The Lion of Senet

by Jennifer Fallon

  The Landfall Festival got under way later that evening. Dirk walked down to the common with his parents. Prince Antonov, Tovin Rill, Kirsh, Alenor, Rees and Lanon walked with them, dressed in their best finery. With a fine gold coronet hidden among her dark curls, and a simple blue gown made of several layers of silk so fine they appeared transparent, Alenor looked quite grown up. His mother wore a green gown made of Necia silk. It was the same one she had worn to the Festival for the past three years. Dirk always thought of it as her Festival gown. It was the only time he ever saw her wearing it. He was wearing new clothes, but that had more to do with the rate at which he had grown this past year than any notion of extravagance on his mother’s part. Kirsh and Prince Antonov wore expensive, hand-tooled, knee-high boots, white trousers trimmed with gold braid and short, heavily embroidered jackets that Alenor whispered were all the rage on Senet this year. Misha did not attend. He was too ill.

  Once Prince Antonov had declared the Festival open, Dirk and Lanon were free to investigate the fair with Kirsh and Alenor. Duke Wallin, Tovin Rill, Duchess Morna and Prince Antonov moved among the people, smiling and talking and mixing with the population in a manner that was not possible on any other day of the year. The High Priestess was nowhere to be seen—presumably she was occupied with the upcoming ritual. Rees vanished from sight as soon as the formalities were over, looking for Faralan, youngest daughter of the Baron of Ionan and his bride-to-be as soon as she came of age. Kirsh took command of their little troop and led them in the direction of the food, determined to get the choicest cuts of the roasting bullocks. The smell was making Dirk’s mouth water.

  “You should see the Festival in Avacas,” Kirsh declared as the others hurried in his wake. “We have fireworks, and acrobats and jugglers...”

  “We have jugglers and acrobats, too,” Dirk pointed out.

  “Not like the ones we have.”

  Kirsh was not deliberately arrogant, Dirk decided. He just couldn’t help noticing the difference between his life on the wealthy and powerful mainland and their much more modest lives on Elcast. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “I didn’t say they were bad. I just said ours were better.”

  Lanon stopped walking and pointed to a shabby striped tent across the common where the acrobats were performing. “Let’s go see them then, and you can tell Dirk what’s so grand about Senet’s acrobats.”

  Kirsh shrugged. “Very well. Let’s go watch for a while.”

  He headed in the direction of the acrobats’ tent, with the others on his heels. When they reached the entrance, he marched through the flap and pushed his way through the spectators to the stage. There was a juggler in the middle of his act tossing a number of brightly colored clubs in the air to the tune of a vaguely familiar melody that a fat woman with several chins was belting out on a slightly off-tune flute. The juggler caught the clubs with a flourish and bowed extravagantly. The crowd applauded and a shower of copper coins flew over their heads to land on the stage.

  “That was good,” Alenor said, a little defensively. Dirk wondered if she was defending the juggler or all Dhevynians in general. The fat woman noticed them with a shocked look, and leaned back to whisper something urgently through the curtain. Then she put down the flute and picked up a small drum and began to beat a complicated tattoo as a couple of stagehands began clearing the juggler’s paraphernalia and the coins from the stage. The juggler turned to the fat woman in surprise. He looked rather irked by the sudden change in the program.

  “He was mediocre at best,” Kirsh scoffed. “Last year the juggler was tossing flaming batons.”

  Lanon grinned. “Didn’t the Prefect cut all his fingers off when he discovered he was a thief?”

  “Well, he might have been a thief, but he was a good juggler. Until he lost his fingers, at any rate.”

  The platform was cleared now and the juggler muttered unhappily as he left the stage. The girl from the pool near the Outlet walked out from behind the striped curtains at the back of the stage.

  Dirk’s eyes widened in surprise. She was the last person he expected to see here. He studied her closely for a moment, a thing he’d been too distracted to do yesterday when she emerged from the pool near the waterfall like some sort of water nymph.

