Smiler's Fair: Book I of The Hollow Gods

by Rebecca Levene

  The Servant sat quietly by his bed, watching him with what looked almost like an expression of sympathy. She wore the plain white robes of all her kind, but her long hair was tied back from her face and there was a darkness beneath her eyes, as if she needed rest. Did the Servants ever suffer sleepless nights? It didn’t seem possible.

  ‘I just went for a walk,’ he said. ‘I got lost, didn’t I?’

  She nodded gravely and he wasn’t sure if she believed him. He didn’t know what else to say to her, so he looked back down at his bandaged hands. They felt wrong: numb where they weren’t agonising and too full of blood.

  ‘You needn’t fear,’ she said. ‘We were able to save nearly all of them, and most of your toes.’

  ‘You saved nearly all of them?!’ He began tearing at the bandages with his teeth, horrified, but she reached out to stop him. Her grip was far stronger than his.

  ‘You lost the tips of three fingers,’ she said. ‘You’ll lose more if you remove the bandages too soon.’

  He swallowed thickly as he felt tears sting his eyes. ‘And my toes?’

  ‘Two on one foot and none on the other. You’ll walk without a problem, though it may take you a little while to relearn. Half of your left ear is also gone.’

  He lifted a hand to feel it, but the bandages made it impossible to sense what was missing.

  ‘Can I have a mirror?’ he whispered.

  It was the first time he’d seen anything like uncertainty from a Servant. ‘Your face is …’ She shook her head. ‘It will heal, and your nose should remain whole. But it’s best you don’t see it yet. It would only alarm you.’

  He lay back on his furs and concentrated on slowing his breathing and holding back the tears. It was his own fault, wasn’t it? He needed to learn to think things through. When he looked back at her, he noticed for the first time the small mole above the perfect golden arch of her eyebrow. She was one of his particular wives. It occurred to him that she might be the mother of his child.

  ‘Did you rescue me?’ he asked her.

  ‘I searched for you. It was another who found you.’

  ‘But you’re …’ He didn’t know how to ask. He didn’t even know if he was allowed to ask.

  She nodded. ‘Through Mizhara’s blessing, I carry a child.’

  ‘My child?’

  She looked as if she meant to deny it, as if she’d prefer to remove his part entirely from the baby-making and give all the credit to her goddess, but she nodded again.

  He studied her closely. The Servants’ robes were loose, but he didn’t think a woman showed much so early in her pregnancy anyway. A few of Madam Aeronwen’s girls had forgotten to take their virgin-flower tea and ended up with something unwanted cooking in their ovens. They’d been able to hide it from their clients for a good long time. And then, of course, there’d been the johns who preferred it when the girl was good and round.

  ‘My sisters were undecided what to do with you,’ she said after a short silence.

  ‘Because of me – because of me getting lost?’

  ‘Because you’re no longer perfect. Mizhara’s laws tells us our husbands must be whole, but she left no words on what to do with those who cease to be so.’

  ‘You mean you’re thinking of letting me go – I mean, sending me home?’ What should have made him joyful filled him with sudden dread. Would Madam Aeronwen take him back after he’d fled Smiler’s Fair and his debt bond to her? Would anyone else want him, so mutilated?

  ‘We debated,’ she said. ‘I spoke for you. What happened to you was no different from the marks of age, and we don’t forsake our husbands when their hair turns grey or their skin wrinkles. You’re human and these are human things. We shouldn’t punish you for being weaker than we.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he whispered.

  ‘I’ve never borne a child before.’ Her eyes were unfocused and he couldn’t tell what strange inner track her mind was following.

  ‘How old are you?’ he asked.

  ‘A hundred and seventy-three years, in the world of the sun’s true circuit.’

  Eric stared at her, briefly dumbstruck. ‘And you’ve never had a child before?’

  ‘Children among us are rare. The last was born twenty-six years ago.’

  ‘So none of the rest of them, the other husbands, they ain’t never fathered a child.’

  She smiled at him suddenly. ‘Only you.’

  He reached out tentatively to rest his bandaged hand against her middle. His daughter lay beneath his palm, but he couldn’t feel her. She might as well not exist.

