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

  ‘I shouldn’t take offence at it. I’ve travelled a long way and met a lot of people.’

  ‘I’m Ishan.’ He paused, clearly expecting recognition.

  After a moment, it came. ‘Ishan. Ishan of Fellview, Lord Isuru’s nephew? But you’re a child!’ He remembered a tousle-headed boy with the same wide, startled eyes who’d often been a visitor to Fell’s End. Ishan and he had been friendly once, both overlooked and insignificant within their families. They’d sailed the reed-clogged marshes and talked of a future that, in the end, had been very different than they’d imagined – at least for Marvan. He’d joined Smiler’s Fair and left his past behind without a backward glance. But it seemed you could never entirely escape it. ‘I’m twenty-four now, Marvan, a man and soon to be Lord Ishan. I’m wed to the eldest daughter of old Lord Bayya of High Water Fastness. He has no male heirs and little chance of getting any, so I’m to inherit the shipfort and its lands. There’s no need for me to run off to live amongst whores and thieves.’ Ishan relaxed against the wall and smiled smugly.

  Marvan wondered for a moment if he should change his plans, but the child who’d been his friend was many years gone. He was as good as dead, killed to make way for this proud young lordling.

  Marvan felt a curious mixture of tension and relaxation. He leaned back in his chair and rested his long legs on the table. ‘No, indeed. You only visit such a place when the tedium of your life becomes too much for you.’

  ‘Tedium?’ Ishan’s lips thinned with displeasure. ‘Well, I suppose a third son’s existence might have been dull, especially in a backwater like Fell’s End. Nothing to do except impregnate the landborn and drink yourself into a stupor. Some of us have responsibilities, though.’ He fingered the gold embroidered anchors at the collars of his jacket.

  So, a thrust parried. But Marvan could already see the weakness in the other man’s defence. He was aware of a growing silence in the tavern as its regulars turned their attention to his conversation. They knew his game; they’d seen him play it before.

  ‘Naturally, you have responsibilities,’ he said to Ishan. ‘No doubt it’s to shirk them that you’ve come here.’

  ‘A hard-working man’s entitled to a break.’

  ‘So he is. And by the look of the conversation I interrupted between you and that charming young dollymop, you were planning on giving your wife a break this evening, as well. If I recall correctly, Lord Bayya’s daughter bore a striking resemblance to her father. The girl had a face like a pig and manners to match. But then it wasn’t her looks that got your father’s cock hard for the match, and I suppose all cats look grey in the dark. You do quench the lamps, don’t you?’ He eyed Ishan’s round face and slightly crooked teeth. ‘No doubt she also prefers it that way.’

  Ah – a hit. Ishan’s hands clenched and unclenched at his side. He stuttered for a moment before managing an indignant if unoriginal, ‘How dare you!’

  Almost there. Almost, but not quite. Marvan shrugged. ‘Perhaps during my years in this place I’ve forgotten how to varnish the truth until it shines more prettily. But as for your needs tonight, I recommend Beomia – she’s a healthy young thing. Or there’s Orson if you prefer the back door, and if I were married to your wife, that would certainly be my entrance of choice.’

  Ishan’s complexion darkened from beige to mauve as he rose to his feet. His chair fell backwards to clatter on the wooden floor. ‘That’s enough. Enough. You – you – I’ll kill you.’

  Marvan swung his feet down and leaned forward, arching a brow. ‘Are you challenging me?’

  Just for a second, Ishan hesitated. Then his hand fell to touch the hilt of one of his twin tridents. ‘Yes, curse you!’

  There were many indrawn breaths around the room and some laughter. Marvan stood and smiled. ‘Your challenge has been witnessed. Very well, then. Who am I to refuse a friend satisfaction?’

  The crowd followed them from the room to the street outside. The muck sucked at their boots and Ishan frowned. There’d be no fancy footwork here, no finesse. But Ishan was bigger than Marvan and that should give him an advantage. When they’d been boys, Ishan had excelled at duelling. Marvan felt a not-quite-pleasant chill of fear at the memory.

