The stream at the other edge of the meadow kept up its steady babble. In any other place in the world, except one, there would be birdsong rising from the woods to celebrate the day. Not here, though. Not with the two of us nestled here.
'Yes.'
I looked down at the badly creased shirt covering me, that bed of meadow grass with its unreal saturation of green.
I had been intimate with Sandu. I had had carnal knowledge of the prince of the Zaharen. Out here, in the open, without even birds to sing over the dried smears of blood on my inner thighs.
The silver below us, though—that sang. And the crystal lustres too, spinning brighter than ever from their boughs.
I waited for the usual blush to heat me; I could never seem to control it. But slowly I began to realize that I wasn't embarrassed or ashamed. Far from it. I felt ... liberated.
Sandu traced a finger down the length of my spine. He lay otherwise unmoving, only watching me when I turned my head to glance down at him.
He
'When are we to wed?' I asked.
'December. You hoped to give your parents time to come.'
I looked around at the fragrant summer meadow. 'Lia and Zane don't live a season away.' 'No. The other ones.' 'What,
'Aye. You thought it might be something of a peace offering, to invite them here. Things have—changed for us, Rez. I've promised not to tell you how. But we both thought your parents back in Darkfrith might have cause to celebrate our union. You've gone there now in a Weave, to see them.'
'But—how could I—'
'Believe me,l wanted to send a letter. But you're good at your Gift, despite the consequences. You were certain you could manage to be there just a few days ahead or behind today, and you gave me your word you'd go directly to Gervase and Josephine, and see no one else in your tribe. In and out. It was so important to you. You swore you'd stay safe.' He sat up, examining the slanted light. 'And now, love ... there's not much time left.'
'What do you mean?'
But as soon as I uttered the words, I knew what he'd meant. I felt the slow gathering pull of the Weave that wanted to come.
I looked at him with wider eyes.
'Thank you,' he said. 'Thank you for coming to me. Thank you for staying.'
'Sandu—'
'No, Honor. Listen now. These are the things you must remember. Yesterday was the eighteenth of August, in the year 1790. This meadow is called Sanctuary. You named it.' He rolled to his feet in a quick, graceful movement, found his breeches crushing some wildflowers nearby. He dug into one of the pockets. 'Take these with you.'
I stared down at the rings he placed into my open palm. Two of them, gold, unadorned. Just like wedding bands. A folded slip of paper beneath them.
'I can't,' I said, and tried to give it all back. 'I can't Weave with metal, not even paper, I think.'
He rebuffed me gently. 'You can, actually. I know that you can, because you already did.' He broke into a grin. 'Notice how I said that so well? No fumbling at all, no tripping up on the past and present. I'm getting better at this. You can take the rings and the note, Rez, because you already did take them.'
The tide of my Weave was a vast, airless vacuum reaching for me. It would suck me in.
Alexandru crouched down to kiss my forehead, his fingers splayed in the tangled mass of curls that clung to my cheeks.
'Give the note to me when you return,' he murmured. 'You can read it if you like, but it's for me. The rings are for us both.'
'I—'
'Good-bye, river-girl.' And I was gone.
He waited for her. He waited all that morning, as the sunrise faded into gloom, and the storm clouds puffed and receded, and then switched direction again to begin a swift, more menacing rolling in from the sea. He left her bell tower only once, to return below stairs searching for food; Alexandru was ravenous still, most likely from all the days of constant flight—not to mention last night. He went back to the room where they had supped but the table had been cleared, down to the last speck. The chamber stretching before him was stained with colored glass and decidedly lacking in food.
When a girl slipped in behind him he turned to face her, very much aware of his missing shirt and stockings and shoes, finding her watching him with her back square against the wall.
Pansy-purple skirts, a cinched bodice, a bulky cloth napkin folded up in her hands. She had to be about fifteen or sixteen, with dark eyes like the fiddle-boy, artfully arranged ringlets of powdered hair ... yet she looked like nothing so much as one of the peasants from his own mountains, a child of the sun and fields.
Perhaps it was only her frock. His people wore bright colors, too.
They regarded each other in silence. Then the Roma maiden thrust out her hands, offering him the contents of the napkin: a handful of pistachios, a crusty heel of bread and a chunk of hard cheese scented of marigolds, still in its rind.
Sandu nodded his thanks. Carrying the bundle with him, he climbed back up to the bell tower.
The promised rain of last night swept closer. He followed it as he ate, the slate-gray diagonal smear that bridged the sky and sea, pushing winds ahead of it, churning up the dead leaves in the gutters along the streets, plucking a host of golden-orange ones from the city trees.
He deliberated going to smoke to fetch his satchel before it hit. He had more garments there, a shaving kit, dried fruit, his boots. The temperature was dipping lower and while he didn't mind yet, it was going to be a true autumn storm, and he'd rather be garbed for it than not. He could get dressed at the palace,
find a way to steal out past the guards, and walk back here again.
But what if she came while he was gone? What if she thought he'd left too, for home, and attempted to follow?
Now that he considered it, would she even return here, to this little tower she'd Woven from? He'd seen her leave him on a handful of occasions, but he'd never once seen her return to her place of origination, her—what has she called it? Her Natural Time. It was possible she'd Weave back to some new site entirely. She'd never said how that part of it worked.
Sandu scowled at the floor, eyeing the pistachio shells he'd dropped in a pile, the crumbling lime mortar laid in lines between the pavers.
No. He'd wait here. She'd come back here. He didn't know how he knew that, but he did.
He perched a hip along the balustrade and watched the storm devour the curve of the horizon, all prospect of the sea and sky erasing into blank gray.
It looked, to his eye, just exactly like an impending obliteration.
The Weave sucked me back. I stood immobile for a moment to adjust to it; the first seconds were always the most disorienting.
I was in my bell tower, with the wind gusting. I was looking inland, at the long, low roof of the row of shops next door: a watchmaker, a haberdasher, a mercer. A clutch of women stood in front of one of the windows below, chattering brightly in Spanish about a hat one of them had bought, the quality of its plumes.
I whirled about. Alexandru was there, sooty clouds looming beyond him. He had balanced atop the railing
