Sandstorm (single books)

by Christopher Rowe

  Against that day, though, Corvus crafted his personal circle with great care, describing its area with inlaid jet and setting the symbols of power as mosaics of onyx, black pearls, and silver. Every wagon in the circus train held its own secret treasures, but there was no greater concentration of wealth and power among the circus folk’s traveling homes than this circle.

  That is how an outsider would have judged things. For Corvus, the tools and materials on the workbench he went to inside the wagon were far more valuable, and while their power was subtle, it was vast. The bench was laden with carefully arranged pots of glue, a lump of wax bristling with needles, and a number of keen knives. A framework of wooden dowels held a sheaf of vellum, which, midway through the process of binding, contained a half-dozen signatures.

  Others in the circus considered their ringmaster’s habit of mending old books a hobby, but Corvus thought of the work as more than that. Hobbies were a layman’s way of killing time, and Corvus was no layman at killing anything.

  Shan and Cynda moved as fast as they could while maintaining a hunter’s silence, pacing each other through the dry washes and boulder fields of the canyon floor. The sisters made it off the mote just as Corvus’s plot played out. The bridges fell with the canvas, but neither of the women believed the bandits and their goblin allies would be trapped above the canyon for long. The Calishite leader’s screams, incoherent with rage, made it clear that armed scouts would spread out, though the chance of any of them tracking the twins, much less overtaking them, was small. Mattias Farseer had schooled them well in the ways of wilderness travel, and if by some chance they did encounter trouble, well, they had been deadly fighters even before they joined the circus.

  Cynda possessed the sharper sense of hearing. The long-haired twin stopped in front of her sister and raised a cautioning hand, but Shan saw that she smiled. She waited for the explanation she knew Cynda would offer.

  When the reason came, it was just a finger pointed to the air, and a hand cupped around an ear. A moment later, Shan heard it, too-singing, from the sky.

  The women gazed up at a familiar shadow passing swiftly beneath the stars. Trill flew low, carrying passengers making no effort at silence.

  Cynda’s grin grew wider, but Shan shook her head. She shared her sister’s deep affection for the goliath, but she wasn’t as quick to forgive his lapses of discipline.

  Shan reached back and felt the contents of her pack again, seeking reassurance of their success. The book had proved easy to retrieve. Corvus would be pleased.

  From the air, the roadside camp of Nightfeather’s Circus of Wonders appeared as a constellation of flickering orange stars drawing the shape of an eye on the plain below. A half-dozen campfires spread out in an irregular oval, encircling a larger central bonfire.

  As Trill descended, Cephas saw that there were peculiar wagons parked around the various fires. They were roughly the same size as the wagons merchants sometimes brought to Jazeerijah, but, instead of being open to the sky or covered in canvas, these were constructed so that walls and roofs enclosed their beds. They reminded Cephas of his cell.

  “Look,” said Tobin, pointing to one fire at the edge of the camp. “There is Mattias, ready with your supper, Trill!”

  The wyvern’s answering call carried no hint of threat. In fact, she sounded happy.

  Cephas heard shouts of welcome rise up from around the various campfires. The people at this circus were used to a wyvern swooping low over their camp by night.

  The man standing beside the fire where they landed did not call out a greeting, at least not any that Cephas detected. But the wyvern seemed to respond to some unheard voice as she dipped one wing to allow Cephas and Tobin to slide off her back. In a single leap she bounded across the space lit by the fire, and the old man raised one hand to scratch the scaly frills around her eyes. Cephas could hear that the man was speaking aloud now. “That’s my girl,” he said.

  Two carcasses-mountain goats by their size-lay dressed and cleaned on the wooden surface of a table. At an invisible signal from the man, Trill lifted one up in her huge jaws and threw her neck back, her head bobbing in time to the sound of cracking bones and satisfied smacks.

  Without warning, Cephas’s vision grew indistinct, filling up with the flickering oranges and yellows of the fire, but fading to black at the edges. The flames danced in time to the rhythm that hijacked Cephas’s awareness. Dimly, he understood that the beating sound was not that of Trill devouring her meal, but the hypnotic pulse he’d first heard the day before. The earth is making music again, he thought.

