Smiler's Fair: Book I of The Hollow Gods Read online

  ‘And I was lucky that you did, you’re right. It’s been somewhat of a drought for me this past year. The last time I had so much fun was on a visit to Fell View, where a very pretty young serving boy seemed happy to spread his legs for a dashing young shipborn lord.’

  He smiled, and Eric tried not to frown. So there’d been others before him, so what? He’d wager they didn’t know how to please a fellow the way he did. And there was something special between him and Lahiru; he was sure the other man sensed it too. He’d known it the first time their eyes had met across Winelake Square, and the certainty hardened with every day Lahiru returned to him. Him and not Kenric, no matter how much the other boy had fluttered his lashes.

  Lahiru rolled over, exposing his perfect flank to Eric. His expression was suddenly melancholy and Eric didn’t know if it was the thought of his wife or just the low mood that often plagued a man right after he’d spent himself.

  ‘How does a lovely young thing like you end up in a place like this, making his living on his back?’ Lahiru muttered.

  Eric grinned, to still be called young when he was sixteen now and other clients had begun to complain about the stubble beneath his rouge. But Lahiru turned to look at him, and Eric understood that his lover really did want an answer to the question.

  ‘Well, I was born over the mountains and up in the north – in the Moon Forest what you probably ain’t never seen. It’s all right there, I suppose. But I was born Jorlith, and my mum had popped out ten before me and half of them already starving. I reckon she prayed I’d be born with the hawk mark, so I’d be the Hunter’s problem, but no such luck.’

  ‘The hawk mark?’

  Eric shrugged. ‘It don’t matter. Point is, I wasn’t wanted and they wanted me even less when they saw I’d never be a fighter. Among the Moon Forest folk, that’s how the Jorlith make their living, from the wergeld for those they kill. So my dad, he took me by the hand and down to the nearest family of churls what needed cheap labour for the fields. I suppose you’d call them landborn – farmers, anyway, but rich enough to buy a new son what everyone knows will just be a servant to ’em. That’s the folk’s way. I don’t know what price my dad got for me, but it can’t have been much ’cause he sold my sister not two months after.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ Lahiru said, his face grave. ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Seven winters. Well, the churls, they put me to work straight away, but I wasn’t no better at farming than I’d been at fighting. And the other children, they knew I was a molly even when I didn’t know it myself. If I wasn’t stooped and sore from the planting and weeding I was black and blue from the beatings.’

  ‘I know how that feels. Our kind aren’t welcome in Ashanesland, either. I’ve hidden what I am my entire life.’

  ‘But it ain’t the same. Your Lord Lust, I’ve heard he don’t approve of sticking your cock anywhere it can’t make babies. You reckon being a molly makes you less of a man. My people say it’s the opposite. The folk think men are wicked, see – filled with evil just waiting to spill out. So a man goes with a woman and she cools down the fire inside him. But two men together, that’s a dangerous thing.’

  ‘I see,’ Lahiru said, though Eric wasn’t sure he did.

  ‘Anyway, I used to dream that one day a Janggok raider would come and carry me away to be his knife woman. Course, that was before I knew what the tribes do to turn boys into girls. And when I was getting towards my thirteenth winter and my cock started to stir I thought, ‘You know what, young Eric? You ain’t much of a fighter and you ain’t much of a farmer and maybe you ain’t no use to no one, but you deserve better than this.’ So I run away to the edge of the forest, where I heard Smiler’s Fair was stopped, and I joined right up.’

  ‘Twelve years old when you became a whore?’ Lahiru’s voice was thick with horror, and Eric slipped his arms around him.

  ‘Don’t you go pitying me – I landed on my feet. Turns out I got a knack for it. I didn’t take the first offer I got, even though I was hungry enough to eat my own hand by then. I took my time and asked around about what company I should join. If I’d been stupid I could have sold my bond to Smiler’s Mile and ended up fucked out by the time I was fifteen, sick with pox and hooked on bliss pills to make the pain go away. I seen it happen plenty of times. You was lucky you didn’t go for one of their boys. We say the dice on their standard’s on account of the gamble you take every time you dip your wick in their merchandise.

