31. 30
When the knock came at my door that evening, I hated that my heart leapt. I threw the nightgown onto the edge of the bed, glad I hadn’t already started changing. My feet were bare, and my hair loose and almost dry from my bath the hour before, but that would have to do.
I took a steadying breath and approached the door.
Before I could open it, it opened for me.
Fella let herself in. I hid my disappointment as best I could.
She scanned me from head to foot, then looked at the bed, and the pulled curtains. “What are you doing?”
I found I hardly minded that she had come in without asking. In a way, it felt familial. It was something Jusia would have done. “Changing into my nightgown?”
She frowned. “On our night?”
“This is a Samiscan’s night. It is not mine.”
Fella walked over to my nightgown and lifted it. “It could be. Just for tonight.”
I padded over to the bed, and sat on the edge of it, my toes balancing on the floorboards.
Fella wafted the nightdress around. “This is very long.”
“It is a perfectly normal length,” I said, but I couldn’t help the smile.
Fella bundled the fabric up, and looked at me expectantly.
I sighed. “I do not wish to ruin Davian’s night. He is fed up with me.”
“That man? Fed up?” she repeated, her voice filled with humour. “Frustrated, yes. Enamoured. Obsessive.”
I gripped the bed linen in my hands, and looked down at my lap. “He told me he isn’t the man for me.”
“I see.” Fella took a seat at the foot of the bed. She clucked her tongue. “Men are stupid. Maybe he didn’t mean that.”
I sighed harder and looked at her over my shoulder. “Fella.”
She only raised her eyebrow, placed my bundled nightgown on the bed, and stood again. Over at my vanity, she plucked up a tin of rouge, and waggled it. “I want you to come. I want to drink with you and cry into the night together.”
I only watched her, hoping she would tire of me.
“I can disguise you, and we’ll go out the side door.
I have a spare mask from years ago. Davian won’t even know you’re there.
” She opened my wardrobe and pulled out my dark brown gown.
I didn’t have many clothes, and I’d find that embarrassing if it was anyone but Fella.
She didn’t seem to care about anything, let alone my quantity of dresses.
She looked over her shoulder at me as she held up the dress against her.
“He’s been chosen as our Prince of Darkness anyway, so he’ll be busy all night. ”
She left that in the air, hoping I would take the bait.
I did. “Prince of Darkness?”
She nodded. “It’s a position of honour. He leads the charge against the darkness of death. Symbolically, only, of course. Usually, Camriel would do it. But he asked Davian this time.”
“What does that even mean?”
She hung the dress against the front of the wardrobe. “It means he’ll be at the head of our group, on top of the chariot. He’ll be there until we reach the main square. It means he’ll have no idea you’re there until the procession is over.”
A night of revelry. Out drinking and laughing with Fella. Davian had a role in this event; he would be busy. He wouldn’t have time to injure me with his words, he would be heralding the night.
It sounded quite delightful. If Granville had the answers, if I could get them from him, then it might only be days before we found out the killer’s identity.
Then I just had to wait until Davian fulfilled his end, and located Ragnifort.
With his mother’s help, and the arsenal of Wisdom, surely someone would know his whereabouts.
I could be back in Ekris’ House before summer was over.
And yet, the idea of seeing Davian, even at a distance... He had made himself clear. I had made myself clear. There was no use pursuing anything between us. Allowing myself to attend tonight would just prove his point: I belonged with pain, and I enjoyed the game we were playing.
I swallowed, and was about to refuse, when Fella stepped towards me.
“Camriel has been in ill spirits with me for months now,” she said. She had tried to keep her tone light, but the truth of it leaked through. “Please come. I promise it’ll be fun.”
Ah. I knew her intentions were good, and she wanted me to attend for my own benefit. But she also wanted someone there. A buffer, a friend, an ally.
As much as I hated to play into Davian’s opinion of me, I could never let down someone in need. I nodded, and watched the simple act light Fella up like nothing else.
She grinned, and I found myself in a whirlwind of chaotic assistance.
Through the curtains at the House of Love, I had only seen the aftermath of the Night’s parade.
I had seen the drunken fools dressed in black as they half-danced, half-fell through the square after dawn.