  ‘The baby hasn’t quickened yet,’ his wife said.

  ‘How long before she moves?’

  ‘Three months, and longer before you’ll be able to feel her.’

  That was a long time while his baby was nothing more than an idea, and ideas didn’t much matter, did they? He’d had the idea that Bolli was his friend, and look where that had led him.

  ‘There will be a great celebration at the birth,’ she said.

  When he tried to smile, his face didn’t move the way it was meant to. He turned his head aside and stared at his pillow. After a short silence his wife left the room, only to return a few minutes later with broth. She held it up to him, but he closed his mouth. He refused the water she offered him too. He’d been a fool to think he could escape alive, but there was one last way he could defy the Servants and all their neat little plans for him. Without food or drink, he’d be gone long before his child was any more than an idea.

  29

  Krish could see the smoke of Smiler’s Fair ahead, and the circle of scavenger birds above it. The last time he’d been close to the place, he’d been too cautious to enter it. Things were different now and he was eager to see what he’d denied himself before. The sun was near setting, though, and Dae Hyo decided to make camp and travel the last distance with the dawn.

  ‘That place isn’t going anywhere,’ he said. ‘At least not right now.’

  Krish sat gingerly beside the fire. His member was still tender, though thankfully no infection had set in, and he was awkward in the leather jerkin that Dae Hyo had stolen for him from a corpse. The other man had insisted they must both dress like true warriors of the Fourteen Tribes now. The turban on Krish’s head felt absurd, but the weight of the twin knives was comforting at his waist and his muscles ached pleasantly rather than unendurably from the last hour’s sparring. Dae Hyo was sure that, with those weapons at least, Krish could learn not to disgrace himself.

  The fire snapped and danced and for the first time since he’d begun to travel with the other man he felt confident enough of his place – that this was his hearth as well as Dae Hyo’s – to pull out the stone figure of his prow god and place her in the flames. The blood had flaked off long ago, and she shone white and pure.

  ‘Funny-looking rock,’ Dae Hyo said, thumping to the ground beside him with a string of small silver fish on a line. ‘Planning to use it to warm your arse as you sleep?’

  ‘She’s my prow god.’

  ‘A god?’ Dae Hyo leaned forward to squint into the fire. ‘Looks like a stone to me. What’s her name?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t dreamed it yet.’

  ‘Fuck me, brother! What sort of god is that? How many worshippers does she have?’

  ‘Just me. You too, if you want. The Five are there for the important things but they’re too busy with the affairs of the shipborn to care for the landborn most of the time. Our own prow gods protect us and our families. Don’t the Dae have gods?’

  ‘Of course. Well, it’s no surprise you’re so ignorant. You were brought up by barbarians, but it’s time you learned the real way of things.’ Dae Hyo reached into one of his saddlebags, rooting through hemp shirts and bottles of rough spirits until he drew out a leather parchment case. The scroll within was brown with age and crackled as he gently unrolled it. ‘I saved this from the camp. It was with the elder mothers’ … with their corpses.’

 
; Krish saw a collection of miniature portraits scattered across the page. Green lines linked some, red lines others and there were black scrawls beneath each, which he guessed might be writing. ‘It’s very pretty,’ he said. It was. The faces were full of character, despite being so small. The frowning, red-crowned woman could have been his father’s cousin, soured by years as a widow, while the haughty man looking down the length of his long nose reminded Krish of the headman of the neighbouring village.

  ‘Now these are the true gods,’ Dae Hyo said. ‘See, here are Belbog and Volog, the fathers of the universe.’ He pointed at the topmost portraits of identical men with broad, smiling faces. ‘Volog pissed out the oceans and Belbog shat out the earth. But then the all-mother Bogdana came along –’ a red-faced woman with golden hair ‘– and she cried because the world the brothers made was so ugly. Her tears became rain and the rain ran into rivers. Fish swam in them and trees grew on the banks, the way trees do. She made the world beautiful, like only a woman can.’