  ‘But Madam Aeronwen offered to buy me into the Fine Fellows, and I’ve already saved up nearly half of what I need to pay back my debt. It ain’t a bad life. At least I ain’t still grubbing in the dirt and married to some skirt who don’t understand why my cock stays soft for her. And I get to meet great lords like yourself, don’t I?’ He smiled to show he meant it and wasn’t just having a joke.

  Lahiru nodded, his expression suddenly closed off. ‘I suppose you’re right. And if you hadn’t come here, I would never have had the pleasure of your company.’

  ‘Exactly. Like they say, the sun shines after every storm.’

  Lahiru sighed and rolled from the bed to his feet.

  ‘Oh,’ Eric said. ‘You ain’t going already?’

  ‘I fear I must. We have guests this evening, my father-by-vow and his household, and I must prepare. I shouldn’t have come here at all, but –’ he smiled that bright smile ‘– how could I resist you?’ He pulled up his trousers and shrugged into his shiny blue jacket, which, unlike Kenric’s drapes, probably had come from the Eternal Empire.

  Eric sat up, splaying his legs to show everything he had. A boy used the weapons he had to hand. ‘You’ll be back tomorrow, though. You said you would.’

  ‘If Smiler’s Fair is still here then so shall I be. Do you know how much longer it’s likely to remain?’

  It wasn’t a subject Eric wanted to think about. ‘There’s no telling for sure, but we’ve been here near a month already. We’re bound to go soon.’

  ‘I mourn that day already. I shall be bereft without you.’

  Eric’s heart sped up and his mouth felt dry, but he’d never get a better chance to say it. ‘You don’t have to be. That pretty young servant boy what you had your way with – what if he was me? What if I worked in your home? You’re a lord, ain’t you? You must have a hundred people at your beck and call. Can’t I be one of ’em?’ He pouted his lips to remind Lahiru of what he’d done with them before. ‘I’d do whatever you asked.’

  The other man was silent for a long moment and Eric felt light with hope. Then Lahiru shook his head. ‘My wife may not be that bright, but she’s not that dim, either. Carrying on right under her nose would be far too great a risk. And a lord I may be, but a poor and powerless one without her father’s gold. No, it won’t do I’m afraid. I wish it could, but it won’t.’

  ‘No, course not. Stupid idea anyway.’ Eric realised that a tear was trembling at the corner of his eye and turned his head away.

  Lahiru had seen it, though. He grabbed Eric’s chin and lifted it to kiss him. ‘Don’t despair, beautiful. Perhaps we shall find another way. We still have tomorrow – and if we are lucky, the day after too.’

  ‘Yeah, here’s to tomorrow,’ Eric said, but Lahiru had already closed the door behind him.

  Marvan woke to see the glazed eye of a dead chicken staring back at him from his pillow. He yelped and Stalker, who had been sitting on his chest purring, hastily jumped down, offended that her gift hadn’t been better received.

  He groaned as he stretched and rose, the floor creaking beneath his feet. It always sounded on the point of collapse, and two storeys up it no doubt was, but he wouldn’t abandon his high room. Let the fair’s foolish visitors sleep off their beer on the lower floors. They’d been here nearly a month already and the worm men were bound to find them soon. The First Death would not be his own.

  Stalker had returned to wind round his legs, leaving ginger and black hairs on his white silk hose. Fell’s End, the home of hi
s childhood, had been overrun with dogs: his brothers’ hunting hounds and his mother’s pampered little pets. He’d despised them all. He hated how they’d show their bellies in craven submission whenever a voice was raised to them, and the shameless way they’d beg for scraps. He couldn’t respect an animal that so desperately needed to be loved. Cats were different, he’d discovered. Stalker did precisely as she liked and never once obeyed his commands. The gifts she brought him were for her own inscrutable reasons.

  The chicken, now he looked at it more closely, seemed to be Ned’s black and gold rooster, the one that woke the whole street with its crowing at sunrise every morning. He supposed he should take it to Ned but, old and scrawny though it was, it would make a decent soup, and his coin was running low. It always did towards the end of a pitch when no one had need of his mammoth’s services.

