Snow

"Don't bother thanking me or anything," Alec said nastily, not answering his question at all, and twitched the reins. The horse started forward, the cart rattling as it moved down the street. Alec didn't look back.

It took David a few hours to find the square. It was enormous but not quite in the middle of the city, was closer to the palace than anything else. At first he merely walked along its edges, staring at the stalls and the people thronging about them. There was a fountain in the center with a grand stone shaped like a young man in the middle, gorgeous and shining brightly in the sun. It was surrounded by a sea of people, and David saw a million things for sale, anything and everything a person could ever want. He saw men and women playing instruments. He saw people dressed in brilliant robes and drab rags. He saw plump cats and skinny ones, big dogs running free and tiny ones carried cradled in sacks by their owners. Even as the sun set the square continued its activity, soldiers coming through and lighting torches. As the stalls closed and people slowly dispersed, David moved closer to the fountain. As the torches burned low he found a place to sit. He wondered what Alec was doing. He wrapped his hands around his knees and thought of songs to sing.

Only a few people stayed in the square all night, huddled shapes curled against rocks and the wall. He talked to a few of them. They all spoke strangely, drifting twisting sentences, and had odd eyes, unfocused and filmed with what looked like wriggling creatures. They would ask him questions and not listen to the answers, instead reply by asking if he knew where there was wormwood to be had, leaning in close enough so he could smell the scent of spicy bitter smoke that clung to them.

"I don't know what that is," he'd told one old woman and she'd sighed, her eyes clearing for a moment.

"Lucky you," she'd told him. "It's strange cursed stuff. It makes your blood race, takes your mind where you want it to be. Backwards, forwards, it's madness but you're there, all those faraway places you want to be at once…but then it's over and you have to find your way back, have to--

surely you know where I can get some. I can tell you know. You've got the eyes for it." There was a knife in her hand, small and rusty. Her fingers were shaking wildly.

"I can't help you," he said, and touched her hand.

The knife shattered when it fell to the ground and the woman shuffled off, hand tucked under her other arm, teeth chattering and face blue from cold.

No one else approached him that night. It wasn't cold and he was used to not having anyone to talk to so it wasn't so bad. It was an adventure, he told himself. A story, and he was part of it.

Still, he felt alone when the sun rose and it wasn't a feeling he'd had for a while. He didn't like it, hadn't missed it. He looked for Alec before he could help himself, wanting to see his face.

Wanting him in his story.

He didn't see him, not even when the sun pushed its way fully into the sky.

He sang. He didn't know what else to do and it made him feel better.

He was singing a song about clouds when a coin was pressed into his hand. He paused, stared at it for a moment. There was a face carved on it he'd never seen before, beautiful and smiling. It looked like the face of the man whose statue stood in the fountain. And it was his now. If Alec was here David could ask him how much it was worth. He tucked the coin away. He kept singing.

A few hours later a woman walking by with a little brown dog stopped and looked at him, then pressed a piece of bread from a loaf she was carrying into his hand. "Like a lost angel, you are, aren't you?" she said, and her eyes were kind; they reminded him of his nurse's, but her fingers on his arm were different, curved possessive, and when she pulled him close her other hand touched him in places his nurse never had. He stared at her, wide-eyed, his blood singing. "I'd pay for a private show," she said. "Later today, when my husband is at the courts. Shall I give you the address?"

He arched into her touch as her dog yipped around his ankles. He let his fingers touch hers, thinking of things he didn't have a name for and couldn't quite picture but was sure he wouldn't mind having. He liked the way his body felt. Her face paled at his touch, her hand falling away.

David looked at his fingers. There was a thin sheen of ice on them. He couldn't feel it. He ate the bread as the woman faded back into the crowd. His fingers dripped water onto the ground. He kept singing.

He was given a glass of ale by a stall owner midmorning, clapped on the back and told, "That voice of yours is good for business. Keep it up!"