by J F Rivkin
“You’d best travel with us as far as Stocharnos,” Ashe was saying, when they were interrupted by howling and shouting from the acrobats’ camp.
“Let him loose, he’ll pull over the tent!” Nyctasia heard mixed with words of a language that was unknown to her.
“Kestrai chelno, ifca! Libos!”
“You let him loose! I’m not going near that monster.”
A moment later, Greymantle came loping out of the darkness and hurled himself on Nyctasia, whining and wriggling with delight. “Good lad,” she laughed, pushing him down, and rubbing his great head affectionately. “Be still, now!” He frisked about her as they hurried into the encampment, and was very much underfoot as Ashe introduced her to the rest of the troupe of acrobats. They were sitting about the cooking-fire, most eating bowls of stew, or mending their motley costumes.
The girl who’d been playing the flute that afternoon was now playing Nyctasia’s harp, and singing a song in the same unfamiliar tongue.
“Bai vrenn ifca, onn mid n’arved,
Arved, bai vrenn ifca hloe?
Hyal, mid shahn ath ypresharved
Nastle’ im ver, ad dinascoe.
Nastle’ im ver, ad dinascoe,
Cendri y’ath-”
But she broke off when she saw Nyctasia, and called out, “Cleyas shi, merisol bircordas!”
“That’s Lhosande,” said Ashe, and translated, “She says, ‘Welcome, sister!’
She’s a music-maker, like you.”
From their dark skin and their strange speech, Nyctasia guessed that the acrobats were of the Lieposi, a mountain-dwelling people from the other side of The Spine. They greeted her with the mountaineer’s handshake-not a clasp of palms, but a firm grasp about the wrist, which, after a moment’s surprise, she returned.
The Lieposi were known as much for their fierce independence as for their strength and agility. The Empire, having failed time and again to conquer them, had at last wisely decided to corrupt them instead. Ambassadors had been sent, to persuade them of the advantages of citizenship, bringing gifts of fine silk and precious metals, jewels and rare spices, delicacies and luxuries that were not to be had in the heights of Mount Liepos.
Those whose curiosity overcame their suspicion went as emissaries to the Imperial Concourse, and came back with thrilling accounts of the splendid city of Celys and the magnificence of the court. In time, more and more of the younger Lieposi had been corrupted to experience these marvels for themselves.
With their race and comeliness, their musical language and their remarkable skills of balance, they were a welcome novelty for a time, to the wealthy and noble denizens of the capital. Though they were well-nigh invincible on their own ground, the Lieposi had been ill prepared to defend themselves against the dangers of imperial civilization. The work of conquest was now well under way.
The Lieposi were rarely seen on the coast, and Nyctasia knew little about them, but her brief acquaintance with them so far had impressed her very favorably indeed. She gratefully accepted a bowl of hot stew and devoured it ravenously while she listened to the curious mixture of Eswraine dialects, Linivathe, and Lieposi which the various acrobats were speaking. There were a great many questions she wanted to put to them, but the day’s adventures had left her famished, and it was not until she’d scraped up every morsel of the savory stew that she paused to ask, “But how did my dog get here?”
One of the boys bowed to her. “He came with me, m’lady. When I ran up the alley I met with someone coming the other way-but it was one of these folk, and he brought me here.”
“‘Lady’…?” said Ashe. “Well, well!” But she asked no questions.
Nyctasia was completely taken by surprise. Had Lorr not given himself away, she would never have recognized him in this merry Lieposi youth. The acrobats had stained his skin as dark as their own, and dyed his fair hair black. In gaudy tatters, in bells and beads and ribbons, he was like one minnow in a school, among the other tumblers.
Nyctasia took his hand, examining it curiously. “Walnut-husk dye?” she guessed.
Ashe nodded. “It doesn’t wash off.”
The brand was still visible, though not nearly as noticeable. “I can still see it,” said Nyctasia doubtfully.
