Here’s a cow that gives milk, and a pig that’s for ham
Here’s a cur and a goat and a lamb;
Here’s a horse tall and proud, and a well-trained old hawk,
But the thing you should see is this excellent cock!”
“Where could you possibly have learned that?” shouted Chains. Calo broke up in a fit of giggles, but Galdo picked up the song with a deadpan expression on his face:
“Oh, some cocks rise early and some cocks stand tall,
But the cock now in question works hardest of all!
And they say hard’s a virtue, in a cock’s line of work
So what say you, lovely, will you give it a—”
There was the unmistakable echoing slam of the burrow’s secret entrance, in the Elderglass-lined tunnel beside the kitchen, being thrown shut by someone who didn’t care that they were overheard. Chains rolled to his feet. Calo and Galdo ran behind him, putting themselves in easy reach of the kitchen’s knives. Locke stood up on his chair, arithmetic slate held up like a shield.
The instant he saw who it was coming around the corner, the slate slipped from his fingers and clattered against the floor.
“My dear,” cried Chains, “you’ve come back to us early!”
She was, if anything, taller even than Locke remembered, and her hair was well-dyed a uniform shade of light brown. But it washer. It was undeniably Beth.
3
“YOU CAN’T be here,” said Locke. “You’re dead!”
“I certainly can be here. I live here.” Beth dropped the brown leather bag she was carrying and unbound her hair, letting it fall to her shoulders. “Who might you be?”
“I … um … you don’t know?”
“Should I?”
Locke’s astonishment merged with a sour disappointment. While the gears of his mind turned furiously to conjure a reply, she studied him. Her eyes widened.
“Oh, gods. The Lamora boy, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Chains.
“Bought him as well, have you?”
“I’ve paid more for some of my lunches, but yes, I’ve taken him from your old master.” Chains ruffled Beth’s hair with fatherly affection, and she kissed the back of hand.
“But you were dead,” insisted Locke. “They said you’d drowned!”
“Yeah,” she said, mildly.
“But why?”
“Our Sabetha has a complicated past,” said Chains. “When I took her out of Shades’ Hill, I arranged a bit of theater to cover the trail.”
Beth. Sabetha. They’d mentioned Sabethaat least a dozen times since he’d come to live here. Locke suddenly felt like an idiot for not connecting the two names before … but then, he’d thought she was dead, hadn’t he? Beneath his astonishment, his embarrassment, his frustration, a warmth was rising in the pit of his stomach. Beth was alive … and she lived here!
“Well, where have … where did you go?” Locke asked.
“For training,” said Sabetha.
“And how was it?” asked Chains.
“Mistress Sibella said that I wasn’t as vulgar and clumsy as most of the Camorri she teaches.”
“So you … are, um—,” said Locke.
“High praise, coming from that gilded prune,” said Chains, ignoring Locke. “Let’s see if she was on the mark. Galdo, take Sabetha’s side for a four-step. Complar entant.”
“Must I?”
“Good question. Must I continue feeding you?”
Galdo hurried out from behind Chains and gave Sabetha a bow so exaggerated his nose nearly brushed the floor. “Enchanted, demoiselle. May I beg the pleasure of a dance? My patron won’t feed me anymore if I don’t pretend to enjoy this crap.”
“What a bold little monkey you are,” said the girl. The two of them moved into the widest clear area of the room, between the table and the counters.
“Calo,” said Chains, “if you would.”
“Yes, yes, I have it.” Calo fiddled with his harp for a moment before he began to pluck out a fast, rhythmic tune, more complex than the ditties he’d been playing before.
Galdo and Sabetha moved in unison, slowly at first but gaining confidence and speed as the tune went on. Locke watched, baffled but fascinated, as they danced in a manner that was more controlled than anything he’d ever seen in a tavern or a back alley. The key to the dance seemed to be that they would strike the ground with their heels forcefully, four taps between each major movement of the arms. They joined hands, twirled, unjoined, switched places, and all the while kept up a near-perfect rhythm with their feet.
“It’s popular with the swells,” said Chains, and Locke realized he was speaking for his benefit. “All the dancers form a circle, and the dancing master calls out partners. The chosen couple dances in the main, in the center of everything, and if they screw it up, well … penalties. Teasing. Romantic frustration, I would imagine.”
Locke was only half-listening, his eyes and thoughts lost in the dance. In Galdo he recognized the nervous quickness of a fellow orphan, the grace born of need that separated the living in Shades’ Hill from the likes of No-Teeth. Yet Sabetha had that and something more; not just speed but fluidity. Her knees and elbows seemed to vanish as she danced, and to Locke’s eyes she became all curves, whirls, effortless circles. Her cheeks turned red with exertion, and the golden glow of the chandelier lightened her brown hair until Locke, hypnotized, could almost imagine it red as well .…
Chains clapped three times, ending the dance if not Locke’s spell. If Sabetha knew she was being stared at she was either too polite or too disdainful to stare back.
“I can see that’s a fountain of gold I didn’t shit out in vain,” said Chains. “Well done, girl. Even having Galdo for a partner didn’t seem to hold you back.”
“Does it ever?” Sabetha smiled, still acting as though Locke wasn’t in the room, and drifted back toward the table where Galdo and Chains had been playing their game. She glanced over the board for a few seconds, then said, “You’re doomed, Sanza.”
“In a donkey’s dick I am!”
“Actually, I’ve got him in three moves,” said Chains, settling back down into his chair with a smile. “But I was going to spin it out for a while longer.”
While Galdo fretted over his position on the board, he and Calo and Sabetha fell into an animated conversation with Chains on subjects of which Locke was ignorant—dances, noble customs, people he’d never heard of, cities that were only names to him. Chains grew more and more boisterous until, after a few minutes, he gestured to Calo.
“Fetch us down something sweet,” he said. “We’ll have a toast to Sabetha’s return.”
“Lashani Black Sherry? I’ve always wanted to try it.” Calo opened a cabinet and carefully withdrew a greenish glass bottle that was full of something ink-dark. “Gods, it looks so disgusting!”
“Spoken like the midwife who delivered the pair of you,” said Chains. “Bring glasses for all of us, and for the toasting.”
The four children gathered around the table while Chains arranged the glasses and opened the bottle. Locke strategically placed the Sanzas between himself and Sabetha, giving him a better angle to continue staring at her. Chains then filled a glass to the brim with the sherry, which rippled black and gold in the chandelier light.
“This glass for the patron and protector, the Crooked Warden, our Father of Necessary Pretexts.” Chains carefully pushed the glass aside from the others. “Tonight he gives us the return of our friend, his servant Sabetha.” Chains raised his left hand to his lips and blew into his palm. “My words. My breath. These things bind my promise. A hundred gold pieces, duly stolen from honest men and women, to be cast into the sea in the dark of the Orphan’s Moon. We are grateful for Sabetha’s safety.”
The Orphan’s Moon, Locke knew, came once a year, in late winter, when the world’s largest two moons were in their dark phases together. At the Midsummer-mark, commoners who knew their dates of birth legally turned a year older. The Orphan’s Moon meant the same thing for those, like him, whose precise ages were mysteries.
Now Chains filled glasses and passed them out. Locke was surprised to see that while the other children received quarter-glasses of the alarmingly dark sherry, his own was mostly full. Chains grinned at him and raised his glass.