The Dark Lord Clementine Read online

  Clementine ran her fingers over the ends of her hair as she walked down into the valley of the Seven Sisters, coaxing that day’s purple strands into a more natural dark auburn. It was a mostly superficial gesture—there was no way she would ever blend in with the locals—but as her father had taught her, it was important to exude authority with one’s appearance, and she doubted her bright violet locks would do much to instill fear in the hearts of men. She smoothed her black taffeta skirt and tugged at the high collar of her blouse, wincing as her shiny black boots pinched her toes. It had been a while since she’d put on anything nicer than a day dress and her worn leather work boots around the farm. (With mild horror, she realized she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d changed for dinner.) But for a trip into the village, she needed to be sleek and refined and just dainty enough to still look deadly, as perfect as one of the poison apples in her orchard.

  From the first step Clementine took onto the main road, news of her arrival spread from villager to villager, a worried whisper on the wind. Mothers hurried their young children inside or tried to hide them behind their skirts. A few shopkeepers closed their shutters when they thought Clementine wasn’t looking. Another group thatching a roof paused in their work until Clementine was at least a full block away, their hammers poised midstrike. They would not dare continue with their noisy activity until she was out of sight—just in case Lord Elithor should follow.

  As Clementine filled her basket with bread, candles, hoof polish, and the special licorice-scented soap the apothecary ordered just for Lord Elithor, she kept her head held high, speaking to the locals as little as possible. She could feel the eyes avoiding her just as keenly as the piercing, resentful gazes that followed her as she walked away. It shouldn’t have bothered her, and under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have—especially if Elithor were with her. In fact, she sometimes felt a little thrill striding into town at his side, turning heads with each step. There was something satisfying about knowing people disapproved of you, that they thought you were strange or frightening, and that there was nothing they could do about it. Only Clementine could spot the smile tugging at the corner of Lord Elithor’s mouth as the townspeople bowed or cowered or stammered respectful greetings as they passed, and it made her happy to know that he was happy, and that all things were as they should be.

  As Father had explained when she was younger and upset that the village children wouldn’t play with her, why should she care if the villagers didn’t like her? Their hatred, in fact, was a sign of her success. They weren’t supposed to like her at all.

  They were supposed to fear her.

  But as Clementine hurriedly made her way through her shopping routine, reminding herself to snap at the baker’s wife for not making change fast enough and threaten the blacksmith’s apprentice for staring at her too long, it occurred to her that for the first time, she was the one who was afraid. The same question circled round and round in her head until she was seeing suspicious glances (well, more suspicious than usual) around every corner: What if they know? What if the townspeople had found out about Lord Elithor’s curse? What if they knew that the man who had overtaxed their grain and serviced them with predatory loans and once turned the whole soprano section of the church choir into cats was holed up in his tower like a recluse, slowly being whittled away? What would they do if they figured out that the Dark Lord Elithor couldn’t threaten them with more than a baleful glare and a pointy wooden finger?

  They would overthrow you, a little voice inside Clementine said. They would raze your farm and castle to dust and run you out of town forever—or worse. And what would you do then?

  Clementine forced herself to walk with confident, measured steps—back straight and head up. She was being silly. There was no reason the townspeople should know of her father’s condition—at least not yet. They all avoided the silent farm like the plague, and the Whittle Witch—if she was indeed the one who had cursed him—seemed content to wait in the shadows for the moment. Lord Elithor had plenty of time to find a cure. The whole incident was likely to go entirely unnoticed by their clueless subjects.

  As Clementine walked, the doors to the white-painted schoolhouse at the edge of the town square suddenly burst open. A gaggle of schoolchildren spilled out onto the lawn to play and eat their lunch in the sun. Clementine hung back, suddenly much less confident. A group of girls settled themselves under the biggest oak tree on the school’s lawn, chatting and giggling as they set out their lunch baskets. Clementine eyed the pale pink, blue, and green bows at the ends of their braids and self-consciously straightened her own black velvet one. She hefted her basket and left the main road, edging around the backs of the simple stone and wooden buildings so she could approach the schoolyard from the rear.

