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For a moment Scarlett just stared at the curious girl. It didn’t even seem to occur to her that Scarlett might not want to talk about her sister that way, or that she was waiting for someone else. This girl was that hot sunny day in the middle of the Cold Season, either unaware or uncaring that she did not belong.
“People don’t expect the truth here,” the girl went on, undeterred. “They don’t want it either. A lot of the people here don’t expect to win the wish; they come here for an adventure. You might as well give them one. I know it’s in you, otherwise you wouldn’t have been invited.” The girl sparkled, from her metallic skirt to the matching gold lines of paint around her angular eyes.
She didn’t look like a thief, but after Scarlett’s experience with the strawberry blonde the night before, she wasn’t feeling particularly trusting.
“Who are you?” Scarlett asked. “And what do you want?”
“You can call me Aiko. And maybe I don’t want anything.”
“Everyone who’s playing wants something.”
“Then I suppose it’s a good thing I’m not actually playing—” Aiko cut off as a new couple approached.
Barely older than Scarlett, and obviously newlywed, the young man held his young bride’s hand with the care of a man not used to holding such an important thing.
“’Scuse me, miss.” He spoke with a foreign accent that took a bit of concentration to discern. “We’s were wonderin’, are you really Donatella’s sister?”
Aiko nodded encouragingly. “She is, and she’d be delighted to answer your questions.”
The couple brightened. “Oh, thank you, miss. Yesternight when we made it to ’er room everything was picked clean. We’s were jus’ hopin’ for some bit o’ a clue.”
The mention of Tella’s scavenged room set something ablaze inside of Scarlett, yet the couple looked so sincere. They didn’t seem to be mercenaries who would sell things to the highest bidder. Their threadbare clothes were in worse shape than Scarlett’s blackened dress, yet their clasped hands and hopeful expressions reminded her of what the game was meant to be. Or what she’d thought it was meant to be. Joy. Magic. Wonder.
“I wish I could tell you where my sister was, but I haven’t seen her since I—” Scarlett hesitated as their faces fell, and she remembered how Aiko had said people at Caraval didn’t expect or want the truth: They come here for an adventure. You might as well give them one.
“Actually, my sister asked me to meet her—near a fountain with a mermaid.” The lie sounded ridiculous to Scarlett’s ears, but the couple lapped it up like a bowl of sweetened cream, their faces alighting at the prospect of a clue.
“Oh, I think I know dat statue,” said the young woman. “Is it da one with a ’ottom all covered in ’earls?”
Scarlett wasn’t sure exactly what the woman was trying to say, but she sent them off with a nod and wished them the best of luck.
“See?” said Aiko. “Look how happy you just made them.”
“But I lied to them,” said Scarlett.
“You’re missing the point of the game,” said Aiko. “They didn’t travel here for truth, they came for an adventure, and you just sent them on one. Maybe they won’t find anything, but perchance they will; the game sometimes has a way of rewarding people just for trying. Either way that couple is happier than you. I’ve been watching, and you’ve been sitting here as sour as rotten milk for the past hour.”
“You would be too if your sister was missing.”
“Oh, poor you. Here you are on a magical isle and all you can think of is what you don’t have.”
“But it’s my—”
“Your sister, I know,” said Aiko. “I also know you’ll find her at the end when all of this is over and you’ll wish you’d not spent your evenings sitting in this stinking tavern feeling sorry for yourself.”
It was the exact sort of thing Tella would have said. A masochistic part of Scarlett felt she owed her sister some sort of tithe made of misery, but maybe it was the opposite. Knowing Tella, she would have been more disappointed in Scarlett for not enjoying Legend’s isle.
“I’m not going to sit here all night,” Scarlett said. “I’m waiting for someone.”
“Is that someone late, or are you just very early?” Aiko raised two painted brows. “I hate to inform you of this, but I don’t think whoever it is you’re waiting for is going to be showing up.”
Scarlett’s eyes darted to the door for the hundredth time that evening, still hoping to see Julian walk through. She had been so sure he would come, but if there was a respectable time to wait for someone, she’d surpassed it.
Scarlett pushed up from her chair.
“Does this mean you’ve decided not to sit around anymore?” Aiko rose elegantly from her own seat, clutching her notebook close, as the back door to the tavern swung open once more.
A pair of giggling young women stepped in, followed by the last person Scarlett wanted to see. He stormed inside like a foul wind made of messy black clothes and mud-caked boots, more disheveled than he’d been the last time she’d seen him—Dante’s dark pants were rumpled, as if he’d slept in them, and his tailcoat was gone.
