Even though Master Payne had announced that they were joining the circus, they’d hardly been in evidence. They were seen, lurking about on the fringes of the camp. They occasionally came in for something to eat, or an awkward conversation, but no one knew where they slept.
It was obvious that they were not used to dealing with people they weren’t trying to kill, and were still trying to figure it out. They never appeared in a town, and sometimes they weren’t seen from one day to the next, especially when other travelers joined the circus at an overnight camp, or were traveling in the same direction.
But they’d been there today. Their usual lazy, insouciant grins replaced by a grim watchfulness. It seemed like every time Agatha had come around a corner, one or the other of them had been somewhere nearby. There had even been one time when she’d been staggering along, the anvil now strapped to her back, when she had stumbled. From nowhere, a pair of strong green hands had caught her and gently set her back onto her feet.
It was shortly after that that Zeetha had released her for the day.
As if summoned by her thoughts, Zeetha’s head popped up through the ladder well. Agatha twitched, but otherwise did nothing.
Zeetha prodded her with a finger, possibly to see if she was still alive. She looked guilty. “How are you doing? I—ah... I was told I might’ve worked you a bit more than I should’ve today.”
Agatha shrugged. It hurt. “I’m sorry I was disrespectful, Kolee,” she whispered.
Zeetha grimaced and proceeded to light several candles and lanterns. She then unbuckled her harness, slipped off her swords and hung them from a peg. The small cloth bag she carried proved to contain several ceramic jars. She opened them one after the other and laid them out in a row on a nearby shelf. Strong herbal scents began to fill the room.
Without a word, she stripped Agatha of her clothes, moving her gently, but pitilessly. When she was done, small stars were lazily pinwheeling past Agatha’s vision.
Zeetha selected a jar, scooped out a handful of creamy paste and rubbed it into her hands. The smell of paprika grew stronger.
She knelt beside Agatha and began vigorously kneading the paste into her shoulders. Agatha’s eyes bugged out and a small “eeee” escaped her lips. The ointment started out soothing, but proceeded to get warmer and warmer until by the time Zeetha was kneading it into her lower back, her shoulders and arms felt like they were on fire. Zeetha ignored Agatha’s squeaks of pain and methodically worked her way down Agatha’s back.
Suddenly, she spoke. “When I asked my Kolee for the sword, she told me I wasn’t ready. But when I asked again, she gave it to me.
“It was so heavy, I was convinced she’d slipped me one made of lead.” She shifted slightly and started working down Agatha’s left leg.
She spoke slower now. “I was younger than you are now, of course. I needed two hands to hold it, and within thirty seconds I had chopped down my aunt’s favorite fruit tree, broken two floor tiles and my toe.”
She switched to Agatha’s right leg and worked her way back up. “Everybody does that at least once. Challenges their Kolee. Tries to prove that they’re Ashtara’s Chosen One.” She was silent as she selected another jar and started from the beginning.
Agatha’s teeth snapped together in shock. This time the contents of the jar felt like ice, and she imagined great scalding clouds of steam erupting from her tortured skin. It took her a few seconds to realize that the pain was fading as well, as if it too were being boiled away. She gave a small groan of relief.
Zeetha gave a small smile. “Like I said, we all do it. The stories are always trotted out at family get-togethers, and everybody always has a good laugh. My teacher’s teacher always said—” and here Zeetha’s voice took on a reedy quality, “There’s no better way to keep a warrior from getting killed than to have her almost do it to herself.”
She paused halfway up Agatha’s right leg. She was silent long enough that Agatha looked over her shoulder to see what was wrong. Zeetha knelt there, tears flowing down her face. She looked at Agatha and sniffed.
“Except of course, when they do manage to kill themselves. My cousin, Zoniax, she was so much faster than I’ll ever be. But they gave her... they let her...” She broke down sobbing. Before she knew what she was doing, Agatha found herself cradling the crying girl in her arms.
“It was such a waste,” Zeetha sobbed. She took a deep breath and pushed herself away from Agatha’s arms and looked her in the eye.
“What you did today was smart. When a warrior is being forged, they don’t train her to be smart. Being smart makes you ask questions, and no War Queen wants an army full of fighters asking questions.” She smiled at the thought. Then she got serious again.
“Now you—you’re never going to be a warrior. But if you ask enough smart questions, you might live long enough to be a War Queen.”
Then she gave Agatha a fierce hug and a kiss on the forehead. Without another word she finished the massage, covered Agatha up and extinguished the lights. A second later, Agatha heard the wagon door click shut.
Agatha lay there for a moment digesting this. Then quickly dropped off to sleep.
The next morning, as she stood shivering, Zeetha casually handed her a pair of padded sticks, complete with handles. Agatha hefted them. They seemed heavy. Zeetha drew her own swords, they gleamed in the faint light.
She spoke gently. “Do not think of it as ‘holding a sword.’ You must learn to think of the Quata’aras as extensions of your own arms. Soon enough, you will learn not to think about them at all...”
The last shreds of spring melted away and summer arrived. The days lengthened. The traffic on the roads increased. Peddlers, tinkers and other travelers increased. Once another traveling show arrived at a large town where the circus was already setting up. What could have been an awkward situation instead turned into a “Battle of the Entertainers,” which lasted for two days, pulled in three times as many customers as usual, sold six times as much refreshments, and ended in a draw.
Agatha continued to play Lucrezia in the Heterodyne shows. She found it to be fun. The only problem was that she seemed to be having an increasing awkwardness with Lars, especially during their big romantic scenes. More than once, Abner was waiting for him in the wings, an annoyed look upon his face.
Meanwhile, Pix had relearned a basic truth about the commedia dell’ arte style of play, which is that the romantic leads tend to be the least interesting characters onstage.
Now this tradition was ameliorated a bit by the fact that both Bill and Lucrezia were full blown Sparks and either one of them was just as likely as the other to pull a doomsday device out of his or her back pocket, but this merely “raised the bar” for the ancillary characters, which helped to explain why the romantic leads proceeded through to their pre-ordained union relatively calmly, valiantly trying to ignore the various clanks, minions, constructs and Sparks that colorfully swirled around them, occasionally throwing pies.
Pix demonstrated that she was actually a very versatile actress indeed. In addition to the enigmatic High Priestess[35], she impressed everyone by breathing new life into hoary old characters such as The Clever Construct, The Oafish Minion, The Wise Witch of the Wood, The Saucy Courtesan, The First Victim, The Clueless Public Official, The Lost American, and The Tragic Abomination of Science.
Furthermore, in the time since Pix and Abner had started keeping company, Pix had mellowed quite a bit. She was a lot more friendly and personable, and actually willing to do some of the thousand and one tedious little jobs that the circus required, and she did them with a rather dopey look on her face while humming happily. It was driving everyone crazy. Astonishingly, she even managed to talk about something other than herself for minutes at a time.
35
The High Priestess was a favorite stock character in the Heterodyne Plays. She represented all of the exotic Sparks who ruled mysterious, far-off lands and lost, barbaric civilizations who started out as antagonists, but invariably fell in love with Barry Heterodyne.