  He threw the bird on to the small bench he used for preparing his food, then walked to the chamber pot. His half-hearted erection wilted to let the piss come out and he breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t the gold to hire himself one of Lord Lust’s Girls and besides, he’d found his enthusiasm for the activity waning of late. He could barely keep himself hard with the thought of a woman these days, except when … Yes. Except then.

  When he was done, he tossed the contents of the pot out of the window and ran a comb through his tangled hair. He was dressed already, so that was it: ready for the evening.

  He’d been feeling it for a few days, the churning in his gut and the buzzing in his mind that seemed to come more frequently now: every few weeks where once the urgency had been separated by months, even years. Excess nervous energy, the apothecary had called it, and put leeches on him to suck it out. It hadn’t worked, of course. When did the old quack’s cures ever do what they promised? Marvan should have gone to the Worshippers instead. Their prayers might have proven equally useless, but at least had the virtue of being cheap.

  He thought about ignoring the feeling and heading over to see the King’s Men perform The Innocent and the Rake for a seventh time, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sit still for it. Or he could tend to his mammoth, which, after all, was his livelihood and guarantee of membership of the Drovers. But the boy he’d apprenticed looked after the great ugly thing well enough and it needn’t do anything but eat and rest until it was time for Smiler’s Fair to move on. No, the nervous energy needed working off and he knew just the place to do it. He pulled his good woollen coat from its hook, then opened his arms chest.

  The weapons glittered in their velvet nests. He ran a gentle finger along the blade of a Jorlith hand axe, but that wouldn’t be any use to him tonight. The sabre he’d had from a proud Ahn warrior lay in its jewelled scabbard and he smiled as a ruby winked up at him. He loved the feel of the blade, its speed and strength, and he felt a pang as he moved past it. The twin tridents were near the bottom, unused for many years.

  He drew them out and found that they fit in his hands as comfortably as ever. They had no blades to keep keen, but there was no rust on the metal of each half-foot-long central prong or the shorter outer guards. He twirled them experimentally, changing his grip to rest each prong along his arm so that the pommel could be used to stun. The movement was a little hesitant, but long years of practice couldn’t be entirely erased.

  Yes. He’d use these, his very first weapons, the ones he’d taken from his brother half a lifetime ago. He seated them in the loops of a leather belt, bound it round his waist and turned to inspect himself in a square of glass the merchant had sworn came from Mirror Town itself. No need to shave. He looked well enough, as well as a man with nose and chin so long and sharp could hope. He straightened his shaggy brown hair, spat on his finger to wipe away the crusted sleep beneath his eyes and opened the door.

  As he passed the second floor, he heard the scrabbling of claws across wood and guessed that one of Nae Kim’s rabbits had escaped again, perhaps searching for her latest brood, which was no doubt already in the tribesman’s stewpot. On the ground floor Ethelred’s goose honked a warning at him. It reared up to flap its strong brown wings, but it knew him well enough to let him pass, and then he was out on the street.

  The mud covered the top of his foot, watery and foul-smelling. When they’d first arrived the streets had been grassy, but that had soon been trampled away. Some of the Drovers had spread straw for better footing, until that too had sunk beneath the muck. Now there was no stopping the filthy tide.

  A turd floated towards him, barely visible in the moonlight, and he jumped aside to avoid it. Something unidentified crunched beneath his foot as he landed, probably the carcass of an animal. Smiler’s Fair was always welcome when it arrived – he’d known shiplords and elder mothers pay gold by the bucketload to tempt the fair and the trade it brought with it. But he wondered what they thought of their bargain when Smiler’s Fair had moved on and left only a vile, rubbish-filled swamp behind. Shit and piss and decaying meat, that’s what we leave them, he thought. But then again, that’s all anyone leaves behind when they go.

  It was quiet in the Drovers’ quarter where people only slept and ate. The tall wooden houses were mostly dark, their residents out tending their animals or spending their earnings. But he could hear the sounds of revelry coming from ahead and soon enough he passed the crossed whips that marked the end of the Drovers’ domain.