  A hand grasped his arm as he took position, and nerves taut with anticipation almost caused Marvan to lash out. But it was only Lucan, a thin-faced clerk of the fair, and Marvan lowered his weapons and smiled pleasantly. ‘Come to see all goes according to the rules, Lucan?’

  ‘Come to tell you to stop,’ the clerk whispered. ‘We’ve looked the other way before, Marvan, but this is a shipborn lord. Don’t be a fool.’

  Marvan stared at the hand on his arm until the other man removed it and took a nervous step back. ‘It’s all legal and above board: a challenge was issued. Am I to prove my cowardice by refusing it?’

  ‘You could prove your wisdom by apologising.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Lucan. If I were a wise man, why would I ever have come here?’

  Lucan frowned and shook his head, though he retreated. ‘Be careful, Marvan. There are some vices even Smiler’s Fair won’t accommodate.’

  Marvan understood the warning, but his gut was too tight with hunger to heed it. The street was busy, the full moon illuminating a ragged assemblage of the lowest Smiler’s Fair had to offer and the outsiders who came to use them. Passers-by stopped to stare at the two armed men, but the customers from The Two Cocks pushed them roughly aside, clearing a duelling space twenty paces long and nearly ten wide. A ring of interested faces surrounded it, eyes bright with the hope of blood.

  Marvan twirled his twin tridents, loosening his muscles. His heart was pounding and he felt something flowing through him, something that left him light-headed but alert, aware but dreaming. This moment. This feeling. It was the only time he ever felt alive.

  Opposite him, Ishan was moving his own twins in a series of intricate forms. It was both a warm-up and a warning: I am a formidable opponent. Fear could defeat a man before a weapon came anywhere near his flesh. All the shipborn men of Ashanesland learned to use the tridents and Marvan had noted the broken shape of Ishan’s cheekbone, probably the legacy of another duel. Perhaps his prowess with the twins was what had won his wealthy wife for him, when better-born men must have wooed her.

  Ishan stood straight and still now, waiting for the duel to be formally opened. Well, no need to disappoint him. Marvan nodded over at fat old Gurpreet, who’d waddled out of his bar to watch the excitement.

  ‘All right then, you sorry buggers,’ Gurpreet said. ‘Weapons at the ready. Let’s get this over with so I can get back to selling beer.’

  Ishan frowned, clearly expecting a more formal pronouncement. After a moment, when it didn’t come, he said, ‘I stand ready before the prow gods of my people.’

  ‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ Marvan said. ‘Let’s give the mob their entertainment.’

  The mud squelched beneath their boots as they circled each other. Marvan shut the crowd out of his mind. They were just a wall to encircle the field of battle.

  When Ishan struck it was swift and hard. The only warning came from his wide eyes, which narrowed a moment before he moved. He’d twisted the twins so that the prongs ran parallel to his arms and the pommel added weight to the fist he swung towards Marvan’s cheek.

  Marvan’s instinct was to dance back. He lost a crucial moment as he fought it, knowing the mud would hold him fast, and when he finally ducked it was too late and the pommel powered into his temple. His vision greyed for a moment before the pain bloomed inside his head. He had no time to decide on his next move; his body did it for him, rolling through the muck and bringing him to his feet behind Ishan’s back.

  He couldn’t take advantage of the position. Ishan spun to face him, smiling mockingly at the muck now covering Marvan and the blood trickling down one side of his face. ‘Apologise abjectly enough and I might just end this while you’re still conscious,’

  Marvan managed a smirk, though his whole f
ace ached. ‘A more skilled man would have killed me. But you seem to have misunderstood. This won’t end until one of us is dead.’

