Beasts of Tabat (24 page)

He wondered if he would meet any of them.

“The Circus stays on the grounds of the College,” the Satyr said. “They subsidize us and we draw attention to their political gatherings.”

Teo wasn’t sure how to reply to this, but he didn’t want him to lapse back into silence. He made a noncommittal sound, but it failed to elicit any more interest.

He worried. Wouldn’t he be likely to meet the Mage he’d escaped from on the grounds? But it was a large place and surely a circus would provide plenty of places to hide.

The streets were quiet this time of night, and he could smell the meals from the houses, rich savory soups and charred meat, making his stomach growl. He swallowed.

The Satyr acted as though he hadn’t heard, marching along. He was surprised how much ground, how quickly, the goatish stride covered.

To their left a wrought-iron fence, backed by ivy leaves, curved to lead them towards a grand gate surmounted by bas-relief trumpeters and harpists. He could have reached out and touched the fence’s chilly bars, but its prickly barbs warned his fingers away.

Beyond the gate, a break in the ivy showed a well-trodden field, filled now with tents and wagons. Everything seemed unexpectedly shiny and new. As they passed under the gate’s arch, moonlight broke through the clouds and danced on the calliope’s brass. Two workers were moving over it, checking it, wiping away smudges with soft cloths before rolling a tarpaulin over it, presumably to keep it from the night’s damp. Were they Humans or long-armed Apes? He couldn’t tell through the darkness.

At this time of night, the crowds had dispersed except for a froth of curious idlers who lingered, watching the circus workers pack up for the evening.

Someone led a pair of zebras past and he stared, wide-eyed. He’d seen pictures in his primer (there were few interesting choices for
Z
, after all) but never such a thing in real life, stripes as crisply edged as though they had just been printed onto each hide. Their muzzles were soft and black, and their manes rose like painted broom bristles.

“What sort of circus is this?” Teo asked.

“The
Moon’s
like any other circus,” the Satyr said. “One of the many that come to town to entertain the masses. Usually we go up and down the coast, putting on shows from city to city. Most places we’ll perform once, twice—only large towns like Tabat have enough people with free coin to keep us busy. Working with the College of Mages, though, lets us pitch here indefinitely.”

“And you have work?” he said dubiously. What if they wanted him to perform? Back home he’d heard tales of circuses. They had lions, and women who bit the heads off chickens.

The Satyr let out a long
Baaa
of laughter. “We always need people to run concessions and shovel shit,” he said. “Don’t worry, we won’t disguise you as a homunculus and make you predict the future.”

He blushed and, watching the crowds as they moved along, realized it was true. He had always thought of circuses as nothing but performers. But here was a group outnumbering them—the roustabouts and workers whose labor had gone into driving stakes, unrolling canvas, pitching tents. A larger, brawnier, and much more unobtrusive contingent. He would be one of those. No one would ever find him among them.

They came to a group clustered around a tank. In it two Mermaids preened and tried to flirt with the elderly man sweeping up the bits of paper and detritus that littered the dusty earth.

One Mermaid’s stringy blue hair was done in elaborate, almost-shellacked curls. The other’s greener hair hung straight and fine. They sat posed like a pair of house cats, their backs half-turned to each other, but leaning forward, displaying their bare breasts to the oblivious man. His head down, swaying like a blind bear’s, he swept the same patch of ground over and over, at least a dozen passes where one would have done before moving onto the next patch.

“Stop and sing to us, Jonas,” the curled Mermaid coaxed, and the other said, “Or we will sing to you. Would you like that?”

Fascinated, Teo saw that a white mouse rode the sweeper’s shoulder. Its nose twitched, scenting the air. It squeaked and the man paused, holding the broom still.

Quick as thought, the mouse ran down his body, easily holding onto the fabric of his grey garment, so shapeless that it was unclear how many pieces it was made of, and ran over to an orange paper cone glittering with pink beads of melted sugar. Cone held awkwardly between its teeth, it returned to its perch and ate, nibbling off the sweet bits as the man started to sweep again.

“Come on,” the Satyr said, moving through the crowd.

The wealth of colors, scents, and sounds dazzled and dizzied Teo. He walked as though in a swoon. It seemed too marvelous to be true, that his luck had shone so moon-bright, had led him to such a place.

They passed through a corridor made of booths, each one’s face a bright smile of twining snakes and fire-breathing mongooses, tattooed clowns, and rainbow-haired magic eaters, just as another worker moved down the corridor behind them, closing each booth to show enigmatic shutters, dull white with age.

