Atticus grinned. “Every time I play him, I hope the same. And that is the important part. When you say Argent’s lines, don’t think of people listening to you. Immerse yourself in the need to make Terrelus hear you. The audience isn’t there to see you think about them. They want to see you heartbroken over the choices of a man who could be great, if only he could overcome his own demons.”

  “How do you do Terrelus's lines then? You can’t really want him to say them.”

  Atticus looked ahead of them, down the road. “In most characters, including Terrelus, there are things I agree with. Truths I feel.”

  Sable nodded. There was the one section where the truth of Atticus's words always warmed her. “When he claims…” She closed her eyes to remember the words. “I cannot but love her. I would face the gods themselves, could they be found. I would change everything on earth—save her.”

  She opened her eyes to find Atticus looking at her sharply. “Why did you pick those words?”

  Sable paused, suddenly realizing she’d misstepped. She shook her head. “I’m not sure.” Her own words felt cool with the lie.

  Atticus's expression didn’t waver. “I think you are.” He considered her for a long moment, before the sharpness in his face shifted to interest. “Do you know which words Leonis agrees with when he’s Epophus?”

  Of course she did. She waited for it every time she saw the play. But she wasn’t about to tell Atticus that. He turned his attention back to the road, waiting for her answer with a tension in his hands. She cast around for something evasive to say.

  And then it struck her: She was sitting on a wagon with Atticus.

  Atticus, the leader of The Duke’s Figment of Wits Traveling Troupe. Who, without any real compensation, was helping her and Ryah escape a city she’d never even hoped to leave.

  He deserved some honesty.

  “His final speech,” she answered, “where Epophus declares that he never had any other choice. That the world had set him on his path, and to have picked any other life, he would have betrayed himself.”

  Atticus didn’t move. “And Thulan?”

  The dwarf was harder. “There’s a moment as the warrior in Epophus's tale.” She tried to remember the lines, but that section of the play was a bit chaotic. “When he talks about the arrows not shot.”

  Atticus let out a small laugh. “The only bolts of mine that did as I wished were the arrows not shot.” He turned back to Sable. “How do you know that?”

  It felt odd to put it into words, but there wasn’t any way to pretend she didn’t have an unusual skill now. “I can feel when someone tells the truth, when they really believe what they’re saying.”

  “Feel it?”

  She thought for a moment. “Feeling is the best explanation. There’s a warmth to the truth. Like a thick blanket wrapping around you. It’s not the same as the warmth from the sun, or a fire, but if someone really believes what they’re saying, I feel a…sense of warmth around me.”

  “Does it actually have to be true? Or just something they believe to be true?”

  “It’s all about how much they believe it. The more strongly they believe it, the more I can feel it. If they’re lying, it feels sharp and cold instead.” She expected some sort of disbelief, but the man merely looked ahead. A slight frustration at the incompleteness of the description nagged at her. “It’s not really a feeling, though. It’s…” She sighed. “I don’t know how to explain it. Occasionally, when someone is really passionate about what they’re saying, they even look different. Brighter, clearer.”

  Atticus was silent for a moment. “That’s…” He ran his fingers through his beard, and looked back at her with great interest. “Do people tell the truth often?”

  She let out a laugh. “Barely ever.” He raised an eyebrow. “That sounded worse than it is. Most conversations are about things people don’t care about one way or the other. But occasionally, someone says something that is utterly true, that they mean with everything they are. And that feels different.”

  “Do other people notice?”

  Sable shook her head. “Usually the most truthful statement is tucked in the middle of the rest of it.”

  Atticus looked down the road. “That is one of the most unique talents I’ve ever heard of. How many people know about it?”

  “Only my sisters.”

  He glanced at her. “The one who stayed in Dockside knows?”

  A chill rolled over her at the thought of Talia telling Kiva. It took no imagination at all to see how he would view such a talent.

  She drew back a little from Atticus, realizing how much she was sharing with a stranger.