  Clementine stopped just inside the tree line of the forest that bordered the back of the school. There were a few moss-covered boulders from ancient landslides and avalanches, which offered excellent cover for snooping young Dark Lords in training. Not that Clementine needed to snoop, of course. But sometimes . . . sometimes it was, well, interesting to see how they acted when she and Lord Elithor weren’t around. It was good practice to get to know her subjects, wasn’t it?

  From behind her chosen rock, Clementine watched the village boys toss a ball back and forth, running and laughing and clapping one another on the back. (No matter how many years Clementine had watched them from afar, she could never quite make out exactly what the point of their game was, or how they even decided who won. She had a suspicion they just made the rules up as they went along.) And as Clementine watched them, she started to wonder . . .

  The scarecrow farmhands were getting less and less dependable by the day, and the chicken fence was still broken. (How the massive Morcerous library didn’t have a single book on carpentry was a mystery and a major failing.) She’d had to hide the regular chickens in the small, overgrown kitchen garden near the currently unoccupied gatehouse, far away from their fire-breathing counterparts, creating an entirely separate errand for herself to feed them every morning. If she could fix the fence and learn the fireproofing spell, it would save her a good deal of trouble. Surely, the villagers’ farms couldn’t be that different from her own—ferocious animals and poisonous plants aside. Some of those boys and girls must know something about building a fence. Perhaps . . . perhaps she could ask for their assistance with her task.

  Clementine cringed at the thought. Father would never allow outsiders onto the farm—especially the villagers. They were sluggish and stupid and resentful, and could never be trusted to do a good job unless threatened with death, and constant threats were just an exhausting business for everyone involved. They could never be trusted with the farm’s magical secrets. And yet, with her father unable to leave Castle Brack, and the needs of the estate growing ever more urgent . . . compromises might have to be made.

  The ball suddenly bounced off a nearby rock, and Clementine shrank farther into her hiding place. A boy with tanned, freckled skin and untidy brown hair ran after it. He picked up the ball, bounced it on his knee, and paused, staring into the forest with a pensive look. She ducked fully behind the boulder. Had the boy spotted her spying on them?

  “Come on, Sebastien!” one of the other boys shouted from the schoolyard.

  “Yeah, Frawley, give it here!” called another.

  Clementine peeked around her rock to see the boy—Sebastien Frawley, she presumed—shake his head and bound back to his fellows, throwing the ball in a long pass. Clementine sank to the ground with a sigh of relief—and immediately flushed with shame. How could she, Clementine Morcerous, future Dark Lord of the Seven Sisters Valley, be afraid to face a handful of commoners? A handful of children? It was preposterous. But somehow, it was easier to be lordly and dismissive of the baker and the candlestick maker, alone in their shops, than it was to just walk past the schoolyard during recess. What was wrong with her?

 
She didn’t have time to dwell on it for long. The sounds of the children’s game had changed from breathless laughter and shouts to the kind of whispering and snickering that Clementine knew never preceded any pleasant sort of interaction. She looked around, once again fearing she’d been spotted, but the boys’ attention was fixed on someone else entirely.

  A woman was walking by the school—or trying to—but the village boys were blocking her way. She wore men’s trousers, a fur vest over a fitted blouse, and a gray traveling cloak with the hood up, which was odd, as it was rather warm. The stranger tugged her hood down low as she hefted her satchel.

  “Oy, miss!” called one of the boys. “Who are you, then?”

  The woman replied, too low for Clementine to hear so far away. The boys stepped closer.

  “Why’re you hiding such a pretty face under that hood?” asked a black-haired boy perched on the schoolyard fence.

  “Oh, Roderick, just leave her alone!” scolded one of the girls from under their tree, but none of them made a move to stand.