  It was like the sound that came when he was at the ragged edge in the arena, when his heartbeat filled his ears with the sound of blood rushing through his veins. And it was also the sound of the earth beneath his feet, the sound of rock and soil and sand. The sound of the earth was one and the same as the sound of Cephas’s heart.

  When he was able to open his eyes, the light was steadier. The feel of the air was not that of the open night, and the planked ceiling made Cephas think for a moment that he was back in his suspended cell.

  But he’d never had an oil lamp in his cell, of course, and he lay on a cot, not on the bare floor. He started to sit up, but his vision swam and he leaned back.

  “I won’t say you’ve been illused. You were a slave, and that goes without saying.”

  Cephas did not recognize the smooth voice, and could not guess what the sounds that accompanied it meant-the clink of metal on stone or ceramic; the pouring of water.

  “But I must say, the extraordinary lengths Azad went to to deny you your heritage are cruel, even by the degenerate standards of your homeland.”

  A figure walked into his field of vision. Grinta the Pike’s descriptions of the world’s peoples were short on any details that didn’t concern fighting, but he remembered that crow-headed men were called kenkus. He even remembered what Grinta said the best tactic to use against them was.

  To run.

  “You’ve spent enough time with Tobin that you’ll have learned my name, and that of our concern-and a good deal else, I imagine. But to see to the formalities, I am Corvus Nightfeather, and you are resting on my bed, in my wagon, in the fellowship of the road that we call Nightfeather’s Circus of Wonders. Welcome, Cephas.”

  Nothing in Cephas’s experience taught him how to respond to that word, “welcome.” But he’d heard it in stories, and he knew generally what it meant. He knew that it sometimes concealed unseen dangers. But the response was the same even then. “A thousand blessings on this house,” he said.

  The kenku solved the mystery of the earlier sounds by extending an ebony, three-fingered hand holding a steaming mug. He laughed as he did so.

  “Excellent. Mattias said the slavers kept up the tradition of reading from the Founding Stories. It’s good that you listened. Yes, that’s very good.”

  Cephas accepted the cup-it was warm to the touch-and sniffed its contents. The color and scent of whatever brew it contained were unlike anything he’d ever had on Jazeerijah.

  “It’s a tincture of dried leaves in hot water,” said Corvus. “And you’ve already had that much of it and more, so don’t worry that we’re trying to poison you. You probably notice that you feel a bit calmer than you should under such strange circumstances-we gave it to you to settle you down when you fell into your reverie outside.”

  “The music …” said Cephas, realizing that he could still hear the steady beat but that it was distant, muted.

  “Music, yes, that’s what you said it sounded like. That you actually hear the earth. That’s the heritage I mentioned a moment ago, Cephas. That’s one of the things the Calishites were keeping from you-besides your freedom, I mean.”

  “ ‘Heritage,’ ” said Cephas. “Is that the same as ‘lineage’? As in the story about the fisherman and the stern woman of the sea?”

  Corvus laughed again. “ ‘Stern woman,’ ” he said, and Cephas heard his own voice in the repetition, a perfect
rendering. “I’d forgotten old Kamar’s puritan streak. Unusual in despots, really, at least in his day. But yes, in the version of the tale he had his scribes include in the book Azad read from, Umberlee is called the stern woman. I hope you won’t be too scandalized if you ever make it to a seaport and hear her own priests call her the Bitch Queen.”

  Cephas risked a sip from the cup. The tincture was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. He was too distracted by the sensation to respond to Corvus.

  “Heritage, lineage,” Corvus continued. “Yes, they are close to the same thing. But lineage speaks to direct ancestry, as in your story, when Umberlee reveals to Kassam that he is the son of the pasha. Heritage is more general-it has to do with the gifts all men are given by the circumstances of their birth. Tobin’s great strength, for example, is his heritage as a goliath. Part of my heritage”-Cephas looked up from the cup, because the voice he heard was that of the gigantic clown-“is my talent for imitating voices.” The liquid tones Corvus used earlier in the conversation returned. “The music you hear from the ground, the way you can interact with the earth. Along with the golden bands on your skin, that’s part of your heritage as a genasi. An earthsouled genasi, in particular.”

