Llewyn recalled their conversation the night before, and Afanan’s mention of her good man from the City.Recalled, too, Fola’s flippancy, her describing Siwan as an object of study rather than a person.
‘Help me trust her as you do,’ Llewyn said.
Afanan sighed.A half-smile crossed her face, but it was obvious that this line of discussion was painful.Nevertheless, she answered.‘When you put it in words, it becomes impossible to believe.The people of the City do not suffer as we do, Llewyn.Their lives are longer, and never carry the aching question of hunger or want.Their world is softer, more beautiful, more wondrous.Esteem is the only currency to its people, and nothing is more disgusting to them than cruelty or unkindness in pursuit of it.’
‘Yet Fola spoke of using Siwan,’ Llewyn interjected.‘A “new phenomenon” that might yield secrets.’
‘Poor phrasing, but the woman’s heart is in the right place, I guarantee you.I left because my mind baulked at what I saw around me, as yours does to hear of it.Each day I woke expecting the edifice to crack, the facade to crumble, and whatever cruelty lies at the heart of the City to reveal itself.It never did, Llewyn, but my mind was built to withstandthis world, not to enjoythat, and the distance between them was unbridgeable.’She wiped at her eye and shook her head.‘So I left, but tried to carry the spirit of the City with me.Any good you see in me, it is a pale reflection of what I saw there, and could not live up to.But I think, now, I might finally be ready.This Fola woman is a second chance.’She smiled up at him.‘We could go with Siwan to the City, Llewyn.They’ll not turn us away.And you can see to it yourself that she comes to no harm.’
‘Can I?’Llewyn’s anger flared.‘The Grey Lady, too, would claim to be benevolent.’
‘It is not the same,’ Afanan insisted.
‘You do not know that.You were an outsider.I know well how people hide their darker secrets from strangers.’
The hurt in Afanan’s face filled Llewyn with shame, but neither would he back down.
‘I know you are afraid,’ Afanan said.‘I wish I could take that fear away from you, but I can’t.I can only ask you to trust me, as I trust you.After eight years, is that still a gift you cannot give?’
He stumbled for an answer.Before he could find one, Siwan fell to a fit of coughing.Damon paused in his tumbles and went to her side.Afanan fixed Llewyn with a last, frustrated glare.
‘We will talk more of this later,’ she said, and crossed the field towards the stage.‘Siwan, my girl, let’s get you some tea, hmm?’
Llewyn was left thrumming with agitation, which he channelled into helping Harwick unload the rest of the wagon.Afanan’s account of the City and its people was too good to be true.That Fola woman had not seemed particularlykind—more flippant and dismissive.She had lent aid to the wounded, but that, too, might have been part of a glamour.It was clear she sought Siwan for some unstated reason, and Llewyn could little imagine such a secret being to the girl’s good.
With a grunt, he set down a chest of costumes in the backstage tent.It was near fully furnished already.There was Roni’s sewing desk, with its baskets of fabric scrap and rack of thread, the spools arranged according to the colours of the rainbow.Near it was the make-up chair and mirror.Screens of lightweight wood and paper—and one of silk patterned after a peacock’s tail—carved out enclaves of privacy near the chests and costume cases.It was difficult to imagine that it had all been packed up and moved that very morning.But the troupe was accustomed to dismantling and rebuilding, usually for less fraught and terrible reasons.
How much longer could he and Siwan sustain this life?It had been comfortable, these last eight years.A rare pairing of close-knit community and the sense of safety to be found in movement.Yet, no matter where they fled, they could never escape the danger that Siwan carried with her.
The raven fiend had grown in strength between that first attempt and this one.Would Afanan stand any chance of rebinding it when it made its next attempt at freedom, or would they need to hope for some greater power—someone like Fola—to lend aid again, serving an unstated, strange agenda?
Hateful thoughts, but ones he could not escape, no matter Afanan’s reassurances.He would do anything to protect Siwan.But he could not deny the blood that stained the festival grounds, nor the bodies that lay broken and scattered in her wake.
It was not her fault.Yet was fault all that mattered?Was a rabid dog at fault when it bit its master’s hand?
His gaze drifted to his footlocker, which had been deposited in a pile of other personal effects.He crossed to it and opened the lid with a creak of leather hinges.He owned little—had always owned little, save the tools of his trade, many of which were useless to him now without the Grey Lady’s power.There was a change of clothes, a set of woollens for cold weather.A hammer of raw iron that he had acquired at some expense as a weapon against the Grey Lady’s agents, its head wrapped in layers of rags.A stone, long smoothed by water, that looked to have once been carved in the shape of some small, squatting animal.A frog, perhaps.When she was small, Siwan had found it in a stream and given it to him with a smile and a kiss on the cheek.One of the first kindnesses to pass between them after Nyth Fran.
He put the stone down and pushed the clothes aside to reveal a wooden box, small enough to cup in his hand.A simple thing, purchased from a travelling merchant.His fingers trembled as he opened it for the first time in four years.The box contained a simple silver band, its inner surface adorned with oak leaves.To anyone else, no more than an ornament, worth only a bit more than its weight in silver pennies.To him, it felt heavy and oppressive with power.
His left forefinger traced the indent on his thumb where he had long worn the ring.Those who had taken him and shaped him for the Grey Lady’s purpose had placed it there.He ought to have cast it into a lake, or melted it to slag.Yet he kept it.A shameful symbol of his uncertainty.A path back, should he choose to take it.
Then, as four years ago, after Caer Bren, he felt that temptation.A desire for the old comfort of certainty.No more need to torture his mind with questions he felt ill fitted to answer.All it would take was a return of the ring to its rightful place.
And a willingness to go from this tent, ghostwood sword in hand, and slaughter Siwan.
‘There you are.’Tula’s rich baritone filled the tent.Llewyn snapped the box shut and turned to face her, ashamed of his temptation, though she could neither perceive nor understand it.She stood with her lithe contortionist’s body framed by the flap of the tent, a troubled expression on her face.‘Listen, I thought you should know—there’s someone asking after you.After the troupe in general, but you specifically.’
Llewyn felt a spike of fear.‘That sorceress, Fola?’They had not, after all, told her of their plans to move camp.
Tula shook her head.‘No.Some other woman.Trick and I were out scouting for someone to replace Jareth when we overheard.More a girl, really.Real slip of a thing.’She sniggered—a recognition of the irony of such a comment from her.‘We caught a glimpse of her, but didn’t approach or say anything.Didn’t think it particularly wise, given what’s happened.But—and this’ll sound odd, but it was odder still to see—she was leading a horse.A bay mare that I coulda sworn was Bess.’
Fear narrowed into sudden, stifling panic.‘The horse Jareth took?’he said, feeling a fool.He slipped the ring-box into his pocket and drew his ghostwood blade from the barrel of prop weapons, then went back to the footlocker.He checked to be sure the twine binding the rags to the raw iron head of the hammer were tight before he slipped its handle through his belt.The weight of it only heightened his fear, made the dire possibilities he read into Tula’s message more real.‘Show me.’
Tula frowned in confusion, but nodded.
‘Harwick!’Llewyn called.‘With me!’
Harwick set down a crate recently taken from the wagon and joined them, rubbing his hands to relieve their work-stiffness.Damon had left Siwan to Afanan’s ministrations and had busied himself hanging the curtains around the stage.He, too, looked up with a start, then trotted over.