  Marqel was no older than him, he guessed. She was dressed in a long cape embroidered with intricate arcane symbols. This close to the stage, Dirk could see the edges of the cape were as frayed and shabby as the rest of the tent. Behind her walked one of the stagehands: a large, bearded, bare-chested man, whose oiled muscles glistened in the late afternoon light.

  But it was Marqel who drew everyone’s eye. Her hair hung down in a thick blond braid. Her face was proud, her sapphire eyes slanted slightly upward in a face that showed a hint of great beauty to come. She was not particularly tall, but as she shed the cloak, revealing a lithe, muscular body in the first bloom of womanhood, the crowd fell silent. She wore a thin, short shift that was only marginally less distracting than when he’d seen her wade dripping and shameless from the pool. Her long, finely muscled legs and arms were bare, and around her upper left arm was a red tattoo that looked like an intricate set of knots. A Landfall bastard.

  He glanced at the young princess and was not surprised to see her scowling. With some strange, unfathomable female instinct, Alenor had taken an instant disliking to Marqel. Perhaps it was their adolescent chatter all the way back to the Keep yesterday as she hurried along beside three boys lost in a fantasy world of pubescent delight sparked by the sight of a stunning naked girl emerging from the water like a vision out of a story-book.

  Dirk had noticed the effect their banter was having on Alenor, and had urged the others to silence, but they sat up talking long into the night, reliving the moment over and over again. Kirsh had said surprisingly little. He just sat there, staring off into space, as if lost in another world.

  The tempo of the drum picked up and Marqel cart-wheeled across the stage. The muscular man stepped forward and she ran at him, stepping into his cupped hands. He thrust her upward and she executed a faultless somersault, landing so lightly that, even as close as he was, Dirk could not hear her footfall. The crowd roared its appreciation as she stepped forward again.

  This time her assistant lifted her onto his shoulders. She stood there for a moment, arms held wide, then bent down to grab the man’s hands. She kicked up into a handstand as he stretched his arms above his head. He walked across the stage as she changed the position of her legs—first a split, then one leg bent—then she closed her legs and arched her back. Dirk watched her in awe, trying to figure out how she knew exactly what point to hold the counterbalanced handstand to maintain a position that looked impossible. The crowd was impressed. The sound of coins landing on the stage, many of them silver, acted as a strange counterpoint to the tattoo of the drum. Finally, the man lowered the girl and stepped back. She flipped across the stage, then back again, as another assistant stepped out.

  The two men clasped their hands together, testing their grip, then nodded to the acrobat. She moved between them, stepping onto their locked arms. She tested her balance for a moment and nodded. The men threw her upward and she somersaulted once, then landed on their clasped arms. They immediately threw her up again, and again she somersaulted, although this time she kept her body straight, rather than tucking in her knees. What came next left Dirk almost too dizzy to follow. Every time she landed, they would throw her up on the rebound, and every somersault was more complicated than the one preceding it. She turned and twisted. The crowd fell silent, wondering how long she could keep it up, wondering if she would miss the small landing platform the men’s arms offered. Wondering if one of them would falter and let her fall.

  Finally, she twisted so many times Dirk was unable to count them, and she landed, not on the locked arms of her assistants, but on the floor in front of them in a deep squat.

  She straightened and held her arms wide, welcoming the adulation of the crowd. Dirk cla
pped as hard as the others, thinking that the only person he had ever met who seemed so arrogantly sure of himself was Kirshov.

  Then the acrobat looked down at the front of the stage. She cast her eye over Dirk and Lanon without pausing. Alenor also received little more than her fleeting attention. But when her eyes alighted on Kirsh, she smiled. It lit her whole face. Dirk glanced at the young prince. His eyes were filled with wonder—and some other emotion that Dirk could not name. The prince and the acrobat stared at each other for a timeless moment, then she looked away, turning her attention back to her audience.

  “Ladies and gentlemen! I give you Marqel the Magnificent!” the fat woman boomed.

  Marqel turned and bowed again to the crowd. A shower of coins landed and the two assistants dropped to their hands and knees to gather up the loot. Kirsh dug into his belt and produced a purse, then beckoned Marqel to the front of the stage. When the fat woman with the drum nodded her permission, the girl stepped forward to accept his offering.

