Chapter 16 - Grand Enchanting
An energetic child slammed her shoulder into the back of Mr. Grey’s knee as she ran towards an enormous bubble-building of grassglass. Mr. Grey stumbled. He nearly toppled under the crowd stampeding toward the concert venue. At the last tock, Tom threw a meaty hand and caught Mr. Grey by the shawl. Mr. Grey steadied himself. He called after the girl, “My fault, miss, I’m sure.” She neither looked back nor apologized. She slipped through the crowd and disappeared.
Mr. Grey turned to Tom. “Thanks for the save, Tom. I hope Honeydew’s inside; that she beat this crowd.”
Tom wiped his dark eyes with the faded handkerchief. The man was still sleepy, Mr. Grey realized, from the party and the windmill flight. Tom looked pointedly away at the passing crowd. “Rein in your thinking,” he said. “Forget every other care. Think of your fiddle.”
Mr. Grey stepped aside for a dozen men wearing monastic robes of mothwing-patterned silk. He fiddled with the clasp of the violin coffin. He said, “Do you still have our treasure?”
Mr. Grey could clearly see the Treasure Chest™ dangling by its handle in Tom’s grasp. Tom hoisted it anyway.
“That’s reassuring,” said Mr. Grey. He paused, then asked, “How’s the dome work, by the way?”
“What do you mean, how?”
“There’s no reed platform. During any heavy storms, the bubble would flood,” Tom shrugged. Mr. Grey looked at the throng. “Should we be rushing? Getting our places?”
“You’re a performer. Your position’s been assured.”
“But what about you? You’ll want a nice place to sit.”
“I’ll hear you playing. Doesn’t matter where I stand.”
“Tom, I want to say something.”
“Then you should say it.”
Tom continued to look, not at Mr. Grey, but at the cataract of passing faces. Mr. Grey began, “You’ve helped me out a great deal.” He paused, tugging at the tight shawl around his neck. “With all the travel. And with the bandits. And with the Sourbeak Hopper. Thanks… for all that, Tom.”
“No thanks are deserved. I failed you on the island.”
The pedestrians zoomed past Mr. Grey’s shoulders, forcing him to keep his senses on the crowd. He did manage a quick turn of sharp grey eyes and ears to Tom. “Failed at the island? Do you mean the Long Faces?”
Tom frowned. “What about the Long Faces?”
“Oh, nothing of course. I only meant that…”
“I tried to fight them. But they’re incorporeal. I can’t hit nothing. I’m not at fault there.”
“I don’t say you were! Of course you tried fighting them. That’s commendable.”
“As long as you recognize.”
Mr. Grey waited a tock (or maybe three, he couldn’t say for sure). “But I don’t see how you failed?”
Tom folded his arms. “I knew not to eat cursed food. But coral candy… Malted chocolate, so smooth and silky and rich, like a Pinot spring.”
Mr. Grey said, “But you eating that coral… That saved me from it. That wasn’t failure,” he added consolingly. “More like unplanned distraction.”
Tom uncrossed his arms and rubbed his tired eyes. “I… also don’t know Lord Snake.”
“You can’t be sure, though. You might have both forgotten; some passing meeting.”
Tom spent a moment applying this perspective. He scratched his whiskers and gradually nodded. Tom abruptly heaved the treasure from the ground and turned to Mr. Grey. He said, “You have strange manners, but you’re good to travel with. Let’s adventure on.”
They joined the nearest current. The streams of people flowed like so many atoms of air, drawn into the grassglass lung by an inward breath.
Tom and Mr. Grey managed only a dozen steps in the gushing crowd. Tom suddenly shoved Mr. Grey sideways into a sliver of dry plaza. Mr. Grey caught himself on his automaton-legs. He managed a quick, stiff balance. He looked at Tom with raised brows. Tom pointed ahead.
Not a dozen paces away, there swayed the hairy form of Heavy-Shining-Gourd. The pedestrian traffic made a wide berth for his stylized beard. He parted the people stream and moved across the tiled courtyard unhindered. Mr. Grey glanced at the passing faces. He saw no conspiring looks; no rough-leather robes to indicate allied bandits. Gourd had come alone.
The hairy man swaggered through the crowd until a single stride separated him from them. Tom reached his spare right hand over a shoulder to touch the mallet hilt. Mr. Grey hefted his violin coffin.
