face was plain as the rest, filled with the same adulation as the rest of the crowd. Before he was aware of it, James had nickered his mount forward, drawn toward her. A wave of dizziness washed over him, the hand on his rifle forgotten. Hands were slapping against his legs and horse as people cried welcome, and he mumbled back, but in his mind, he was already over there with her, climbing down from the saddle and taking her in his arms. His chest felt swollen with something entirely unlike air; it was like soup, thick and expanding, filling him up. And elsewhere, other feelings stirred his flesh.
“James,” Alex called. His voice cut through the haze, snapping the link between James and the golden tunnel separating him from Beth, and then he was blinking amidst a sea of faces, bombarded by a racket of voices. “Come on.” Alex had already turned away. He hadn’t noticed anything.
James cleared his throat, making a renewed effort to smile and shake hands with the traders, aides, mothers, and scavengers below him. But his eyes were still drawn to the left, to the very same spot, furtively stealing glances at her whenever he could.
All the while she remained immobile, the shadow of a smile lingering on her lips, watching him. When it proved too much for him and he once again made to inch forward through the crowd, she shook her head almost imperceptibly. Her eyes flashed.
Later, they said.
She turned in a flash of icy gold, leaving an impression of thick lips, grey eyes, and a smile to light up the world frozen in the air. When he looked again, she was gone. In her place were only the beefy paws of the farm hands being mashed together in great booming claps.
Drunk on the afterglow she had left in the air, even from thirty feet away, James made to carry on in Alex’s image, but couldn’t quite shake the stupor that had fallen over him. They reined up by the stables and James dropped to the ground, taking a feed bag from the head stock keeper with thanks and attaching it to his mount’s muzzle.
“Glad to see you both, young masters!” cried Malverston, town mayor four years running. “Elected mayor,” he proudly announced at every opportunity, though no election had ever been held. He was an enormous near-spherical man with a grimy beard that ran down to his navel in tangled greasy spiracles. His beady black eyes latched onto Alex and James like leeches. “Always a thrill, always. What news of the world?”
James cringed inwardly at the exaggerated falseness, the grandiose antiquated exclamations. Malverston was full of them. He thought himself some kind of generous member of the gentry, a relic from the eighteenth century who was embarrassed to find himself of good fortune and chose to mingle with the commoners. But James knew better. They saw his kind all too often.
“As always, Mayor, there’s plenty to tell and little time to tell it,” Alex sang over the continued hum of the crowd. James hated these pleasantries, pretending friendships that were simply not there. Alexander Cain was no songbird, but a quiet, pensive soul. He would be a great man one day—they all said it, wherever they went. James would be lucky to be half the man he was when he came of age. Yet this eternal front he put on in public, the showmanship, it was all a lie.
But it was all part of the mission. That was the way they had always done things. And all things told, James was glad to endure a little falseness if it meant success. He had a destiny, after all, and he would do anything to see it realised. The world relied on the precious few like Alex and himself. If they failed, a new Dark Age would sweep over everything in a generation.
“And you, my dear Mr Chadwick! You’re looking more strapping by the day.”
James nodded and called on his practised diplomatic smile, honed to perfection over countless iterations. But his body seemed gummed up, his mind still on Beth. “Mayor,” he stammered.
He caught a confused warning glance from Alex and shook himself, squashing Beth’s face from his mind.
Malverston clapped, lest any attention waver from him, and laughed in great hacking gulps. “Good, good, fortune smiles on us all. My dear friends, I’m sure our guests are tired after their long ride. Let’s give them some space and refreshment.” He flicked a hand in the