by Robin Hobb
I dared a question. “And if I go out now and tell what I know?”
He looked at me sadly. “Now you sound like Tiber.” He shook his head. “You wouldn’t be believed, Burvelle. It would sound pitiful, as if you tried to make excuse for your own failure. Go quietly, son. There are worse things than being culled. You’re leaving with an honourable discharge. You don’t have to go home with your tail between you legs. You could leave here with a posting to one of the citadels in the east.” He suddenly leaned toward me and tried for a smile. “Think on it for a night. Come back to me tomorrow morning, and tell me that you’ve decided you do want to be a scout. I’ll see that your transfer papers are written up that way. There will be no mention of a culling on them.”
He waited for me to reply. I could have thanked him. I could have said I needed time to think. Instead, I said nothing at all.
Captain Maw spoke very softly. “You are dismissed, Cadet Burvelle.”
I heard it as my sentence. I rose without acknowledging his words and walked out of his office, out of the engineering building and into the cold of Dark Evening. Tonight, in Old Thares, people, caroused and celebrated the longest night of the year. Tomorrow, they would breakfast together and exchange good wishes for the first lengthening day of the year. Before the week was out, Sirlofty and I would be on our way back to my family home. All the years my father had prepared me had been for nothing. The golden future he had promised me was dross. I thought of Carsina and tears pricked my eyes. She would not be mine. Her father would never give her to a cavalla scout. I suddenly knew I would die childless, that the soldier son journals I sent home to my brother’s house would be a story that dribbled away with no ending at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Carnival
Carneston House was deserted. An unhappy cadet corporal sat in Sergeant Rufet’s chair behind his desk. Surely that was a punishment duty. I surmised he had been given the night shift so that even our dour sergeant could partake of the pleasures of Dark Evening. He gave me a dispirited stare as I trudged past him. I could not find the energy to hurry up the steps. All around me, the dormitory was unnaturally quiet.
Upstairs, my bunkroom showed all the signs of a hasty departure. No one had waited for me. They’d all racketed off together for a wild night of town freedom without even a thought for Nevare Burvelle. I suspected that all the hire carriages would be gone from the cabstand. Even if I’d wanted to go, it was too late now. But I was hungry. I decided I’d leave the Academy grounds and walk to a nearby public house for a beer and sup. Then I’d simply come back to the dormitory and go to sleep. If I could.
I took my greatcoat from its hook, and as I thrust my arms down the sleeves, a folded bit of notepaper fell out. I picked it up from the floor. My name was on the outside of it, in Spink’s handwriting, blotted as if he’d done it hurriedly. I unfolded it and stared at the horrible words that sealed my fate. “I’ve gone to meet Epiny. It was none of my doing, Nevare. She sent me a note by messenger, saying she would find me on the green by the Great Square so we could celebrate Dark Evening together. I know I’m a fool to go to her; it will seal your aunt’s opinion of me. But I dare not leave her alone there amongst the types of men that will be roving the streets tonight.” The note was signed with a sloping ‘S’.
I crumpled up the paper and thrust it into my pocket. Now I had to go to Dark Evening, even if I had to walk all the way into the city’s centre, for Epiny’s reputation would be completely ruined if she were to spend Dark Evening alone with Spink. I wasn’t sure that my presence could make it any better, but resolved that I would do what I could. Spink would be culled in the coming week, just as surely as I would. For Epiny to be out with him, and for him then to be dismissed from the Academy would ruin both their names. I took my hoarded allowance out of its hiding place behind my books and left. I wrapped my muffler round my throat as I ran down the steps.
The path from the Academy gates to the cabstand had never seemed so long. When I reached it, there were no carriages, but an enterprising boy with a pony cart was waiting there. The pony was spotted and the cart smelled of potatoes. Given a choice, I never would have ridden in it. I handed over to the boy the ridiculous fare that he demanded and mounted the splintery seat beside him. We set out through the chill streets. The cold wind burned past my ears as the pony trotted along. I pulled my hat down and turned my collar up.
