Damon offered his help, too.But much as the boy cared for Siwan, Llewyn did not want to involve him.Despite a hard beginning, he had an innocence about him.One that would be soiled by Llewyn’s fears.Llewyn insisted he get some sleep—if King Abal would be well rested for the evening, his enemy the Beast-King should be, too.
‘All right then,’ Damon said.He tugged at the lock of hair behind one of his horns.‘Before you go, I wanted to ask, on Siwan’s behalf… Well, she desperately wants to perform tonight, but says you wouldn’t let her—’
‘We’ve already discussed it,’ Llewyn said, with a deepening of the ever-present itch of fear on the back of his neck.‘She can play, so long as she wears the mask.’
Damon’s eyes lit up.A grin split his boyish face.‘Excellent!’He beamed.‘Where is she?I mean, she might want stage coaching.’He coughed, awkward in his excitement.
Llewyn nodded towards the backstage tent, and Damon scampered off to celebrate with Siwan.
‘Where’s that barrel, then?’Harwick said, stifling a yawn.
Other members of the troupe were returning from the procession.Tula and Trick, the contortionist and the tumbler, were engaged in some argument about royal burial practices as they made for their tent.Ayden and Mirelle, the troupe’s musicians and the two oldest members of their company—excepting, perhaps, Afanan herself, whose age was something of a mystery—ambled down the hillside and greeted Llewyn and Harwick with a wave.Llewyn drew Harwick to the edge of the camp.
‘There’s no barrel,’ Llewyn admitted.
Harwick sighed.‘Of course there isn’t.Is this about Siwan performing tonight?’
‘More than that.Did you see the sorceress in the funeral procession?’
‘Queen Medrith?’
‘No.Further back.With the silver staff and the eyepiece.There was a four-armed hulk of a man beside her.’
Harwick frowned.‘What of her?’
‘She was watching the hillock,’ Llewyn said.‘She may have seen Siwan.’
‘From the road?’Harwick rubbed the side of his face.‘Llewyn… you need sleep.It was a long night.You don’t like being around so many people.You’re worried.I understand.But this isn’t like Llysbryn.’
‘How not?’Llewyn bristled.‘If anything, this is more dangerous.A court sorceress rather than a hedge druid.’
‘A court sorceress who has yet to attend one of our performances,’ Harwick pointed out.‘What makes you think she will?’
‘I’m telling you, she was watching the hillock.’
Harwick bulled over that point.‘And what do you suggest we do?Stalk her back to her rooms in the castle or the merchant quarter?I was never an assassin, Llewyn.Just a soldier, and that was a long time ago.’
At Llysbryn, Harwick had been hesitant.A decade, he had said, since he’d killed a man.In the end he hadn’t done the killing, only emerged from the edge of the druid’s glade to distract his attention while Llewyn crept up behind.
Still, the strongman’s face had gone sallow and his eyes had drawn distant while the druid’s blood pooled.‘It was necessary,’ Llewyn had told him, hearing an echo of the Grey Lady in his own voice.‘He had designs on Siwan.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ Harwick had said, his voice cold and quiet.‘Not so sure at all.’
Once, Llewyn might have handled such threats on his own.Shadow and glamour would have concealed him.A broken piece of quartz might have stifled the sound of his footsteps.Another gemstone to carry whispers to his ear.Now he had little more than the strength of his arm and his ghostwood blade.Not enough, without help.
Harwick grimaced.A flicker of the shamed expression he had worn over the druid’s corpse traced his face.‘If Siwan is in such danger, why not tell Afanan?She’s better able to protect her than we are.’
Because Afanan was, herself, a sorceress, and she still possessed the stone that imprisoned the greater half of the raven fiend.After eight years, she had yet to reveal what she intended to do with it.Yes, she was kind, and Llewyn had far more friendly memories of her than frightening.She ate and drank and joked with the troupe—treated them as a mother hen might treat rambunctious chicks—and it was easy to forget her power to call flame and lightning from the air with a snap of her fingers and a broken gem.But Llewyn would not forget the wraith in the woods of Nyth Fran, bound to her geas and sent to stalk him.
She seemed one of the better people he had known.But the Grey Lady, too, thought herself good, and viewed at a certain angle, her cruelties might seem beneficent.Llewyn better trusted Harwick, who acknowledged old sins and old pains.He better trusted a murderer on the road, in truth.With the nakedly wicked, one could count on a certain measure of honesty.
Goodness had been, in his experience, often no more than a glamour.His mother and father had beengood folk.The people of Nyth Fran had seemed so, too, if one did not dig for deeper roots.The gwyddien, and their Grey Lady, were known in druid lore as beneficent fae, though they would as easily destroy a child for the threat it might pose as pull a weed.
‘I’m only asking that you be alert,’ Llewyn said.‘Keep an eye out for the sorceress.For her silver staff and her guard.’
Harwick nodded, more to end the conversation than from any real agreement, Llewyn thought.‘Fine.I will.Now go and get some sleep, Llewyn.It’ll make you feel better.’
But worry would prod Llewyn awake.He paced the perimeter of the camp, laying defences.His defection from the Grey Lady had stripped him of many powers, but he still had all his knowledge and a handful of tricks: a line of salt trickled in the gaps between the tents; a net of toadstool lamellae placed in front of Siwan’s; a pinch of bonemeal mixed into the ashes of last night’s cooking fire.Poor defences, but better than nothing.The only sure weapon he still wielded was his ghostwood blade, disguised but always nearby.
