A Circle of Celebrations: The Complete Edition (5 page)

I reversed my course and headed back toward him, under my own power this time.

“Hey, Shilldon,” I called. “Happy Affection Day!”

I pulled one of the pink-fledged arrows out of my quiver and nocked it to the bowstring.

Shilldon’s green eyes widened in horror. The face rose as if he sprang from his seat. Then he yanked Massha up and held her before him.

“You won’t shoot me,” he said. “You’ll hit Massha!”

The shadow figure I could only see in my mind’s eye huddled down behind her. Her broad body made a good shield. I could have moved around to the other side. But I was pretty sure I didn’t have to. He wasn’t in control of the situation. He’d have to peek out sooner or later to see what I was doing.

Wait for it,
I told myself, the sharp string cutting into the joints of my fingers.
Wait for it.… There!

I loosed. The arrow took Shilldon right between the eyes. He fell backward and measured his whole length on the cobblestones. The shaft of the arrow disappeared, and pink feathers floated down onto his face.

A billowing cloud of nothingness floated off his body, revealing a tall, muscular frame. So it had been a cloak! He tried to sit up, but I hovered over him and peppered him with more arrows.

“Let’s find you the
real
love of your life, or at least for tonight!” I said.

On the dance floor, a handful of girls and a few men stopped gyrating and looked around. All at once, they saw Shilldon.

“Oh, my God, he’s gorgeous!” a tall redhead shrieked. She abandoned her partner and ran toward Shilldon, her arms out. A black-haired beauty caught up and blocked her way.

“Don’t you dare touch him! He’s mine!”

“I want him!” a slender man dressed in pink Affection Day garb said, throwing himself at the prone Jahk. “He fell out of nowhere to be with
me
!”

In a moment, more than a dozen people were fighting over Shilldon, tearing at his clothes, covering him with kisses and caresses. He scrambled backward, trying to get away from them.

“Massha, help me!” he cried.

My former apprentice looked down at him. Her jaw set.

“No.”

Shilldon looked up at her in shock and disbelief. The mass of loving bodies covered him, hiding him from sight, weighing him down.

Bamf!

The would-be lovers collapsed to the ground. Shilldon was gone.

“He’s gone!” the redhead cried, feeling the empty cobblestones in vain.

“How could he leave me?” the black-haired woman wailed.

“You?” the slim man said, consumed by woe. “How could he leave
me
?”

I felt around the ground until I touched the edge of the unseen cloth and gathered it up. Having an invisible cloak might come in handy one of these days.

“Where did you learn to shoot like that, boss?” Massha asked.

“Hunting lizard-birds in the forest before I met Garkin,” I said. “If I wasn’t good, I didn’t eat.”

“Well, that was one lizard-bird I’m glad you shot,” she said. She glanced around, warily, but Shilldon was nowhere in sight. “I can’t believe that I ever thought he was the one. Do you think he’ll be back?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “He used you as a shield to protect himself. You know now that he’s a coward.” I pulled an arrow from my quiver. “Are you still afraid that he’s the one you’re really meant for?”

Massha smiled. “Not anymore. It’s Hugh, now and forever.” She pulled the sides of her red bodice apart, revealing an expanse of cleavage. “Hit me, boss. I’m ready.”

“Where’d she go?” Aahz asked, as I returned to the side of the dance floor. A serving maid offered him a bucket of pink ale. I dropped my hat on the table and propped my bow against the wall. The gems flashed on and off like lightning bugs, bathing us in pink, red and white light. The servant poured me a mug of beer.

“To the cottage,” I said. I took a long drink. My throat was dry. In spite of its bizarre color, the beer tasted pretty good. “Hugh’s been waiting there all evening. It almost killed him not to be here, but he’s a good general. He knows when to fight his own battles, and when to send out special forces instead. I doubt we’ll see them until morning.” I worked my jaw with one hand. It still hurt where Massha had struck me. “What a weird festival. No wonder Hemlock never celebrates it.”

“Nah,” Aahz said, taking a gulp of ale. “This is the best Affection Day I’ve ever seen.”

“Maybe one day I’ll have someone special to enjoy it with.”

Aahz clapped me hard on the back. “You already did, partner.”

“Huh?”

“You saved a friend from an abusive ex-lover. You helped her rekindle her romance, and that was a hot one already. If you can’t enjoy that, you’re hopeless.” He grinned. “And now Hemlock owes us a favor. It was worth the two or three gold pieces we had to kick in to make this work.”

