The Hjort woman tried to pass her. Millilain hit her hard with her shoulder and knocked her sprawling. She had never hit anyone before. She felt a strange lightheaded sensation, and a tightness in her throat. The Hjort screamed curses at her, but Millilain ran on, heart pounding, eyes aching. She jostled someone else aside and elbowed her way into the line that was forming. Up ahead, the Liiman was handing out sausages in that strange impassive Liiman way, not at all bothered, it seemed, by the struggling mob in front of him.
Tensely Millilain watched the queue moving forward. Seven or eight in front of her—would there be enough sausages for her? It was hard to see what was going on up there, whether new skewers were going on the fire as the old ones were sold. Would there be any left for her? She felt like a greedy child worrying if there were enough party favors to go around. I am being very crazy, she told herself. Why should a sausage matter so much? But she knew the answer. She had had no meat at all for three days, unless the five strips of dried salted sea-dragon flesh she had found on Starday while prowling in her cupboard qualified as meat, and she doubted that. The aroma of those sizzling sausages was powerfully attractive. To be able to purchase them was suddenly the most important thing in the world for her, perhaps the only thing in the world.
She reached the head of the line.
“Two skewers,” she said.
“One to a customer.”
“Give me one, then!”
The Liiman nodded. His three intense, glowing eyes regarded her with minimal interest. “Five crowns,” the Liiman said.
Millilain gasped. Five crowns was half a day’s pay for her. Before the Shortage, she remembered, sausages had been ten weights the skewer. But that had been before the Shortage, after all.
“You aren’t serious,” she said. “You can’t charge fifty times the old price. Even in times like these.”
Someone behind her yelled, “Pay up or move out, lady!”
The Liiman said calmly, “Five crowns today. Next week, eight crowns. Week after that, a royal. Week after that, five royals. Next month, no sausages any price. You want sausages? Yes? No?”
“Yes,” Millilain muttered. Her hands were trembling as she gave him the five crowns. Another crown bought her a mug of beer, flat and stale. Feeling drained and stunned, she drifted away from the line.
Five crowns! That was what she might have expected to pay for a complete meal in a fine restaurant, not very long ago. But most of the restaurants were closed now, and the ones that remained, so she had heard, had waiting lists weeks long for tables. And the Divine only knew what kind of prices they were charging now. But this was insane. A skewer of sausages, five crowns! Guilt assailed her. What would she tell Kristofon? The truth, she decided. I couldn’t resist, she’d say. It was an impulse, a crazy impulse. I smelled them cooking on the grill, and I couldn’t resist.
What if the Liiman had demanded eight crowns, though, or a royal? Five royals? She couldn’t answer that. She suspected that she would have paid whatever she had to, so strong had the obsession been.
She bit into the sausage as though she feared someone would snatch it from her hand. It was astonishingly good: juicy, spicy. She found herself wondering what sort of meat had gone into it. Best not to consider that, she told herself. Kristofon might not be the only one who had had the idea of hunting for little animals in the park.
She took a sip of the beer and began to raise the skewer to her mouth again.
“Millilain?”
She looked up in surprise. “Kristofon!”
“I was hoping I’d find you here. I closed the shop and came out to see what that mob was all about.”
“A sausage vendor appeared suddenly. As though a wizard had conjured him up.”
“Ah. Yes, I see.”
He was staring at the half-eaten sausage in her hand.
Millilain forced a smile. “I’m sorry, Kris. Do you want a bite?”
“Just a bite,” he said. “I suppose it won’t do to get back on the line.”
“I think they’ll all be sold in a little while.” She handed him the skewer, working hard at concealing her reluctance, and watched tensely as he nibbled an inch or two of the sausage. She felt intense relief, and more than a little shame, as he gave the rest back to her.
“By the Lady, that was good!”
“It ought to have been. It cost five crowns.”
“Five—”
“I couldn’t help myself, Kris. Picking up the scent of them in the air—I was like a wild animal, getting on that line. I pushed, I shoved, I fought. I think I would have paid almost anything for one. Oh, Kris, I’m so sorry!”
“Don’t apologize. What else is there to spend the money on, anyway? Besides, things will be changing soon. You’ve heard the news this morning?”
“What news?”
“About the new Coronal! He’ll be here any minute. Right here, coming across Khyntor Bridge.”
Bewildered, she said, “Has Lord Valentine become Pontifex, then?”
Kristofon shook his head. “Valentine no longer matters.
They say he’s disappeared—carried off by the Metamorphs, or something. In any case it was proclaimed about an hour ago that Sempeturn is Coronal now.”
“Sempeturn? The preacher?”
“That one, yes. He arrived in Khyntor last night. The mayor has backed him, and I hear the duke has fled to Ni-moya.”
“This is impossible, Kris! A man can’t just stand up and say he’s Coronal! He has to be chosen, he has to be anointed, he has to come from Castle Mount—”
“We used to think so. But these are different times. Sempeturn’s a true man of the people. That’s the sort we need now. He’ll know how to win back the favor of the Divine.”
She stared in disbelief. The sausage dangled, forgotten, in her hand. “It can’t be happening. It’s craziness. Lord Valentine is our anointed Coronal. He—”
“Sempeturn says that he’s a fraud, that the whole story of his having switched bodies is nonsense, that we’re being punished with these plagues and famines because of his sins. That the only way we can save ourselves now is to depose the false Coronal and give the throne to someone who can lead us back to righteousness.”
“And Sempeturn says he’s the man, and therefore we’re supposed to bow down and accept him and—”
“He’s coming now!” Kristofon cried.
His face was flushed, his eyes were strange. Millilain could not remember ever having seen her husband in such a state of high excitement. He was almost feverish. She felt feverish herself, confused, dazed. A new Coronal? That little red-faced rabble-rouser Sempeturn sitting on the Confalume Throne? She couldn’t grasp the idea. It was like being told that red was green, or that water henceforth would flow uphill.
There was the sudden sound of strident music. A marching band in green-and-gold costumes that bore the Coronal’s starburst emblem came strutting across the bridge and down the esplanade. Then came the mayor and other city officials; and then, riding in a grand and ornately embellished open palanquin, smiling and accepting the plaudits of a vast crowd that was following him out of the town of Hot Khyntor on the far side of the bridge, a short florid-looking man with thick unruly dark hair. “Sempeturn!” the crowd roared. “Sempeturn! All hail Lord Sempeturn!”
“All hail Lord Sempeturn!” Kristofon bellowed.
This is a dream, Millilain thought. This is some dread sending that I do not understand.
“Sempeturn! Lord Sempeturn!”
Everyone on the esplanade was shouting it now. A kind of frenzy was spreading. Millilain numbly took the last bite of her sausage, swallowed it without tasting anything, let the skewer drop to the ground. The world seemed to be rippling beneath her feet. Kristofon still shouted, in a voice now growing hoarse, “Sempeturn! Lord Sempeturn!” The palanquin was going past them now: only twenty yards or so separated them from the new Coronal, if that was indeed what he was. He turned and looked straight into Millilain’s eyes. And with amazement and steadily gathering terror she heard herself yell, “Sempeturn! All hail Lord Sempeturn!” along with all the others.