Smiler's Fair: Book I of The Hollow Gods

by Rebecca Levene

  Marvan held out the knife towards her. ‘You could return to Ashanesland if you chose. And this boy is marked for death already. You’re simply carrying out the sentence.’

  She hesitated for a long moment while Marvan watched her with a terrible intensity and Krish willed her not to take the weapon. But she did. Her fingers closed round the hilt and she moved it to his throat as his stomach heaved with terror.

  ‘No!’ Marvan said, and grabbed her arm before she could strike. Krish saw that he was shaking with suppressed excitement and, horribly, the front of his trousers bulged with his erection. ‘That’s too quick. Now we’ve got him here we can take our time. I was never able to really linger over it before.’ He rested his hand on top of Nethmi’s. ‘I suggest the wide veins in his legs. Acwell the clerk once fell through a pane of glass and took a very long time dying that way.’

  Krish was still looking at the other man’s mocking smile when he felt a slash of fire across his thigh and then the gentler warmth of his blood flowing. He bit his lip to stop from crying out but couldn’t contain a whimper when another vein was opened. His heart beat hard, pumping blood out of the wounds to soak into the mud.

  Olufemi watched the Dae man as he searched the room. He reeked of cheap spirits and his hands were shaking, but his attention seemed focused on his task. He was thorough, if not methodical. It felt strange to be sharing space with a man who actually knew Yron’s heir, who’d breathed the same air as him. She wanted to savour her success, but fear dug out the foundations of her triumph. Krishanjit was in the hands of a murderer, and they had no idea where he’d been taken.

  It was Adofo who’d brought her here. She’d been fruitlessly walking the quarter of the Queen’s Men when the lizard monkey leapt from her shoulder. He’d held her gaze as no normal animal would, ran a few paces, then turned to catch her eyes again. With no better lead to follow, she’d followed her pet – but it seemed he’d brought her to a dead end.

  ‘There’s nothing to find here,’ she told Dae Hyo. ‘We can only guess where Krishanjit’s been taken. What do we know?’

  ‘This Marvan’s a killer,’ Dae Hyo said. ‘Not a fighter – a man who likes to kill for sport. That’s what the clerk said. I tell you what, if I killed for pleasure, I’d want to do it somewhere quiet. Neighbours don’t take kindly to that sort of thing.’

  ‘Or somewhere noisy,’ Olufemi said, straightening from her own search so abruptly that she felt the bones in her spine click. ‘Marvan’s a Drover. Their stables are near here.’

  Dae Hyo nodded. ‘Animals make a lot of noise.’

  ‘Animals being slaughtered even more.’ She didn’t need to tell him to follow as she swept from the room.

  Adofo chittered loudly as he clung to her, but it was impossible to say if there was encouragement or annoyance in his voice. He seemed unwilling to offer any more guidance. She could only hope that meant she was on the right path.

  The house swayed as they descended the stairs and she was reminded again of the impermanence of Smiler’s Fair, its fragility. She’d enjoyed that when she lived here – such a contrast to the weighty age of Mirror Town – but now it felt dangerous. There was no safety here.

  No safety at all. When they exited the building they found a group of Ashane soldiers gathered outside the door. Olufemi realised a part of her had been expecting it. Encountering Dae Hyo had been too much good fortune and here was the ill-luck to balance it. There were ten Ashane and, in their midst, a grossly fat man. Even standing still he was gasping for breath and dripping with sweat. The air around him was rank with the stale smell of it.

  She felt Dae Hyo shift beside her and grabbed his arm before it could reach for a weapon. She didn’t know how adept a warrior he was, but none could be skilled enough to overcome these odds. She didn’t intend to die in a fight he started.

  The fat man was eyeing her speculatively. She didn’t like the sharp intelligence in his round face. ‘Have you perchance been visiting the Drover Marvan?’ he asked. His accent was that of a shipborn Ashane, though his almond eyes and fair hair spoke of a more mixed heritage.

  ‘He’s not there,’ Dae Hyo said before Olufemi could frame a more politic answer.

  ‘And why were you seeking him?’ the fat man asked.

