Sometimes there had come deep, strange, roaring sounds when they were hunting far into the forest. Not a boar. Not a bear. Certainly not a wolf. Those with the lord and lady were often fearful then. The lady did not look afraid at such times, it was noted. She’d smile a private smile, making her even more beautiful.

No one ever saw the creature that roared in the forest, far off among the dense, close shadows of the trees.

—

Thierry had drinking companions who seemed to remember all their dreams, or many of them. They’d recount these at interminable length and with depressing frequency. Even Eudes, from behind the bar in The Lamb, normally so taciturn, would sometimes share a dream he’d had the night before. Many of his involved boats, for no obvious reason.

But why would dreams be obvious? Wasn’t that the point of them? Why people paid Kindath fortune tellers or other dream-readers for explanations?

For his own part, he didn’t dream, or remember them very often if he did, except for the recurring one, and he didn’t need a Kindath woman to explain it.

He dreamed of Orane. Even within Orane, wherever in the city he was sleeping. He dreamed himself walking his city, different times of day, hearing the sounds—bells, shouts, market cries. The women and men in the streetwalkers’ quarters, more discreetly inviting. Yellow-robed clerics intoning in street processions for funerals or festivals, swinging their censers as they went. Crowds in the squares, into the evenings in summer, gathered around a performer, the ever-present pickpockets moving among them. Laughter in such crowds. Or disdain if a musician or juggler was deemed weak. Orane was—everyone said it—the hardest place for a performer. They had high standards in his city.

He dreamed tastes and smells, too. Meat pies at street stalls, and fish pies and pastries. Pigeon tarts. Lamb chunks roasting, boar meat in winter. Open flasks of wine at a stand. Fresh bread early in the morning, everyone with their favourite baker, every vendor with their own cry.

He’d dream himself walking, and looking about, even if he had just spent half the day walking and looking about! It was as if his love for the city spilled into his nighttime life, the shadow world of sleep. When others imagined strange things, shaped fantasies of power or images of passion, dealt with terrors of one kind or another, Thierry Villar dreamed himself in his city and in love with it.