  There was a lot more after this. Krish tried to attend to it. He needed to be convincing as a Dae if he was going to hook his army using the Dae lands as bait. But the Dae gods had left them to their slaughter, while his prow god had seen him safe through the mountains and into Dae Hyo’s company. So he listened and he tried to learn the strange foreign names, but when they broke camp the next morning he waited until Dae Hyo’s back was turned, then lifted his goddess out of the ashes and stowed her in his saddle pack.

  Smiler’s Fair was vast. Dae Hyo told him that it was packed up and moved every month or so, but Krish couldn’t imagine how. They approached it over the brow of the hills surrounding it, so that he was able to look down on the whole shambolic, crowded place and marvel. It was even more astonishing from close up than it had been from a distance. How many people lived here? He hadn’t known there were so many people in the world.

  The buildings were mostly three and four storeys high, many painted, most faded, all in some more or less advanced state of decay. Higher structures rose here and there. Krish saw a windowless blue hall and beside it a collection of tall, improbable spires topped with figures depicting animals Krish didn’t recognise. They seemed unstable, wobbling in the slight breeze that blew in across the plains. And everywhere there were flags: pictures of snowflakes and men and women waving in the same wind.

  ‘Those flags are what we need to follow,’ Dae Hyo said. ‘That’s how to find your way around. Smiler’s Fair moves, you see, not just all of it over the land but its own streets inside itself. When they rebuild it’s always changed, but the banners show the different companies: the whores, the traders, the cooks, more whores.’

  ‘Which company do we want? Who’d want to follow us?’

  ‘Well … No need to get ahead of ourselves. Let’s feel out the lie of the land first. We’re looking for men who’ll fight for honour rather than gold. Not everyone in Smiler’s Fair is worthy to join the Dae.’

  ‘They’ll probably be more keen to join if you don’t insist on cutting off pieces of their penises,’ Krish said, not for the first time.

  ‘But then they won’t be Dae. Don’t worry, we’ll ford that stream when our feet are damp. Ah, here we are – this is what we need.’

  Krish realised they’d reached the stables, a cluster of stalls outside the gates of the fair that reeked of manure. He dismounted and Dae Hyo led their horses towards the light-skinned, hunchbacked man who seemed to be running the place. There was a brief negotiation and then coins were exchanged and Dae Hyo slung his arm round Krish’s shoulder and turned him towards the fair.

  ‘Look, you see that tower to the left, the one with the raven flag on it? I say we separate, find out what we can and meet there at sunset.’

  ‘Separate?’ Krish’s suspicion that Dae Hyo didn’t really have a plan started to harden into certainty. He was afraid the other man had insisted they come here because of the entertainment on offer, not for the warriors they might find. But before Krish could question him Dae Hyo was striding towards the open maw of Smiler’s Fair, and by the time he’d caught up they were at the gates.

  Two guards blocked them, hard-muscled men with spears. Their hair was an unnatural yellow and their skin was as pale as fungus. They stared at Krish and Dae Hyo as they approached, then lowered the spears to block their way.

  ‘Halt, strangers, and speak your names,’ one of them said.

  Krish had almost managed to forget he was a hunted man; now the careful gaze of the guards sharply reminded him. His wasn’t a name he wanted said aloud, and he grasped Dae Hyo’s arm, but the other man spoke first.

  ‘I’m Dae Hyo and this is my brother, Dae Krish.’

  ‘Your brother?’ Both guards studied them sceptically. Krish knew that no two men looked less like brothers: one thin and dark and big-nosed and the other huge and pale and flat-faced.

  Dae Hyo laughed. ‘You work in Smiler’s Fair – don’t tell me we’re the strangest thing you’ve ever seen.’

  One of the guards scowled, but the other relaxed and waved them through. As Krish felt a weakening rush of relief, he knew that it was Dae Hyo who’d saved him. It hadn’t even occurred to the other man that this might be a problem, and his unfeigned calm made them seem guiltless in a way Krish knew he’d never have been able to pull off.

  ‘Pass then,’ the guard said, ‘and keep the Smiler’s peace.’

