Angelfire | The Whispering Wall #3

Twenty Six: An Audience

"I need to pee." Koen danced from foot to foot. "You think Harkenn would mind if I went in one of the horse buckets?"

Jordan snorted. "I think everyone who watched you do it would mind."

Koen looked around at the teeming crowd surrounding the platform, a sea of heads stretching across every inch of the market square and down all the streets leading off from it. He sighed. "Damn it. Guess I'll have to wait."

They were all waiting. Despite the number of people here, there was an expectant hush in the air. Harkenn had yet to arrive; the hastily constructed platform in the centre of the square contained only Unspoken and guards. Yddris and Nika were both assigned to Harkenn's personal escort, and while Jordan was expected to be present for the speech, he had thankfully not been assigned to the procession from the castle. He wondered if Arlen had met with Markus yet, if it had gone well.

A tremor threatened in his spine, and he pushed all thoughts of the Devils out of his head.

"Are you well, Thorne?" Cara asked, because of course she'd sensed that brief flash of panic.

No. Not at all.

"I'm fine," he said roughly, because it was easier to pretend than to get into all the many things that were bothering him. He hadn't slept last night and his eyes ached with it. If anyone had noticed that his voice was hoarser than usual from the bruising on his throat, they had been tactful enough not to say anything.

Someone touched his hand. He flinched on instinct and Astra withdrew a little. "Sorry to startle you."

"It's okay. I was..." he trailed off. The sentence didn't even seem worth the bother of finishing.

Henrik appeared behind her. Yddris's friend jerked his head and nudged Jordan's shoulder; the Unspoken equivalent of a wink. "You think Harkenn's making a statement, or do you think he's making a statement?"

Indeed, the platform Jordan stood on was surrounded by grim-faced guards and every Unspoken in the city, it seemed, who wasn't needed on the defence of the outskirts. Down below them, Thirris looked to be chatting the guards' ears off.

"I reckon he might be making a statement," Jordan replied. He snorted. He was getting a bit sick of people making statements — there never seemed to be anything good in it for him.

"I don't see why I have to be involved in it," someone muttered from along the row. Jordan glanced over.

"Didn't recognise you for a minute there," he said to Jeorge, who stood with his arms crossed on the other side of Koen. He wore a cloak very like the one Jordan wore, only it bulged strangely at the back where his wings were concealed.

"How strange," the Angel drawled. "I thought I would stand out." He gestured in a distinctly disgruntled manner at the hood covering his face. "How do any of you get around without any dark-damned peripheral vision?"

"Practice," Jordan, Koen and Astra all said at once.

"And usually after tripping up a few times," Koen added, unhelpfully.

"I'll look forward to that," was the sour response.

"Have you finished anything lately?" Astra asked softly, drawing closer to Jordan's side again. Her aura, warm and controlled, nudged gently against his, and he couldn't tell for the life of him whether she was doing it intentionally.

"Haven't had a chance," he admitted. Several half-finished paintings sat in his room — the commission of the outskirts estate he'd help rob, barely past the underpainting, and Darin's commission of his parents' farm, which he'd only managed to sketch out onto the canvas, and reams of his own personal work at various stages of not being finished — but then life had become so chaotic he'd barely sat at his desk to study, let alone paint.