Caught up in the narration, Cephas moved his leg perhaps a heartbeat later than he was meant to.
“But wait,” said Corvus. “What was that? Did any of you sense movement?”
Marashan’s voice called out from the crowd. “Are you blind? It’s Cephas! He’s lying right there under those bricks!”
Corvus laughed along with the rest of the crowd, and Cephas took that to mean he would not be given his scripted cue. With considerable effort, he lifted the paving stone lying across his chest and flung it across the ring.
The kenku’s voice rolled like the drums. “Honored Argentori!” he cried. “Behold! The Wind That Blinds! The Tempest That Scours! Marvel at the feats of the strongest man alive … The Sandstorm!”
Melda had been married to Whitey the Clown for ten years even before the two of them signed on with Corvus Nightfeather. And she still couldn’t tell which of her many brothers-in-law was which when they wore their makeup. She had no idea who came rushing up to her outside the tent, pointing back to the wagons.
But she knew the clowning life well enough to know what was part of the act and what was not. She recognized genuine panic and weighted that against her respect for her husband’s family traditions.
She laid her hand on the clown’s shoulder and said, “Tell me what’s going on or I will tie a knot with your legs that doesn’t require any tricks with big britches.”
When he spoke, she identified the voice as that of the second-eldest brother, Blue, a man not inclined to excitability. “Horses,” he said, “riding up from the pass, fast.”
Melda cursed beneath her breath and thought. She said, “Mattias should be back at his pet’s nest. Find him, and then tell Whitey to wipe off the face paint and get into his fancy togs, because I’m betting he’ll be stepping in for Corvus.” She watched Blue go, looked around long enough to find one of the mallets the roustabouts used to drive the tent stakes, and then strode toward the road, damning the locals’ odd philosophy as she went.
“Any right-thinking village,” she said, “would have a militia.”
When the figure loomed up out of the dark, a hammer coming off its shoulder, Shan let a silver-tipped dart drop from the sheath in her sleeve into her right hand. A heartbeat before she loosed it, her sister reached up from behind and knocked her toss wide.
Unquestioning of Cynda’s judgment, Shan knew they had found a friendly face at last. When she brought the blowing pony they rode to a trembling stop, she even saw who. The hammer was a workman’s mallet, and the figure was Melda. They had found the circus.
“Shan! Cynda!” the woman cried. “What have you done to these animals? You know better than to ride a beast so hard!”
The sisters were riding double on the strongest pony remaining of the three stolen from the abbey’s stables. The one trailing them on a lead blew out not long before, and, in the light of torches brought up by roustabouts, Cynda saw that the little roan’s eyes rolled. Later, she would have to find a way to tell gentle Melda about the dappled mare put down with a broken leg halfway through their mad dash across the plain. She needed someone to know they showed that pony honor and respect. Only harshest necessity drove the sisters to push these animals so far beyond their limits.
Shan rested, her hands on her knees, breathing almost as hard as the ponies. The hand that brought her water was Mattias Farseer’s.
The old man waited for her to drink, then said, “What is it?”
Mattias was as skilled with the twins’ fingertalk as the women themselves. She began to tell him.
Cynda interrupted with a quick gesture. All the circus folk knew the sisters’ sign for quiet because it was a gesture borrowed from Corvus. There were cheers and laughter coming from the tent, and the ponies breathed like bellows. The pitch in the torches burned with an audible hiss. The night was not quiet.
Even above those noises, something could be heard back down the road. The way to Argentor from the plain was as broad and smooth as any merchant king’s road in the cities of the North. It ran straight, up a shallow grade. The Spires of Mir threw back echoes from any traffic along the road, and the sounds carried up from the grasslands.
The twins had no need to communicate further. The sound of many heavy hooves, marching fast, cut through the night like a sword.
Chapter Seven
Among the Djen slave races Calim brought through the Airy Gate were the hubryn, who mingled with the native humans and became our ancestors. There, too, were the hin, who founded the divers nations of the halflings. And Calim also brought the horned yikaria, who feed their children blood.
Ninlilah Adh Arhapan, Musar of El Pajabbar, sent no scouts and attempted no secrecy. During the long run across the plain, the scent of horses fleeing before them alerted the minotaurs to spies even before they found the carcass of a pony in a dry gully. The beast had been put down with a single, swift strike, bespeaking a level of skill that Ninlilah respected.
The spies-two or more halflings by their footprints-did not hide the body, and neither did they make any effort to conceal signs of their flight through the prairie grasses. They traded stealth for speed, rejecting the skulking ways their kind typically embraced.
This was something else Ninlilah respected.
El Pajabbar would be met by foes warned of their coming. Whether those foes would be prepared was another question. The master of games said “earthsouled,” which could mean strength to rival the minotaurs’ own, but he also said “peace loving,” a phrase the genasi used for cowardice.
It did not matter. The heir of the master of games was somewhere among these spires of stone. The people who hid him from her would fight or not, and so they would die or not.
He is found, Ninlilah thought to herself again. Again, she stifled the primal bray she was moved to sound. Marod yn Marod is found.
A strange scent flared her nostrils, and Ninlilah raised one mailed fist. Behind her, the two lines of warriors clattered to a stop, cursing and bellowing.
She ignored their petty insubordination, seeking among the hulking silhouettes for the downward-pointing horns of a particular male. Seeing that one of her fighters already turned his muzzle up to the air, she knew her impulse to stop and investigate the alien smell was wise.
Wrinkling his broad, red nose, the bullock came to stand by Ninlilah. “Sultana-” he said, then staggered, spitting blood and teeth when she struck him across the muzzle.
“You are to call me Musar!” she roared, and brought her chain-draped hoof down on the warrior’s dewclaw.
He did not cry out in pain. He valued his life too much for that. Instead, the young minotaur ducked his head in ritual submission and said, “A thousand pardons would not excuse my offense.”
Ninlilah snorted, because it was clear from his tone that the bullock was not sure what offense he had given. “You are too free with your words,” she told him. “The yikaria have no herd rank, by the vizar’s order.”
The bullock kept his head down. “This is known,” he said. “But so far from Calimport, so far from the djinn’s hearing …”
Ninlilah resisted the urge to strike the fool again. “There is no place outside the vizar’s hearing,” she said. “Marod el Arhapan may have sent us here without Shahrokh’s knowledge, but I assure you the djinni knows all by now. His spies among the Banites would have informed him even if the pasha’s ritualists did not hurry to him as soon as they closed the gate behind us. Have care. Now, use the gifts the Forgotten God gave you.”