“Nick,” Alan choked out at last. His voice was destroyed, as if someone had been slowly strangling him for days.
He dragged himself up into a sitting position, and his outstretched hand almost reached Nick’s body, fingers hovering over his shoulder, as if Alan was too scared to touch him.
Alan’s hand finally fell on Nick’s shoulder, very lightly, very gently, the same way Sin pulled the blankets over Toby when he was asleep and she did not want to wake him.
Nick lurched upward, shuddering, black eyes staring and terrible, like a dead thing come to unnatural life.
Alan did not flinch.
“Don’t you ever,” Nick snarled. “Don’t you ever do anything like this to me again.”
“Okay, Nick,” Alan soothed him. “I won’t. I promise.” “You’re just lying,” Nick said. “You said you’d never leave. You always lie.”
“I know,” Alan murmured. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“I missed you,” Nick raged, his voice cracking, and he put his head down, forehead pressed against Alan’s knee.
Alan laughed a little, trembling and amazed, and Sin felt a rush of triumph, like the victorious adrenaline that always ran through her exhausted body after a successful performance, but multiplied by a thousand.
Mae laughed, her laugh a victory song even as she held her brother up, and Sin looked at her, knowing that their smiles mirrored each other, joyful and fierce.
Then Sin looked at Alan, and he looked back at her. He looked so much older, or as if he had been through an illness everyone had thought would prove fatal. There were crow’s-feet scored deep in the corners of his eyes, and his hair was thick with silver. His eyes had not changed at all, still dark steadfast blue and dear.
“Alan,” she whispered.
He whispered back, “Cynthia, I’m here.”
She had him back. The Market was safe. They had lied and murdered and now they had trapped the magicians, become almost as bad as the magicians, ready to see people as food for demons.
There was already one man possessed, walking through London in the rain. There would be more. The Market had to accept that. Sin had to accept that, what they had become in order to win.
It had been worth the cost. But it was such a cost.
Alan stroked Nick’s hair with hands that could not stop shaking.
“Shh, it’s all right,” he said, lying again already, making the lie a lullaby. “Everything’s all right now.”
Sin turned back to the window, watching through the glass as that dark shape walked away through the rain, the human lost, the demon alone.
She had been in enough battles before to know victory was always bitter, and the bigger the fight, the worse the cost. But she hoped she would never again taste victory as bitter as this.
22
The Leader of the Goblin Market
THE LIGHTS OF THE GOBLIN MARKET WERE SHINING ON THE arching branches of the trees around Kensington Gardens. They were floating on the silvery surface of the lake, like lilypads with light instead of a lily.
Sin was dancing.
She was covered in tiny beacon lights like the one she had used in Black Arthur’s house, shining like pearls with tiny candles set inside, and strung together across her skin with gossamer-thin threads of silver. It was a costume to brighten the old audience’s eyes and dazzle all those for whom this was their very first Market.
The Goblin Market was spread around the lake on all sides, larger than it had ever been before, like a tiny city.
Sin knew there was nothing more important than opening a show with a bang.
She was dancing in silence by the lake, an illuminated apparition, her reflection a white shadow on the waters, her feet moving through the dark grass. People had started to gather, murmuring to one another, a hushed spoken start to applause.
Two tall torches were burning on either side of the lake.
The torches carved a warm orange cave in the evening. There was a cold wind blowing, making the flames of the torches form strange shapes, as if they were dancers themselves.
The music started, lifting the scene to a whole new level. The drums of the Market started first, setting everyone’s hearts to a new rhythm, and then Matthias led the twisting, turning, and enchanting music of the pipes. Sin spun with them, brightness flowing around her as if the music had become a shimmering ghost and was turning her in its arms.
Low and sweet and simple came the sound of Alan singing, his voice changed but still beautiful, a song about love and trust in darkness.
Sin twisted her body as if moving like this was easy, as if she was made of water and light. Her hair lifted in the wind, streaming curls with more light trapped in them, and she moved as if caught by the current of the night wind, arms swaying above her head and then moving gently down, palms resting against her body.
She danced from the lake surrounded by trees gone sunset orange in autumn and night, through the Market, cutting a path to where the pagoda stood.
She held her face just so, looking at nobody directly and so looking at everyone, welcoming her audience.
Then she pulled the long knife from her bodice and threw it straight and true, and at the cue Chiara flung up the curtain hanging in front of the pagoda. The knife thudded into a wooden pillar, and the curtain was caught.
Behind the curtain, in the center of the pagoda, stood Merris Cromwell and Mae. Over their heads, among distant trees, a golden spire shone like a crown, the memorial of a queen’s beloved.
Merris was all in black, her hair streaming black too. It was dark enough that nobody could see the traces of red.
Mae was wearing tiny beacon lamps as well. Sin had designed both their costumes, as Mae did not really have the eye for showmanship yet; she tended to go overboard. Mae’s dress was longer and lower, though, a softly glowing evening gown that cooled the brightness of her hair. Her eyes were shining.