  ‘Why are you asking?’ Dae Hyo’s tone was belligerent and his arm resisted Olufemi’s grip, creeping towards the sword at his belt.

  ‘We believe he may be in possession of information that is of interest to us,’ the fat man said with the easy politeness of someone who held all the power. ‘Perhaps it’s the same information you were seeking: the whereabouts of an Ashane lad going by the name of Krishanjit, or Dae Krish. And what would your name be?’

  He knew, Olufemi realised, or at least he guessed, that they were friends of his fugitive. She could have tried to dazzle or deceive him, but he didn’t seem the type to be impressed with tricks.

  ‘My name’s no business of yours,’ Dae Hyo said.

  ‘My name is Olufemi, a mage of Mirror Town, and it’s not your place to question me,’ she added, striding towards the Ashane troops with a confidence she didn’t feel.

  They at least seemed a little in awe of her people’s reputation and parted to let her through. But the fat man smiled as she approached, entirely unmoved. And none of them expected her to sweep her arm in a wide arc, to jerk her wrist just so to release the mechanism hidden beneath her robe and scatter fire-dust over all the men around her.

  She was already running as the first of them screamed at the particles scorching his skin. Others, wiser, fell to the mud and rolled to put out the fires the powder had sparked in their clothing. None of them was inclined to try to stop her.

  ‘Belbog’s balls!’ Dae Hyo said as she grabbed his arm to pull him after her. The warrior hadn’t proven to be much use, but she couldn’t afford for him to fall into Ashane hands. He knew far too much about Yron’s heir.

  At the end of the alley, she risked turning to assess her pursuit.

  There was none. One of the men she’d sprayed with fire powder had run straight into the tenement that held Marvan’s home. The wood was old and dry and the powder ate through it with relish. As she watched, there was a sharp crack and the upper storey toppled sideways on to the house next door and set it alight too. The Ashane who weren’t aflame themselves were already fleeing, the fat man panting in their midst. The whole street would be burning soon. The houses were packed too close together to escape the conflagration.

  ‘Did you mean to do that?’ Dae Hyo asked, horrified.

  ‘I meant for us to get away. Let’s do so.’

  Krish didn’t know how much longer he had left. He felt weaker than he had in the depths of his worst winter fever. He was as near to death as the day he’d killed his father. His legs were numb and he could no longer feel the blood leaking down his thighs. His head felt crowded with sensation: pain, the distant clamour of the fair, the dense, musky smell of the mammoth whose stable he’d die in, and fear.

  ‘I killed my da,’ he whispered. These people were killers. They’d like that, wouldn’t they?

  ‘You already told us,’ Nethmi said softly.

  Had he? ‘He deserved it.’

  ‘Most people do.’ Marvan leaned into Krish’s field of vision, which had shrunk and darkened. ‘There’s not much spirit left in him,’ he said to Nethmi. ‘Shall we end it now?’

  ‘I suppose we should.’ She sounded reluctant, but in Krish’s hazy vision her face seemed to wear the same expression of dreadful eagerness as her companion’s. She raised the knife, its blade crusted with blood from the times Marvan had already opened and reopened Krish’s veins.

  Terror brought Krish a moment of clarity. ‘You’ll regret it,’ he forced himself to say. ‘When I’m dead you’ll have to find someone else. And then again and again until you’re caught. You can’t kill people for no reason.’

  ‘I think we’ve proven you wrong,’ Marvan said.

  ‘No. You’ll get cau
ght. You will. You can’t kill people for no reason. I can give you a reason.’

  ‘What reason can you possibly give us?’ Marvan asked, but Krish thought he was genuinely interested in the answer.

  The jolt of fear gone, Krish’s mind felt foggy and slow again. ‘The reason … A fight. My cause. Soldiers can kill as often as they like. They’re expected to.’

  Marvan shook his head. ‘No, that won’t do. Soldiers are also expected to die, usually in large numbers. That isn’t my intention.’

  Krish thought of telling him that he could torture prisoners instead, if that pleased him. But he found that he didn’t want to die with those words on his lips. The army he’d intended to build to fight his father had no place for monsters like Marvan. ‘You’re cowards,’ he whispered. ‘I couldn’t beat you in a fair fight, but you haven’t even given me that.’