Gourd laughed like a hyena. He said, “You flew above my ambush. A cunning approach.”
“We’d like to go inside now,” said Mr. Grey, “if it’s all the same.”
“Any candy in that chest?” asked Gourd. The beady eyes set in the midst of the hairy mass fixed onto the Treasure Chest™ dangling from Tom’s hand.
Tom shook his head. “We’ve got no candy on us. Leave and stop stealing.”
For a moment Gourd lingered his eyes suspiciously on the chest. Then he looked between Mr. Grey and Tom. “I must stop you here.”
“I don’t think you must,” said Mr. Grey. A pedestrian passing near him saw their breath in suddenly cold air.
“Ah, you haven’t realized.” Gourd grinned beneath the beards. He threw his hands and hair in a wide flourish. “I work for Lord Snow!”
Mr. Grey and Tom glanced at each other. “We realized that,” they said together. That was the gist of what they said, anyway. They used different words, out of sync.
“How could you possibly know?” asked Gourd. He shrank slightly, like a damp ball of lint.
“You wear his emblem,” said Mr. Grey.
Gourd looked down contemplatively at his field of facial hair. He tapped the four-gumdrop badge pinned there. “This is for fashion. Lord Snow said it was a gift. I wear it by choice, not obligation.”
“That may be the case. It’s still the great lord’s icon.” Mr. Grey added a note of stony sarcasm to the last words, separating them from his usual politeness.
“I would still wear it. Even if I didn’t serve. It’s a cool design.”
“You do serve him though…”
“You made a quick assumption. You could have been wrong.” Gourd brushed his hands from his beard and pulled his mallet from its back holster. “It doesn’t matter. You will not perform today. Set down the treasure.”
Tom did not set down the treasure. He grabbed Mr. Grey’s free hand in his, set the handle of the Treasure Chest™ in it, and let go. Mr. Grey tilted under the box’s weight. Tom wiped his eyes calmly with the handkerchief, folded it neatly, set it in his pocket, and slowly drew his own mallet. He stepped between Gourd and Mr. Grey.
“Join the crowd and go inside,” said Tom. He roused himself with a head shake. “I’ll handle this man.”
“I wouldn’t want to…” Mr. Grey began to say. Gourd, seeing Tom’s intention, rushed forth; a blur of dark hair. He swung his mallet down in an arc. Tom’s mallet flashed up to meet it. The flat barrel-heads of the weapons met with a loud, wooden clap. Passing pedestrians glanced at the fight. They gave the combatants a wide berth.
Tom stepped back. He said, “I’ll see you after the show.” Taking one hand off the mallet he shoved Mr. Grey towards the stream. Mr. Grey fought to keep his balance with the violin coffin and Treasure Chest™. The crowd yanked him toward the grassglass bubble.
As the stream of people pulled Mr. Grey away, and he lost sight of Tom and Gourd, he heard another wooden clap.
Mr. Grey watched a broad range of facial expressions meld into one collective, approving look. He watched robes of myriad patterns - butterflies, wagon wheels, clouds, shoes, socks, lanterns, torches, bugs, birds, everything ever existent under boy sun or daughter moon - rustle with applause. All those people strands sucked into the dome from the outer plaza, now formed an enormous Wine Medo host. As one they rose from alternating bean-cushion and flower-cushion seats. Their applause rattled the glass. Some stamped their feet. Some even shouldered their neighbors. The faces, and the robes, and the cheering, stamping, clamor; all of it bloomed under the humid, tart light streaming through the grassglass globe.
Ahead of Mr. Grey, on the central stage of pale reeds, the performer thus acclaimed bowed low and long. He wore a crinkled tinfoil robe and a crinkled tinfoil bandanna, and carried a shiny, curvy fiddle. He waved the fiddle in one hand and the foil bandanna in the other for a final flourish. Then he strode, crinkling all the way, and disappeared down the stairs on the opposite side of the stage.
Two performers stood ahead of Mr. Grey. The next one in line mounted the stage. The applause returned to a budding state. The performer set a cat skull on the pale reed floor - his grand treasure for the piece - and began to play.
Mr. Grey held his violin out stiffly and slowly. He inspected both it and the bow for perhaps the hundredth time. Anything to avoid the eyes in the people sea.
