Carneston House was deserted. An unhappy cadet corporal sat in Sergeant Rufet’s chair behind his desk. Surely that was a punishment duty. I surmised he had been given the night shift so that even our dour sergeant could partake of the pleasures of Dark Evening. He gave me a dispirited stare as I trudged past him. I could not find the energy to hurry up the steps. All around me, the dormitory was unnaturally quiet.
Upstairs, my bunkroom showed all the signs of a hasty departure. No one had waited for me. They’d all racketed off together for a wild night of town freedom without even a thought for Nevare Burvelle. I suspected that all the hire carriages would be gone from the cabstand. Even if I’d wanted to go, it was too late now. But I was hungry. I decided I’d leave the Academy grounds and walk to a nearby public house for a beer and sup. Then I’d simply come back to the dormitory and go to sleep. If I could.
I took my greatcoat from its hook, and as I thrust my arms down the sleeves, a folded bit of notepaper fell out. I picked it up from the floor. My name was on the outside of it, in Spink’s handwriting, blotted as if he’d done it hurriedly. I unfolded it and stared at the horrible words that sealed my fate. “I’ve gone to meet Epiny. It was none of my doing, Nevare. She sent me a note by messenger saying she would find me on the green by the Great Square so we could celebrate Dark Evening together. I know I’m a fool to go to her; it will seal your aunt’s opinion of me. But I dare not leave her alone there among the types of men who will be roving the streets tonight.” The note was signed with a sloping S.
I crumpled up the paper and thrust it into my pocket. Now I had to go to Dark Evening, even if I had to walk all the way into the city’s center, for Epiny’s reputation would be completely ruined if she were to spend Dark Evening alone with Spink. I wasn’t sure that my presence could make it any better, but resolved that I would do what I could. Spink would be culled in the coming week, just as surely as I would. For Epiny to be out with him, and for him then to be dismissed from the Academy, would ruin both their names. I took my hoarded allowance out of its hiding place behind my books and left. I wrapped my muffler round my throat as I ran down the steps.
The path from the Academy gates to the cabstand had never seemed so long. When I reached it, there were no carriages, but an enterprising boy with a pony cart was waiting there. The pony was spotted and the cart smelled of potatoes. Given a choice, I never would have ridden in it. I handed over to the boy the ridiculous fare he demanded and mounted the splintery seat beside him. We set out through the chill streets. The cold wind burned past my ears as the pony trotted along. I pulled my hat down and turned my collar up.
The closer we got to the center of the city, the more evident the holiday became. Streets that would ordinarily have been deserted in the cold and dark were thronged with people. Holiday lanterns with cutouts of capering nightshades, the lustful and mischievous sprites said to serve the old gods, hung in the windows or beside the doors of almost every establishment. The intersections were jammed with pedestrians and the traffic thickened as every conveyance in the city seemed bound for the same destination. Long before we reached the Great Square, I could hear the noise of the crowd and see the haze of light that it put into the night sky. I smelled food cooking, and heard the wheezing notes of a calliope competing with a shrill soprano singing about her lost love. When our pony cart wedged for the third time into standing traffic, I shouted over the din to the driver that I was getting out and left them there.
I moved a little faster on foot, but not much. The crowd eddied and swirled around me, and I was often carried sideways with the flow of people. Many of the merrymakers were masked and wigged. Gold chains made of paper and glass jewels sparkled on wrists and throats. Others had painted their faces so extravagantly that the lights glistened off the thick layers of greasepaint. I saw all manner of dress, and a great deal of undress, too. Muscular young men, usually masked as nightshades, went bare-chested through the crowds, making suggestive remarks to women and men alike, much to the merriment of all within earshot. There were women, too, bare-armed even in the cold, their breasts bulging out the tops of their gowns like mushrooms erupting from moss. They wore masks with voluptuous red lips and lolling tongues and arched brows over gilded almond-shaped eyeholes. The crowd nudged and shoved me along until I felt like I was swimming through the morass of merrymakers.
A vendor bumped into me, rather deliberately. When I turned to confront her, she grinned wildly up at me with a garishly painted mouth and urged, “Sample my fruit, young sir? It’s free! Take a taste.” A domino mask of silver paper and her red-painted lips were her only disguise. She held her tray with both hands at chest height. Dark grapes, red cherries, and strawberries surrounded two immense peaches. She leaned toward me, thrusting the tray at me, jolting it against my chest.
I stumbled back from her, confused by her wide smile and aggressiveness and foolishly said, “No thank you, madam. The peaches are large but they are surely well past their season.” Everyone around me roared as if I had made a fine jest while she pursed her lips and then stuck out her tongue at me.