“Mae of the Market,” Merris said, her voice echoing in the night. “Will you take my people as your own, guard them and care for them, protect them with all your mind and all your body and all your strength?”
“I will,” said Mae. “If they will have me. And if I do badly, they will be able to make a change. In seven years, I will call a meeting like this one, and I will call on Cynthia Davies. I will listen to the Goblin Market if they wish to take her as leader or keep me: I will lead the best way I know how, and in seven years if the Market wishes, I will follow her with all my heart.”
Merris turned her black eyes to the Market. She had not wanted to come back, but Sin had contacted her through the necromancer now running Mezentius House. She had not pleaded or begged, but she had argued that it was the only way to transfer the Market, safe and entire. She had been sure that some part of Merris would still care.
And here she was.
“What do you say, Market people?” Merris asked. “Will you have her?”
Sin stepped forward before anyone else could, and said into the anticipatory hush, “We will!”
They got applause for the moment, applause for the dance and the whole show, applause that went ringing on and on as Merris put her hands to Mae’s throat and fastened Celeste Drake’s pearl there for all to see.
“I’ve done my part, I think,” said Merris, standing in the shadows with Sin and watching her with Liannan’s eyes.
Nick was hovering at Sin’s back. Sin was not entirely sure if he was there as a silent threat, if he thought she needed protection from Liannan, or if he simply wanted to say good-bye.
“Yes,” Sin said. “Thank you.” She thought of Liannan and of Anzu, who had said he was betrayed. “And I’m sorry if you feel we took anything from you.”
“Anything from me?” Liannan asked, a subtle change in intonation the only way to differentiate between Merris and the demon now. Her eyes slid to Nick. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, my dear. He’s just strayed a little. You humans don’t live very long at all. A human lifetime to us, it’s only the duration of a game. You forget every game, after a while.”
“Not this one,” Nick said.
Liannan smiled at him, sweet and cruel. “All right, my darling,” she told him indulgently. “We’ll see. I’m off to play my own game now.”
She went over to Nick, her feet hardly seeming to touch the ground, and leaned up to kiss him. Nick jerked slightly away, and she only caught the corner of his mouth.
Liannan laughed as if she found him infinitely amusing. “See you later,” she murmured, and moved away, easy and boneless in the night, swimming through shadows.
“Merris,” called Sin.
She turned, the haughty face Sin knew so well smooth and young, but still the face she knew, half the woman she had cared for and half a demon.
But Sin was getting used to that.
“I loved you very much,” she called out. “I wanted you to know.”
“Yes, child,” said Merris, in her old impatient way. “I knew.”
Then she was gone. Nick and Sin exchanged glances, understanding each other well enough, and turned back to search through the lights of the Market for Alan.
Liannan’s open disbelief that Nick had changed, that the long, painful process of transformation could ever work at all, made Sin take especial note of all the magicians moving, some more obviously uneasy than others, through the Goblin Market.
She saw the fearless leader of the Aventurine Circle walking through the Market, using his usual method of diplomacy, which was talking at people blithely and persistently and moving on, leaving them stunned in his wake.
“He says after learning to talk to me, everyone else was easy,” Nick said behind her. “Which is funny, as I never recall him having trouble talking to anyone at all.”
Jamie’s voice, addressing Seb and Mae and floating over to them, bore him out. Seb was walking beside Jamie as usual, but something about the way they were walking caught Sin’s attention: Jamie’s body angled back to mirror Seb’s, perhaps. She thought this might be a date.
“I was thinking that what I need is a nickname,” said Jamie. “A fearsome nickname. Like James Hook.”
“I think that one’s already taken,” Seb told him, sounding utterly bemused but affectionate, and almost not embarrassed about it.
“Oh,” Jamie said, downcast. “Really?”
“Captain Hook in Peter Pan,” Mae informed him readily. “His first name was James.”
Jamie frowned in thought. “Captain Hook was cool. I could go with that. What would you say to James Hook the Second? I don’t really think I look like a captain.”
“I think you’re an idiot,” said Nick. “Not that that’s relevant. Except that it is always relevant.”
“Oh, hush up or I’ll be Evil Jamie again, and pull your hair,” Jamie said lightly, while Seb and Mae both glared at Nick. Sin stepped forward to intercept the glares.
“Thanks so much for all your help with the lights, Seb,” she told him. “You really have an eye for this.”
Now Seb did look completely embarrassed. Apparently he could accept being g*y, but coming out as artistic was a step too far.
Jamie looked impressed, though. “Oh, hey,” he said. “They’re great.”
“Right,” Seb said. “They’re not that good. But. Um. I’m glad that you—that you like them.”
Jamie looked confused, then surprised and dawningly pleased. He still did not seem terribly used to being liked.
He smiled, crooked and a little shy. “Yeah, they have a certain appeal I’m starting to appreciate,” he said, and when Seb stayed there looking helplessly down at him, Jamie was obviously seized by an impulse, pulled him down, and gave him a light kiss.
So definitely a date, then.
“Not a word, Nicholas,” Mae said, with terrible warning in her voice. “I think it’s nice.”