  ‘We’re not cowards,’ Marvan said in sudden earnest. ‘I don’t think there’s a word for what we are. Now, I believe we’ve said all that needs to be said. Nethmi, are you ready? If we don’t finish it soon, blood loss will end him before we can.’

  He reached across to join his hand with hers on the knife. For a second they both stared at Krish. They seemed to be enjoying his knowledge of what was to come.

  His dazed mind thought the scream that followed was his own. But Marvan and Nethmi’s heads whipped round, the knife lowered and in the second before the beast was on them he realised it was the mammoth he’d heard.

  The monster screamed again as it charged and Marvan and Nethmi flung themselves to either side seconds before it could crush them. Krish, trapped and helpless, watched its great feet descend towards him and wished for the clean death the knife could have given him.

  The feet missed him by inches and then the beast was past. It flung itself against the far wall of the stable, trumpeting its distress.

  ‘Five save us!’ Marvan said. ‘Something’s on fire!’

  Krish had thought his vision was failing. It wasn’t. The air was filled with smoke. He could smell the burning too, and understood the mammoth’s desperation. All creatures feared fire.

  ‘Quick, kill him and let’s get out!’ Nethmi said, her voice high and panicked.

  The flames were visible now, yellow above the stable walls. The fire must be vast. The heat of it was already causing sweat to start on Krish’s body, banishing the chill of blood loss and fear.

  Marvan stooped to retrieve the knife. The mammoth, mindless with its own terror, trumpeted and charged again. This time its foot caught Krish a glancing blow, bruising flesh almost too numb to feel. Marvan stumbled against the wall, dragging Nethmi with him. ‘No time,’ he gasped. ‘The fire will finish him. Don’t let it finish us.’

  Without so much as a backward glance at him, Krish’s tormentors turned and fled from the stable, leaving him with the panicked mammoth and the rising flames.

  33

  Outside the stables, the extent of the fire was terrifyingly evident. It appeared that all of Smiler’s Fair had caught alight. The sky was choked with smoke and the air was ripe with the stink of charred flesh. Nethmi and Marvan had barely run two paces before they were swept up in the crowd fleeing the inferno.

  The force of the mob was irresistible. It was like being caught in a flash flood, as they were tossed in the eddies and currents of its panic. Nethmi’s heart thudded hard when the flow tried to tear her from Marvan, but she grabbed his wrist and kept him with her.

  Everyone wanted to flee the flames, but no one seemed to know in which direction the fire lay. Perhaps it was in more than one. The air was thick with smoke and ash, almost unbreathable. Nethmi could see nothing but the people closest to her and the occasional wall of a building as she was crushed against it by others stronger or more desperate than she. The orange glow of the fire seemed to surround them on all sides. Maybe there was no escape.

  ‘What happened?’ Marvan repeated to everyone he passed. He looked frantic. She supposed it was his home that was burning, but she wished he’d stop. No one would answer. No one seemed to know.

  They stumbled out of the narrow passage between two stables and into another mob fleeing in the opposite direction. All vestiges of order disintegrated. The fire was in sight now, even through the smoke. It was consuming the buildings around them at a terrifying rate. And they had been going in the wrong direction. They were deeper into the fair now.

  The crowd surged, as mindless in its fear as the mammoth had been, and no will or grip on Marvan’s arm could hold him to her. He was swept one way and she another – even closer to the flames. She gasped as a man staggered out of them towards her. He was screaming: a harsh, desperate sound.

  She tried to dodge the walking corpse, its melting flesh falling from blackened bones even as it staggered forward. Then it was on her, grasping her in flaming arms so that the flames caught her too. At first it was only a red glow, a few tiny patches barely alight. She should be able to quench it – she must. But when she beat the fire with her hands it seemed to leap beneath her palms, scorching them and spreading outward. One moment her dress was whole, and then it was alight: a torch that burned all around her. The heat was so intense she felt the material fusing with her flesh. It brought a bone-deep agony like nothing she’d ever experienced and she lost all reason, screaming and trying to flee the fire she carried with her.