  Cephas absorbed this, recalling that the kenku used that word for him in welcome, and recalling something else, besides.

  “She was lying, though,” Cephas said.

  Corvus cocked his head again, in the other direction. “Who was lying, Cephas?”

  “The stern woman, your Umberlee Bitch Queen. She told Kassam the Fisherman that he was Pasha Mujen’s son, but it was a trick. When he went to the court to claim his inheritance, the pasha’s vizar whipped him all the way back to the docks, and the blood from his wounds turned the waters of the bay red. That’s what the stern woman wanted-Kassam’s blood for her scheme to drive the fish away from the pasha’s waters.”

  “I’m sure you’ve found that real life does not always follow the way of the stories,” Corvus said. Shouts sounded from outside the wagon. “The twins have returned,” he said. “Let’s see if Tobin and the roustabouts have fixed you a place by the campfire yet.”

  By “a place,” Corvus meant a wooden platform that, while clearly assembled with some haste, looked much like the boardwalks and low tables to which the Calishites confined him. Unlike those on Jazeerijah, this one was piled high with pillows and cushions. And while many of the men and women gathered around the bonfire were armed, they all greeted Cephas with broad smiles and calls of “Well met!” and “Welcome!”

  Cephas was about to step down from the back of Corvus’s wagon when Tobin appeared at his side. “Here now, Cephas,” said the goliath. “Let’s not have you falling again. Corvus says you must be careful of the ground until you learn to sing back to it.” With that, Tobin picked Cephas up, took two long strides across the camp, and dropped him among the pillows on the fireside platform.

  The phrase “a bit calmer than usual” did not begin to describe Cephas’s ease of mind after drinking the tincture. He had not even flinched when Tobin hoisted him over his shoulder. Through the pleasant haze he thought, Drink nothing else the kenku offers.

  Most of the people in the firelight were humans, with a few in the number who might have benefitted from some of Grinta’s kin in their “heritage.” One by one, they approached as Tobin introduced them. Cephas was too used to avoiding even the appearance of friendship with anyone other than Grinta to do more than nod in response. He hoped that the few names he’d managed to learn already would serve him for at least a little while longer.

  Two such came into his hearing. “And here are Shan and Cynda, whom you met in the canyon, yes?” said Tobin. “But they are more than just adventurers, see? They are aerialists.”

  Cephas remembered Tobin’s talk of the twins and their wire. “Your fighting technique,” he said to the women, “it uses garrotes?”

  The sister with the shorter hair-Shan? — gave him a confused look and walked over to join Corvus in the shadows at one end of his wagon. The other-yes, Cephas felt sure the one with long hair and a ready grin was Cynda, so the other must be Shan-poked Tobin in the ribs and slapped her knee, miming laughter. Both women were travel stained and weary, but Cynda insisted, by means of a quick series of hand motions that the others of the circus clearly understood, on demonstrating for Cephas’s benefit what an aerialist was.

  Someone brought a thin beam of wood, the size and shape of two quarterstaffs joined end to end, and gave it to Tobin. “Usually we stretch a wire between two poles, and it is much higher,” Tobin explained. “Cynda just wants to show you that she’s even better at acrobatics than she is at swordplay. Circus performers”-Tobin shrugged-“love unsophisticated audiences.”

  Cephas made no reply. If he had anything to say, it would have been lost in the cheer the others raised, anyway.

  Tobin set one end of the long staff on the ground next to the bonfire and held the other against his shoulder. Cephas lost sight of Cynda, but then she came tumbling through the flames, arms and legs stretched out so that her lithe body paralleled the ground. She tucked her head in and rolled in midair, bringing her bare feet around to land on the end of the staff just as Tobin pulled down on its other end with all his might, using his shoulder as the fulcrum of a makeshift catapult.

