examined first. And do not trust any message that is given to you that purports to be from anyone in the show. Anything that must be told to you, I will tell you in person. Even if it is an emergency.”
“That is an excellent plan,” Giselle said, feeling extremely touched. Any other time, she might have been irritated—but she’d been watched for a fortnight, was no closer to knowing who was watching, and was beginning to feel more than a little paranoid. She was aware that these self-appointed tasks had the potential of adding yet more burdens to Kellermann’s already too-busy day. He would not have insisted on this if he was not sure it needed to be done. “And I cannot thank you enough. I don’t want to burden you more than you already are.”
But Kellermann waved off her concern. “I see you often enough to pass on whatever needs to be said in the course of the day,” he replied, then bowed. “Think nothing of it, and it is my pleasure to be able to assist you in something. And now, it is more than time for all of us to sleep. Perhaps more ideas will come to us then.”
“Perhaps,” she replied, and went into her vardo. She knew it well enough now that she didn’t need to light a lamp to move about, and there wasn’t much she needed to do. She’d wash in the morning. Right now, she just needed to add a little more wood to the stove, and then get rid of her clothing and bundle herself into bed. The wood was beside the stove, and the padded leather mitten she used to open the stove was on top of the wood. She blew on the coals to bring them to life, and carefully stocked the stove for the night. Her clothing went on the bench, folded, and her warm, heavy flannel nightdress was on the bed. Soon, she was in the bed, under a new eiderdown, staring up at the ceiling of the bed cubby.
But her last thought before sleep was troubling. For she and Mother had found no sign of “Johann Schmidt,” all those years ago after his fall. He was not below the tower where he should have fallen, and Mother had not been able to find any trace of how he had gotten away. Nor had the two experienced Bruderschaft hunters.
In fact, except for the fact that she and Mother had seen him, fought him, and watched him fall, there was no evidence that he even existed.
So if he had survived the initial fall, which seemed wildly unlikely, where had he gone? He would have been seriously injured; Mother had thrust him out the window in such a way that he would have tumbled to the ground without any control. Who or what had rescued him? How had they gotten away without a trace and without Mother knowing? Where had they gone after their escape?
If he had been an Air Magician trying to steal her power, why hadn’t she sensed that? Why hadn’t her sylphs?
And was there any way that the watcher really could be him?
There were no answers. But her dreams were troubled.
The show had been packed up the night before, and the company moved out as soon as the first light of predawn lightened the sky. Kellermann had arranged with a local baker at a coffee house to have steaming rolls and coffee delivered in the darkness, and the cooks had precut slices of cold ham, beef, and cheese, and kept out bowls of butter, and they all ate a solid breakfast standing beside the cook wagons, with nothing for the cooks to pack up but the rinsed cups, and the sugar and cream. The cowboys grumbled that the coffee wasn’t strong enough, but Giselle noticed that they drank the milk cans that the coffee had been brought in dry.
Hot rolls and butter, ham and cheese and plenty of coffee and cream were her idea of an ideal breakfast, so she began the day in a good frame of mind. Evidently this was too early an hour for the watcher, for as they drove down the road that paralleled the railway, Giselle felt no eyes on her, to her intense relief. Lebkuchen and the show horse Polly had worked out their differences and pulled alongside each other willingly. There was plenty of light thanks to street lamps within the city, and by the time they were actually past