I felt Vindeliar do it. He dropped the illusion as the captain’s face neared hers and let him see her as she was. His intended kiss did not reach her mouth as he recoiled from her. In less than a breath, Vindeliar had restored her glamour. But by then the captain had stumbled back a step. He blinked, rubbed his eyes with the palms of both his hands and then smiled at Dwalia sheepishly. ‘I’ve been awake too long. I stand on land and feel giddy from the stillness. Lady Aubretia, I will see you later this evening. We shall dine together.’
‘We shall,’ she promised him faintly. He turned his head, rubbed his brow and made his way back up to his ship. He looked back at us from the deck, and she lifted a lace-gloved hand to wave at him. He grinned like a boy, waved back and turned to his duties. For a moment longer, she stood staring after him. Hurt made her homely face even plainer. Vindeliar stood innocently by, feigning that he did not know what had just happened but, ‘He saw me,’ Dwalia said in a low, accusing voice. ‘You allowed him to see me.’
Vindeliar looked off into the distance. ‘Perhaps, for an instant, my control faltered.’ He flickered his gaze back to her and then away. I saw his vicious satisfaction but perhaps it was too fleeting for her to catch. ‘It takes a great deal of strength to maintain such an illusion,’ he pointed out to her. ‘The captain is not a gullible man. To make his crew see you as Lady Aubretia every moment was hard. To make the captain see you in such a different form, in every moment he was with you has near drained all my magic. Perhaps now is the time when you should give me—’
‘Not here!’ she snapped. She glared at both of us. ‘Pick up that trunk and follow me.’ Vindeliar took one end and I seized the other handle and we walked behind her. The trunk was not that heavy. Carrying it was only awkward because Vindeliar was such a weakling. He kept shifting his grip from hand to hand, and he walked leaning over as if he could barely lift it. The trunk bumped and skipped on the paving stones and knocked against my hip and calf. Every hundred paces or so, she had to stop and wait for us to catch up with her. Vindeliar strove to maintain her appearance. Men were halting to cast admiring looks at her. Two women exclaimed to one another over her hat and dress. She walked proudly and when she glanced back at us, there was a pleased light in her eyes I had never seen before.
We walked down streets crowded with folk foreign to my eyes. Sailors and merchants and workers, I guessed them to be, but in all manner of garb and of all different colourings. I saw a boy with hair as red as rust, his hands and arms speckled with freckles like a bird’s egg. There was a woman taller than any person I’d ever glimpsed, and her bare brown arms were sheathed all over in white tattoos from her fingertips to her wide shoulders. A bald little girl in a pink frock skipped beside her equally bald mother whose lips were framed with tiny jewels. I turned my head, wondering how the jewels stayed on and the trunk hit my calf on top of an earlier bruise.
I felt Vindeliar struggling to carry the trunk and maintain Lady Aubretia’s illusion. The third time Dwalia had to stop and wait for us, she said, ‘I see you are becoming useless again. Very well. You need not try so hard. For now, I wish folk to not notice us. That is all.’
‘I will try.’
Her beauty fell away from her. She became ordinary, and less than ordinary. Not worthy of notice.
Dwalia trudged through the crowds, and people grudgingly gave way to her, and we lurched along after her. I could feel Vindeliar’s magic failing. I glanced over at him. He was sweating with the effort to carry his end of the trunk and maintaining his illusion. His power sputtered and danced like a dying flame on a damp log. ‘I can’t …’ he gasped, and gave up his efforts.
Dwalia glared at him. I wondered if she knew he no longer cloaked her. But as we tottered along behind her, folk began to notice her. I saw a woman wince at the scar on her cheek. A little boy took his finger from his mouth and pointed it at her. His mother shushed him and hurried him along. Twice, pale folk stopped and turned toward her as if they might greet her but she didn’t even pause for them. Folk stared at her and she must have known they saw her as she truly was. One grey-bearded sailor gave a caw of dismay at the sight of her. ‘A feather bonnet on a pig,’ he said to his swarthy companion as they passed, and both guffawed.
Dwalia halted in the street. She did not look back at us as we caught up with her, but spoke over her shoulder. ‘Leave it. There is nothing in that trunk that I’ll ever wear again. Just leave it.’ She reached up and tore free the pins that had secured her hat, threw it to the ground and strode away.