“That’s right,” I said. All of the preparations had really worked out to almost nine gold pieces. I vowed to keep the other receipts out of Aahz’s sight when I squared up with Grimble. I stretched out my arms and yawned. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. I think I’ll just go back to Deva and get some sleep.” I reached for the rest of my beer.

Aahz picked up my hat and set it on my head. He took the mug away from me and shoved the bow into my hand.

“No, you’re not,” he said. “You’ve still got a dozen deliveries to make for me before midnight. Get going!”

I tipped my glittering hat.

“Anything for a friend,” I said, before I
bamfed
out.

***

Mardi Gras

Wash Away the Sins

The mellow
clip-clopping
of the horse’s hooves on the cobblestone pavement sounded perfect amidst the iron curlicues and multicolored paint of the buildings looming on either side. The driver of the open landau grinned through his thick, neat, blond beard. He wore a suit that harkened back two centuries, but the velvet of the coat was as smooth and pristine as the day it was woven, and the folded cravat shone white at his throat.

“Pride of New Orleans!” he shouted. “Come and see the finest city in North America, bar none! The tou-ah be leavin’ from whatever street corner you standin’ on. Where y’at? Pride of New Orleans tou-ah! How about you, little lady? You and your friends, fifty dollahs?” He tipped the stem of his whip to the brim of his top hat in a little salute.

The girls in the t-shirts giggled and clutched their plastic Hurricane cups. They shook their heads. Pride gave them a grin and drove on. No need to grab for a few tipsy souls now. The time for the great gathering was later on. The parades had yet to start.

He sniffed the air. His fellow Gluttony was somewhere about. The overwhelming smell of food and drink that saturated the air over the odor of unwashed humans, tobacco, vomit, and mold wasn’t due to the restaurateurs and bar owners kicking it into high gear. Gluttony couldn’t help but reek of his obsession no matter where he went. Most of the people in the streets were strangers. They didn’t realize that the French Quarter didn’t usually smell like that. Otherwise they might take warning.

He turned into Rampart and made a quick right down St. Ann’s toward Jackson Square. The streets were full of tourists laden with throws and locals in costume. That pleased him. Should be a good day.

The other Manifestations must have thought so, too. He spotted Greed, that skinny minx in her designer jeans and tight camisole, following a couple of teenaged boys from up north as they moved just a little too casually through the elbow-to-elbow crowd past a store along the northeast side of Jackson Square. Her eyes changed from hazel to gold as they snagged a few throws off the nearest display and stuffed them up under their t-shirts. The expensive ones were in plain view of the proprietor, a round-bellied black man in his fifties with his arms crossed over his chest. Greed dropped back, stricken. They weren’t up to her standards.

Small stuff,
Pride thought haughtily.
Chickens. If they’d been serious about it, distracted the owner, pulled a little fast-talking, they could have had the twenty-dollar necklaces, at a minimum.
He felt sorry for Greed. She had tried, but the material was just not there. He looked at the grand clock at the other end of the square. Its hands had nearly met at the top. Only twelve hours to go, and neither one of them was doing much of a job.

They were not there on their own impulse. The Big Guy had a sense of humor about his most beloved creation, humankind. It pleased Him to send the personifications of the most deadly sins to tempt mortals into a state of disgrace.

The strains of a jazz band struck up in the distance. Pride turned his horse toward Bourbon Street. This was the moment he had been waiting for. If he couldn’t snare a few souls who were pride-ridden beyond help on board those floats, then he wasn’t much of an absolute. He needed to instill an overweening belief in their own superiority, so they would have something to repent come midnight and Ash Wednesday. Those souls—their souls—depended upon it. By exaggerating the small sins that everyone carried inside themselves, the Manifestations made it easier to recognize them, rue them, and put them aside for good. They would be washed clean for another year. If they resisted sinning, so much the better for them. An experienced and repentant soul made a better angel than a stifled hermit. If not, the Devil was waiting, and he had gotten a lot more unrepentant souls than he deserved over the last few years. Come life’s end, unwary mortals would find themselves in Hell, sunk down by a load of sin they hadn’t bothered to get rid of when they had the chance. Pride had been there more than once, and never wanted to go back. The devil himself wasn’t a bad fellow—in fact, he was pretty good company, and more honest than any of his unwilling guests—but just like in real estate, it was all about location. Heaven wasn’t just about having the good things, but their proximity. Proximity was the reward. In Hell, all those good things were there, but just out of reach: food, water, shelter, comfort, love. Forever. Pride shuddered. Best to keep as many souls as he could from having to suffer the deprivation. He wanted them to get down on their knees and pray on Wednesday for forgiveness, even if their only prayer was, “Dear God, I am so sorry I drank all those Hurricanes. If you take away this hangover, I swear I will never do that again.”

