Chapter Text
Shirayuki wasn’t expecting a knock at her door, not at this hour. Evening, once Garrack shooed her out of the pharmacy and she enjoyed her solitary dinner, was time for reading, sometimes taking notes. Occasionally she spent time with Zen and the others, but that was always planned in advance and started with her knocking on his door. Nobody ever came to her.
She peeked through the crack in the door, half-certain it would be some exhausted castle page looking for Lord Haruka and lost in the pharmacy wing.
The white face of the queen was not what she was expecting. “I’m sorry about the hour, but may we speak in private?”
She wasn’t about to say no to the queen, of all people, so she unlatched the chain and swung the door wide. At the queen’s shoulder there stood a silent shadow, her guard. Shirayuki hadn’t spoken to Obi in a long time, probably since Lilias. She’d forgiven him for menacing her all those years ago, but at the same time she had always been a little relieved that he went to work for the king instead of Zen. Zen still grumbled about it, at times, but she didn’t see the point. All she knew now was that he was one of the few guardsmen who never made his way to the pharmacy, so either he was very good at his job or he just hid his injuries. And apparently now he was the queen’s bodyguard when she wandered the halls at night accosting journeymen herbalists.
At least he stayed outside, lounging in the hallway as casual as though he’d sprouted there. Haki spared him a thin smile as she entered, sweeping past the pile of mail and the unruly hook piled deep with coats and cloaks to pause by the breakfast-table. Shirayuki hurriedly cleared the dirty dishes and swept off the chair. “I don’t have company often, Majesty.”
“I’ve heard that,” Queen Haki answered, and Shirayuki didn’t know which was worse, that someone was spying on her habits or that the queen cared. The look on her face must have mirrored her confusion, because the queen laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m not here to judge you for your tidiness. You, of all people have seen Garrack’s office.”
While a true statement, it shed no light on why she was actually there. “Would you like some tea?”
“There’s no need.” The queen waved off the suggestion with a single hand, as elegant a sweep as one would expect from someone born to the position. Shirayuki felt as though everything was unreal, a certain something that made her brace for the worst. “I have a problem that I think you may be able to help me with.”
“Anything, your Majesty.” She answered hesitantly, because as much as she was a royal pharmacist, as much as her job depended on royal goodwill, it was hard to imagine what she queen could ask of her that Garrack could not have provided. Even less did she understand why she was being asked here in her own home, outside business hours and away from the pharmacy.
“Ever since our wedding, we have been trying to conceive,” said the queen, and Shirayuki could add up the grief in her voice to finish the picture. Surely the queen must feel her job was unfinished, that her position was shaky so long as the factions in the north could scheme and plot against Clarines’ tenuous and limited succession. “Garrack has done all she can, you can imagine all the things we’ve tried. We are at our wits’ end.”
“I’m sorry this is troubling you, but I am no expert,” Shirayuki answered. “Mistress Garrack has far more experience than I, and further-ranging knowledge. Ryuu is better read, and Shidan a more creative compounder of new medicines.”
“I have spoken with them all. They are all masters, and I value their attempts. But I hear you have your own ways, that there are avenues you might pursue that they could not.”
Shirayuki froze. She knew not what look was on her face, how unnatural her paralysis must look, but only that the secret she thought she’d left in Tanbarun was not so secret after all. “I am merely a pharmacist-”
“Please,” pleaded the queen. “I want a child. I will do anything for a chance...” She didn’t beg for her husband’s sake, although certainly he must have opinions on the fact. Her hands twitched with her words, cradling an imaginary infant to her chest, and she spoke not as a queen, but as a woman longing to be a mother. The grief in her eyes pulled at Shirayuki.
Years of study warred with old memories. “I might.” The admission was more than she’d ever thought she’d say. “I- I’ll need to consult some books, but I will do what I can.”
There was not much more to say after that. The queen grasped her hands and there were tears in her eyes, and the knowledge that she might be able to help soothed the sourness of going back on a promise.
At the door, Obi was still waiting, uncanny eyes flickering aside from his mistress to pin Shirayuki where she stood. Shirayuki never could tell what he saw, whether he was bored just looking at her or whether he saw every one of her secrets at once and was less than impressed. Either way, it was a relief when he turned at last and followed his mistress on silent feet.
