She watched him come. He moved like a jumping jack that strung too loosely, so that he seemed about to turn a flip or clatter into a pile of bones and string. His zupan’s loose skirts swirled around his knees and its undone sleeves swung as he walked. Every man in Kate’s country wore such a coat, but on this man it hung like a costume. Kate wondered if he was foreign. His strange, witch-pale skin and hair made it hard to tell. The white coat bleached him further, made him look like a painting that had half washed away.
“Lovely lass,” he drawled, leaning sharp elbows on her counter, “I hear you work wonders in wood.”
Now, Plain Kate had caught no fish for two days. Niki’s bread was gone and she was hungry. But she was required to turn down work, and she did: “There’s a wood guild shop—” she began.
He laughed elegantly. “Master Chuny? Boxwood for brains, dead twigs for fingers. No, no, Little Knife. I want someone with some feeling. You see”—he widened his eyes at her—“I’ve suffered a loss.” And he drew from his back, where it was slung like a sword, a length of wood. He set it down in front of her.
The thing was the size of a small branch, polished and curved. The back of the curve was splintery and broken, like a bone. A snapped string curled around it. Plain Kate picked it up. “What is it?”
“A courtier to the queen of all wooden things,” he said.
Plain Kate raised an eyebrow and waited for a more sensible answer.
“It’s a bow,” he said. “A bow for my fiddle.” And he half sang: “A walker, a wanderer, a trader in tin—a roamer with a violin. My name is Linay, and I grant wishes.”
Just then, Taggle sprang from nowhere and landed neatly in front of her. He stuck his long nose into Linay’s pack. Plain Kate picked him up. The cat squirmed, then relaxed into her arm and started to purr. She eased him onto one shoulder and he slunk around her neck, where he draped bonelessly, like a fur collar with glittering eyes.
“Why,” said Linay, “no silver mink could match that.” He reached out to chuckle the cat’s chin.
Taggle bit him.
Linay pulled his hand back and smiled with many teeth. “Sweet-tempered little beast.”
Plain Kate had recovered from the strangeness of Linay’s singing, and his eyes that shone like new tine. She ran a finger down the broken bow. “Yes, I think I could make you another. What can you pay me?”
“Mmmm.” Linay leaned close. “I could write a song about your eyes.”
Kate avoided snorting at a paying customer, but she answered shortly: “Something I can eat.”
Linay smiled, slow as a fern uncurling, and sang: “What do you wish for, Plain Kate?” As he sang he reached out and brushed the side of her face with bony fingers. His hands smelled of herbs, and something shot through her like ice on the neck. She leapt backward.
“Now that’s a wish,” he said, smiling at her distress. “But I wouldn’t. To raise the dead, it’s a tricky thing, goes wrong most often.”
Plain Kate was panting. “I don’t want you to raise my father!”
“Of course you do, orphan girl. All folk want their dead back, and I should know. I’ve spoken with the shadowless, and they come shambling, how they come hungry, how they come wrong as a bird in water—”
“Stop it!”
Linay laughed, merry but not kind. “Well, what do you want, then? Beauty? Luck? I sell them all.” He leaned in, smelling bitter as burnt spices. “Of course, the trinkets are nonsense, fodder for fools. But I have true power and a will to use it. It’s more than the work is worth, but we might trade.”
“What do you want?”
“Your shadow.” His own shadow fell across the table between them, and it seemed thin to Kate, swirling as if cast by smoke, not solid flesh. “If you give me your shadow, I’ll grant the secret wish of your heart.”
“But why? Why do you want it?”
“Ah.” He winked at her. “I know a lady who lacks one.” She must have been gaping at him, because he crooked a finger under her chin to close her mouth. Taggle swiped at him lazily. Linay jerked clear, his smile folding up. “I’ve been listening to talk in this town. They say your shadow is long and that no one loves you. You are luckless and defenseless. Do not doubt that I can twist things until you are glad enough to give me anything I like.”
Then suddenly his smile was back and the roiling edge of his shadow was gone. “But in the meantime, what about my bow? Would you like a beauty charm, perhaps, in payment, Plain Kate?” On his tongue her name suddenly sounded like the insult it had once been.
“I’ll take turnips,” she said sturdily. “Or fishhooks. Fine wood maybe. Coin on the off chance you have it. But I’ll have no deals with witches.”
“Won’t you now?” He was merry again. “I have no turnips or fishhooks or oxcarts or sailcloth. Two silver.”
“Five,” she said.
“Three.”
“Five,” she said again.
He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “Five.”
Plain Kate put the coin he gave her in advance in her pouch and pulled out her slate to sketch the bow. Taggle’s fur was soft against her neck, and that was the only part of her that felt warm. Linay was eyeing the part of her hair. Finally, as she kept working, he turned away, whistling.
three
the fish, the axe, and the bargain