TWENTY-SIX

Euan Ash was standing in a strange little house full of birds, all white hens except for one the color of fire that was laying golden eggs. It sang each time it dropped an egg into its nest. Euan could not hear its voice, but he knew that that was because its song was so beautiful no mortal could imagine it, even in dreams. Each time it laid an egg, the egg would break in two and his name would come out of the gold shell. No yolk, no chick of white or fire, just a word in that unimaginable voice.

Euan. Euan. “Euan.”

He woke with a start and found a stranger at Unciel’s bedside.

Unciel still slept, looking so frail he might have floated away if the blankets weren’t weighing him down. Euan had never met Gyre. The young wizard had come and gone in Unciel’s cottage one evening in early summer after Unciel summoned him. But enough power had loosed itself in that bedchamber in the past days for Euan to recognize it in the lean, haunted face, the still eyes gazing down at Unciel.

Euan, waking in the chair as usual and feeling molded to it, leaned forward stiffly to study Unciel. He still breathed, apparently. The stranger gave one brief glance at Euan, taking in the unshorn scribe with the reddened eyes, the wrinkled clothes, the gaunt, colorless face.

“I’m sorry,” the stranger said.

Euan blinked. “Gyre,” he said after a moment. “You must be.”

“Yes.”

“How is—how are things in Serre?”

“When I left, they seemed unusually peaceful.”

Euan, remembering his dream, sensed a tale tangled somewhere within the flock of hens and the lovely, secret voice that perhaps told the tale from beginning to end, but which he could not yet hear. He rubbed his eyes wearily.

“You should tell that to King Arnou.”

“I spoke to Lady Tassel, who was strangely unsurprised to see me appear in Unciel’s kitchen. She went back to the palace to tell the king that all is well with his daughter.”

Euan pulled his hair into spikes and slumped back in the chair. “What about Unciel? Will all be well with him?”

“He’s not dead yet,” the enigmatic Gyre answered. He shifted the blankets a little, pulling them closer to the wizard’s face. “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”

“I don’t remember. There’s some limp cabbage soup hanging over the ashes.”

“I’ll see what I can do with it,” Gyre said. Euan stopped him before he made it through the door.

“Wait—” He paused, trying to drag his thoughts into some coherent form. “Wait.” Gyre did so. “You just—You and Unciel—You were just roaming around Serre wearing that monster’s face, terrifying every living thing—Now you’re going to warm up some old cabbage soup? Is that how life normally is for a wizard?”

“Some days you battle yourself and other monsters. Some days you just make soup. You’ll both need to eat, after all that.”

“After all what?”

“After all you did for him. After all he dreamed for me.”

Euan sat back with a sigh. The raven, perched on the chair back behind his head, picked through its feathers in search of something moving. The one-eyed cat on Euan’s knee closed its eye and went back to sleep. So did Euan.

This time his name was written in elaborate, elegant script in the midst of his dream by what looked like a burning finger. Euan, the fire said, and he woke himself answering.

“Yes. Where were we?”

Unciel was looking at Euan, his eyes open for the first time in days, and strangely clear. They had lost that ashen mist of memory; fire had rekindled itself behind the blue.

“Finally,” he said, and the scribe, still moving out of dreams, reached for his pen.