Shrike tapped it with his forefinger. He looked up to find Wren wearing a wry smile.
“Have you seen your reflection today?” Wren asked.
Shrike confessed he had not.
Wren laid his gyrdel-book on Shrike’s work-bench beside the mask and retrieved his shaving mirror from where it lay atop the medicine chest. He held it up before Shrike.
Above Shrike’s head, the silvered glass showed a cobweb of ruined flesh strewn between branches of bone.
“Ah,” said Shrike.
Wren set the mirror aside on the rim of the hollowed stump. He sat beside it, shrugged off his frock coat, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and beckoned Shrike to follow him there. As if Shrike did not already feel called to follow wherever Wren chose to lead him.
No sooner had Shrike joined him then Wren raised his hands towards his antlers—then hesitated. “If I may?”
Shrike nodded.
Ever so gently, Wren’s fingertips alighted on Shrike’s antlers. Shrike felt no pain, even as Wren’s hands came away with bloodied scraps of velvet like fallen leaves wet with crimson rain. Wren threw it into the fire as Shrike had done before him.
Shrike would not have begrudged Wren if he’d gazed on the gory mess of it all with revulsion. Yet Wren didn’t shy away from getting his hands as dirty as Shrike’s own. Again and again Wren peeled away the velvet with all the delicacy of a bard strumming a harp stringed with maiden’s hair. A touch brimming with mercy paired with eyes bereft of pity. Meeting his gaze felt like returning home.
The sunset had faded to full twilight when Wren ceased plucking the withered blooms of velvet and turned to the copper tap in the hollowed stump. He rinsed his hands, then, taking linen from the medicine chest, he soaked it through and brought it to Shrike’s antlers, polishing them as if they were blades of glass. The linen came away vermilion, then rust, then blush, then, at the final rinse, bearing just the faintest golden tinge. A dry clout daubed what he’d washed, then he brought up the shaving mirror again for Shrike’s inspection.
The soft rounded tips of chestnut velvet had fallen away to reveal gleaming points of ebony bone.
~
Chapter Twenty-Six
The first of May fell upon a Thursday.
Which meant Wren would have to ask Mr Grigsby for the day off in advance if he wished to join Shrike in dancing ‘round a maypole at the Court of the Silver Wheel.
By Wednesday morning, the final day of April, Wren had not yet invented a plausible excuse. He had, however, concocted an improbable one, and as he retrieved the day’s first delivery of the penny post, he slipped a letter from his waistcoat pocket into the bunch before handing the pile off to Mr Grigsby. Then he returned to his own desk to wait.
“Why, Lofthouse!” cried Mr Grigsby not a minute after. He held up a particular letter. “You’ve missed one for yourself! Here you are, and don’t feel you need wait to open it.”
Wren smiled and accepted his own letter back from Mr Grigsby. He read over the words he’d penned himself in his garret that very morning and let his face fall into an expression of sober concern.
“Nothing grave, I hope?” said Mr Grigsby, who of course watched him throughout.
“I’m afraid it is grave indeed, sir,” Wren replied. “My friend Mr Butcher has fallen ill and is in want of nursing.”
Not entirely a lie. Mr Grigsby needn’t know the peculiar particulars regarding Shrike’s ill health. Nor that Wren had already tended him by night for the past month and more.
“Dear me!” said Mr Grigsby in a tone of such genuine concern as to wrench even Wren’s withered conscience. “Has he no relations who might look after him?”
“No, sir,” Wren answered honestly.
Mr Grigsby clucked his tongue in sympathy. “Of anyone else I might ask if he had any friends to look after him—but I know he could have no nearer or more stalwart friend than yourself, Lofthouse.”
Wren’s conscience gave another feeble pang. He ignored it.
Mr Grigsby drew himself up with a look of great resolve. “You needn’t ask, Lofthouse. I grant you leave to see your friend. Stay as long as he requires you. And, if I might be so bold as to recommend, you may find the services of Dr Hitchingham most amiable.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Wren.
Mr Grigsby gave him a hopeful smile and returned to his post.
