else there.

Where were the relatives and suitors, coming to welcome a new dawn, her first day grown? Where were the servants waiting with coffee? Perhaps he had sent them away. A surprise maybe in the next room.

"Father?"

"Daughter."

"Where is everyone, Father?" she said. "Where are my breakfast and my coffee and my first glass of wine?"

As she came closer to him, she smelt the sweet tang of liquor, noticed the empty bottle.

He steepled his fingers, squeezed his eyes shut. There were age spots on the back of his hands.

"I wanted to tell you sooner..." he began. "I have done something. It is not easy to talk about."

"What did you do, Father?" she asked brightly, waiting for the joke, the sudden reveal. Relatives hiding in the next room, bursting out with surprises. But her father’s tone was raw, and there was a shadow across his face.

"I did it for us, I hope one day you will forgive me. It was for the best, I think. At the time at least it was for the best."

"And what did you do, Father?" She smoothed the brittleness in her tone. Control yourself, Mother had said. Always control yourself. Never let them see inside. If they see you, they own you. IF they know what's inside you, they can use it. She put a smile in her voice, a natural little quirk in the corner of her mouth to frame the question. Whatever it was, it was nothing that could possibly spoil the day.

"Your mother had just..." She heard the note of accusation in her father's voice, but she ignored it. "I was not myself. I gambled, and I lost. Lost everything, the house, all the money. We were going to be thrown out. You were just a little girl."

What was the dimwitted old man saying? He still had the house. They were rich, weren't they? Rich enough to buy anything.

"That was years ago, Father."

His shirt was not fully tucked in. A little triangle of pale, hairy belly fat was bulging over the top of his trousers. Little black hairs and yellow skin. She had nothing to fear from him, but there was something off, something broken in the air, and the shadow still lay across his face.

And there was something missing. Something that should have been on the table, fluttering in a rosewood box.

"Where’s my heart, Father?" she asked politely, placidly, keeping her voice very civil.

"You were just a child," he mumbled, face down, weak flabby chin. "Just a little girl and your mother was fresh in the ground..."

His fumbling fingers bumped the empty wine bottle on the table, setting it spinning, and for the first time, she noticed another on its side next to his chair.

"Where’s my heart Father?" She kept her voice even, though a hot, churning feeling was rising up in her chest. A trapped feeling and she wanted to leap at him, to bite his eyes out and tear at his face, but she kept the smile in her voice. Never let them see.

"It feels good," he muttered. "It feels good to finally talk freely about these things. I’ve kept this secret for so long. It’s been such a burden for me. Telling you now is like freeing myself. I feel giddy." His wet mouth formed into a furtive little grin.

"What did you do, Father!"

"You must understand, my dear, I did it for us."

The monster felt her skin growing warm under her grey dress. The pearls hung heavy around her neck and wrists. She got to her feet, pressing her fists into the table. He looked up at her, eyes swimming and bleary.

"You gambled my heart?"

"No! No, everything else, never that. I would never gamble your heart. But your mother was always the sensible one. After she was gone, I didn't know what I was doing. We had nothing. Walder Gintas, you know Gintas, right? He helped us. He paid all the debts back. He has been very kind to this family, almost like a second father. He only asked one thing. You understand I had to give him something, and what else was there, after your mother had gone? What else did I have to offer him?"

Walder Gintas, the ugly little bald man who sometimes came to dinner, the one who always stared at her across the table. She felt her skin grow cold again.

"You traded my heart for this house?" Her voice became louder, unladylike, but she didn’t care. Her idiot father had traded her heart to a gangster? There was no point hiding her feelings now. All was lost.

"We had nothing. I gave you a home, a life, the best schooling..."

"And what use is that to me now?" The words were thick and fat in her mouth. They choked her. "You sold me for a... a what... a house? I belong to me, not to you, not to Walder Gintas! You had no right to do that! To me! Never any right!"