A masked man in a gilt crown and a cheap cloak of thin velvet, his nose red with drink, pushed past me to the vendor. “I’ll taste your fruit, my dear!” he bellowed, and to my shock, he lowered his face into the tray and made loud slurping and gobbling noises while the woman squirmed and laughed delightedly. A moment later my eyes made sense of the gaslit scene. The bodice and sleeves of her dress were painted onto her skin, with a collar and cuffs of lace to complete the subterfuge. The “peaches” on her “tray” were actually her powdered and painted breasts surrounded by wax fruit on a ledge of stiffened fabric. She was as good as naked. I smothered an exclamation of astonishment, yet could not help laughing along with the gawking crowd. The woman wiggled and shrieked, offering him first one breast and then the other. He gently pinched the nipple of one in his teeth and shook it playfully as she squealed delightedly. Never had I seen such a display of wanton licentiousness, nor witnessed folk gleefully encourage it. Suddenly I thought of Epiny in such a place and the smile faded from my face. A moment before, I had nearly forgotten Epiny in the pageantry of the Dark Evening holiday. Now I turned and pushed my way out of the knot of spectators. I knew I must find Epiny, and quickly.
But where?
The streets were thick as porridge with people. I could not lift an elbow without touching someone. The crowd was in motion, and we all edged forward in a mincing lockstep. I was taller than most, but the extravagant hats and tall wigs worn by many of the festivalgoers were a bobbing, swaying forest around me. I could see no open space and so I allowed myself to be carried along, flotsam on a tide of debauchery.
The Great Square was at the heart of Old Thares. All around it, the merchant houses and businesses were the tallest and finest in the city. Lights glowed in many a white-framed window, and music and laughter exploded out of the doors each time they were opened. Despite the cold night, people stood on balconies, glasses of wine in their hands as they stared down at the sea of frivolity below them. The entire city was in the mood for a wild celebration to cheer on the passing of the longest night of the year. The wealthy had gathered in their fine houses for balls and masquerades and sumptuous dinners, while outside in the streets the rest of the populace celebrated as only the poor and the working class know how.
The closer we came to the main square, the louder grew the noise. Thousands of voices competed with all sorts of music, noisemakers, and the shouting of hawkers. I smelled food and was suddenly hungry to the point of nausea. When the river of people around me reached the square, the pressure slackened somewhat. I still had to thread my way through the merrymakers, but I managed to join a crowd clustered around a stall selling skewers of hot meat, roasted chestnuts in newsprint cups, and hot potatoes baked in their jackets. I bought some of each for three times what I should have paid, and ate standing in the midst of the pushing, shouting crowd. Despite all that had befallen me that day, they were delicious, and if I had had the time, I would have wasted more coin on a second helping of each.
There are seven fountains in the Great Square. I made my way toward the closest one and clambered up on the rim. From that vantage, I got my first full view of Dark Evening in Old Thares. It frightened me and filled me with the contagious excitement of the mob at the same time. The throng filled the immense square and pushed out into the surrounding streets that radiated from it. The heat of the massed bodies banished winter’s chill while badly spaced streetlamps shed yellow circles of light onto the crowd. In one section of the square, music was playing and people were dancing wildly. In another, some sort of gymnastics contest was going on. People were stacking themselves up into pyramids, higher and higher. Surely when those on the bottom gave way, there would be injuries for those at the top. Even as I watched, it happened, to wild cries of dismay and shouts of triumphs from their rivals. A few moments later another pyramid was rising.
Beyond the square was the green that sloped gently down to the river, dotted with bright tents that billowed in the winter wind. Spink’s note had said that Epiny would find him there. I doubted it. I had never seen or even imagined so many people packed so closely and still filling such a large space. Nevertheless, I jumped down from the fountain’s edge and began a deliberate trek toward the green. The crowd did not give way to me. I edged between people and sometimes went around tightly packed knots of folk gathered to watch a performer. I did not move quickly; I could not. All the while, I kept my eyes open, hoping to spot either Spink or Epiny. The lighting was erratic, the masked and hooded people always in motion, and the din of voices and instruments pressed on my ears and wearied me.
The green had become the brown, the tended lawns already trampled to thick mud in this one night. The lamplight did not reach this far and the circus folk had lit their own lanterns. The lights gave color to the parts of the tents they touched. Torches illuminated garish posters and wildly attired barkers who perched on their stands and shouted their cant to lure the folk into the tents. The roars of caged beasts emanated from one flapping tent door, its sign promising me that within I would find EVERY LARGE PREDATOR THAT THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN! The next tent had a barker who shouted in a hoarse whisper that no man was truly a man until he had seen Syinese dancers perform the Dance of the Blowing Leaves, and that the next performance would start in five, only five, a mere five minutes from now, and that I should hurry before all the front seats were gone. I walked past, feeling sure that Spink and Epiny would not be in there.