  Two Jorlith guards stood stiffly under the arches, their gold hair bleached by the moonlight to the same white as their faces. They lowered the weapons and nodded at Marvan when they recognised him, putting a mark against his name on the census.

  Beyond lay the territory of the Queen’s Men. Queen Kaur’s stern face flapped on banners to either side of the street. She looked disapproving, and who wouldn’t, at the debauchery being undertaken below her? The bars were so crowded their occupants spilled into the street, bringing gusts of laughter and an aura of barely controlled violence with them. There were acrobats to entertain the drinkers, songbird sellers, men masked like animals and women with their breasts bare and their bodies painted silver. There were cutpurses, too. The Queen’s Men was a haven for them, but the visitors didn’t know that and stood oblivious as their coin was cut from their waists while they gawped at the performers. Marvan put a firm hand over his own purse and moved on.

  He passed another two Jorlith guards and then the banners flapping above him showed a round breast squirting wine into a glass and he was in the Fine Fellows’ streets. As he passed the first of the knocking shops a man walked out into his path, shipborn to judge by his embroidered blue silks. He was still doing up the last buttons on his jacket but his expression was blank, as if the pleasures he’d left behind were already forgotten, or he was already contemplating the next vice he’d sample.

  Marvan’s destination, the Two Cocks, was next door. Gurpreet always contrived to place his tavern next to one of the many houses of ill-repute, explaining both its name and the quality of the custom that crowded it. The faded wooden sign, a mangy bird pecking at a man’s member, swayed in the breeze as Marvan elbowed aside the lollygaggers cramping the entranceway.

  The smell of cheap ale and cheaper gin wafted over him. ‘A small pint of beer, Jotti, and none of your barrel dregs,’ he shouted across to the barmaid, then pushed his way through to pick up the tankard.

  ‘Nothing but the best for you, Marvan, you know that,’ Jotti said.

  He pressed two clay anchors into her palm to ensure it remained true. When she smiled at him he saw that her plum lipstick had smeared on to her teeth. She’d caked powder on her face, turning the brown skin a dirty yellow, and stuck no fewer than three patches on it, but they did little to disguise the pox-marked skin beneath. She’d earned her membership in the Fine Fellows with her legs spread wide.

  He scanned the room, nodding greetings to the sellcocks and dollymops and cutpurses who caught his eye as they searched for a suitable cully among the visitors huddled at the tables. The visitors, in turn, eyed the local colour with a mixture of horror an
d excitement. The pair in the corner were obviously female. Their long hair had been piled up under their hoods and one of them had even painted on a false moustache, but there was no mistaking the womanly waists beneath their jackets. No doubt they were shipborn girls out for some excitement and their fathers would have their hides if they were caught. They’d probably thought it worth the risk. Smiler’s Fair might pass by only once in a person’s life, and how could anyone resist the lure?

  An old man sat alone at a table, already deep in his cups, his beard smeared with froth and his cheeks a feverish red. He was no use. The youth at the table beside him, however – but, no: he was bouncing a cheap dollymop on his knee and Marvan knew he’d soon be retreating somewhere private.

  At a table near the back, talking to one of the whores but not yet paired with her, was a young man who seemed just perfect: well-dressed, proud-faced and far enough into his cups to take the lure. Marvan slid into the seat opposite him. He smiled at the whore, a new Ashane girl he didn’t recognise with soft brown eyes not yet turned to hardness by her work. She smiled back, perhaps hoping for a double booking, but he shook his head and she slunk away to find fresh meat.

  The man turned to look at Marvan. His round face held round eyes that made him seem perpetually startled. ‘Do I know you?’ he asked, irritated.

  ‘Only you can answer that question,’ Marvan said.

  The man’s eyes widened even further. ‘By the Five – I do know you. That’s not a nose a man forgets in a hurry. Marvan of Fell’s End, am I right? Lord Parmvir’s youngest.’

  It wasn’t the response Marvan was expecting. ‘It is right,’ he said after a moment. ‘Or at least, it was. I’m simply Marvan, a Drover of Smiler’s Fair, these days.’

  ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’