But Mr. Grey had so much more to look for in that dense throng! His eyes turned away from his fiddle. He tried concentrating on the current piece. His ears attended this newest performer. The notes were good - beautiful - but they could only hold his ears. Mr. Grey returned to the eyes, almost against his will. The grey orbs sorted the faces; tossing aside the unfamiliar, seeking those he knew.
Here was the puckered mug of an old man, with caterpillar eyebrows crawling across his forehead. This small-voiced elder had hired Mr. Grey to play at his epoch-ly yard sale. He’d paid Mr. Grey with his thanks, plus a handful of shiny pebbles. There was the gaggle of old women from the stove house. They wore their diverse robes of candlesticks, poetrees, garden rakes, and Sourbeak Hoppers respectively. In another fragment of the crowd, Mr. Grey picked out lord Pygmy-Footed-Snake’s single eyes. Around him sat the accompanying soldiers and attending doctor. They reclined in their flower-seats beneath comforters and blankets.
Mr. Grey hardly had time for a mechanical wave to these familiar faces and an immediate relocation of his eyes, when another former client waved for his attention. It surprised him to find so many of his small-gig patrons attending the concert. Surely they couldn’t all have come for him? Not every low-paying job had gone well. Yet all who knew and saw him smiled.
Mr. Grey sprung his eyes from the trap of another friendly set. He ran them up the auditorium stairs, along the scrolled iron handrail, towards the back of the theater. There the eyes stumbled into Ms. Maysey.
The valetudinarian perched atop a bean-sprout seat. With one hand she applied antiodor perfume; with the other she held her smoking pipe. The mice in her hair flinched alternately at each new note in the performer’s enchantment. Her eyes caught Mr. Grey’s. She smiled. He waved. Their eyes flicked apart.
Mr. Grey’s eyes hustled down a row of back seats. The eyes moved cautiously and steadily past the audience without knocking into the watchers’ knees. The eyes hurried past silken robes and corduroy robes and reclaimed-robes of plastic and used tissues. The eyes avoided uncomfortable lingering with any one face. Mr. Grey’s eyes wandered; stumbling against familiar eyes; cringing from new ones; two lost, restless grey orbs.
Then Mr. Grey’s eyes landed on his big-eared, big-nosed, no-eyed teacher. Nesting-Inside-Pots.
Pots couldn’t see him, of course. And she’d have no way of knowing he saw her. At some point after finding a flower-seat, she must have asked a neighbor where Mr. Grey stood. Pots now faced sightlessly in his direction. She maintained an unbroken, friendly smile, with two thumbs pointed at the grassglass roof.
Mr. Grey closed his eyes. He breathed through his nose. He straightened out his hair, mustache, and robe. When he opened his eyes again, they were grey and still. He let them rest on amiable Pots for a moment more.
Then he heard the performer on stage reach a trilling, crashing stop; the conclusion of another grand piece. The faces had so distracted Mr. Grey that he’d missed the enchantment’s effect. The respectful silence once more broke into a ringing wave of cheering, stomping, and applause. Mr. Grey looked, calm and aimless, over the confusion.
Mr. Grey’s eyes rolled along the upper boxes. They caught suddenly on another set. The cold, grey eyes attached to a cold, translucent pair. The latter sat in a head with fog hair and fog beard.
Lord Blushing-Inside-Snow looked on Mr. Grey from his high, private box. He wore the same robe of ivory feathers; it gave him the dinner-contemplating air of a snow owl. He fluttered his pale face with the four-gumdrop-patterned fan. Each little wave of air - like each new flake of snow on a mound - added chill to his mien.
Their eyes connected for a fraction of a tock. Had the look lingered, it might have devolved to a battle of stares; the kind of battle Mr. Grey never lost. But lord Snow kept his eyes from lingering. He looked away, but he also inclined his neck. Mr. Grey just caught the slight nod amidst the morass of cheering surrounding the lord. Lord Snow had nodded toward the next contestant.
Mr. Grey turned to the performer. The woman was just mounting the stage as the crowd sank back to their flower and bean seats. She was the last in front of him; the last to play before Mr. Grey faced the crowd.
