They watched the entire play, and then stayed to hear the musicians who took the stage after. When the music was finished, they went not to the cobbler’s shop for necessary boots, but sought out the crowded open markets in the center of Pasanhal, where yet more stalls lined both sides of the streets and goods of all kinds were being bought and sold. They saw items that were specialties of Pasanhal, and many more that had come from faraway regions of the kingdom. Lily found new paints for her face, to replace those she had lost in the fires back home, and a small bottle of fragrance that smelled unlike anything she had ever come across before, yet, when Vetch noted that he liked the fragrance, immediately bought. Or, she would have, if he had let her even once take some of her own coins from her rucksack before he produced the payment first.
But when they found another clothier, and Vetch stood long admiring an elegant townsman’s shirt made from such fine material in a deep shade of blue that would so perfectly compliment his complexion and hair, she produced the coin before he could argue and purchased it for him before his eyes.
“What apprentice mage has ever had this much coin to spend on her sweetheart?” she mimicked his earlier remark and then laughed melodiously when he glared at her with feigned disapproval at the extravagant purchase. “I’m not gonna let him deny me the pleasure,” she added, and then Vetch also laughed.
He insisted on changing into the new shirt on the spot. In his leather armor, he had looked as she was most accustomed to him looking, a handsome soldier. But when he stepped back into view clad in the stylish blue shirt, the effect was striking in an altogether different way. He was a vibrant townsman now, the man she had imagined she was to meet at the markets back home, before the attack had happened. That felt like a lifetime ago, and she had not expected to so soon recapture the feeling of that morning—before the screams, before the fire—when she had looked at herself in the mirror one final time before descending the stairs. But here it was: that same feeling, their second chance at that day.
For a few hours, they forgot all about the perils they had survived, and those that still awaited them. And they refused to think about the people they pursued, people who would gladly finish the job they’d begun in Moonfane Forge, should Vetch and Lily find them and take even one wrong step. Instead, they blithely strolled the colorful and radiant town. They ate more sweet foods, and watched jugglers and acrobats. They allowed themselves to smile and laugh and converse about trifling things. For Lily, it was reinvigorating in a way she didn’t have to think about. It was a gentle day, a day of sunlight and music, of the breeze wisping through her hair.
As they strolled side by side, she took furtive glances at the man beside her. It wasn’t only his appearance that so captivated her, it was the way he held himself with confidence. Vetch walked with self-assurance, as if he knew the town as well as his own. He held his head high, and when he spoke to vendors and shopkeepers, he gave them his full attention and spoke to them with equal parts respect and ease. It was the same way she had seen him conduct himself amongst his fellow soldiers. It was why even the veterans had so frequently looked to him for leadership. She was not a soldier herself, but she would gladly follow him anywhere.
Much too soon, the daylight began to fade. The markets closed and the crowded streets gradually cleared. The festivities moved from the streets and open plazas to the taverns and gathering halls and private homes. Unsure of which crowd to follow, and reluctant to return to their inn so soon, Lily and Vetch made their way closer to the lake’s shore and followed a plank walkway past bobbing ships at rest on one side and boisterous sailors’s taverns and humble fishermen’s huts on the other. The air was cold off the lake, its slate, perpetually shifting waters uninviting to two who were mountain-born. But it was exciting simply to wander the unfamiliar place together. Sometimes they would talk animatedly with each other, then for periods of time they would walk in restorative silence, and both were equally good.
Scraps of distant music carried to them by the wind lured them away from the lake and back into town. They strolled a different quarter now, far away from where the markets and festival activities had been. Here were only simple domiciles with quaint little courtyards separating them. Unlike the wide thoroughfares and deliberate layout that characterized central Pasanhal, everything in this quiet and subdued district looked as if it had been built willy-nilly. Little dirt pathways wove in between one-room houses, around humble wells and gardens, sometimes turning back round on themselves.
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“It’s like the lower Residential District back home,” Vetch observed, even as Lily had been about to express the same.
“Peaceful,” Lily agreed, and Vetch nodded.
At length, the music brought them to another courtyard, larger than the others, the common gathering place for its particular neighborhood. Warm lanterns and little torches surrounded the open space where a crowd was gathered. All faces were turned toward a young couple.
The man wore the clothes of a farmer, but they were newly clean and in good repair. The young woman who faced him wore a simple white dress and a wreath of white flowers in her hair. As they stood looking into each other’s eyes, a town headman read to them vows of joining.
Lily put her hand to her mouth. “It’s a wedding,” she exclaimed softly. “Let us stay and watch.” Vetch made a quiet sound of agreement. And, so, they stood apart from the gathered crowd and listened while the headman led the young couple through the little rituals, and spoke to them well-wishes for their future life together.
When he bid the two to hold hands, Lily felt a soft touch on her fingers and she gasped. Without a word, Vetch’s hand sought hers and gently clasped it in his, mirroring the couple they watched. When she looked to him, she found his dark eyes on her, and what she read in them made her breath come faster and a tingling run up and down her arms. She folded her fingers into his and as one they turned their attention back to the wedding. In a world of their own, they held hands just as the couple did, while the headman concluded the ceremony and declared them married.
Heat. Bliss. Delightful agitation. All came and went in a fraction of a moment. How could such an innocent gesture mean so much? Then, Lily found herself plunged back into the scene surrounding her, as Vetch released her hand to join in with the cheers and applause for the newly married couple. Her head still spinning, Lily joined in. Then, in a mutual decision to leave the couple and their families and friends to their celebration, she and Vetch turned to leave. They had taken hardly a step when an older man grabbed Vetch’s arm.
“Stay, stay!” he bid them.
“We don’t know them.” Vetch shook his head. “We only stopped as we were passing by and—”
“Stay,” the man repeated, and the corners of his eyes crinkled with his smile. “All are welcome. The more who celebrate a joining, the better. Please, celebrate with us. Please, please.” He gestured with a callused farmer’s hand, and before they knew it, Vetch and Lily were being conducted to a table laden with food and drinks.
No one challenged their presence or hesitated to include them in the merriment. It did not matter to the quarter’s local farmer and shepherd folk that they did not come from Pasanhal. They were invited to eat and mingle. Strangers struck up conversations with them. They were even introduced to the bride and groom. Through them, they learned that the man who had bid them to stay was the groom’s father. When he and his son and new daughter-in-law learned that Lily was a mage, they treated it as a point of pride, declaring her presence to be a good portent for the marriage.
The minstrels struck up their music once again and dancing broke out; not the stilted, soldierly court dancing of the upper class, but the informal and joyous dancing of common folk celebrating on a temperate night beneath the stars. Lily and Vetch were swept up in it all, their steps and turns kicking up dust around skirt and trousers. The revelry continued on well into the night, well past the time the bride and groom took their leave together, and still Lily and Vetch danced on. The press of Vetch’s palm to hers, the touch of his fingers on her waist, the jubilance in his eyes whenever he tossed his head to clear his hair out of the way, made her feel light and invigorated, as if fatigue and worry could not touch her. In the lulls between dances, they shared in the food and drink, becoming drunk on a local barley wine. It was bitter, but the way it made her feel was anything but. The world spun and yet also seemed to stand still for them.
In that precious bubble of unmarked time, Lily forgot all about her fatigue and her hurts and her fears. She let herself be carried away with the rhythm and passion, and by the closeness of Vetch. Even the small stab of guilt that had burrowed itself into the corner of her thoughts, that she was somehow betraying Mari by them halting their search for her, even if only for a few hours of ease impulsively stolen for themselves, could not reach her against the maelstrom of music and elation.
In the morning, it would find her again. She knew it would and accepted it. But not on this night. This night was theirs.