arms and snakes for teeth. His tail had been wrapped around your tender throat a thousand times and his eyes held the secrets of twilight, the end of humanity, the beginning of something new and repulsive.
That was not entirely true, she reminded herself. Sometimes he was human. He even appeared handsome and kind. Did he change, or did he create illusions? It did not matter. He was one of the nightmare people; that was all that was important. He would die with the rest of them.
An hour later, she arrived at the estate where she had been housed for the better part of her childhood. The building was deserted, overrun by weeds that clung to the sides of the two-story building. She stared at the estate in shock.
Not possible, she thought. This is not the way I remember it. The iron gate surrounding the estate had been rusted shut, and she was forced to climb over it. The dogs that had prowled the grounds were silent. Deep down, a part of her knew that she had heard the barking of Byrne's hounds for the last time. The estate had changed to an impossible degree. She had been here less than a month earlier, just before the desert raiders had taken her from the streets that had been her home after she had left the estate.
She heard a rustling behind her. Krystin spun and drew one of the daggers Myrmeen had begrudgingly allowed her to keep. When she saw the figure standing before her, she lowered the knife immediately.
'Malach Byrne is dead,' the child said in a singsong voice, her head tilted to one side, her body as thin and drained as a wilting flower. 'Malach Byrne is my Daddy, and Malach Byrne is dead.'
'Melaine,' Krystin whispered in shock.
'Daddy's dead, Daddy's dead,' Melaine sang. She stopped suddenly when she saw Krystin, a gasp of terror choking off her words as if hands had closed about her throat and were strangling her into eternal silence. The child was dressed in rags. She carried something in her hands that appeared to be the scalp of a man. Long, stringy hair was woven between her pale fingers.
'Melaine, what's happened?' Krystin said.
'Who are you?' Melaine spat, clutching the black, hairy object to her breast as if it were a toy she had played with in her childhood. Her eyes were the pale gray Krystin had remembered, her features plain, her small nose upturned.
'Don't you recognize me?'
Melaine backed away, her small, bare foot catching on the root of a large tree. She fell back, the impact knocking the wind from her. Krystin rushed to her side and placed her hands on Melaine's arms. The young girl tried desperately to wriggle out of Krystin's embrace, but she was weak and malnourished, her flesh mottled with bruises and sores.
'Melaine, it's Krystin. I'm your friend.'
'Daddy's men will find you. They'll hurt you. They won't let you touch me, they won't!'
Krystin tried to hold back her tears, but she could not restrain the racking sobs that escaped her. 'Melaine, we've been friends all our lives, please!'
'Daddy's men will find you. Daddy's dead, but his men will find you. They can't find me. I'm too smart for them. They want to take me away in a cart, like they did him. They want to bury me in the ground, or burn me. I know, I've seen. I followed them. I watched them. I know what they are. I know what they want to do with me!'
'Melaine, please, don't you know me?'
The straw-haired girl stopped wailing long enough to look into Krystin's face. Sanity briefly flickered in her eyes, then the light of reason faded and her head came up suddenly, her teeth snapping like those of a ravenous animal. Krystin let her go and flung herself back to avoid the attack. Melaine sprang to her feet with unexpected grace and ran off, singing, 'I don't know you, I never did, I never will. I only know Daddy, and Daddy's dead, but before they burned him, I took his hair, and soon, and soon;..'
Her voice trailed off, and Melaine quickly vanished into the night. Krystin sat for a long time and allowed herself to cry for the friend she had lost. Finally she could cry no longer. Her strength drained from her, Krystin returned to the gates, managed to drag herself over the top, and began the long walk back to the inn.
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.
