Torio didn't blame him. They had been through far too much for Edlin to easily trust a man he'd never before met. Grateful Peace knew better. Perhaps he could calm his companion's unease.
Arranging for Citrine not to be disturbed was quite simple. Toriovico stopped in to see her, ostensibly to see if she wanted to accompany him to practice. Citrine had trouble rousing enough to talk to him, but he managed to get her to drink some water in which he had dissolved a small dose of a powder his apothecary had given him when a torn muscle had made sleep impossible.
He felt bad about drugging the child, but she could not be permitted to wake and possibly say things that would endanger Grateful Peace and Edlin. Then Torio told Citrine's maid that the child was not to be troubled.
Racing down the corridors in a fashion he had not since he was a boy, Toriovico reached the large dance studio located in one of the towers near the center of Thendulla Lypella. The Choreographerùa highly ranked member of his sodalityùwas too assured of himself to be honored at Toriovico's attendance, but he did offer a small sniff of approval at his lead dancer's return.
For a time Toriovico had attention for nothing beyond the intricate movements of the dance. However, once the company had gone through the same passage several timesùa handful of the younger fruit and vegetables were having difficultiesùhis mind was free to wander. A solution came to him about halfway through the practice. He tried it out, mapping it as he would the steps of a dance, and found no flaw in it.
It would mean hiding the two fugitives until the next day, finding a way to get them clean and more appropriately costumed, but it should work. Columi's services should be needed, but happily the emeritus Prime was not attending Xarxius's hearing.
Toriovico's greatest worry was how to keep Melina in ignorance of her prisoners' escape. Grateful Peace and Edlin had questioned Citrine extensively regarding how Melina communicated with Idalia and the slaves she supervised. From what Citrine said, communication was roundabout at best, involving notes dropped at public pedestals and then routed from there to Thendulla Lypella. Melina had preferred to go to Idalia herself, and Idalia was forbidden to come to Melina or to send any human messenger.
This, combined with the fact that Idalia would doubtless prefer to hide her failure from her mistress as long as possible, gave Toriovico hope that waiting until tomorrow would not be too great a risk to take.
At the conclusion of practice, Toriovico spoke with the Choreographer. The man was all enthusiasm for the Healed One's suggestion.
"Just what we need," he said, "during this time of doubt and crisis, a public display of all that is good about our land. Pageantry, color, respect for the wonders of the past. I am honored to serve you in this way."
"Very good," Toriovico said. "I will leave you to your preparations. I have one or two things to do myself."
DERIAN FOUND THE NOTE late in the afternoon, resting on the carpet in the front hallway. From scuff marks on the paper, it had clearly been slid under the door.
The folded paper bore no address, but somehow Derian did not think that a missive for Hasamemorri would have been so delivered. Despite her continuing support of her tenantsùor maybe because of itùHasamemorri had lost no respect with her friends and neighbors. The people who threw rocks at the shuttered windows or left offal on the doorstep wereùat least according to Bee Biter's eye and Blind Seer's noseùstrangers.
The tall redhead carried the paper into the room that had been Doc's consulting room and now, in the absence of patients and the occurrence of their own semi-imprisonment, had become their sitting room.
Doc sat reviewing a text of medical drawings sent to him by Oculios the Alchemist while Wendee and Elise worked at the mending. Firekeeper disdained either reading or hand work but lay drowsing by the cold hearth, her head on Blind Seer's flank. She was still mending from her injuries, and though he kept quiet about it, Derian was worried about her.
"I found this in the hall," Derian said, holding up the folded sheet of paper. "There's no address."
Elise dropped her stitchery in her lap with rather too much eagerness.
"Let me see!"
Derian held it out of her reach, teasingly, as he might have with Damita.
"I found it," he chided. "I get to read it."
He broke the blob of wax that sealed the fold and frowned. He read some New Kelvinese, but except for a few words this was beyond him.
"I guess you get it after all," he said, handing the paper to Elise.
