The genasi also carried away the bodies of the minotaurs, no doubt to a gentler end than would have come if the circus folk had taken charge of the grisly task. Shock was passing from most faces now, except perhaps that of Whitey, the master clown who looked so stunned and haunted. The others were asking questions among themselves.
“Wait for Mattias to return from his hunt,” Corvus told them, and refused to say anything more. He would not even introduce the mysterious swordswoman who had apparently arrived at his request.
“She is windsouled,” the grieving Sonnett told Cephas. “She is genasi, like us.”
Sonnett was in the Welcome Terrace, working with her kin to restore the place to the function intended by its name. She looked to her mother’s serenity and made a great effort to match it. Cephas watched the crystal-haired windsouled woman study everything around her, and thought of the near-deadliness of their first encounter. Like me, perhaps, thought Cephas in silent reply to gentle Sonnett. Not like you.
And not like shattered Marashan, who had not left the spire where her brother now rested forever. The girl had spoken to no one-not even to her mother and especially not to Cephas, at whom she would not even look. She sat with her back against the spire, rocking and keening, arms wrapped around her knees.
“There is a storm inside my daughter,” Elder Lin told Cephas when he struggled to apologize. “You did not ignite it. Even those horned slaves of the Calimien did not plant it within her. It has always been there, and shielding her from the world has not prepared her for the way it tosses her heart now. But I knew no other way.”
Cephas had no reply, and Blue came for him then, dashing his hope that the Elder might explain further.
“My brother’s wife will live,” Blue said as they made their way back to the wagons. “I always said he’d married an ox, not an ox maiden. That strength is showing.”
Cephas clapped the man on the shoulder, relieved. “Perhaps I can show you how to work a crossbow later,” he said.
Blue shook his head. “No need,” he said. “My brothers and I had the ringmaster teach us while the rest of you buried our kin.”
Corvus had set out a circle of canvas chairs around a small campfire. He, the twins, the windsouled woman, and Whitey sat talking. As Cephas approached, he saw Mattias and Tobin joining the group. The two wore grim expressions.
Cephas joined the circle, finding a seat between Whitey and the swordswoman.
Corvus waited for them all to settle themselves, then spoke. “This is Ariella Kulmina, a swordmage of Akanul, a land ruled by genasi like the Emirates.”
The woman protested. “Not at all like the Emirates-”
Corvus waved her to silence. “Last night I appealed to the WeavePasha of Almraiven, our sponsor in this mad business, for aid against our attackers. He was sharing a meal with the swordmage, and she volunteered to travel here by means of his magics. We will speak more of this in a moment. First, I would hear what you found out there in the spires, Mattias.”
By way of answer, the old man spilled open a roll of roughly woven cloth. Two sets of horns, still joined by the polled ridges of bone they grew from, clattered onto the stone.
The woman of Akanul breathed in sharply, and even Whitey turned his empty eyes away.
Corvus said, “I make that twenty-four.”
Mattias nodded at Tobin. For the first time, Cephas noticed how wan the big man appeared. He had the thin-skinned appearance of a gladiator sent back into the arena too soon, with only a hedge shaman’s inadequate chants closing his wounds. Tobin had been in a dreadful fight, and recently.
The goliath turned something over and over in his hands-the jagged end of a single horn, dried blood crusting its broken end. “I could not hold her,” he said. “She was so strong. So terribly strong.”
Cephas realized the whole company was staring at him, and he looked down to see that he had risen to his feet. He shook his head, began to apologize, but then decided to give voice to the question so unaccountably important to him. “She lives? The minotaur woman who led the attack-she escaped you?”
Mattias answered. “Aye. And retreated south toward the mountains, running fast and alone. Tobin took her measure, and she’ll not forget him. But I am glad she fled, and I hope never to face her again.”
Cephas sat, feelings of relief and unease and bewilderment warring inside.
Whitey spoke. “What do you mean, ‘our sponsor in this business,’ Ringmaster?” There was an edge to his voice Cephas had not heard before.
“Old friend,” Corvus said, and Whitey shocked them all by savagely cutting his hand across his chest. He knew how to stand in for the kenku in the ring, and he knew the kenku’s means of imposing quiet.
“Employee,” he said. “I am your employee, Corvus, in a circus. Your other activities, all the shadow games those of you sitting here get up to, you know they’re no secret to me. I knew what the score was when I signed my family on, and I signed anyway, because you pay well and you have access to routes nobody else does. But most importantly, Corvus, because you swore, you swore to me, that our worlds would not intersect. You swore to me that my family would never be in danger because of something you did.”
There was a long silence. Then Corvus sighed. “Whitey, the attack last night, Melda’s wounds, they cannot be blamed-”
And this time it was Mattias who interrupted, though he required only a soft word to silence Corvus.
“No,” he said. “No, Corvus. He is right. We set no fires, we put our hands on no axes, but he is right. Nine Hells, I don’t know half of what you’re stirring up right now myself, but I do know that Candle and Kip and the others would be breaking down the tent right now if we were nothing more than circus performers.”
Corvus did not immediately respond. He waited so long to speak that the silence, uncomfortable to begin with, grew almost desperate. Cephas searched his memories for some experience that would offer succor or solution, but found nothing. There was too much he did not know.
Finally, Corvus said, “If we were nothing but circus performers, Candasa and Kip would be buried on their father’s farm in the grainlands north of Elturel”-Whitey started to stand, but Corvus had suffered the last interruption he would countenance-“dead like their parents from plague in the Year of the Second Circle.”
Whitey, unimpressed, held his hands wide, shaking his head.
Corvus spoke on. “If we were nothing more than circus performers, then Tobin Tok Tor would still be haunting the Riftedge, chased by dwarf patrols and clanless.
“And wouldn’t Melda, your wife, Whitey, have died with her sisters and their herds if we had not come across her fighting druid-fettered wolves all alone?”
Only Cephas and, he noticed, the Akanulan Ariella Kulmina, still watched Corvus, who had risen to his feet and circled the campfire. All the veterans of the circus stared at the ground.
“I have broken no vows. And I have gone far beyond the requirements of our covenant. Our worlds will not intersect? I said no such thing, Whitey. I promised to protect you and yours from the shadows that haunt this spell-blasted, god-torn, tyrant’s playground of a world, and I have done that. I have done that more than any of you know. Any of you.” The last three words he said standing before Mattias.
“And now I will do still more. When the sun sets, I will accompany this woman back to Almraiven. The WeavePasha will open a portal. Some of you will accompany me. The rest will stay here until Melda is recovered. Then Whitey will lead the circus north in rebadged wagons.”
The clown was confused. “I had no intention-”
“I suggest you make for Cormyr. I have a legitimate-looking Player’s Writ packed away somewhere, so you’ll not have to pay their fees. With luck, you should cross the Bridge of Fallen Men in time for the autumn fetes and festivals.”