The storyteller thinks of asking why Four Wish and her child have not been given this room, but he holds back. He has asked, and will ask again, the people of Twist to be a believing audience, to live in his story, and so he is happy to give the same to Praise.
“I am sorry for these hardships,” the storyteller says. “And sorry, too, for what this community faces each day. Give me this night to think on what you have said, and I will give you an answer in the morning.”
Praise releases a sigh that he has been holding since the outer scouts first reported back that the storyteller was approaching and the First told him of her plan. Before Praise, the storyteller remembers, it was a large, quiet person named Tulloch. And before Tulloch it was someone called Lim.
But there has always been this room, always this plea, always the grasping for what is just out of reach.
“I’ll thank you for that,” Praise says finally. “Let me know if there’s anything you need tonight. I don’t sleep well. None of us do, really. What with all the . . . Well, I’ll most likely be awake should you need anything.”
“It’s okay. I understand.” And he does. To exist in a world that might devour you at any moment, it’s enough to drive a person to the kind of desperation that asks for the impossible and demands it anyway.
“Rest well, storyteller,” Praise says, leaving the room and closing the door behind him. It clicks shut.
For a long time, he stands still and silent in the room, eyes open but seeing nothing, the slowly dying sounds of Praise settling in for the night flittering through the walls. He is lost, his mind wandering paths that were and that might have been. Near him, the hammock still sways slightly, a whisper-creak in the bare light of his skin.
Long after those who can sleep have dropped away, the storyteller moves to the hammock and sits down. The walls seem to lean in close, holding him in. He slides his pack from his shoulder and cradles it for a moment in his lap.
Twist is silent in the manner of a person practiced at playing dead, and it is into this silence that the storyteller speaks as he opens his bag and peers into the darkness inside.
“Where are you, keeper?”
* * *
“Good day, storyteller. I have some breakfast here if you’d like.”
Praise is waiting for him when the storyteller emerges. On the table, Praise has set what is, for the people of Twist, a feast. Charred vegetables of various kinds surround three separate cuts of meat. A large cup of water sits next to the plate.
“Is this wyrm meat?” The storyteller leans forward, eyeing the plate.
“It is,” Praise says, proud. “We can’t do much about the big ones, of course, same as that lady from your story, but every once in a while, we find a young one we can all take down. Feeds us for thirty, forty days.”
“This is kind of you, but I’m not hungry, thank you,” the storyteller says after a moment. Drinking water he can manage, but the thought of chewing through meat and fibers that once thrilled with life is enough to stir something like rage in him. He steps out the door and onto the street outside Praise’s home.
“That’s no problem at all,” Praise says, catching up to him. They begin walking back toward the fires. “Did you sleep well?”
The storyteller can hear the crowd gathering around the fires even from this far away. How quickly they grow comfortable with him and his protections, he thinks.
“I’m afraid I cannot extend my stay in Twist,” he says as the two of them begin walking toward the fire. “I must continue spreading my stories, however much I might like to stay in one place.”
This last is true—though there is of course only the one story. Were he to stop moving, the slow fade of his body and mind—along with the last bits of himself he still clutches—would go, the transformation finally completed.
And it’s best, too, he has found, to deliver the rejection with confidence after the appearance of having thought on it.
Let us get where we’re going, he thinks.
“Please, storyteller,” Praise says, walking beside him. “Please. Just a few days.”
The wheedling, begging tone in his voice is like a bug crawling across the storyteller’s neck.
“I’m sorry, but no. I cannot. I will stay through today and then move on. I expect to finish by the end of the day and can take my leave as Twist goes to sleep.”
Silence falls between them for a moment, and the storyteller can almost hear the pleas turning hard and bitter between Praise’s teeth.
“I understand, of course,” Praise says, finally.
They walk the rest of the way without speaking.
* * *
“Sing, memory,” the storyteller says as he steps back on the dais, looking out again at the people of Twist. “Sing of that which the Sea takes and of that which the Sea can never touch. Sing of a crew stranded among enemies and of a city floating beyond the ken of any map.”
He pauses, drawing them in, letting them feast on the anticipation.
“Sing,” he says, offering a wide smile, “of pirates.”
A healthy laugh burbles up from the crowd. This is what they went to sleep thinking of, and it was their first thought upon waking.
“Sing of the hanged, of the Gone Ways, of a city once bent to a green law, a city that has lost its way.”
He lets his eyes roam to where the First is in close, quiet conversation with Praise.
“Sing of betrayal. And sing of redemption.”
He reaches down for the cup of water, still where he had left it, where he knew it would be. He holds it up and slowly pours the remaining liquid onto the ground.
“Sing of thirst, and the dread ambition of those who would quench it.”
A pause, during which he shifts the pack on his shoulder and looks down at his feet for a moment.
“Sing of a sailor, a seeker, a light searching for darkness. Sing of the fire, and sing of its keeper.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Boots struck the dock in eerie unison as pirates erupted from the Once-City like maddened ants spilling from a disturbed hill. Kindred looked up to see her crewmates mobbed by more and more pirates. Some fought, creating tiny, skirmishing circles among the masses, but they all fell.
Little Wing stood from where she crouched protectively over the captain. She roared at the oncoming attackers, lashing out.
Long Quixa and Cora the Wraith rose with fists and teeth, elbows and knees.
Stone-Gwen battled. Scindapse shouted.