THE NEXT DAY they showed their credeens at the gates of Hamardan, the first of the river cities clear of the marshes, and rode through the streets, Negomas playing a calling song on his drums, Linjijan making witcheries on his flute,
Harra riding the gray with her knees and plucking cascades of cheerful noise from her daroud. It wasn’t market day but the bright noise of the music was pulling folk, Hina and Temueng alike, out of their houses and shops, and drawing boisterous children after them.
They made a wide circle about the city and then in the center of the flurry they’d created they rolled, trolled, caracoled to the largest Inn in Hamardan. It was a hollow square with few windows in the thick outside wall and a red-tile roof with demon-averts scattered along the eaves, a place where the richest merchant would feel safe with his goods locked in the Inn’s fortress godons, and he himself locked into the comfort and security of the Inn proper. This was early in the season, few merchants traveling yet. End of summer, not yet harvest time, no festivals coming up, none in the recent past. Folk were ripe for anything that promised entertainment. Though they were players and low on anyone’s scale of respectability, though half the troupe was foreign and worth even less than players, still Taguiloa knew the value of what he was bringing to the Inn and made a point of assuming his welcome. He drove the wagon into the central court and leaped down from the driver’s seat with an easy flip, landed lightly on the pavingstones to the applause of the swarming children, bowed, laughing to them, then went to negotiate for rooms and the use of the court for a perfbrmance on the next night after the market shut down and the crowds it brought were still in town.
BRANN SET UP a small bright tent in the market and put Negomas beating drums outside it, Jaril doing some tumbling and calling out to the passersby to come and hear past and future from a seer come from the ends of the earth to tell it. Though she carefully used nothing painful from the bits Yaril gave to her, she gave the maidens and matrons a good show and it was not long before word flew along the wind that the foreign woman was a wonder who could look into the heart and tell you your deepest secrets.
Twice male seekers thought to take more than she wanted to give-a woman alone, a foreigner, was fair game for the predatory-but a low growl from a very large brindle hound that came from the shadows behind the table was enough to discourage the most amorous. And she got twice her fee from these men, smiling fiercely at them and mentioning things they didn’t want exposed, and a calm threat to show to the world their poverty or stinginess, whichever it might be. They left, growling of cheat and fake and fraud, but no one bothered to listen.
That night the Inn was jammed with people, anyone who could come up with the price of entry-city folk and those from the farms and fisheries around, the jamar and his household. The poorest sat in thick clumps on the paving stones of the court, the shopkeepers and their families packed the third-floor balcony, the jamar and his family had the choice seats on the end section of the second-floor balcony, the side sections of that balcony given over to town officials and the jamarak Temuengs. The wagon was pushed against the inside end of the court, its sides let down on sturdy props to make a flat stage triple the wagon’s width. The bed and sides were covered by layers of cork, the cork by a down quilt carefully tied so it wouldn’t shift about. The first balcony above the wagonstage was blocked off for the use of the players; a ladder went from this to the wagon bed, giving them two levels for performing.
It was a good crowd and a good-natured one. Brann and Harm took coin at the archway entrance to the court, the Inn servants escorted the balcony folk to the stairs and glared down street urchins who tried to sneak in for free. The Host stood on the second balcony watching all this with suppressed glee, since he got a percentage of the take for allowing Taguiloa to use his court. There were very few clients in the Inn and fewer expected for the rest of the month, so it was no hardship to accommodate the players, something Taguiloa had counted on for he’d made enough tours with Gerontai to know the value of an innkeeper’s favor.
The noise in the court rose to a peak then hushed as the drums began to sound, wild exotic music most of these folk had never heard before, a little disturbing, but it crawled into the blood until they were breathing with it. On the second-floor balcony Taguiloa looked at Brann. “Ready?” he mouthed to her. She nodded. He put his hand on Negomas’s shoulder. The boy looked up, smiled then changed the beat of his music, lending to the throb of the drums a singing sonorous quality; Linjijan came in with his flute, giving the music a more traditional feel, blending M’darjin and Hina in a way that was more comfortable for the listeners. Then the daroud added its metallic cadences and the crowd hushed, sensing something about to happen. Taguiloa leaped onto the balcony rail and stood balanced there, arms folded across his chest, the soft glow of the lampions picking out the rich gold and silver couching of his embroidered robe.
“People of Hamardan.”
The drum quieted to a soft mutter behind him; flute and daroud went silent.
“In the western lands beyond the edge of the world, maidens dance with fire to please their king and calm their strange and hungry gods. At great expense and effort I bring you FIRE…” As he gestured, blue, crimson and gold flames danced above the quilting (Yaril and jail spreading themselves thin) “… and the MAIDEN.”
A loose white silk gown fluttering about her, Brann swung over the rail and went down the ladder in a controlled fall, using hands and feet to check her plunge. Then she was in among the flames, standing with hands raised above her head while she swayed and the flames swayed about her. The drum went on alone for a while until the beat was so strong they who watched were trapped
2.38 Jo Clayton in it, then the flute came in and finally the daroud, playing music from Arth Slya, the betrothal dance when a maid announced to the world that she and her life’s companion had found each other, a sinuous wheeling dance that showed off the suppleness of the body and the sensuality of the dancer. In Arth Slya there were no flames, the girl would dance with her lover. Brann danced it that night with what pleasure she could and more sadness than she’d expected to feel, danced it in memory of Sammang Schimli who had salvaged her pleasure in her body,
The flames vanished, the music stopped, the dance stopped. Brann stood very still in the center of the wagonstage, breathing rapidly, then flung out her arms and bowed to the audience. She ran up the ladder and vanished into the shadows to a burst of whistles and applause.
The drum began again, a quick insistent beat. Taguiloa leaped onto the railing. “People of Hamardan, see my dance.” He flung the broidered robe away with a gesture as impressive as it seemed careless for he capered high above the wagon and the court’s rough stone on a rail the width of a small man’s hand. He wore a knitted bodysuit of white silk flexible as chainmail, fitting like a second skin; a wide crimson sash was tied about his waist, its dangling ends swinging and flaring with the shifts of his body in that impossible dance. Behind him, flute and drums blended in familiar music, Hina tunes though the drum sound was more sonorous and melodic than the flat tinny sound of tradition. At first the flute sang in a traditional mode then changed as the dance changed, beginning to tease and pull at the tunes. Harra tossed Taguiloa’s shimmer spheres to him, one by one. They caught the light of the lampions and multiplied so it was as if a dozen tiny lamps were trapped in each crystal sphere, shimmering crimson, gold and silver as he put one, two, three and finally four into the air and kept them circling as he did a shuffle dance on that rail moving on the knife edge of disaster until he built an almost unbearable tension in the workers, who gave a soft whisper of a sigh as he capered then tossed the spheres one by one into the darkness behind him.