  “Thank you for telling me,” he said, meeting her eye. “I won’t use it against you, Sable.” The warmth reassured her more than the actual words.

  “I owe you more than you can know for taking Ryah out of the city.” She tried to make the words convey how deeply she felt them.

  He gave a slight smile. “Then pay me back by being the best Lady Argent any audience has ever seen.”

  Sable glanced at the play. “I intend to.”

  “I have no doubt you’ll do fine,” he said, his voice thin and cool.

  “Liar,” she said with a smile before climbing down from the wagon and walking back toward the others.

  Leonis and Ryah looked at her curiously when she returned. Thulan gave her the briefest glance.

  “Lady Argent,” she told Leonis, holding up the papers.

  “Excellent. I’ll run through your lines with you.”

  She gave him an apologetic look and started toward the wagon. “I’m supposed to work with Thulan.”

  The dwarf scowled. “Why?”

  She paused. “Atticus said if I wanted a feel for how the lines were said, I should come to you.”

  “I can play Lady Argent,” Leonis objected.

  Thulan snorted. “You make her sound like a spineless noblewoman.”

  Leonis frowned. “She is. She’s useless. Wastes time arguing with Terrelus when she’d be better off locking him in her wine cellar to keep him from doing anything stupid.”

  Thulan let out an annoyed huff. “Lady Argent is the only one in the entire play with any sense. If Terrelus would listen to her, he’d actually accomplish what he set out to do.”

  Sable nodded. “I agree with Thulan.”

  “They never would have let him live there in peace,” Leonis objected, sounding irritated.

  “He ran away before he bothered to try!” Thulan threw out.

  Leonis jabbed a finger at the dwarf. “You’re going to fault the man for leaving a place he didn’t want to be anymore?” His voice rose. “You?”

  Thulan growled.

  “Are we still talking about Terrelus?” Sable asked, glancing between the two. “Because I don’t remember him running from anything.”

  “Doesn’t he start a battle?” Ryah asked timidly. “I thought everyone died at the end of the play.”

  “If Terrelus had left,” Leonis snapped, ignoring her, “at least he’d have had reason to. He wouldn’t just be running away from ghosts.”

  Thulan’s gaze flattened and Leonis, after a withering look at the dwarf, lengthened his stride and stalked to Atticus's wagon. Thulan glared after him, exhaling with a rough, rumbling anger.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sable caught Ryah’s eye. She’d shrunk back from the argument and met Sable’s look with wide eyes.

  Thulan stared forward, angrily muttering something under his breath.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Sable climbed up onto the blue driver’s bench and sat at the edge, as far from the dwarf as she could. The wagon rocked irregularly back and forth. But despite the awkwardness of the motion and the fact she sat by an angry dwarf, it was almost soothing. The last two night’s exhaustion caught up with her. Her head spun and her body felt numb as it melted into the bench. She rubbed her face, trying to clear away the tiredness.

  This was the closest she’d ever been to Thulan, at least during the day. Everything about him was built on different proportions than she was. His legs, clad in dark wool trousers, were burly, his worn boots, hanging well above the floor of the wagon, were wide and heavy. Resting on his lap, he held the reins loosely between fingers that were not only twice as thick as Sable’s, but covered with leathery skin. In fact, a lot about Thulan was leathery. He wore a leather vest over his broad chest and scuffed, leather bracers on his arms.

  The bit of skin visible around his beard and bushy eyebrows was leathery, as well. His russet hair, pulled into several wide braids, hung down his back.

  Unlike most of the other dwarves she’d seen, Thulan’s beard didn’t hang long and wild to his waist. It was neat and trimmed, only a few fingers’ width past his chin. With no neck to speak of, the beard still touched his barrel chest, but for a moment, Sable was struck by how he wasn’t as brawny as she’d expected, despite being far more burly than any human she’d ever met. The urge to ask him about caves and tunnels, whether he’d lived in them and why he’d left, almost outweighed the severe, closed-off expression on his face. Almost.

