A doll-like woman catches my eye, sitting on the threshold of a half-open door. She wears her shawl pulled back, so all can see the beauty of her face. She pats a reddening salve into the curve of her lower lip and smiles. “Let me make you over,” she calls. A face-changer. I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never had the coin or the need for more beauty, especially not the ikon-sculpted kind.
But face-changers are skilled ikonomancers. She could know something more than the others.
She beams as I approach. “I’m sorry, I’m actually looking for information.”
“Oh?” Her smile dims a notch. “What sort, love?”
“There was an incident. In the fourth, at the old shrine. A man was taken by the Wardana.”
Her eyes flicker over my head, and a hand lands on my shoulder. My stomach sinks.
A gruff voice—I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman—speaks over me. “You don’t know anything about that, do you, Carver?”
The doll-like woman bats her eyelashes. “Not in the slightest.”
“You’d better tell this girl here where she ought to go.”
“Oh?” She glances at me. “If you’re sure. Three doors down, love. Good luck.”
The hand on my shoulder tightens and guides me past her. I roll my shoulder and duck, breaking my assailant’s hold, and bolt.
I sprint down the first alley I find, but a figure stands in my way. Backtracking, I hurtle down another and hit a dead end. I spin and face two hooded, shawled figures.
“Brave, but not very smart, is she?”
“Give her a break. She’s never had our hospitality before.”
My legs tense in preparation. There’s a gap between the bigger one and the wall and I launch myself at it.
Hands grab me around the waist and haul me up. “Let me go!”
I knee them in the chest, but they don’t falter in the slightest. Their back takes up my entire view; I can’t see where we’re going.
A rap of knuckles on wood, a creak of a door. A dark interior; I squint as we pass shadowed shelves, and make out folded bundles of—clothes?
My captor knocks again, and this time light pours out as the door opens. A hum of conversation and scattered clinks of metal. Could they be chains, like the ones Dalca put on Pa?
I’m carried over the threshold and deposited on my feet in front of some dozen people sitting around makeshift tables laid with food and drink.
They quiet, save for one man with round cheeks. “What’s this?”
One of my captors lowers her hood, revealing a sharp chin and tired green eyes. “Behold. May I present Alcanar Vale’s daughter.”
Several of them stand to get a better look at me, and the green-eyed woman puts her arm around me and guides me to a table at one corner of the room. Without fuss, she settles into a seat and gestures at the man behind a long counter. My fists at my sides, I stand and wonder if I can make it out of here. The other one who came for me stands at the entrance; I’d have to get past them.
“You can take off your shawl.” I don’t catch who spoke.
Four others are seated around the table, which seems to be an old door set on a crate.
I glare back at them. Who are these people who know about Pa, about me? To my left is a small woman with a mass of gray curls and the kindly face of a grandmother, save for the long scar that runs from the edge of her eye to her jaw. At her feet is a bundle of fluff—moss, by its shades of green and blue—which she spins into yarn by rolling it between her fingers and onto a wooden spindle. The grizzled, burly man at her side takes a swig from his cup and returns, with a click and clack of needles, to knitting a roll of yarn into a length of cloth. He grins at me when I meet his eyes, revealing that one of his teeth is marked with an ikon.
Directly opposite me is a tall woman, about Pa’s age, with silver-streaked dark hair that falls over her shoulders. She pulls a pair of half-moon spectacles off her nose and closes the book before her, fixing me with a frown. She’s so astoundingly gorgeous—like a warrior from legend, carved in cedar and brought to life—that I get a little embarrassed just looking at her.
Beside her is a delicate-boned person with a shaved head and pink cheeks, who squints at me with the intense focus of the inebriated.A crumpled mass of cloth, half-mended, sits in their lap. And beside them, to my right, is the green-eyed woman who dragged me here, who beams at me expectantly.
What is this? Cautiously, I pull my shawl down.
Gasps and murmurs of surprise go around the table.