old Martin was doing: trying to erase the gray from the world, to make all the answers simple. And look at the damage he did. With a weary smile, she said, Has Nate told you about us? How all of this began?
No.
Tell him to show you John Slonim. And tell him I love him, and that I’m proud of him. I’ve asked Derie a thousand times, but she won’t do it. It’s not her way. Caterina gave Judah a long, thoughtful look. My, but you are amazing.
I’m not amazing.
My dear, Caterina said, you’re a miracle. Now let me go, please.
Like falling down a hole, the gentle sway of the wagon becoming the heat of the fire becoming the cold tower floor. The magus moaned next to her, clutching his stomach and head in turn, tongue bitten hard between his teeth. Judah’s arm hurt. She traced the source of the pain to a red welt on the inside of her wrist. For an instant, she could feel Gavin’s presence. Then the importance drained out of him like water from a punctured bucket.
“Something is wrong,” she said. She didn’t think the magus could hear her.
* * *
Who’s John Slonim? she asked.
His eyes widened in surprise. How do you know about John Slonim?
You mentioned him, Judah said, although she didn’t know if he had or not. You said you’d show me sometime.
I did? Nate looked confused. I suppose I must have.
So show me now.
He seemed to think about it for a long moment. He looked better in the Work, too; more the way his mother had seen him. Yes. Yes, why not?
He brought her to a poor village in the woods. She saw hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, thin shirts piled on top of each other instead of warm coats, and sickly, too-serious children huddled against their mothers. But the torches stuck on the sides of the now-familiar Slonimi wagons around the clearing were cheerful and beckoning. The Slonimi were thin, too, but their clothes were a colorful hodgepodge of styles and fabrics that spoke of long journeys and distant origins. The air smelled of fire and roasting nuts and snow. This memory felt different than the others Nate had shown her, something in the way the torchlight picked out the hollow faces and the contrast of the saturated caravan colors with the drab clothes of the villagers. This wasn’t a scene Nate had seen; this was a scene that had been shown to him. She was seeing it not just through his eyes, but through all of the eyes it had passed through on its way to him. She knew things she couldn’t have known: the way the villagers had been drawn to the clearing like water drawn downhill, the bleakness of their lives stretching out beyond it. She knew the empty storerooms without having to see them, just as she knew the shed in the woods, full of tiny dead bodies and old thin ones, stacked like cordwood, waiting for the thaw.
A few planks stretched between the two grandest wagons for a stage, a piece of scarlet cloth tacked overhead for a canopy. The edge of the stage was lit with a dozen candles in reflecting lanterns so the man onstage seemed to glow. His skin was a warm brown, his cravat a brilliant red, and in the candlelight none of the people on the ground could see the stains that dotted it, or the worn places in his coat. His coppery eyes sparkled and his face was alive with excitement. You, that face said to every single person in the audience. I am talking to you. You are special. You are important.
I bring you magic! he cried. I bring you blossoms in the dead of winter! Judah heard him in all of herself, the music in his voice, the practiced warmth. With a showman’s flourish, he reached into the battered silk hat he held.
The performer’s grin lifted away, rising with the smoke. Confusion spilled across his face. Then: astonishment.
His hand emerged from the hat holding a fistful of flowers. Not the folded paper that Judah (somehow) knew he expected, but real flowers, vivid and luminous: irises, orchids, lilies, flowers nobody knew the names of, flowers nobody had ever seen. Out of the hat spilled more flowers, and more, and with them came leafy vines, growing at an alarming pace, reaching across the planking, down to the ground. The man dropped the hat and backed away from it. The faded black silk