She could picture the man, small, bald, dressed in dark leather, waddling through the town surrounded by crooks and lackeys. A little round man with a stupid little round head under a stupid little round leather hat.

"You sold me to Gintas the midget. Gintas the rat. He killed his own wife!"

"No one knows that for sure."

"Everyone in town knows it. He’s a monstrosity, a murderer, a nasty little cutthroat sneak of a worm-faced toad! You sold me to him? You gave him my heart when I was just a little girl? What does he want? To marry me? To take me into his bed? I won’t do it! It's disgusting!"

"I think he has different ideas."

"I'll kill him."

"You can't kill him. He has your heart. You’d be killing yourself."

"He’s a monster. I am my own, not yours to trade, not his to take and use. It makes my skin crawl to think of him touching it. I belong to me. How could you! I'll not forgive you for this, not ever. I hate you! I hate you forever!"

Her father clenched his jaw. He got to his feet. Though he was a small man, he was still taller than her. His knuckles cracked into fists.

"You spoilt little brat." his voice was quieter now and it shook slightly. "I gave you everything. I sacrificed everything for you. Your mother sacrificed everything. She would be here if it wasn't for you."

The monster fell silent as a thought occurred to her.

"It's lucky Mother's dead then."

"What did you say?"

"I said it’s lucky she's dead! You must be glad she's dead. Imagine what she would have done to you if she had known. She would have hated you, just like I hate you. She would have spat at you. She would have..."

He hit her in the mouth.

And she was falling across the table and onto the floor, a high-pitched whine ringing in her ears. She scrabbled at the tiles with her fingernails. A string of blood and drool hung from her lower lip. A long string of blood, sliding across the black and white tiles, leaving a wet spitty mark as her shoulders heaved and she gasped for air. And then a deep well of laughter cracked open inside her, and she could not stop. She was laughing and watching the bloody string of spit wobble from her lower lip, down onto the tiles, and he was standing over her, and all she could do was laugh at him.

What an idiot, what a disgusting dirty old shit old shit of a fool he was. He had sold her heart and he had struck her and knocked her down, and now, every debt she owed him was repaid and he would never see her again, She would never let him see her again, and still, she could not stop laughing at him.

She struggled to her feet, not bothering to wipe herself, letting the string of blood swing from her chin down onto the front of her dress, splattering the pearls and staining the grey satin. He stared at the floor. He could not even meet her gaze.

She brought her voice back under control, no emotion, never let them see inside.

"Are we done now?" A sweet voice. The right voice can summon armies.

He was rubbing his knuckles as though he had hurt himself. Hurt himself on her little pointed chin. She had never seen him cry before. He looked ridiculous.

"Jolly good then." Brisk. Formal. Always in control, though her head felt loose on her shoulders.

Then she turned on her heel and walked out of the ballroom, out of the house, across the lawn, onto the road.

Away from him forever.

Chunks of Mud

Gintas' mansion was six miles north. The monster trudged along the rutted cart track, face set in a scowl. She had refused a horse, a carriage, and every other offer of help from Father’s servants. None of the bastards had pressed the issue.

How could she not have known? Mother would have known; she would have never let herself be trapped so.

Be like a dancer, Mother had said. Come in from one side and strike from the other. Smile with a blade up your sleeve. Subtle is the way. Subtle and full of knives.

Her pink silk slippers were useless on the rutted path. Brown water soaked through the soles. Mud and small white stones clung to the laces. She might as well go barefoot like a filthy peasant. The blood had crusted down the front of her gown, stiffening it and now the stitching scratched her chest. The pearls were dead stones. Ugly bones from stupid ugly little dead animals, hoiked by peasants from the bottom of a turgid sea.

Everything was stupid. Hot rage boiled up inside her. She howled across the fields. The heat of it pressed into the corners of her face. The pressure of the screaming filled her cheeks.

A flock of crows rose from a distant stand of trees. They circled, then settled once again in the same place. The world cared nothing for her pain. She was all alone in the middle of nowhere and no one cared at all. She would make them care. Give her a knife, she would make them care.

