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“You did not volunteer your own tale to capacity,” I snapped at him. “Hence, you cannot expect the girl to share the details of her mother’s illness. Unless you’re a physician?”

“Rhetorical as your question was, I’ll answer anyway. Potioneers aren’t blood-letters or healers. I don’t know squat about mending a broken bone, but I can spray a mixture onto the skin that’ll make the bone glow beneath the surface, in order for the physician to see it better.”

“Then cease interrogating her.”

The girl looked bemused, perhaps because I had spoken with vigor on her behalf, and perhaps she did not know how else to react, for I certainly did not.

“And you, knight?” Lyrik asked. “Why are you here?”

Within my silence lurked a multitude of responses, none of which I longed to impart.

“He’s here for everyone but himself,” the girl mumbled. “He’s a protector.”

I shifted. What she had said was the truth.

Lyrik pointed at himself. “Residence.” Then he pointed at the girl. “Sickness.” Then he pointed at me. “Protection.”

He sucked on the cylinder, expelled fumes, and swerved toward Nicu. “And you?”

It came to my attention that Nicu had stopping watching the potioneer and started watching night descend over the woodland, his withdrawal also rather unlike him. He started at Lyrik’s question. “I...I’m...”

“Don’t be shy.”

“I’m not shy.”

“Didn’t think so.”

“I’m tumble-weeding, tumbling for my own suns and moons.”

“Independence,” Lyrik translated, grasping Nicu’s wayward speech without practice. He tipped ash into the pit and regarded the embers. “The Queen’s grandson, huh? Does that make you a prince?”

It did not. The Queen was his grandmother in both name and love, but not by blood. Nevertheless, Princess Briar would have named him an heir to the throne, placing him in the line of succession, were it not for his condition, which made him an unlikely candidate to run a country. Such an appointment would be too much for Nicu, and since the princess and jester were also unwed lovers, their boy was not a prince. He was simply the Royal Son.

Lyrik’s voice had a slouch to it, but the slouch could straighten at any moment and become combustible matter. It was not a favorable prospect.

I warned the squatter, “It makes him your superior and our friend.”

“I was asking the songbird.”

“You said you knew of him.”

“I hear what I hear. Not nothing, not everything.”

“I can speak for myself,” Nicu avowed to me. “I have my own words.”

“Evidently.” Propping one foot against the fire pit’s rim and leaning his head on the banquette, Lyrik spewed smoke to the sky. “Enlighten me. Sing me a song, Songbird.”

Nicu perked up and sang a ballad about dreams, the lines random and nonsensical. As always, this bore no consequence against the silvery flute of his voice, rendering the words secondary. None could deny his gift of producing a dreamlike melody, able to cast spells.

The girl and I applauded, commending his talent. Lyrik, however, offered a belated response. He jabbed the smoking object into his mouth, his applause lagging, clapping lazily at the treetops. His expression remained unchanged, unmoved, unimpressed.

At this, Nicu’s expression faltered.

My dislike of our host intensified. The young woman beside me glared at him as well, both of us united in at least one thing.

The lumber maiden opened her mouth to flay him, but a disturbance interrupted her and had me rising to my feet. I stepped to the terrace edge, listening as a rhythmic tap echoed overhead, growing more pronounced, until the young woman gasped. She rapped her knuckles on her bench, matching the tempo, and the tapping responded in kind.

“Punk!” She lurched off the banquette and pounded across the terrace. “Where are you?! I’m gonna kill you!”