Pride’s job hadn’t been so hard in the past. People he tempted confessed more readily to their sins. He put it down to less enthusiastic church-going and a belief that nothing they did had any consequences. Hurricane Katrina had pushed people back to the congregations in droves once they had lost everything, but they were drifting away again, even though they were still unsatisfied and unfulfilled. It was strange, but humanity felt as if it was dead inside. They came to New Orleans and Mardi Gras to try and feel alive. These were the ones Pride hoped he could reach. He touched his crop to his horse’s flank to hurry her up. He didn’t want to miss the Rex parade. That was the big one.

Pride drove his beautiful carriage into a nook on Bourbon Street that to mortals looked no larger than a mail slot, and emerged into a sunlit courtyard surrounded by white marble walls and fluted pillars. New Orleans was full of passages into the real world. This was the entrance to his domain. There was room enough for fifty carriages inside, or anything else he wanted stowed there, though he had no need of storage space. His horse dislimned in a burst of brilliant white light, and the carriage dissolved in shadows. He could summon anything he wanted into being, temporarily or permanently, a skill he admitted he was proud of. Over his shoulder, he noticed a twenty-something young man with dark skin who had followed him in. The youth looked at the place where the horse and carriage had stood, then at the glass in his hand, and scrambled back out of the entrance. Pride grinned.

Pride took his place at the top of the parade route so he could see every single float that passed, every band, every dancer. Envy was the one who had started the contest among the Manifestations for each to get as many souls secured as he or she could. Greed and Gluttony had rushed to second the notion. Pride usually won the contest at festivals, because they were usually celebrations of a mortal’s affiliations, whether of ethnicity, gender or interest. He and Anger shared the honor at political conventions. That almost made up for Greed’s absolute hold on Christmas. He could see her taking her place about half a block down, with a good view of a three-story house with iron railings where shapely female exhibitionists were already flashing their breasts at the crowd. Up and down went the scanty t-shirts, to the delighted roars of men and not a few women and Lust. The big, well-built male Manifestation was red-faced with pleasure. He had a girl in each arm. His hands traveled up and down their bodies, bringing them to writhing, near orgasmic, pleasure. They didn’t care who saw them. Lust did a thriving trade in alleyway sex during Mardi Gras as well as the flashers, not to mention the strip clubs and professional hookers who plied their wares in doorways and windows around the Quarter. Pride could already see the glow, invisible to mere humans, that said Lust was having a productive day.

Sloth was somewhere around, accumulating followers of his own. He loved the parade-
goers
because they were there to enjoy themselves by doing the least possible and still have the most fun. The entertainment was there for them to enjoy without having to lift a finger. The weather was good, and you barely had to stretch out a hand to secure a drink, or a bead necklace, or a partner to dance with. Pride felt the easy pleasure of Sloth’s influence spread out over the crowd. New Orleans’s longtime motto was “Laissez les bon temps roulez,” or, translated from the local Franglish, “Let the good times roll.”

And roll on they did.

The jazz bands of New Orleans had been legendary, and rightly so. After the hurricane, musicians had been slow to return, but there were plenty of them this year. The lead float of the Rex parade was led by a cadre of horns and woodwinds, all in the hands of old and middle-aged men, most of them African-American, dressed in sherbet-colored satin suits with derby hats to match, dancing and jiving as they progressed along Bourbon.

Behind them came the face of a dragon. It looked fierce and proud, painted in rainbows of color but predominantly the purple, green, and gold of Mardi Gras, and sparkling with rows and swirls of lights that blinked and rolled in rhythm, making the dragon look as if he was dancing to the music. Above the face, the king and queen of Rex, resplendent in white satin and masked in feathers, waved to the crowd from the lofty perch of their float; their court, also gorgeously dressed and arrayed around them also waved. The King of Rex and his consort had been chosen from among their krewe as the supreme embodiment of justice and authority. Their very stance showed how much they enjoyed their position of honor. Pride drank in their self-esteem and fed it back to them in waves.

