by Andre Norton
“Stop that boy, someone stop that boy!”
He kept melting away (don’t run, don’t run, the crowd would not know what boy the merchant meant). There was a general stirring as the crowd examined itself for fault, and he was mostly through it, easing away.
“That one! Stop him!”
He broke and ran as he had run when he was fruit-nipping in the autumn-market, when his legs were short and the tavern-keepers who kept the few permanent inns had not tried hard to catch him—no finesse in those days, none now, but a heart-thumping race, jostling fairgoers, oh, Lords, himself well dressed and moving wrong, drawing every eye, the fine clothes that had protected him now become the thief-catching mark, individual, describable—
His head swam. Startled ladies dodged him, he them, a knot of priests called out at him—he dived aside, through a curtained tangle of guy-ropes and pegs, and, weaving through the maze behind the tents, hid himself, hugged himself, faint and tucked up as he had hidden beneath the tavern stairs—
“Sphix,” his mother would call. “Oh, Sphix, come out of there, I know where you be, imp—”
He bowed his head and squeezed tears from his eyes; looked up in a flood of sun against the flap. Shadows came and went like the puppet-plays, all strange with dazzle. He thought that he would faint, but fainting was not so easily achieved. Panic passed. No one came. Just the shadows. The hue and cry died down. He was trapped there, in a young gentleman’s clothes, in a place no sensible young gentleman would get himself, in a place no thief ought to, and himself gut-aching with hunger and exhaustion, while the shadows dimmed and the day waned, and the ground beneath him went cold.
The voices grew fewer: there were the shouts of merchants to apprentices, closing down.
(Oh, Lords, don’t let them move the flap aside.)
The voices grew louder, though fewer: the walled shops shut their iron gates and barred their shutters for the night; the lords and ladies of the pavilions sought entertainments among their own rank; the merchants of the tents rolled up their displays and betook them to safekeepings the temple provided (for a fee), to roister or commiserate the night away down among the taverns. Ithkar Fair changed its dress and became carnival, ceased glitter and became torchlit gaud. The gimcrack dealers ruled the night; the sellers of gold-washed trinkets, of glass gems and tinsel crowns, of luck-pieces and charms of spectacular bad taste.
But some jewelers merely changed displays, or put apprentices on duty, or rented for the night.
Into such a transformation Sphix crept, from beneath the overlap of two canvas displays; and if he staggered, it was not unlike the young bravos (some of them nobility pretending otherwise) and ruffians (some pretending nobility they had not) who careened through the aisles in this quarter beneath the temple’s very walls, their wits and their manners left in the ale tents. They shouted and laughed, jostling him this way and that.
He walked—he knew only direction now. He lost whole tracts of the course, passing through the aisles, knocking into drunken celebrants; and thinking, thinking how quickest to turn the stone to some few coins, to fill his stomach; roust old Tomek out and trade these clothes before the dawn—
The tents and booths began to be those of clothiers, like the gimcrack arts of near-the-walls, the cheaper goods left on display, the gaudy, the tawdry, the well used. He looked about him, dazed, trying to know where he might be. A set of carousers bore down on him.
One caught his arm, swung him with them—he tried to fling out again, feigning merriment. The arc swept on, imperiled tent-pegs and ropes, bore him stumbling beyond the torches of the aisle.
Then he struck and darted to escape in panic; but one seized him by the sleeve—it tore. He ran, stumbled on a guy-rope, and sprawled among the stakes.
They hauled him up again. “It’s Khussan’s lad,” one said. He knew that voice without the torchlight that filtered through the tents and showed the black-bearded man, the broken nose, the gapped teeth. “Eh, pretty boy? What’s it have? What’s it take today? It gives it to us, eh?”
He said nothing. They found the stone; he knew they would. He knew they would hit him then, Coss and his little band. Not while Khussan was alive; but the master thief was dead, and the carrion birds moved in. He shut his eyes, squinted one open again.
