4 September

The vendors are looking at me strangely. I sit here cross-legged on the stone piling with this journal and my pen and blood-red ink, and they look at me strangely. It?s a change in my routine, and theirs. If I am no longer the odd woman who stands silent for an hour and then leaves, are they missing a chance to try and sell me something? I can almost hear the thoughts of the man with the meat-pie cart across the way. He?s agonizing over whether to try to sell me something. If he succeeds, months of lost sales will haunt him. If he fails, the other vendors will laugh at him for even trying.

After all, in all these months I haven?t so much as smiled at any of them, much less made a purchase. It?s just a time for solitude and silence, now. Which seems odd, on reflection. I come to one of the city?s main thoroughfares, one of the bridges from north to south, in the middle of the day. I wait from noon bells to one after, with the crowd rushing back and forth ? too jumbled to be tides of people, it?s all swirls and whirlpools and eddies of stillness. Below the river churns on, so different from the ice-choked torrent that sucked me under in the winter. And into this swell of noise and life I come for solitude and silence.

But where else should I go? At least here there?s life. The shop is almost deserted; I wait and I work on furniture for the residence upstairs, because there is no work to be found. Even construction has slowed, with Dockside almost entirely rebuilt and the West End ? well, it?s the West End. Those who can afford to repair and rebuild their homes for the most part already have.

Davvy comes and goes, but there?s not enough work for two anymore, not really. I don?t know what he does while he?s gone. I don?t ask. I hide in the wood, with the few small commissions underway, when he appears; it?s selfish, it?s cowardly, but I can?t seem to reach out. Not to Lydia or Eless, Jade or Lang. Most of all not to Davarin, who deserves so much more than I can find it in me to give. So I work on the few small jobs, alone. I bring this journal with me to the center of the bridge and write where none will care to look inside.

Silence becomes a habit; I rarely seem to speak anymore, and when I do ? I?m always surprised my voice doesn?t come out as a raven?s croaking. What happened to my resolve to venture out again? It vanished, almost as soon as it was written.

I?ll write of fears and whispered gossip, instead. Bloody murders, nothing new for the West End, but these are so horrible that even those hardened by life here look ill at the thought. Men, women, children ? torn apart, and on some it was done carefully so the victim would remain alive as long as possible. There are ugly whispers against lycans, werewolves, for the claw marks sometimes found on the scene. Mob sentiment grows. I don?t think it is lycans ? or not the groups of them that people seem to fear. There?s too much familiar in it.

I hope I imagine things.

Even the spread of news about the Harvest Festival is only a bright surface painted over roiling depths. There?s an uneasy feeling in the air. Is it always this way here in the autumn? Please all the gods, I hope not. Let it all be imagination. Let it not be here this year as it was last year. Let me keep my blood-colors to ink on paper for a while longer.

I haven?t patrolled with the Scathachians as I promised for their aid. I haven?t seen Mirage in months, either. The few times I?ve looked, she seems nowhere to be found. We spoke of a mission, something I could help with ? and since then I?ve heard nothing. Shall I find the strength to break my silence for that?

The bell sounds ? and the meat pie vendor has just gathered his courage to call across to me, to try to sell me something to eat. I?ll buy.

28 September

What do you say when someone gives you a house? ?Thank you? doesn?t seem enough, and ?why? sounds both ungrateful and suspicious. It was ?why? that I thought, though. From Davarin I would have asked ?how? and worried what he had been doing to afford it. From Lang the only thing I could think was ?why?. When I finally asked, he said that it was because we?re as close as family, and family takes care of one another.

A house still seems excessive.

When did I lose my optimism? My faith in people? No ? let me find better words. Because strangely, I have more faith in strangers than I do in my friends. I haven?t lost my faith in people, just in myself. Still picking up the pieces. I?m not giving up the shop in the West End. The house has a workshop in the basement ? perhaps Dav will want to use that. Or we can clear it for a sparring ring. I won?t be driven away from the one place I?ve created and held.

