Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War 1)

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve seen bigger.” In fact, I’d fallen in bigger, but as this appeared to have dropped from the behind of a single beast I had to agree that it was pretty damned impressive. You could have heaped a score of dinner plates with it if one were so inclined. “It’s big, but I have seen the like before. In fact, it’s quite possible that we’ll soon have something in common.”

“Yes?”

“It’s quite possible, my friend, that we’ll both have had our lives saved by a big pile of shit.” I turned towards the retreating old man. “Hey!” I hollered down the road at his back. “Where’s the circus?”

The ancient didn’t pause but simply extended a bony arm towards an olive-studded ridge to the south.

“Circus?” Snorri asked, still transfixed by the dung pile.

“You’re about to see an elephant, my friend!”

“And this effelant will cure my poisoned hand?” He held the offending article up for inspection, wincing as he did so.

“Best place to get wounds seen to outside a battle hospital! These people juggle axes and burning brands. They swing from trapezes and walk on ropes. There’s not a circus in the Broken Empire that doesn’t have half a dozen people who can stitch wounds and with luck an herbman for other ailments.”

A sidetrack turned from the road a quarter of a mile on and led towards the ridge. It bore evidence of recent traffic, and large traffic at that—the hard-baked ground scarred by wheel ruts, the overhanging trees sporting fresh-broken branches. On cresting the ridge we could see an encampment ahead: three large circles of wagons, a scattering of tents. Not a circus set up to entertain but one on the move and enjoying a rest stop. A dry-stone wall enclosed the field where the travellers had camped. Such walls were common in the region, being as much a place to put the ubiquitous chunks of rock that the soil yielded as they were a means of containing livestock or marking boundaries. A sour-looking grey-haired dwarf sat guarding the three-barred gate at the field’s entrance.

“We already got a strongman.” He eyed Snorri with a short-sighted squint and spat an impressive amount of phlegm into the dust. The dwarf was the kind that resemble common men in the size of their head and hands, but whose torsos have been concertinaed into too small a space, their legs left thin and bandy. He sat on the wall cleaning his fingernails with a knife, and his expression announced him more than happy to stick strangers with it.

“Come now! You’ll offend Sally!” I remonstrated. “If you’ve already got a bearded lady I can scarce believe she’s as comely as this young wench.”

That got the dwarf’s attention. “Well, hello, Sally! Gretcho Marlinki at your service!”

I could feel Snorri looming behind me in the way that suggested my head might get twisted off in short order. The little fellow jumped from the wall, leered up at Snorri, and unhitched the gate.

“In you go. Blue tent inside the circle on the left. Ask for Taproot.”

I led on in, thankful that Gretcho was too short to pinch Snorri’s backside or we might be owing this Taproot for a new midget.

“Sally?” the Norseman rumbled behind me.

“Work with me,” I said.

“No.”

Most of the circus folk were probably sleeping out the noon heat, but a fair number worked at assorted tasks around the wagons. Repairs to wheels and tack, tending animals, stitching canvas, a pretty girl practising a pirouette, a heavily pregnant woman tattooing the back of a shirtless man, the inevitable juggler throwing things up and catching them.

“Utter waste of time.” I nodded at the juggler.

“I love jugglers!” Snorri’s grin showed white teeth in the cropped blackness of his beard.

“God! You’re probably the sort that likes clowns!”

The grin broadened as if the mere mention of clowns were hilarious. I hung my head. “Come on.”

We passed a stone-walled well beyond which, away down the slope, a scattering of headstones stood. Clearly generations had used this place to pause their travels. And some had never left.

The blue tent, though faded almost to grey, proved easy to spot. Larger and cleaner and taller than the rest, it stood centrally and sported a battered painted sign outside on two posts.

Dr. Taproot’s famous circus

Lions, tigers, bears, oh my!

By appointment to the Imperial Court of Vyene

Since knocking is difficult with tents, I leaned in towards the entrance flap and coughed.

“. . . couldn’t just paint some stripes on the lion?”