by Jude Fisher
Aran clenched his jaw. ‘His name is Rui Finco, Lord of Forent, and he’s a dangerous man to cross. You leave customers like that to me. We’re here to trade and I’ll tolerate no trouble.’
‘I don’t like him,’ Fent said stubbornly, but the fighting light had gone out of his eye.
‘Liking has little place in business.’
And with that, Aran strode out into the breakers to haul the next of the laden faerings ashore.
The vegetation of the foothills turned out to be nothing that Katla had encountered in Eyra: consisting largely of oddly-coloured sedges and lichens, and tufted grasses sprouting through all these like clusters of feathers. The gradient was steep, too; but the stitch didn’t return and she made it to the top in less than a half-hour, breathing harder than she’d like but delighted to have explored further than any of her brothers into this new land. Near the summit she turned to look down on the fairground. From here, Sur’s Castle seemed no more than a tiny crag, the people like insects bustling around, the ships as still and small as roosting birds on the glistening sea. But when she got to the crest of the hills, instead of being rewarded by a sunlit panorama stretching away to the exotic land of Istria, she saw nothing but mountain after mountain after mountain, ranges lining up one behind another like an army defending its territory; and then she remembered that the anchored boats off the shore of the Moonfell Plain had not been Eyran alone, but also those oddly elegant Istrian craft with the eyes carved at bow and stern so that the vessel could see in all directions. So most of the Istrians also came to the annual gathering by sea, not overland.
In which case, who were all those people a thousand feet below? Down there, the valley lay like a jewelled sash, impossibly green amid vast expanses of rockfall and scree, a narrow tract that wound its way like an emerald snake in and out of the mountains’ feet. And on that path, as far as the eye could see, came cart after cart, wagon after wagon, and hundreds of great, black slow-moving beasts toiling ahead in a long, long line, tiny figures perched, as bright as ladybirds upon their backs.
Katla felt her mouth open in a great gasp of wonderment. Nomads: the wandering peoples of Elda, doing what they were most famous for: travelling the world. It was the most amazing sight she’d ever seen. She watched them making their way towards a col further up the range, which meant— They were coming to the Allfair! All at once she was laughing, her head tilted up to the sky, the sun warm upon her skin. Truly, Sur took with one hand and gave with the other: if she hadn’t climbed his rock, her father would have had no cause to cut her hair; and if she hadn’t lost her hair, she’d never have run off in a rage and ended up here, rewarded by this secret glimpse of another world.
As they said in the north: ‘The likely may happen: also the unlikely.’ And it was true.
It was the arrival of Fabel Vingo that saved Saro from the beating he might otherwise have won from his brother.
‘Handsome beasts this year, eh Tanto?’
‘Indeed, Uncle. As you can see,’ he held out his injured arm for inspection, ‘Saro and I have paid dearly to make them look their best!’
Fabel roared his approval. ‘Ah well, it’ll be the high-spirited ones that always fetch the best price; and it ain’t the case only with horses – eh, lad?’
Tanto’s huge, open-hearted laugh joined with his uncle’s bellow. Saro looked on, smiling weakly. It would never do not to accede to the joke, though he had no idea what it was that had set them off so.
Uncle Fabel took his eldest nephew by the elbow and together they walked around the enclosure, Fabel indicating each horse’s finest points, Tanto nodding discerningly, as if riveted by every word. Saro sighed. He kicked at the ground. Truly life could be mightily unfair. Surely any idiot could see that Tanto had no interest in the animals at all, that as far as he was concerned they were just walking bags of cantari, ready to be exchanged into nice fat dowry payments. It was ironic, Saro thought, tracing a pattern with his foot, that his brother had not the wit to make the rest of the metaphorical leap: for if the horses were there to be traded for money; how different was Tanto’s own position? Endowed with sufficient funds, and enhanced by his status at the Allfair’s contests, wouldn’t he then also be auctioned to the highest bidder, married off into the family of the man who could offer the Vingo family the best deal, as far as social and political advancement were concerned?
