“Nine... ten. Let’s make it eleven, shall we?”
“Thanks,” Crispin said, pocketing the notes. He was vastly taken aback to see a gleam of what might have been tears in the cloudy blue eyes. He got slowly to his feet and unfolded his cap. Whatever was wrong with Smithrebel he wasn’t about to give the money back!
The Old Gentleman stepped back a pace, birdlike, rubbing his papery fingers together. “This isn’t right. This just isn’t right. There’s something... something I have always meant to tell you.” He paused. “Your dear mother wouldn’t have thought it right at all for me to send you off with nothing more than a few dry pound notes of your... your inheritance.”
He did an odd little tap dance. Crispin noticed that the black patent leather of Smithrebel’s shoes was scuffed and muddy. A thread of worry tugged at him. The slightest hint that the flabby little Ferupian might be more than a small-time circus monarch, destined to share the fate of all imperfectly competent monarchs—that is, to be the object of derision, flattery, and resentment in equal proportions—that he might, in fact, be a human being—had always unsettled him. Especially as the Old Gentleman tended to single him out to be the object of such hints. Crispin usually met the Old Gentleman’s oblique pleas for pity with a stony face. But now the recklessness of the freed criminal prompted him to say, “My inheritance?”
He wouldn’t put it past the Old Gentleman to have heisted some of Anuei’s belongings after her death. Maybe he was having an attack of conscience. Relics from Lamaroon? More of the famous forbidden props, most of which Crispin himself, at the age of twelve, had burned without opening the boxes?
His heart quickened. He knew he would not have the fortitude to leave those boxes unopened this time.
The Old Gentleman looked up, his blue eyes hooded. He shook his head. “No. I... I apologize. That was unprofessional of me. Go your way.”
Bullshit, Crispin thought. Frustration welled up inside him. He bowed sharply from the shoulders. “Well, then, in that case, thank you for your generous gift, Mr. Smithrebel, and farewell. It has been a pleasure working for you.”
He turned on his heel and pushed out through the curtains. A dark passage led to the lowered rear door of the truck. Oblivious of the trappings being loaded, the elephants hooting, a toddler crying for its mother, he jumped down to the mud and turned his face up to the rain.
He had a cramp in his neck. For a minute he stood feeling the tension drain out of his muscles.
Then he jammed his cap firmly onto his head, fingered the soft old notes in his trousers pocket, and went to find Millsy.
Millsy accompanied him some distance down the road. Not southward. The last thing Crispin wanted was to be overtaken by the circus and have rude jokes shouted out of the truck cabs at him. They walked north, back toward the towns where Prettie had performed.
This was truly the last of it, this hilly road overhung by dripping trees. As they walked, Crispin felt himself overcome by a wave of sentiment. He glanced at Millsy: a wooden mannequin moving jerkily, his feet weighted down by wisdom as if by cement overshoes. A master of secrets Crispin could never understand even if he was given a chance. A friend.
Ever since Crispin had become as competent a handler as Millsy himself, there had been a distance between them. There had been a time when Millsy poured out his soul to Crispin, night after night. He told the boy things he had probably never told anyone else. Even though Crispin had been too young to understand the half of it, he could remember if he wanted to.
Only he didn’t, particularly.
Only he couldn’t help it.
There had been good times later on. No matter what Millsy’s flaws, there was no one else in the circus worth arguing with. Sharing a bottle late at night, after a good show, when they were on a three- or four-night stand outside some big town where the Old Gentleman allowed they didn’t have to move to draw a new audience the next day. Talking daemons. Talking about humanity and politics and the war—the questions that talking about daemons inevitably brought up. Getting worked up the way you can only do when you’re drunk.
It had begun to rain again, and Millsy turned the collar of his coat up around his ears. Crispin stopped. There was a moment of awkward silence. The old handler said, “You ought, I think, to be able to make it back to Valestock in a couple of weeks if you go straight north. We came by an extremely circuitous route, after all.”