  “You must come to Senet to perform!” Kirsh gushed. “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. You are the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s not up to me, your highness,” Marqel replied. She was breathless from her performance. Dirk wondered how she had learned who Kirsh was. He hadn’t told her he was a prince yesterday by the pool. “You would have to speak to Mistress Kalleen.”

  She squatted down and reached for the purse, her hand lingering on Kirsh’s for much longer than was necessary.

  “I’ll do better than that,” Kirsh promised, no more willing to release her hand than she was to let his go. “I’ll speak to my father. I’ll see that you get his personal invitation.”

  She smiled. “Then I look forward to seeing you again, your highness.”

  Then with a suddenness that shocked him, Marqel snatched the purse from Kirsh’s hand and was gone before he could answer.

  Chapter 24

  The fair was something of an anticlimax after that, although Kirsh did graciously admit that the Elcast acrobats were as good as anything one saw in Senet. In fact, he grew quite tiresome after a while. He ignored the other performers. He didn’t want to dance to the music, or listen to the story-tellers, or watch the animal acts. All he could talk about was Marqel the Magnificent.

  “Marqel the Mercenary, if you ask me,” Alenor grumbled as Kirsh continued to rave about the young acrobat while they ate their dinner.

  “What do you mean?”

  They were sitting on the grass above the common under the castle walls, eating the juicy rare beef on bread trenchers they had finally managed to acquire through the press of hungry people. Rees had joined them and Kirsh and Lanon were giving him a blow-by-blow description of Marqel’s act.

  “You were there, Dirk,” Alenor reminded him. “She was looking for Kirsh. Didn’t you see the way she smiled at him? She was probably waiting for us at the pool yesterday, too.”

  “But how could she have known we’d be at the pool yesterday?” he asked, wondering if Alenor’s distrust was simply jealousy in another guise. Alenor looked at Kirsh the same way Kirsh had looked at Marqel. “And why would she bother?”

  “Because foreign performers need a permit to work in Senet. The Guild won’t let them in otherwise. If Kirsh arranges for his father to invite them to Avacas, then they automatically get their permit, and it won’t cost them a single dorn. I’ll bet you they were saving their best performance for when we arrived.”

  “She was good, though.” Personally, he didn’t see anything wrong with a little bit of entrepreneurial thinking.

  “She’s a Landfall bastard.”

  “That’s hardly her fault.”

  Alenor smiled. “Dirk, you always think the best of people, don’t you?”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes. I think it makes you one of the nicest people I know.” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek and then ran off, leaving Dirk feeling rather bemused and more than a little pleased by her praise. Dirk would have followed her, but his mother chose that moment to arrive with Lady Faralan.

  His brother’s fiancée always visited at Landfall, and spent the next three months under the watchful eye of her future mother-in-law, learning the finer points of running a household as big as Elcast Keep.

  Faralan was a pleasant enough young woman, blond and comfortably plump, although to Dirk’s mind she was a bit dim. Well, perhaps that was unfair. She was educated in things he cared nothing for. She appeared fond of Rees, and he of her, which was fortunate. She had been coming to Elcast since she was betrothed to Rees at thirteen, and Dirk considered her as much his sister as if she was already married to his brother. Consequently, he ignored her for the most part. She would one day be the Duchess of Elcast. He would be a physician, either here on Elcast, or on some other island. There had never seemed much point in getting close.

  As Faralan and Duchess Morna drew nearer, Rees jumped to his feet. Faralan had been crying and his mother’s expression was thunderous.

  “Where is Alenor?” Lady Morna demanded.

  “She went that way, my lady,” Kirsh volunteered. “I’ll fetch her if you like.”

  “Thank you, Kirshov. I would like that very much.”

  Kirsh, with Lanon on his heels, bolted in the same direction as Alenor had gone a few minutes before. Dirk found himself alone in the midst of a rather uncomfortable silence between his mother, his brother and the obviously distraught Faralan. Rees was studying his boots with great determination.

  “You’d best be off, too, Rees,” his mother said icily. “I wouldn’t want you to keep his highness waiting.”

