away. The town awoke one day to a sky as bright as blue steel and a sun that turned the bay to gold in the morning and white fire in the afternoon. That sense of lethargy was gone. In the potato fields the carts rolled with new vigor. In Green Heart an army of women began once more to bedeck with flowers the podium where Jamie McCann and Susan Delgado would he acclaimed this year's Reaping Lad and Girl.
Out on the part of the Drop closest to Mayor's House, Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain rode with renewed purpose, counting the horses which ran with the Barony brand on their flanks. The bright skies and brisk winds filled them with energy and good cheer, and for a course of days—three, or perhaps four—they galloped together in a whooping, shouting, laughing line, their old good fellowship restored.
On one of these brisk and sunny days, Eldred Jonas stepped out of the Sheriff's office and walked up Hill Street toward Green Heart. He was free of both Depape and Reynolds this morning—they had ridden out to Hanging Rock together, looking for Latigo's outriders, who must come soon, now—and Jonas's plan was simple: to have a glass of beer in the pavilion, and watch the preparations that were going on there: the digging of the roasting-pits, the laying of faggots for the bonfire, the arguments over how to set the mortars that would shoot off the fireworks, the ladies flowering the stage where this year's Lad and Girl would be offered for the town's adulation. Perhaps, Jonas thought, he might take a likely-looking flower-girl off for an hour or two of recreation. The maintenance of the saloon whores he left strictly to Roy and Clay, but a fresh young flower-girl of seventeen or so was a different matter.
The pain in his hip had faded with the damp weather; the painful, lurching stride with which he had moved for the last week or so had become a mere limp again. Perhaps just a beer or two in the open air would be enough, but the thought of a girl wouldn't quite leave his head. Young, clear-skinned, high-breasted. Fresh, sweet breath. Fresh, sweet lips—
'Mr. Jonas? Eldred?'
He turned, smiling, to the owner of the voice. No dewy-complexioned flower-girl with wide eyes and moist, parted lips stood there, but a skinny woman edging into late middle age—flat chest, flat bum, tight pale lips, hair scrooped so tight against her skull that it fair screamed. Only the wide eyes corresponded with his daydream.
'Why, Cordelia!' he said, reaching out and taking one of her hands in both of his. 'How lovely you look this morning!'
Thin color came up in her cheeks and she laughed a little. For a moment she looked forty-five instead of sixty.
'You're very kind,' she said, 'but I know better. I haven't been sleeping, and when women my age don't sleep, they grow old rapidly.'
'I'm sorry to hear you're sleeping badly,' he said. 'But now that the weather's changed, perhaps—'
'It's not the weather. Might I speak to you, Eldred? I've thought and thought, and you're the only one I dare turn to for advice.'
His smile widened. He placed her hand through his arm, then covered it with his own. Now her blush was like fire. With all that blood in her head, she might talk for hours. And Jonas had an idea that every word would be interesting.
With women of a certain age and temperament, tea was more effective than wine when it came to loosening the tongue. Jonas gave up his plans for a lager (and, perhaps, a flower-girl) without so much as a second thought. He seated sai Delgado in a sunny comer of the Green Heart pavilion (it was not far from a red rock Roland and Susan knew well), and ordered a large pot of tea; cakes, too. They watched the Reaping Fair preparations go forward as they waited for the food and drink. The sunswept park was full of hammering and sawing and shouts and bursts of laughter.
'All Fair-Days are pleasant, but Reaping turns us all into children again, don't you find?' Cordelia asked.
'Yes, indeed,' said Jonas, who hadn't felt like a child even when he had been one.
'What I still like best is the bonfire,' she said, looking toward the great pile of sticks and boards that was being constructed at the far end of the park, eater-corner from the stage. It looked like a large wooden tepee. 'I love it when the townsfolk bring their stuffy-guys and throw them on. Barbaric, but it always gives me
'Aye,' Jonas said, and wondered if it would give her a pleasant shiver to know that three of the stuffy- guys thrown onto the Reap Night bonfire this year were apt to smell like pork and scream like harpies as they burned. If his luck was in, the one that screamed the longest would be the one with the pale blue eyes.
The tea and cakes came, and Jonas didn't so much as glance at the girl's full bosom when she bent to serve. He had eyes only for the fascinating sai Delgado, with her nervous little shifting movements and odd, desperate look.
When the girl was gone, he poured out, put the teapot back on its trivet, then covered her hand with his. 'Now, Cordelia,' he said in his warmest tone. 'I can see something troubles you. Out with it. Confide in your friend Eldred.'
Her lips pressed so tightly together that they almost disappeared, but not even that effort could stop their trembling. Her eyes filled with tears; swam with them; overspilled. He took his napkin and, leaning across the table, wiped the tears away.
'Tell me,' he said tenderly.
'I will. I must tell somebody or go mad. But you must make one promise, Eldred.'
'Of course, molly.' He saw her blush more furiously than ever at this harmless endearment, and squeezed her hand. 'Anything.'
'You mustn't tell Hart. That disgusting spider of a Chancellor, either, but especially not the Mayor. If I'm right in what I suspect and he found out, he could send her west!' She almost moaned this, as if comprehending it as a real fact for the first time. 'He could send us
Maintaining his sympathetic smile, he said: 'Not a word to Mayor Thorin, not a word to Kimba Rimer. Promise.'
For a moment he thought that she wouldn't take the plunge … or perhaps couldn't. Then, in a low, gaspy voice that sounded like ripping cloth, she said a single word. 'Dearborn.'
He felt his heart take a bump as the name that had been so much in his mind now passed her lips, and although he continued to smile, he could not forbear a single hard squeeze of her fingers that made her wince.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'It's just that you startled me a little. Dearborn … a well-spoken enough lad, but 1 wonder if he's entirely trustworthy.'
'I fear he's been with my Susan.' Now it was her turn to squeeze, but Jonas didn't mind. He hardly felt it, in fact. He continued to smile, hoping he did not look as flabbergasted as he felt. 'I fear he's been with her… as a man is with a woman. Oh, how horrible this is!'
She wept with a silent bitterness, taking little pecking peeks around as she did to make sure they were not being observed. Jonas had seen coyotes and wild dogs look around from their stinking dinners in just that fashion. He let her get as much of it out of her system as he could—he wanted her calm; incoherencies wouldn't help him—and when he saw her tears slackening, he held out a cup of tea. 'Drink this.'
'Yes. Thank you.' The tea was still hot enough to steam, but she drank it down greedily.
'I don't like him,' she said. 'Don't like him, don't trust him, none of those three with their fancy In-World bows and insolent eyes and strange ways of talking, but him in particular. Yet if anything's gone on betwixt the two of em (and I'm so afraid it has), it comes back to her, doesn't it? It's the woman, after all, who must refuse the bestial impulses.'
He leaned over the table, looking at her with warm sympathy. 'Tell me everything, Cordelia.'
She did.
Rhea loved everything about the glass ball, but what she especially loved was the way it unfailingly
