Bradley, Marion Zimmer - SSC 03 (30 page)

 
          
"I
know," she whispered.

 
          
Lythande
strode away without looking back, leaving Wess shivering in the early-morning
shadows.

           
Wess returned to the room at the top
of the stairs. When she entered, Chan propped himself up on one elbow.

 
          
"I
was getting worried," he said.

 
          
"I
can take care of myself." Wess snapped.

 
          
"
Wess,
love, what's the matter?"

 
          
She
tried to tell him, but she could not. Wess stood, silent, staring at the floor,
with her back turned on her best friend.

 
          
She
glanced over her shoulder when Chan stood up. The ripped curtain let in shards
of light that cascaded over his body. He had changed, like all of them, on the
long journey. He was still beautiful, but he was thinner and harder.

 
          
He
touched her shoulder gently. She shrank away.

 
          
He
saw the, bloodstains on her collar. "You're hurt!" he said, startled.
"Quartz!"

 
          
Quartz
muttered sleepily from the bed. Chan tried to lead Wess over to the window,
where there was more light.

 
          
"Just
don't touch me!"

 
          
"Wess
—
"

 
          
"What's
wrong?" Quartz said.

 
          
"Wess
is injured."

 
          
Quartz
padded barefoot toward them and Wess burst into tears and flung herself into
her arms.

 
          
Quartz
held Wess, as Wess had held her a few nights before, when Quartz had cried
silently in bed, homesick, missing her children. "Tell me what
happened," she said softly.

 
          
What
Wess managed to say was less about the attack than about Lythande's
explanations of it, and of Sanctuary.

 
          
"I
understand," Quartz said after Wess had told her only a little. She
stroked Wess' hair and brushed the tears from her cheeks.

 
          
"I
don't," Wess said. "I must be going crazy, to act like this!"
She started to cry again. Quartz led her to the blankets, where Aerie sat up,
blinking and confused. Chan followed, equally bewildered. Quartz made Wess sit
down,
sat beside her and hugged her. Aerie rubbed her
back and neck and let her wings unfold around them.

 
          
"You
aren't going crazy," Quartz said. "It's that you aren't used to the
way things are here."

 
          
"I
don't want to get used to things here, I hate this place, I want to find Satan,
I
want to go home."

 
          
"I
know," Quartz whispered. "I know."

 
          
"But
I don't," Chan said.

 
          
Wess
huddled against Quartz, unable to say anything that would ease the hurt she had
given him.

 
          
"Just
leave her alone for a little while, Chad," Quartz said to him. "Let
her rest. Everything will be all right."

 
          
Quartz
eased Wess down and lay beside her. Cuddled between Quartz and Aerie, with
Aerie's wing spread over them all, Wess fell asleep.

 
          
At
midmorning, Wess awoke. Her head ached fiercely and the black bruise across her
side hurt every time she took a breath. She looked around the room. Sitting
beside her, mending a strap on her pack, Quartz smiled down at her. Aerie was
brushing her short smooth fur, and Chan stared out the window, his arm on the
sill and his chin resting on his arm, his other shirt abandoned unpatched on
his knee.

 
         
Wess
got up and crossed the room. She sat on her heels near Chan. He glanced at her,
and out the window, and at her again.

 
          
"Quartz
explained, a little....... "

 
          
"I
was angry," Wess said.

 
          
"Just
because barbarians act like . . . like barbarians, isn't a good reason to be
angry with
me."

 
          
He
was right. Wess knew it. But the fury and bewilderment mixed up in her were
still too strong to shrug off with easy words.

           
"You know
—
" he said, "you
do
know I couldn't like
that. ..."

 
          
Just
for an instant Wess actually tried to imagine Chad acting like the innkeeper,
or Bauchle Meyne, arrogantly, blindly, with his self-interest and his pleasure
considered above everything and everyone else. The idea was so ludicrous that
she burst out in sudden laughter.

 
          
"I
know you wouldn't," she said. She had been angry at the person he
might
have been, had all the circumstances of his life been different. She had
been angry at the person
she
might have been, even more. She hugged Chan
quickly. "Chad, I've got to get free of this place." She took his
hand and stood up. "Come, I saw Lythande last night, I have to tell you
what he said."

 
          
They
did not wait till evening to go to the governor's palace, but set out earlier,
hoping to gain an audience with the prince and persuade him not to let Satan be
sold.

 
          
But
no one else was waiting till evening to go to the palace, either. They joined a
crowd of people streaming toward the gate. Wess' attempt to slip through the
throng earned her an elbow in her sore ribs.