  People screamed when they saw her too. She reached for them in desperation but they pushed her away. One man jabbed a knife towards her and she felt the sting as it penetrated, so much less than the pain of the fire that was chewing through her clothes and into the flesh beneath.

  She didn’t know where she was going. She didn’t know what she was doing. She wished that Marvan was still beside her. She wished for her father. The fire was everywhere. She was caught in a maze of it, in the death throes of a place she barely knew. Her father had always said the Five would judge Smiler’s Fair for its offences against the gods. Were they judging her for her own? Was this her due for killing her husband and for trying to kill Yron’s heir? She couldn’t say it wasn’t just.

  She found herself in the centre of a square. The moist mud sucking at her feet was a baffle against the relentless fire. She fell into it and rolled, putting out the flames that still burned on her. The pressure was agony and the cool of the mud only the slightest relief. She barely had the energy to rise. No part of her felt untouched by the flames.

  The fire was on every side. There was no escaping it, but perhaps she could wait it out here. Smiler’s Fair was dying; she didn’t have to. She smiled and looked up, towards a sun she couldn’t see through clouds of smoke and ash. She didn’t see the tower falling towards her either, not until it was a moment away from impact and by then it was too late.

  The masonry collapsed over her, pushing her down into the mud. She felt bones snap beneath its weight. The harsh wood tore the ragged, burnt skin from her arms and pierced her leg. For a single moment she felt every particle of the pain, the burnt flesh, the crushed bones and bleeding wounds; her lungs aching from the choking smoke and the weight pressing against her body.

  And then she felt nothing.

  The mage was crazed. That was the only explanation for it. Dae Hyo hadn’t been too keen on talking to those Ashanemen either, but he hadn’t thought to set the whole fucking fair on fire just to get out of the conversation. He’d liked to have abandoned her, but she was the only one who knew where to go.

  They were running towards the outer edge of Smiler’s Fair, where Olufemi said the Drovers’ stables were. They were running away from the flames, but the flames were outpacing them. Dae Hyo wasn’t ashamed to admit he was afraid. No one wanted to die by fire; it was a nasty way to go. The mage was sweating too, and not just from the heat. Her face was twisted with panic and she’d forced her old legs to a pace even he found hard to keep up. Only her pet was calm. It clung to her robe and glanced at the destruction all around with slitted, untroubled eyes.

  Smiler’s Fair was finis
hed, that was plain. In the distance, its towers were aflame. The Merry Cooks’ pennant was half singed away, its smile turned grotesque. The gambler’s dice of Smiler’s Mile had rolled their last and he could hear the terrible screams as the Fierce Children’s trapped menagerie burned alive at the heart of the fair. The cacophony of smells that normally accompanied the fair had been reduced to just two: ash and cooked flesh.

  Still, it almost seemed that Dae Hyo and Olufemi might make it out of the destruction alive. The horizon ahead was dark with smoke and no hint of orange or red. But sparks flew overhead, carried on an unkind wind, and fell on the waiting wood. There’d been no rain for a week and the fire caught in seconds. The flames danced their way across the street and took the other side too until there was no route through. There was no way back either. The fire was everywhere.

  Olufemi stopped and Dae Hyo skidded to a halt beside her. There was no point running. There was nowhere to run to. Voices floated through the smoke, raised in pain or panic, but they had this corner of the inferno to themselves. They’d reached the stables, he realised. High-pitched howls pierced the walls to either side. Hooves beat against the door to their left in a desperation that wouldn’t find any answer.

  ‘Well?’ Dae Hyo said to Olufemi. ‘You’re a mage – do something!’

  She tried to laugh and ended up coughing, leaning over and drooling sooty spit into the mud.

  ‘There must be a spell. A rune! Come on – what use are you?’

  She straightened, wiping her mouth. ‘I’m no use at all. We’re going to die. Yron’s heir lives and I die.’ She laughed again. There was a dangerous edge of hysteria in it.

  The flames leaned inward, reaching for them. Dae Hyo looked around frantically, as if an escape route might somehow appear. He didn’t want to die here. His life hadn’t amounted to enough for it to be over. He’d achieved nothing he’d set out to do. He hadn’t even found his brother so they could die together.