  Ishan’s moment of shock gave Marvan his opening. All the old training came back to him as he thrust forward, the trident’s point flung towards Ishan’s chest by the weight of his body. Ishan saw the danger and twisted aside, just fast enough to spare his heart, but he couldn’t avoid the blow entirely. A trident’s power is in its point. It met Ishan’s skin and parted it easily, skimming a rib before sinking into the lung beneath.

  The crowd shouted and some cheered but Marvan heard boos, too. They’d wanted a spectacle and the fight was ending almost as soon as it had begun.

  Ishan’s momentum pulled the trident free and a gout of blood sprayed after it. He gasped and staggered back, his face pale. Marvan understood the disbelief in his expression. The trident was a weapon meant to injure, to disarm and to defend. That was why the shipborn used it in their duels. Their noble lives were too valuable to waste on petty squabbles. But a trident could kill. And tonight it would.

  Ishan staggered back a step. He must have known that he was in trouble. The blood flowed freely from the puncture in his chest. Each breath wheezed out of him and a red froth was beginning to form on his lips He didn’t give up, though. Marvan supposed that was admirable. Slower than before, but still deadly quick, Ishan lunged forward – point-first this time, aiming for his own killing blow. It struck, but only a glancing impact, a scrape against Marvan’s ribs that hurt but didn’t wound.

  Weakened, Ishan was no longer a danger. Now Marvan could give the crowd their show. He reversed the tridents in his hands and circled his opponent. Ishan stumbled round to keep him in sight. When Marvan darted forward to crash a metal-filled fist into his stomach, he did nothing to evade the blow.

  Ishan bent, coughing, and a trickle of blood fell from his mouth to the darker mud below. Marvan took the opportunity to move behind him, and aimed a kick for his buttocks. The crowd roared as Ishan fell face-first into the muck. He struggled to rise as Marvan watched, finally dragging himself to his knees. He’d lost one of his twins and the other dangled limply from his right hand.

  The fight was suddenly boring. Marvan’s chest felt tight with the need to end it, the need to complete the act he’d been yearning towards for days. He kicked out again, knocking the other man on to his back. Ishan’s face was empty of arrogance. His expression held only fear now.

  Marvan licked his lips as he dropped to his knees beside Ishan, delaying the moment, savouring it. Ishan’s hair felt coarse against his fingers as he grabbed a fistful and pulled back, exposing his vulnerable neck. The other man’s eyes rolled wildly, trying to follow Marvan’s hand and the trident that he moved to press against the apple of his throat.

  ‘You show him, Marvan,’ someone shouted. It was meaningless. This wasn’t about anyone but him and Ishan.

  ‘I yield,’ Ishan croaked. He was sobbing, the tears mingling with and smearing the other filth on his face. ‘I yield. You’re right, I do take my wife from behind. She is a sow!’

  ‘Is she?’ Marvan said. ‘I barely remember her.’

  The metal hilt had warmed in his hand. It was a part of him, an extension of his own arm. He raised the spike above the other man’s throat and then brought it down. The point pierced the thin skin and the thick tube of Ishan’s windpipe, cleaving clear through the tendons and arteries of his neck until it hit the bones of his spine, where it stuck fast. But it had done its job. Blood spurted out on to Marvan’s face and across bystanders who’d leaned too close to watch the end. The smell of it was rich and coppery, stronger even than the stench of shit.

  Marvan watched the last breath shudder out of his childhood friend with a surge of pleasure. As Ishan’s life drained away, a beautiful peace filled Marvan. It was done. He closed his eyes, enjoying the quiet in his mind. When he opened them he saw that Lucan was watching him, an expression of disgust on his face.

  If only the feeling would last. If only it ever lasted.

  Eric woke alone at dawn. There’d been no john willing to pay fifteen glass feathers to spend the whole night with him and he stretched luxuriously, enjoying the temporary solitude. It was very quiet, though. Too quiet, and there was a heaviness in the air that made him twitchy, like an animal growing restless at the approach of a storm. His stomach clenched as he rolled from the bed and inspected himself in the mirror above the dresser.

