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

“A mind-sworn wizard? A hidden hand that might separate you? Watch me! If I had such, this circus would be a gold mine and me the richest of all rich men.”

I had expected him to laugh at my claims of enchantment, so to be taken seriously was a relief, though hearing how hard it might prove to be to undo the magic was less pleasing.

Taproot finished his drink and put the little bottle back in the drawer. “Speaking of rich men, you might care to know about one Maeres Allus.”

“You know—” Of course he knew. Taproot knew of the Red Queen’s secret brother, too broken for the throne. He knew about goats chewing on the slopes of distant fjords. He would hardly not know of Vermillion’s greatest crime lord.

“Watch me.” Taproot laid a slim finger alongside his slim nose. “Maeres has secrets that even I don’t know. And he is not best pleased with you.”

“Perhaps a journey north would be good for my health in any case, then,” I said.

“True enough.” And Taproot waved me out, fluttering his hands as if I were a tumbler come to beg more sawdust for the centre ring and not a prince of Red March. I let him do it too, for when a man who knows too much knows not to waste his manners on you, it’s best to be moving on.

NINE

The pregnant woman, done for the moment with her tattooing, led me to Varga’s wagon. She waddled ahead of me looking fit to pop at each step, though she said her time lay weeks ahead.

“Daisy,” she told me. Her name, or perhaps what she planned to call the whelp if it proved female. I hadn’t been listening too hard. We’d passed a wagon where a woman in tight silks sat with her ankles crossed behind her head, and my attention had wandered.

“Daisy? A fine name.” For a cow.

I spotted the elephant, corralled by a fence that it could swat aside, tethered to a thick post by a length of chain. A number of circus men, showing off lean and muscular bodies, lounged around a bar made of two barrels and a plank, watching the elephant and whatever else might pass. Behind them a well-laden beer wagon provided shade. Circuses always came amply provisioned with ale for the audience. I guess it must be easier to impress a drunken crowd.

Further on we passed a shabby tent stitched with moon and stars, symbols of the horoscope dotted amongst the faded heavens. An ancient sat outside on a three-legged stool, snaggle-toothed and liver-spotted.

“Cross my palm, stranger.” I couldn’t tell if the creature was man or woman.

“Don’t humour her.” Daisy increased the speed of her waddle. “Cracked, that one is. Everything’s doom and gloom. Drives the punters away.”

“You’re quarry.” The old woman called after us, then coughed as if a lung had burst. “Quarry.” I couldn’t tell which of us she’d aimed the words at.

“Save it for the peasants,” I called back, but it left a chill. Always does. I expect that’s why prophecy sells.

We walked on until the hacking cough faded behind us. I laughed, but in truth I had felt hunted since we left the city. Though by what I couldn’t say. More than the Silent Sister, more than Maeres’s terrors even, it was the eyes behind that enamel mask that watched me from my quiet moments. Just a glimpse at the opera, just a glancing encounter, and yet it haunted me.

“Varga.” Daisy pointed at a wagon much as Taproot described. She drew in a deep sigh and started to waddle off, back the way we’d come. I offered no thanks, distracted now by the small crowd of scantily clad young women clustered around the open end of Varga’s wagon. Dancers, by the litheness of them and the snatches of silk they wore.

“Ladies.” I approached, flashing them my best smile. It seemed, however, that a tall blond prince of Red March was less interesting than a huge dark Norseman bulging with muscle as if his arms and legs had been crammed with boulders. The girls pointed into the gloom beneath the awning, giggling behind their hands, exchanging appreciative whispers. I leaned around and stepped up onto the buckboard.

“You didn’t need to take his shirt off,” I said. “It’s his hand that needs removing.”

Snorri offered me a dark look from the sloping couch he’d been arrayed upon. He really did have an alarming topology, his stomach ridged and divided by muscle, his chest and arms bursting with power, veins writhing across him to feed blood into the engines of his strength, all tensed now against the pain Varga’s investigations were causing him.

“You’re blocking my light.” Varga turned from the messy work in hand. She was a woman of middling years, tending to grey, with a homely face of the kind that supports compassion and disapproval in equal measures.