  A thin-faced boy grabbed a long twig from the ground and lunged forward, trying to dislodge the stranger’s hood, but in a move so fast it was almost a blur, the woman swatted the stick aside, wrenching it from his hand and sending it spinning into the road. The boy snatched back his hand in surprise, and the woman pulled back her hood. All of the onlookers gasped.

  “I kindly request that you let me on my way,” she said, loud enough for Clementine to hear this time.

  But no one was listening to what she was saying. They were all staring at her face. The woman wasn’t old, perhaps in her early twenties, with thick chestnut hair held back in a bun at the nape of her neck. Even from a distance, Clementine could tell she was beautiful—but Clementine could also see what had made the boys gasp. A large puckered scar inches wide ran from the corner of the woman’s lip, over her cheekbone and almost to her hairline, twisting down the right side of her mouth in a permanent frown.

  The boys took a step back, but their hesitation didn’t last long.

  “She’s a witch!” the boy with the stick exclaimed, pointing an accusing finger. The other boys murmured their agreement. Clementine’s heart beat faster. Could they be right? Could this be the Whittle Witch, making an appearance at last, finally ready to move in for the kill?

  But the woman only sighed. “I assure you, I am only a traveler passing through. Now if you would kindly—”

  “Get out of here, ugly witch!” called the boy named Roderick. He spat into the dirt. The few adults milling around on the main street looked away or hurriedly walked on, and one of the shopkeepers who hadn’t closed his doors to Clementine did so now—and that, it seemed, was all the encouragement the boys needed.

  “You heard him—leave!”

  “Scram, witch!”

  “We don’t want your kind here!”

  They circled the woman—though Clementine noticed they didn’t actually step any closer—taunting her and throwing more sticks. While Clementine wouldn’t have been sad to see a witch forced out of the valley—especially the Whittle Witch—she doubted that this traveler, while mysterious, was actually a witch at all. You could never be too careful, it was true, but if the woman really was a witch, why hadn’t she defended herself? Why hadn’t she turned all of those boys to slugs where they stood? It was what the Dark Lord Morcerous would have done.

  Clementine didn’t care to see any more. She knew how this would end—with the woman run out of the village, or worse. And the stranger probably wasn’t evil or magical at all. She was just different—and that, in the villagers’ minds, was enough of an excuse to chase her away.

  Clementine picked up her basket and hurried back the way she had come, occasionally checking that the ends of her hair were still resolutely one natural color. This was why her father always told her not to stand out too much on trips to the village, future Dark Lord or not. If the people’s fearful respect slipped, even for one moment, she could end up on the receiving end of more than a few threatening twigs.

  What had she been thinking, considering employing those boys on the farm? They would sooner burn her at the stake than help her with anything.

  Clementine skipped her last few errands—she didn’t really need those new bootlaces, she decided—and hurried back to the silent farm. Back to the place where sheep did not baah and pigs did not oink and all hair ribbons were black, so there was no point wishing otherwise. Where no one dared look at her cross-eyed except the heads mounted on the walls, if only because there was no one else to look at her—and that was all just fine.

  On the walk back, Clementine looked up at the Lady in White and her cascading snowy gown. And for the first time ever, though she could not say why she did it, Clementine made a wish for someone else.

  Please help the traveling stranger, she thought.

  ***

  Sebastien Frawley hung back from the rest of his classmates, hands clasped behind his head and elbows sticking out like chicken wings, idly kicking at patches of dirt. He didn’t stand so far back as to be deemed a fraidy-cat, but he hoped the few paces he’d put between himself and that bully Roderick would strike just the right note of casual disinterest.

  “Hey, guys, what about the game?” he called to his friends. “Bell’s gonna ring soon.”

