She is Thiago’s.
No one touched her. She drifted through the revelry alone.
Where was Thiago, she wondered, her eyes darting from mask to mask. She would get a glimpse of long white hair or wolf aspect and her heart would jump at the thought that it was him, but each time it was someone else. The long white hair belonged to an old woman, and Madrigal had to laugh at her own skittishness.
Every citizen of Loramendi was in the streets, but somehow space opened around her and she moved alone, following in her friends’ wake toward the agora. Thiago would be there, she guessed, probably standing with his father on the palace balcony, watching the crowd surge as the procession spilled wave after wave of chimaera into the square.
He would be watching for her.
Unconsciously, she slowed her steps. Nwella and Chiro went whirling on ahead in their masks, kissing. For the most part they just touched the lips of their masks to the lips—beaks, muzzles, maws—of other masks, but there were real kisses, too, with no regard to aspect. Madrigal knew what it was like from previous festivals, the grasswine breath of strangers, the nuzzle of a tiger’s whiskered jaw, or a dragon’s, or a man’s. But not tonight.
Tonight, she was in isolation—eyes were on her but not hands, and certainly not lips. The Serpentine seemed a very long stretch to go alone.
Then someone took her elbow. The touch jarred her, coming as it did to end her apartness. Thinking it must be Thiago, she stiffened.
But no. The one at her side wore a horse mask of molded leather that covered his true head completely. Thiago would never wear a horse head, or any other mask to conceal his face. He wore the same thing to the ball every year: a real wolf’s head atop his own, its lower jaw removed so that it made a sort of headdress, its eyes replaced with blue glass, dead and staring.
So who was this? Someone foolish enough to touch her? Well then. He was tall, a head above even her own height, so that Madrigal had to tilt her face up, laying her hand on his shoulder, to nudge his horse muzzle with the beak of her bird mask. A “kiss,” to prove that she still belonged to herself.
And as if some spell had been broken, she was part of the crowd again, spinning in the graceless stamping of the revel, with the stranger for a partner. He moved her along, guarding her from the shoving of larger creatures. She could feel his strength; he might easily have buoyed her without her feet even touching the ground. He ought to have turned her loose after a twirl or two, but he didn’t. His hands—gloved—kept hold of her. And since she didn’t think anyone else would dance with her if he let her go, she didn’t move away. It felt good to be dancing, and she gave herself over to it, and even forgot her anxieties about her dress. Fragile as it seemed, it was holding up fine, and when she whirled it rose in waves around her gazelle hooves, weightless and lovely.
Part of a seething, living tide, they streamed along. Madrigal lost track of her friends, but the horse-masked stranger didn’t abandon her, and when the procession neared the end of the Serpentine, it began to bottleneck. The dancing slowed to a sway and she found herself standing with him, their breathing quick. She looked up, flushed and smiling behind her bird mask, and said, “Thank you.”
“My lady, thank you. The honor is mine.” His voice was rich, his accent strange. Madrigal couldn’t place it. The eastern territories, perhaps.
She said, “You’re braver than the rest, to dance with me.”
“Brave?” His mask was expressionless, of course, but his head quirked to one side, and from his tone, Madrigal realized he didn’t know what she meant. Was it possible he didn’t know who she was—whose she was? He asked, “Are you so ferocious?” and she laughed.
“Terrifying. Apparently.”
Again, that tilt of the head.
“You don’t know who I am.” She was strangely disappointed. She had thought he might be a bold soul, flouting the general fear of Thiago, but it seemed he was only ignorant of the risk.
His head bent toward her, his mask muzzle brushing her ear. In his nearness, there was an aura of warmth. He said, “I know who you are. I came here for you.”
“Did you?” She felt slightly giddy, as if she had been drinking grasswine, though she hadn’t had so much as a sip. “Tell me then, Sir Horse. Who am I?”
“Ah, well, that’s not entirely fair, Lady Bird. You never told me your name.”
“You see? You don’t know. But I have a secret.” She tapped her beak and whispered, smiling, “This is a mask. I am not really a bird.”
He reared back in feigned surprise, though his hand didn’t leave her arm. “Not a bird? I am deceived.”
“So you see, whatever lady you’re looking for, she is all alone somewhere, waiting for you.” She was almost sorry to send him away, but the agora wasn’t far off now. She didn’t want him to catch Thiago’s disfavor, not after he’d rescued her from dancing the whole length of the Serpentine alone. “Go on,” she urged. “Go and find her.”
“I’ve found who I’m looking for,” he said. “I may not know your name, but I know you. And I have a secret, too.”
“Don’t tell me. You’re not really a horse?” She was looking up at him; his voice had struck her as familiar, but the familiarity was distant and vague, like something she’d dreamt. She tried to see through his mask but he was too tall; at the angle of her sight, all she could make out through the eye apertures was shadow.
“It’s true,” he confessed. “I am not really a horse.”
“And what are you?” She was really wondering now—who was he? Someone she knew? Masks made for mischief, and many a sly game was played on the Warlord’s birthday, but she didn’t think anyone would be playing games with her tonight.
His answer was swallowed by an upsurge of piping as they drew near the last musicians along the route. Trills like bird calls, a twanging lute, the throat-deep ululation of singers, and beneath it all, like a heartbeat under skin, the cadence of drums carrying the urgency to dance. Bodies were close on all sides, the stranger’s closest of all. A swell in the crowd pressed him against Madrigal and she felt the mass and breadth of his shoulders through his cloak.
And heat.
She was conscious of her bareness and sugar glitter, and, plainly, her own rushing heartbeat, her own rising heat.
She flushed and stepped away, or tried to, but was shoved back into him. His scent was warm and fulclass="underline" spice and salt, the pungent leather of his mask, and something rich and deep that she couldn’t identify but that made her want to lean into him, close her eyes, and breathe. He kept an arm around her, pushed back against the crush and kept her from being jostled, and there was nowhere to go but onward with the crowd as it funneled into the agora. They were in the funnel, and there was no turning back.
The stranger was behind her, his voice low. “I came here to find you,” he said. “I came to thank you.”
“Thank me? For what?” She couldn’t turn. A centaur flank hemmed her in on one side, a Naja coil on the other. She thought she caught a glimpse of Chiro in the whirl. She could see the agora now—straight ahead, framed by the armory and the war college. The lanterns overhead were like constellations, their flicker blotting out the real stars, and the moons, too. It crossed Madrigal’s mind to wonder if Nitid—curious, peering Nitid—could see in.
Something is going to happen.