Chapter 84 New Beginning
Daisy Smithson slouched through the open-air corridor that had once been the pride of Brightwater’s merchant class and now served as a public bazaar for both victors and survivors. The morning sun clung to her shoulders like an accusation, highlighting the sweat-stained collar of her patched tunic and painting shadows under her eyes that no amount of sleep or lack thereof could erase. There’d been a time, not two months past, when she’d stalked these lanes as a half-feral slip of a girl, slinging traps and cheap alchemy to stay ahead of both pest and poverty. She found herself missing those days with a desperation that surprised her, and she clamped her jaw to keep from saying so out loud.
Delia Moss kept pace at her side, all wiry nerves and fretful glances, clutching a basket of herbs with the same anxiety most people reserved for a newborn. The crowd parted as they walked, not with reverence, but a wary deference, as though Daisy’s footsteps might set off another revolution right there between the egg vendors and the brined fishmonger. Some faces flickered with gratitude, a few with naked fear. Most looked away entirely, unwilling to meet her gaze but unwilling to ignore her, either.
There’d been stories, after the siege. Daisy knew most of them because she’d started half; the rest had mutated in the telling. She’d heard she could speak to rats, or that she drank the blood of mages to gain their power. She couldn’t decide which she preferred.
A child darted between Delia’s legs, wide-eyed and silent, and Daisy caught herself reaching for the little one’s shoulder before thinking better of it. The child vanished into the tangle of limbs and market crates without a sound.
“You’re doing it again,” Delia murmured, not breaking stride.
“Doing what?” Daisy scowled, then realized she was glaring holes into a basket of bruised apples.
“Scaring the life out of every honest soul in a fifty-foot radius.” Delia’s voice was soft, but there was steel under it. “You could try smiling.”
Daisy gave her a look.
“All right, not smiling. But maybe less… murder-face?”
Daisy snorted, but the tension in her jaw eased a notch. The smell of the market, ripe fruit, vinegar, and woodsmoke- worked its way under her guard, as did the familiar shouts of hawkers pitching whatever hadn’t yet been looted or burnt to the ground. The city was battered but alive, like a wounded dog with too much pride to limp.
Daisy let the current of bodies nudge her forward until they reached a stall with a sun-bleached cloth awning and buckets of wildflowers spilling over the sides. For a heartbeat, she stared at the mismatched blooms as though she’d never seen them before. She reached out and grazed a cluster of pale yellow daisies with her thumb, their petals rough and thin from a dry spring.
“Reminds me of when Mum used to line the windowbox,” she said, and caught herself surprised by the softness in her own voice.
Delia smiled sidelong. “Those never lasted more than a week.”
“Neither did the window,” Daisy said. It could have been a joke or a eulogy. She didn’t linger to find out.
A shadow crossed the stall, and Daisy’s pulse skipped in the instinctive way that never really left you, even after you’d faced down men with blades and worse. But the shape resolved itself into Oliver Greenfield, who looked exactly as she remembered and yet not at all: the same crooked smile, the same crow’s nest hair, but dressed in a clean shirt for once, with a crust of fresh bread under one arm and a half-smirk already cocked and loaded.
“You’re up early for someone who prefers to let the city stew in its own juices,” he said, and held out the bread as though it were a peace offering.
Daisy eyed it, suspicious. “What’d you do to it?”
“Nothing you wouldn’t do yourself,” he shot back, quick as ever. “Besides, it’s not poisoned. See?” He tore off a chunk and popped it in his mouth, chewing exaggeratedly before adding: “Might have some weevil, but it’s protein, right?”
Delia rolled her eyes but took the next piece when Oliver offered, then made herself busy examining a tray of dried rosehips at the neighboring stall. Daisy understood the maneuver for what it was, Delia, ever the tactician, giving them space, but it did nothing to slow the heat working its way up her neck.
“Bread’s good,” Daisy said after swallowing her bite. She tried to keep her tone flat but failed. “Thanks.”
They stood like that for a moment, the market noise thrumming around them, neither quite looking at the other. Daisy noticed Oliver had a cut on his left knuckle, a day or two old, already scabbed over. She had the sudden, irrational urge to ask who’d hit him.
Oliver reached into his satchel, rummaging past more bread and a bundle of what looked like pickled onions before extracting a fist-sized object wrapped in oilcloth. He pressed it into Daisy’s palm. “Been working on that,” he said, all nonchalance.