I halted, staring hopelessly around me and praying for a clue. In that instant I saw a hat go by. I could not see the face of the woman who wore it, for she was masked, but I recognized the foolish hat I had seen Epiny wearing the day she came to the Academy with my uncle. “Epiny!” I shouted, but if she heard me over the din, she did not pause. I tried to push my way through the crowd, only to have an angry drunk threaten me for jostling him. By the time I got around him, the hat had vanished into the mouth of a dark blue tent decorated with painted snakes, stars, and snail shells. When I got close enough to read the poster beside the entry, it proclaimed that this tent held FREAKS, GROTESQUES, AND WONDERS OF HU-MANITY! Well, that would certainly attract Epiny, I thought. I joined the line of people waiting to go in. A few moments later I was surprised when Trist, Rory, Oron, and Trent joined me. They hailed me heartily, slapping my back and asking how I was enjoying Dark Evening so far. I think their loud greetings were to make it clear to the people who were already waiting behind me that they were my fellows and intended to join the line where I was. In truth, I was very glad to see them. I immediately asked if they had seen Spink.
“He came with us,” Rory shouted over the general hubbub around us. “But he shied off on his own dam’ near soon as we got here. H’ain’t seen him since.” Drink had brought out Rory’s accent.
“Caleb went looking for free whores,” Trist enlightened me, as if I’d requested the information. “Nate and Kort went looking for ones who took money.”
I looked at their faces, flushed with drink and carnival, and thought of what I could tell them. The words rose like bile in the back of my throat. I swallowed them down. Soon enough they would know we had all been culled. I felt old as I decided that I would let them have this last holiday, merrily ignorant of their fate.
The line shuffled us along as Rory told me that, truly, I did need to see the Syinese dancers perform. “I’d no idea a woman could bend like that!” he enthused, to which Oron sourly observed, “No proper woman can, fool!”
In the midst of the argument that followed, Trist poked Rory in the ribs and said, “Look at that! I doubt he was given leave to be here. I’ll bet Colonel Stiet thinks little Caulder is home and tucked up in his trundle bed right now!”
I had but a glimpse before the crowd closed off the sight. There was Caulder, his hat on crooked and his cheeks very red. There were several Academy cadets with him, old nobles’ sons, and most of them second-year cadets. Two I recognized immediately. Jaris and Ordo had linked arms and were whooping and shouting back at the barker who was trying to persuade them to come inside his tent and see the Juggling Hidaspi Brothers from Far Entia. The other cadets were passing a bottle among themselves. I saw it reach Caulder’s hands. He took it and, at their urging, tipped his head back for a drink. I saw his face as he lowered the bottle. He did not relish it, but he swallowed it anyway. He grinned weakly afterward, and I wondered if he was clenching his teeth against his belly’s load.
“They’re giving that boy strong drink!”
Rory guffawed. “If he thinks chawin’ ’bacco made him sick, wait til that hits his belly. He’ll be shitting through his lips until the morning light!”
Trist and Trent laughed uproariously at the crudeness of Rory’s comment. Oron pursed his lips primly and looked disapproving.
“Someone should stop them,” I said, but the line suddenly began to move more quickly and I was carried along with it. The man at the tent door snatched the admission price from my fingers and reached for the next man’s coin. I told myself that Caulder would be all right, and that if he got sick as a dog, he well deserved it. A moment later I entered the world of the circus sideshow.
The circus folk knew their business. The tent floor was coated thick with straw to keep the walkways from turning to mud. Lanterns hung from supports and the walkways circled through the tent’s interior, leading from one display to the next. Low canvas wall or cage mesh forced us to keep our distance from the attractions. Ostensibly we could wander where we willed, but the push of folk behind us propelled us to the left. In a few moments, I am shamed to say, I had nearly forgotten that I was trying to find Epiny in the midst of the chaos.
The first sight that met our eyes was a slender girl dressed in a short vest secured only by a chain across her breasts. The pleated skirt she wore came barely to her knees. Even so, her body was well covered, for it was draped in coil after coil of a monstrous snake that was lapped around her and the throne that she sat on. She held the snake’s wedge-shaped head between her hands and stroked it as she spoke softly to it. The snake’s tongue fluttered forth and the girl extended her own pink tongue to meet it, earning a collective gasp from the audience. Rory especially would have stayed there, entranced, but the push of the crowd moved us on.
We saw the goat-faced man, with his protuberant yellow eyes, long teeth, and goat’s beard. He was tethered to an upended crate and he bleated at us as we passed, but I judged him a fraud. Next was the horrific sight of a man sitting bare-chested on a box, with the body of his half-formed twin hanging from his ribs. I stared at that and could not look away until Rory took me by the upper arm and hurried me on.
The poster had promised true. We saw freaks, grotesques, and wonders. A strongman bent an iron bar, passed it round the crowd for us to inspect, and then straightened it before our very eyes. The skeleton man stood, bent, and turned round that we might see every vertebra in his back push out against his skin. Three midgets dressed in red, yellow, and blue scampered around a ring, turning somersaults and cartwheels. They then advanced to shake hands round the crowd and win their tips of coins. A conehead sat rocking on a tall stool, his tongue extended as he amused himself by shaking a large rattle at the crowd. A pretty little girl with long golden curls and flippers instead of arms stood on a chair and sang a song about the heartless mother who had abandoned her. “The poor little thing!” Rory exclaimed with heartfelt pity. Coins rang as we tossed them into the big china bowl at her feet.