The closer we got to the centre of the city, the more evident the holiday became. Streets that would ordinarily be deserted in the cold and dark were thronged with people. Holiday lanterns with cutouts of capering nightshades, the lustful and mischievous sprites said to serve the old gods, hung in the windows or beside the doors of almost every establishment. The intersections were jammed with pedestrians and the traffic thickened as every conveyance in Thares seemed bound for the same destination. Long before we reached the Grand Square, I could hear the noise of the crowd and see the haze of light that it put into the night sky. I smelled food cooking, and heard the wheezing notes of a calliope competing with a shrill soprano singing about her lost love. When our pony cart wedged for the third time into standing traffic, I shouted over the din to the driver that I was getting out and left them there.
I moved a little faster on foot but not much. The crowd eddied and swirled around me, and I was often carried sideways with the flow of people. Many of the merrymakers were masked and wigged. Gold chains made of paper and glass jewels sparkled on wrists and throats. Others had painted their faces so extravagantly that the lights glistened off the thick layers of greasepaint. I saw all manner of dress, and a great deal of undress, too. Muscular young men, usually masked as nightshades, went bare-chested through the crowds, making suggestive remarks to women and men alike, much to the merriment of all within earshot. There were women, too, bare-armed even in the cold, their breasts bulging out the tops of their gowns like mushrooms erupting from moss. They wore masks with voluptuous red lips and lolling tongues and arched brows over gilded almond-shaped eyeholes. The crowd nudged and shoved me along until I felt like I swam through the morass of merrymakers.
A vendor bumped into me, rather deliberately. When I turned to confront her, she grinned wildly up at me with a garishly painted mouth and urged, “Sample my fruit, young sir? It’s free! Take a taste.” A domino mask of silver paper and her red painted lips were her only disguise. She held her tray with both hands at chest height. Dark grapes, red cherries, and strawberries surrounded two immense peaches. She leaned toward me, thrusting the tray at me, jolting it against my chest.
I stumbled back from her, confused by her wide smile and aggressiveness and foolishly said, “No, thank you, madam. The peaches are large but they are surely well past their season.” Everyone around me roared as if I had made a fine jest while she pursed her lips and then stuck out her tongue at me.
A masked man in a gilt crown and a cheap cloak of thin velvet, his nose red with drink, pushed past me to the vendor. “I’ll taste your fruit, my dear!” he bellowed, and to my shock, he lowered his face into the tray and made loud slurping and gobbling noises while the woman squirmed and laughed delightedly. A moment later, my eyes made sense of the gas-lit scene. The bodice and sleeves of her dress were painted onto her skin, with a collar and cuffs of lace to complete the subterfuge. The ‘peaches’ on her ’tray‘ were actually her powdered and painted breasts surrounded by wax fruit on a ledge of stiffened fabric. She was as good as naked. I smothered an exclamation of astonishment, yet could not help laughing along with the gawking crowd. The woman wiggled and shrieked, offering him first one breast and then the other. He gently pinched the nipple of one in his teeth and shook it playfully as she squealed delightedly. Never had I seen such a display of wanton licentiousness, nor witnessed folk gleefully encourage it. Suddenly I thought of Epiny in such a place and the smile faded from my face. A moment before, I had nearly forgotten Epiny in the pageantry of the Dark Evening holiday. Now I turned and pushed my way out of the knot of
spectators. I knew I must find Epiny, and quickly.
But where?
The streets were thick as porridge with people. I could not lift an elbow without touching someone. The crowd was in motion, and we all edged forward in a mincing lockstep. I was taller than most, but the extravagant hats and tall wigs worn by many of the. festival-goers were a bobbing, swaying forest around me. I could see no open space and so I allowed myself to be carried along, flotsam on a tide of debauchery.
