Helain was still screaming when Ganelon awoke. Sleep fogged his thoughts. Dazedly he wondered if he might still be dreaming. He'd had them before, horrible dreams within dreams in which he thought he was awake, but wasn't.
No. Ambrose was at Helain's door, speaking soothing words to her. "We're here to protect you," the shopkeep said in his soft wheeze of a voice.
"Needle and thread," Helain shrieked. The spy's path. Don't you understand? The spy's path!"
Stiffly Ganelon rolled off the hard wooden bench. He found himself standing upon a blanket, which Ambrose must have covered him with some time during the night, only to have it kicked off onto the floor. Ganelon wished he'd kept himself wrapped up; his feet and legs ached with cold.
"Helain, are you all right?" Ganelon called. He knew she might not answer, but to ask Ambrose instead of her would be to admit that she was truly lost to him.
The shopkeep held up a hand, a halfhearted warning to keep Ganelon back. The young man came to the door anyway. It wasn't that he lacked respect for Ambrose; his heart would not allow him to abandon Helain to her pain. "What is it, dear heart?" he asked through the small barred window.
Like a wary animal, Helain slowly backed away from the door Her red hair all but covered her eyes. She cautiously swept aside matted bangs and stared at Ganelon. "Who are you?"
The question cut him like a blade. Even in the worst of her delusions she had recognized him, if only as a fond acquaintance. Before Ganelon could respond, Helain's features softened and she laughed. The sound was bright and clear. "You're looking very handsome this morning," she said, "even if you do need a shave."
Ganelon glanced at Ambrose and found his own astonishment mirrored on the older man's face. The question was far more lucid than any Helain had posed in the last few weeks. Her laughter was more amazing still. Neither man had heard that sweet sound for almost a year, since she'd shown the first signs of incipient madness.
Smiling broadly, Ganelon turned back to the little window. "You never did like it when I skipped a day with the razor."
"You're mistaken," she noted flatly. "We've never met before."
As swiftly as his spirits had been raised, they plummeted. "Don't you know me?"
"Ambrose said that you were here to protect me," Helain replied, "but I've never seen you before. Do you work the mines?"
The young man stifled a sob. "I'm Ganelon. We were to be married-and will be, just as soon as you get well again."
Helain clamped her hands over her ears. "I will not hear talk of love," she said. "I cannot."
"But you must, because I love you."
She screamed, not so much in fear as in grief. Ganelon thought briefly of the banshees that haunted Nedragaard Keep. He could almost hear an echo of their keening in Helain's cry. Had he not been so overwhelmed by his own sorrow and concern, he would have wondered at that insight, since he had never been near the keep and had heard of the unquiet spirits only in stories.
Ganelon felt Ambrose's hands upon his arm and let himself be steered away from the door. "You should not have told her that," the shopkeep said. "You know how it upsets her."
"Why?" said the young man piteously. "What have I done to her that she cannot bear to hear those words?"
There was no answer to this question, at least none that Ambrose or Ganelon or any of the other people who cared about Helain had been able to discover. A few days before she was to marry Ganelon, Helain had fallen ill. At first Ambrose had dismissed it as a fever brought on by all the excitement. As her guardian, he saw to it that she rested. Everyone expected her to recover in time for the ceremony.
The subsequent weeks and months saw Helain's condition worsen. For a time Ambrose feared she had contracted the plague, though he never let the possibility that he might catch the fatal sickness keep him from her side. With the help of Ganelon and a few of the more courageous miners' wives, he attended to her physical symptoms, which eventually abated. It was not the White Fever that had Helain in its grips, but some malady of the mind. For a full turning of the calendar the madness tormented her with paranoid delusions, kept her sleepless for days then plunged her into such profound slumber that she could not be roused by any means.
Through it all, Ganelon had proved constant. It had never been his nature to commit to anything unreservedly. He'd held a dozen jobs at the mine, none for very long. Only the support and tolerance of friends like Ambrose kept him fed. He missed shifts, slighted his duties, and disappeared for days, carried along by whatever "adventure" caught his attention. It was no easy task for Ambrose to keep the impulsive young man from the notice of Azrael's pit bosses. Somehow, though, he managed.
Ganelon's devotion to Helain, to their mutual happiness, was the only repayment Ambrose needed. Even after she fell ill, the youth never wavered, never let his wanderlust draw him far from the mine. In fact, Ganelon dedicated himself to the stricken Helain with such fervor that Ambrose feared he, too, had been possessed by a sort of madness, but it was nothing less than the frenzy of passion.
"Best we leave her to herself," Ambrose said after he and Ganelon had sat together in silence for a time. He drummed stubby fingers on the bench. "We should get to work. The sun's up, and so are our customers."
Ganelon nodded but didn't follow the shopkeep down the stairs from the balcony to the store. He sat with his head bowed, listening to Helain's screams and to the mundane sounds of Ambrose readying his shop for another day. Soon her shrieks dwindled to sobs, then whimpers. All the while, Ambrose went about his work, opening barrels and shifting crates. He was moving the wooden chairs used for the previous night's prayer meeting when Ganelon finally pulled on his boots, walked to the rail, and looked out over the ordered chaos below.
The large, dimly lit two-story room served as store, warehouse, meeting hall, and gathering spot for the people who worked the Veidrava salt mine. The miners and their families thought of the store as belonging to Ambrose, though he only ran the place. Like everything else of value in Sithicus, the shop really belonged to Lord Soth. The master of Nedragaard Keep had never seen the store or the mine, but his stunted seneschal visited often enough to keep that fact fresh in their minds.
"With the new stock of cloth from Borca, it should be a busy day," Ambrose called up to Ganelon. The shout brought on a fit of coughing, a reminder of the weakness in the older man's lungs from years of working in the mines. Still wheezing, the shopkeep unbarred and opened the front door. He expected to find customers queued impatiently.
He found his stoop deserted.
Ambrose stepped outside. As was his habit, he kept close to the door, within the confines of the building's early morning shadow. His years below ground had left him unaccustomed to sunlight Unlike the other men who'd survived their time in the pit, he had never reacquainted himself with it. As eccentricities went, this was unusual, even for a place of back-breaking, soul-deadening toil like Veidrava. But the shopkeep's kindness had long ago eclipsed this quirk in the locals' minds.
Squinting against even the weak light of dawn, Ambrose looked around. A group of miners' wives, dressed in coarse clothes of a uniformly drab style, milled together on the opposite side of the wide gravel road. They met the shopkeep's eyes but did not return his waved greeting. "What's the matter now?" he wondered aloud.
"Sheep do not traffic with wolves," answered a soft voice.
Ambrose turned to find himself facing a petite, gray-haired woman dressed in the brightly hued clothing of her tribe. "Magda Kulchevich," he said. "As always, I am pleased to see you."
Ambrose did not wonder how the woman had got behind him without making a sound, or why the miners' wives kept their distance. Madame Magda was raunie of the Wanderers, the small Vistani tribe that roamed the wilds of Sithicus. They were fortune tellers and traders and thieves. The locals shunned them, until they needed some shady work done. Then they were glad to pay the Vistani's fees, whether the price was reckoned in silver or blood.