We saw the reptile man with his scaled body, and the tattooed lady whose skin was covered in images of flowers. A pincushion man drove long needles through his cheeks and then stuck a nail far up his nose. I had to look away from that. Twin boys ate fire. In a murky tank, a mermaid surfaced briefly, waved her webbed hands, flipped her tail at us, and then vanished again beneath the greenish water. An albino girl blinked red eyes at us within her hooded cape. A man swallowed a sword and drew it out again.
On and on we trudged, past wonder after wonder. Three tall warriors from distant Marrea danced in a circle as they flung knives at one another, plucking them out of the air before the blades could reach their targets. In the next cage, a bear-boy snuffled and snorted through his feed. Hair was thick on his arms and down his back, and his little black eyes were devoid of human intelligence.
In the next enclosure, three Specks from the distant mountains huddled together under a blanket inside a large wooden crate turned on its side. At first, I could see only their mottled faces and oddly striped hands as they peered out at us from the crate’s shelter. They all had long, unevenly colored hair that hung untended around their shoulders. They looked cold and uncomfortable, and showed no signs of enjoying displaying themselves as the mermaid and skeleton man had. It was only when Rory took a plug of chewing tobacco from his pocket that they stirred to life. Then they threw aside their blanket and raced to the edge of their cage, thrusting their hands out through the bars beseechingly. There were two men, one of them old, and a woman. The men wore rags about their loins, the woman nothing at all. The old man moaned piteously, but the woman spoke clearly. “Tobacco, tobacco. Give some to me. Please, please, please. Tobacco, tobacco!”
She smiled sweetly as she spoke, her voice reminding me of a clamoring child. It was an unsettling contrast to the way she shamelessly pressed her body against the bars of the enclosure to enable her to reach toward us. We stared, transfixed. Her breasts were full and round, her haunches sleek. The markings on her skin wrapped her flesh and were echoed in her multicolored hair. From where I stood, I could see the dark stripe that ran up her spine, and the mottled stripes that radiated from it. She was not piebald like a horse, not spotted like a jungle cat. The stripes varied in color from pale yellow to almost black, yet were obviously the pigments of her own skin, not an applied cosmetic. Black lined her eyes as if she had applied kohl, but when she licked her lips eagerly, I saw that her tongue was also banded with color. An extraordinary thrill ran through me; she was woman and wild animal, all in one, and the abrupt desire I felt shamed me. Her childish begging seemed innocent and natural in contrast to her tempting body. Rory held the tobacco out of her reach; with his free hand, he reached through the bars to stroke her haunch. She made no objection, but only giggled and tried to reach the tobacco in his other hand. He laughed drunkenly, as focused on her as if they were alone. I watched fascinated by desire as he slipped his hand over her knee and began to slide it up her inner thigh. She grew very still; her lips parted and she breathed through her mouth.
The keeper, who had been sitting bored on an upended keg beside the cage, stood suddenly. He was a scraggly fellow in a soiled striped shirt and rough canvas trousers. He hurried over to us, pushing his way through the crowd. He elbowed Rory back and jabbed at the Speck woman with a prod, ordering her angrily, “Back, back!” Then he turned on us and commanded us, “Step back from the bars. Don’t give them ’baccy, fella! It’s how we train them. Don’t you reward them for actin’ up. Get back, Princess. Gimpy, get back!”
The young female had completely captured my attention. For the first time, I noticed that the younger male had a shattered foot. Gimpy drew back warily from the keeper’s prod. He had not spoken a word. But when the keeper jabbed Princess, she turned on him, hissing. Then, in unaccented passion, she unleashed a stream of the foulest invective I’d ever heard. She finished it with, “A worm crawled up your mother’s hole and laid an egg in her womb, and that was you! Your trees have no roots and your dead do not speak to you! You lick yourself and think your vermin a fine meal! You—”
Before she could mouth another insult, the uncrippled male slapped her. “Quiet, quiet, quiet! Be good. Show the gennlemun your breasts.” Then, as she staggered back from the blow, he turned to the keeper. “I’m good. I’m good. ’Baccy, ’baccy? Some for good Beggar?”
“A bit,” the keeper conceded. From his pocket he took a black plug of crude leaf. I could smell the molasses mixed with it. He broke off a tiny crumble and put it into Beggar’s hand. Before he could carry it to his mouth, Princess attacked him. They tumbled to the straw on the floor of the cage, wrestling over the prize. The crippled Speck looked on, rocking from his good foot to his sound one, but not intervening. The surrounding crowd gave up a mixture of cries of alarm and applause. The keeper gauged it as general approval and let them fight. The male seemed intent mostly on getting his hand up to his mouth and wriggled away from the female’s blows and scratches. The sight of the two, near naked and struggling supine, was both disturbing and arousing.
