—
Daimon joined Vivien Ravensley that evening for dinner in the Gold District.
The district was one of the outermost in Severluna. Blessed a couple of
centuries before by the god Severen with a stray nugget of gold, it had
attracted swarms of prospectors. A sanctum had been built near the site of the
finding. The gold ran out not long after the sanctum was completed; the
disappointed prospectors moved on. Even the god himself moved on; at least the
sanctum’s Mystica did. The sanctum, unsanctified, wore many faces through the
years. Now it was The Proper Way, a restaurant and brew-pub named after the
street on which it stood.
They sat at one of the little outdoor tables overlooking the distant lights
floating on the dusky blue Severen: night-fishers, barges, cruise and
container ships following the river to the sea.
Vivien had caught Daimon’s eye at a party one late night, an endless affair
that drifted from place to place by the hour, its cast changing across every
threshold. He kept seeing her at odd moments: once leaning against a colorful
paper-covered wall, her hair a sleek helmet of burnished copper around her
face, another time between two marble statues, her own face as matte white as
theirs, her eyes a rich peacock blue flecked with gold that turned fiery when
someone struck a match to light a candle next to her. Looking for her, he didn
’t find her; she seemed to become visible only when he thought she had gone.
Then she would appear again across yet another threshold and give him
something new to notice: her very long, thin fingers, her smile that made him
think of otherworldly beings whose names were slowly vanishing from the
language.
Finally, she turned that smile to him and beckoned.
They put in an order for steak and vegetables and watched their supper cook on
one of the blazing grills on the restaurant deck. As they ate, Daimon told her
about his lunch with the king.
“It sounds like a fairy tale,” Vivien commented. “Your mother enchanted the
king for a night and—”
“Came up with me. Yes. It seems extremely tactful of her to vanish like that.
Asking for nothing from my father, no money, no help—and then considerately
dying. If it hadn’t been for my great-aunt Morrig, not even my father would
have known I existed. I certainly would never have known. I could be out in
the dark now, repaving highways or working on one of those container ships,
instead of having a palace to return to after sitting here with you.”
She looked at him over a forkful of blackened carrots. Passing car lights
caught her eyes, kindling that strange golden fire in them. “You’re not.
Returning. Are you?”
He smiled, entranced by that fire. “How could I?”
He was very familiar with her tiny, untidy apartment overlooking the sleepless
streets and the broad, busy river. But he had no idea where she worked. She
only laughed when he asked, and hinted of something involving dogs, or small
children, or the elderly. “Very boring,” she told him. “I do it; I get
paid; I don’t want to think about it.”
She scattered her past in riddles around the apartment. A photo of an ancient
village hung on her wall; it seemed made entirely of stone, its cottages and
streets and the lovely little bridge that arched over a meandering brook he
could not find on any map. A hundred-year-old sketch of a hoary castle stood
framed on the table beside her bed. It was ringed with water, one tower split
and sagging, the drawbridge drawn up tight, like a mouth clamped over a
secret. “Where I was born,” she explained of those things. “Only it’s not
in that photo—that’s just the antique part of Ravensley.” When he asked
about the name, she shrugged. “It’s old. Common in south Wyvernhold.”
Again, he could not find it on a map. “Too small,” she told him, laughing.
“The tiniest village in the world.”
She had come from there to Severluna, sometime in the previous year. Even that
was vague. But her vagueness would be accompanied by that bewitching smile. He
felt oddly comfortable with the lack of detail; it mirrored his own sense of
something missing. Half of him seemed anchored to his Wyvernbourne heritage,
but the other half lacked a solid place to stand. That part of himself drifted
aimlessly, feeling the lack, wondering what it was he could not see.
He said, cutting into his steak, “I am glad my father finally told me about
my mother. I wish he had told me what little he knew years ago. It would have
put an end to my endless imaginings. And I wish there had been more to tell.”
“A happier ending?” Vivien guessed. “She didn’t die? But nothing in the
world stays private these days. Her death made things tidy.” He eyed her; she
lifted a shoulder. “Nothing to tell, no one to know, nothing muddled or
messy.”
“Only between the queen and my father,” he said dryly.
“But Queen Genevra has been—” She paused. “Well. If not perfect, at least
perfectly discreet.”