  “Mother...”

  “Just go, Rees. Don’t make an issue of it.”

  Rees looked at Faralan, reaching for her. She shook him off angrily. “Don’t touch me! I can’t believe you’re going to take part in this!” Dirk guessed her distress had more to do with the ritual orgy that would soon take place than the human sacrifice that preceded it. For that matter, Faralan might simply be annoyed that she was too young to take part. The Duke of Ionan made a lot of noise about being a faithful servant of the Goddess.

  “Prince Antonov ordered me to, Faralan. I’ve no choice.”

  Dirk tried to make himself as small as possible. He felt for his brother. Having been under the dangerously benign gaze of Prince Antonov, he knew exactly what Rees meant.

  Suddenly, his mother seemed to notice him. But she wasn’t angry, or even particularly concerned that he had overheard their disagreement. “Dirk, would you escort Faralan back to the Keep, please?”

  “Of course,” he agreed, jumping to his feet and brushing the crumbs from his trousers. Faralan spared her fiancé one last scathing glance before turning toward the castle with a sob.

  Dirk had to run to keep up with her, but once he had delivered his future sister-in-law to the postern gate, which by Dirk’s definition was still the Keep—albeit just barely—he bolted back the way he had come. He was much less concerned about Rees and whatever had upset Faralan than he was about spending time with Alenor. If he’d had his wits about him, he would have volunteered to fetch her before Kirsh did. The realization gave him pause.

  They’re about to burn two men alive and all I can think about is spending time with Alenor. I’m as bad as they are.

  When he arrived back at the place where they had eaten dinner, he discovered Rees was gone and Kirsh and Lanon yet to return with Alenor. Prince Antonov had arrived, though, and was talking to his mother. Something about the way his mother was standing, something about the set of her shoulders, made him hesitate. Dirk skidded to a halt and moved a little to the left, into the shadow of an early blooming hibiscus. It was rude to eavesdrop, he knew that, but in his experience it was also rather informative. Nobody ever said anything really interesting in the hearing of someone they still considered a child.

  “You did this deliberately,” Morna was saying, in a low, angry voice. “Why can’t you just leave us alone?”r />
  “Leave you alone to foment rebellion, Morna?”

  “Rebellion? Don’t make me laugh! What hope does a poor island like Elcast have to take on the likes of Senet? This has nothing to do with rebellion. This is your way of getting at me. Or are you doing this for Johan’s benefit?”

  “If it were not for your eternally patient and forgiving husband,” the prince warned softly, “you would have been executed as a heretic years ago, Morna. As for Thorn, he’ll get what’s coming to him. He cannot escape my justice now.”

  “Are you really brave enough to burn him, Anton? Do you really want to stir up all those old hatreds? Put Johan on public trial and you risk losing Dhevyn.”

  “Don’t try to glorify his deeds, Morna. Johan has long passed the point of fighting for a cause. He’s a criminal. Nothing but a miserable pirate eking out a hand-to-mouth existence in the Baenlands by theft. He’ll be tried and burned as a thief, too, not a revolutionary. Nobody even remembers the reason he started on this path.”

  “You remember though, don’t you, Anton? He was your friend once. You betrayed him, like you betrayed Analee. How can you live with yourself after what you did?”

  “I did what the Goddess asked of me.”

  “You did what that evil bitch Belagren asked of you. And you still do her bidding. I hoped that when Rainan took the throne, we’d still have a ruler capable of defying you, but then I learned you’d taken poor Alenor hostage. You’ve made Rainan as powerless as the rest of us. So what will you do next? Marry Alenor to Kirsh? Yes, that would fit your plans very nicely, wouldn’t it? He’s cast in the same mold as his father.”

  “If I didn’t know how much the suicide of your sister pains you, Morna, I could have you condemned for voicing such sentiments.”

  “Why bother, Anton, when you can hurt me so much more by making my sons take part in your sick rituals?”

  “Ah, your sons. That would be the son you abandoned to follow a heretic and the son you’ve raised in ignorance of the Goddess’s ways?”