Daren

Daren worked around one of the smaller theatres of the river quarter, shifting scenery or trimming lamps or mending whatever had broken, and Zarina, calling herself Sera, never entirely established what his job was. He was lean and loose-built, with brown hair that needed cutting, a small pale scar on one cheek and sleeves rolled to the elbow in any weather, and he had a habit of holding whatever tool he had last used as though he had forgotten it was in his hand.

He did not belong to the Velvet Veil, and he was not clever or glamorous or interested in freedom as an idea. He was easy company. When he had nothing to say he said nothing, which almost nobody at the palace had ever managed with her, and the first time he kissed her and she went still, he waited, and did not try again that night. He was her first lover, by her own choice, in a narrow room over the theatre with one candle burning crookedly, and it was clumsy and kind and entirely hers. Before dawn he fastened the back of her dress for her, and it was the plainest, kindest thing anybody had done for her in a year.

She left him for Silas after Sabra died, without ever quite deciding to. He came looking for her at the Red House and found her in another man’s coat with her eyes too bright, and did not shout, because he was not a man who shouted.

“I liked Sera,” he told her on the stair. “I don’t know who this is.” Then he told her to look after herself, because nobody else in that house was going to.