  Instead, she cleared her throat. “I see why Atticus wanted me to talk to you about Lady Argent instead of Leonis.”

  Thulan glanced over at her, then turned his attention forward again. “Why are you talking to anyone?”

  “I need someone to recite Argent’s lines.” She held out the papers. “Probably only once.”

  The dwarf gave an annoyed huff and reached for them, handing Sable the reins in return. She took the thin straps of leather and held them at arms’ length.

  “What do I do with these?”

  Thulan gave her an incredulous look.

  “I’ve never driven a wagon. Actually, it’s been ten years since I’ve even ridden in a wagon.”

  He looked at the horses plodding mindlessly behind the caravan in front of them. “I think you can handle it.”

  Flipping open the papers, he set his finger on the top of a page and frowned at her. “You open scene three by yourself.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “It’s harder to get your bearings when you have no one to play off of.” The dwarf shrugged. “No way around it. You’ll start after Leonis finishes the constable’s speech declaring his intention to hound Terrelus to the end of the world.”

  “Come wind or storms or hoary frost.” Sable nodded.

  “That’s the one. He’ll clear the stage, and your lines begin as follows…”

  Thulan glanced at the lines before closing his eyes. He breathed deeply, erasing the scowl and replacing it with an air of worry. “An ill-bred wind disturbs the night.” His voice was still deep, but smoother and somehow feminine. “There’s a foreboding echo to the owls’ mournful songs.”

  Sable was caught off guard for just a moment by the change in the dwarf, but she focused on the words. Thulan’s voice rose, pleading, and Sable felt the longing as Lady Argent pleaded with the stars and moon and “deep musing shadows of the night” to impart their wisdom to Terrelus, to soothe his mind.

  Thulan’s words rolled on, and Sable drew them in, letting them line up neatly in her mind. The more the wagon rocked, the more sleepy she felt, but she forced herself to keep listening. When the dwarf finished going through them, Sable thanked him and handed him back the reins.

  Thulan frowned at her. “That’s all you needed?”

  Sable nodded. “I knew most of it already.”

  “Then go find Leonis to coach you through some movements. Because you can’t just stand on the stage like a stone.”

  For the next hour, she walked next to Leonis as he coached her through different ways to stand, pointed out which gestures were awkward on stage, and gave her general pointers.

  Jae and Serene walked in front of them. Serene kept her nose buried in a book, holding it closer to her face. Jae chatted cheerfully with her in a mostly one-sided conversation.

  Ryah had gone to the back of the wagon to rest, and Leonis had gone through Sable’s scenes twice before she let out an especially long yawn.

  “When was the last time you slept?” he asked.

  Sable rubbed her face. “It’s been a while.”

  “Go lie down in the back. When we stop for lunch, Atticus will walk you through more of it. You’ll want your wits about you and we don’t need Lady Argent falling asleep on stage tonight.”

  She almost objected, but it was barely midmorning and the idea of lying down was almost irresistible. Ryah was already asleep on the pile of curtains, so Sable climbed up next to her and settled in.

  The curtains were rough, the air in the back warm and dusty, but the moment Sable curled up against the pile of curtains, her eyes closed. Even the jostle of the caravan wasn’t enough to keep her awake.

  Her dreams began with green hills. She walked through them—flew through them. Tasted freedom and spread new, feathered wings so wide they brushed the neighboring hilltops.

  A black raven dove out of the sky, streaking toward a ravine. It shot through Sable’s wing, ripping it apart. Feathers scattered on the wind and she crashed down into ferns and mossy rocks. She stood, surrounded by a warm, damp gully, the walls blanketed with vibrant green leaves.

  And then, deep in a crevice, it began.

  The green darkened to black. Shadows grew, covering stone and leaf. Flames laced the edges and flickered in the depths. Pounding boots echoed off the rocks.

  Not here, she pleaded. Not these hills.

  She turned to run, but the world in every direction was nothing but darkness and flames. Ravens circled above her in the purpling sky. She sank down on the grass and found it to be nothing but ash. Sable grasped a handful and let it trickle through her fingers, just as she had a thousand nights before.