Past the busy walkways, they came to a place where people moved more purposefully: The backside of the circus, a medley of open bed and closed wagons that had been repurposed into living quarters. He could not help but admire the cleverness of their construction. A tent roof had been unrolled above a small wagon’s flatbed to make it serve as a table, and a smaller tent had married the cook wagon, whose sides had folded down wantonly to unveil a canvas and wood kitchen where a pot of chal boiled, a stack of white mugs beside it.

“What’s the owner’s name?” he asked the Satyr.

“Murga.”

The name was familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

Would he like Murga, he wondered, and would Murga like him? If he did, now he would be a workingman, earning his daily wage—something different than the scattered and day-to-day street existence he’d been conducting.

Once again, he felt a future settling on him. Did he dare hope that this time it would take? Surely this was where he was meant to be, he decided. A future was a satisfying thing to have, like owning a house to sleep in, or a good knife, or a pair of waterproof boots. A future full of predictable days and nights, free of the uncertainty that some storm might seize him, carry him away.

He ducked his head to conceal his smile at the thought. The Satyr caught it anyway. He said nothing, just gave him a contemptuous look. Teo shrank under that cold stare. The corners of his mouth drooped, and the Satyr smiled as though the corners of his own mouth were counterweights ascending.

It was an unpleasant smile. He had a panicked, nonsensical thought—
He’s brought me here to kill me
—that melted away just as fast as common sense reared its head.

The Satyr paused outside a blocky tent, one a little larger than the other living quarters, and called into it, “Murga? Are you there?”

“Aryk.” The flap pushed open and a slender man emerged, bowing his head in greeting.

The Satyr bowed hers in turn before stepping back and pointing at Teo. “This is the boy.”

Murga looked Teo over. The circus owner was a slender man, pale as though Northern, although the shape of his features were pure Old Continent. He wore a red coat with elaborations of gold braid at the sleeves and collar over shiny black trousers. The outfit reminded Teo of the calliope.

“Come inside,” Murga said, pointing Teo in.

The tent’s smell reminded Teo of the cramped sweat lodge on the village’s outskirts, where the hunters went and sat in the depths of Winter, sweating before they ran out and rolled in the snow. A ritual that he had managed to escape by leaving—he was glad of that, he was pretty sure. The tent’s smell edged up into his nostrils and made him feel uncomfortable, pinned.

Behind him, Murga paused, speaking in an undertone to the Satyr. Teo couldn’t catch the words. Then Murga came through the flap as well, to sit down at a rickety desk. The inkwell didn’t smell of ink. It was filled with oil and magic. Underneath the desk was a box that reeked of blood-soaked earth. His nose itched and the hair on the back of his neck bristled.

“Miche says you are looking for a job,” the man said. “I’m Murga, and I run
The Autumn Moon
.”

“It’s a lovely circus, sir,” he blurted out, terrified that he’d say something dreadful within the first few minutes.

From behind the stained canvas, a scent of cinnabar and sweet amber came out of the darkness. He’d smelled that desert scent more than once here as he’d entered the circus, though he’d never seen the heavy-footed presence that it betrayed.

Murga chuckled. “Nervous, are you?”

“Yes.” The admission made him relax a little.

“What can you do?”

“I’m strong, sir, and I learn quickly. I know a little wood and stone working from my parents back home.”

“And where is back home?”

“Up the Northstretch River, a village near Marten’s Ferry.”

“Why did you leave there?” Murga’s dispassionate gaze surveyed him like a side of meat.

“My sister was dying of bone-stretch fever. My parents promised me to the Moons if she survived. She did, so I came downriver to join the Temple. But I do not feel suited to them.”

“What word have you sent to your parents?”

He looked down at the grass underfoot, yellowing and sere. “I haven’t told them anything yet.”

“I see. I presume the Temples are similarly in the dark.”

He looked up to examine Murga’s face in turn. It was a curious, expressionless face that reminded him of one of his sister’s least favorite dolls, Katar. Katar had dominated their childhood games as an entity to be placated, and in later years he often thought to himself that they had been so firmly under the doll’s sway that if it had ordered someone’s eyes torn out, they would have schemed to obey it. He shivered at the thought. His skin crawled at the feel of some heaviness in the air, like standing too close to one of the Duke’s aetheric lights.

“You are frightened?” Murga asked.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said. “Miche said you had work for me. If you don’t, I will go back to Bella Kanto.” He straightened himself, holding his shoulders back as proudly as a Gladiator.