She felt the subtle tug of her own lost heart, hooked on the hollow place inside her, and she hated it. There was only one road she could walk now, towards Gintas, and when she saw him, what then? She could not kill him, Father had been right about that. He held her heart. He owned her in the most complete and intimate way a person can own another. To disobey him was impossible. It was degrading; humiliating. No one should have to suffer so.

She crossed a bridge over a little river. Two Lennel men were down by the sparkling water. Their shapeless black forms rippled slightly in a breeze that was not blowing. They cast no shadows. Though they stood together, each looked in a different direction as though the one did not even know the other existed.

Stupid things, doing nothing all day long, billowing and drifting and silently watching everything. What were they even doing here? There was nothing for them out here, nothing but shepherds and crows. She picked up a rock from beside the path and hurled it at the two shadow creatures. The rock passed straight through their inky bodies and splashed into the stream behind.

She picked up more rocks and hurled them. Some piece of her was aware that she was cackling like a witch, lifting and hurling muddy, squishy rocks, while the dirt mushed under her fingernails and splashed up over her dress.

A rock passed straight through one of the shapeless heads. The creature shivered but still, it didn't move. When she ran out of rocks, she hurled gravel and chunks of mud. The gravel splatted through the billowing ragged bodies, making ripples in the water behind. She wiped her hands on her dress, neverminding the stains.

When at last she sank down, exhausted against the parapet, the Lennel men were unmoved. She might as well not have bothered with them at all. The world cared not a fig for her, and she, in turn, cared nothing for it.

She pictured her father, short and fat and crying, and had to suppress a giggle. At least one person was sorry.

The monster reached Gintas' mansion by mid-morning. It was huge, with at least fifty plate glass windows on the front face alone, much larger than father's house. Two wings made of newer stone angled away as though the house were hiding secrets behind its back.

She wiped the mud and white stones from her slippers onto Gintas’ pristine lawn. Her grey gown was a ruin, streaked with mud, torn around the hem. Some of the pearls had fallen away along the road. She hadn't bothered to gather them.

She brushed herself down and ran her fingers through her hair. She was not presentable, but she didn't care. Gintas could take her as he found her. She composed her face into a scowl as she knocked. The fat little bastard might own her heart, but she’d be damned before she’d ever let him see her smile.

The door swung open on well-oiled brass hinges, and a servant in a stupid red waistcoat frowned down at her.

"You are Taliette?" he intoned, ushering her inside. "You are expected."

She didn't bother to reply. She pushed past the frowning man into the hallway. Some of the mud on her dress smeared on his waistcoat leaving a mark. She almost smiled at that, but not quite.

The reception area was sumptuous. She refused to look at the glorious frescoes that spread up the walls and across the ceiling. She ignored the alabaster carvings. The floor was tiled in complex geometric patterns. She steadfastly kept her eyes from chasing them.

The house might be a palace for all she cared. It was all shit, and she hated it forever.

The servant showed her through a small door into a wood-panelled room like a ship’s cabin. Shelves lined the walls, heavy with books, scrolls and scientific instruments. There was a rack of knives on the wall. She ignored everything and kept her eyes stubbornly downcast. If she could not make him suffer, she would suffer instead and make him watch.

She felt again the faint tugging at the core of her, and her eyes were drawn to a glass bead on the table, nestled among parchments. Inside the ball, something was fluttering like a moth against a window.

She rushed to it, fingers hooked like claws, but some invisible force held her back. The more she leaned into it, the more she was pressed away. She groaned in frustration. She was inches away, but she could not come any closer. It was hers, damn it, it was her own heart, and she would have it!

"You cannot take it," said a soft voice. "It is mine, bought and paid for."

Shit. The little bastard was standing in the corner. She almost giggled at the fright of it, but suppressed the feeling and composed her face into an icy scowl. She smoothed her dress. Never let them see.

