Smiler's Fair: Book I of The Hollow Gods

by Rebecca Levene

  ‘I don’t have any money,’ Krish told him. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Really?’ The first man closed his meaty hand around Krish’s left forearm and his friend took the other. They startled a little when they got a close look at Krish’s eyes but didn’t loosen their grip.

  Krish knew he was shaking. He gritted his teeth so they wouldn’t chatter and said, ‘It’s true. I haven’t been to market.’

  That seemed to give the thieves pause. The first released Krish to scratch a finger through his short hair. ‘Well,’ he said to his companion. ‘He is heading into the village.’

  The doubt on their faces slowed Krish’s pounding heart a little. They were young and their weapons were flint like his own belt knife. They hadn’t managed to steal the coin to buy metal, which made them either inexperienced or inept.

  ‘I can tell you where you need to wait for other traders,’ Krish said. He pointed at a rock formation on the shoulder of the mountain, a twisted heart inside a brown ring. ‘See there, the grey boulder – another path runs beside it. This way is slow, for when the donkey’s carrying. That’s steeper but quicker. We take it when we’re going home.’ It might even be true. This was the first year his da had sent Krish down the mountain rather than going himself. Krish hadn’t yet figured out his route back, but he’d spotted the goat track he was pointing to and thought it hopeful.

  The first thief was looking where Krish pointed, but the second’s gaze shifted over his shoulder, into the valley far below.

  ‘What is it?’ his companion asked.

  ‘It’s … I think …’ He walked forward, towards the lip of the escarpment. The other thief followed, his captive seemingly forgotten, and Krish thought he might stand a chance of slipping away. But now he could see what they’d spotted: a vast, complex collection of shapes in the distance, out of place against the brown mud and scattered trees of the valley. A dirty haze rose above it, circled by birds.

  ‘Is that Ashfall?’ Krish asked. He moved forward to stare between the two thieves.

  ‘Ashfall?’ the thick-voiced man scoffed. ‘We’re a thousand miles from Ashfall. Don’t you know nothing?’

  ‘That’s no shipfort,’ the other agreed. ‘It’s too big. And it weren’t here last week. You don’t know nothing, do you?’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘That’s Smiler’s Fair,’ the thief said.

  Nethmi paused fifty paces in front of the gates and grasped Lahiru’s arm tighter. His two guardsmen shuffled to a halt behind them, so close she could feel their garlicky breath against her neck. She knew they were gawping over her shoulder. She was gawping too. She’d heard of Smiler’s Fair, of course, but hearing and seeing were two different things. Now she was here, her uncle’s orders to stay away didn’t seem quite so unreasonable.

  The gates were wood and twice as tall as a man. Through them she could see a broad street surfaced with straw and lined with buildings three, four and even five storeys tall, leaning perilously above the crowds. Further in there were taller spires yet, brightly tiled and hung with pennants whose designs she didn’t know: a fat, laughing man, dice and – she blushed and turned away – a naked breast. It was impossible to think that none of this had been here two days before. And the people. Tall, short, fat, thin, with skin and hair of every shade, a babble of languages and faces eager for the entertainments of the fair. It was hard to imagine herself a part of that crowd, swept along in its dangerous currents.

  ‘What’s that stink?’ one of Lahiru’s armsmen asked.

  ‘It’s the smell of everything,’ Lahiru said. ‘They say the fair holds one example of all that there is in the world – every food, every spice, every pleasure and every vice.’

  ‘And the virtues?’ Nethmi asked.

  He grinned, not seeming to share her fear. ‘The fair’s only interested in what it can buy and sell. There’s no profit in virtue. Come, you’ll see when you’re inside.’

  He pulled on her arm and she let herself be led. This might be the last day she ever spent with Lahiru, and she was determined to enjoy it. So what if her uncle had forbidden her to come here? Last night he’d told her of the marriage he’d arranged for her, a match to Lord Thilak of Winter’s Hammer in the distant and cold west. It was just three weeks until she went from her home to that lonely place.