“Let’s leave,” I said to my fellows. They did not even turn to hear me. But in the crate in the back of the cage, something stirred. A moment later an old man tottered out. I had not noticed him before. He had wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. Beneath it, he wore a robe of rough cotton. He had long graying hair, the stripes fading in it, and his face was lined as deeply as a crumpled leaf. I thought the elder would rebuke the fighting couple. Instead he came to the bars of the cage and looked round at us with rheumy eyes. He coughed, and then spat dark spittle into the straw. He said something in his native tongue. It was a strange language, flowing, with few consonants I could detect. The crippled Speck came to stand beside him. He replied in the same tongue and pointed in our general direction. The old Speck leaned close to the bars, sniffing loudly. His gaze suddenly met mine. He smiled with brown teeth, and nodded as if we were acquaintances meeting on the street. He held his hand toward me, palm up and open, as if inviting or requesting something.
“Whatturu doin’?” Rory demanded of me suddenly. “ ’Zat a charm?”
I looked down in horror. Of its own volition, my hand was moving, my fingers weaving the air. Dream words echoed in my mind. ‘Tomorrow you face a test. You will pass it and make the sign and you will then fight for the People.’ I seized my right hand in my left and massaged the fingers. “Just a cramp,” I told Rory.
“Oh,” he agreed.
Inside the cage, the aged Speck nodded at me. Then he took a step back. He slapped one hand on his chest, cupping the hand to make a larger sound than I would have expected. At the noise, the struggle on the cage floor instantly ceased. Both combatants came to their feet. The male hastily clapped his hand to his mouth as he did so, and I saw his tongue work, tucking his nubbin of tobacco into his cheek.
The old Speck said something to them. The girl replied negatively, almost angrily. The old man repeated himself. He did not raise his voice or sound more insistent, but suddenly all three of the other Specks cowered from him. The girl stood up straight then and announced loudly, “I speak, I speak. Quiet. Listen.”
“Hey, then, what are you up to?” The keeper demanded angrily. He shook his prod at them, but all of the Specks had stepped back, out of his reach. The girl, her face reddened and one arm bleeding from a long scratch, still manifested a sudden, savage dignity. It clothed her nakedness better than any garment. She tossed back her streaky mane and spoke clearly.
“Tonight, we dance. Right now. The People dance the Dust Dance. For you all. Come close, come close. See us dance. Only one time! Watch it now.” She beckoned us, waving her arms to urge us closer.
Beside the cage, the keeper’s jaw dropped open. “What’s this, what’s this?” he demanded angrily, but the Specks were no longer paying him any attention. He seized the chain that secured the door to their enclosure and rattled it threateningly, as if he were coming in. Beggar looked over his shoulder at the keeper, and then ignored him as the three males trooped back toward their shelter. The girl positioned herself in the middle of their cage, well out of reach of the keeper’s prod. Now she lifted her voice and her arms. Her clear tones rang out. “Dust Dance! Dust Dance! Gather all for the Dust Dance! You never to see this before! You never to see this again! Come one. Come all. Dust Dance of the People!”
Her tone was a fair imitation of the barkers’ outside. My estimation of her innate intelligence rose. As a man, we all pressed closer to the cage, even as the keeper warned us sternly, ‘Keep back! Keep back! Do not touch the bars!” When we all ignored him, he raised his own voice and began shouting, “The Dust Dance of the Savage Specks of the far east! Gather one, gather all. Only five tallies more to witness the Dust Dance. A mere five tallies to watch what you’ll never see again!”
But his efforts to profit went mostly ignored. Oh, a few fools dug into their pockets and counted money out to him, which he promptly stuffed into his own greasy purse. Inside the cage, the woman continued to cry her appeal for spectators while the males huddled inside their shelter. In a remarkably short time, they emerged “dressed” for the dance. Feathers, dead leaves, bits of fur, tassels of shells, and a pouch were suspended from strings tied round their waists. Their matted hair had been hastily plaited into queues down their backs. Long earrings of cheap beads dangled almost to their shoulders. I sensed items hoarded for a long time, perhaps in great hardship.
