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

“Will he live?” I asked, my interest genuine though self-motivated.

“It’s a nasty wound. The tendons are undamaged but one of the small bones of the hand has been broken, others displaced. It will heal, but slowly, and only if the infection is contained.”

“A yes then?”

“Probably.”

“Good news!” I turned back to the girls outside. “That calls for a celebration. Let me buy you fine ladies a drink and we can afford my companion a little privacy.” I stepped down amongst them. They smelled of greasepaint, cheap perfume, sweat. All good. “I’m Jalan, but you can call me Prince Jal.”

At last my old enchantment started to work. Even the sculpted magnificence of Snorri ver Snagason had a hard time competing with the magic word prince.

“Cherri. Pleased to meet you, Your Highness.” Some doubt in her voice, but I could tell she wanted to believe her prince had come.

I took her hand. “Enchanted.” And she smiled up at me, pretty enough with a snub nose and wicked eyes, fair hair, curled, streaked with blond.

“Lula,” said her friend, a petite wench with short black hair, pale despite the summer, and sculpted as if to satisfy a schoolboy’s dream.

With Cherri on one arm, Lula on the other, and a clutch of dancers following behind, I led the way back to the beer wagon. Snorri let out a sharp gasp from under Varga’s awning. And life was good.

• • •

The afternoon passed in a pleasant haze and parted me from the company of my last silver crowns. The circus men proved remarkably tolerant of my pawing their women, as did the circus women, and we sprawled on cushions before the beer wagon drinking wine from amphorae, growing louder as the shadows lengthened.

Annoyingly, the dancers kept asking me about Snorri, as if the hero of Aral in their midst weren’t quite enough to hold their attention.

“Is he a chieftain?” Lula asked.

“He’s so big.” A red-haired beauty named Florence.

“What’s his name?” A tall Nuban girl with copper loops through her ears and a mouth made for kissing. “How is he called?”

“Snorri,” I said. “It means wife-beater.”

“No?” Cherri, all round-eyed.

“Yes!” I faked sadness. “Terrible temper—if a woman upsets him he cuts her face.” I drew a line across my cheek with one finger.

“What’s the North like?” The Nuban girl wasn’t so easily deflected.

I tipped the amphora to my mouth, gulping wine while I held my hand out at a steep angle. “Like that.” I wiped my lips. “Only icy. All the northmen slip to the coasts, where they congregate in miserable villages smelling of fish. It gets very crowded. Every now and then a bunch more come sliding down from the hills on their arses and the only place for the ones closest to the shore is on a boat. And off they sail.” I mimicked a ship’s progression across the waves. I gave Lula my amphora. “Those horns on their helms?” I made myself two horns, a hand to each side of my head. “Cuckold’s horns. The new arrivals are bouncing abed with the wives left behind. Terrible place. Don’t ever go there.”

A small girl and small boy came out to sing for us, a remarkable pair with high clear voices, and even the elephant moved closer to listen. I had to shush Cherri to hear uninterrupted when the children sang “High-John,” but I let her giggle through their rendition of “Boogie Bugle.” Without warning their voices soared into an aria that drew me back to Father’s opera. They sang it sweeter and with more heart, but still the world seemed to close about me and I heard those screams in the fire. And beneath those screams my memory ran a deeper sound, something heard but at the time not understood, a different kind of howling. The roar of something angry rather than scared.

“Enough.” I threw a cushion at them. It missed and the elephant snagged it from the ground. “Scram!” The little girl’s lip wobbled for an instant and they both fled.

“. . . ‘give them what they want, dears.’ That’s all he says. With Taproot it’s all hips and tits. There’s no art in it for him.” Lula looked up at me over her clay goblet, seeking affirmation.

“Well, to be fair, Lula, you are mostly hips and tits,” I said, a slight slur to my words now.

They giggled at that. The combination of a title and freely flowing wine will have people laughing at anything you offer up as funny, and I’ve never once complained about it. A sharp oath rang out from the direction of Varga’s wagon. I put an arm around Cherri, another around Lula, and drew them close. Enjoy the world while you can, I say. A shallow enough philosophy by which to live, but shallow is what I’ve got. Besides, deep is apt to drown you.