Icestorm by Theresa Dahlheim

Author:Theresa Dahlheim [Dahlheim, Theresa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-07-11T22:00:00+00:00

There was a stagehand crouched just behind a purple canvas drape that was supposed to represent a mountain. Graegor could see him from the high balcony box, even though he was dressed all in black and wasn’t moving. Was he holding up the sun?—No, it looked like that particular pole was fixed in place. Unable to untangle the personal relationships being portrayed by the actors, Graegor extended his sight toward the stagehand to try to figure out what he was doing there.

He had gotten a lot of practice at extending his sight over the last few days, even though he wasn’t always able to break away from the line-of-sight rule that, as far as Contare knew, restricted every other person who had the talent. It was mildly interesting to watch birds fussing in nests, dogs tracking down scents, and cats prowling through yards—mostly calicos, oddly enough. He’d even watched little green bees gathering nectar, something impossible before spring where he’d grown up. But watching animals do what they did was not all that useful.

And watching this stagehand was doubly useless because he wasn’t doing anything. He was Adelard and probably as old as Graegor’s father, and he was staring intently at something on stage, but Graegor couldn’t decide what. Was he waiting for a cue? Was something resembling action going to happen at some point before the play ended?

Graegor drew back his sight, and when his hearing returned, he glanced at Tabitha, sitting beside him. She was completely captivated, her hands clenched into a fold of her ice-blue skirt. But just because Tabitha found the play fascinating didn’t mean he did.

Tonight she seemed to find everything fascinating, except him.

It was confusing. At Solstice, the night before the duel, the way she’d told him to win for her—that had led him to believe she’d want to know all about the fight when they spoke to each other again. He’d called to her from the fishing boat on his way back, but she’d been so concerned about how exhausted he’d seemed that she’d insisted that they wait until the next day to talk. So he’d called to her on Godsday afternoon, wanting her to hear not only about the duel, but also about his two latest visions and his meetings with Lord Oran and the heretics. Tabitha had listened to him, but her responses, when she’d made them, reminded him of the condescending attention one paid to a talkative child. He’d confessed to her that he’d almost killed Ferogin, but that he’d stopped himself because she would have wanted him to—but she hadn’t seemed to realize how significant that was. He’d described Lord Oran’s dream, and his prophecy that Graegor would “burn the world”—but she hadn’t seemed to realize how frightening that was. He’d asked if something was bothering her, but she’d denied it, so he’d kept going, mainly because he never wanted to be accused of keeping any secrets from her. When he’d told her about the heretics, she’d immediately latched onto the fact that her face had not been included among Brandeis’s new drawings.

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