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It was, in its way, a happy childhood I was loved, I ate well—and pinkgill is not at all an unsavory mushroom when used judiciously, and eaten by those whose bellies are staunch and steadfast as ours We lived in a rickety, bare-roofed house on stilts near the long blue river, which was cold as a corpse’s cup and prone to flooding Poisoners are paid well, of course, but if one displays one’s wealth, then one is often asked its source, and we thrived on a discreet business The riverside was a poor part of tohere folk slopped their garbage onto the current and cursed their chickens in braying voices, and so we chose it, and my parents practiced their art on me with tender attention

Curiously, however, the layering of poison upon poison in rew stretched and thin, like a snake’s, and quite as untrustworthy When I was just a boy,me to mix bilewort, holly seeds, and elephant ear to make a draft that would plant the seeds in the subject’s sto from their mouths a feeeks after application When we finished, he spread a bit of the stuff on ue, like a sacrament—for my parents believed sincerely tha

t death was a sacred covenant between poisoner and condeive a person the world distilled, and thus deliver them from it What more profound act can there be? I closed my eyes, prepared for profundity The brew tasted dry and dusty, like flowers left too long in a white vase, but there was a sharp tang to it, an arrow of sourness that flashed bright across my throat

I looked at my father, surprised, and held outsprouted there, its berries verrew smoothly from my palm, the child of some combination of oil and seed or root and blossohed nervously and trimmed the miniature bush down to the skin Eventually, it scabbed over, but froued with effusions such as these, twisting out of my flesh like new limbs

And so I became both source and practitioner—but I was not allowed to actually sprinkle the food orto experience the exchange of one world for another My education was purely alchemical

“If we let you loose the venoht spook the unicorn,” they said, grinning, knowing I did not understand But I observed , concealed behind door or holloall, beneath hanging tapestry or bed Shall I tell you of my favorite, while we have the time? You must be curious—we are so alike, you and I

The Doge of a far-off country, a place full of red rocks and red roofs and stoops dusty with sage and sap, was possessed of two daughters, the one devilish and heartless, the other sweet and good as milk Such men are often afflicted thus these days In this city of red rocks and red roofs, which was called Ae was called Hind, and she was the sort that liked to dance with ht not to see The second was Hadil, who liked only to please her father As they grew, alike in beauty and poise, the Doge frowned into his cups and weighed their differences He was a coh perhaps a switch to the back of one and a stiff drink to the other would have sufficed But he was, as I have said, a complex man

Now Ah s in a salty spit of sea A tiny inlet fed blue water into the center of the territory, and all along it greeeping cedars, at which the youngthem the future wealth of Amberabad For the present wealth of Amberabad was amber, which is so plentiful in those parts that onethe narrow, rust-colored beaches and pluck wet, glistening stones from the sand Some even fish for it, with fine nets of nettle and flax, drawing red-golden ge water The city s jewels, and cast its shadow in pale yellow streaks on the earth, for Amberabad was a city in the sky, suspended between the trunks of the great seaside cedars

Long garlands of chicory, htly budded roses wound around the delicate bridges that led from tree to tree as in some cities streets will lead from ministry to cemetery, and in others canals will lead from market to haberdashery The people of Amberabad are exceptionally fleet of foot, and hardly any of thee’s palace is, rather predictably, built out froreatest of cedars, and all of its roos of blossoallop, and any nuold with this glea material, and with the soft, furry planks of cedar which show through the occasional strategic gaps in the walls

In these roos of a over her body in co wide over her wrists and waist, crisscrossing her old as sap, her hair as deep a red as the s of beads, but hers were cast froe black ruin left behind when amber is burned to make that costly oil which her sister so resembled These black beads whorled round, loose at her throat and close at her wrists and waist, crisscrossing her barely contained breasts

In these rooms Hind tried to coax her sister to read the books she read, which had woodcuts no girl should see, and to eat cakes which would ure ample, and to leave open the aht swing across the es In these rooed doors when the night strea birds, showing her sister instead plain brown breads and raw roots She tried to train her sister’s wanton eyes to prayer books which had no woodcuts at all, but only psal on the balconies of her high house until her voice became known as the Bell of Amberabad In these rooms neither sister yielded to the other, and they sat sullenly upon their red couches, the one chewing her roots, the other her cakes

“Why will you not play with me, as a sister should?” Hind would cry

“Why will you not pray with me, as a sister should?” Hadil would whisper

And so their father called upon us, and we traveled in our little caravan to this city, which, , as he usually said of the opulent cities where our arts wereof an ascetic, one slightly green from the same little drafts of poison to which I was happily accustoe was unspecific in his letters as to the shape of the lesson, only as to its intended content Thus we pored and pondered until we had devised e thought an acceptable tutorial

It was a very complicated boil: shattered oyster shell and quartered toad, lily of the valley and autumn crocus cut carefully from the insides of my cheeks, jack-in-the-pulpit and poached rhubarb leaves, smoked and reduced and thickened with cane for weeks At the last, pearls were dissolved into the brazier, and toad eyes pierced and allowed to dribble into the ht flavor of anise and dusky peppers, and presented the as cooks I watched from behind awking at the finery