Mr. Grey saw few of her physical features. A fox mask with a hundred whiskers hid her face. Her robe was fur - of the same creature - and its long sleeves covered her hands. Only her fingers, wrinkly and pale, showed below the cuff. She curled them over the handle of a Clydesdale-hair bow, and around the neck of a violin in the shape of a goose. On the pale reed stage she placed her grand treasure; a bottle of octogenarian tears.
Mr. Grey soon forgot all consideration of her mask or her hands. Mr. Grey, like every favored soul under the grassglass dome that day, had his sense stolen by her playing.
Mr. Grey’s eyes ceased their aimless roving over the crowd. He watched every push and draw of the bow across the strings. He watched - treasured, admired, was awestruck by - every subtle pounce of the fingers. He watched the shaking vibrato of the hands; at once sublime and horrible; a seizure dance. He watched the fox woman dance too; swaying in time with her music; her body somehow matching her hands, as though the swish of a sleeve or the nudge of a hip were integral parts of the piece; the masterful passion of the enchanter given necessary release in dance. And his eyes danced with her.
Mr. Grey’s ears danced too, but with cascades of alternating low notes and high notes. The notes sounded at once improvised and intended; creative and orderly. As the music persisted the notes formed into architectural shapes, building a melodious palace, from its bass foundations to its trebling pinnacle. The goose-violin purred, slow and soft, like a cat. The goose-violin bellowed in a sudden dragon engine sprint.
And then there was Mr. Grey’s nose. Undefended by cologne. The black-sheep of his senses. Dull beside the others. Slow on the draw.
What a tale that nose told after!
This master’s enchantment dealt in smell. Mr. Grey’s nose - the noses of the audience - absorbed an olfactory cannonade. The diverse notes hopping through the air carried a pungent panoply. When the notes were quiet, Mr. Grey smelled a country home, a baked goulash of apples, cinnamon, and nutmeg seeping from an oven. When the notes were quick and high, fresh laundry and lavender saturated the dome’s atmosphere. Slow notes were sometimes caramel, sometimes chocolate, sometimes peanut butter, but always sticky and fuddling on the brain. And when all these notes melded together, in rapid, strange combinations, the diverse scents melded too.
The aromatic promenade held the noses’ attention. And the player held the eyes’. And the music held the ears’. Only their tongues were spared. And throughout the performance, not a syllable was said.
The octogenarian tears evaporated. The fiddling master ended her overtures with a long, low, quiet note, and the smell of a harvest field.
Mr. Grey understood victory wasn’t possible. He’d expected some truly grand enchantments at this contest. He’d realized nobody would be shaving faces or tying shoes. In the performances before this fox-masked woman’s, he’d witnessed remarkable effects: blocks of ice shaped into miniature castles, assistants vanishing from crates without hidden doors, combining and dispersing of shadows to create spotlights. But Mr. Grey had never known, from experience or story, an effect so perfectly suited to contests. The combination of dance, song, and smell captivated the crowd. Mr. Grey understood why Lord Snow had pointed out this master. Any hope of victory collapsed against such an obstacle.
As the crowd rose in their largest cheer yet, and the fox-masked player bowed before her exit, Mr. Grey searched the crowd. He looked for Tom’s whiskered face. Mr. Grey hadn’t seen Tom before, and didn’t see him now. He saw Pots, alternately clapping and giving him the double thumbs up. He appreciated her support, but it seemed somehow lesser now, with his forthcoming loss.
Mr. Grey considered how he could escape unnoticed. He forgot Lord Snake’s treasure gift, and his promise to play, and the advice of the boot Ogur, and the support of Pots. Mr. Grey wanted only not to follow the fox-masked woman’s enchantment.
And then he noticed a patch of sitters among the standing crowd. They were a cluster of young girls and boys.
At their center sat Honeydew.
Mr. Grey singled her out with her robe of sunflower-eyes. One of the students stood to applaud, but Honeydew set a hand to the child’s shoulder and pushed it gently back to the flower-seat. She caught Mr. Grey’s eyes in her dark ones. She didn’t smile, or wave, or give a supportive thumbs-up. She gave him one nod; like lord Snow’s, but for him alone.
Mr. Grey took another steadying breath. He searched for a comfortable thing to remember. His ticker was still in Honeydew’s care. He hadn’t had time to get it from her. But the violin in his hand felt smooth, familiar. He focused on it, felt its comfortable weight on his shoulder, the tightness of its strings.
