‘Not here!’ she snapped. She glared at both of us. ‘Pick up that trunk and follow me.’ Vindeliar took one end and I seized the other handle and we walked behind her. The trunk was not that heavy. Carrying it was only awkward because Vindeliar was such a weakling. He kept shifting his grip from hand to hand, and he walked leaning over as if he could barely lift it. The trunk bumped and skipped on the paving stones and knocked against my hip and calf. Every hundred paces or so, she had to stop and wait for us to catch up with her. Vindeliar strove to maintain her appearance. Men were halting to cast admiring looks at her. Two women exclaimed to one another over her hat and dress. She walked proudly and when she glanced back at us, there was a pleased light in her eyes I had never seen before.
We walked down streets crowded with folk foreign to my eyes. Sailors and merchants and workers, I guessed them to be, but in all manner of garb and of all different colourings. I saw a boy with hair as red as rust, his hands and arms speckled with freckles like a bird’s egg. There was a woman taller than any person I’d ever glimpsed, and her bare brown arms were sheathed all over in white tattoos from her fingertips to her wide shoulders. A bald little girl in a pink frock skipped beside her equally bald mother whose lips were framed with tiny jewels. I turned my head, wondering how the jewels stayed on and the trunk hit my calf on top of an earlier bruise.
I felt Vindeliar struggling to carry the trunk and maintain Lady Aubretia’s illusion. The third time Dwalia had to stop and wait for us, she said, ‘I see you are becoming useless again. Very well. You need not try so hard. For now, I wish folk to not notice us. That is all.’
‘I will try.’
Her beauty fell away from her. She became ordinary, and less than ordinary. Not worthy of notice.
Dwalia trudged through the crowds, and people grudgingly gave way to her, and we lurched along after her. I could feel Vindeliar’s magic failing. I glanced over at him. He was sweating with the effort to carry his end of the trunk and maintaining his illusion. His power sputtered and danced like a dying flame on a damp log. ‘I can’t …’ he gasped, and gave up his efforts.
Dwalia glared at him. I wondered if she knew he no longer cloaked her. But as we tottered along behind her, folk began to notice her. I saw a woman wince at the scar on her cheek. A little boy took his finger from his mouth and pointed it at her. His mother shushed him and hurried him along. Twice, pale folk stopped and turned toward her as if they might greet her but she didn’t even pause for them. Folk stared at her and she must have known they saw her as she truly was. One grey-bearded sailor gave a caw of dismay at the sight of her. ‘A feather bonnet on a pig,’ he said to his swarthy companion as they passed, and both guffawed.
Dwalia halted in the street. She did not look back at us as we caught up with her, but spoke over her shoulder. ‘Leave it. There is nothing in that trunk that I’ll ever wear again. Just leave it.’ She reached up and tore free the pins that had secured her hat, threw it to the ground and strode away.
I was stunned. I’d heard tears in her voice. Vindeliar dropped his end of the trunk with a thud. It took longer for me to realize she was serious. She didn’t look back. She stumped away from us, and we were both panting when we finally caught up with her. I was quickly aware that I had not trotted nor even walked much in our days aboard the ship. Her pace meant that I had little time to look around. I had only glimpses of a well-kept city, with wide uncluttered streets. The people we passed were clean and their clothing was simple but whole. The women’s skirts were wide-belted at the waist and the loose folds came scarcely to their knees. They wore sandals and their blouses either had no sleeves at all or sleeves like bells that fell past their wrists. They were taller than Buck women, and not even the dark-haired ones had curly hair. Some of the men wore only vests over their bared chests and their trousers were as short as the women’s skirts. I supposed it made sense in that warmer climate, but to me they appeared half-naked. They were lighter-skinned than Six Duchies folk and taller, and for once my pale hair drew not a second glance. I saw not a single beggar.
As we left the wharves and warehouses and inns behind, we passed some of the pink-and-pale-yellow buildings I had seen from the ship’s deck. There were flowerboxes below the windows and benches by the doors. Shutters were opened wide on this fine day, and I saw rows of spinning wheels in one pink building, with the spinners hard at work and I heard the clack of looms from the shadowed room beyond them. We passed a building that breathed out warmth and the smell of baking bread. Everywhere I looked, I saw cleanliness and order. It was not at all what I had imagined Clerres would be. Given how cruel Dwalia had been, I had imagined a whole city of hateful people, not this pastel prosperity.
There was other foot traffic on the road with us. Like the port part of the city, the folk hurrying along beside us were a mixed lot. Most of them were light-haired and fair-skinned and dressed in the garb of Clerres, but some were plainly foreigners and travellers from afar. Mixed in with them were men and women in guard’s garb, wearing a badge with a twining vine on it. Many of them stared openly at Dwalia’s ruined face, and some appeared to recognize her, but no one offered her a greeting. Those who seemed to recognize her looked shocked or turned away. For her part, she did not offer ‘good day’ to anyone and set a pace that meant we passed most of our fellow walkers.
Our path toward the white island led us along the shoreline. Water lapped on the beach. Gary-and-white sand sparkled over bones of granite. We walked on a smooth road past houses with vegetable gardens and arbours between them. I saw children, all dressed in the same sort of smock garments, playing in dooryards or sitting on the steps of the houses. I could not tell if they were boys or girls. Dwalia strode on. As she walked, I watched her tug the final pins from her hair and let her braids hang lank about her face. She took off her necklace and lifted the earrings from her ears. I almost thought she would toss them aside, but she tucked them into her bag. With them gone, all traces of Lady Aubretia vanished. Even her fine gown became an oddity rather than lovely.
To my surprise, I became aware of her feelings. She did not simmer and boil as my father had. My father’s thoughts and emotions had always surged against my senses; they were why I had first learned to make walls within my mind. Dwalia’s were not nearly so strong. I think I sensed them only because for so long I had pushed tendrils of my thoughts into her mind. It was as Wolf Father had warned me. A way in was also a way out. And now her thoughts seeped through to me. I felt from her a resentful anger that she had never been beautiful and had never felt loved, only tolerated because she was useful. I felt her heart wander back to a time when she had known love, once, and loved in return. I saw a tall woman, smiling down on her. The Pale Woman. Then, as if crushed under a fall of icicles, that feeling stopped. The closer we drew to the island, the more I sensed self-justification that was rooted in anger. She would force them to acknowledge that she had not failed. She would not allow them to mock or rebuke her.