His appearance was quite ordinary, a balding grey head, sensible indoor clothes. He spoke with a lowly Belonosian twang like a pirate. He looked her up and down appraisingly. She expected a leer at any moment, but none came.

He was less than her. He was beneath her notice. He would know this from the way she was staring at him. He would recognise the contempt, and he would crumble beneath the weight of it, yet still, he held her gaze.

"You have the look of your mother about you," he said at last. "The same hair, the same dark eyes. We were friends, her and I, back in the old days."

"My mother would have killed you for what you've done," she spat back at him.

"Oh, you'd be surprised." His voice was gentle, but there was steel in it, just beneath the surface. "She was a powerful woman, your mother. Too powerful in many ways, given what happened to her. If she had been weaker, perhaps your father would have got his way, and she would still be here."

"I don't want to talk about my mother," she growled.

"No, I can understand that, so let's talk about you instead. Let’s talk about Taliette, formerly of House Cordae."

Gintas scooped up the glass bead from the table, and she felt the warm pressure of his hands around it. Her heart fluttered within the bead, then rested once again. It pulsed, red, then green, regular as the beating of a heart.

"It is a beautiful thing, isn’t it. I own several of these, but yours is by far my favourite."

She held her tongue as he flipped the stone over and over between his fingers, stirring the heart inside into movement. She felt the ghostly flickering of it inside her chest, so close. He held the bead up to his eye, staring right down into it, right through it and out the other side, until he was staring at her instead.

"I have spent many hours studying this thing," he continued. "I've held your dreams in the palm of my hand. I know what makes you tick."

She choked back a curse. "You don’t know me," she snarled.

"Oh, quite the contrary, I know you very well. I've seen the darkness just beneath the surface. You hide it so well when you want to, but you shouldn't have to. Darkness shouldn't be hidden."

She refused to reply. She glared at him. No emotion.

"You know, I could force you to speak," he said. "I have your heart here. I could ask anything of you, and you would have to obey me. I could command you to drown yourself in a bucket. That is what it means to own a heart."

"I am not yours."

"And yet here I am holding your heart in my hand, and there you are, covered in mud with sticks in your hair, and could you not have tried to come to me clean?" He sighed. "Still, it will not matter soon."

He lowered himself into a leather chair behind the desk and motioned to a second chair opposite. She ignored him and remained standing.

"Allow me to speak plainly," he said. "I have no use for slaves here in Barrowscale. Everyone under my service is here willingly. I will not hold you captive. If you really desire it, I can give you back your heart, then you can take it and go home, whole and intact."

"Why would you..?"

"Home to your father ." He drawled the word father , extending the syllables as though testing the sound of it. His eyes glittered, watching her.

Her father. She would have to go home, and really, could anything be worse than that?

And yet her heart called and she longed for it. She snatched at the stone but felt the pressure again, pushing her back, like many hands pressing against her chest and her face, crowding into her mouth and the hollows behind her nose.

"It is not so simple as snatching a rock," he said. "There’s a process..."

"Show me how I can get it..."

She leaned against the pressure holding her away from it, her feet slid on the floor, it was like hands inside her skull, hooked in her nostrils, in her sinuses, mushing against her forehead hot and rough.

"Stop struggling. You’ll hurt yourself."

"Give me my heart!"

"You were made for greatness!" He slammed his fist down on the table. She froze. People did not shout at her. "Do you have any conception of what you can be? You are Leola’s daughter. I can make you magnificent!" The quills and books jumped as he pounded his fist into the table with each word.

"I am mine, not yours. I do as I please."

"You lay in your bed tormenting servant girls."

"Give me my heart right now!"

“You waste yourself!”

“Now!”

"You are so stubborn! I am offering you eternal glory, you ignorant little brat! You will ravage nations. You will fuck empires up the arse. The world will be your sodding cunt-toy, and all you have to do is stand still for a moment and let me tell you how!"

"Give it!"

He closed his eyes, took several deep breaths. When he spoke again, he was collected, casual. Mildly amused.

