Chapter 11 #3
Damon and Siwan had become fast friends—and were becoming more than that to each other, now that they were nearing adulthood.
His expansiveness and skill inspired her.
She had told Llewyn as much last time they had argued about her desire to perform on stage.
And he wanted for her what Damon had—that confidence, that blossoming into his place in the world.
But Damon was not stalked by the same dangers that would follow Siwan all her life.
There was no risk, to him, in attention.
No danger that someone in the audience might see him not as a talented performer, but as a tool to be taken and wielded, or as an abomination to be destroyed.
‘Also, I didn’t know the House of Abal were black of hair,’ Damon mused. ‘None of the histories I read bothered to mention it.’
He perched his chin on the crook between thumb and forefinger and narrowed his eyes at Jareth.
Jareth glared back and tossed his golden mane. ‘Do not tell me to wear dye.’
‘It would be more authentic,’ Damon pointed out.
‘Oh?’ Jareth snarled. ‘Which do you prefer, Damon? Authenticity, or having both horns on your head, rather than snapped off and shoved up your arse?’
‘Now, now, boys,’ said Spil, interposing his reed-thin body between the two youths. ‘The dye wouldn’t dry before tonight, anyway, and we won’t have time to find a replacement for the Beast-King of Galca if you impale Damon on his own horns.’
Jareth visibly chafed at being called ‘boy’, let alone being lumped in with Damon.
‘I’m irritated,’ he declared. ‘I’ll need to sleep the rest of the afternoon if I’m to be any use tonight. Harwick, see that no one wakes me.’
Harwick nodded a solemn promise, then rolled his eyes as soon as Jareth’s back was turned.
‘The trouping life would be so pleasant if not for the egos of actors,’ Harwick mused in his rumbling voice. ‘Present company excepted, of course.’
Spil poked Harwick in the ribs.
Damon laughed. ‘Of course. I think of myself more as a playwright, anyway.’
‘Oh!’ Spil put the back of his hand to his forehead and mimed fainting. ‘The lad betrays our noble art! Cruel defection! And for what?’
‘Respectability?’ Harwick ventured.
That elicited another poke to the ribs.
‘Jareth may be a ponce,’ Spil said. ‘But he’s right that we all need sleep.’ He tugged at Harwick’s hand and made for their tent. ‘Come along, dear.’
‘Harwick,’ Llewyn interrupted. ‘I need your help with something.’
‘Ach, another barrel to move?’ The strongman rubbed his ox-wide shoulders and winced. He offered Spil an apologetic smile, then turned to follow Llewyn. ‘Well, let’s be quick about it, then.’
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 been good 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.
While he worked, he felt eyes on him, but that may have been only paranoia.
It stalked him as certainly as the Grey Lady’s agents stalked Siwan, however distantly.
No length of time would be enough to let him feel secure.
His enemy was ancient, and undying. Impatient at times, and fickle, but as often willing to wait and stalk for years—or decades—for the opportunity to strike.
All he could do was be vigilant, stay on the run, and deny her those opportunities as best he could.
When he had done all he could, he went to his own cot in the backstage tent. It had been a long night, and an anxious dawn. Now, with luck, he could rest awhile, and brace himself for the storm of worry to come with nightfall.
He had just begun to doze in the late-morning light, still cool with autumn’s chill, when he heard footsteps. He knew them at once. He would always know her at once. She carried a piece of him at her throat, mingled with her soul.
Siwan came to his bedside. He feigned sleep.
If he spoke, he feared he would poke and prod again at the wound between them.
Mention his unease with her performing, or by his expression or some accidental turn of phrase betray that he could never understand her need for the stage and thought it all a foolish, dangerous risk.
‘Llewyn?’ she said softly, to test his wakefulness. When he made no response she knelt and, gently, with an echo of the quiet girl she had been, kissed the side of his brow. ‘Thank you. I know you’re afraid, but … Well, thank you. I’ll be splendid. You’ll see.’
She left him, but sleep never came. He lay awake as morning warmed into afternoon, the ever-present image of Siwan on the altar bright behind his eyes.