  The stink of the place was astonishing. The source of it was no mystery. The ways between the buildings were more liquid than solid, full of turds and spoiled food and the occasional rat or chicken corpse. Krish saw that many of the residents wore wooden overshoes tall enough to hold their clothes above the muck. He had nothing similar and his sandals and trousers were soon soaked through with the unbelievable filth.

  Dae Hyo had told him that Smiler’s Fair was filled with those driven from their own homes by famine, or greed, or boredom, or a crime for which they didn’t want to pay the price. It had sounded like a hopeful place to find recruits, but Krish saw little to encourage him in the faces he passed. They were all clenched like fists, holding everything important in and threatening the world to keep out. Only the visiting tribesmen who wandered among them met his eye and sometimes smiled, but they had a place in the world already – they wouldn’t want to become Dae. They certainly wouldn’t fight for an Ashane king’s son.

  And would the Ashane themselves follow him now he’d made himself a tribesman? His manhood had almost recovered from the cutting, but every time he pulled it out to void his bladder he was shocked to see its strange baldness. The hemp-cloth trousers felt too rough and tight against his skin and Dae Hyo had told him he had to grow his hair like a man. At the moment it was still too short to wind beneath his turban and hung ragged into his eyes. He was pretending to be Dae to further his cause, but was he changing too much? He mustn’t become Dae.

  A red-haired, bone-thin man passed him and Krish tried to catch his eye but got only a glare and a shove for his trouble. Clearly the street was no place to go recruiting. Dae Hyo had told him about the fair’s taverns, which sold spirits and ale. Drink had driven his da to violence but it made Dae Hyo friendlier. Krish hoped a tavern’s customers might at least be willing to listen.

  He’d noticed that the ground floors of many of the wooden buildings were open to the street. Most had signs hanging outside, but it wasn’t always easy to guess what they meant. The dice he knew – some of the men in the village had liked to gamble away their scant earnings – but was the sheep a livestock market or a butcher’s?

  It took him nearly an hour to figure out that the bunch of round red fruit meant a place where drink was served. Dae Hyo had given him a little of the coin he’d pilfered from those he’d killed. There were a few clay anchors and one glass feather but the rest were foreign to him. It was strange to think that he might be carrying more than his da had ever earned in his life. He hid the coins away in a purse tucked close to his skin and stepped through the open door of the tavern
.

  The inside was crowded with people of every race and nation. Voices were loud, faces were red and swords and axes hung on many belts. There was an edge of suppressed violence that made Krish want to turn and flee, but he went to the long bar instead, where he saw others exchanging coin for drink.

  ‘What’s your pleasure?’ a woman asked him. Her bosom bulged above the low neck of her dress and her skirt barely reached her knee.

  Krish tried not to look at her breasts as he passed over the glass feather and said, ‘Whatever this will buy.’

  She bit the coin and then smiled. ‘Take a seat, my lovely. I’ll keep the ale coming till your money’s spent.’

  There was a chair wedged into a far corner. He sat in it and eyed the room, too ill at ease to do more. Most of the customers were in groups. There were rowdy collections of laughing friends and the occasional pair, a coy woman and a man with lechery in his eyes. The few lone drinkers were deep in their cups, staring sullenly into the distance. None of them looked like they’d want him to interrupt.

  ‘A motley collection, friend, and that’s the truth.’ The man was suddenly there, sitting opposite him, though Krish hadn’t noticed him approach. Krish smiled awkwardly and the man smiled back far more naturally and offered his hand. ‘Marvan son of Parmvir, formerly of Fell’s End, latterly the proud company of Drovers. And you would be?’

  ‘I’m Krish,’ he said, then winced and wished he’d thought to lie. He needed to be careful around other Ashane, but Marvan showed no recognition at Krish’s name and there was a comfort in his familiarity.

  ‘A stranger here, I’ll hazard a guess.’ Marvan’s grin was wide beneath a pointed nose. All of his features seemed a little exaggerated, as if they’d been drawn larger than life for comic effect.

  ‘Yes, I’m a visitor,’ Krish admitted.

  ‘But an intriguing one. A native of Ashanesland dressed like a man of the plains. Were you kidnapped as a young boy? Or perhaps you simply aspire to the warrior way. I remember being impressed with tales of the tribes in my youth.’