“Because you know it’s there, and look for it,” said Ashe. “But you never saw this one, did you now?” She held out her hand to Nyctasia, as she had done often that day, and there indeed was the mark that Nyctasia had completely failed to notice every time. “We don’t come close to others when we perform,” she explained. “Especially not those of us who’ve been branded. And we keep to ourselves, of course. We stay in our tents and wagons, not at inns, and we never eat in company. But we don’t hide-folk look at our masks and our finery, not at us.”
“People see what they expect,” Nyctasia agreed. “Are any of you really Lieposi, then?”
“I don’t remember, m’lady,” said Ashe, with a grin.
“Some of us are,” the drummer laughed. “I think.”
“All of us are,” someone else insisted.
“None of us are.”
“He is,” one of the boys said, pointing to the surprised Lorr.
“I’m one,” said a woman who spoke with the accent of a Midlander.
“No you’re not. I am.”
“You’re a Liruvathid!”
“You’re a-”
Ashe lit a lamp at the fire and beckoned to Nyctasia. “Whatever we are, you’d best be Lieposi, at least till we reach Stocharnos. Come along.”
Nyctasia meekly followed her to one of the gaily painted wagons, and submitted to having her hands and face covered with a dark, oily paint. So many bizarre and unexpected things had already happened to her that day, that it seemed useless to do anything but accept what fate had in store.
“Ashe,” she began, “I can never repay you and the others for all you’ve done, but I-”
“Close your mouth,” Ashe said curtly, “or you’ll get paint in it.”
Nyctasia obeyed, and Ashe, smoothing the stain around her lips, could feel her smiling. She began to stroke Nyctasia’s face and throat, leaving dark streaks, and gently working the coloring into Nyctasia’s skin. Nyctasia closed her eyes, and felt Ashe carefully brush a layer of paint on her eyelids with one fingertip. “Don’t open them yet a while,” she cautioned. Taking Nyctasia’s face between her hands, she softly blew on her eyelids to dry them.
Nyctasia shivered. “If you keep on like that, I’ll not be responsible for what happens,” she murmured.
Ashe chuckled, unlaced Nyctasia’s shirt and playfully kissed the hollow of her throat before she spread the dye over her collarbone, and above her pale breasts. “You’re safe enough for now, my piebald lady-this stuff tastes foul.
Turn around.” With tickling fingers, she stained the soft skin behind Nyctasia’s ears, then rubbed the paint into the back of her neck and shoulders. “You’ll never make a tumbler with such stiff sinews,” she scolded. “I can well believe that you’re a scholar. You need to use your limbs more.”
“What I need’s a hot bath,” said Nyctasia wistfully.
“Well, that you can’t have. This paint will wash off. The walnut really changes the skin’s color, but this only hides it.”
Nyctasia suddenly grew serious again. “Ah, that’s what I meant to tell you, Ashe, in return for your help-you must listen. The white flowers painted on your face-wash them off, and never wear them again! None of you must wear that poisonous paint on your bare skin. Perhaps the walnut-stain offers some protection, but that’s far from certain.”
“But I’ve worn it before, and come to no harm,” Ashe protested.
“The effects make themselves known only over time,” Nyctasia explained. “That very pure white is made from powder of lead, and lead’s a slow-working poison, but a deadly one. Paint your masks with it if you will, but don’t let it touch you. And if you make the mixture yourself, bind a scarf about your face and don’t breathe in the p
owder. I tell you, an ancestor of mine was murdered by means of a leaden goblet that turned everything he drank to poison. It took a long while to do its work, but his enemies were patient.”
Ashe frowned. “It sounds like great nonsense,” she said skeptically. “Probably just an old tale.”
“For the vahn’s sake, you must believe me,” begged Nyctasia, miserably aware that she was never less convincing than when she was telling the truth. “You came to my rescue today-let me rescue you from a worse fate. If you continue to wear lead-white, in time it will poison your very blood. At first it will make your head ache, and turn the food to bile within you. Then your hands will commence to tremble and your limbs to shake, till you no longer have the mastery of them. And when it has crippled and maddened you, then perhaps you will be fortunate enough to die…”
Ashe had already taken up a flask of vinegar, poured some onto a rag, and begun to scrub at her face, muttering to herself in Lieposi. “It’s only the white that’s dangerous?” she demanded.
