You know- Of course he knew. Taproot knew of the Red Queens secret brother, too broken for the throne. He knew about goats chewing on the slopes of distant fjords. He would hardly not know of Vermillions greatest crime lord.
Watch me. Taproot laid a slim finger alongside his slim nose. Maeres has secrets that even I dont know. And he is not best pleased with you.
Perhaps a journey north would be good for my health in any case, then, I said.
True enough. And Taproot waved me out, fluttering his hands as if I were a tumbler come to beg more sawdust for the centre ring and not a prince of Red March. I let him do it too, for when a man who knows too much knows not to waste his manners on you, its best to be moving on.
NINE
The pregnant woman, done for the moment with her tattooing, led me to Vargas wagon. She waddled ahead of me looking fit to pop at each step, though she said her time lay weeks ahead.
Daisy, she told me. Her name, or perhaps what she planned to call the whelp if it proved female. I hadnt been listening too hard. Wed passed a wagon where a woman in tight silks sat with her ankles crossed behind her head, and my attention had wandered.
Daisy? A fine name. For a cow.
I spotted the elephant, corralled by a fence that it could swat aside, tethered to a thick post by a length of chain. A number of circus men, showing off lean and muscular bodies, lounged around a bar made of two barrels and a plank, watching the elephant and whatever else might pass. Behind them a well-laden beer wagon provided shade. Circuses always came amply provisioned with ale for the audience. I guess it must be easier to impress a drunken crowd.
Further on we passed a shabby tent stitched with moon and stars, symbols of the horoscope dotted amongst the faded heavens. An ancient sat outside on a three-legged stool, snaggle-toothed and liver-spotted.
Cross my palm, stranger. I couldnt tell if the creature was man or woman.
Dont humour her. Daisy increased the speed of her waddle. Cracked, that one is. Everythings doom and gloom. Drives the punters away.
Youre quarry. The old woman called after us, then coughed as if a lung had burst. Quarry. I couldnt tell which of us shed aimed the words at.
Save it for the peasants, I called back, but it left a chill. Always does. I expect thats why prophecy sells.
We walked on until the hacking cough faded behind us. I laughed, but in truth I had felt hunted since we left the city. Though by what I couldnt say. More than the Silent Sister, more than Maeress terrors even, it was the eyes behind that enamel mask that watched me from my quiet moments. Just a glimpse at the opera, just a glancing encounter, and yet it haunted me.
Varga. Daisy pointed at a wagon much as Taproot described. She drew in a deep sigh and started to waddle off, back the way wed come. I offered no thanks, distracted now by the small crowd of scantily clad young women clustered around the open end of Vargas wagon. Dancers, by the litheness of them and the snatches of silk they wore.
Ladies. I approached, flashing them my best smile. It seemed, however, that a tall blond prince of Red March was less interesting than a huge dark Norseman bulging with muscle as if his arms and legs had been crammed with boulders. The girls pointed into the gloom beneath the awning, giggling behind their hands, exchanging appreciative whispers. I leaned around and stepped up onto the buckboard.
You didnt need to take his shirt off, I said. Its his hand that needs removing.
Snorri offered me a dark look from the sloping couch hed been arrayed upon. He really did have an alarming topology, his stomach ridged and divided by muscle, his chest and arms bursting with power, veins writhing across him to feed blood into the engines of his strength, all tensed now against the pain Vargas investigations were causing him.
Youre blocking my light. Varga turned from the messy work in hand. She was a woman of middling years, tending to grey, with a homely face of the kind that supports compassion and disapproval in equal measures.
Will he live? I asked, my interest genuine though self-motivated.
Its a nasty wound. The tendons are undamaged but one of the small bones of the hand has been broken, others displaced. It will heal, but slowly, and only if the infection is contained.
A yes then?
Probably.
Good news! I turned back to the girls outside. That calls for a celebration. Let me buy you fine ladies a drink and we can afford my companion a little privacy. I stepped down amongst them. They smelled of greasepaint, cheap perfume, sweat. All good. Im Jalan, but you can call me Prince Jal.
At last my old enchantment started to work. Even the sculpted magnificence of Snorri ver Snagason had a hard time competing with the magic word prince.
Cherri. Pleased to meet you, Your Highness. Some doubt in her voice, but I could tell she wanted to believe her prince had come.
I took her hand. Enchanted. And she smiled up at me, pretty enough with a snub nose and wicked eyes, fair hair, curled, streaked with blond.