"Walk with me a while," he said. "The gardens are magnificent this time of year. You will hear what I have to say, and then you will make a choice.”

Bought & Paid For

There were fields behind the house. Tents and wooden buildings ranked in orderly rows. The monster heard a crash of arms and a cry of men sparring. Other men cooked and ate, or sat at long tables drinking from big glasses.

Gintas was powerful, anyone could see that by the nods of respect the men gave him as they passed by. They entered a field where there were targets. Several men and at least two women ranged up and down with bows. Despite herself, her heart beat faster at the sound.

Twang, thud.

Twang, thud.

The archers called out to one another, then walked down the field together to collect their arrows.

"You like to shoot?" said Gintas.

Stupid idiot thought he could bribe her to stay with arrows. She liked to shoot, but she wasn't going to tell him that.

"Your father never approved, did he? He had certain opinions about what a woman should be. I watched you sometimes, you'd take your mother's bow and go into the woods. You used to shoot in your dreams. Your fingers used to curl around the fletchings in your sleep."

Bastard was still talking. She would wait until he had done bleating, then take her heart and leave, and then she’d get her bow and come back at night and shoot him. She could see the nobbly place on the back of the neck. That’s where she’d shoot him. One of Father’s men had hurt himself like that once. They had carried him upstairs still alive but with his arms and legs all floppy. She had snuck in afterwards, sat at the bottom of his bed and watched him trying to breathe. She would shoot him there, and then... And then what? Go home? Back to Father ?

"I’m going to kill you," she muttered, but she wasn’t sure if she meant it.

He ignored her. "Would you like a turn on the range?"

She laughed in his face. "You think I'll stay with you because you have targets? I have targets."

"Your mother shot very well. She used to ride up here in the summer evenings to practice with her bow and drink wine."

"I don't want to talk about my mother," she growled. "Now give me my heart."

"Oh, it is not quite so simple as all that," he said. "You were bought and paid for, you must repay your price."

He pulled a little bag and a pair of silken gloves from his pocket. He slipped on the gloves, reached in and withdrew three copper pennies. They jingled as he tossed them in his palm.

"I gave these to your father ten years ago, but he would not take them. He hurled them back at me and left them on my doorstep. I have not touched them with my hands. They are still his, although I carry them."

"Three pennies? Seriously?" she patted down her sleeves, looking for a purse, but found none.

"All magic is trade," he said. "With these coins, you can buy back your heart, if you want it."

"So give me the dumb coins then," she said, holding out her hand.

He jingled them together in his palm. "Can you hear them calling to you?"

"They're coins. They don't call."

"Ten years ago they were just coins. Now they are your heart's price. Listen, I want you to learn their voices."

She shook her head "They don't have voices," but now that he mentioned it, she could hear something, like a whisper behind a wall. She ignored it, it was stupid, it was all stupid.

"Your father thinks you will return tonight," he said. "He has big plans for you."

Her Father. Her fat little father who had traded her for a house. Her heart rested on Gintas' palm, quite still, as though listening.

"I know what you’re thinking," he said after a minute. "You’re wondering if your pride will allow you to return home. I can tell you the answer now. It won’t. Not one piece of your nature will allow you to crawl back and beg."

It was true. Her stomach turned at the thought of it. She’d die in a ditch first. Maybe she would do just that. Who would care anyway? That would show them all, finding her frozen and drowned in a ditch. They'd have to drag her out, all wet and dead, then dig a big hole to put her in. They'd probably all be crying.

But her heart turned and turned, comfortable in his rough hand. It did not call out to her. The hollow place inside her chest was still and silent.

"There are other options of course," he continued. "Maybe you’ll go to Teleth Kier, find a rich husband with floppy hair and silly shoes. Put on a pretty dress and spend your days going to parties. Can you picture that? Leola’s daughter, old and wrinkled, and what would it have been for, eh? What is your life for? I’ve carried your heart for ten years. I know it better than I know my own. I can tell you what your life is for, if you’ll listen. I can tell you what you were always meant to do."

