And they were swallowing every word.

Three

“Last time I was on this stage before you,” Roland began, “I danced the commala. Tonight—”

George Telford interrupted. He was too oily for Eddie’s taste, and too sly by half, but he couldn’t fault the man’s courage, speaking up as he did when the tide was so clearly running in the other direction.

“Aye, we remember, ye danced it well! How dance ye the mortata, Roland, tell me that, I beg.”

Disapproving murmurs from the crowd.

“Doesn’t matter how I dance it,” Roland said, not in the least discommoded, “for my dancing days in the Calla are done. We have work in this town, I and mine. Ye’ve made us welcome, and we say thankya. Ye’ve bid us on, sought our aid and succor, so now I bid ye to listen very well. In less of a week come the Wolves.”

There was a sigh of agreement. Time might have grown slippery, but even low folken could still hold onto five days’ worth of it.

“On the night before they’re due, I’d have every Calla twin-child under the age of seventeen there.” Roland pointed off to the left, where the Sisters of Oriza had put up a tent. Tonight there were a good many children in there, although by no means the hundred or so at risk. The older had been given the task of tending the younger for the duration of the meeting, and one or another of the Sisters periodically checked to make sure all was yet fine.

“That tent won’t hold em all, Roland,” Ben Slightman said.

Roland smiled. “But a bigger one will, Ben, and I reckon the Sisters can find one.”

“Aye, and give em a meal they won’t ever forget!” Margaret Eisenhart called out bravely. Good-natured laughter greeted this, then sputtered before it caught. Many in the crowd were no doubt reflecting that if the Wolves won after all, half the children who spent Wolf’s Eve on the Green wouldn’t be able to remember their own names a week or two later, let alone what they’d eaten.

“I’d sleep em here so we can get an early start the next morning,” Roland said. “From all I’ve been told, there’s no way to know if the Wolves will come early, late, or in the middle of the day. We’d look the fools of the world if they were to come extra early and catch em right here, in the open.”

“What’s to keep em from coming a day early?” Eben Took called out truculently. “Or at midnight on what you call Wolf’s Eve?”