22
22THE 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 gay, 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.”
“You’re both deranged, and you always were,” Nick drawled. “I’m never going to be done getting you tiny lunatics out of trouble.”
He did not sound deeply upset about it. Mae dimpled up at him. “We get you out of trouble right back.”
She had changed out of her beautiful dress, which meant that Sin had been able to force her into it for all of twenty minutes. She was wearing a black business skirt and heels, which was not exactly Mae’s style but which suited her somehow, and a pink T-shirt that read AND THEN THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER (BARRING DEATH, DIVORCE, ARREST FOR TAX FRAUD, THAT INCIDENT WITH THE POOL BOY…) The letters on her shirt got too small to read at that point.
Against her pink shirt was the dull gleam of the black pearl, the talisman safeguarding her from demons, the jewel that canceled out a demon’s mark. For at least seven years, and then they would see.
Nick looked away from Mae and at a random patch of grass.
“We could…,” he said, and hesitated. “We could grab a cup of coffee. Sometime. You and me.”
“Are you asking me out?” Mae inquired.
She waited for Nick’s tiny nod, and then she was beaming, even brighter than before. Sin would not have thought that was possible.
“I don’t know about coffee. I might hold out for dinner.”
“We can do whatever boring thing you want,” Nick told her.
Mae laughed. Sin thought she was trying for mocking and sophisticated, but Mae just sounded happy. “Ah, l’amour.”
“I’ll entertain myself looking at your face,” Nick said. “You know I like that.”
“Yeah,” Mae said, beaming and beaming. “Sounds like a plan.”
They couldn’t stand around here talking all night. They had to be seen around the Market, shaking hands and walking through the stalls, and it was almost time to dance.
When Sin set off, Mae followed her at once. She caught on fast, that girl.
They had never dared hold the Market in such a public place, but now with the magicians’ spells for privacy here they were, in a park surrounded by the purr of cars, a palace not so far away. The stall of lights was located on a statue of Queen Victoria, beacon lights dripping around her neck, a single love light hanging from her stone scepter.
Helen the magician was standing at Carl’s weapons stall, having an animated conversation about morning stars.
Phyllis’s stand of chimes was gone and would never be set up again, but Ivy had put up chimes around the scrolls and tablets and old books in her stall. The chimes sang out softly as she moved around them, their song calling passersby to her stall.
Sin stopped and spoke to Matthias, who was walking along with two older women behind him, making complicated hand gestures as they went. Neither of them, unlike Matthias, was Asian.
“These are my parents,” Matthias said, and gestured to the women, his thin piper’s hands moving with easy, fluid grace. He had his pipe tucked away.
“A pleasure,” said Sin, and shook both their hands.
One of the women gestured at Sin after she was done shaking hands.
“She says she’s heard a lot about you,” said Matthias. “She’s probably thinking about someone else. If you’ll excuse me, there are a lot of gullible tourists to rook once I’m done showing my parents around.…”
He laughed, dark eyes sparkling in his thin face. The other woman took his arm, her face much amused: She clearly thought her horrible little boy was hilarious.
Sin blamed it on the parents, really.
She just felt lucky she’d had good ones. Her father was walking through the Market for the first time in years, with Lydie and Toby in tow. He’d promised they would all come and watch her dance.
Later they would all go home together. There would be food on the table, the children would be looked after, and Mae would be in charge of the Market for now, making reckless, brave decisions, even though she would obviously need a little help.
There was time now to rest, to do the right thing by Lydie and Toby, to work out exactly what kind of leader Sin wanted to be, and if she wanted to be a leader at all.
And there would always be the Market. There would always be magic, and the dance.
Jonas and Chiara stopped her next, asking where Merris had gone, and Sin had to tell them she’d left already.
“I’ve been thinking,” Jonas said. “Do you think that necromancer at Mezentius House was Merris’s boyfriend? At her age! That’s nasty.”
“I don’t know,” said Sin. “I’m planning on having a boyfriend at her age myself.”
“Alan Ryves for life?” Chiara asked, making a slight face.
“That’s the plan,” Sin told her, and as if all he needed was to be called, she finally caught sight of Alan. He was talking to one of the magicians, an older man, but when he saw her looking he excused himself and limped over the grass to join them.
“Doesn’t matter if you disapprove,” she told Chiara. “Every one at school thinks he’s a catch. An older man, you know. With a car.”
She came a few steps to meet him and lifted her face to his, kissed him with her eyes half-closed under the Goblin Market lights. It didn’t matter whether the Market thought she outshone him a thousand times or her school wondered how on earth she’d snagged him: They knew each of them had a hundred masks, and every one was true.
“Hey, Bambi,” said Alan.
Sin smiled up at him. “Hey, Clive.”
“Who disapproves of me?” Alan inquired. “If it’s your dad, I can talk him around. Where is he?”
“My dad has seen Nick and is in a state of deep and profound thanksgiving at present,” Sin informed him. “My grandma doesn’t much like the idea of me and a white boy. But she’s not here.”
“So I’ll come around for tea,” Alan said. “Give me ten minutes.”
“Don’t disappoint me like this,” Sin murmured. “Make it five.”
She heard their new leader and her retinue calling out for them, so before the others reached them, Sin caught his face between her hands and kissed him one more time for luck.
“Now,” she said, and looked around inquiringly. “Who is going to dance with me? Since I haven’t convinced Alan to put our dancing lessons into practice—yet.”
She looked at Nick and at Mae, both good choices, and then she got another surprise.
“If you don’t mind,” Jamie said, “I think I’d like to try.”
Sin blinked. “Are you a good dancer?”
“You’re a man of many mysteries, James Crawford,” Sin told him, and Jamie looked extremely gratified.
It would look good, the darling of the Goblin Market and the leader of the magicians, dancing together. It would be a symbol of the fact that all this could really work.
“If she’s teaching you to dance,” Nick said in a low voice to his brother, “I want to teach you how to use a sword.”
“Well, if you would really like to,” Alan responded, lazy and affectionate, as if he was promising Nick a treat.
Nick raised his eyebrows at Alan, and Alan grinned.
“More than anything in two worlds,” Nick murmured. Alan leaned his shoulder toward Nick’s, not quite touching.
“Learn to duel after you sing for me and Jamie,” Sin commanded.
She wanted more people to hear him sing, wanted his voice to help bring the Market together, the voice she loved, the one that had called a demon in and made him understand.
It made Sin think for a moment of another demon, who had spared her for no reason at all, except that he might be beginning to understand too.
Liannan might be right. This might all pass, so fast, time and hope slipping through their fingers.
There were other magicians besides the Circle that was now part of the Market, and demons still watching outside this world, hungry and cold. This gathering under the Market lights might not work.
But here they were, for this night at least.
And it might work.
This was the Goblin Market, where you could find anything, even a new side of your true self.
Sin reached out and took Jamie’s hand, interlacing his fingers with hers, and stepped with him a little apart from everyone else: the demon and his brother, Seb the magician and her leader. She made them her audience and gave them her best smile.
“Come on then,” she said. “Let’s dance.”
Jamie smiled and followed her lead into the dancing circles. The lights strung along the boughs traced bright arches over them all, united for now at least. There was music starting, a fresh and beautiful tune, their new leader in her bright pink shirt presiding over them all. Alan’s head was bowed over his guitar. Nick was sitting in the grass at his feet, like a child waiting for a bedtime story, ready to listen to a song. There was a silver scythe-shaped gleam in her partner’s dark eye.
For this one night, magic was everywhere.