For a moment, Saro was the recipient of a delightful vision: his brother, naked in the selling-ring, hair and muscles polished with linseed oil, eyes rolling in fear; paraded around on a lungerein with the rest of the marriageable lads. The dealer with his silver baton pointing out Tanto’s fine pectorals, the proud carriage of his head, the curve of his neck, the neat turn of his calves and fetlock; flicking him lightly across the buttocks with the whip to show off his well-disciplined gait, his graceful trot; then running the baton down his flanks and lifting into view Tanto’s private parts so that the audience might remark (disparagingly) upon the virility and length of his—
‘Saro!’
Saro’s head shot up so fast he cricked his neck. Favio Vingo had joined his brother and Tanto and was even now bearing down upon his second son. Thank Falla his people were not mind-readers, Saro thought wildly. If they were, it would not be Tanto on the receiving end of a whip.
‘Hello, Father.’
Favio Vingo was a short man, though compactly muscled. He hid the shame of his encroaching baldness today under a fabulously-patterned silk head-wrap, fastened with a vast emerald on a pin. ‘I have something to show you, Saro. Come with me.’ His father beamed: clearly, Saro thought uncharitably, the effects of the araque must still be with him, that he should be so magnanimous towards one he so despised.
Garnering his most obliging and agreeable expression, Saro took his father’s proffered arm and fell into step with him.
‘What is it, Father, that you wish to show me?’
‘Words would not do justice to the experience: you must see it for yourself and form your own responses. I remember witnessing a similar scene on my first visit to the Allfair—’ he paused. ‘By Falla! Over twenty-five years ago, now: can you believe it? Twenty-five years. Twenty-five visits to the Moonfell Plain, by the Lady! And still the memory of that first time as clear as if it were yesterday: such excitement, eh Fabel?’
Fabel Vingo looked over his shoulder at them. ‘Ah yes. I remember my first time at the Fair – would have been a few years after you, though, brother.’ He winked and then turned back to continue his conversation with Tanto. As if unconsciously, he ran a hand through his own thick cap of hair.
Favio grimaced. ‘It wasn’t just his first time at the Allfair, either,’ he said in a voice too loud to be destined for Saro’s ears alone, but there came no response from his brother.
They made their way past the rest of the livestock stalls and the temporary booths for the herdsmen and servants, and soon found themselves out on unoccupied ground. The sun, coming to its fullest point now, beat down on the volcanic ash so that in the miasma of heat thus produced, it seemed that the eastern mountains rose off the plain in great, rippling waves, like a tide. The sky overhead, early clouds now burned away to nothing, was the deep, unflawed blue of a Jetra bowl.
Favio shaded his eyes. Saro, following his example, stared out into the heat-haze. Tanto and Fabel, bored already, started to discuss the intricate silver inlay-work that could be commissioned from some northern craftsman they’d heard of who specialised in ornamental daggers and pattern-welded swords. Lovely work, apparently: though far from cheap.
‘Oh!’
The gasp escaped Saro before he could draw it back. Out of the middle of the haze as from the heart of legend, or the gorgeously deceptive Fata Morganas reported by explorers in search of fabled Sanctuary, shimmering like a mirage and most eerily magnified by the waves of heat, a nomad caravan pulsed gradually into view – a weaving, many-legged millipede of a creature displacing clouds of dust as it travelled unerringly towards th
e fairground.
‘Wanderers!’
‘Aye, lad,’ Fabel said cheerfully. ‘The Lost People; the Footloose: here they come, ready to fleece the lot of us yet again!’
Three
Charms
Jenna Finnsen gazed into the polished metal mirror Halli Aranson had just brought to their booth as ‘a gift for a maid on her first visit to the Allfair’. She’d heard him announcing himself at the doorflap and had promptly disappeared behind the partition, leaving him shuffling his feet awkwardly in front of her father. What a clod, she thought. Just a great big farmboy with no courtly manners at all, even if he was desperately in love with her. She giggled, then watched with alarm as her large grey eyes disappeared into fat little folds of skin and lines etched themselves around her nose and mouth. ‘Oh no,’ she thought desperately. ‘Not at all alluring. You mustn’t smile like that when you meet Ravn. Solemn and intense, that’s the way to win his heart.’