Lula, said her friend, a petite wench with short black hair, pale despite the summer, and sculpted as if to satisfy a schoolboys dream.
With Cherri on one arm, Lula on the other, and a clutch of dancers following behind, I led the way back to the beer wagon. Snorri let out a sharp gasp from under Vargas awning. And life was good.
The afternoon passed in a pleasant haze and parted me from the company of my last silver crowns. The circus men proved remarkably tolerant of my pawing their women, as did the circus women, and we sprawled on cushions before the beer wagon drinking wine from amphorae, growing louder as the shadows lengthened.
Annoyingly, the dancers kept asking me about Snorri, as if the hero of Aral in their midst werent quite enough to hold their attention.
Is he a chieftain? Lula asked.
Hes so big. A red-haired beauty named Florence.
Whats his name? A tall Nuban girl with copper loops through her ears and a mouth made for kissing. How is he called?
Snorri, I said. It means wife-beater.
No? Cherri, all round-eyed.
Yes! I faked sadness. Terrible temper-if a woman upsets him he cuts her face. I drew a line across my cheek with one finger.
Whats the North like? The Nuban girl wasnt so easily deflected.
I tipped the amphora to my mouth, gulping wine while I held my hand out at a steep angle. Like that. I wiped my lips. Only icy. All the northmen slip to the coasts, where they congregate in miserable villages smelling of fish. It gets very crowded. Every now and then a bunch more come sliding down from the hills on their arses and the only place for the ones closest to the shore is on a boat. And off they sail. I mimicked a ships progression across the waves. I gave Lula my amphora. Those horns on their helms? I made myself two horns, a hand to each side of my head. Cuckolds horns. The new arrivals are bouncing abed with the wives left behind. Terrible place. Dont ever go there.
A small girl and small boy came out to sing for us, a remarkable pair with high clear voices, and even the elephant moved closer to listen. I had to shush Cherri to hear uninterrupted when the children sang High-John, but I let her giggle through their rendition of Boogie Bugle. Without warning their voices soared into an aria that drew me back to Fathers opera. They sang it sweeter and with more heart, but still the world seemed to close about me and I heard those screams in the fire. And beneath those screams my memory ran a deeper sound, something heard but at the time not understood, a different kind of howling. The roar of something angry rather than scared.
Enough. I threw a cushion at them. It missed and the elephant snagged it from the ground. Scram! The little girls lip wobbled for an instant and they both fled.
. . give them what they want, dears. Thats all he says. With Taproot its all hips and tits. Theres no art in it for him. Lula looked up at me over her clay goblet, seeking affirmation.
Well, to be fair, Lula, you are mostly hips and tits, I said, a slight slur to my words now.
They giggled at that. The combination of a title and freely flowing wine will have people laughing at anything you offer up as funny, and Ive never once complained about it. A sharp oath rang out from the direction of Vargas wagon. I put an arm around Cherri, another around Lula, and drew them close. Enjoy the world while you can, I say. A shallow enough philosophy by which to live, but shallow is what Ive got. Besides, deep is apt to drown you.
The first evening stars watched me being taken for a guided tour of the dancers wagon, supported on either side by Cherri and Lula, though who was doing the most supporting would be hard to say. We tumbled inside and strange to say that in the dark nearly everything we wanted to do required three pairs of hands.
In the dead of night a commotion interrupted proceedings within the dancers wagon. At first we ignored it. Cherri was making her own commotion and I was doing my best to help. We ignored it until the wagons rocking stopped dead, moving Cherri to draw breath. Until that point Id heard little above her exclamations and the creaking of axles and supports.
Jalan! Snorris voice.
I stuck my head out through the flaps into the starlight, far from pleased. Snorri stood with one thick arm gripping the wagon bed, arresting its motion. Come.
I hadnt the breath to tell him that was what I was trying to do. Instead I slipped out, lacing up what needed to be laced. Yes? Not keeping the temper from my voice.
Come. He led off between the nearest wagons. I could hear weeping now. Wailing.
Snorri followed the fields gradient, letting it lead us a little way out from the wagons and carts encircling Taproots tent. Here several dozen of the circus folk huddled before a bright fire.
A child died. Snorri set a hand to my shoulder as if offering comfort. Unborn.
The pregnant woman? A foolish thing to say-it had to be a pregnant woman. Daisy. I remembered her name.
The babes buried. He nodded to a low mound in the dirt out past the fire, snug between two old grave markers. We should show our respects.