“So far as I know. You could still paint on the leaves.”
Ashe opened a chest and rummaged through the heap of tawdry trappings within. “I can wear this instead,” she said, pulling out a worn chaplet of white silk blossoms, “And here’s what you need, my dark beauty.” She held up a long, tangled black wig of human hair. It was none too clean, Nyctasia noticed with dismay, but it would disguise her cropped hair most effectively.
With Ashe’s help she put it on and combed it, trying her best not to think about head-lice.
By the time they rejoined the others, Nyctasia could easily have passed for one of the troupe, A shirt sewn with glass jewels, and stitched with stars of silver thread, lent her the same air of shoddy splendor that graced the rest of the company, and her gift for masquerade and deception completed the transformation.
There was nothing of the stoop-shouldered scholar or the gracious lady in her bearing now. She moved with the same free, dancing step as the tumblers, holding her head high and imitating their loose-limbed grace with seeming ease. She put on their bold manner as well, laughing at their surprise. “Did you lot think you were the only imposters on the roads?” she mocked. “They call me Mistress of Ambiguities who know me best,” Greymantle sniffed her and sneezed indignantly, confused by the smell of the paint.
Ashe repeated Nyctasia’s advice about the lead-white, in a variety of languages, until everyone had understood the warning. “That lady knows all about poisons and potions, according to him,” one of the boys affirmed, gesturing toward Lorr.
A young woman, half of whose face and one of whose hands were a stark white, got up hastily and hurried off to wash.
Auval frowned at Lorr. “Learn right now, youngster, not to tell what you know about your friends, not to anyone. You’d no call to speak to us about her, and you’re not to speak to others about us, do you understand? You’re a fugitive, you ought to know better.”
Abashed, Lorr mumbled an apology. “I… I do know better. I was foolish. I may trust you with my life, but not with someone else’s.”
“Yes, that is a necessary lesson,” said Nyctasia. “Yet I begin to think that there may be a time to give one’s trust freely, to follow the promptings of the spirit alone. I too, Lorr, trust these new friends of ours.” There was a time when she would have blamed herself for allowing strangers to learn anything about her, but somehow it did not alarm her now. The acrobats already knew her for a criminal, but they were hardly in a position to betray her, Her real secrets lay elsewhere, and Lorr knew nothing of them. She turned to Auval. “In truth, there is little enough he could tell you about me. He only knows that I’m a healer, and anyone may know that.”
“Indeed they may not. Why would a healer be traveling with the likes of us?
You’re no juggler, so you’ll have to be a minstrel, or perhaps a fortuneteller.
Can you sing?”
Nyctasia smiled to herself, amused that he should find it necessary to teach her guile and caution. Was it possible that she had changed so much as that? She must take pains to relearn her wary and mistrustful ways before she dared return to court!
“I can sing,” she said. “And I can interpret dreams, and tell the secrets of the stars, though the stars be silent. I can read the future in folks’ eyes and tell them just what they wish to hear. I can brew love-potions that do no one any harm. I should think I could earn my way, and be most useful to you.”
“Why, let’s hear what you can do, then, and we’ll judge your talents for ourselves,” said Ashe. “We’ve more use for a singer than for a charlatan!” She spoke to the girl with the harp, who reluctantly handed the instrument to Nyctasia, asking her something in a puzzled tone.
Someone translated, “Lhosande wants to know how to tune the strings. Those silver pins won’t turn like the ones on her bircorda.”
The girl took up a small, long-necked lute and pointed out the wooden tuning-pegs, then gestured at the harp, clearly demanding an explanation. As soon as Nyctasia had shown her how to use the silver key, she insisted on trying it herself, and Nyctasia understood her well enough without translation. She almost cried out, “Tell her not to tighten them too far!” but when she saw how carefully Lhosande turned the key, she held her tongue.
“She’ll not be satisfied till we get her a harp like that,” Ashe predicted.