“Coss, I got to have a copper—you want me thieve for you, I’m hungry, Coss. Lords, I got to get something—”
Gone the lordlings lisp; it was dockside cant, Coss’s own. He had strength in him maybe to cock his leg and shove it where it would do Coss least good; but the other two had his arms and Coss would get up again. There was no choice left, no choice in all the world. Coss patted him on the cheek, ever so gently. “Let ’im go, lads, let ’im go—an’ no, lad, ain’t no copper. T’morrow there be a copper. Maybe a twain, if you brings us the likes again. Khussan got hisself hung: we got a guard or two looks the other way. We got this. We names ourself a thief and turns you in; or you thieves for us. It’s us or it’s Luttan; you works the fair, you pays your cut to someone, lad; Khussan you ain’t, is you, now?”
“No,” he said. And: “Coss, I got to have that copper.”
They hit him then and kicked him when he fell among the tent-pegs, several times.
Then one took his hand and put a coin in it. “So’s you knows where it comes from,” Coss said.
There was that noise which in the night, in the lowest haunts of the fair, always attended private troubles: the laughter, dead a moment, picked up; the prudent went away quickly and by now were gone.
Sphix moved and closed his fingers on the coin in panic, for there was someone there with him, in the light that slipped through the tents, on the great flats of tent-sides and panels. He knew that he would be robbed again, perhaps of clothes this time; certainly of his coin; foreseeably of his life. But for that life, he could not stir his limbs beyond a feeble twitch, a halfway successful lurch onto his side to protect his vitals from a kick. He was cold, oh, Lords, cold and sick and to lose the copper was only a slower death—
“Son.” No one had ever called him that. He risked an eye out of the protective squinch. Perhaps in the great justice of the Three Lordly Ones his father had arrived, the great miracle of his life, or he was quite crazed. This man that knelt down by him sounded old. Dim light shone silver off his hair and the brown shoulders of a homely robe. This was not the father he had dreamed of. He drew his hand to his waist, palming the coin to a slit in the belt, all the while the old man laid hands on him and felt his limbs and, Lords, gathered him up, cheek to a rough-spun robe, and held him like a child.
He had no strength to waste. He rested, figuring to hit when he had to. Be smart, Khussan would say; fight smart; meaning not at all when you can run. “How are the ribs?” the old man asked. “They break any?”
(Lords, what’s he want?)
“Can you get up?”
He tried; the old man helped. It was—Lords, he saw the light glancing off the rough-spun brown—a friar; one of the wandering priests. He was safe, then. His knees nearly left him on the spot; but the old man’s arm was there.
“Where can I take you?”
“Nowhere. Nowhere.” Then a thought came muddling through: He thinks I’m quality. Hopes for some lot of alms. “They took all I had. My father—I ran away to the fair— they took all I had.”
“Brother,” the old man said. “I’m not a priest. Just a lay brother. Come on.”
“Where?”
“Out of this place, before something worse happens.”
“I’m hungry—”
“Hungry, after that?”
“I’ve been hungry, Father.” The hope got tears from him—no need to act.
“We’ll get you fed, then.”
It was rescue: he limped along among the guys and tent-pegs, leaned on the old man, believing in miracles, that a thief could find an old man so crazy. “Bless you,” he kept muttering, “bless you, Father—”
“Lords bless you, too, boy; mind
your feet.”
It was a flaky pastry, a cup of milk—Ale will put you on your nose in it, son. Take the milk. Sphix had wobbled up to the noisy little zone of benches and tables with the friar’s arm firmly locked about his own: the friar had set him on a bench at the other end from doting parents placating a squalling youngster. Sphix blinked and winced at the screams, but he was too unsavory—they moved and took the howling brat. He shut his eyes, opened them again with a jerk as the bench rocked and the friar was back with food.
He ate, picking at the crust and letting his stomach know something was on the way: no rushing. There was meat and gravy inside. He still had his copper. The clothes—there was another benefit to fine clothes: witnesses saw the color, not the man. Tomek would trade off, if he could get to Tomek’s booth. The outfit, split up, would never be recognized.
Coss—Coss was another problem. A permanent one. He could go to Luttan and his lot; but Luttan was worse. Nothing like Khussan.
Tears ran down his face while he numbly chewed away and drank the warm milk.