Murga stared at him expressionlessly, then threw his head back and laughed, a derisive caw that seemed to go on and on. Teo could feel his face burning, but he forced his expression to remain level.

“No, boy,” Murga finally gasped out, still laughing. “I will hire you as a roustabout, a jack-of-all-sorts, who helps as needed. You’ll answer to Sibella, chief of the roustabouts, and you’ll get two silver skiffs a week, same as everyone, with one afternoon off of every twelve.”

He held out his hand. “Shake with me, boy, and we’ll seal our pact.”

They joined hands. There was magic here in Murga’s grasp, Teo could feel it reaching inside him. But surely Bella would not have sent him someplace he’d come to harm? Perhaps this was a test of some sort. He forced himself still until Murga released his hand.

The circus owner had a small, satisfied smile. “Head along to the cook tent, and have them tell you where to find Maisie. She’ll show you around.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Thank you, sir.”

***

Chapter Twenty-Two

Circus Life for Teo

The girl Teo found sitting in the cook tent was a stoop-shouldered, broad-faced thing, wearing thick black boots and a dress that looked like several performers’ discarded outfits sewn together. She was perhaps his age, perhaps a few years older. Tulle rode her hemline, making the fabric look as though it were seen through dirty glass.

“I’m looking for Maisie,” he told her.

“I know. You’re the greenest,” she said with a relish that made Teo realize she’d been the former occupant of that niche. “I’m Maisie, and you’re taking over my tasks. So one of the things you’ll do is collect chal mugs, bring ’em back here, and make sure they’re washed and the rack full.”

“All right,” he said. “What else?”

She studied him in silence, measuring him inch by inch.

“I’m Teo,” he offered up in answer to her wordless regard.

“Of course you are.” She seemed to have made up her mind as she drained off half her tea and stood. “Come on, I’ll show you my rabbit.”

As she turned, something odd caught his eye, twitching at the back of her skirt.

“You have a tail!” he gasped, surprised. She must be a Beast, but she spoke to him as freely as one Human to another.

Her look was amused. “We’re all Beasts here.”

“Murga owns you?”

“You could say that.” She shrugged. “Or not. You’ll see.”

She took him through a winding aisle of painted canvas and new-smelling tents. In the heart of a small complex of identical tents, she knelt beside a cot and pulled a wooden crate out from underneath it. Inside was a fuzzy blue knitted blanket, smelling of rabbit droppings, and an immense furry rabbit, at least twice the size of any rabbit Teo had ever seen. Its size startled him, and he said so.

“Isn’t she?” Maisie said. “She’s a Clovian winged rabbit.”

“Winged rabbit?” he said dubiously.

She fondly smoothed the mass of black fur from which two beady eyes peered, ran her fingers over the velvety ears. She reached out to take his hand and run his fingers along the rabbit’s back through the knots of fur there.

“There, do you feel it?” She smiled at him complicitly, and he was very aware of her nearness, her warmth, the soft heat of the rabbit’s fur, its heartbeat as rapid as his own.

“I’m not sure,” he said, uncertainly. “What should I feel?”

She frowned at him. “Her wing nubs, of course.” She giggled. “Why, what did you think I meant?”

He faltered, wordless, and the frown returned. She put the rabbit back in the box with a last caress. It sat and stared at her, not moving, as she slid it back into the darkness.

“You’d better get to work,” she said.

“What am I supposed to do, just collect mugs?”

The thought seemed to scandalize her. “No. Everything and anything. Wander and keep your hands busy. If Murga sees you idle, he’ll fire you.”

* * *

That night, Teo went to his cot with aching arms and legs. He’d helped with cleaning the elephant stalls and thought he’d never raked up so much shit in all his life.

But his dream didn’t comfort him. It dissolved into chaos. In it he ran through streets filled with confusion, with fire and shouting and blood.

The little wood was edged with an iron fence. It was the work of a moment to scale it, to leap over the side and into the midst of a confusion of fat, complacent squirrels that had been sleeping in the midst of a ball of leaves. It was quiet here, despite the distant noises. He rested, licking blood from his jowls.

He jolted awake. Covered with blood and bits and fur, rubbing amorously, embarrassingly against the freezing iron fence. His thighs were sticky. How had he gotten here? What had happened? Was this magic again?

He had changed, he realized. He had turned into a cougar, like his parents and their parents before them. But that was impossible! They had sent him here because he had not inherited that talent, had been unable to Shift, and thus was in no danger of discovery.