The fox mask woman in the fox fur robe left the stage. The applause faded. The people sat.
Mr. Grey mounted the stage with six quick steps. He walked over and stood in its exact center. He turned to face the audience. He set the old boot - no longer an Ogur, still a grand treasure - on the floor before him. His grey eyes remained open, but he didn’t see the crowd’s eyes. He saw Honeydew, back at her wheelhouse, accepting his vacation invitation.
Mr. Grey plucked at each string once to check its tuning, brought the bow to the strings, and played.
The grey man’s body and face hold sculpture-still.
But, his bowing arm pumps like a train’s coupling rod. It hurls notes. It takes the audience by surprise. The music ruptures onto the hush, commencing quietly. Charging faster. Charging louder. Each new note swelling. It flurries along the aisles and down the rows. It rushes by faces tinted expectant-green under the grassglass dome. It buzzes past ears. It hums down throats.
Then a sudden check. Not a stop, a stumble. The notes maintain a rhythmic chug, but they wobble. Deliberately. Chord carriages run over the alien audience; alarmingly unsteady and attractively loud. The notes are pushy. The notes are low. Except, then a sudden chime. A high tin bell squeals behind the wobbling lows at spare intervals.
The grey body and face are without expression. The bow arm saws. The left fingers skitter, punching down like cattle-guns onto the strings. The fingers pull the hand down the neck like mechanical spider legs. Still the warbly and warped notes, still the high chime of a finger’s plucking lunge. This loose wheeled music plunges into the alien ocean; ambushes the listening ears.
The different elements coalesce: the chugging, the warping, the tinny bell. The green, alien faces start to shift. In the green bubble of glass, rainbow auroras wave. The swirls paint the audience in sudden, vibrant color. One patch looks up; their faces flush with strangers’ blood, as shiny crimson color-light drops through the roof. Another section follows; their eyes shine with the heat of a fire’s cradle. Purples and blues and new colors of turquoise and pink and azure swirl over the crowd. Some colors land on upturned faces. Some dye hair and shoulders. Some linger in one spot, strobing from one hue to the next. Some hurtle like celestial nebulas over the wide people space.
Through these swathing, shifting colors; through the wobbling, chugging measures of the enchantment; through it all, there is nothing in the performer to distract the crowd. No ostentation. The enchantment changes colors. The colors dance on almost every person, almost every surface, in the concert hall. But the colors do not touch the player, and the player moves not a muscle more than the music needs. He stays, as ever, grey.
The music, color, and enchantment carry on the warped charge. They gain speed, rushing on, but gradually soften too. As though the music has broken through the grassglass. As though the shifting colors speed frictionless and unstoppable into the unknown sky. It sounds off, farther and farther away, with the occasion tinny bell-chime, or swirl of electric danger-sound.
The piece wobbles and chugs away, back to colorless silence.
Mr. Grey felt a soft tap on his spine. He turned to see Tom, sweating and wiping his brow, but otherwise hale.
“Good to see you Tom,” said Mr. Grey. “I looked for you in the crowd.”
Tom wrung his handkerchief and began folding. He said, “Heavy-Shining-Gourd kept me. But I heard you play.”
“I hope you weren’t much troubled?”
Tom pointed a finger over Mr. Grey’s shoulder. Mr. Grey looked. He plied his eyes through the clusters of people in the plaza outside the grassglass dome. He picked out Gourd’s distinguishing beard, skulking among the idlers. Gourd looked unhurt, but weary. Shiny sweat covered his canvas of hair; many of the miniature beards styled across the broad mead looked wild and bedraggled.
Gourd caught Mr. Grey’s eye. He averted his own and skulked away.
“Did he carry our treasure, by any small chance?” asked Mr. Grey.
“I think he spent it.” Tom pulled a cluster of gummy-elkhorns from a pouch and chewed with a thoughtful air.
Mr. Grey clasped his hands and waited.
“What was your grand enchantment?” asked Tom after some intense chewing.
“Oh nothing of note. A shame you missed out on them. Some wondrous effects. Now the fox player; she commanded attention.”
“Your playing sounded oddball; in a way I liked.”
“We’ll see what the judges think.” Mr. Grey inclined his head to the concert hall facade. At the top of the broad steps leading in, a huddle of judges - Lord Snow among them - deliberated. A few performers and members of the crowd milled nearby, looking expectant. Most people were happy to wait and chat in the plaza.