"I don’t want to hear this."

The coins and the stone rested on his open palm, just out of reach. She could snatch them. She didn’t move.

"There is an old Aden motto," he said. "Otheal. Othlalioch, Khot. It can be translated as ‘Death speaks my name’. It means that there’s a clarity, right at the end when you realise what your life was always meant to be for, but by that time it’s too late. Only a few get to know their purpose when they’re still young enough to do something about it. I can tell you what your life is for. I’ve seen it."

"You don’t know what my life is for..."

"Some people are civilised." Gintas interrupted. He spat the word out of his mouth like a rotten grape. "They take whatever shit the world spits onto their dinner plate and they pretend it is what they always wanted. But you’re not like that. You’re wild."

Despite herself, Taliette felt a shiver go down her spine.

"There’s just one thing you lack. Something you’ve never had before in your civilised little life. Something only I can offer you."

She kept her chin high and tried not to look interested. "And what’s that? What do I lack?"

"Permission."

She looked at him directly for the first time. "What do you mean?"

"Tell me, why didn't you kill that servant girl this morning."

"How did you know about that?"

"Oh, I know lots of things, little one. So tell me, why?"

"I'm not playing your games."

"Your father would have been angry. That's why. When you break a rule, there is a consequence, and there are all kinds of rules. Big ones, secret ones. Subtle ones that we all just accept. You get in trouble. Would you have liked to have killed the girl this morning?"

She shrugged and pretended to yawn. "You're boring me now."

"Oh, you certainly know how to put on a show, don't you." He frowned at her. "You sit in your big house, making servant girls eat coal. Later you marry, and you sit in another big house, tormenting different serving girls while some foppish lordling uses your body to sprog out a crop of suitable heirs. Think of all the things you’ve ever wanted to do, but can’t because the world expects you to be as you appear to be, beautiful, aristocratic, compliant. But now I hold your heart. Whatever I command you to do, it’s not your fault, it’s mine. I will free you from the constraints of civility."

"You mean I can do what I want?"

He gave a short, barking laugh. "Heh, what you want, what you want. Do you even know what you want? Let me tell you this. I know what you want. I’ve seen right through your heart, and I can tell you, if you’ll listen. This is real magic, to change a destiny. Did I mention I am a wizard of sorts?"

Taliette watched him silently, fists half unclenched. His expression was harder than she remembered it. His eyes were grey steel. He was short, but his hands were strong. All her life she had been surrounded by weak men. This was not a man like her father. This was a man who could break things.

"What if I change my mind?"

"The price is fixed. Get your coins, and you can buy yourself back. One day we will go our separate ways, but until then I promise you it’ll be better than the alternative. Lots of arbitrary violence. You up for that?"

"You mean I get to kill people?"

"You think that’s all I’m offering? Killing people? Let me show you what you are, and then you’ll know."

Her heart pulsed quietly. She thought about Father, about marrying some rich idiot, birthing his children, pretending to laugh at his stupid jokes forever until she died, old and pointless and bitter.

"Tell me what I want," she whispered.

"You want the same as me, what every reasonable person wants. You want to rule the world."

A warm wave passed over her body. It was right. She had not realised before, but it was right. It was as though she had been told the rules of some secret game, and now she understood how her life fit together. It was what she was for. The world was hers, she just had to reach and take it.

"You want me to rule the world?"

"Yes."

"The whole world?"

"Yes."

"And I can do anything I like with it?"

"I will have your heart, so you can’t kill me, but yes. Anything you like."

"How will I..."

"I will show you."

Her life hung in the balance. She could fall one way, or she could fall the other, and nothing would ever be the same again. Gintas, or her father. A life of silks and comfort and mundanity, or... or something else.

"Do you still want the coins?" He was holding them out to her now. She could snatch them. She would be whole once more.

The monster shook her head, turning away from him. "You can keep them," she said. "I won't be needing them."