  Her uncle had given her no choice, only a portrait of her betrothed so she could grow accustomed to his face. Lord Thilak looked handsome enough, with thick hair and smiling eyes, but shipborn painters were paid to flatter. She’d seen her own portrait and while it had captured her doll-like prettiness with reasonable accuracy, she knew her nose wasn’t quite so straight nor her lips so full and red. And Thilak was old, approaching fifty. What kind of husband could he be to her? But there was no use dwelling on her situation. There was nothing she could do about it – only this petty act of rebellion, which would have to be enough.

  The entryway to the fair was thronged with the landborn, but Lahiru’s men shouldered a way through so they soon came to the gate and those guarding it. Nethmi couldn’t help but stare. She’d seen Wanderers before, with their strange pale skin, but these men were odder yet. Their hair was gold and silk-fine, their limbs were wrapped tight in cloth of the same colour and they were as tall and slender as the spears they held crossed to bar the way.

  ‘Halt, stranger,’ one said, ‘and speak your name.’

  Lahiru stepped forward confidently. ‘I am Lahiru, lord of Smallwood, and this is the Lady Nethmi of Whitewood.’

  ‘And those?’ the man asked, nodding at the guards.

  ‘Saman and Janith, also of Smallwood.’

  Nethmi saw the other pale man carefully writing the names on his tablet, and then the spears were uncrossed and they were waved through. The smell was stronger and ranker inside, and the noise almost overwhelming. She held fast to Lahiru, an anchor in the tide of people washing down the thoroughfare. A goose honked at her and chickens flapped their wings from the doorway of one house while their brethren boiled in great tureens opposite. White-coated men ladled the broth into bowls and passed them out to anyone with the coin.

  ‘Why do they need our names? Will they report us?’ she asked Lahiru.

  He shook his head. ‘It’s for their own use, not to be passed on. They keep a record so they can tell if anyone is missing. You’ll be asked again at each gate between districts, if I recall. Each company keeps its own records of who’s come and gone and a roll-call is taken every morning.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Well … So they know if the worm men have eaten anyone in the night.’

  ‘The worm men?’ She stared at him to see if he was teasing.

  ‘They believe so, yes. It’s how the fair knows when it’s time to move on. The worm men fear the sun—’

  ‘In children’s stories!’

  ‘The citizens of the fair believe them to be true,’ Lahiru replied, herding her away from a donkey cart and into the path of a juggler, who cursed as his batons and balls dropped all around him. ‘They believe the sun poisons the land against the worm men so they can’t emerge from their lairs below. But as the weeks pass and the fair keeps the soil in permanent shadow, the influence of the sun fades until the monsters are able to dig to the surface and snatch a victim. And when the first death comes, Smiler’s Fair breaks its pitch and travels on.’

  ‘But …’ Nethmi looked around. They’d moved deeper into the fair as they talked, into a region of narrow alleys and houses open on their lower floors to reveal stalls selling jewellery and cloth and spices and weapons and other objects whose use she couldn’t guess. They passed a tall, narrow house whose walls were covered in slippers of every shade, another filled with silver teapots and delicate glasses and a third whose walls of empty-eyed masks made Nethmi turn away uneasily. The stalls’ owners were of every race and people but their faces shared a knowing, cynical cast. ‘They can’t believe in the worm men here, can they?’ she asked Lahiru.

  ‘And
why not? Haven’t you ever wondered why the shipforts always circle their lakes and the wagons of the landborn move once a week?’

  ‘That’s to remind us of our origins. We’re shipfolk – to move brings us luck. I learned that from my nursemaid.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Lahiru grinned, shaking off his unaccustomed thoughtfulness. Nethmi knew his light-heartedness irritated her uncle, but she’d always found it appealing. He’d been the same as a boy, back when her father was still alive and she’d imagined herself destined to be his wife, uniting the neighbouring shipforts in one family. But her father was dead and her uncle had chosen his own daughter Babi for Lahiru. He’d given her three children but little happiness, nor she him. And soon Nethmi was to be married to old Lord Thilak, an even less joyous union.

  ‘So, what shall we do now we’re here?’ she asked.

  He pointed above her, to a pennant hanging from a roof beam, showing a rayed sun. ‘See that – it marks the company whose territory we’re in. Journey’s End, I think. Traders. And those others—’ he pointed over the roofs to distant regions of the fair ‘—the raven is Jaspal, so that’s the Fierce Children’s district. They’re in charge of the Menagerie, filled with animals from all over the world.’

