May she always know happiness. Don't worry about me. Protect the girl.
She stopped in the marketplace and wondered if that had been a prayer to some god or another; if so, it had been her first. Perhaps exposure to Myrmeen and the Harpers was changing her after all.
Suddenly a glint of green fire caught her attention. She stopped and found herself captivated by a beautiful emerald pendant. The item hung from the fat arm of a dark-haired woman who had her own booth in the marketplace. Several other necklaces were displayed on the woman's pale, meaty forearm, but it was the emerald pendant that arrested the girl's attention. Upon closer examination she realized that it was a locket. As she stared at its polished surface, Krystin began to see images form. Suddenly the world fell away. She was no longer aware of the crowd surrounding her, of the suffocating shroud of voices that had hung upon her. For a single, precious moment, all that existed in the world was the locket.
Within its emerald depths, she suddenly knew, lay the answers that she so desperately sought. A face began to form as she stared at the locket, the face of the old man from her waking dreams.
"There you are," a voice called.
The sounds of the crowd fell upon her like a wall of distress. She turned from the locket and saw Myrmeen standing before her with an expression of impatience.
"I thought I told you not to wander far," Myrmeen said.
"Did you?" Krystin said absently, her gaze returning to the locket, which now held only a glimmering promise of the magic she had felt within it only seconds before. Hope seized up within her as she took Myrmeen's arm. "Buy it for me."
"What?"
"Please, Myrmeen." She swallowed hard. "Mother, if you like. The green locket. Buy it for me. You can afford it."
"Let's get out of here," Myrmeen said darkly.
"No," Krystin wailed. "You have more money than can be found in any temple in this city. Buy me the locket!"
Before them, the fat woman stared at the mother and her child with amusement. She shook her arm, making the chains rattle slightly. "I like a customer who knows what she wants. Go on, buy her the locket. It's cheap."
Myrmeen grabbed Krystin's arm and yanked her away from the booth, where the fat woman urged them to come back, offering to cut the price in half.
"Didn't you really look at it? It was dented and cracked," Myrmeen said. "If it's baubles you want, I'll give you a cartload when we get to Arabel. But for now we're low on gold and we can't squander it on cheap costume jewelry."
Krystin looked over her shoulder. She was able to glimpse the locket for another moment, then the crowd intervened and the fat woman disappeared.
For the rest of the afternoon, Krystin lapsed into a sullen mood. Late that evening, when Myrmeen brought the evening's meal, Krystin refused to acknowledge her presence. Myrmeen set the tray down carelessly, the loud crash of steel plates and utensils causing Krystin to tense momentarily, then relax once again.
"Fine," Myrmeen said. "If you want to act like a child, then I might as well treat you like one. You can sleep in this room alone tonight. I'll make other provisions." Myrmeen waited for a nasty retort. When none came, she frowned and left the room.
Several hours passed. When the hunger in the pit of her stomach became too overwhelming to be ignored, Krystin went to the tray and bit into the corns and meats that had been left for her, though they now were cold. In the gleaming metal of the picked-clean dish, Krystin saw the reflection of the room behind her. She thought of the terror that once sought her out in the darkness, the nightmares that until recently had come for her every night. They had gone away only when she had begun to sleep in Myrmeen's presence. Bringing a metal cup to her lips, Krystin drank deeply and was surprised by the pleasant surprise of peppermint bubbling in her mouth, a treat that she had told Myrmeen she treasured when she was a little girl.
Suddenly, out of fear and loneliness, Krystin began to sob. When her tears had run their course, she left her room and tried to find Myrmeen. She decided that she would tell the woman about the strange images that she had seen. Her memories seemed to be unraveling like a tapestry with a single thread that was slowly being pulled loose.
The door to Reisz's quarters was ajar and Krystin heard voices within.
"That's all that's left," Reisz said.
"We're all right," Myrmeen replied. "I chose this place for a reason. There's a depository less than a mile from here. In the morning, I want you to take this claim ticket and retrieve the cache I left there for emergencies. The gold you'll find should be enough to get us through another week or two, if we're careful."
"They're open all night. Why not go now?"
"Because the Night Parade revels in the darkness. We don't want to be seen by the burning man who nearly had us before, now do we?"
"Good point."
A sudden change came over Krystin. She thought once more of the locket, of the strange images that had come to her as she stared into its jade depths, and she knew that she had to own that locket, had to possess it no matter the cost.
Krystin crept back to her room and waited for midnight, her fear of the darkness all but forgotten in her excitement. When she was certain that the hour had come, Krystin returned to the room shared by Reisz and Ord. She found the door unlocked and quietly entered, using every technique of stealth that Myrmeen had taught her. She froze when she saw Myrmeen lying on the floor, her face turned to the wall, then relaxed and moved to the small nightstand beside the bed where Reisz lay. The claim note rested in plain view. She took it without incident, then retreated from the room without disturbing the others' sleep.
As she walked down the hall, Krystin heard Myrmeen sob quietly in her sleep. She stopped for a moment, thought about going back, then hung her head low and proceeded down the stairs.
Twelve
Krystin was painfully unaware that dawn had arrived. She had lost most of the night staring into the emerald depths of the prize she had betrayed her benefactor to acquire. Procuring Myrmeen's cache of valuables had been a simple task. The locket had been waiting for her in the marketplace. She had divided the gold that she had not spent, burying most of it in the soft, well-packed earth of a deserted, fire ravaged barn. The money would serve as insurance that, in the event the others did not survive the war on the Night Parade, Krystin would have a stake to begin a new life elsewhere-in Arabel, perhaps.
Returning to her room at the inn, she had sewed the remaining gold into the lining of her sash and the inside of her boots. Then she had curled up on her bed and held the emerald locket before her. Thin white beams of moonlight had sliced into her room and fallen upon the locket, reflecting the light with brilliant, prismlike shards. It was not the beauty of the object that accounted for its fascination to the young woman. Krystin knew that if she had been pressed to explain the locket's significance, she would fail in the attempt. All she knew was that she had seen this locket, or another trinket that looked identical to it, once before. She sensed that if she could remember exactly when and where she had glimpsed it the first time, she would be on the way to solving the mystery of what had happened to Melaine, Byrne, and Caleb Shar. She had to know if she could trust her memories.
As the night went on, her world had become a sparkling green field, a beautifully woven tapestry of hazy, indistinct images. She shuddered in anticipation as the fog encompassing her vision stepped up to the threshold of clearing then hesitated. Figures danced back and forth in the emerald world. They gestured broadly, inviting her into their land with words that she could not hear and actions that she could not quite discern.