“The fox lady won.” Mr. Grey said as a matter of fact.
“You gave your highest effort?” asked Tom.
“I wasn’t disappointed. In my piece, I mean.”
“What matters the winner then?”
“The winner always matters,” said a voice from behind.
Mr. Grey and Tom turned, and met the loping approach of Honeydew. Her school students - dressed in budding-flower robes - slunk about in circles close behind. As she drew up to Mr. Grey and Tom, Honeydew spun to address her following. “Thank you for coming. You can return to your homes.”
One by one each student opened their palms towards her, bowed, said, “Thank you Wisdom Honeydew,” then ran away. Honeydew ignored her departing students. She turned to Mr. Grey and Tom.
“You played pretty well,” she said to Mr. Grey. She nudged his shoulder with a fist, in the way of a friend.
“You hid in the crowd,” said Mr. Grey. “I was glad to mark you out; your sunflowers helped. And you brought students.”
“I did more than that. You had heavy-shouldered foes.”
“I think the fox mask triumphed. She deserves the prize.”
“The winner always matters,” Honeydew reiterated, adding at the end a sly tongue click. “Before I’m sidetracked…”
Honeydew darted her hands into the Wine Medo robe’s many folds. The hands searched beneath the silk; the patterned sunflowers rippled like real ones caught in playful Wind. After a few tocks’ searching and a click or three of irritation, she drew forth and held out Mr. Grey’s pocket ticker.
Mr. Grey took his ticker from her with a delicate pinch of thumb and index. He ran his grey hands over the metal, returned to its familiar smoothness. He saw his grey eyes captured in the shiny, unmarked casing. He turned the ticker over and polished the unfractured glass face with his gaze. He watched the tiny rectangle hands tock, tock, tock their way over the cold marble disc. Feeling it and seeing it tock, he felt - knew, somehow - that the pocket ticker was perfectly set to the time; perhaps by careful work of the tinker, or perhaps by the simple rightness of that state.
“You forget how to tell time?” asked Honeydew, as Mr. Grey’s inexpressive face blankly contemplated the ticker’s.
He looked up at her. “It’s good to see it working.” Mr. Grey darted the ticker into its usual pocket. The maneuver felt smooth and natural. He asked, “Was the search grueling, for a tickersmith?”
Honeydew related her own adventure; hunting through town and country, searching for a Wisdom of Artifice and Timekeeping capable of mending the broken ticker. Mr. Grey asked how much he owed for the repair. She ignored the question.
“You had a secret to tell,” said Tom after she’d reached the end of her story.
“It’s not a secret,” she began with a satisfied smile. “It was careful strategy. What I did…”
Before Honeydew could reveal what she’d done, however, another voice timidly requested their attention from the background of clustered people.
Mr. Grey looked to the side, followed by Tom and Honeydew. His eyes waited - still and patient - on the squeaking-haired, saddle-robed, ruddy-cheeked approach of Ms. Maysey. She hurried in lightly bouncing steps through the packed plaza. When anyone shifted near her she jumped in surprise, letting off tiny gasps and tiny clouds of pipe smoke.
Ms. Maysey released the remaining smoke in a wispy trail as she reached the trio. “Glad I caught you,” she said to Mr. Grey in one rushed intake of breath. “I had to give my praise. Well done.”
“Thank you, Ms. Maysey.” Mr. Grey inclined his head.
“Your piece was inexplicable and weirdly fascinating.” Her mouse hair shook with mirth. Her eyes drew wide and she added, “Of course it was reallytruly very good despite, er, rather, because of that! I mean, I liked the whole prismatic thing.”
“Much too generous. It was kind of you to come.”
“I wouldn’t turn down an invitation.”
Before Mr. Grey could ask who she’d come with Tom said, “You seem to be in a rush.”
“Goodness that’s right! Got to hustle. Heading off to Glory Days. If you’re going that way, I’ll see you there,” Each successive phrase came to them from greater distance as Ms. Maysey scurried into the crowd.
“How’s she paying the boat fare?” asked Honeydew.
“She’s hypochondriacal,” said Mr. Grey. “It’s intractable. She’s on a health trip.”
“You had a secret to tell,” said Tom to Honeydew, exactly the same as before.