She accepted the missive with an slightly arrogant arching of her browùthen stuck her tongue out at him.
"It's very strange," she said after puzzling over the writing for a long moment.
"Read it," Doc prompted.
Elise did so without further hesitation.
"Be at the Processional Gate within the crowd at the noon hour. Seize the gem that is your own and additional riches will fall into your hands."
Derian felt his blood thrill.
"Is it signed?" he asked.
"Not even with an initial or a sign," Elise replied, turning the paper over in her hands and inspecting it carefully. "The paper's very fine quality, though, even by New Kelvinese standards."
Wendee extended her hand and Elise dropped the paper into it.
" 'The gem that is your own,'" Wendee read. "That has to be a reference to Citrine! I think someone is telling us that she's going to be at the Processional Gate at noon tomorrow."
Derian didn't disagree, but he wasn't as confident as Wendee that they'd understood the entire message.
"What's that bit about 'additional riches,' then?"
Wendee gave an airy wave of her hand.
"Diversion. Something to make anyone who reads this think the note was about an assignation or maybe even thieves planning a crime. There are lots of messages just like it in the plays."
Derian wasn't going to give in so easily.
"Maybe," he said. "Still, I don't suppose we dare not show up at the appointed time and place."
"Not in the least," Elise said in her Grandmother Rosene manner. "What if this letter is from the Healed One? He would have taken great risks communicating with usùin addition to whatever he's done to arrange that Citrine be within our reach."
"What are we going to do about the crowds?" Wendee asked. "We hardly dare walk to Aswatano for vegetables. Now we're going to go all the way across the city to the gates of Thendulla Lypellaùand hide ourselves in a crowd?"
Doc grinned mischievously and leaned forward.
"Wendee, it is time you returned to your roots on the stage. The one thing certain to be overlooked in New Kelvin is a group of people dressed in some colorful or peculiar manner. We have until noon tomorrow. What can you manage by then?"
THAT WAS HOW Derian found himself standing at the front edge of a festival crowd close to the Processional Gate. He was dressed like a giant carrot, Wendee having decided that each of their costumes must cover their heads at least to the hairline so that they wouldn't need to resort to shaving their hair.
To escape that humiliation, Derian would have dressed as almost anything, but he thought that a carrot was going a bit far. Wendee had, however, quizzed Hasamemorri's ever useful maids and learned that criers from Thendulla Lypella had announced a special preview of a portion of the Harvest Joy danceùwith the Healed One himself dancing the part of the Harvest Lord.
"It is meant," the maid explained, "to hearten our people. Many have been greatly disturbed by recent events within the Dragon Speaker's court."
"Lots of people will be dressing up following a harvest theme," Wendee had explained to them later, "and Hasamemorri's maids say that those who are costumed will be given privileged places at the frontùit's the usual custom apparently."
Orange fabric had been what Wendee could acquire at both short notice and in sufficient quantities to cover Derian's lanky form, so a carrot was what he must be. They didn't have time to make entire costumes for each one of them, so a common brown
robe made the foundation for a respectable potato costume for Doc.
Doc kept complaining, however, that the hooded upper-body garment, which had been cobbled from a burlap sack, itched and was full of dust. However, since shaving the front portion of his scalp was the only other option, like Derian, Doc surrendered.
Elise was rather more fortunate than either of the men. Among her belongings was a pale green New Kelvinese robe. This, when accompanied by a loose white silk coif and appropriate face paint, transformed her into quite a convincing young onion.
Wendee was either the least or most fortunate of the lot, depending on how one was inclined to think. Nothing in her wardrobe lent itself to the general theme of fruits and vegetables, and creation of Derian's carrot robe had occupied all available hands. After some consultation, Hasamemorri herself suggested that Wendee attire herself as a wheat mother.
"The Mothers are lesser figures," she said, "not the wives of the Harvest Lord, so you won't be out of line. You've a woman's figure," Hasamemorri added approvingly, "not a mere slip of a girl's like Lady Elise."