“Tell her to keep it for me, till I send for it. I’d best not carry it about Stocharnos. Perhaps the magistrates will set a watch for the harper who escaped from Larkmere.” The harp was beautifully crafted of polished ebonwood, its fore pillar ornamented with inlaid silver, and it had been designed as much to be looked at as listened to. It was almost small enough to seem a toy, and there were only fifteen strings, which had to be re-tuned for each new song. It was a lady’s instrument, not a harper’s, and Nyctasia had owned far better ones. But this harp had been Erystalben’s last gift to her, and she did not want to lose it. “She’ll take good care of it,” she said, “and I’ll send her a finer one in its place.”
“How will you know where to send?” Ashe asked reasonably. “We don’t know ourselves where we’ll be from week to week.”
“But a messenger could find you at the Osela fair next autumn, I’ll be bound.
Performers never miss it, so I’m told.”
“So you do remember. I saw you there too.”
“What, among all those people? Surely not.”
“Oh, I told you, I can see quite a lot from my roost, and I was no higher than your head, in Osela. Auval and ’Rashti held the rope. Isael noticed you too”-she pointed to the drummer-“because you gave him two crescents in good silver, and he wondered that a harper should have such a sum to squander. He thought you must want something in return, for an offering like that. We rather expected you to visit our camp that night.”
“Oh? And do folk often try to buy your favors?”
Ashe shrugged modestly. “Who could blame them? But the reason I remembered you was the way you gazed at me all the while, like someone lovestruck.”
“So I did. I’d never seen a rope-dancer before. I thought you were a Manifestation of Grace and Balance.”
“Well! I’ve been called a mountebank and a mudlark, but never a maffestation. I hope it’s something pleasant-it sounds like a plague.”
“It is a sign to the seeking spirit that there is, after all, order and significance in the world we know,” Nyctasia said slowly. She seemed to weigh her words carefully, and she wore a faraway look, as though she were alone and only speaking her thoughts aloud. Had Corson been present, she would have warned the company that Nyctasia was about to embark upon one of her learned lectures, if nothing was done to stop her.
But Ashe insistently recalled her to their conversation, complaining. “I know every tongue twixt the woods and the water, and I can’t make sense of that. Is it flattery or philosophy-that’s all I want to know. And given my choice, I’d prefer flattery,” she added.
“Why then, y
ou shall have it,” laughed Nyctasia, and reached for her harp again.
She thought for a moment, fussing with the strings, and then sang:
“Not more nimble is the spider,
Strider on a silken strand,
Than the web-walker, graceful glider,
Who owns the air and scorns the land.
Ruler of a realm no wider
Than a maiden’s velvet band
Is her Highness the rope-rider.”
“Highness…?” someone groaned, making a wry face.
“There is the riddle, here the answer-
Queen of the acrobats is the rope-dancer!” sang Nyctasia.
“More!” shouted Ashe, delighted.
“Mercy, Your Highness, I haven’t the strength,” said Nyctasia, with a yawn. “We stiff-limbed scholars need our repose.”
“One more verse,” Ashe urged, “then I’ll show you to a bed, my word on it.”
“Only one, then.”
“Hush!” Ashe commanded the others. Lhosande took her flute and played a soft harmony to Nyctasia’s harping.
“For the bird that takes its rest
On a twig as slender as a thread,
With one foot tucked to its downy breast, The while beneath one wing it hides its head, Is not more certain of its perch, I vow, Than the rope-dancer on her hempen bough.”
“Enough!” cried Auval. “You’ll make her vainer than she is already.”
“No fear,” said Nyctasia, “my rhymes are spent.”
Had she only landed in Larkmere that morning? It seemed that she’d been running, hiding, climbing for days without a rest. She handed the harp back to Lhosande, and hung the key around the girl’s neck on its silver chain. Some of the others rose too, stretching.
“We’ve room for another in here,” said Ashe, leading Nyctasia to her wagon. “For a little one like you, at least.” She began to push aside chests and sacks and bolts of cloth, to make a bit more space on the floor. “I was disappointed that you didn’t seek us out, in Osela,” she remarked. “I was sure you would.”