Again, Siwan rolled her eyes, as though there were no reason at all for his worry.‘Who would know better?Who that we could trust, anyway?Come on.Watch the procession with me, then I promise I’ll sleep away the afternoon.’She folded her hands behind her back and stepped past him for a better look at the road below.‘Have to be fresh for tonight, after all.’
‘For tonight?’At first, her meaning escaped him.She had done her part already, helping Roni sew the costumes and dress the sets for the troupe’s performance.There might be some minor tear in need of mending, or a last-minute prop to be thrown together, but…
Realisation struck like an iron bolt to the eye.
‘No.’
Her shoulders stiffened.‘It’ll be fine.Roni and I finished the mask.Clouded lenses, like we talked about.With that, a hood and a cape, no one will take me for anything but another eccentric troubadour.’
‘Any one of these people may be an agent of the Grey Lady in disguise,’ Llewyn whispered, casting around them, hoping the nearing procession would draw all attention from the others on the hillock.‘We can never be sure, no matter how well Afanan’s eye pierces glamour.’
‘Or yours?Or mine?’Siwan muttered.‘Between the three of us, we would see something.Besides, it’s been years and she hasn’t sent anyone.’
‘Eight years is the blink of an eye, to her,’ Llewyn said.‘And she knows we’ll be alert.’He hated this topic of conversation.Hated how much it agitated his own fear and old anger, to say nothing of how it put fire to Siwan’s.But perhaps she had cooled too much.She needed to remember the dangers that lurked in the shadows between the trees.He would not always be able to remember them for her.‘Even if she has no agent in the crowd, there may be hedge wizards, druids, sorcerers without Afanan’s kindness, who might see you as a means to deepening their own power.Why take the risk?For what?To stand on a stage and sing a song?’
‘Yes!’She spun to face him, her cloak whirling around her knees.‘Exactly that!It’s what I want, Llewyn!And I’m good at it!Everyone says so.Only you’re too bloody frightened to see it.I’ll not spend my whole life mending burst seams and sewing costumes.’
It was an old argument, now.A year after Nyth Fran, she had picked up Ayden’s gittern and begun to strum, and the old bard had laughed and gently placed her fingers to form her first chords.At the time, Llewyn had been pleased to see the dark cloud that had hung about her finally breaking.When Mirelle had started teaching Siwan to sing, Llewyn had thought little of it; even sat nearby with his pipe to listen, enjoying the mingled warmth of tobacco and her little, learning voice.And then she had said she wanted the stage.
She stared up at him, bristling and defiant, daring him to push back.Her shoulders, as slight as sparrow’s wings, rose and fell in steady anger.Did she want him to drive the wedge between them deeper?Would that make it easier to do as she willed, despite his fears, despite the pain it would cause him?
Light caught the silver chain around her neck, exposed by her sudden turn.He could not see, but he could feel—always, like a limb severed yet still alive—the shard of ghostwood that hung from it, hidden by her cloak.The cage of her fractured soul.The talisman he had made for her, to save her from the raven fiend and to change her life forever.
His answer to her pleading voice, her desperate eye gazing up from the altar stone.
He turned away, back to the procession.
‘No answer?’Siwan pressed.‘So I’ll do as I want, then?’
A slow breath, to let the embers of his anger cool.The procession drew nearer now.He could make out the prince on his white charger, the black train of his cloak spilling behind his saddle, his gold circlet marking his office.A woman—his mother, the queen, Llewyn presumed—rode beside him.
‘You finished the mask?’It had been Roni’s idea.A proposed compromise the last time this argument had nearly torn them apart.
‘Yes.Of course.No one will see my eyes, if anyone is even looking for them.There are plenty of oddities in the world, Llewyn.Even without the mask, even if my eyes and my face were on full display, most people would see no more than another descendant from the First Folk’s experiments.’
He knew that for false.Had learned it for certain, three years ago in Llysbryn.And that had been no agent of the Grey Lady, only an itinerant druid with too keen an eye and too open a face.He had recognised Siwan—if not for what she was, exactly, then at least for the power she carried.Llewyn had seen the surprise, then the greed in his eyes.The sprouting of a dark purpose in his heart.
Someday, someone else would be looking, and would see, Llewyn knew.Someone he and Harwick could not deal with quietly—as they had the druid, stalking him to his camp in a glade off the road.Someone not even Afanan could defend against.The echoes of the Grey Lady’s voice clung to him.Her rage.Her desperation.She was patient, but unforgiving, and he had been far from the most powerful of her gwyddien.
He let his gaze drift along the king’s oaken coffin, borne on an open carriage, to the nobles and courtiers following behind the prince.A sea of black and grey silk beneath fluttering banners.Downcast faces riding in silence.Bowed heads leaning towards neighbours to exchange a few whispered words.A gathering of sober dignity, save one woman.
She rode further back in the column, with the minor courtiers, with no standard or device save a silver staff.The hulking mountain of a man—four-armed and dour-faced, and even more darkly complexioned than she was—ought to have drawn Llewyn’s eye first, but there was something about the woman.She held herself tall in the saddle, sweeping her gaze over the crowds to either side of the road with a curious, bemused expression, as though there was something absurd about this gathering of thousands to mourn the death of the king.
The woman’s gaze found his.Llewyn started, as he still did, eight years later—but there was no longer any glamour to protect him from such unwanted intimacy with strangers.The woman reached for something in her pocket and brought it to her eye.It glinted in the morning light, like glass.
‘Well?’Siwan pressed.‘Will you put up a fuss, or accept that I’m going to perform whether you agree or not?’
He made himself look away.If the woman had some sort of spyglass, she might pick him out from the crowd atop the hillock.She was a sorceress, he was certain, by her staff, bearing and sensitivity to his gaze.Clearly not someone overly constrained by courtly manners.Not the sort of person whose attention he wanted.
Siwan went on, the frustration in her voice becoming more pronounced and louder, drawing a few annoyed glances from others in the crowd.‘It’ll be a small crowd, tonight.Safer, I suppose, if that matters.And I’ll wear the bloody mask.Stones, Llewyn, say something.’
‘We should go,’ he said, reaching for her hand.
She snatched it away.‘It’s only started!’
‘Go with me now, and you can sing tonight.’
‘Oh?You’re giving yourpermission?’