Hasamemorri helped Wendee dye a plain robe golden brown. Braids of golden straw attached to a sturdy cotton coif, and a basket containing ears of wheat completed Wendee's accessories. Her face was painted in a rather unsettling mosaic in which her eyes and mouth became elements within the harvest bounty.
"I think it is a shame and a disgrace," Hasamemorri said, leaning back in her chair and inspecting her work, "that you Hawk Havenese have been treated so poorly this last moon or so. I take great pleasure in thinking how now you'll go out and enjoy some of Dragon Breath's brightness."
But Hasamemorri's shame on behalf of her fellow citizens did not extend to accompanying her tenants. She cried off on the grounds that her knees would not stand the strain, but Derian thought that Hasamemorri was far too acute not to have noticed that strange events seemed to be plaguing her tenants and far too canny to get intimately involved with them.
One other member of their party cried off as well.
Firekeeper said she hurt too much to put them at risk by accompanying them. No one doubted the truth of her words. Though the lacerations to her leg had closed and daily looked less angry, Firekeeper herself was becoming more and more withdrawn.
"Firekeeper seems worse since we went to Thendulla Lypella," Derian confided in Doc as they helped each other put on their costumes. "Could she have caught something? Or could someone have cursed her?"
He offered the last suggestion hesitantly, but surely the New Kelvinese were capable of such.
Doc shook his head.
"Firekeeper's not sleeping enough. Worried, I think, about the others. Maybe if we get Citrine back and see our way toward getting Edlin and Peace she'll relax."
Doc frowned slightly, then went on, hesitantly, as if confiding something in rather bad taste.
"In fact, I took the liberty of giving her something this morning that will help her sleep while we're gone. I don't want her changing her mind and doing herselfùor someone elseùan injury."
Unspoken was the fact that Doc had done this without consulting Firekeeper, who barely tolerated medicines that reduced pain and hated anything that dulled her wits.
But Derian couldn't waste energy worrying about Firekeeper or her possible reaction now. Indeed, as much of an asset as the wolf-woman could be in a crisis, as the hour drew closer to noon and the crowd surrounding the Processional Gate grew Derian was glad that she was not being subjected to this cacophony. Who knew what she would do?
Or perhaps "almost glad" was a more honest reaction. Part of Derian dreaded discovery as a foreigner as he had never feared anything before and knowing that Firekeeper would be there to get him and the others out would have been reassuring.
Promptly at noon, a series of resounding cymbal clashes and shouts from the guards at the gate announced that the event was beginning. The crowd hushed so rapidly that Derian was reminded of those days when King Tedric himself would come to address his subjects from the speaker's balcony at Eagle's Nest Castle. Even the vendors who moments before had been hawking everything from sweets to plaster figures shaped like various vegetables settled to watch.
Though the sense of expectancy was similar to what Derian had experienced, there was something more as well. Joyful anticipation mingled with intense reverence could be seen on face after brightly painted face. Derian was tall enough to see through the gates and realize that the crowd was two-sided. The inhabitants of the Earth Spires had left their daily round and were watching with expressions no less reverent than those of their less privileged fellows outside.
In those expressions, Derian was reminded yet again that to the New Kelvinese the Harvest Dance was no mere civic celebration like the fourteen society festivals in his homeland, it was a magical ritual meant to somehow influence the coming year. Today's performance might only be a rehearsal, but that made it only slightly less important than the real thing. As Hasamemorri had explained, the magic would still be there.
The soles of Derian's feet tingled and his heart beat more wildly than it had even when he had contemplated a potential riot. It took all his self-control not to rush away lest this magicùlike that which had brought into being the Dragon of Despairùrage out of control. He calmed himself with a physical effort, straightening the point of his hat and looking toward the Processional Gate, which even now was swinging slowly and smoothly outward.