“Where are you staying, boy?”
He blinked; he shrugged then, because he felt the tears cold on his face and had no wish to look that way. “Dunno,” around a mouthful.
“A weaver lets a corner to me, after hours. A place to sleep.”
He blinked again. It was a dream of his, to prowl the tents after hours and not be caught; but he was not that skilled, to bypass the night-warding charms of the rich places: that took a minor magician, a special kind of thief. “Sure,” he said. (But a weaver’s shop—nothing to pocket there. He could see himself with some great bolt of cloth, staggering away.) “Sure. Thanks.” He sipped at the milk.
The bruises hurt. His ribs and gut ached. He would be slow for days. And Coss—Lords, Coss expected profits.
He forced the last of the pie down and swallowed the last of the milk. He looked at the friar, who finished his and got up.
“Come along,” the friar said.
He got up. His legs felt battered. He was sore everywhere. But he walked on his own, with the old man at his side through the crowds, the laughter of the young, the pranks.
A boy jerked the friar’s sleeve. “Cut it!” Sphix yelled and aimed a kick, proprietary.
“No need for that,” the friar reproved him.
“Brat’ll have your purse,” Sphix muttered. It was one of Oin’s lot, no proper thief. Beggar. But opportunist.
Another ran up to stop the friar, a fat woman from a booth who pressed something in his hand. He touched her cheek, blessinglike. “Here’s a coin,” the friar said, opening his palm when they walked on. “They come to me. What if one were taken?” There was another beggar, another, and another. To an old woman the friar gave the coin.
Rage swelled up in Sphix, longing for that coin. “Lorssakes,” he cried. “Father, that woman’s no more blind than you.”
“I don’t need it,” the friar said. “I’ve eaten. I have a place to sleep. She has to have something to give her guild . . . doesn’t she?”
Sphix opened his mouth. Shut it. A tiny alarm rang deep within his heart. But the friar took his arm. “This way.”
It was a wagon-tent, one of the down-Ith kind that pulled into the grounds at the start of fairtime, turned its draft animals to the livery, and settled deep into the appropriate rows. It extended awnings and all the appurtenances and produced a marvelous lot from its insides, which in this case was not alone a great lot of canvas, but skein upon skein of wools, carding-combs, folding chairs, peg-tables, vats, hanging-frames. It smelled of wools and warmth, of cookery and charcoal; it was a maze inside of hanging fabrics, blankets, like laundry of a hundred lamplit hues: stripes and plaids, checks and embroideries.
The merchandise flapped as they came in and gave up an old, old woman as gaudy as her trade, striped skirts, ripple-weave shawl, grizzled braids done up in yarn. “Who’s this?” she said.
“I don’t know,” the friar said. “Son, you have a name?”
“Sphix.” The blankets hanging leftward moved; a dark, frowning boy stood there; another move: on the right a man, huge and black-haired, with bare arms the largest he had seen on any man. Oh, Lords, the place was as warm. No knowing what ambushes. “Sphix, ma’am.” His eyes went back to the grandam in the braids, his smile immediate, winning, and tragic. “The good father said—”
“Of your charity,” the friar said. “The lad was beaten. Robbed. I fed him.” The friar was dragging him through the maze, the grandam left behind; there was a corner of the tent, a pallet. “Mind your manners. You’re in Grandma Nosca’s tent. Wipe your feet; don’t tread the blankets.”
They were pursued. The boy came bringing blankets, fine, new blankets. The friar handed them Sphix’s way and Sphix clutched them, gazed perplexedly at the religious, remembering the fat woman and the coin. So now there were blankets.
“You a magician of some kind?” Sphix asked, half-afraid to hear the answer. “Everything come when you want it?”
“When I need it. Mostly.” The friar sat down, kicked off his leather-and-wooden shoes, revealing gray woolen socks. He lay down and flipped the blankets over his rough habit. “To sleep, lad, sleep, that’s what we’re here for.”
Sphix made his bed—never such a bed in all his life, not with first-time blankets. He worked his boots off (no socks), prudently tucked them under the blanket edge, and lay down with a great sigh.