Daisy peeled back the cloth. Inside was a small wooden pendant, shaped like a daisy: petals splayed out in uneven, charming asymmetry, and strung on a bit of leather cord. The surface was burnished smooth, save for one petal with a tiny nick, as if it had been caught in a knife-fight.
She turned it over in her hand, not trusting herself to say anything. For someone who made a living picking locks and other people’s pockets, Oliver was surprisingly terrible at hiding his blush.
“S’not much,” he mumbled, “but I thought maybe you’d want something to remind you who you were, before all this.” He gestured vaguely at the city, at the castle towers in the distance, and the bloodstains still visible in the mortar between the cobblestones.
Daisy squeezed the pendant. It was heavier than it looked. She opened her mouth, closed it, then finally said, “You’re an idiot.”
“That’s the consensus,” Oliver said, and grinned.
Their hands brushed as he helped her fasten the necklace. His fingers were warm and calloused, and Daisy’s heart thudded with a panic that had nothing to do with fear.
Delia pretended to cough loudly from the next stall, but the moment was already broken.
Daisy looked up and found herself staring at a face she’d never seen in the market before, yet recognized instantly by the way the sunlight refused to touch it. Xeris, the Ancient One, her unwanted shadow, coiled in human skin, moved through the crowd without so much as disturbing the air. He wore the body of a lean, sharp-boned man with eyes like candleflame and hair the color of charred iron. There was nothing overtly magical about him, but even the beggars and urchins stepped aside as he passed, the way cats avoid water.
Xeris stopped a pace from Daisy, gaze flicking from her to Oliver to the wooden pendant at her throat. Something sour twisted his mouth, a parody of a smile.
“Charming,” he said, voice deep and cold enough to bruise. “Does it come with matching earrings?”
Daisy set her jaw, defiant. “What do you want?”
“A moment,” Xeris said, and shot a look at Oliver that could have stripped paint. “Alone, if you please.”
Oliver hesitated, eyes darting from Daisy to Xeris and back again, but Daisy gave him the smallest shake of her head. Not now.
She stepped away from the flower stall, and Xeris fell into step beside her, hands folded behind his back like a nobleman surveying a battlefield.
“You are attracting attention,” he murmured, tone even. “Unwise, given the circumstances.”
“It’s a market,” Daisy said. “That’s what people do here.”
Xeris’s eyes flickered. “You misunderstand. News has reached beyond the city walls. Messengers from the neighboring kingdoms arrived at dawn. Their letters, heavy with congratulations, are heavier still with implied threats.”
Daisy frowned. “You think they’ll try to take Brightwater back?”
Xeris regarded her as one might a beetle on the edge of a blade. “Not immediately. They will wait. Watch. The true war is always patience.” He lowered his voice, and for the first time, Daisy heard a trace of something like concern. “You have made yourself a symbol, girl. Symbols attract both worship and destruction.”
Daisy’s hand drifted to the pendant. She looked back at the market, the faces watching her with fear, awe, or both.
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” she said, too quietly for anyone but Xeris to hear.
“History rarely waits for consent,” Xeris replied. His expression softened fractionally. “But you can choose how you wield it.”
They circled back to the flower stall, where Oliver stood with hands buried in his pockets, studiously ignoring Delia’s attempts to play matchmaker with a nearby glassblower’s apprentice. Xeris lingered just long enough to remind Daisy of his presence, then vanished into the press of bodies with a rustle of cold, dry air.
Daisy exhaled slowly, feeling the weight of invisible eyes on her. The city was watching, and so were the enemies she had yet to meet.
Delia returned, eyebrows raised in question. “Everything all right?”
“Nothing’s ever all right,” Daisy said. But her fingers found the pendant at her throat, and for the first time that morning, she didn’t feel completely hollow.
“C’mon,” Oliver said, offering his arm with an exaggerated bow. “Let’s see what passes for a sweet in this place now.”
Daisy looped her arm through his, pretending she didn’t notice the warmth blooming under her skin.
Together, they walked the length of the market, and if Daisy’s posture was a little straighter, if her steps landed a little more certain, she blamed the bread. Or the sunlight. Or the way Delia hummed an off-key tune, and Oliver pretended not to be proud of the necklace he’d made.
She ignored the glances, the whispers, the slow, shifting tide of expectation rising around her. For now, she was Daisy, and that would have to be enough.