Shirayuki wasted no time once the door was closed and chained behind her. She reached into the depths of her bookshelf, stretching over the top of herbalism references and novels to grasp a thin, dusty volume from the dark void behind the other books. The leather of the cover was as smooth against her fingers as it had been to her mother’s and her grandmother’s before her. This was a secret she’d thought she’d left in the past, a part of a life she’d chosen to bury and mourn.
But in Haki’s pleas Shirayuki heard the echoes of all the women who’d knocked at her grandmother’s door, begging for miracles in desperate voices. Her grandmother had turned them away, most of the time. “There’s always a cost,” she’d explained when little Shirayuki had asked why. “The more desperate the asker, the harder it is to pay.”
But perhaps Shirayuki did not have her grandmother’s experience, or else she had not yet developed a resistance to desperation, because she found herself unable to pretend there was nothing she could do. It may not have worked for her in the past, but she was older now, more experienced in the world and with a stronger will.
So she blew the book clean and gently cracked it open, still smelling her grandmother’s kitchen in the paper. Two different handwriting styles intertwined throughout the pages; her mother’s offering suggestions and novel ideas and her grandmother’s making corrections and counseling caution. When her grandmother had refused to explain what happened to her mother, she’d pored over this book time after time, trying to preserve any memory she could of the woman she’d barely had a chance to know.
Now it was her turn to take the risks. Flipping through pages, she could tell by the wear on the pages which spells were her mother’s standbys. There were workings for healthy livestock, rain out of season, clean water; the prosaic concerns of daily life. But these were not what Shirayuki was looking for. One page, pale as the day it was written, stared up at her at last. If she didn’t know better she’d think it had never been opened before. “A favor,” read the title, and a shiver worked its way down Shirayuki’s spine.
The spell did not need a particular phase of the moon, only its setting. She looked out the window, beyond the yellow glow of her lamp, and the crescent moon was low in the western sky. She reached for her shawl; there was no reason to give herself time for doubts. If she were to hurl herself from a window, best she should take the leap before she had time to think about the landing.
Magic upends the natural order, turns chaos into truth. The palace was no place for it, walled and hemmed around with structure and rules and hierarchy. The place she wanted was the forest and there wasn’t much time; she threw open the door to her garden and in her haste, her foot caught on the sill.
As least she wasn’t carrying glassware for once, she thought, bracing for the inevitable fall. But arms caught her, bearing her upright seemingly effortlessly.
“It’s a bit late for a walk, wouldn’t you say?” It was a voice she hadn’t heard in some time, but was in no danger of forgetting. She’d known Obi longer than anyone at the castle save Lord Haruka, even if they were not exactly on conversational terms. “Unless the pharmacy has unexpectedly expanded its open hours to the middle of the night.”
He made no move to set her back on her feet, betraying no effort in his support of her weight, and his arm was rigid where her hands caught at his sleeve, but she wriggled her feet back to steady ground. “Thank you for your help, but I have an errand-” With a push, she tipped herself upright, and there was a brief flash of grin as he relented, setting her back on her feet.
“Do you require assistance?” The formal words were belied by the purr with which they were said, and Shirayuki gritted her teeth. It was far too late at night for her to put up with this kind of mocking. She had things to do.
“No,” she answered, a little more curtly than she might have done at a more reasonable hour. “I have everything under control.”
Deep in the castle woods she found the spot she needed, a circular pond silver in the last of the light. The evening wind rustled the leaves about her, inviting her toward the midnight plant collecting she was accustomed to. But she resisted the easy path, standing by the shore of the pond where the still water reflected the light of the stars.
It reminded her of a similar pond, a similar night when a much younger Shirayuki saw the stars through tears and begged her request into the night with a voice hoarse from crying. Nothing came of it then, whether it was a failure on her part or simply too late, and she learned that magic wasn’t enough.
But for Haki she set everything behind her, every uncertainty about her ability to work so dangerous a spell, every concern about what the price would be, all her lingering annoyance at Obi’s interruption, and every doubt that magic could heal what medicine had failed.