The Great Square was at the heart of Old Thares. All around it, the merchant houses and businesses were the tallest and finest in the city. Lights glowed in many a white-framed window, and music and laughter exploded out of the doors each time they were opened. Despite the cold night, people stood on balconies, glasses of wine in their hands as they stared down at the sea of frivolity below them. The entire city was in the mood for a wild celebration to cheer on the passing of the longest night of the year. The wealthy had gathered in their fine houses for balls and masquerades and sumptuous dinners while outside in the streets the rest of the populace celebrated as only the poor and the working-class know how.
The closer we came to the main square, the louder grew the noise. Thousands of voices competed with all sorts of music, noise-makers, and the shouting of hawkers. I smelled food and was suddenly hungry to the point of nausea. When the river of people around me reached the square, the pressure slackened somewhat. I managed to join a crowd clustered around a stall selling skewers of hot meat, roasted chestnuts in newsprint cups, and hot potatoes baked in their jackets. I bought some of each for three times what I should have paid, and ate standing in the midst of the pushing, shouting crowd. Despite all that had befallen me that day, they were delicious, and if I had had the time, I would have wasted more coin on a second helping of each.
There are seven fountains in the Great Square. I made my way toward the closest one and clambered up on the rim. From that vantage, I got my first full view of Dark Evening in Old Thares. It frightened me and filled me with the contagious excitement of the mob at the same time. The throng filled the immense square and pushed out into the surrounding streets that radiated from it. The heat of the massed bodies banished winter’s chill while badly spaced street lamps shed yellow circles of light onto the crowd. In one section of the square, music was playing and people were dancing wildly. In another, some sort of gymnastics contest was going on. People were stacking themselves up into pyramids, higher and higher. Surely when those on the bottom gave way, there would be injuries for those at the top. Even as I watched, it happened, to wild cries of dismay and shouts of triumphs from their rivals. A few moments later, another pyramid was rising.
Beyond the square was the green that sloped gently down to the river, dotted with bright tents that billowed in the winter wind. Spink’s note had said that Epiny would find him there. I doubted it. I had never seen or even imagined so many people packed so closely and still filling such a large space. Nevertheless, I jumped down from the fountain’s edge and began a deliberate trek toward the green. The crowd did not give way to me. I edged between people and sometimes went around tightly packed knots of folk gathered to watch a performer. I did not move quickly; I could not. All the while, I kept my eyes open, hoping to spot either Spink or Epiny. The lighting was erratic, the masked and hooded people always in motion, and the din of voices and instruments pressed on my ears and wearied me.
The green had become the brown, the tended lawns already trampled to thick mud in this one night. The lamplight did not reach this far and the circus folk had lit their own lanterns. The lights gave colour to the parts of the tents that it touched. Torches illuminated garish posters and wildly attired barkers who perched on their stands and shouted their cant to lure the folk into the tents. The roars of caged beasts emanated from one flapping tent door, its sign promising me that within I would find Every Large Predator That The World Has Ever Seen! The next tent had a barker who shouted in a hoarse whisper that no man was truly a man until he had seen Syinese dancers perform the Dance of the Blowing Leaves, and that the next performance would start in five, only five, a mere five minutes from now, and that I should hurry before all the front seats were gone. I walked past, feeling sure that Spink and Epiny would not be in there.
I halted, staring hopelessly around me and praying for a clue. In that instant, I saw a hat go by. I could not see the face of the woman who wore it, for she was masked, but I recognized the foolish hat I had seen Epiny wearing the day she came to the Academy with my uncle. “Epiny!” I shouted, but if she heard me over the din, she did not pause. I tried to push my way through the crowd, only to have an angry drunk threaten me for jostling him. By the time I got around him, the hat had vanished into the mouth of a dark blue tent decorated with painted snakes, stars,” and snail shells. When I got close enough to read the poster beside the entry, it proclaimed that this tent held Freaks, Grotesques and Wonders of Humanity! Well, that would certainly attract Epiny, I thought. I joined the line of people waiting to go in. A few moments later, I was surprised when Trist, Rory, Oron, and Trent joined me. They hailed me heartily, slapping my back and asking how I was enjoying Dark Evening so far. I think their loud greetings were to make it clear to the people who were already waiting behind me that they were my fellows and intended to join the line where I was. In truth, I was very glad to see them. I immediately asked if they had seen Spink.