 
          
"Don't
push, girl," said the ragged creature she had jostled. He shook his staff
at her. "Would you knock over an old cripple? I'd never get up again,
after I'd been trompled."

 
          
"Your
pardon, citizen," she said. Ahead she could see that the people had to
crowd into a narrower space. They were, more or less, in a line. "Are you
going to the slave auction?"

 
          
"Slave auction?
Slave auction! No slave auction today,
foreigner. The
carnival come
to town!"

 
          
"What's
the carnival?"

 
          
"A carnival!
You've never heard of a carnival? Well,
ne'mind, nor has half the people in Sanctuary, nor seen one neither. Two
twelve-years since one came. Now the prince is governor, we'll see more, I
don't doubt. They'll come wanting an admission to his brother the emperor
—
out of the hinterlands and into the capital, if you
know."

 
          
"But
I still don't know what a carnival is."

 
          
The
old man pointed.

 
          
Over
the high wall of the palace grounds, the great drape of cloth that hung limply
around a tall pole slowly began to spread, and open
—
like a huge mushroom, Wess thought. The guy ropes
tightened, forming the canvas into an enormous tent.

 
          
"Under there
—
magic, foreign child.
Strange animals.
Prancing horses with
pretty girls in feathers dancing on their backs.
Jugglers,
clowns, acrobats on high wires
—
and the freaks!"
He chuckled. "I like the freaks best, the last time I saw a carnival they
had a sheep with two heads and a man with two
—
but
that's not a story to tell a young girl unless you're fucking her." He
reached out to pinch her. Wess jerked back, drawing her knife. Startled, the
old man said, "There, girl, no offense." She let the blade slide back
into its sheath. The old man laughed again. "And a special exhibition, this
carnival
—
special, for the prince.
They won't say what 'tis. But it'll be a sight, you can be sure."

 
          
"Thank
you, citizen," Wess said coldly, and stepped back among her friends. The
ragged man was swept forward with the crowd.

 
          
Wess
caught Aerie's eye. "Did you hear?"

 
          
Aerie
nodded. "They have him. What else could their great secret be?"

 
          
"In
this
skyforsaken place, they might have overpowered some poor troll, or
a salamander." She spoke sarcastically, for trolls were the gentlest of
creatures, and Wess herself had often stretched up to scratch the chin of a
salamander
who
lived on a hill where she hunted. It
was entirely tame, for Wess never hunted salamanders. Their hide was too thin
to be useful and no one in the family liked lizard meat. Besides, one could not
pack out even a single haunch of fullgrown salamander, and she would not waste
her kill. "In this place, they might have a winged snake in a box, and
call it a great secret."

 
          
"Wess,
their secret is Satan and we all know it," Quartz said. "Now we have
to figure out how to free him."

 
          
"You're
right, of course," Wess said.

 
          
At
the gate, two huge guards glowered at the rabble they had been ordered to admit
to the parade-ground. Wess stopped before one of them.

 
          
"I
want to see the prince," she said.

 
          
"Audience
next week," he replied, hardly glancing at her.

 
          
"I
need to see him before the carnival begins."

 
          
This
time he did look at her, amused. "You do, do you? Then you've no luck.
He's gone, won't be back till the parade."

 
          
"Where
is he?" Chan asked.

 
          
She
heard grumbling from the crowd piling up behind them.

 
          
"State
secret," the guard said. "Now go in, or clear the way."

 
          
They
went in.

 
          
The
crowd thinned abruptly, for the parade-ground was enormous. Even the tent
seemed small; the palace loomed above it like a cliff. If the whole population
of Sanctuary had not come here, then a large proportion of every section had,
for several merchants were setting up stalls: beads here, fruit there, pastries
farther on; a beggar crawled slowly past; and a few paces away a large group of
noblefolk in satins and fur and gold walked languidly beneath parasols held by naked
slaves. The thin autumn sunlight was hardly enough to mar the complexion of the
most delicate noble, or to warm the back of the most vigorous slave.

           
Quartz looked around,
then
pointed over the heads of the crowd. "They're
making a pathway, with ropes and braces. The parade will come through that
gate,
and into the tent from this side." She swept her
hand from right to left, east to west, in a long curve from the Processional
gate. The carnival tent was set up between the auction block and the guards'
barracks.

 
          
They
tried to circle the tent, but the area beyond it all the way to the wall was
blocked by rope barriers. In the front, a line of spectators already snaked
back far beyond any possible capacity.

 
          
"We'll
never get in," Aerie said.

 
          
"Maybe
it's for the best," Chan said. "We don't need to be inside with Satan
—
we need to get him out."