I had already violated the standards of etiquette. What I said next needed to be thoughtful and poised. I blurted out instead, “What happens if you can’t bow back?”
Occupying himself while I mustered myself, the prince had turned to stare intently at a ladle. Now, he stared at me instead. What are you? his mystified amethyst eyes seemed to say. “I don’t believe I understand.”
The saggy floorboards were bound to give way eventually. Maybe they’d do me a favor and make it happen now.
“If someone bows or curtsies at you, and you aren’t able to return it right away,” I heard myself explain.
Understanding lit his expression, and his familiar half-smile reappeared. He leaned toward me and met my eyes as though confiding a great secret. Perhaps he was. “It’s terribly uncomfortable,” he said quietly. “We have to look for whoever did it until we find them, and can’t think about anything else in the meantime.”
Oh. “I suppose I just did that. I’m sorry.”
He straightened, seeming to forget about me in an instant. “Finding you was my pleasure,” he said warmly, though rather distantly, and picked up a meat skewer. “Is this a weapon?”
I carefully took the skewer from him and set it back down. “Not by design, no.”
“I see,” he said, and before I could stop him he crossed the kitchen in three great strides to inspect a skillet hanging from a nail in the wall. “This is almost certainly a weapon.”
“It isn’t . . .” This was the most tongue-tied I’d ever been in the presence of a fair one. “Well—it can be utilized as one, certainly, but it’s for cooking.” He looked around at me. “Craft to make food,” I clarified, because his eyebrows were drawn together in polite consternation verging on alarm.
“Yes, I know what cooking is,” he said. “I was merely astonished that so many tools of your Craft can double as armaments. Is there anything you humans don’t use to kill one another?”
“Probably not,” I admitted.
“How peculiar.” He paused to look around at the ceiling. Disquieted by what he might choose to comment on next, I cleared my throat and curtsied.
With a slight frown, he turned around and bowed back.
“Ordinarily I take clients in the parlor, which is this way. Should we get started? I wouldn’t like to take too much of your time.”
“Yes, certainly,” he replied, but as we walked through the hall he continued glancing upward, and soon halted altogether to place his hand against the white plaster wall. I stopped too and waited for him to finish with a tight smile on my face, which was really more of a means of keeping myself from screaming in exasperation.
“There’s a very strong enchantment on this house, and an odd one at that,” he remarked finally.
“Yes.” I started walking again, relieved to hear the swish of his coat follow. “It was the first thing I worked toward when I began painting these portraits—it took me an entire year to earn. No fair one—”
“May harm an inhabitant within this house’s walls so long as you live,” he finished at a murmur. “Impressive work. Gadfly’s?”
I nodded, resisting the urge to look over my shoulder. As the parlor’s distinct smell rolled over me I adopted a more formal tone out of habit. “I’ve enjoyed his patronage for years. May I ask why you think it’s odd?”
“I’ve never seen an enchantment like it before. Nor would I have expected something like this of Gadfly.”
Now it was my turn to almost come to a dead halt. I kept myself moving with a physical effort, entered the parlor, and went about mechanically arranging the charcoal I’d need for the day’s sketch. Had the enchantment gone bad? Had I said something wrong to Gadfly all those years ago, left an accidental loophole in the terms of our arrangement? The possibility was so sickening my hands and feet started going numb.
“As a prince, I could destroy most enchantments if I wished,” he went on, still looking around at something I couldn’t see. “But when I said this one was strong, I meant it. It’s far beyond even my power. Gadfly must have spent a great deal of energy to achieve such a working, which is out of the ordinary, since I’ve never seen him so much as get up out of a chair unless he had to. He must enjoy your Craft immensely. I’m beginning to understand why he was so persistent in recommending I have a portrait done.”
I blew out a steadying breath.
One thing the prince had said sounded off—Gadfly had given me the impression he’d had nothing to do with this appointment—but I was so relieved the thought fled my mind almost instantly.
“I had no idea,” I said. “You’re the first to tell me—no one else has ever mentioned it.”
The prince brushed past, his sleeve caressing my arm. The parlor appeared to interest him greatly. It was the largest room in my house, and the most cluttered, though we took pains to keep it neat. At present the only unoccupied piece of furniture was the settee beside the window. In the corner to my left there was a varnished side table on which sat a crystal vase containing two peacock feathers, a set of imported china, a stack of leather-bound books, and an empty birdcage. The brocade chairs next to it were piled high with mismatched drapes, rugs, and curtains in every color and pattern imaginable. The rest of the room went on similarly, in each nook and cranny a different collection of curiosities, as though the parlor were a miniature, eclectic museum of human Craft. My chair and easel sat unassumingly in the very center.
The prince seemed too distracted to reply, so I continued: “When working with human patrons, portrait artists usually travel to their homes and paint them there. Because I can’t do that with fair folk, of course, we choose furniture and decorations and arrange them to your liking here in this room.”
“It restricts us,” the prince murmured, touching his fingertips gently to the birdcage. He ran them down the thin metal bars. I remembered the raven sitting outside and wished I’d had the presence of mind to put the cage in another room, even as I wondered what on earth he was talking about. Never once had a fair one acted anything but pleased to surround themselves with the parlor’s gaudy props.
He snatched his fingers away and turned around. His pensiveness vanished into a smile like morning mist dissolved by the sun. “Gadfly’s enchantment, that is. Why none of us have mentioned it to you before. It feels like having a pair of shackles around our wrists, as light as spider-silk but strong as iron. No fair one enjoys commenting on their own weakness.”
“But you’re an exception, sir?”
“Oh, not at all. I don’t enjoy it either.” His smile deepened, and the crooked dimple reappeared on his cheek. “I just have little regard for discretion, as you might have noticed.”
Indeed, I had. He was unlike any other fair one I’d ever met.