“Tell me,” Rhapsody said. Her voice came out in a choked whisper.
Jal’asee smiled broadly. “Time,” he answered. “He will have the power of Time. I hope you will do me the honor of allowing me, when the child is old enough and the occasion permits, to help teach your child how to use it.”
The child within her belly lurched. Rhapsody flinched; the song of the fountain’s splashing had come to an end, and with it her nausea returned. She stood slowly, trying to maintain her balance, and put a hand over her brow to shield her eyes from the ascending sun.
“Thank you,” she said noncommittally. “I will discuss that with Ashe when the time is right. I thank you for all the lessons you have imparted to me today, and hope that you will convey my thanks to Edwyn Griffyth for the walking machine he sent to Anborn.” She sighed regretfully. “I hope he will deign to make use of it. I confess that it strangles my heart to see him so impaired.”
The Ancient Seren ambassador rose as well and looked down at her, his shadow blocking the sun.
“Why?” he asked, taking her arm and leading her back up the garden path to the keep.
“Because he was injured in battle saving me, as I assume you know,” Rhapsody said, struggling to walk steadily. “I tried to employ my skills as a Singer and Namer to heal him at the time, but as you can see, the hapless state of my training and the limits of my abilities kept him from healing completely. Perhaps that is because, lacking a baptism in my guiding star’s light, I am only fooling myself into believing I can draw on its power.”
Jal’asee continued walking, but his voice moved closer to her ear, as if he could cause it to sink on the air.
“A tie to a guiding star, like love, is often stronger when it has to be found at great cost,” he said softly. “And Anborn is not crippled because you were unskilled to heal him, but because he was unwilling to allow you to do so. Perhaps someday he will forgive himself, and then you might try again. But having watched him over the last seven centuries, I am not going to wager anything valuable on it. Your child may benefit from the blessings of all five primordial elements, but he will undoubtedly be cursed with pigheaded stubbornness of epic proportions. It runs in deep rivers on his father’s side of the family. You have my deepest sympathy in advance.”
Rhapsody laughed in spite of herself all the way back to the garden gate.
13
True to her word, Duckfoot Sally set herself up as Faron’s protector.
The long ride south from Bethany to Sorbold was a difficult journey under normal circumstances; housed in a fragile tank of fetid water, in the back of a circus wagon lurching over pitted and unkempt roads was just short of agony. Sally moved her cot into Faron’s wagon after the first night, when the creature’s tank was nearly shattered by the lion-faced man and the sword-toothed geek, two of Faron’s wagonmates, who saw the new arrival as a source of jealousy or food, or both. Duckfoot Sally had interposed herself between the ravenous freaks and the cowering creature’s tank with a broom handle and a snarl of such intensity that the men, both more than twice her size, had shrunk back into the dark recesses of the wagon, muttering threats and grousing quietly until sleep took them into a realm of relative silence.
For several days the Monstrosity traveled without stopping except for the night; no shows were given, because there was no place along the route with a population worthy of the effort. The Ringmaster had chosen to avoid the holy city-state of Sepulvarta, which was the citadel of the Patriarch of the largest religion in Roland, knowing the Patriarch would have them arrested and tried for peddling human misery. So there was little to do but travel by day, and camp by night. Duckfoot Sally tended lovingly to Faron, and the creature seemed to settle into relative calm, though it still shrank away whenever anyone else came into the wagon. Sally happily took on all of the responsibility of Faron’s maintenance herself.
The keepers, the Ringmaster’s henchmen who served as control for the freaks and guards for the audiences, began grumbling among themselves about Sally’s new obsession. Malik, an older keeper with a scar running from the base of his skull down the centerline of his back to his waist, took to lying in wait outside the new freak’s wagon, watching her comings and goings and reporting them back to an increasingly displeased Ringmaster. On the night before they came to a small farming settlement on the Krevensfield Plain to the south of Sepulvarta, he caught her as she came off the ladder, empty fishbowl in hand. Malik leaned around the wagon’s side and grabbed her around the waist.
“Ahoy, now, Sally, where ya been? Seems like yer slightin’ the rest of us to wait upon the fish-boy hand an’ foot—if he had a foot, that is.”
Duckfoot Sally gave him an impatient shove, extricating herself from his grasp. “He has feet, ye rock-headed lout. They just be soft.”
“Aye, an’ I’ll betcha all the rest of his parts are soft as well,” Malik grinned, catching her waist and turning her around again. “But you know that ain’t the case with me, Sally, doncha, girl?” He buried his bearded face in her neck, nibbling playfully.
“Yeah, ye have a right hard head, Malik,” Sally said crossly, but the keeper’s lips were having an effect.
“ ’Sss been a long time, Sally,” Malik crooned, his hands moving higher. “You fed him jus’ now, right?” The carnival woman nodded, her eyes starting to glaze over. “And is he asleep?” Another nod. “Then he should be all right for the moment, eh? Let’s go off behind the privies, and I can have my way with you.”
Sally snorted contemptuously. “ ’Twill be the other way round,” she said, setting the fishbowl down on a barrel and glancing furtively around the camp for any sign of the Ringmaster; he was not to be seen. “Always is.”
“Either way,” said Malik agreeably. He took her clawed hand and led her into the darkness.
As soon as Duckfoot Sally had disappeared into the night, three of the other keepers came out of nearer shadows and made their way quietly into the wagon.
The creature was asleep in its cloudy tank, floating limply in the water, as the shirtless men crawled through the dark wagon, stepping carefully over the bedding of the other freaks who were out taking the air or eating their nightly meal. When they were finally in the back of the circus cart they conferred quietly through hand signals, then leapt out of the darkness, banging noisily on the tank, pressing their faces up against the glass walls and screeching hideously.
The new creature bolted awake, squealing piteously, its fused mouth flapping at the sides, gasping and cowering in the back of the tank.
The keepers were still making faces at the creature, banging on the canvas lid of the tank with sticks, when Duckfoot Sally charged into the wagon, fastening the stays of her many bodices, fire blazing from her eyes. Behind her Malik, his pants still unlaced, glowered angrily.
She raked her nails savagely across the backs of two of the keepers, drawing blood, and bellowed in a voice that threatened to shatter the glass tank.
“Ye bloody bastards! Get away from my Fair ’un!”
The only keeper not in range of her swinging talons gave her a mighty push that sent her sprawling backward, where she landed at the feet of the Ringmaster, who stood in the doorway of the wagon, a lantern in his hand.
“What is going on in here?” the tall, thin man demanded.
“They’re bedeviling my poor Fair ’un!” Duckfoot Sally spat, rising furiously from the floor and starting into the fray again, only to be pulled back as the Ringmaster seized her arm.
“If you idiots have harmed the fish-boy in any way, I will draw and quarter you,” he said in a deadly hiss. “That freak has tripled our take.” He turned to Malik and gestured at the floor. “Move this bedding to the carnivore wagon, and bring the dead displays in here.” He turned toward the trembling creature in the tank. “I don’t want to take any more chances with the fish-boy’s bunkmates.”