young.â
Her voice flashed, the broken, growling quaver momentarily fading to return me to afternoons in the still air bent over the classics of the cityâs literature. âYou are still young.â
And you will never be young again, I thought, but halted the words before they passed my lips. Thus is the foolishness of youth, to think such things, as if I would be immune to the ravages of time. As yet uneducated by the years, I bent down to lay the bundle on a piece of broken masonry. âWhoever you are, take this offering in peace.â
âNone of it is mine.â
That was almost an aphorism from Alimanderâs Booke of Thought , which she and I had spent several weeks studying. âNothing belongs to any of us but the breath in our lungs,â I replied, quoting the ancient philosopher back to her.
This was an old game, and it must have caught at some corner of her memories of herself. âIf we do not hunt, we do not kill.â
I supplied the next line of that quatrain. âIf we do not kill, we do not eat.â
âIf we do not eat, we do not live,â she answered.
The closing line was âIf we do not live to hunt, why do we live?â
âI donât know, girl,â Danae said. âI do not know why we live.â That was when I knew beyond doubt that she was my old mistress of letters, and that, furthermore, she knew exactly who I was.
âI am so very sorry,â I whispered. My eyes stung with unshed bitterness. But for my deeds, she would still be hale and whole. âI lit the white candle and the black for everyone I could name within the walls of the Factorâs house, and also more for those whose shades were beyond my knowing.â
She made no answer. I waited, as the bright meadow at my back came further alive with the morning. The eddying breeze brought a grassy smell to war with the rotting funk of Mistress Danaeâs lair, while some troupe of insects began a cycling, buzzing hum.
Eventually, I turned to step into the sunlight.
âWait, girl.â
I paused, unwilling to face her again. Mistress Danae did not need my sharp gaze when trying to draw her own words forth. Instead I stared down across the shoulder of the meadow at the rucked-up forest of the lower slopes. A flock of birdsâstarlings?âcircled above a towering oak, as if something moved beneath. A haze of mist lay in the valleys farther below. Somewhere out of my line of sight Briarpool glimmered, and the Greenbriar River, which eventually spilled into the sea just west of Copper Downs. All through those woods and hills were mossy walls, stretches of paved trackway, tumbled towers. What was now almost a wildland had once been a daughter city of my adopted home.
I could see the sweep of the land, the benison of history given over once more to the wilderness. Whatever impulse or power had drawn the people of Copper Downs north into these High Hills had long since released them back to the chilly margins of the coast. The wonder of the struggle between the Dancing Mistressâ fading people and the power of the old Duke was that it had not prevailed over a much deeper time.
Or perhaps it had done so. Were humans driven from this land by pardines, some years after the grave builders had given up on their hilltop refuges?
My thoughts brought me back to where I stood, facing away from a woman who could not speak to me but had something she needed to say. I was not expected to answer her, that much was clear. Knowing this would take some time, I settled into a more comfortable crouch to ease a twinge in my back. This allowed me to remain faced three-quarters away from her while keeping her at the edge of my sight.
I did not fear attack. No matter how feral or desperate Mistress Danae might be, that slight, bookish woman could not overpower me. Rather, I wanted to see what she would do.
My patience was rewarded as she eased out into the middle of the tower floor. She
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