As her breath fell into the old rhythms, she felt the connection with her mother’s line, the power humming beneath the forest. She stood in the center of the web, strings held gently in her hands, and knew with a tug she could change the world. She could call for her favor and someone would answer.
She lit her ritual candle, beeswax hastily carved with secret patterns and studded with seeds. She spoke the words, no flowery incantation but a simple request. Her intention expanded like waves from a pebble dropped into a pond, and at the center she waited.
The night was silent around her for one breath, two, and then the hair on the back of her neck prickled. “It’s been too long since anyone has asked for me,” a voice spoke in her ear, male and seductive and resonant. There was something familiar about it, wound about with strangeness too profound to measure. She whipped her head around to look for the speaker, but only a deeper darkness flitted past the edge of her vision. “And here I’d thought everyone had forgotten.”
The stranger stopped, motionless at last, but she still could not make him out. It was as though the starlight itself couldn’t pass through him and the candlelight flowed around him like stream-water around a rock, leaving him perpetually shadowed. Only his eyes caught the light, golden and slitted like a cat’s. “To think I’ve had to entertain myself all this time, and here you are. I thought you had given up.”
That gave her pause, and she wanted to ask what he meant, but questions have power. Answers even more so. “I have a request to make. The queen-” She carefully rehearsed her words on the way, calculated to provide all the relevant information and minimize opportunities for mischief, but the figure waved a hand dismissively.
“The king and queen are unable to conceive. You want me to help them bear the heir they desperately desire. Do you ask this on their behalf?”
There it was, the first trap. “No, on my own. I want the best for them, but I am the one who asks.”
The figure moved again, circling her, and she could detect pleasure in his voice. “And nothing for yourself. How uncommonly generous. You know, of course, that there is a price to be paid.”
She shifted her feet as he kept moving, constantly turning to keep him in her vision. If she lost him in this darkness, there was no guarantee she’d find him again. “Of course I know that,” she snapped, and even though his face was still shrouded in shadow she had the unmistakable impression of a pleased grin. “State your terms.”
The stranger hummed. “It’s so hard to know the going rate, when it’s been so long. I could take all your understanding of seven herbs, or three fingers from your right hand. Which would you miss the least? Or I could steal you away, claim a year of your life for my own. Perhaps you would come to enjoy that.” He sounded intrigued with his own speculation.
Any of those options would be a hardship, but hardships can be overcome. “Is that the price you want?”
“Why, no.” There was laughter in his voice, and the darkness was suddenly closer. From here she could make out a man’s shape against the stars, taller than her. His inhuman eyes still reflected the light, and she couldn’t look away. “Tell me, is a child something that you, too, want?”
She couldn’t overlook that he’d answered a question with a question, but at the same time no good came of lying. “Someday, yes. When I find the right-”
A hand stretched out, blocking her vision, and between his fingers he fanned out two leaves. They were long and narrow, much like willow leaves, and a vibrant green even the candlelight was enough to reveal. “Give one of these to the queen. Have her swallow it whole, with as much water as she likes.”
Shirayuki reached out, taking the leaves without brushing the stranger’s fingers. “The other? And the price?”
He leaned in, still all shadows even as he came closer to the light. “Why, that one is for you. You will find the price clear enough in time.”
“That’s no way to make an agreement, I need to know-” Shirayuki turned, first just a look, then a full turn as the shadow was nowhere to be seen. She was alone by the pond in the dark, as her candle guttered out at her feet.
The sky was still black when Shirayuki made it back to her room, the stars from earlier hidden in haze, but it was the silent hours just before the sun begins to make itself known in the east. The two leaves sat protected in her pocket, a weight of hope and uncertainty both.
She’d thought her outing beyond the walls had gone unobserved, the only alert guards within the castle those assigned to the royal apartments, but a note was jammed in the opening of her door, a bag hanging on the handle.
“Get some sleep,” the note said in an unfamiliar scrawl. “And eat something.” The bag held a single pastry, still warm from the kitchen. She’d rarely had one so fresh.
She looked both ways down the hallway, wondering briefly who would have been looking for her so late at night. The only one who knew anything was Obi, and there was no point asking him why he’d do something like this. It was not the kind of question he would deign to answer.
She patted her pocket, reassuring herself of the leaves’ safety one more time, and took a bite of her warm pastry.