Crispin nodded. “If I was you,” he said, and paused as he remembered that the fates of Smithrebel’s were no longer his business. What the hell. Good advice comes back in cowries—one of Anuei’s sayings. “If I had Smithrebel’s ear, the way you do, I’d tell him to cut some of the shows on the itinerary and head straight for Thrandon. There’s no good dragging this out. The takings last show must’ve been shit.”
“Yes, they were,” Millsy said, gazing into the distance. “And we had to refund most of the entries after the accident. But you know how Mr. Saul is. I do not think I have a hope of changing his plans. All we can reasonably expect is that next time around, he will have learned his lesson with regard to the Apple Hills.”
“And maybe next time he’ll strike gold,” Crispin said, remembering the summer of the Happy Mountains. “And maybe bloody not.” He shifted his knapsack on his shoulder and looked down at his friend. “Why do you stay, Millsy?”
Millsy shook his head. “You mean, when I could have far better things? When I could be respectable, or rich, or both? I stay because I love the circus. I love it. You know that word, Crispin? Love.”
Suddenly Crispin was furious. How dare Millsy lie to him? Now that they were probably never going to see each other again, telling the truth had, paradoxically, become all-important. “That’s crap. Nobody loves being an entertainer. They just love traveling, being out of reach of the law.”
Millsy’s eyes glinted like steel ball bearings in nests of wrinkles. “You only think that because you yourself are not in love with the circus.”
Automatically, Crispin started to protest, but Millsy held up his hand.
“I have been watching you since you were a toddler—I am afraid sometimes you forget the great differences in our ages, my friend—and I know you better, perhaps, than you know yourself. Your mother, Smithrebel, Herve, Elise, and even poor little Prettie, all of them tried to—to convert you to the circus, if I may use the word without vulgarity. I was guilty of the same crime myself. Do you remember when I tried to make you into a trickster?”
“Queen, yes!” Crispin grimaced, remembering badly bitten fingers, occult wounds that did not heal for half a year, fits of shivering that took him unexpectedly during that period. Millsy had, he remembered, been badly disappointed, though he was at pains to conceal it. But he had waxed philosophical about the whole thing. It required an extremely rare combination of qualities to trick uncollared daemons; all women had the raw potential, but almost none of them the will. Men had the will—that was why ninety-nine out of a hundred handlers of collared daemons were male—but the wrong chemicals in their bodies. Millsy was a biological freak.
“But I failed. All I succeeded in was making you into a competent daemon handler. Which by no means limits you to working as an entertainer. Daemon handlers are needed in every single field, whereas tricksters are not. In the same way, only a few people need to know how to make candles, but everybody needs to know how to light them. So it was lucky for you, really, that you did not have my blood.” Ruefully, Millsy pinched his own thin forearm. “If you had followed in my footsteps, the circus would have had you for life. And I am convinced, now, that you would not have been content.”
“And Prettie wouldn’t be dead!”
Millsy winced. “Crispin, I do not know what happened. But she was courting Death. He would have come to her sooner rather than later, no matter what—it was just a stroke of bad luck that He chose you for His tool.”
Crispin gritted his teeth. “How dare you try to fake me with philosophy?” Anger almost choked him. “B
ad luck my foot. I fucked up.”
“Does it gratify you to believe that?”
The rain drifted lightly through the trees.
“I’m gonna settle down,” Crispin spat. “I told the Old Gentleman I was gonna quit anyway—and it was the truth! I’ve had enough of this. It’s a mug’s game. Maybe there’s something wrong with me—born and raised in the circus, and all I can do is leave.” He stared into Millsy’s steely little eyes, trying to read him. “Come back through Lovoshire in five years and ask for me, I’ll be living in a fine townhouse with servants of my own and girls on both knees!”
“Oh, Crispin,” Millsy said with a catch in his voice.
“What? What?”
“You’ll only be unhappy if you fix your heart on that kind of life.”
“Can you read the future?”
“I know the ways of men!”
Crispin folded his arms. “You’re being insufferably obscure,” he said in Millsy’s own, rather affected accents. But Millsy was too agitated to notice.
