Merolanna slumped back. “Gods, fairies…the world has run utterly mad.”

Utta called in the little maid Eilis. “See to your mistress,” she told the girl. “Take good care of her. She has had a shock.”

But who will see to me? she wondered as she left Merolanna’s chambers. Who will take care of me in this mad time when legends spring to life at our feet? Zoria, merciful goddess, I need your help now more than ever.

Even to Matty Tinwright, who had never found it easy to say no to a celebration or a feast, especially if someone else was paying the tally, it seemed a bit much. Surely with an invading force just across the river—an invading force of monsters and demons at that—all these fetes and fairs were a waste, if not worse?

Perhaps Lord Hendon is only trying to divert us from our troubles. If so, he had set himself a hard task, because troubles were plentiful. The creatures across the bay had not attacked the keep, but they had certainly cut off all supplies coming to the overfilled castle from the west, and the short, terrifying war had emptied the valleys to the west and south as well, so there were no cattle or sheep being driven in from Marrinswalk and Silverside and no wool or cheese from Settland, only such supplies as could be brought in by ships, which lay crammed in Southmarch harbor like driftwood against a seawall.

Despite all this, the merriment went on. Tonight, to celebrate the first evening of Gestrimadi, the festival in honor of the Mother of the Gods, there would be a public fair in Market Square and here in the castle a great supper and masked fete, with music and dancing.

And yet surely there has not been a darker Dimene-month since the Twilight folk last marched on us, two hundred years gone?

It was strange, Tinwright thought, that a place as solemn and silent during the day as this should spring to life so feverishly at night, as though the chambers were tombs which discharged their occupants only after sunset, so that they could dance and flirt in imitation of the living.

It was a powerful image, and he thought suddenly that he should write it down. Surely there was a poem in it, the courtiers emerging from their stony dens at nightfall, wearing masks that hid everything but their too-bright eyes…

But Hendon Tolly and his circle will not like it, and these days that is a very dangerous thing. Didn’t Lord Nynor disappear after being heard criticizing the Tollys’ rule? Still, the lure of the idea was strong. He decided that he could write it and keep it hidden until better times, when his foresight would be recognized, and his brilliance (if not his courage) honored.

Poets are not made to be hanged, he reminded himself. They are made to admired. And even if I could only be admired for being hanged, I would choose obscurity, I think. No, he would stay alive. In any case, he had other things to live for, these days…