“She almost told it herself,” said Honeydew with a shoulder prod in the direction Ms. Maysey had gone. “What I did was…”
Yet again Honeydew’s attempt at telling her scheme failed. This time it took sound as an unfamiliar, gravelly voice. “Your eyes and ears folks! Attend with them if you please.”
Honeydew, Mr. Grey, and Tom turned to the marble frontage of the grassglass dome. The conference of lordly judges faced the crowd. They looked over the milling crowd from a tight semicircle. Lord Snow - frigid as ever - stood on the leftmost side. A leather-skinned and leather-robed gentleman on the far right called again for attention. He went on, taking frequent raspy breaths between his words. “At this marked Moment… we distinguished councilors… have named a victor…”
The distinct knots of people held their collective breath. The distinguished councilor collected his. He named the victor of the competition.
The victor was the lady in the fox mask.
Mr. Grey applauded with perfect, rhythmic claps, and he stopped clapping at the exact midpoint of the fade-out. His shoulders remained perfectly square. His eyes faced forward.
The lady in the fox mask ascended the steps to claim her Dragon’s Hoard™ prize. Tom lumbered beside Mr. Grey as the applause dwindled. He placed a hand on the stone shoulder and said, “You played your own way; performed a grand enchantment. Let that be your prize.”
“As I said before, I think she deserved the win,” answered Mr. Grey. “And it’s not so bad. I’ve missed Starharbor. It feels like it’s been ages. Since I was last home.”
“What I’ve been trying to say,” began Honeydew. She was immediately interrupted.
Lord Snow had come. He floated over to the group. Nearby pedestrians shivered. His pale feathers, fan, and foggy hair gave the air a mean chill.
Honeydew whirled. She unsheathed a scowl. From between pulled back lips and alabaster teeth, she said, “You’re interrupting.”
Lord Snow did not pay her the least attention. He set his eyes against Mr. Grey’s. They stared at each other.
And stared…
And stared…
Tom and Honeydew stood by silently. They felt instinctively the solemnity of the moment. Mr. Grey stared; unmoved. Lord Snow stared; he waited for Mr. Grey to avert his eyes, to blink, to give up.
Like ice, waiting for stone to melt.
After a long stretch of time - where even the sun above held motionless, wrapped up in the contest - lord Snow slowly closed and opened his eyes. “You were not the worst player,” said the lord.
Honeydew burst out angrily. “You employed that wooly stooge, sicked him after us.” She pushed herself up beside Mr. Grey and glowered at lord Snow.
Lord Snow looked coldly at her. “I wished you not to perform. Perhaps I misjudged.”
Honeydew readied a diatribe. Lord Snow cut it off. He inclined his head ever so slightly to Mr. Grey. Then, just as quickly as he’d come, he glided away.
Honeydew stamped and ground her heel into a courtyard tile. “That’s not an apology,” she said through a tensed jaw.
“For him it may be,” suggested Tom.
“We should get going,” said Mr. Grey lightly. “We do have packing.”
Honeydew, still grinding her teeth and heel, said, “I’ve got some words to say about that! Any other intruders? Any interruptions?” She waited several tocks, glaring at the crowd, as though threatening anyone else to step forward.
Finally Honeydew took a calming breath. She spoke slowly. “Here’s what I managed. I invited your clients, and that Maysey girl, and my teaching class. And I had them bet on you. Winning the contest.”
She relaxed as she went on, and produced her best lecturing face. “Stakes are a new field. Little betting goes on here. With all of those bets, your odds were the best. Fox Mask Lady’s odds were low, but I saw through her. She was a ringer. When all the town bet on you, I bet on Fox Mask. So I won the pot…”
Mr. Grey stared, not yet comprehending. “How much did you make?”
“Enough to reach Glory Days. A ticket for me, a ticket for you. And a ticket for Tom too.”
“That thought was… cunning; exploiting the odds,” Mr. Grey considered the scheme. “You gambled on my failure.”
“You made others lose,” said Tom. He looked hard at Honeydew. “Took treasure from your students.”
“Only a little,” said Honeydew. Both Mr. Grey and Tom saw she’d avoided considering her guilt.
In a defensive tone she turned to Mr. Grey and added, “Do you or don’t you want to follow Jodee Coats?”