'Didn't he say anything?'
'He said ... this evening, you should go to the grounds of the governor's palace.'
'Why?'
'Westerly ... this may have nothing to do with Satan. But the auction block is there.'
Wess shook her head, confused.
'Where slaves are offered for sale.'
Fury and humiliation and hope: Wess's reaction was so strong that she could not answer. Lythande came up the steps in one
stride and put his arms around her. Wess held him, trembling, and Lythande stroked her hair.
'If he's there - is there no law, Lythande? Can a free person be stolen from their home, and ... and ...'
Lythande looked at the sky. The sun's light showed over the roof of the easternmost building.
'Frejojan, I must go. If your friend is to be sold, you can try to buy him. The merchants here are not so rich as the merchants in the capital, but they are rich enough. You'd need a great deal of money. I think you should, instead, apply to the governor. He is a young man, and a fool - but he is not evil.' Lythande hugged Wess one last time and stepped away. 'Good-bye, little sister. Please believe I'd stay if I could.'
'I know,' she whispered.
Lythande strode away without looking back, leaving Wess alone among the early morning shadows.
Wess returned to the room at the top of the stairs. When she entered, Chan propped himself up on one elbow.
'I was getting worried,' he said.
'I can take care of myself!' Wess snapped.
'Wess, love, what's the matter?'
She tried to tell him, but she could not. Wess stood, silent, staring at the floor, with her back turned on her best friend.
She glanced over her shoulder when Chan stood up. The ripped curtain let in shards of light that cascaded over his body. He had changed, like all of them, on the long journey. He was still beautiful, but he was thinner and harder.
He touched her shoulder gently. She shrank away.
He saw the bloodstains on her collar. 'You're hurt!' he said, startled. 'Quartz!'
Quartz muttered sleepily from the bed. Chan tried to lead Wess over to the window, where there was more light.
'Just don't touch me!'
'Wess-'
'What's wrong?' Quartz said.
'Wess is injured.' Quartz padded barefoot towards them and Wess burst into tears and flung herself into her arms.
Quartz held Wess, as Wess had held her a few nights before, when Quartz had cried silently in bed, homesick, missing her children. 'Tell me what happened,' she said softly.
What Wess managed to say was less about the attack than about Lythande's explanations of it, and of Sanctuary.
'I understand,' Quartz said after Wess had told her only a little. She stroked Wess's hair and brushed the tears from her cheeks.
'I don't,' Wess said. 'I must be going crazy, to act like this!' She started to cry again. Quartz led her to the blankets, where Aerie sat up, blinking and confused. Chan followed, equally bewildered. Quartz made Wess sit down, sat beside her and hugged her. Aerie rubbed her back and neck and let her wings unfold around them.
'You aren't going crazy,' Quartz said. 'It's that you aren't used to the way things are here.'
'I don't want to get used to things here, I hate this place, I want to find Satan, I want to go home.'
'I know,' Quartz whispered. 'I know.'
'But I don't,' Chan said.
Wess huddled against Quartz, unable to say anything that would ease the hurt she had given Chan.
'Just leave her alone for a little while, Chan,' Quartz said to him. 'Let her rest. Everything will be all right.'
Quartz eased Wess down and lay beside her. Cuddled between Quartz and Aerie, with Aerie's wing spread over them all, Wess fell asleep.
At midmoming, Wess awoke. Her head ached fiercely and the black bruise across her side hurt every time she took a breath. She looked around the room. Sitting beside her, mending a strap on her pack, Quartz smiled down at her. Aerie was brushing her short smooth fur, and Chan stared out of the window, his arm on the sill and his chin resting on his arm, his other shirt abandoned unpatched on his knee.
Wess got up and crossed the room. She sat on her heels near Chan. He glanced at her, and out of the window, and at her again.
'Quartz explained, a little ...'
'I was angry,' Wess said.
'Just because barbarians act like... like barbarians, isn't a good reason to be angry with me.'
He was right. Wess knew it. But the fury and bewilderment mixed up in her were still too strong to shrug off with easy words.
'You know -' he said, 'you do know I couldn't act like that...'
Just for an instant Wess actually tried to imagine Chan acting like the innkeeper, or Bauchle Meyne, arrogantly, blindly, with his self-interest and his pleasure considered above everything and everyone else. The idea was so ludicrous that she burst out in sudden laughter.
'I know you wouldn't,' she said. She had been angry at the person he might have been, had all the circumstances of his life been different. She had been angry at the person she might have been, even more. She hugged Chan quickly. 'Chan, I've got to get free of this place.' She took his hand and stood up. 'Come, I saw Lythande last night, I have to tell you what he said.'
They did not wait till evening to go to the governor's palace, but set out earlier, hoping to gain an audience with the prince and persuade him not to let Satan be sold.
But no one else was waiting till evening to go to the palace, either. They joined a crowd of people streaming towards the gate. Wess's attempt to slip through the throng earned her an elbow in her sore ribs.
'Don't push, girl,' said the ragged creature she had jostled. 'He shook his staff at her. 'Would you knock over an old cripple? I'd never get up again, after I'd been trampled.'
'Your pardon, citizen,' she said. Ahead she could see that the people had to crowd into a narrower space. They were, more or less, in a line. 'Are you going to the slave auction?'
'Slave auction? Slave auction! No slave auction today, foreigner. The carnival come to town!' .
'What's the carnival?'
'A carnival! You've never heard of a carnival? Well, ne'mind, nor has half the people in Sanctuary, nor seen one neither. Two twelve-years since one came. Now the prince is governor, we'll see more, I don't doubt. They'll come wanting an admission to his brother the Emperor - out of the hinterlands and into the capital, if you know.'
'But I still don't know what a carnival is.'
The old man pointed.
Over the high wall of the palace grounds, the great drape of cloth that hung limply around a tall pole slowly began to spread, and open - like a huge mushroom, Wess thought. The guy ropes tightened, forming the canvas into an enormous tent.
'Under there - magic, foreign child. Strange animals. Prancing horses with pretty girls in feathers dancing on their backs. Jugglers, clowns, acrobats on high wires - and the freaks!' He chuckled. 'I like the freaks best; the last time I saw a carnival they had a sheep with two heads and a man with two - but that's not a story to tell a young girl unless you're fucking her.' He reached out to pinch her. Wess jerked back, drawing her knife. Startled, the old man said. There, girl, no offence.' She let the blade slide back into its sheath. The old man laughed again. 'And a special exhibition, this carnival - special, for the prince. They won't say what 'tis. But it'll be a sight, you can be sure.'
Thank you, citizen,' Wess said coldly, and stepped back among her friends. The ragged man was swept forward with the crowd.