And there was music!A piper wielding a strange, honking instrument formed of a bladder and half a dozen flute-like protrusions played alongside a singer and a youth with a hand-drum.The melody held a depressive minor key and the words sounded archaic, a challenge even for Fola’s thaumaturgically augmented talent for learning language.
The music, though an appreciated dash of culture, added to the melancholy that held in the market quarter—a sharp contrast to the bustle and excitement of the festival grounds.Fola spotted flashes of colour here and there—particularly through windows, or on the banners that fluttered from roof pinnacles, or in bundles of late-summer flowers for sale in market stalls—but most people wore drab greys and browns.Funeral colours, Fola gathered, in mourning for the fallen king.Maybe, too, a reflection of the toll the haunting had taken on the common folk.She saw many a haggard, exhausted eye, and sounds as ordinary as a cat’s yowling or a crow’s caw drew frightened, furtive glances.
Frog’s wing brushed her cheek and she yelped.She craned her neck and caught the bird flattening himself into a bad imitation of a tree branch—one that jutted not from a log or a stump, but from her shoulder.She burst out laughing, both at Frog and at herself for so easily giving in to the melancholic atmosphere.
Chasing that feeling of humour and relief, Fola sought out the nearest burst of colour—a square banner of checkered pink and yellow threaded with a needle, vest and spool, bright as a sunburst through the clouds.It hung above a whitewashed door.Broad bay windows framed all manner of fine clothes on display—mostly in moody greys and browns, though a few slashes of green, blue or silver shone through.
Fola glanced back at Colm.Like most of the world, Parwys saw its fair share of unusual mortal morphologies—the old clock-winder Puli, for one, and plenty of the performers readying the festival ground had oddly shaped limbs, or elongated faces, or leathery skin, or even horns.Yet Colm had attracted a few glances from passersby.Partly for his four arms, Fola was sure, but as much for his clothes, which marked him out as a man more accustomed to sleeping out of doors than under the roof of an inn, let alone a palace.
‘You’ll need a new wardrobe if you’re to accompany me to court,’ Fola said, fighting a grin.Here was her chance to get him back for all his teasing.She could already hear his grumbles as the tailor stuffed him into leggings, a collared jacket, and a linen shirt—both modified to fit four arms, of course—with a vest lined with silver brocade instead of raw iron studs.
Colm looked past her.
‘You’re paying, I take it?’he said, without a hint of hesitation.In fact, he seemed… No.He couldn’t possibly beeager.
‘Only if I get to choose the wardrobe,’ she said.
A smile slowly crept across his face.
* * *
Several hours later, after the sun had long crested and begun its descent towards dusk, the tailor followed them into the street, grinning and shaking Fola’s hand again and again, thanking her for the custom and the generous tip.Fola pressed two royals into the porter’s hand after he loaded their newly acquired baggage behind their saddles, then two more royals for the young assistant who had been holding the horses.The boy’s eyes grew bigger than the gold coins as he stared at them, then at her, then at his employer.
‘Ach, you needn’t pay him that much,’ the tailor said, shaking her head.‘The boy won’t know what to do with it.’
Before Fola had left the City, Arno had spent days forcing her to practise the strange rituals of trade, evenhaggling.All concepts and skills she understood well enough in theory.It was simply difficult to break the ingrained habit of taking whatever you needed whenever you needed it, sure in the knowledge that more would be available to you or to anyone else who might follow after.Frankly, she had no real ability to gauge what the coins were worth, beyond how many of them people demanded in exchange for the things she asked for.In this case, that had proved to be a tidy tower of eight gold royals and four silver pennies, which had bought two dresses for her, plus three full suits for Colm.
The dresses had not been part of the plan, but they had caught her eye with their fine make and charming decoration.Plus, they would fit her cover story better than the trousers, coat and cloak she’d been wearing, all of City make.The one she had on now—a sturdy midnight blue linen trimmed in silk and threaded with silver stars—would create more of the impression she intended, and complemented her complexion nicely.
Colm—who looked frustratingly comfortable in his hose, grey-green shirt and black coat piped with silver thread—crossed all four of his arms.It was difficult to take his severe gaze seriously under the broad brim of his new cavalier’s hat.In a moment of weakness, she might have called him ‘debonair’ rather than a ‘smug git’.
‘The tailor has the right of it.You oughtn’t give the boy so much,’ he said, still wielding the affected tone and diction he had used from the moment they had entered the shop.The transformation in his bearing from mercenary wild man to temporarily embarrassed dandy had stunned Fola to near silence, leaving her able to do little more than agree with the volley of requests he launched like arrows from his bow.‘It’s more money than he’d see in a year.Odds are he’ll burn through one royal on drink and gambling before being gutted and left in the street for the other.’
Fola glared back at Colm.The boy’s fingers clutched tight around the coins.
Colm shrugged in resignation.‘At least give him pennies and bits instead of royals.Pennies are still too bright for his purse, but they’ll catchlessunwanted attention, if not none.’
Fola reached into her own purse, took out a handful of bits and pennies, and added them to the boy’s royals.She feared the boy’s jaw might unhinge from stupefied confusion.The porter’s and tailor’s weren’t far behind.
‘Keep arguing, and I’ll just give him more,’ she said.
‘And bring the thieves and murderers down on our heads in his stead,’ Colm grumbled, but mounted his horse and gave no further argument.
Fola smiled to herself as she remounted.It was no proper rejoinder to how badly he had outmanoeuvred her in the tailor’s shop—who in their right mind could have imagined he had a taste for fine clothes?—but it helped to salve the bruise.
‘Which is the act, I wonder?’Fola remarked as they rode away.A bit of light banter meant to further ease her embarrassment.‘Colm the rugged wild man, or Colm the courtier who knows how to gauge the quality of silk by feel?’
He ran a broad palm down the front of his vest.There was a pause while he furrowed his brow, seeming to mull over an answer.Not the quick, biting response Fola had expected—which left her unsettled, worried that her question had somehow probed an old wound.She hardly knew anything of his life, after all.Only a few tales of mercenary adventures, shared casually on their travels.
Silently she cursed her quick, unthinking tongue.How often had a snide remark killed a budding friendship in the City?If she were a bit slower witted, and a bit more cognisant of other people’s thoughts and feelings, she might have dealt with less rejection—or, at least, the board might have been a bit less brusque.
‘My mother had a taste for the finer things,’ he said at last, the rumble of his voice soft like a distant river.‘We deserved to dress as well as anyone, was her thinking—at least when the harvest was good and we could afford it.’
The hand that traced the silk embroidery flowed down to the hilt of his knife.He smiled sadly, his eyes unfocused, as though gazing into memory.‘And then she died, and I had to learn to make my way in the world with these.It’s been a good while since I’ve felt silk, I’ll admit, but neither is an act, Fola.Just two halves of the whole.’Another silence while he studied her, the furrow still in his brow, but some of the sadness fading from the smile.‘I haven’t spoken of her in years.Maybe decades.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Fola said, fighting the urge to look away and hide her shame.‘I shouldn’t have asked.’
He shook his head and looked down at her, seeming baffled by his own openness.‘You’ve stirred up pleasant memories.Ones I haven’t thought of in some time.Only the ending was sad.It’s been long enough that the pain has faded some.’