  ‘I’d like to see that.’

  ‘I think it’s near the centre. And that–’ He blushed and froze with his hand pointing at a banner showing two dice with a strange bulbous-ended rod between them.

  ‘That there’s Smiler’s Mile,’ a high voice piped up and a girl no more than ten insinuated herself between them. She smiled, gap-toothed, and swung her arm in a wide circle over the roofs of the fair. ‘The fat man with a spoon, that’s the Merry Cooks. It’s them what serves the food, though I ain’t saying it’s good. The horse is the Drovers, no need to worry yourself about them – they ain’t for visitors. The snowflake’s the Snow Dancers. See, it’s simple. Queen Kaur’s face, that’s the Queen’s Men. You don’t want to go near them. They don’t do nothing but rob.’

  Lahiru smiled and ruffled the urchin’s hair, though it was filthy with grease. ‘And the winged mammoth? I confess I don’t find that one so simple.’

  The girl squirmed away from his touch. ‘The King’s Men. They put on plays. Boring. But that one—’ she pointed to the simplest banner of all, the black silhouette of a figure against a white ground ‘—that’s us Worshippers. We’re the best of all the companies, because we keep company with the gods.’

  ‘So we should go there, I suppose?’ Nethmi said. ‘That’s your impartial advice?’

  ‘No,’ the girl said. ‘Winelake Square in the Fine Fellows’ quarter. That’s where Jinn’s preaching today and he’s the best of all the Worshippers. You ought to go there.’

  Nethmi pulled out a glass feather, but Lahiru took the coin from her and held it out of the girl’s reach.

  ‘Jinn, you say? The boy preacher who teaches disrespect for the Five and sedition against our King?’

  The girl shrugged, seeming more annoyed than alarmed. ‘Some people think so, but he keeps the fair’s peace and the fair keeps him safe. Why not hear him out?’

  Lahiru held the coin a moment longer, then tossed it to the girl and watched her catch it, bite it, slip it somewhere beneath her cloak and melt back into the crowd.

  ‘Well?’ Lahiru asked, turning back to Nethmi. ‘Shall we hear sedition being preached? Your uncle would be furious if he learned of it.’

  She thought of her upcoming marriage, unwanted and inevitable, and returned his sly smile. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He would.’

  Eric didn’t have many strong opinions, but he felt strongly that if a boy was about to be replaced, it was kinder not to let him know. It didn’t seem Madam Aeronwen shared the sentiment, though. Not with the way she was fawning all over Kenric while the rest of her sellcocks and dollymops gobbled their lunch in the kitchen paying customers weren’t invited to.

  The room was cramped and rough, nothing like the public areas of the house. The wooden ceiling was low, the walls unpainted and the smell of stew made from tainted meat lingered. Eric liked it here, or he always had. But that had been when he was the one being smiled at and slipped little treats. Now it was Kenric.

  Kenric was lapping it all up, the way he always did. He picked at pieces of fruit and put them in his mouth one at a time, being sure to lick his lips and his fingers of the juice after each. It was shameless, even for a whore of Smiler’s Fair, but Eric knew he only had himself to blame.

  Six months ago, Kenric had been a stable boy with the Drovers, miserable and with many years of shovelling shit left ahead of him before he bought out his debt bond and earned full membership in the company. Eric had shared a few small beers with the thirteen-year-old, and maybe he’d boasted a little about his life in the Fine Fellows and how he was near halfway to buying out his own bond.

  But he hadn’t known that Kenric would go to his master and beg him to sell his bond on to Madam Aeronwen. Nor that she’d shell out so many gold wheels for the boy, who was pretty enough to be a girl and young enough to have no hair on him and skin as smooth as a baby’s.

  The lad seemed to feel Eric’s eyes on him. He grinned and rose, oozing over towards him until he was sitting in Eric’s lap with his thin arms around his neck.

  ‘Tell you what, mate,’ Kenric said. ‘I’m out of lotion, and you got that palm oil what your clients go crazy for. Lend me it, will you?’

  ‘It’s mine,’ Eric protested. ‘I paid for it.’

  Kenric batted his long lashes and looked up through his curly honey-coloured hair. ‘But you ain’t using it. You ain’t got no gentlemen booked today, and I got three.’