I had heard distant drums, seen some light peel against the rooftops far from my quiet room.
It was always something that was very much apart from who we were, as it was the only festival where we didn’t participate in any capacity.
Everything I had heard of the House of Pain, of the God of Death, seemed to dictate its obvious separation from the House of Love. They were cruel and mischievous. An unkind house built on the suffering of others.
To see it on the Night of the Dead, standing here, amongst starry-eyed citizens giggling and playing like children, I could not understand why Talia kept our orders so separate.
At its heart, this celebration was a musical procession. It started at the House of Pain at the edge of Dytho, and paraded into the city’s core. I expected only a handful would join us at the House, with some of the city’s rougher edges coming out to drink with us as we moved through the town.
But as we snuck up to the back of the procession, I need not have feared discovery.
There were already one hundred souls waiting for it to start.
They all wore their best clothes, with their cloaks pulled over their heads and a red candle dripping in their hands. More than that, they each wore a smile.
This alone was enough to warm me, as people chattered excitedly about what the display might be this year. I hadn’t even fathomed there was a display. Fella brought out a wineskin, and offered it to me, showing me she had another full one of her own, and that warmed me further.
We both wore black masks, as many of the others in attendance did, too. Rather than Davian’s metal half-face, these covered only our eyes and the tops of our cheeks. But the cloaks and the volume of people would shield us from unwanted recognition.
The procession consisted of three chariots, all painted in midnight black, each attached to two horses.
The first, positioned far down the line, a good eighty feet from where we lingered, held a single man.
He stood tall, waving and raising his cups to everyone around him.
I knew now that it was Davian, but the distance was enough to see nothing but his shoulder pads and the hint of a horned helmet.
The second chariot looked empty, and I would have strained more to see its contents if the night had not flared into action.
I was already two swigs of the wine deep when the drums started. Two men, at the back of the third and final chariot, raised their arms in unison, holding sticks with rubbered ends. They slammed them down, and the noise reverberated in my bones.
My heartbeat quickened as the chariots lurched into movement, and all around us the jeers of the participants rose into a cacophonous hum of excitement. Half a dozen more people had thronged in behind Fella and I, and we were in it, actually in it, as the procession marched towards the city.
It was glorious.
The drums kept up a steady beat, slow and consistent.
The noise set our pace, but it also excited me.
There was something to that steady thrum that promised a thrill.
There was a waiting glee in the crowd, and as we moved through the dark, lamp-lit streets, more people than I ever would have expected came out to laugh in the face of death.
To welcome the fall and the winter to come, to see darkness as a friend and not a foe.
Some of those who came out carried their own instruments.
Fiddles, lutes, and flutes. They would play as wandering minstrels, keeping in time with the drums, for the groups around them.
We would stamp and clap and egg them on, and all the while, we walked or ran to keep up with the procession.
Acrobats and athletes straight from the gymnasiums came out to play, too, tumbling and racing alongside us.
And at its helm, leading us into the cobbled streets and paving our way to our goal, was Davian.
As the Prince of Darkness, he commanded the attention of every reveller.
He bade us to raise our cups and skins, and we did.
He bade us drink, dance, and crow. Everyone obeyed, everyone bought into this Samiscan royalty, and the pageantry of it.
I found myself constantly having to drag my feet, because I had moved too close, I had danced my way too near to the second chariot, close enough for him to glimpse. It was hard to pull back, when every one of his yells seemed to draw me as firmly as a rope around my waist.
The drink didn’t help, and yet it helped immensely. The next day I would hardly know what that meant, but now, the drink softened and escalated until I was laughing and swirling with Fella like we were the closest of bosom friends.
I stumbled over a cobble, and nearly went sprawling. But a lady in the crowd caught me, and righted me. She smelt familiar, that heady scent of expensive perfume opening the lock on a memory. I straightened as she pulled her hood back with a matching look of surprised recognition.
“Daisy?” I half-asked, half-exclaimed.
The blonde courtesan grinned as I pulled her in for a hug. I never would have embraced her on the street normally, but something of the joy of seeing a familiar face when you don’t expect one was enough to quash any sense of propriety.