Their keeper had turned barker. “Never before seen in a city! Never before performed under a tent! The Dust Dance of the Savage Specks. Ladies and lords, come now, come now, to see the—”
His voice was suddenly drowned out by an ululation from the Speck woman. Before her cry died out, the Speck men took it up, modulating it to a deep-voiced chanting. They spaced their voices, like children singing a round, producing a strange echoing sound. Slowly, feet shuffling, they began to circle the woman. She stood, her arms uplifted like a tree’s branches, and swayed in place as she sang in a pure, sweet soprano. It did not matter that we did not speak the language. I could hear the wind blowing and rain dripping from leaves in her song. The men circled her slowly, once, then twice. The crowd drew closer to the cage, transfixed by the strange dance and odd song. Each of the men dipped a hand into his pouch and drew forth a handful of fine dark dust. They began to shake their hands over their heads as they danced round the woman. The dust leaked from between their fingers to float free in the air around them. The woman’s voice suddenly rose in an extended note she held for an impossibly long time. Again the men circled her, dancing in close and then out in a larger circle. Again, they dipped their hands into their pouches and shook the dust free in the air as they danced. The woman swayed like a tree in the wind, and the crowd oohed in awe as a ghostly wind shushed through the tent in seeming harmony with the dance. It carried the floating dust over the crowd and several people sneezed, raising brief flurries of laughter from those around them.
The dance went on and on. Long after I had wearied of it, I was trapped there. The crowd behind us pressed us close to the cage bars. Rory especially seemed enraptured by the woman and her song. He gripped the bars with both hands and hung on, as if he were the one imprisoned by her wildness. I saw the keeper look at him twice, and feared the man would come to bang his knuckles, but the press of the mob trapped the man as effectively as it did us.
The woman’s song and the men’s chanting built to a crescendo. Their shuffling dance became a swift walk, then a jog, and suddenly they were running round the edges of the cage, even the old man, even the limping Speck, and they flung their dust in handfuls that drifted out over the crowd. People suddenly cried out as the dust stung their eyes. Coughing and sneezing, I turned my head away from the dance and tried to push my way back into the gathered folk, to no avail. The dust I had inhaled burned in the back of my throat and left a fetid taste in my mouth. The keeper was shrieking at the Specks to stop, stop, and suddenly they did.
Without a glance at their keeper, all of them gathered silently in the middle of their enclosure. The men upended their little dust bags and shook them, but nothing fell out. The woman stood in their midst and briefly set a hand on top of each of their heads, almost like a benediction. Then they turned, and with no acknowledgment to the crowd at all, nor to the rain of coins that were showering onto the straw, they retreated to their crude shelter and huddled there, showing us only their striped backs. Their heads bent together as they conferred about something.
Almost immediately the crowd began to break up, but it was some moments before we could move away from our spot. “I never saw anything like that before,” Trist said. He knuckled at his eyes, reddened where the dust had hit them. I turned a little aside from my fellows and spat several times, trying to clear the foul taste from my mouth. I wiped my mouth with my handkerchief, and almost immediately had a violent sneezing fit. Around me, other people were coughing.
Rory clung to the bars still. “She is, well, she is somethin’,” Rory agreed. His mouth hung slightly ajar as he stared at the woman huddling in the shadows of the crate.
“You want her?”
We all turned, startled, at the keeper’s lascivious offer. Somehow he had crept close to us. Now he spoke to Rory in an undertone. “I seen her looking at you, fella. Fancies you, she does. Now, I don’t usually do this, but—” And here he looked from side to side as if fearful of being overheard. “I could ’range for you to see her. Alone. Or maybe with a friend or two, long as there’s no rough stuff. She’s a beauty, and I got to keep her that way.”
“What?” Rory asked blankly.
“You know what you want, fella. Here’s how it works. You give me the money now, so we know you’re the one. Then you come back, round midnight when the crowds are less. I’ll take you to her. All she’ll want from you is your ’baccy. Specks do love ’baccy something fierce. She’ll probably do anything you want. Anything. And yer friends can watch, you want ’em to.”
“That’s disgusting,” Oron said. “She’s a savage.”
The keeper shrugged and brushed at his striped shirt. “Maybe so, fella. But some men, they like a woman a bit on the wild side. Give you a ride you won’t never forget. Not an ounce of shame in that one, there isn’t.”
“Don’t do it,” I said quietly to Rory. “She’s not what she seems.” I could not have explained my foreboding.
He jumped as if I had poked him, and looked startled to find me there. He had been so completely focused on the keeper’s base offer. “Well, course not, Nevare. What sorta fool do you take me for?”
The keeper laughed, low. “Listen to him, you’ll be the fool that missed the chance of a lifetime, young feller. Do it now, while yer young, and the memory will keep you warm even when yer old.”
“Let’s get away from here,” Oron said. He didn’t seem to care that he sounded prissy. I was just glad that he had said it, instead of me. We all began to turn away.
“Come back later, without your friends!” the keeper called out after us as we pushed our way through the crowd. “You can tell ’em later what they missed.”
It was not Rory but Trist who glanced back as we left. Would they go back? I strongly suspected they would. “Let’s see the rest of the freaks and get out of here,” I suggested.
“I need a beer,” Rory countered. “I got dust down my throat what needs washin’ out. I’m leavin’ now.”