“People are... I have lived among settled folk, as you have not, and I feel it my duty to warn you!” The old handler rocked on the balls of his feet. “Your skin. Your height. Those are only the most superficial of your differences from the average Ferupian! And those are the differences they will notice. Those are the differences they will reject you for!” He laughed, but it was more of a bark. “Why couldn’t you have waited to kill Prettie until we were in Kingsburg? There, there are other Lamaroons—you would have had a far easier time of it!”
Crispin gasped in disbelief. “Not you, too. Not you, too! Smithrebel thinks I did it—”
“On purpose, yes! He can scarcely help thinking that, and so do most of his employees, but not I. I trust you. You say you passed out in midair. I believe you. I only hope it was not the symptom of some illness which will return to plague you later in your life.”
The possibility was a horrid one. It had not occurred to him.
“I so much want you to have a happy life!” Millsy insisted.
Crispin could imagine Anuei, if she were alive, saying that. But if Millsy felt paternal toward him, this was the first he’d heard of it. He hardened his voice. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re really getting at? You’re warning me against a shitload of fake dangers. You’re not usually paranoid.”
Millsy shook, each segment of him trembling individually, as if his strings were being jerked by a great hand.
“You secretly want me to fail, don’t you?” Crispin said. “Just like you failed. You don’t stay with Smithrebel’s because you love it, you stay for the same reasons the deserters do.” He took a deep breath and deliberately dragged the squirming past into the present. “I know you got kicked out of the army, Millsy. I know you got kicked out of court. I bet there’s a lot of people trying to catch up with you.”
“You’re wrong,” Millsy said faintly.
“You told me all about it yourself. When I was little, and you’d come and get me at night, and—”
“No!” Millsy was shaking so violently now that Crispin feared for a second he would fall apart. “That’s unfair! Crispin, I had thought better of you!”
Maybe it was unfair, at that. Millsy obviously thought Crispin held those long-ago nights against him. But there had not been anything sordid about it. Only after Crispin grew old enough to know right from wrong had he started to think of the incidents as perversions. In reality, Millsy could not have been gentler. And the day that Crispin had first expressed the slightest discomfort, Millsy had withdrawn and never touched him again.
How tightly had he been holding himself in check, all these years?
That’s sickening! How can I think such things? To keep from dwelling on it, Crispin said loudly, “You told me all about your years at court! You told me how they plotted to kill you! You had to leave.”
“I chose of my own accord—”
“Yeah. Just like I’m leaving here of my own accord. Yeah. I was only a kid, but I remember how Queen-damned bitter you were!” He stared at Millsy. “And you’re not half as old as everybody thinks you are!”
“I have described the effects that tricking daemons can—”
“You’re what? Forty-five? That means—I know what’s wrong with you. You’re jealous of me. Because I have another chance. And you don’t.” He gestured around at the silent trees. “This is all you’re going to have. For the rest of your life.” He made circles with his thumbs and forefingers and thrust them at Millsy. “Nothing. Zero. Zip.”
Millsy whispered, “Galianis.”
“What?” Crispin shouted, nearly at the end of his wits, because this was the last hour he would ever spend with his friend, and he was wasting it on recriminations. “What are you saying?”
The first shades of dark had begun to fall. It looked as if Millsy was stroking the air in front of him. Then, all at once, Crispin saw the thing like a small blue child clinging in the crook of his arm. Millsy must have had the daemon with him all along. Galianis wore child-size breeches and a woolly jumper, probably cadged from one of the circus mothers. It had been asleep when Millsy called it to materialize; at its name, it opened enormous eyes and cleared a shock of pale hair out of its face with one hand. “Guests always welcome,” it piped. There was not a trace of intelligence in the saucer-sized orbs that fixed Crispin. “A budget imbalance will unfortunately be inevitable. Tastier than any other brand. Sweet yet spicy!”
Millsy rubbed the daemon’s hair. It responded to the caress by smiling, practically purring. But so would a kitten. “Closed every second Tossday for inventory,” it said, and hopped to the ground with the suddenness of a sparrow. Its stream of slogans, catchphrases, and overheard sentence fragments dropped to a mumble as it started to dig holes in the mud with its fingers.