Teo’s thought was first relief—
That means I’m normal, after all, a Shifter like any of them
—and then,
I wonder if they would have sent me away if they’d known that?

And on the heels of that petulant thought came another that gathered terror and bile in his throat. They would take him, burn him, kill him! Triumph and terror tore him between them. He was a Shifter, after all, and not a failure. But to be a Shifter, to hover between Beast and Human, is dangerous here in Tabat. If he is recognized for what he is, he would be killed.

And where is he? It took a while, but gradually recognition swam up out of the trees. The Piskie Wood, war memorial of the Moonshine Wars, some forty years ago.

You had to have a license to hunt in the Piskie Wood, and while the College of Mages paid for freshly dead Piskies, some war veterans simply went in to kill Piskies. He’d learned that begging beside its gates sometimes yielded well. But you ran the risk of the fury of the three beggars regularly clustered there, war veterans themselves.

Two rabbit-sized Piskie corpses were impaled on a spike beside the gate. Teo recoiled, seeing the dulled eyes, the torn wings. Thoughts of Sorcerers flung in harbors and the bite of flames at his own heels jerked at him, made his muscles seize and spasm in panic. Gasping for breath, he flung himself back along the ice-slicked curb.

He couldn’t think—couldn’t think—couldn’t think. Details flashed at him: the Piskie’s eyes, its wings, rain-smeared engravings on mottled orange paper, the ghostly sway of jellyfish, tendrils of dying mushrooms. He fought down the panic as though wrestling another boy bigger than himself, grappling desperately, flinging elbows and knees.

How had he managed to change? What had brought him to it here and now when it had failed so often in the past? Was it simply time or some other force? Was there some curse lingering on him, summoned by Granny Beeswax?

He remembered Murga’s grip. Had Murga done this? But how?

He scrubbed himself clean as best he could with handfuls of dry grass, shivering as the freezing wind picked at his privates.

He was far, far from
The Autumn Moon
. He slunk back through the streets in the hours before dawn, cutting through the Duke’s plaza.

The roar of the waterfall filling the plaza’s center filled his ears, bore down on his sense, overwhelming him. He felt dizzy and sick and destroyed by the thoughts whirling through his head. He was a Shifter after all, in a city that hated them.

A cluster of people moved along the southern edge, talking and laughing, and two pedal-cabs passed along the curve of road and shops marking the outermost bound, side-by-side as though racing. There was music and more laughter, the sort he associated with alcohol, from a building laden with ornamental ironwork, leaning to overlook the stairs down to the next terrace. And the Duke’s aetheric lights gleamed, bright and shiny as hatred, worms of brilliance crawling, writhing on the ice-glazed stones underfoot.

He kept pulling at his clothing, trying to duck back into the shadows and armor himself against the wind’s intimate chill. The Moons gleamed overhead on a Plaza busier than he would have expected.

“Stupid boy!” Someone stepped forward in a rustle of skirts just as a cluster of people passed. Two Merchants and their guards, the Merchants chuckling at some joke, the guards grim-faced and wary, as though danger might spring out of the Plaza’s stones at any moment. She backed him out of the pool of light. A Beast woman, an Oread, carrying a tray of flowers.

“Can’t you see your shadow?” she hissed into his ear in a waft of garlic and hot breath. He looked down at the cobblestones under his toes and saw his shadow wavering across her skirts.

Not a Human boy’s shadow at all, not hair and ears and elbows, but rather a cougar’s feline shape, tufted ears and sinuous tail. Two shadows really—one from the nearest aetheric light, its radiance a brilliant pellucid blue, the other a normal, boy-shaped outline, twin-lapped from the two torches shining beside the entrance to a nearby tea shop.

His thoughts jumbled: homesickness, heartweariness, thoughts of returning home. And above all, fear—what did it mean to be a Shifter in the middle of this city, where a common streetlight could reveal his secret? His eyes burned with tears. He wiped them away with the backs of his hands—were they grown hairier, shaggier? He thought so.

“Everything’s in flux now, though the Duke’s Peacekeepers have put things calm for the moment. Get out, boy, and don’t risk these lights again. They show your shadow as it should be.”

He tried to stammer thanks but she was gone.

He made it back to the circus, still dizzy. What would he do now? What could he do? Perhaps it had been a fluke.

Perhaps it wouldn’t happen again.