She composed herself rapidly and returned to her favourite reverie.
Holding the mirror about a foot above her head, she gazed up under her fair lashes and addressed his invisible presence, mouthing softly: Yes, sire, my name is Jenna Finnsen, daughter of Finn Larson of the Fairwater clan, who supplies your royal household with the finest seagoing vessels.
To this the King always replied, Had you not told me your name, I would have guessed it from the graceful curve of your neck, as noble as a swan’s, and surely your father’s inspiration for the prows of his lovely ships.
And at this, Jenna would look modestly down, thus drawing the King’s eye to her rounded bosom, nestling like a pair of goose-eggs amid all the fine Galian lace, and he, overcome by her extraordinary beauty, would take her by the chin, and after murmuring even more wonderfully poetic compliments would address the assembled crowd (which would, of course, include all the so-called friends who told her such a thing could never happen, as well as all the young men from the local skerries, especially Tor Leeson who had once, when they were thirteen, told her she looked like his mother’s milch cow) and announce that he had chosen his bride – the exquisite Lady Jenna – and that they could all now leave, as quickly as possible, so that he could be alone with his love. Then he would sweep her up (she could imagine the hard-packed muscle of his arms, the ease with which he would crush her to his chest, the thump of his excited heart) and—
Lowering the mirror until it was level with her face, she closed her eyes and kissed it passionately. The cold tin misted like a blush.
‘You like your mirror, then?’
Guiltily, Jenna clutched it to her and whirled around to face the speaker.
‘I— I thought you’d gone.’
Halli grimaced. ‘I went outside with your father for a few moments to discuss some business.’
Jenna’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. She hoped it was not the business she thought it might be, for she chafed at becoming part of some inter-clan land transaction – the codex to a bargain struck between men. ‘What business?’ she asked rudely, going on the attack before he could pursue the matter with the mirror.
‘I am thinking to commission a ship from him.’
‘My father’s ships are the best in the world – they’re not for just anyone!’
Halli blinked. ‘Our money is as good as the next man’s,’ he said mildly. When she did not deign to answer, he went on: ‘King Ravn is calling for men with their own ships to pioneer a passage through the Ravenway with the Far West, and I thought to volunteer my services, and,’ he looked into her face intently, ‘to make a sufficient sum that I may buy a parcel of land and take me a wife . . .’
‘And you have someone in mind for this . . . honour?’
Halli met her gaze steadily. ‘I might.’
‘Pigs might fly.’
Halli had sparred too much with his impertinent little sister to allow such churlishness to throw him. ‘You know, at the midsummer fair at Sundey a couple of years back,’ he said, ‘I seem to remember there was a man who claimed to be able to make you see pigs fly – aye, and sheep, too.’
Jenna scoffed. ‘That’d just be some potion he’d be selling – made with spotted toadstool for the truly gullible.’
‘More than likely.’ He let a pause develop. ‘But when I had my two coppers’ worth it was a maid that I saw flying: set her heart on the moon, she had, and was leaping up and down with all her might, and making quite a show of herself into the bargain; but no matter how high she flew, she just couldn’t make that lofty old moon notice her.’
She stared at him in disbelief.
‘Wasted right away, she did, for want of what she could never have,’ he finished softly.
Comprehension dawned slowly. A hot and heavy red flushed up her neck, across her cheeks and into the very tips of her earlobes. Her hand tightened on the mirror.
‘Well, I was going to ask if you’d like to come with me to see the nomad peoples arrive, with their spotted toadstools and magic potions for the gullible and all; but as I can see such flightiness does not appeal to you, I’ll bid you farewell, for now, Jenna, till the Gathering, and perhaps we’ll speak again after that, eh?’ He dipped his head and ducked smartly out of the tent.
There were a few moments of silence, followed by a gale of amusement from outside the booth. Jenna recognised her father’s laughter, and that of her brother, Matt, and her cousins, Thord and Gar. Furious, she flung the mirror to the ground and stamped on it till its pretty surface was dulled and dented.