That would get on my nerves inside five minutes, Crispin thought. But Millsy loves them like children. He sighed and drove his hands into his pockets.
Millsy looked up. His eyes were at once anxious, sad, and self-mocking. “What a mother hen I am,” he said. “I suppose I was trying to warn you against every eventuality. Although that’s not possible. I apologize.”
“Well, if nothing else works out, there’s always the army,” Crispin said.
Millsy laughed. “Yes.”
There was an awkward pause. The rain grew a little heavier. Crispin wondered where he was going to sleep that night; if he would even be able to sleep in the wet and the cold. Perhaps he should just keep walking. How long could he keep on going before he fell down? Or could he find shelter with the locals? A movement distracted him. Galianis had leaped back on Millsy’s shoulder. Two pairs of eyes regarded Crispin: one flat and pale blue; one whose dark, sad gaze sent a pang through Crispin, deep inside where he had forgotten it could hurt.
“I’m sorry if I said anything to offend you,” he said stiffly, formally.
“Oh,” Millsy said, and coming alive all at once, made a move to hug Crispin. Crispin instinctively stepped back. Millsy said with a rueful smile, “You devil! Not even this once?” and moved toward him again.
“Get off!” Crispin said violently, and jerked away. Something of his horror must have shown on his face. Millsy’s mouth quirked, but he did not try to hug Crispin again. “You can deny it to me, but not to yourself,” he said.
“You sicken me!” Crispin shouted. “I’ve had enough!” His throat was full again. “I tried to patch things up, dammit, and you—you’re still trying to sabotage me! Well, I’ve had enough!” He flung around and strode away into the gathering dark, feeling angry, stupid, and betrayed. Childishly, he kept expecting Millsy to come after him. Behind him was silence.
And after a moment: “Fresh every day. We don’t need your sort around here. A position is open to an experienced scribe.”
And it was too late to turn back, and Millsy was not coming after him. Crispin reached the top of the hill and risked a glance over his shoulder. Millsy stood in the confusion of their footprints
—they had churned up the mud so much that it looked as if there had been a fight—his hands in his pockets, his overcoat flapping like a scare-the-crows’ ragged garment in a wind which was apparently localized. The daemon had vanished again.
Crispin swore aloud, and turned his face north.
Even in the rainy twilight, the grass of the verges was a brilliant peacock green. Darkness closed down from the top of the sky, finally erasing even the faint redness above the western treetops which had signaled the sinking of the sun behind the Wraithwaste. Little black squirrels came out and chee-cheed in the trees, as loud as the tree monkeys of the southern forests.
Crispin figured he might never have a house, or servants. But all he needed was a place to stay and a job which brought him enough money to keep a girl who made no demands on him. That was all he needed. Was it too much to ask?
Right now it seemed that it was asking for the earth. Millsy had made it seem that way.
And the memory of that moment reverberated in his head like the sound of a plucked guywire. His steps squelched faster. He would not slacken his pace. This was the only way he was ever going to get somewhere.
If you shut jour eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire. But just before they go on fire you see the lagoon.
—J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
The Ugliest Shop of All
Fessiery 1895 A.D. Lovoshire: Valestock
“Hey... up!” Crispin shouted. He bowed. “And now for the most dangerous feat performed by jugglers of any stripe, in any of the twenty-one domains! Ladies and gentlemen, can I have a volunteer from the audience?”
The urchins giggled and crowded each other. The scattering of daemonmongers’ wives with their black umbrellas, dresses which would have been able to stand up on their own, and wickerwork baskets in which they carried their excuses for going out to the shops—trifles (Crispin imagined) like thin slices of ham, little jars of goose-liver pâté wildly unseasonable hothouse berries—his mouth watered—ornate, remote creatures, they leaned their heads together and smiled disapprovingly. A week and a half of performing on the corner of Main Street had taught him that although they might linger longer than any others, only very rarely did coins come from those plump, suede-gloved fingers. Even the drab nannies who stopped occasionally to watch without visible sign of interest would occasionally send their charges over with tuppence to put in his cap.
The War in the Waste Page 10