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A CROWN OF WEEPING STARS

PART III

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The rooms which had clearly been lived in made Ember uncomfortable—but clothing was now a matter of some importance. His threadbare shirt hung loosely around Ky’s shoulders, and she was constantly pinching it closed; likewise, he had no desire to wander about clad in nothing but a pair of dirty trousers. It was cool beneath Sisters mountain and he shivered with each mysterious draft which blew through the halls.

He paused outside the first open doorway, disturbed that he was invading a personal sanctuary, and one which had clearly belonged to someone of more wealth than he had ever dreamt of having.

Ky had no such qualms, and swept past him with a pleased hum.

Bits of jewelry and broken baubles were scattered about, and a tall wooden cupboard leaned crookedly in one corner, doors ajar. She sniffed, quirked her head, and disappeared into an adjoining alcove.

“Where are you going?”

“To find the pretty things I smell.”

He didn’t bother to question her logic—when it came to matters of a magical nature her senses were far keener than his. Many personal odds and ends were scattered about the room, but once Ember’s eyes lit upon the bed, he couldn’t tear them away. There was nothing remarkable about it…

Only a wrinkled blanket, and a faint depression in the center of the mattress, as if someone had gotten up and left a few moments before they entered—it must have been more than a thousand years since, but if he touched it, he would not have been surprised to find it warm from the lingering presence of its former occupant.

The notion haunted him.

For a short while he listened to the faint creak of cupboard doors opening and thumping shut again as Ky scurried here and there, collecting anything which caught the attention of her bulbous siren eyes.

Many belongings had obviously been preserved by magical methods, but most were not. Each item of interest seemed to wither beneath his fingertips, and those that did not crumble to dust occasionally let out a faint creak, weathered cracks appearing on their surface—as if for a thousand years they had been under a spell of forgetting, and his touch had reminded them how old they truly were.

At last he came to the crooked cupboard, and flung the carved doors aside with a puff of dust and a coughing fit. A bundle of embroidered fabric greeted him, pristine despite its age, and he smoothed the golden trim between his fingers. His excitement quickly ebbed as he realized these materials had not been made for simple folk.

“Ember!”

He glanced up as Ky reappeared in the doorway and held aloft a string of glossy pearls. She bared her fangs at him, lips curling, and pressed them to her heart.

“Yes, they’re very nice…”

But Ky had already moved on to the bottles she had gathered from the adjacent room. He could just make out a few of the runes and symbols: they appeared to be herbal in nature, such as basil, or thyme, and a few others which were foreign but reminded him of trees.

She shook one next to her ear, listening intently, and then uncorked it. Her eyes fluttered wide and she held it to her nose.

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He tensed.

“Be careful—”

With an exultant shout, Ky dumped the oil over her head and tipped her chin back, closing her eyes as a dizzying fragrance of crushed rose petals washed across the room.

Ember stumbled back, waving his hand in front of his face.

“Not magic,” she cried, turning to him with a mouth-open grin. Shimmering oil dripped from her lips and the end of her nose, and she let out a croaking laugh. “There are many, many flowers in this bottle!”

“Maker’s Breath!” he coughed, glaring through watery eyes. A vague memory beset him of the village healer toting about similarly pungent bottles of scented oils. “Are you mad?”

“I am not upset with you,” she said calmly, licking a little of the oil from her lips. “Why should you be thinking so?”

“Not mad—mad!” he spluttered. “You’re quite clearly meant to use one drop at a time! Not—argh—all of it at once!”

She blinked, glancing at the bottle, and then eyed him skeptically. “You say this before, about the honey.”

“And I was right!”

“Do you wish to know what I think?”

“No.”

“I think you are afraid of sweet things, Ember,” she accused with a sniff.

“I like sweet things,” he said, careful to keep well away from the fragrant sirena as he crossed the room. “I like them in reasonable portions.”

Drops of oil pattered on the faded rug at her feet.

“And which of us shall say what is ‘reasonable’?” she challenged suddenly, a gleam in her eye. “Ember, who is living one place only, never seeing even the ocean, or Ky, who comes from far away, and travels many lands, and has seen so many things?”

“At least Ember has a dram of common sense,” he snapped, feeling childish. “So what if I haven’t been so many places as you? I bet I know things you don’t!”

Ky lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug.

Ember turned back to the cupboard, his face flushing. Her drifting shadow was preceded by the suffusion of crushed roses, and she reached around him with her slender fingers, hooking a claw into the fabric.

"Hmmm."

The scent of her musk and the essence of flowers completely overwhelmed his senses as her oily fingers trailed across a different garment, woven of greens and blues; she pulled it gently from the clothing cupboard and shook it with an exultant shout. A frilled dress unfurled, spilling across the stone floor as if a waterfall had sprung from her gathered arms.

Before he could open his mouth to protest, Ky was already measuring the thin sleeves and plunging neckline against her own curvaceous frame.

“Impractical,” he sighed.

It must have been worth all the coin that he had scrounged from his nets on the river and more. For all its splendor, he could hardly imagine anyone dragging such a wealth of material through the dusty mountain halls.

She huffed a few siren words, offering him a reproachful glance.

“If you can shorten it—tear the cloth, perhaps—”

The sirena held it up to her figure, took hold of the garment where it fell below her knees, and tugged viciously. Only a single loose thread ripped free. It was clearly well-made to have been spared the moth-eaten fate of its fellows, and would take time and effort to unravel.

Ky's ears drooped.

She let it fall to the floor in a crumpled heap.

Guilt smote him. “I suppose, if you really like it—”

“I no longer want it,” she said primly, straightening her borrowed shirt and tangling her fingers into her hair. “After all, what is the worth of a thing, if it is not practical.”

He felt soundly mocked, but hooked his thumbs through his belt and left the room without another word.