Live for it,
he told them.
Bask in it. You deserve every moment of it. You are better than all of those who worship you.
The king’s back straightened, and the queen’s long, slender neck seemed to lengthen further.
Good,
Pride thought.
That’ll hold you through the day.
He saw them on their way, glowing with ego. His talent worked best on those most receptive to it. Envy couldn’t touch them. They were real royalty for this day.

Lust had chosen the same couple as a focus. His hot red energy surrounded and suffused the court. A few of the princesses shifted uncomfortably on their flower-strewn benches. The king and queen eyed one another from behind their masks, their glances promising a dynastically good time later on. Pride grinned.

Greed hopped up and down on her narrow spike heels, beckoning the court to throw beads to her. She and those around her she had charmed were already festooned with enough sparkling throws to break their backs, but they must have more, armloads more. She worked her wiles upon the crowd, until they were shrieking in expectation at the riders on the float, demanding necklaces and doubloons. Pride watched with caution. Another of Envy’s contests was to see how many humans they could take away from one another. Pride found it counterproductive and seldom participated in it. Sloth, flabby and proud of it, could rarely be bothered to fight for mortals. He lounged on a second-floor balcony with a host of onlookers who were just enjoying the view. Pride couldn’t sense Anger anywhere. Mardi Gras was frequently a disappointment to his red-eyed friend, with so many people getting into the spirit of good times. He was pleased to see that the Rex court was unaffected by Greed. Regally, they tossed rope after shining rope of beads and handfuls of gold coins to her minions, enjoying the pleasure they spread.

The Rex parade ended and was succeeded by Zulu, then Orpheus, Bacchus, Saturn, and a dozen other krewes, all filling Bourbon Street with music and glitter. Pride found willing followers in each one. He was pleased and satisfied with himself. The crowd swelled larger and larger until when the music of the last jazz band faded away, it filled the twilit streets. Gluttony and Lust took over, sending the multitude in search of other forms of satisfaction. Gluttony had found turtle soup and crawfish étouffée somewhere, because the rich, heady aromas filled the air. Greed was for the moment sated, lost under a shining cloak of beads. Sloth lolled on his balcony, waves of laziness rolling out from him.

At nightfall, Pride left them to their pleasures. Wearing an impeccable evening suit and a purple mask he had picked up in sixteenth century Venice, he slipped into the first of the elegant balls, at the Art Museum. Exclusivity drew him. The people who were privileged to pass through the doors, past the
hoi polloi
, were already prideful. He fed their egos, giving them a sense that they were more worthy, more exalted, and just plain better than the man on the street. No matter that in their normal lives they were plumbers and store clerks; tonight they were the elite, with over a hundred years of history behind them. He sailed into masquerades, dinners, dances, and discos, buoying the pride that each man and woman had in themselves and the spirit of the day.

Envy’s mortals hung around the doors of the same hotels, wishing with all their hearts that they could pass through those portals and into the exalted enclaves, resenting those who could. Pride patted Envy on the shoulder as he went by. She shot him such a look of hate that he felt pity for her.

In the Orpheus party, masked dancers filled the room, but the walls were lined with tables manned by catering staff dressed in waistcoats and white gloves. They helped the guests to an opulent buffet of food and drink ranging from jambalaya to beignets, champagne to whisky. Gluttony, a plate in each hand and one balanced on each arm, gave him a nod from behind a gold pig’s mask. Pride sampled a taste of each dish, bestowed well-deserved compliments and energy upon the caterers, and departed for the next party. He crossed paths with all of his companions at one party or another. Greed danced with a wealthy man wearing huge diamond cufflinks on his ruffled French cuffs. She wore a priceless gold necklace taken from a dead king of Persia over eight centuries before. Each coveted the other’s treasure. Pride could see they were blissfully happy.

Lust was in the corner of every ballroom, whispering suggestions into the ears of masked couples who stole moments away from their mates or chaperones. Sloth lolled at his leisure on couches surrounded by those who had eaten, drunk or danced their fill and didn’t want to bestir themselves further. Envy appeared at the shoulder of servers who waited upon the honored guests but were never part of the party. She, too, was amassing followers within doors as well as without.