A series of deep drumbeats set the tempo, and then an unseen orchestra burst into a soaring piece that replaced the conventional melodies with which Derian was familiar with complex themes that evoked, even to his city-bred imagination, the entirety of the harvest.
Emerging first through the gates came six women, their long legs bare, their robes kilted up almost to their hips. The motions of their dance were those of stoop labor, the bend and toss, bend and toss so eloquently expressed that Derian found himself looking to see what they were picking.
These were followed by burly men, their coordinated arm gestures evoking the scything and binding of sheaves. They were followed by apple pickers, grape stampers, diggers working root vegetables loose from the soil. Somewhere in the course of their circling, whirling dance, Derian realized that he was seeing the same dancers over and over again, but they merged their motions into each other's so smoothly that the entire process of the gathering in of summer's bounty was evoked and celebrated.
Around the fringes of these workers and their complex dance skittered little children dressed in robes the colors of autumn leaves. Their costumes were so carefully constructed that Derian could tell oak from maple, elm from ash, beech from birch without even looking to see the leaf patterns block-printed on the fabric. The leaves were chased by winds in robes of silvery white touched with icy grey. Every so often a rumble just like thunder would drown out the music. Then the harvesters would increase their tempo, glancing upward, their posture so eloquent of worry that Derian found himself inadvertently checking the clear noon sky.
Gradually, the gathering of the harvest segued into a celebration of its bounty. Men hauled out a wagon laden with piles of fruit and vegetables. Over this bright treasure stood the Harvest Lord himselfùdressed in girded robe, his hair the brilliant color of autumn leaves. He posed for a moment of sudden hush on a small platform suspended over the wagon's bed; then, on this small stage, he began to dance. His motions incorporated the gathering in of the harvest, but also recalled its planting and somehow reminded the watcher of all the labor involved.
Watching, Derian forgot he had ever been afraid, caught up in the joy and wonder of what a human body could achieveùand disbelieving, even as he watched and knew it was real, what he was seeing.
Derian had seen the Healed One in person just the day before. He could recognize something of that man in the figure who towered over his subjects now, but he had to struggle to do so. This seemed no man but a vibrant force of nature.
But wonders did not end with the Harvest Lord's dance. At
a wave of Toriovico's hand, the gathered crops in the wagon bed rose and joined him in his celebration, spilling over the sides with such effortless grace that Derian's mind had to fight to see costumed men and women and not grain, fruits, and vegetables suddenly brought to exuberant and joyful life.
And in the midst of this, Derian spotted Citrine. She was dressed in bright red robes, the hat on her head shaped exactly like an apple. Her skills were not markedly less than those of the other child dancers in the fruit and vegetable groupùthough the autumn leaves that still skittered and pirouetted around the fringes clearly represented the most skilled.
Wendee's hand closed around his arm and Derian nodded. Then he realized what they were going to have to do. To the little fruit and vegetables, possibly because their dancing was not up to that performed by their fellows, had been given the task of distributing gifts to the crowd. Like the rest, Citrine had danced back to the wagon and been given a basket containingùas Derian saw when a shy little boy dressed as a cucumber thrust a piece into his handùminiature vegetables and fruits, molded from sugar paste.
"Spread out," he whispered to the other three, "and try to get near Citrine. Make it look like part of the fun."
That wasn't as hard as it might have seemed. The reverently watching audience had evolved into a good-natured scramble for some of the candy. The fruit and vegetable children circulated through the throng, handing out their gifts and often giving little impromptu performances.
Citrine was hardly the center of all eyes, though Derian could have sworn that the Harvest Lordùthough he continued his own stylized motionsùwas rather more aware of her than he might have been expected to be.
Knowing that the voluminous skirts of his carrot costume offered a perfect place to conceal Citrine should she resist, Derian made an extra effort to reach her. He was rewarded, coming up on her just as she was handing out her last bits of candyùand incidentally becoming even less of interest to the foraging crowd.
The Dragon of Despair Page 66