  A few of the boys looked back at him at that, leaving an opening for the woman to shoulder her way around them. They scowled and kicked up dirt in her wake, and Gregor and Curly Cab pretended to give chase for a few steps, but they backed off soon enough. The woman put up her hood again as she walked away—hopefully for good. Sebastien was right—the school bell would be ringing soon, and no one really wanted to risk the schoolmaster’s wrath by being late for afternoon class. “Chasing witches” was not likely to be a well-received excuse for tardiness.

  Knowing it could be seconds before those stormy expressions turned on him, Sebastien picked up the ball and tossed it at Curly Cab’s mop of curls; it bounced off him with a satisfying thud. Gregor caught the ball and snickered.

  “What was that for?” Curly Cab complained, massaging his head.

  “Just making sure your head’s still on straight,” said Sebastien. “You got awfully close to that witch. She could’ve gotten you in her thrall.” Sebastien waggled his fingers in an exaggerated spell-casting motion—or at least what they all figured a spell-casting motion must look like. The other boys laughed, Sebastien accepted a half-hearted shove in the shoulder from Cab, the girls rolled their eyes in unison, and they all went back to their game for the last few minutes of recess.

  But even as he laughed with Gregor and Simon and scored a few points against Roderick, Sebastien couldn’t stop thinking about the scarred woman, and he couldn’t stop the guilty feeling squirming around his insides. His behavior, while successful at getting the boys’ attention away from the woman, hadn’t been very chivalrous, and Sebastien Frawley was extremely concerned with chivalry. He wasn’t entirely sure what chivalry was exactly, but the brave knights in his favorite stories his mother read to him were always very chivalrous. They were usually doing things like defending ladies’ honor, rescuing ladies from towers, putting their cloaks over puddles for ladies to step on, and just, you know, being nice to ladies and people in general, and also slaying dragons. The slaying and the fighting in battles seemed to be a separate skill set, though.

  Sebastien Frawley wanted to be a knight more than anything in the world. As the son of a poor farmer in a town whose only castle was occupied by an evil Dark Lord, he knew his chances were pretty slim, but there were always options. When he was old enough, he could leave the valley and seek knightly employment beyond the woods, or even on the other side of the mountains—surely, there were good lords as well as evil ones, and it would be Sebastien’s highest honor to serve them. And if that didn’t pan out, he could always just walk through the forest until he found a maid
en to save, or maybe a mystical object. Forests in his mother’s books seemed to be chock-full of ancient magical cups and cursed swords, and maidens that needed saving.

  But in the meantime, Sebastien still had a few years to work on his knightly skills, and that meant not only practicing his swordsmanship by hacking away at the tree in his backyard with his mother’s longest kitchen knife when she wasn’t looking, but also cultivating his knightly virtues, chief among them chivalry. And today, he’d been presented with a perfect opportunity to spring to the defense of a lady in need, and he just . . . hadn’t. He hadn’t yelled at his friends and challenged them to a duel over her honor. He’d made a half-hearted attempt to redirect their attention without sacrificing his own reputation. He’d been cowardly.

  In his own defense, Sebastien thought, the lady in question was not at all like the ladies he’d read about in books. For starters, she was not beautiful at all. Though the others were convinced her scar was a witch’s mark, Sebastien wasn’t so sure. They’d all seen a few hedgewitches in their time, and those witches mostly looked like normal people, just with scragglier hair. And Sebastien’s father had a scar on his leg, from an unfortunate encounter with a bull, that was just as ugly as the woman’s. So it seemed logical to Sebastien that “scar” did not necessarily equal “witch.” But she’d also been dressed funny, much like the hedgewitches he’d seen in the past, and worn trousers, like a man. And she hadn’t run away or shouted for help when Gregor came at her with the stick, which is what a storybook sort of lady almost certainly would have done.

  So if she probably wasn’t a witch but she didn’t behave like a lady, what was a knight in training to do? Perhaps striking for the middle ground had been the wise decision. There would be plenty more opportunities to practice chivalry in the future.