Along the way, she felt drawn to a certain house at the end of a deserted street. Candles burned within the house. A party was in progress. Krystin heard people laughing. She stole close to the window, then looked inside. The man she had been looking for was dancing with his wife while several of his friends laughed and applauded.
"Impossible," she whispered. He should have been dead.
She remembered finding this man for the Night Parade. He had been insanely jealous and suffered from an all-consuming fear of losing his wife to another man. A handful of human-looking creatures had attached themselves to him like leeches wearing the faces and forms of newfound friends. In this capacity, they had manufactured lies about his wife's infidelities and told him that they could not turn away while his wife made a fool of him. He had murdered his wife, then himself, and the Night Parade had feasted upon his anguish.
Krystin returned to the inn without allowing herself any further detours. She arrived ten minutes before the Harpers returned, quiet and shaken after their escape from the harbor authorities. Only Ord sensed her distress, and when he tried to find out why she was upset, she pushed him away.
The next day, Myrmeen woke Krystin and insisted that the child share morningfeast with the others. Krystin moaned and complained that she was not hungry and only wanted to be left to herself, to sleep.
"There's nothing planned for today," Myrmeen told her. "Why don't we spend it together?"
"Yes," Krystin said dully. "I suppose."
She had spent the night in a deep, dreamless sleep. The visions that had been troubling her waking hours did not intrude. All she wanted was to return to that blissful state of oblivion, but she knew from Myrmeen's tone that the woman would not be put off. Myrmeen was making another one of her concentrated efforts to play mother to Krystin. The girl knew that Myrmeen's pleasant smile was forced, her words carefully rehearsed. Nevertheless, she did as Myrmeen requested. They spent the morning touring the markets, with Lucius maintaining his invisibility and watching them at a comfortable distance.
They stopped before a merchant selling clothing from the eastern nations and Myrmeen said, "I had a scarf like this once." She ran her hand across a brilliantly colored length of cloth that displayed a beautiful golden dragon. A sigh of disappointment sounded from her. "Unfortunately, our gold is running low, not something I'm used to dealing with."
"Like abstinence?" Krystin said. The words had surprised Krystin. She had no idea why she had said them.
Myrmeen's pleasant mood faded. "You have quite a mouth on you, you know that?"
Krystin shrugged. She had wished that Myrmeen would simply talk to her rather than at her. Their conversation consisted of sporadic bursts of speech followed by lengthy, unbearable stretches of silence. In the marketplace, with so many people noisily haggling over prices, Krystin could not evaluate the quality of the silence between Myrmeen's words. She needed something to think about, something to take her mind from the startling revelations of the previous night. Arguments with Myrmeen had become a normal, almost comfortable way to spend her day.
"What is your problem?" Myrmeen spat.
"You are," Krystin said without thinking.
Myrmeen grabbed her arm and fought down her impulse to slap the girl with the back of her hand. "By the gods, you're lucky we're in public, the way you speak to me."
"You want to hit me? Go ahead. I don't care. I've been beaten by the best of them. There's nothing you can threaten me with that's going to make me care. You don't know anything about me. You haven't even asked. I had a life before we met-a terrible one, but a life. My life."
"So did I!" Myrmeen howled.
They both stared at one another. Krystin did not need to gauge the quality of the silence this time. She could see the confusion and anger in Myrmeen's eyes, along with the guilt that had motivated her in the first place. The chasm between them was widening with every quiet moment.
"What did you, um," Myrmeen said haltingly, "what did you want to tell me?"
"Nothing," Krystin said with a tired laugh. "Nothing, Myrmeen. It doesn't matter." Say that it does, she thought. Say that you want to know. Let me tell you who I am. Stop thinking about who you want me to be.
Myrmeen was silent.
"What about the scarf? You were about to tell me something," Krystin said.
"No. Like you said, it's not important." Myrmeen sounded tired and defeated.
They continued through the marketplace in silence and soon allowed themselves to be separated by the crowd. Krystin did not object; even with Myrmeen beside her, she felt more alone than ever.
Krystin found a merchant selling tiny brass figurines. The statuettes were of elven folk. They were taken from a collection of stories that had been read to her by Madame Childress, the woman who had tended to the daily needs of Byrne's hunters at the estate. Krystin never knew if Childress was a Night Parade member or not. The woman had shown the children compassion and light, even as Byrne had embodied the shadows that always appeared to be watching them. Her memories of that place were vivid and overpowering.
The estate was overrun. Melaine didn't know you. And the storm is coming closer, Krystin. You can feel it.
"May I be of assistance?" a voice asked.
Krystin looked up to see a muscular, sun-baked blond man with a dark-haired child in his arms. The little girl he carried buried her face in his chest and took only a quick peek at Krystin. From the glimpse that Krystin had of the child, she could tell that the three-year-old would be a devastating beauty when she grew up.
"I was admiring your handiwork," Krystin said.
The man laughed and hefted the girl into the air. He kissed her forehead. "You see, my dear? I'm not the only one who thinks you're pretty." The man looked back to Krystin. "Or were you talking about my other handiwork, the ones on sale before you?"
Krystin smiled. "Your daughter's very beautiful."
The girl peeked out, chanced a slightly longer look at Krystin, then turned away and held on to her father for all she was worth. The man grinned.
"She's very shy," he said. "She's adopted."
Krystin asked the man if he had ever heard of Malach Byrne or his daughter, Melaine.
"Yes, it is very sad," he said. "Malach secured his fortune in the wake of the great storm-he was a builder. The city needed builders at any cost. He was a good man, though a trifle vain. He lost his hair and insisted on wearing a wig to make himself look younger."
The hair Melaine clutched to her breast, Krystin thought. The fact that she had not sliced it away from his cold flesh was comforting to Krystin.
"When did he die?" she asked.
"A year ago."
Krystin flinched.
"His daughter was never found. They say she hides somewhere in his old house. New tenants do not stay long. They are certain the place is haunted. I saw poor Melaine once at the outskirts of town, picking through refuse for her evening meal. A poor, sad child, no longer sane."
"A year," Krystin repeated dully. In her memories, Byrne had been alive three weeks ago.
"Dear miss, forgive me for inflicting sadness upon you. There are happier subjects. My figurines, for example. Each comes with its own personal story, which I will tell you-"
"I have no gold, I'm sorry."
The man smiled gently. "If I did not need to feed my princess and keep the roof above our heads, I would gladly part with one of them for you."
"No, you've given me all I need. I thank you."
Krystin turned and left the merchant, waving good-bye to his retiring young daughter. She envied the girl the life of love and happiness that would stretch before her in the coming years, then realized that there were no guarantees in life. A totally unselfish thought, something that even she would admit was quite unusual for her, came in that instant: