Ruiz studied the listings with intense interest. One troupe was identified with a priority number higher than any of the others. In three days, the troupe would perform a great Expiation in a town named Bidderum, a hundred kilometers to the south.
Luck indeed, he thought. Here was a member of the poachers’ organization, beyond a doubt. He wondered how this list would compare to the official League list. Beyond a doubt, the lists would not be identical.
He would be at Bidderum in three days.
He overcame his distaste and stripped the corpse, and then dressed in the assassin’s rags. The assassin had carried a number of weapons concealed under his rags; these Ruiz took also, as well as the man’s identity plaque. He picked up the saddlebags and slipped out of the room.
The inn was quiet. Apparently the folk of Stegatum were abed. Ruiz reached Denklar’s apartments without meeting anyone, and retrieved his staff.
In the stable, Ruiz had a bit of difficulty saddling the assassin’s striderbeast, which apparently smelled the death on its former master’s clothes.
But finally he was safely away from Stegatum, riding over the waste under the moon, and the sensation of escape, of freedom, was as fine a feeling as he could remember.
Chapter 13
Ruiz Aw squatted in the meager shade of a mud wall, waiting for the parade. Sweat trickled over his body, though the sun was sinking fast.
The townspeople of Bidderum filled the street leading into the square. They kept a cautious distance from Ruiz, respecting his strangeness. To encourage them, he fixed a leer of affable madness on his face.
Ruiz felt the hard-packed clay of the street tremble under his feet. As the crowd condensed on the shady side of the street, he heard the gasp and whistle of steam thumpers, and he stood up in the properly respectful attitude. The parade toiled up the street toward him, moving at a slow dragstep that matched the rhythm of the thumpers. The thumpermen passed, three abreast, the huge steel feet of their machines slamming down on the street with jarring force, in perfect unison. As the thumper rebounded into the air, each man stepped forward smartly, wrestling his machine ahead, straining at the long handles braced to it. It was clearly no job for weaklings, for the men, all brawny specimens, sweated and struggled as they marched their smoking machines into the central square. In earlier times the thumpermen would have carried great balks of timber to shake the earth. Progress, Ruiz thought, and chuckled.
Behind them came several dozen musicians in the traditional Pharaonic mourning garb, which consisted of masses of thorny shrubs bound to the torso with leather straps. Ruiz saw that they were of all ages and sexes, and that many exhibited entertaining deformities. All held eccentric musical instruments in their hands, but marched in silence. It was an artistic and well-balanced group, and the thorns were cinched in so that the blood ran in thin striations down each lean dusty body, an effect which indicated a first-class production budget. Dancing about the perimeter of the orchestra was a cadre of clowns, jugglers, minor mages, streamer tossers, and glitter flingers.
The last mourner, a much-scarred ancient with a particularly large and uncomfortable collection of thornbushes, preceded the steam engine that drew the stage. This engine was in the shape of a scarab, plated with damascened steel and turning man-high spiked driver wheels.
The stage it pulled was skirted with flashing metal-thread tapestries, showing scenes from the Pharaohan mythos. Mounted on a central platform was a grand gilded sarcophagus, carved with various beasts, demons, and the several Pharaohan gods of redemption and resurrection. On the four corners of the stage stood the members of the phoenix troupe. Each held a ritual pose, as still as the jounce and sway of the stage would allow. Three were older men in the fanciful costumes of senior conjurors, and one was a young woman of great beauty. She had the pale olive skin and fine coppery-black hair of the Pharaohan nobility, and wore the linen robe of the intended phoenix. As the stage jerked past she looked directly at Ruiz Aw, but then her gaze swept past, impersonal and unseeing.
He found that he had dropped his lunatic grin, just for a moment.
Behind the stage trudged three fat doctors, there to certify the death. They wore over their shoulders the tanned hides of large arroyo lizards, with skull and toothy upper jaw worn as hats. This symbolized the chancy nature of their calling, though Ruiz supposed that the costume was also a gesture of professional respect. The lizards provided many patients.
Ruiz Aw bent his head and stared at his dirty toes. The datasoak had given him the outline of what was to follow. Reluctantly, he joined the crowd filtering into the square.
Nisa, former favored daughter of the King, concentrated on her balance as the stage jolted toward the Place of Artful Anguish, willing all other thoughts away, pushing her mind into a safe golden corner, feeling nothing but the throb of life in her veins. The drug made it easier; she remembered the way the philterer had made it for her, stirring the fine red granules into the pale wine. He’d handed the goblet to her with an air of ceremony, and in his faded old eyes she’d read both envy and compassion.
Since that moment, she had only broken bits of memory, like the dreams or nightmares of a restless sleeper.
…The gowners, washing her with sweet oils, while she stood, passive, arms lifted, eyes closed, feeling their subtle touch on her body, caressing, teasing.
…Flomel, helping her to mount the stage, dark eyes burning in his narrow face. He pulled her toward her station as if she floated above the scarred wood of the stage. “You will be magnificent!” Flomel whispered to her fiercely, holding her face in his long clever fingers.
…The heat, the dust, the smell of the people in the narrow streets of Bidderum, the stench of refuse from the alley mouths. She breathed it all in, as if it were fine perfume, filling herself with sensation one last time.
Just before the stage rumbled into Bidderum’s central square, she caught sight of an extraordinary figure in the crowd that lined the gate. He was garbed in the fantastic rags of a snake oil peddler, as tall as if he carried noble blood, with a face like a daybat, sharp and imperious. He was so unexpected a sight that she was briefly shocked from the grip of the drug. Her eyes looked into his for a moment, and his glance reminded her of the mirrored hall of her father’s palace, where Nisa could look into the polished metal and see herself growing smaller with each new reflection. His eyes were hard as glass, but just for a moment they softened.
She allowed her gaze to float away. Were she not promised to Expiation, were she at home in her father’s palace, she would probably send her guards for the strange casteless man, and so would have yet another folly to Expiate. Then the drug pulled her under again, and she thought no more.
The square of Bidderum was broad and level, surrounded by earthen walls that gave increasing shade as the sun dropped toward the west. Ruiz elbowed his way through the press, ignoring the muttered curses that followed his progress, until he reached a low buttress that provided an excellent vantage. He unceremoniously displaced a group of urchins who were already established there, swinging his staff cheerfully until they fled, cursing him. He hitched up his rags and settled back on his heels to wait for the opening act.
To his left a stocky woman, wearing the clay-spattered apron of a potter, talked with her neighbor, an ancient with the tattoos of a scribe. “Mark my words,” she said, speaking loudly into the ear of the scribe, “this is an unhealthy sort of entertainment. Things were different in your day, eh?”