everyone’s hearts to a new rhythm, and then Matthias led the twisting, turning, and enchanting music of the pipes. Sin spun with them, brightness flowing around her as if the music had become a shimmering ghost and was turning her in its arms.
Low and sweet and simple came the sound of Alan singing, his voice changed but still beautiful, a song about love and trust in darkness.
Sin twisted her body as if moving like this was easy, as if she was made of water and light. Her hair lifted in the wind, streaming curls with more light trapped in them, and she moved as if caught by the current of the night wind, arms swaying above her head and then moving gently down, palms resting against her body.
She danced from the lake surrounded by trees gone sunset orange in autumn and night, through the Market, cutting a path to where the pagoda stood.
She held her face just so, looking at nobody directly and so looking at everyone, welcoming her audience.
Then she pulled the long knife from her bodice and threw it straight and true, and at the cue Chiara flung up the curtain hanging in front of the pagoda. The knife thudded into a wooden pillar, and the curtain was caught.
Behind the curtain, in the center of the pagoda, stood Merris Cromwell and Mae. Over their heads, among distant trees, a golden spire shone like a crown, the memorial of a queen’s beloved.
Merris was all in black, her hair streaming black too. It was dark enough that nobody could see the traces of red.
Mae was wearing tiny beacon lamps as well. Sin had designed both their costumes, as Mae did not really have the eye for showmanship yet; she tended to go overboard. Mae’s dress was longer and lower, though, a softly glowing evening gown that cooled the brightness of her hair. Her eyes were shining.
“Mae of the Market,” Merris said, her voice echoing in the night. “Will you take my people as your own, guard them and care for them, protect them with all your mind and all your body and all your strength?”
“I will,” said Mae. “If they will have me. And if I do badly, they will be able to make a change. In seven years, I will call a meeting like this one, and I will call on Cynthia Davies. I will listen to the Goblin Market if they wish to take her as leader or keep me: I will lead the best way I know how, and in seven years if the Market wishes, I will follow her with all my heart.”
Merris turned her black eyes to the Market. She had not wanted to come back, but Sin had contacted her through the necromancer now running Mezentius House. She had not pleaded or begged, but she had argued that it was the only way to transfer the Market, safe and entire. She had been sure that some part of Merris would still care.
And here she was.
“What do you say, Market people?” Merris asked. “Will you have her?”
Sin stepped forward before anyone else could, and said into the anticipatory hush, “We will!”
They got applause for the moment, applause for the dance and the whole show, applause that went ringing on and on as Merris put her hands to Mae’s throat and fastened Celeste Drake’s pearl there for all to see.
“I’ve done my part, I think,” said Merris, standing in the shadows with Sin and watching her with Liannan’s eyes.
Nick was hovering at Sin’s back. Sin was not entirely sure if he was there as a silent threat, if he thought she needed protection from Liannan, or if he simply wanted to say good-bye.
“Yes,” Sin said. “Thank you.” She thought of Liannan and of Anzu, who had said he was betrayed. “And I’m sorry if you feel we took anything from you.”
“Anything from me?” Liannan asked, a subtle change in intonation the only way to differentiate between Merris and the demon now. Her eyes slid to Nick. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, my dear. He’s just strayed a little. You humans don’t live very long at all. A human lifetime to us, it’s only the duration of a game. You forget every game, after a while.”
“Not this one,” Nick said.
Liannan smiled at him, sweet and cruel. “All right, my darling,” she told him indulgently. “We’ll see. I’m off to play my own game now.”
She went over to Nick, her feet hardly seeming to touch the ground, and leaned up to kiss him. Nick jerked slightly away, and she only caught the corner of his mouth.
Liannan laughed as if she found him infinitely amusing. “See you later,” she murmured, and moved away, easy and boneless in the night, swimming through shadows.
“Merris,” called Sin.
She turned, the haughty face Sin knew so well smooth and young, but still the face she knew, half the woman she had cared for and half a demon.
But Sin was getting used to that.
“I loved you very much,” she called out. “I wanted you to know.”
“Yes, child,” said Merris, in her old impatient way. “I knew.”
Then she was gone. Nick and Sin exchanged glances, understanding each other well enough, and turned back to search through the lights of the Market for Alan.
Liannan’s open disbelief that Nick had changed, that the long, painful process of transformation could ever work at all, made Sin take especial note of all the magicians moving, some more obviously uneasy than others, through the Goblin Market.
She saw the fearless leader of the Aventurine Circle walking through the Market, using his usual method of diplomacy, which was talking at people blithely and persistently and moving on, leaving them stunned in his wake.
“He says after learning to talk to me, everyone else was easy,” Nick said behind her. “Which is funny, as I never recall him having trouble talking to anyone at all.”