  Cynda flew so high that Cephas lost sight of her again, this time because she was above the nimbus of light cast by the fire. When he spotted her, plummeting back down, straight toward him and staring him directly in the eye, he hurried to roll out of the way, forgetful of any need to stay on the platform.

  He stopped when he saw the end of the staff swing around. Tobin held it across both shoulders like the burden staves the kitchen slaves of Jazeerijah used to haul two pails of water at once. Cynda reached out with one hand as she fell, caught the staff, and swung in a circle all the way around in a move that ended with her standing easily atop the narrow pole, hands in her pockets.

  The crowd laughed and whistled. With a start, Cephas realized this was the first night he’d ever heard cheering that didn’t include calls for blood.

  Cynda bowed, bending nearly double but maintaining her balance atop the staff, which Tobin kept still and solid as rock. She grasped the wood between her feet and brought her legs up into the air until she attained a position exactly opposite that from which she started. Then, in a display of steadiness and strength that Cephas would never have expected from so small a woman, she lifted one hand and held it out to her side, holding her whole weight above her as she scissored her legs back and forth in an elegant dance in the air.

  For a moment, it seemed that her weight was too much for that single arm, because Cynda bent her elbow, but it became clear the collapse was by design. Her long locks of chestnut hair spilled around her face as she brought her lips close enough to the wood to give it a cheeky kiss, before she extended her arm straight again with sufficient strength to launch clear of the makeshift “aerialist” stage. Tobin must have anticipated the move, because he angled the staff back down, and when the halfling woman completed the arc of her last leap, she landed on the narrow ramp, ending her performance in a relaxed, languorous pose, reclining against the staff, legs crossed before her as if she simply warmed her toes by the fire.

  Cephas joined the thunderous applause that the other members of the circus offered Cynda. The halfling acknowledged them all with a gesture, then turned to offer her own applause to Tobin, who waved her and the others off. “I only held a stick; it is nothing.”

  “It was a great display of strength, my friend,” said Corvus, who joined them. Shan was nowhere to be seen, her place at the kenku’s side taken by the old man, Mattias. “Done with just the right amount of flair and finesse, as ever.” Corvus turned to Cephas.

  “Tobin is our circus strongman. He is expert at making the audience believe that the things that are easy for him are difficult, and that the things that are difficult for him are easy. Come to think of it, that’s a pretty
good description of all our roles.”

  Cephas appreciated the goliath’s extraordinary strength, especially after having faced him on the canvas, but asked, “Is a strongman a sort of clown?”

  Tobin opened his mouth to speak, but Corvus held up a single taloned finger that silenced him. Even in his relaxed state, Cephas noticed that all the people of the circus grew quiet when the kenku raised his hand.

  “Why yes, in fact,” said Corvus. “Just as Tobin’s performance offered us an example describing what all of us do, that word, ‘clown’-and oh, it’s an old one, Cephas, as old as any story Azad yi Calimport ever read-that word describes what most of us are. It’s a supple word. Though what Tobin meant when he told you he was a clown means something very particular. Something, alas, that he has yet to find the opportunity to master, given the demands of the road.”

  Tobin blushed, looking anywhere but at Cephas. A kind-faced man, thin and wiry, stood and thumped Tobin on the back. “Here now, boss,” he said, “you know we’ve taken the big fellow as our ’prentice. And we all heard you tell him he could leave off bending steel and juggling village elders if he could find his own replacement.”

  This time Tobin did speak, even though he made an unconvincing attempt at a whisper. “Quiet now, Whitey,” he said. “Please?”

  Every eye turned to Cephas. Mattias spoke, looking at Cephas but directing his question to the kenku ringmaster. “You’ll try to claim you didn’t have this in mind, I suppose?”

  Corvus appraised Cephas the same way that Cephas often did his opponents, measuring width of shoulder and deepness of chest, trying to gauge how hard the coming blows would fall. “I did not,” Corvus said to Mattias. “This is just another happy coincidence. Another wonder to delight all those good folk whose delight earns us our bread and wine.”