It will take some of the risk from using the shop as a safe-house, though. Festival night I went to the house ? Dav was there. He?d cooked ? he learned to cook, for me. We talked, more than we have in months. And much later that night, after he?d fallen asleep, I left the house and walked back to the shop. Dav deserves much better than I give him.

I still don?t have a coat ? my hands were freezing when I got there. I was blowing on my fingers, trying to warm them up, and not paying attention to where I was going. Almost tripped over a scrawny girl curled up in the doorway. I thought she was just one of the random homeless, looking for a place out of the wind, until she gabbled one of the safe words at me. She inhaled three sandwiches so fast I barely saw her chew. She?s still staying here, looking nervously out the windows and hiding every time a Watch patrol goes by. I wonder if she?ll say good-bye before she leaves, or just vanish? Usually they just vanish.

It?s a good thing there?s work coming in again. Alex?s table is finished, though he hasn?t come by to collect it. Because he?s late, there are chairs, too. I had time. At the festival, after Lang gave me the deed and the keys to the house ? and left ? I saw Silas. He called me by name and I didn?t recognize him, not until he reminded me. My memory is as shattered as the rest of me, broken, jagged bits of mirror fallen to the ground. We had talked, when we first met, of frames ? he?s a painter ? and I gave him the address to the shop.

When he visited, it was ashes. I told him that it?s been rebuilt. He ordered the frames on the spot; I?ll have them ready in a month, with the first in a week or so. Frames aren?t that difficult, really, but they take more care. The frame can?t draw attention away from the piece it frames, and so it?s usually a mistake to make the ornamentation too elaborate. Too plain, however, can be just as distracting. It?s a challenge.

I was talking with Silas and another woman, Alexandra ? Lexie. Somehow the topic turned to passion ? what we were passionate about. Silas said that his passion was the same as his profession, painting. Lexie?s an accountant, but she said her passion is people, trying to figure out what makes them tick. My profession is easy. I?m a carpenter, and it can be satisfying. Creating something from nothing ? it?s a way to make amends for the life I lived before, the life of destruction.

But they asked what my passion is, and I couldn?t answer.

I don?t know.

28 March

I?ve picked up this journal, my pen, so many times before, and put them back down again without ever letting ink touch paper. Now there seems to be too much for the parchment to bear. Lerida?s alive, returned. I haven?t seen her since she visited, but she?s alive. She offered to help me when she found out about the fire.

How could I tell her that nobody can help me?

I smiled, no challenge really ? I was, am, truly happy to see her, to know that she?s back in RhyDin. She looks better, too ? stronger, more whole, in the now. She was drifting before she ran, even I could see it. Whatever she found when she ran, it was good for her.

Highlights ? we went to Nosgoth, Davarin and I. Darkmere?s home. It?s a peaceful place, or seems so. I kept expecting something to wrong. Nothing did. By the time we left my nerves were wound tighter than ever. Not what Davarin was hoping for; I hid it from him. I?m getting better at acting, I think. Maybe if I act as if all is well, it will be.

Paladin still hasn?t returned. I don?t think I have hope anymore, not really. It?s just habit to go to the bridge at midday. A small, private ritual. The bells mark each day survived, time unrolling and leading me around in a circle back to the same place I was the day before.

I should be dizzy.

The Watch ? watches. They have their suspicions of us still. Everybody knows the West End Watch is full of corruption. I have proof. It scares them to know I have proof and haven?t used it. They expect me to blackmail them, or to go on a crusade for reforms. They don?t know why I do neither, and so they watch. It?s time to change my safe words, for those few people who still come to the shop in the middle of the night, fleeing the people who should be protecting them.

The shop is neutral ground. Unspoken, but fact nevertheless. I?ve taken in refugees from all walks, from warring gangs, or occasionally just a person who needed a safe place to go for the night. What can the Watch do about it? There?s no evidence. If they ask who the person spending the night was, my answer is always the same. ?My friend.? Apparently, I have many friends. Most of them I?ll never see again.

I shouldn?t tempt Fate. I know what the Watch can do about it. If I have proof of their corruption, they still have a charge of murder and arson to hang over my head.

I suppose this is how we play the game.