“He came with us!” Rory shouted over the general hubbub around us. “But he shied off on his own dam’ near soon as we got here. H’aint seen him since.” Drink had brought out Rory’s accent.
“Caleb when looking for free whores,” Trist enlightened me, as if I’d requested the information. “Nate and Kort went looking for ones that took money.”
I looked at their faces, flushed with drink and carnival, and thought of what I could tell them. The words rose like bile in the back of my throat. I swallowed them down. Soon enough they would know we had all been culled. I felt old as I decided that I would let them have this last holiday, merrily ignorant of their fate.
The line shuffled us along as Rory told me that, truly, I did need to see the Syinese Dancers perform. “I’d no idea a woman could bend like that!” he enthused, to which Oron sourly observed, “No proper woman can, fool!”
In the midst of the argument that followed, Trist poked Rory in the ribs and said, “Look at that! I doubt he was given leave to be here. I’ll bet Colonel Stiet thinks little Caulder is home and tucked up in his trundle bed right now!”
I had but a glimpse before the crowd closed off the sight. There was Caulder, his hat on crooked and his cheeks very red. There were several Academy cadets with him, old nobles’ sons, and most of them second-year cadets. Two I recognized immediately. Jaris and Odon had linked arms and were whooping and shouting back at the barker who was trying to persuade them to come inside his tent and see the Juggling Hidaspi Brothers from Far Entia. The other cadets were passing a bottle amongst themselves. I saw it reach Caulder’s hands. He took it and at their urging, tipped his head back for a drink. I saw his face as he lowered the bottle. He did not relish it, but he swallowed it anyway. He grinned weakly afterward, and I wondered if he clenched his teeth against his belly’s load.
“They’re giving that boy strong drink!”
Rory guffawed. “If he thinks chawin’ bacco made him sick, wait till that hits his belly. He’ll be shitting through his lips until the morning light!”
Trist and Trent laughed uproariously at the crudeness of Rory’s comment. Oron pursed his lips primly and looked disapproving.
“Someone should stop them,” I said, but the line suddenly began to move more quickly and I was carried along with it. The man at the tent door snatched the admission price from my fingers and reached for the next man’s coin. I told myself that Caulder would be all right, and that if he got sick as a dog, he well deserved it. A moment later, I entered the world of the circus sideshow.
The circus folk knew their business. The ten
t floor was coated thick with straw to keep the walkways from turning to mud. Lanterns hung from supports and the walkways circled through the tent’s interior, leading from one display to the next. Low canvas walls or cage mesh forced us to keep our distance from the attractions. Ostensibly, we could wander where we willed, but the push of folk behind us propelled us to the left. In a few moments, I am shamed to say I had nearly forgotten that I was trying to find Epiny in the midst of the chaos.
The first sight that met our eyes was a slender girl dressed in a short vest secured only by a chain across her breasts. The pleated skirt she wore came barely to her knees. Even so, her body was well covered, for it was draped in coil after coil of a monstrous snake that was lapped around her and the throne that she sat on.
She held the snake’s wedge-shaped head between her hands and stroked it as she spoke softly to it. The snake’s tongue fluttered forth and the girl extended her own pink tongue to meet it, earning a collective gasp from the audience. Rory especially would have stayed there, entranced, but the push of the crowd moved us on.
We saw the goat-faced man, with his protuberant yellow eyes, long teeth, and goat’s beard. He was tethered to an upended crate and he bleated at us as we passed, but I judged him a fraud. Next was the horrific sight of a man sitting bare-chested on a box, with, the body of his half-formed twin hanging from his ribs. I stared at that and could not look away until Rory took me by the upper arm and hurried me on.
