‘Sie ist volkommen,’ Brother Albrecht nodded, at last. ‘She is perfect. Sie haben gut getan, Mago Verde. You have done well.’
Mago Verde bowed in acknowledgement. ‘For you, master, anything. I know that you will reward me generously when the time comes.’
‘Her new arms?’ asked Brother Albrecht. ‘Ihre neuen Arme? Are they ready yet?’
Xyrena was surprised that he spoke English, even if he did speak it with a very thick German accent, and not with any kind of German accent that she had ever heard before. A medieval German accent, she guessed. But then she thought: this is a dream, after all, and it’s his dream, so I guess he can speak any language that he wants to, in his own dream.
Mago Verde waggled the fingers of both hands at the ringmaster. Whatever this signal meant, the ringmaster clearly understood it, because he wheeled around on his heel and let out a piercing two-fingered whistle. From behind the curtains somebody called out, ‘Almost ready, signore! Almost ready!’
‘Then quick! At the double! You are keeping the Grand Freak waiting!’
Mago Verde leaned over the side of Brother Albrecht’s seat and said, ‘Your attention, please, your worship. Before we give this divine young lady her new arms, I have to tell you that we have three unexpected visitors.’
Xyrena tilted her head toward her microphone. ‘Are you there, John?’ she asked Dom Magator. ‘It looks like we’re going to be needing some backup in a couple of minutes.’
‘We’re right outside the big top, sweetheart. Locked and loaded, both of us. An-Gryferai is dead overhead.’
Brother Albrecht focused his sapphire-blue eyes on Xyrena and gave her a penetrating look that made her feel as she had become as transparent as water, and that he could see right through her armor to her naked body, and into her very bones. Into her thoughts, too, and her emotions, and everything that she had ever said or done or cared about.
‘How can a visitor be unexpected?’ he said. He looked at Jekkalon and Jemmexa, too. ‘How can you three people walk into my dream without my dreaming it? Es ist nicht möglich.’
Jekkalon stepped forward. ‘No disrespect, dude. We heard about your circus and we just wanted to take a look for ourselves. Me and my sister, we’re acrobats. Trapeze artists. We have a kind of professional interest, if you know what I mean. We only wanted to size up the competition.’
‘Mago Verde?’ Brother Albrecht demanded. ‘How did these people get here? Are they real, or do they come from somebody else’s dream?’
‘Oh, they’re real all right, your worship. As real as I am. But I don’t yet know where they come from, or how they got here.’
Brother Albrecht said to Xyrena, ‘Come here, Fraülein. I want to look at you.’
Under her breath, Xyrena said to Dom Magator, ‘He wants me to come closer. With any luck I’ll give him the twitch, too.’
‘Just play it cool, Xyrena,’ Dom Magator warned her.
‘What’s he going to do? Grab ahold of me? Chase me round the stage? The guy doesn’t have any legs.’
‘Just watch yourself, that’s all. He hasn’t survived for eight centuries without having some kind of serious power.’
Xyrena approached the black contraption and then stood in front of Brother Albrecht, her chin tilted up defiantly, her coronet shining, her heavy golden cloak rippling behind her in a wind that nobody else could feel.
Brother Albrecht said, ‘What is your name, Fraülein?’
‘Xyrena. Well — among others. My daddy used to call me his little Fruit-Loop.’
‘Are you real, Xyrena?’
‘The last time I looked in the mirror, yes.’
‘You come from the waking world, nicht wahr? How did you get here? You realize that this is my dream, this circus? Mein Traum, verstehen Sie?’
‘I know that. But you have plenty of real people here already, don’t you? We didn’t think you’d object to two or three more. And we’re only passing through, you know? Like Jekkalon says, we’re taking a professional interest, that’s all.’
Brother Albrecht’s left eyelid twitched, as if he had a nervous tic. As haughty as he was, Xyrena guessed that their appearance in his dream had not only baffled him but troubled him, too. It was even more obvious that he was beginning to feel the effect of her sexuality. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and between his thighs his brown velvet jerkin had visibly started to swell, and she knew that she was arousing him.
‘Tell me, Xyrena,’ said Brother Albrecht. ‘Do I know you?’
‘I very much doubt it, unless you’ve ever been to The Knick Bar in Milwaukee.’
‘Are you a witch?’
‘A witch? What kind of a compliment is that?’
‘You have magic about you. You are fascinating me. But of course you are aware of that, yes? You are doing it deliberately. You think because I am a fallen priest that I do not know how to resist your allure.’
His words sounded very stilted, every syllable perfectly pronounced, as if he were reading them from an English phrase book.
Xyrena shook her head. ‘Not a witch, Your Freakness. Only a woman. But then you know all about women, don’t you? How dangerous they can be. How much you can lose, if you’re not very careful.’
Brother Albrecht was about to reply when all of the clowns and the freaks the animal trainers shuffled noisily backward, and the audience filling the big top let out a low moan of apprehension, like the moan of passengers when an aircraft hits an air pocket and drops several hundred feet without warning. Through the crowd of performers on the stage emerged a thin Italian-looking man dressed in a shiny emerald-green suit, pushing in front of him a large wire cage on wheels. He was closely followed by a sallow man with an iron-gray hairpiece and heavy George Burns spectacles. This man was wearing a long white lab coat spattered with brown stains, and thick brown leather gauntlets.
They were greeted and led forward to the front of the stage by the ringmaster, who cracked his whip and shouted out, ‘Ladies and gentlemen! Perversions and distortions! I give you Signore Guido Serpente, reptile charmer of unparalleled mesmerity, and Doctor J. Friendly, surgeon of a thousand unimaginable agonies!’
Signor Serpente pushed the cage right up to the edge of the stage, and then stepped away. Jemexxa was closest to the cage, but at first she couldn’t understand what was inside it. All she could see were gray dusty-looking coils, like worn-out hosepipes.
‘Voilà!’ Brown Jenkin cried out, prancing around the cage. ‘Sind hier die neuen Arme für dieses reizende Mädchen!’
At first, Brother Albrecht didn’t take his eyes away from Xyrena. But then he said, ‘Let us talk later, Fraülein. For now, this is more important.’
‘You’re the boss,’ Xyrena smiled at him. Mago Verde had noticed the effect that Xyrena was having on his lord and master, and was glaring at her with undisguised venom.
Brown Jenkin unfastened the catch on the door of the cage, and then Doctor Friendly reached inside with both hands. The ‘hosepipes’ immediately reared up and it was only then that Jemexxa realized what they were: two huge snakes, each at least six feet long, and each as thick as a human arm. They both had flat, anvil-shaped heads, yellow eyes, and forked tongues that flickered out between their fangs.
‘Oh my God!’ she said. ‘I’m totally terrified of snakes!’