  ‘Give it him, Eric,’ Aeronwen said, her square face stern. ‘I’ll drop you five glass feathers, if you’re begrudging the cost.’

  And that, of course, was that. Kenric left Eric’s lap as soon as he had what he wanted and they all went back to eating. Except Eric didn’t have much of an appetite any longer. He put down his knife and stood.

  ‘Off to drum up some custom?’ Kenric asked in that sweetly poisonous way of his.

  ‘Going for some air, ain’t I?’ Eric said. ‘It’s close in here.’

  ‘Not much fresh air to be had out there,’ Madam Aeronwen said. ‘The Worshippers sent to ask leave for their boy Jinn to set up shop in the square. He’ll be preaching to the cullies and there won’t be room to swing your balls.’

  ‘Then I’ll listen to Jinn.’

  Madam Aeronwen laughed, a sound like hard cheese being grated. ‘You turning cully, my Eric? You’ve been in the fair five years now, you know how it goes. You pay the Worshippers’ coin and they see you right with all the gods a person needs to bother with. There’s no call to go believing any of it.’

  ‘Ain’t no harm in listening,’ Eric muttered. ‘Might be entertaining.’

  She frowned at him, face fierce beneath her short grey hair, then waved a hand. ‘Go then, but keep a keen eye out while you do. Your takings are down this pitch and your room and board ain’t cheap. Find yourself an old man with a fat purse, my lad. That’s better than any god.’

  The air wasn’t any fresher outside, but then he’d hardly expected it to be. The square was filling already. There were the usual cullies scurrying into drinking dens and the arms of other whores, and the citizens of the fair getting ready to relieve them of their coin in any way that presented itself. But another crowd was building in the centre around a small stage.

  Eric strolled towards it, not actually that interested in hearing what the preacher boy had to say, but too proud to go back inside. And maybe Madam Aeronwen was right. Perhaps there was trade to be picked up here. The folk who came to the fair weren’t generally looking for religion and he could provide something a lot more fun than praying, couldn’t he?

  The preacher himself was heading for the stage now, a slight thing younger even than Kenric. He didn’t look like much, but Eric knew he had a big name among the Worshippers, and they weren’t the sort to be easily
impressed. Maybe he would have a listen after all. He eased himself closer just as the man next to him did the same. They bumped into each other and it wouldn’t have mattered, only the cully tripped over his own legs and fell against a man seated at a table outside the Blessed Dice.

  It was remarkable how quickly it went off after that. The man the first had fallen against lashed out, hit the wrong fellow, he in turn thumped the wrong man and soon a general brawl had broken out. Eric didn’t get the impression anyone involved had been much averse to the idea of a fight in the first place. He wasn’t too keen on it, though, and he scrambled aside.

  He wasn’t the only one making himself scarce. He saw Thin Pushpindar and Fat Pushpindar laughing as they hopped out of the way of a falling tribesman, and the cullies were scattering all around. One woman was almost squashed before her companion grabbed her hand and dragged her clear while the two bruisers with them scowled and pushed the fighters away. The woman’s friend looked round, scanning for more trouble, and his eyes hooked Eric’s.

  The man was handsome enough to be a whore himself. His skin was the pleasing brown of the Ashane, with wavy hair a shade darker, while his trousers hugged his trim legs. Eric’s prick twitched appreciatively and he felt something in his gut, or maybe higher, that made him stop and stare. He didn’t even remember to pout prettily the way Madam Aeronwen had taught him.

  The other man was staring too and Eric knew that expression. He used to see it a lot, and now he was sixteen and not such a pretty boy as some others, he saw it less. This man wanted him. But then the woman he was with touched his arm and he glanced down at her and smiled. Maybe he was wed to her and couldn’t have what he lusted for. Maybe not, though, and so when the man looked back over, Eric pointed to Madam Aeronwen’s and winked and even remembered to pout this time. And it seemed like the man winked back, but a group of brawlers fell between them, more and more cullies piled into the square and Eric lost sight of them.

  He sighed and turned back to the stage, where Jinn was getting ready. He might as well listen to the preacher talk about his god. Perhaps if he had a word afterwards, Jinn could pray a little for him and get the man to remember Eric’s wink. Perhaps he could get things back to the way they were before Kenric came along and made his sweet life a little more sour.