With a bashful wince, Daire watched her from the side and said, “The pretor told us about your consort—husband, that is. I doubt anyone would fault you for not trusting yourself anymore.”
She’d said no such thing, but he was right. She didn’t trust herself. “The pretor knew about my marriage?”
“He knows everything,” Daire said with a brief flare of his pale-blue eyes. He seemed to have more to say, but his attention was drawn to Ryquin’s back. His trepidation was vibrant. If not for all the lumens dancing through the twilight, she thought she might even see it glow.
Elloven asked him about Cirque Calliope instead.
“Oh! Now that is a sight to see.” He lifted his lumen higher. “I won’t spoil it for you. Pretor Estelar would be quite mad and rightfully so. He was so pleased when he learned you were arriving just in time to see it. It’s only one night a season, though it is a long one.” His chest puffed with a sigh. “I’m sad I’ll miss so much of it this time.”
“Aren’t you coming with us?”
“No, I...” He paused, boring a hole through Ryquin’s back, but the man was preoccupied with a stubborn Jesstin. “I will be doing something else. As will Jesstin.”
Elloven’s heart spiked in reaction to their upcoming separation. But Daire seemed to understand her sudden quiet and reached for her arm.
“He will still be close enough for your bond.”
“What will you be doing?” Her first thought was that Estelar had told Ryquin to occupy Jesstin to distract him, so he could speak with her privately. It would have been simpler to just ask. She was bursting with questions, and it wasn’t like Jesstin was thrilled to be near her.
But that was more than Daire was willing to say. He nodded at the village below, blazing with illumination. “I wish I could see Cirque Calliope for the first time again. What a wonder it is. Will you describe it to me later, as you saw and felt it?” He sounded earnest, like a child dreaming of a big adventure.
She smiled at him, despite the unease creeping through her. “I’d be happy to, Daire.”
Sesto hadn’t stopped stewing over the pretor’s assertion that he was harmless, or dreaming of ways to prove him wrong.
He supposed that, to look at him, he wasn’t the most assuming man. He was hardly a wisp taller than five feet, hairless, and with a high voice that had never been given the chance to drop before he was castrated and sent to the Reliquary to live out his life as an abbot. He’d still be there if not for Rhiain, who’d enthusiastically folded him into her family almost a decade ago.
He took the honor seriously. He might lack the physical prowess of Jesstin, the cunning of Rhiain, or the intellectual acuity of Asterin, but his intuition was the nearest thing to magic. In being ignored or overlooked, he was often underestimated. Is it worth holding their tongue in his presence, reducing him, in their minds, to an animal or a piece of furniture. Harmless. Useless.
For once, he was glad of it. Lady Elloven was mesmerized, perhaps even magicked, and would not be disposed to reason. Jesstin was so full of anger and resentment, his judgment was clouded. And the stable hand was far more involved in the scheme unfolding around them than he wanted them to know.
Sesto would again need to be invisible, innocuous. For Jesstin, he could be that and more.
“This is quite a spectacle,” Sesto remarked to the consort, Daire, as they moved through the fairway of a market called Covent Mystique, described by the sweet man as an “enchanted bazaar.” There were signs advertising animal parts for incantations, cast-iron kitchenry that looked like it had been forged from the dark recesses of the earth, enchanted cloth of silver and gold, and Sesto’s favorite: a stall that was no more than a large blanket covered in random trinkets the proprietor claimed were possessed by the souls of criminals. For a mere gold piece, add a murderer to your shelf today!
Daire had been assigned child-minding duty when he could hardly mind himself, but he was kind, and Sesto sensed no veneer hiding something more sinister. “You said this cirque only goes for one night?” Seemed like an unreasonable amount of effort for a single evening of entertainment, but what did he know?
“Yes,” Daire said softly. “Once a season, every twenty-one days.”
“Short seasons.” And quite a lot of effort for an event that happened with such frequency.
“How long are yours, Sesto?”
Sesto had never outright counted, but he reckoned he was close. “Oh, about eighty or ninety days. We have four. Springtide, autumnwhile, winter, and midwinter. We used to have summertide, but not for many generations. Here?” The answer should have been four as well, but everyone in Rivenholde acted like the place was in another world entirely, and he would learn more by entertaining that notion.
“Fifteen,” Daire said. “Oh, when the stalls are open later, you must try this mulled wine, Sesto! It’s the very best you’ll taste. The grapes are imported from Curia Rosedown, which is my home.” He frowned slightly. “Was my home. Still my prominence.”
When he turned, Sesto saw the glowing mark on the back of his neck: a circle filled with smaller circles. He had an urge to touch it and feel whatever magic was imbued, but he recalled how small and invisible he’d always felt when men tried to touch his bald head or ask him what it was like not to have testicles.
“And Rosedown, is it far?”
“Two peaks down the range. A day’s ride or so, weather depending.”
“How did you come to be here?”
“Oh.” Daire stopped walking and was solemn. “You won’t want to hear that story. It’s not very magical or happy.”
Sesto laughed bitterly. “Could it be worse than castration, torture, and being sold to the kingdom’s spiritual authority for a life of involuntary servitude?”
