Crooked Words Page 20

pretending to be magical and she’d studied medicine abroad. The latter made her seem just as magical as if she did know how to summon zombies and enchant crops—and a good sight more useful.

  “But…”

  Amelia drew in a deep breath. “One, two, three, four, five…”

  The woman yelped, perhaps finally seeming to realise that Amelia wasn’t the least bit interested in being seduced by an intruder, and scurried for the door.

  “Please tell everyone that if they wish to romance me, they can send a request in writing,” Amelia yelled as she put the staff back in its place beside her bed. “With references!”

  The main door, with its ominous-but-useful-for-scaring-people creak, slammed shut, followed by the crunch of the woman’s footsteps as she ran down the gravel path towards the village.

  Amelia waited until the noise faded before following her down, grumbling as she locked the doors, checked the windows and laid down lines of pepper and dried basil leaves across the front and cellar doors in the hope that the villagers would think them some kind of magical protection. Tomorrow she’d have to do something about the cellar. Some kind of suitably dangerous-looking creature that liked the dark and didn’t make too much noise would do nicely, although Amelia had never imagined that the basilisk wouldn’t be threatening enough.

  Something had to be done; no more having her sleep interrupted by the desperate whims of people thinking themselves in love!

  “Good heavens,” she said when she returned to her bedroom. It took her a moment to blow out the lamp, lie back down and get comfortable under the covers. Her cat made a soft purring noise as it ventured back out from under her bed. “Do they think that because they’re pretty, I’m not going to care if they invade my house? Do they think that because they’re naked, I’m going to tear my clothes off and ravish them?”

  The cat said nothing; it just jumped up on her feet and clawed her through her quilt.

  “I know, I know.” Amelia sighed and rolled over with one ear always trained to listen for the tell-tale creak of floorboards. “I’m just too old-fashioned.”

  Playing the Death Card

  Note: ‘Playing the Death Card’ is a Stillwater Files short story that takes place at some point after Asylum; it does contain minor spoilers. For those willing to read on anyway, Oscar Stillwater is a queer, female-assigned, bigender psychiatrist living as a man in a world where queerness isn’t just a ‘mental illness’—it’s a crime.

  She enters the study just as Oscar settles down in her favourite armchair and props her heels up against the edge of the coffee table—a staid, rather plain-looking woman in a light lawn dress, her dark, wiry hair tucked under a pinned scarf like Trade women, a silk pouch in her right hand. No pendants or crystal orbs or shawls hanging around her throat and arms, thank heavens, just neat blue cloth and a thoughtful-looking expression, although Oscar should know by now that Sydney has no patience for the extravagant charlatans that entertain the daughters and wives of the Council. If not for the pouch, Oscar could have imagined her a seamstress or perhaps even a governess, but the pouch, hanging on a string and flicking back and forth as she stops just inside the door, ruins that fond delusion.

  “Oscar.” Sydney slips in behind the woman and closes the study door. She’s as smartly-dressed as ever, her shoes polished, not a button or hair out of place, but she smiles a little too broadly for someone pretending to be household staff. “I bring you Mistress Arrah Piper. Arrah—my spouse, Oscar Stillwater.”

  “Milord.” Arrah bobs her head despite the informality of the introduction. “I am given to understand…” She stops and looks back at Sydney, who leans against the doorframe with a casualness not typically given to a man in the three-piece suit of a manservant. Oscar’s not sure if it’s Sydney’s behaviour, Oscar’s title or the subtle wealth of the room that unnerves her: Oscar doesn’t go out of her way to flaunt her money, but there’s no Trade woman alive who can’t work out the cost of the red cedar sideboard, or how many shillings Grandmamma paid to purchase the lace protecting the table from Oscar’s boots. “Ah … well, some scepticism?”

  Some scepticism? Oscar raises her eyebrows, taps her fingernails against the worn leather armrest. “You could say … well, that I am here because sometimes we must indulge the people we love.”

  Sydney gives a loud, rude snort and steps forwards, waving Arrah onwards. “Come, sit here. Oscar…” She frowns at Oscar’s left knee and the cane she left propped against the seat of the chair, and then shakes her head as if deciding that what Grandmamma thinks about the coffee table is none of her business—as it should be. “Be nice.”

  She can argue that insult, but Arrah twists the red string back and forth in her hands, and really, the sooner this farce is over and done with, the sooner Arrah can go back to the Districts or wherever it is she comes from, and the sooner Oscar can return to her stack of medical journals—to science and logic and sanity. “Yes, Master Cliffhall,” she says, and she tries not to sound too sarcastic; she gestures at the love seat angled behind the coffee table. “Have a seat, Mistress Piper.”

  “This is real, milord.” Arrah sits down on the very edge of the love seat; she threads her fingers together as she looks up at Oscar’s face with a rather earnest-mouse sort of expression. “The cards are our opportunity to talk with the universe—to receive enlightenment and inspiration. All we have to do is listen to what the cards tell us.”

  Oh, please. Not only is that ridiculous—as if the universe is going to bother to speak to one Oscar Stillwater through a deck of printed cards—but also tiresome. In fact, Oscar’s not sure there’s anything substantially different between Arrah’s speech and those of the temple priests on Sundays, and isn’t her life about proving those ignorant, archaic men wrong? “Did you know, Mistress Piper, that there’s a group of Icali scientists who have put forth the proposal that religion is nothing more than—”

  “Oscar.” Sydney sits down on the love seat beside Arrah, shooting Oscar a dark, furrowed-brow glare. “What did we agree to, again?” She holds the glare for a moment longer, and then turns a softer, gentler smile towards Arrah. “I’m sorry. She’s a scientist and a psychiatrist, and, for all that I try, every so often she slips back into ignorance. It’s taking quite a bit of effort to undo all that education.”

  Arrah gives a nervous, whisper-soft giggle.

  Oscar glares back at Sydney, but Sydney turns her head as if Oscar isn’t even in the room, ignoring Oscar as effectively as a parent ignoring a yelling child in a tantrum. Well. Someone is going to be sleeping alone for a few weeks—Patron’s tits, Sydney knows just how Oscar feels about fortune tellers, so why does she insist on Oscar’s playing along? Yes, there needs to be more compromise in their relationship, but Oscar doesn’t make Sydney read medical journals, for fuck’s sake!

  “Perhaps we should finish with the small talk and get on with the reading,” she mutters through gritted teeth. Half an hour. It can’t take any longer than that, can it? Light a few candles, shuffle the deck, lay out a few cards in whatever mystical-seeming pattern Arrah finds appealing, and voila, one useless prediction. “How about I go first?”

  Sydney does look at her then, her eyebrows raised. Oscar reaches up to adjust her spectacles and tries to look as though she hasn’t just volunteered in order to escape from the parlour the moment Arrah is done with her reading.

  Arrah, however, seems oblivious to all the staring, and nods. “Of course, milord.” She glances around the room and then looks back at Oscar’s face. “I … I think perhaps the room is cleansed enough.”

  The urge to comment that the cook probably has basil and oregano in the kitchen and would this do for a cleansing ritual has Oscar pressing her teeth into her lip. Nice. She did promise, for all it’s obvious to everyone but Sydney that this is a colossal waste of time. She sighs and lets out a long, slow breath, while Arrah leans forward, opens the drawstring pouch and emerges with a spread of black silk that she smooths across the table, a
ll the while looking at Oscar’s feet. Politeness dictates that she remove them, but it’s her parlour, and besides, what’s the worth of being a fucking cripple if she can’t rest her boots on the coffee table every now and then?

  The cards follow the silk from the pouch, a colourful printed deck small enough to fit in Arrah’s palms. She slides them back and forth, shuffles them together well past the point where Oscar would have declared the job done, her eyes closed all the while as if she’s focusing some part of her soul on the printed and lacquered slips of cardboard. Oscar’s just about to speak when Arrah opens her eyes, shuffles the deck one last time, and scoots around the table to hold the deck out to Oscar. “Would you shuffle them please, milord?”

  “Didn’t you shuffle them enough?” she asks, but she sighs and picks up the deck. The Tower looms up at her, the lightning striking its twisted top creepy for all that it’s only ink on paper. She grimaces and shuffles the card away, deliberately not looking at the cards as she slides them together. Arrah doesn’t answer—Sydney just gives Oscar another warning glare—and Oscar shuffles them once more before handing them back. “There. Now, remember: if you pull any fake so-called soul-reading tricks on me, I’m going to know about it. My