Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [69]
“Don’t you know better than to get in my way, fool!” she screeched. Her voice was as harsh as a screaming cat’s.
He allowed puzzlement to creep over his face, though he never stopped smiling, and tilted his head to the side. Then he pointed to his ears and shook his head.
She spat into the dust. “Bah! Not only a simpleton, but a mute, too!” With a sour look, she flapped her hands, miming speech. He shook his head again. Then, thinking quickly, mimed wood-chopping, then rubbed his belly and looked at her entreatingly.
She growled and mimed shoveling, then eating, and pointed to him, then to herself.
He nodded eagerly.
“Hmph,” she said, though she didn’t seem as irritated as she had been a moment before. She made a gesture; he felt his eyes widen as the mortar began to grow, until it was more than wide enough for both of them. She pointed at the mortar, then at him, then pointed down beside herself.
So clearly she had just hired him to do her heavy labor, just as he had hoped she would.
Because if she had something that he needed, this was no bad way to find out what it was, and maybe even get hold of it. And if she thought him to be a simpleton, she would not set him any impossible tasks, such as sorting out three kinds of grain from a heap of several bushels worth.
Grinning foolishly again, he clambered inside the mortar.
She hardly waited until he was over the rim. With a shout from the witch, the mortar shot into the sky, tumbling him into the bottom of it. With difficulty, for the mortar was moving as swiftly and as violently as a tiny sailboat on a windy day and heavy seas, he got to his knees, clung to the stone sides of the thing, and peered over the edge.
They were so far above the trees that the birds were no more than specks, and the ground was shooting past at a rate that made him dizzy.
He closed his eyes and hung on for all he was worth, wondering if this time he had let himself in for far more than he could handle.
Away over the hills, a tiny paper bird shot across the sky, as swift as an arrow, swifter than a falcon. The spell that animated it had found a target and it was closing in fast.
Chapter 11
There were six girls in the Jinn’s keeping now, and one of them was trying to kill the other five.
It wasn’t the Wolf-girl, either. Katya got along perfectly well with her. She was clean, polite, a little shy, but just as determined to find a way out of this captivity as Katya was. More than that, she better understood the ramifications of this terrible desert than any of the rest of them.
No, the one that was trying to kill the rest of the girls was a Rusalka.
How and where the Jinn had gotten hold of her, Katya could not imagine. Why he had stolen her, she also had difficulty in understanding. This one was not a ghost; she was a true water spirit, which did make her something of a rarity, and indeed, did make her very, very magical.
But—
She was vicious. She had taken over the fountain as soon as she was put down, and the first attempt at a friendly overture by the young sorceress was met with slashing talons. She drowned one of the Jinn’s men the very first night; after that he made the garden off-limits to them, which was a mixed blessing, because even though it meant there were no more guards posted in the garden itself, it also meant that the Rusalka could do whatever she wanted there.
And what she wanted was to kill everything that wasn’t her.
Now, she was a water spirit, and as such, Katya could probably control her. The trouble with that idea was that she did not want the Jinn to know she was that strong in magic. She wanted him to think her powers were very minor. If he tried to drain her, she wanted him to underestimate her ability to fight back. Part of her ability to disguise herself was an ability