  She curled forward onto the scorched ground. Not here. Not again. The ground beneath her shook at the approaching boots. The fire drew closer, and she pressed her eyes shut against it.

  Heat crawled up her legs.

  She jolted awake.

  The sun streamed in through the wagon window, landing hot on her calves.

  She rubbed her face, trying to banish the dream. When her heart slowed, she sat up. The back door of the wagon was split into two parts, the top half flung open. Outside, the Tremmen Hills rose unscorched and vibrantly green.

  The wagon rolled off the road onto the grass. They must be stopping for lunch. An unexpected twinge of nerves thrummed through her.

  Atticus would want to run through the play. Lady Argent’s lines weren’t hard, but saying them in front of the troupe sounded…uncomfortable.

  The wagons pulled to a stop, and Ryah woke, stretching and peering out the back. The sisters climbed out to find Thulan and Jae unhitching the horses. Atticus called for Leonis, Merilee, and Sable.

  “To save time,” he said, “we’ll just go through the scenes Sable’s in.” He glanced at her. “Do you know the rest of the play enough to know where those are?”

  She nodded, the motion feeling a bit wooden. Her whole body felt wooden, actually. Her legs felt oddly sized, her arms too heavy to hang but too awkward to cross. Merilee’s bracelets jingled as she crossed her arms with perfectly natural ease and gave Sable a critical look.

  “Leonis.” Atticus motioned to some empty space near the red wagon. “Please finish up the scene before Lady Argent appears.”

  The tall man strode across the grass, his gait and expression matching what she’d come to think of Terrelus over the years. He began the speech at the end of his scene, ending with, “Come wind or storms or hoary frost.”

  He came off the imaginary stage and gave Sable a little bow, waving her on.

  She stepped onto the exposed piece of grass, feeling the eyes of the others on her.

  She opened her mouth, but realized she had no idea how to start Lady Argent’s lines. The words were gone.

  Atticus's brow knit together, and Merilee let out an annoyed sigh. Leonis's expression shifted from pleasant expectation to a grimace.

  “An ill-bred wind,” Atticus prompted.

  The words came rushing back, and Sable grabbed onto them. “An ill-bred wind disturbs the night.” Her voice sounded as wooden as everything else. “There’s a foreboding echo to the owls’ mournful songs.” The words were there now, all lined up. She focused on them, trying to block out everyone’s eyes. She knew she should be moving, but every movement felt more awkward than standing still. So she shuffled a few steps to the side, hurried off the rest of the speech, and breathed a sigh of relief when she’d said the last words.

  Silence greeted the ending.

  “That was terrible,” Merilee said.

  Atticus shot the woman an annoyed look. “It was a fine first try. The words were right.”

  “There’s a bit more to it than saying the right words,” Merilee said with a sniff.

  “You don’t have any scenes with Sable,” Atticus pointed out. “Why don’t you go get lunch?”

  “I’d rather see what sort of mess you’ve hired.”

  Atticus clenched his jaw and turned to Sable. “You’re focusing on the wrong thing, Sable. You should be thinking about what Argent is saying. Not about us.”

  “I realize that,” Sable said, trying to keep her voice calm. “But it’s impossible not to focus on all of you staring at me.”

  “We’re staring at you right now and you’re talking like a normal person,” Merilee let her gaze run over Sable’s stiff body. “Almost.”

  Sable glared at her. “That’s because these are my words.”

  Atticus scrubbed his fingers through his beard. “Let’s try the next scene. Maybe it’ll go better with Leonis there.”

  Leonis retook the grassy stage and began the next scene.

  It was easier saying her lines to Leonis, who played Lady Argent’s husband. She had him to focus on, at least partly, and he was not stiff at all.

  “Better,” Atticus said when they finished. “Let’s try the scene with Terrelus.”

  He strode onto the grass himself and began the lines before Lady Argent would appear and try to draw him back from the tragedy he raced toward.

 

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