And so he left us, and I feared he had gone back to speak to the keeper. I told myself there was nothing I could do about it. I abruptly recalled I was supposed to be looking for Epiny. As the current of the crowd washed us along, I watched for her chimney hat in vain. By the time we had seen the firewalker, the tall man, and the bug eater, my fellow cadets had somehow melted away from me in the crowd. Despite myself, my mind pictured Rory tangled with the calico woman, and I knew an odd mixture of both envy and disgust. I made myself walk on.
I moved to a less congested area. I spat again, feeling queasy from the foul taste of the Speck dust in my mouth. I tried to clear my throat of it, and ended up coughing instead.
When I caught my breath and looked around me, I found myself standing in a backwater in the freak tent. I’d seen the main spectacles. Here, at the outer edges of the tent, were the secondary attractions, the ones that seemed trivial after the greater shocks of the main stages. A woman wriggled her deformed yellow feet at me while she cackled like a chicken. The insect man sat within a tiny tent of mosquito netting while roaches and beetles and spiders crawled about on him. Laughing, he set a caterpillar across his upper lip as if it were a mustache. It was too tame. The crowd shuffled past him, unamused.
The fat man stood up from his stool and wiggled his shoulders to set his naked gelid belly dancing. I stared at him. His bulk dwarfed Gord’s. He had greased his pouched flesh to make it glisten in the lamplight. He had hanging breasts like a woman and his bare belly drooped over the waistband of his striped trousers like a fleshy apron. Even his ankles were fat, I noted, the flesh puddling over the tops of his feet. Beside him an obese woman dressed in a short pleated skirt and a sleeveless bodice reclined languidly on a divan. She had a box of candies on a low table before her. As I watched, she ate the last one, and sent the box to join its empty fellows on the floor around the table. Her mouth and eyes were painted, and when she lifted her gaze and saw me staring at her, she pursed her lips at me in a kiss.
“Look, Eron. A soldier boy. Did you come to see sweet Candy?” She beckoned to me. The way her arms wobbled put me instantly in mind of the tree woman of my dream. I took an involuntary step backward, making her laugh. “Don’t be scared. Come a little closer, lovey. I won’t bite you. Not unless you’re as sweet as sugar.”
The fat man had resumed his seat on his stool. He turned his head to look at me and smiled. His face was wreathed in fat; even his brow seemed heavy. I was, for the moment, the sole gawker. He spoke to me. “Soldier, eh? You a soldier lad? Oh, yes, I can tell. It’s in the bearing. What branch are you? Artilleryman?”
He spoke in such a friendly way that I would have been an oaf to ignore him. Yet I was suddenly uneasy to have the spectacle turn into a person. I glanced over my shoulder. Most of the crowd seemed to prefer the more lurid offerings of the tent and shuffled past his little stage with scarcely a glance.
“I’m cavalla. I’m a cadet at the King’s Academy,” I said, and then I stopped. Was I? In a few more days, I was certain, I’d be culled. The fat man didn’t even notice my abrupt silence.
“Cavalla! You don’t say! I was cavalla myself once, though you’re not like to believe it now. Jensen’s Horse. I started out as their bugle boy, I did, no taller than a flea and skinny as a whippet. Bet you don’t believe that, do you?” He spoke as casually as if we had met at a cabstand, as if there was nothing strange about him chatting with someone who had come to gawk at him as an oddity.
I felt embarrassed for him, and smiled awkwardly. “It’s a bit hard to believe, sir, yes.”
“Sir,” he said softly. Then he smiled, the expression pressing lines into his doughy face. “Been a long time since a young soldier has called me that. I was a lieutenant when this happened to me. I was on my way up, too. They told me that in a month, perhaps two, there would be a vacancy and I’d be a captain in my father’s old regiment. I was so happy. I thought it had all been worth it.” His face was transfigured by some memory, his eyes staring into the distance. He glanced down at me abruptly. “But you’re an Academy lad. Bet you wouldn’t think much of some ranker like me. My father had been a ranker before me, but he’d never risen higher than master sergeant. When I got my lieutenant’s bars, he was over the moon about it. He and my old maw sold just about everything they had to buy me a commission. I was shocked to hear they’d done it.”
He suddenly fell silent and all the old glory faded from his face. “Well,” he said, and laughed harshly. “My dad was always a good trader. I bet he got top dollar out of that commission when he sold it off.” He saw me staring at this revelation, and laughed again, more harshly. He gestured rudely at his body. “Well, after this happened to me, what was I to do? My career was over. I come back west, hoping my family would take me in; they wouldn’t even speak to me. Wouldn’t even admit it was me. My old dad tells everybody that his son died in battle with the Specks. Close enough to truth, I guess. It was the damn Speck plague that did this to me.”
He lumbered over to the edge of his stage and sat down heavily. The whole process of lowering himself looked awkward. He dangled his legs over the edge. His low shoes were run over and tired, near bursting at their seams. His feet looked fat and run over, too, wider than they should have been. I wanted to leave, but could not simply turn and walk away from him. I wished other spectators would come to distract him from me. I did not like that he was being so friendly and talkative. I had to force myself to look interested in his words.