Coss tried to haunt the edges of his sleep; there was always, last before sleep, Khussan’s eyeless face. But he was too tired—too helpless, he told himself.
Then even fear for his life was too little a fear. His stomach hurt, but it was that good kind of hurt rich food gave it. He tucked up and shut his eyes—
—opened them again with the before-light bustle of activity. His boots were still there and likewise the coin in its place in his belt, which he had not even loosened.
He rubbed his eyes. The friar stirred and sat up.
He smelled coals.
“Breakfast,” the friar said.
Sphix began to sit up. The beating hurt enough to bring tears to his eyes; but it was of no consequence. He smelled fresh bread and imagined wondrous things, like jam and butter, tasting them in his memory of special days, the tavern table and old Melly’s preserves.
Oh, Lords, to be a priest, he thought; and eat jam and butter.
When the friar got up and made up his pallet, he took his cue, smiled his winningest smile, folding up his blankets. “Breakfast, Father?”
The old man did not smile, not all the way. Sphix knew such smiles, was a connoisseur of expressions; and that look frightened him, that wistful, I-know-you-lie look.
“Tea,” the old man said, “and bread and butter. That suit you?”
Oh, mightily it suited.
“Yes, Father.” He levered himself to his feet, staggered this way and that, and made the tent shake, wobbling into it. He kept the idiot cheerfulness on his face because the friar had an impatient look; he played the fool, because a fool could make laughter, turn questions, lie a bit.
And get out after breakfast.
“Who beat you?”
“Father—” Instant, owlish sobriety. “I’ve no desire to know.”
There was Nosca, eldest; her son, Olf (Blackbeard), western and broad-faced; and Olf’s wife, Tiggynu, eastern and flat-nosed, with small dark eyes and dusky skin and red enamel on her canines when she grinned. The imp was Stynnit, half-and-half, father’s nose and mother’s eyes and no one’s freckles but his own. Sphix scowled at the brat and the brat grinned, having everything all his life and eating bread each morning.
Of a sudden, between the cakes and the second cup of tea, his aching ribs caught up to him, and it was hard to get up again.
But all good fortune ended.
There was the door. He thought of palming something, like a fat skein of wool, worth a penny. But he had no quickness left. He would botch it all. Besides, they knew his face.
“G
ood luck,” the friar said when they both stood outside, the sun coming up pink and golden, the tents spreading themselves like newborn moths. Cattle lowed. A bird laughed. Fair folk began their own rushing about after supplies and water and taking slops out to the wagon.
Into this bustle the friar set out. Sphix caught a breath, danced on one foot, committed himself, plunged after. “Father, where are you going?”
“Oh, about. Up and down. Wherever.” The friar never turned his head. Sphix faltered, fell behind. Hurried a second time.
“Mind if I join you?” Coins came this man’s way. And blankets and breakfasts. And he hurt, Lords, he hurt; it hurt to run, hurt to walk, to breathe. He could not face a day of stealing. “I know the fair.”
“So do I.”
He dropped back, defeated.
The friar stopped, turned. “Well?”
Sphix caught him up, breathing like a winded horse and holding his side. But there would be supper. Maybe a place to sleep again. He swung along beside the friar, matching strides and remembering—oh, sweet Evin, the clothes. The clothes he wore. He was hunted, up near the wall.
And suddenly—suddenly he spied one of Coss’s folk, just sitting, the other side of the slops-wagon.
Three-Fingered Tok they called him. Small and lean, like the vermin that haunted grain bins.
Tok winked.
He kept walking, limped his way up even with the father and stayed there.
There were fair-wards, brass-hats, with their staves; they wished the friar good morning.
There were priests: they did not.
“What do you do?” Sphix asked, meaning what the friar did in his walking about.
“I’m doing it.”
“Is this it! Walking around, picking up coppers, handing them to fake blind beggars?”
The friar turned on him a look very like Khussan’s, all quizzical, as if he had said something very peculiar indeed.
And he walked, that was all, walked until Sphix was limping; until they were very near the walls and Sphix limped more and more.