‘Ever ride a yeka, Joz?’
‘No.’
‘What about you, Knobber?’
‘No.’
‘’Ave you, Mam?’
‘Oh, go away, Dogo.’
‘I did, you know: I rode a yeka, when I was working for the Duke of Cera, commanding that troop that made the first crossing over the Skarn Pass. Did it stink? Man, it stunk.’
‘Oh, do shut up.’
Undeterred, Dogo turned to the companion on his left, a huge, lowering mountain of a man dressed from head to foot in stained leather and mail.
‘Doc, did you ever ride on one of them things?’
The big man regarded him solemnly. ‘Bugger off, Dogo.’
‘Right then, Doc. Sorry, Doc.’
For some seconds, silence resumed. The five mercenaries leaned on the stockade they had been hired to guard – one task among many at this Allfair, and an easy one, though as a result it wasn’t paying too well – and watched the Footloose roll in to the fairgrounds with their great shaggy yeka and their rumbling carts, their wagons and litters and outriders in eccentric and colourful garments.
‘Ever had yer palm read, Joz?’
‘No.’
‘Did you, Knobber?’
‘No.’
‘Mam?’
She gave him a hard stare.
‘What about you, Doc? ’Ave you ever bin to one of them nomad fortune tellers and ’ad yer palm done, ’ave yer?’
‘Let’s have a look at your hand, Dogo.’
‘Righto. What can you see?’
‘A bloody short lifeline if you don’t stop your yakking.’
‘Oh.’
A long string of goats trotted past with red tassels in their ears, herded by a pair of piebald dogs and a lad doing handsprings. A six-wheeled cart rumbled behind upon which several sunburned women and two furiously moustachioed men all in tangerine silk headwear and row upon row of ivory beads and not a great deal else reclined amongst a pile of cushions and blew fragrant smoke from a huge spouted pot. A chorus of whistling and catcalling marked the wagon’s progress.
‘Ever had a Footloose woman, Doc?’
‘Dogbreath—’
‘Yes, Doc?’
There was a thump and a yelp.
Aran Aranson watched the great caravan come in and felt his heart lift as if he had just heard the opening notes to a favourite song.
Seeing the Footloose always had this effect on him – it made him believe in the existence of infinite poss
ibility. There was something otherworldly about the nomads and what they brought here with them – something magical, provocative; something chancy. It brought into sharp perspective the mundanity of trade and gossip and court politics; it lifted the Allfair to another plane of being. It might just be the waft of their cooking spices as they passed – complex and unfamiliar – or of their perfumes – elusive, subtle, teetering on the edge of recognition; or the incomprehensible babble of a foreign language; or just the knowledge that these were folk who had travelled the length and breadth of Elda and as a result had seen and known more than he would ever see or know. If he were to admit it to himself, Aran Aranson envied the nomad peoples. He envied their rootlessness, their lack of responsibilities, their undemanding sense of community. But most of all, he envied those ever-changing horizons, the thought that each day might bring new discoveries about the world and your life in it.
He watched a nomad woman stride past in her voluminous silver-threaded robes of yeka wool; a man with his face tattooed from crown to chin; young lads laughing and running with a crew of mangy dogs. Little black goats and exotically feathered chickens. Whole tribes of children – all brown and gold skin and hair and flashing white teeth. A mule swayed past, burdened with saddlebags bulging with candles in every imaginable hue and shape, accompanied by a sharp-faced man carrying a dozen yard-high paper lanterns. However he had managed to keep them intact in the high winds of the Skarn Mountains, Aran could not imagine. He stared and stared and after a while became aware that something about his face felt stiff and odd. It took him a moment or two to realise that all this time he had been grinning from ear to ear.
‘You look to be enjoying yourself, Da.’
He spun around. It was Katla, with butchered hair and a filthy tunic.
‘What will your mother say when she sees you?’ He looked her up and down in dismay. ‘It was all I could think to do.’