Wystwood

28. A dead man's dance

The night was prowling shadows and distant starlight. Ada had not been given a candle for her room, and the darkness seemed to press past the window and draw each breath from her lungs with mist-touched fingertips.

The nightmares had come before sleep had the chance, but Ada focused on the green ribbon still tied tightly to her bedpost and imagined home. She thought she may have woken once in the early tides of morning, drawn not by the wispy streams of sunlight, but rather from a shadow that crept beneath her doorframe.

Footsteps faltered behind her unlocked door, gossamer threads of darkness filtering through the cracks and weaving around her bed slats. But through the peppered fog that clung to her consciousness, Ada heard the door next to her own softly closing. Though that, too, may have sprung from a realm of dreams as she slipped back to sleep.

Morning came in lazy ebbs, and it was not the sunlight that woke Ada, but Solen's calls from the landing. She rose from bed with stiff limbs and bleary eyes, the starched blankets folding around her legs as she shuffled towards the dresser.

The sun was a buttery wash across her skin, half blinding even when it struggled through the dust-coated window. It skittered across the building opposite her window, thick mortar hardened into bulbous beads between its bricks as if still wet. Ada brushed her hand across the grimy glass, squinting through the window and down between the houses.

A vast jasmine vine ran up the adjacent building, dappled here and there with tiny flowers that caught the sunbeams with pearlescent petals. It grew from a small courtyard that was arranged between the two houses, a makeshift allotment squared off inside it with vegetables jostling for space and overflowing onto worn-down cobbles.

The back door leading out from the taproom was ajar and swinging, but slate steps also led down to another hidden entrance. Ada guessed it to be a cellar door, perhaps leading to a pantry sheltered from each summer's warmth.

She dressed quickly, then draped her cloak around her shoulders before peering out onto the empty landing. She half expected a shadow to still be strung around her doorframe, but there was no sign that anyone had lingered by her room the night before. She cast the thought aside, running fingers through her hair and then heading to the staircase.

Solen sat alone by the bar, the room silent apart from the clinking of the woman's silver spoon against a jar brimming with honey, and she kicked a stool out for Ada as she entered. Solen's clothes looked identical to the day before, but now the bandolier of knives was tightened around her waist.

Offering Ada a plate of half-stale bread, Solen pushed her jar across the bartop and motioned for her to dip a slice into the syrupy honey. Ada eyed Solen's spoon as she chewed, a globule trailing down its stem and pooling between her slim fingers.

"Don't you want any?" Ada asked, waving at the stack of bread.

But Solen shook her head, licking her honeyed fingertips as she replied, "I don't want to waste the taste."

Ada hummed through a mouthful of bread crust and relished the honey's taste that was so much more decadent than marmalade. "Honey's a bit of a luxury in my town. We only tend to get any around autumn time."

Solen leant across the bar, lowering her voice as if she were about to share some intimate secret. Her lips were laced with sugar as she breathed, "I wouldn't say it's exactly common around here either. But when the world turns rotten, you've got to at least savour its sweetness."

"How dramatic," drawled a man from across the room, and Ada had to grasp at the bar to keep from toppling backwards.

Raeph lounged by the back door, dressed entirely in black like a figure carved from coal. The hollows of his cheeks were half hidden by his wild hair, and violet shadows shaded his face as if framed against a twilight sky. "Shouldn't you both be gone by now?"