“So I come to the city. Took up begging on the street corners, but no one believes a fat man who says he’s starving. I would have starved, too, if I hadn’t taken on this duty. It’s not that different from the cavalla, some ways. Get up, do your shift, eat, go to bed. Watch each other’s backs. Stick together. That’s what they say about the cavalla, isn’t it? That we always watch out for one another. Right, trooper?”
“Right,” I said uneasily. I felt he was building up to something, some declaration of brotherhood that I didn’t want to hear. I needed to leave, now. “I have to be on my way now. I’m supposed to be looking for my cousin.” The words came to me with a sour taste of guilt. They were merely an excuse, and a stark reminder to myself that I had completely forgotten about Epiny and Spink and the danger she might be in.
“Yeah, right, he has to go.” The Fat Lady spoke from her divan. From somewhere she had drawn out another box of candies and was untying the blue ribbon that bound the creamy yellow box. She spoke without looking at either of us. “He knows you’re gonna touch him for some coppers. ‘I was in the cavalla, gimme a coin.’ Bores me to tears. I heard it too often.”
“Shut up, you fat old slut!” the man told her angrily. “It’s true! I was cavalla, and a damn good soldier once. Maybe I was a ranker, but I’m not ashamed of that. Every promotion I got, I earned. It was never give to me because I was some noble’s son, nor bought for me. I earned it. Earned these lieutenant’s bars. Looky here, trooper. You recognize the real thing, don’t you? And you wouldn’t mind giving an old comrade-in-arms a few coins so I could buy me something a bit stronger than a beer? Gets cold working in here in the wintertime. A man could use a good stiff drink after what I go through.”
The fat man had managed, by much effort and with several grunts, to haul himself back to his feet. Now he took a folded cloth from his trouser pocket. He opened it carefully, to show me the lieutenant’s bars that shone inside it. I stared at them, knowing they might not be real, knowing that, like the jewelry that many folk wore for Dark Evening, they might be paper or enamel over dross. The fat man unpinned the gleaming bars from the rag that wrapped them and polished them a bit. Then, as he refastened them to the rag, he made the “keep fast” charm over them. I felt a chill up my back. True, he might have learned it from watching others, as Epiny had, but there was something so habitual about the way he did it that I doubted it.
He glanced over at me and saw the dismay in my face. He smiled, and it was a cruel smile, one that mocked himself. “I’m just an old ranker, son. Never sent to the King’s Academy like you; never had the guarantees that you have. If the plague hadn’t done me in, I’d be serving out near the far east still. But it did, and here I am. I get food, and work, if you call this work—parading around half dressed in a drafty old tent so young blighters can look at me and laugh and stare, so sure they’ll never be me. I get a bed and blanket every night. But that’s about all I get. No extras in this life. But once I was a cavalla man. Yes, sir, I was.”
I found my hand thrust deep in my pocket. I pulled out my money and pushed it into his hands and then turned and fled. He shouted his thanks after me, and added, “Don’t you let them send you to the forest, boy! You find yourself a nice post in the west, counting sacks of grain or keeping tally of horseshoe nails! Stay away from the Barrier Mountains.”
I could not find the exit from the tent. I pushed through a crowd of people packed around a girl juggling knives, not caring how they stared at me, nor even for the one woman who cursed me roundly for stepping on her foot. My path led me back past the Specks’ cage, but there was no crowd round it that I could see. The male Specks were there, wandering listlessly about the enclosure. The woman was gone. I estimated the time at midnight, and guessed that Rory and Trist had returned for her.
I made my way to the tent door. I didn’t want to think of them with the wild Speck girl. The fat man and his tales of being a ranker had soured the circus for me. The weight of my recent misfortunes descended on me once more. I was to be culled, for no more reason than to keep the Academy in political balance. It would be seen as shameful, no matter what they wrote on my papers. I doubted my father would buy me a commission. He’d probably sternly tell me that I’d had my chance, and that now I’d have to enlist as a common soldier, alongside all the other common sons of common soldier sons. There would be no arranged marriage for me, no officer’s commission, and no glorious future commanding troops for the king. I wondered if I would run back to Maw tomorrow and beg to be a scout.
I emerged from the trapped smells and still warmth of the tent into the cold night air. As the night deepened, the crowds were thickening, not dispersing, and I suddenly knew that I had no chance at all of finding Epiny or Spink or anyone else in such chaos. Even if I found Epiny, there was no saving her reputation now. Best to go back to the dormitory and pretend I had never found Spink’s note. The whole world was sour and cold and dark, without a single friendly face. I looked up at the night sky to try and get my bearings, but the lamplight and torchlight overpowered the feeble and distant stars. No matter. I’d just go back the way I’d come. Somewhere at the edge of the Great Square, I would find a cabstand and get back to the Academy.