* * *

The mugs, Teo found out over the next day, were a never-ending task. He suspected he was being tested and knew it for sure when he found a mug tied to the top of the circus tent.

He stood looking up.

Billows of cloth between lines of ribbing made a sky within the tent, white as a snowy day. Vertical red and white stripes lined the vast walls. The main tent pole that held its peak aloft was solid pine, as thick around as his waist, perhaps a little thinner. Metal staples along it allowed him to climb upward.

He had climbed pine trees at home. Their outward thrusting branches formed natural handholds and this pole was easier, even, in its irregularity. He climbed quickly in his enthusiasm, and it was not until he realized he was at the first trapeze platform’s level that he looked down.

From here he could see the trails swept in the sawdust by Jonas’s ragged broom, long lines and loops and curlicues like a faltering script forgetting how to form words. The thin edge of the wooden hoops marking the circus rings were almost invisible seen from this angle: arcs of red and green and blue worn to a sawdust shade along the outer sides.

Was this how Bella felt, standing in the arena? Surely she was never this frightened. He swallowed hard and looked up at the mug hooked on the underside of the topmost platform. It seemed no closer now than when he had started climbing.

Was anyone watching him? What would be the point of the prank if not? He supposed that his reaction would establish here and now whether he was a good sport, a likeable fellow, or someone everybody habitually picked on. He sighed and refrained from looking around. Better to simply dive into the deep water and get it over.

He climbed and climbed. He squinted upwards, trying to see if the mug were getting perceptibly larger. Finally it was there, almost in reach.

He realized with horror that to retrieve it, he would have to lean out and grab it. This high up, he could see the canvas’s rough weave above him and hear the faint splat of icy raindrops against it. He wondered what would happen if he simply refused to cooperate, kept clinging to the pole all through the day and into the night, letting the acrobats climb over and around him on their way up to the top. He supposed eventually he would grow tired and fall. How long could someone live on the tiny acrobat’s platform?

Finally, though, he took a deep breath and uncurled one hand’s desperate grip on the ladder. He reached forward, feeling the uncontrollable shaking of his hand and his pulse hammering in his throat. It was so far down. When his fingers touched the cold china surface, he could have wept with joy.

He thrust it in his tunic pocket and began to make his way back down, which was far worse than the upward trip had been. He kept imagining his foot slipping on the staple, imagining that he would slide and fall, end up smashed flat in a puff of sawdust.

By the time he was back entirely on the ground, he was shaking and felt queasy. Still, he faced outward, forcing a smile, and bowed slightly, gravely, not looking to see if anyone was watching. He took pride in not stopping to rest or recover himself, instead immediately taking the mug back to the cook tent.

He thought that probably no one had seen the incident after all. It was stupid, thinking it would make any difference. But then a passing workman clapped him on the shoulder, and Jonas offered him a discarded program that could be used to patch the hole in his shoes. At least one set of eyes had witnessed his ascent and spoken of it to others.

In the cook tent, he let the armful of mugs clatter into the washing bin and drew his own fresh mug, finding a seat to one side. He’d done enough for now. He held the first sip on his tongue, trying to puzzle out the flavors. He wondered if they would taste different if he were in his cougar form.

He had not tested his abilities any further. He wasn’t sure how. He’d sat staring at his hand, willing the fingernails to narrow and sharpen into claws, tips deepening into pads, hair like fine gold sprouting—but there was nothing. They said sometimes Humans went mad and imagined themselves Beasts—was he one? But if so, how could he be Human when his parents were not?

Dreams of being caught haunted him. They were what made him waver in thinking himself anything other than Human. They would weight him with chains and throw him in the harbor, or tie him to a pole and light him on fire.

As long as he stayed inside the circus, stayed out of the touch of the aetheric lights, he’d be safe. He wanted to go see Bella, but the route worried him.

People moved in and out of the tent without looking at him. Only Maisie and Jonas talked much to him, and Murga was usually only a glimpse. The other workers were a strange mixture of Beasts, and sometimes he thought they might prove friendlier if only he could adjust to their city ways, to their too-quick words full of slang and unfamiliar phrases.

At the table behind him an argument broke out, only half intelligible. He had absorbed a little of the slang—performers were called Faces, not always in a complimentary way. Faces were difficult, demanding—didn’t know how to pitch a tent or splice a rope.

There did not seem to be many friendships across the lines, with the exception of Mad Jonas, who worked constantly picking up bits of paper and other jetsam that had landed on the island of the circus.

He was pleased with the image. It did seem an island to him, self-contained.