State of Sorrow (Sorrow #1)(71)
There was no point in pretending they weren’t who they were – the country was abuzz with the news from Rhannon and the fact that both candidates were attending the Naming, even though no one had anticipated them coming to Ceridog.
So they didn’t try to be discreet, instead walking slowly through the town to the central square, Dain shadowing them closely. Though Sorrow felt horribly exposed, she tried to relax, reminding herself no one knew they were there.
She forced herself to pause and look in windows, as Luvian marvelled at the things for sale: books, jewellery, trinkets that could have no real use except to be looked at as they gathered dust, until eventually Sorrow’s curiosity was real, and her enthusiasm too. All around them Rhyllians walked and chattered, sitting on tables outside cafés with small cups of steaming coffee, gossiping in their lilting language, looking happy and relaxed. On a street corner a tall olive-skinned Rhyllian pulled a shining silver flute from a case and began to play, as passers-by flicked silver coins into a hat he’d left on the ground. Two children darted forward to dance, and Sorrow found her mouth curving involuntarily.
There was so much room for pleasure in the world, Sorrow realized, as Luvian handed her a small cake, topped with cream and crystallized petals, that he’d ducked into a bakery to buy after she’d pointed it out in the window. This was what she wanted for Rhannon. For life to feel worth it, not just be toil and misery.
Luvian handed one of the confections to Dain, who stared at the cake as though unable to believe it was real. She ate it in three bites, but there was a reverence to them that Sorrow found oddly charming. She would never have expected one of the Decorum Ward to be so … human. Though she was loath to admit it, after what happened at the bridge, and now this, the woman was beginning to grow on her.
When Sorrow took the first bite of her own cake, she couldn’t stop herself from moaning. She’d thought the feast at the inn was incredible, but it was nothing, nothing, compared to the rapture of sugar and cream that flooded her tongue now. She met Dain’s eyes with a complicit, chocolate-coated grin, as she licked the cream from her fingers greedily, not wanting a single morsel to go to waste. Irris hadn’t said it was like this. Sorrow was right to demand everyone give her cake, she thought giddily. There really ought to be cake every day.
When she glanced at Luvian, he was staring at her, rubbing the back of his neck, his lips parted, and she realized abruptly she wasn’t behaving like a future chancellor. She swallowed the remainder quietly, making sure she appeared composed every time her advisor darted a nervous glance her way.
Though she’d find a way to go back to the bakery before they left.
After they’d spent enough time establishing themselves as curious tourists, and Sorrow had finally recovered from her cake, they headed for the Registry of Colours. It was two streets back from the square, an old-looking, golden-bricked building that dominated the leafy avenue.
Sorrow pulled Luvian away from Dain. “How do we play this?” she whispered.
“Straight. There’s no point in lying, they’ll see right through it. We say we’re trying to trace the artist, and we know this is one of the colours they used.”
“All right.” She returned to Dain. “I’m sorry, but I need to ask you to wait here.” She pointed to a wooden bench, positioned beneath a tree. “This is confidential. You can’t come with us.”
“I’m supposed to guard you. I have orders.” When she’d spoken at the bridge her voice had been a commanding bark, iron-lined and brutal. But now her voice was soft, sweet even, at odds with her muscular frame.
Sorrow looked at her more closely then, at her clear, bright skin, her delicate nose and large, thickly lashed eyes. She couldn’t be much older than Luvian, perhaps mid-twenties. Her cheeks still had a childlike roundness to them, and again Sorrow thawed towards her. She wasn’t the battle-hardened monster Sorrow imagined all the Decorum Ward were.
“I’m sorry, Dain. I can’t tell you why you can’t come, but that’s my order. Please,” Sorrow tried.
Dain gave her a long look, and then nodded. “Very well. I’ll wait.” She sat on the bench, knees apart, hands resting atop them.
“Call me deluded, but I think Vine might have accidentally assigned me the only decent member of the Decorum Ward,” Sorrow murmured to Luvian as they approached the door to the registry.
“Miracles do occasionally occur.”
He pulled the cord that hung beside the door, releasing it when a deep bell chimed behind the thick wood. A moment later, the door swung silently open and a young Rhyllian woman stood there. Like Rasmus, she was adorned in jewellery, her ears lined with hoops, another in her left nostril, and one piercing her left eyebrow. Her paint-splattered fingers were full of rings too, and through a tear in her equally stained tunic, Sorrow spied another ring through her belly button. The girl looked from Sorrow, to Luvian, then back to Sorrow, before frowning.
“We have some paint fragments we’d like to match,” Luvian began, in Rhyllian.
“I know who you are,” the girl replied in heavily accented Rhannish. “You’re here about the portraits. Of the lost boy returned. You want to know who painted them.”
“Yes.” Luvian blinked. “But how—”
“It’s me,” the girl said, leaving Luvian gaping like a fish, and Sorrow stunned into silence. “I paint them. Well, I painted the last one, at least. You’d better come in.”