  His make-up had rubbed away in the night, exposing the pale face beneath the gold hair. Awful. His eyes looked dull, and was that a line beside his mouth? No wonder no one had wanted him for the whole night.

  No wonder Lahiru hadn’t stayed.

  He applied his new make-up carefully, lining his eyes to make them seem larger and rubbing colour on their lids to bring out their blue and rouge on his cheeks to highlight the bones. When he was dressed in his fine linen shirt and the silver chain that had been a gift from a besotted old man, he looked almost all right, almost like a boy someone might lose his heart to.

  The morning muster for the Fine Fellows took place in Gamblers’ Square. Its entrance led between the Nine Times Nine and the Lucky Knot, whose owners had been fast enough to secure themselves the prime location. Both establishments sprawled out on to the muddy ground. Tables tipped at angles where dead-eyed men tossed dice that had betrayed them all night long but might, just might come good for them on the next roll. The members of the company crowded around them. They leaned against the tables and upset the games, uncaring as they peered up towards the platform where the censor would take the muster.

  Eric found himself sandwiched between Mad Mercy, one of the whores from Madam Sin’s rival house, and a stranger with bruised eyes and a stubbled face who seemed barely conscious. And there was the censor now, his jowls wobbling beneath florid cheeks.

  It would be today, Eric felt it in his gut. The names started being called and there was an ‘Aye, present’ or ‘Still abed’ for each, but he knew it couldn’t last. When they came to Ishan of High Water Fastness, a moment’s silence seemed to confirm his fears and then a laughing voice piped up ‘No secret there, mates. Marvan of the Drovers done for that one’ and Eric gasped in relief. But three names later another silence fell, and this time no one filled it.

  ‘Ravi son of Ravith of Deep Lake village,’ the censor said again. ‘Not seen? Not known?’

  ‘I kept him company last night.’ The young girl blushed when the crowd turned to look at her. ‘But the bugger snored like a rockfall so I told him he could sleep on the floor.’

  ‘And he wasn’t there when you woke?’ the censor asked.

  She shook her head and a murmur travelled through the crowd: ‘Dead, dead, dead.’

  ‘The First Death!’ the censor confirmed. ‘The soil has spoken – we’ve hidden it from the sun too long and the worm men have found us. Smiler’s Fair must move again.’ The cry was repeated down side streets and along alleys to quarters beyond theirs, so that soon the whole fair would know.

  Eric stood frozen while everyone around him rushed into motion. Only the gamblers at their tables remained still, watching in confusion as figures climbed the walls of the building in which they’d spent their night and began to dismantle it. Eric thought it was like watching ants at work on a leaf. They swarmed over the wood, little things tearing apart something much larger than themselves.

  His heart felt pulled apart too. Lahiru never came to him before noon. Smiler’s Fair would be in pieces by then, maybe even gone. No one wanted to remain long on ground that had seen the First Death. Eric should already be breaking down Madam Aeronwen’s establishment, helping to load it into their travel wagons, or helping the Drovers feed and hitch the ice mammoths that would draw them somewhere new, far away from Lahiru.

  He didn’t help; he just watched. He saw the panels of the Last Luck pulled apart and stacked on the backs of wagons higgledy-piggledy so that some showed their decaying outer surface and others the brightly painted interior
, tessellations of dice and cards. The Aethelstan’s Rest was so small there was no need to pull it apart. George, its hulking doorman, rolled the wheels to each of its corners so that they could be attached to the axles and tightened. Then four brown horses were brought up and the tavern was departing Gamblers’ Square. It joined the procession of buildings, whole and broken, already heading down the valley and away.

  It was so fast. They’d each done it a hundred times before. Smiler’s Fair moved on and they with it; it was the way of things. Gamblers’ Square was soon a muddy blank with only a few stragglers left in it, knee-deep in the muck. Madam Aeronwen’s had gone already and Eric would need to run to catch up. Smiler’s Fair didn’t wait. He had to go.

  But they were heading for the plains. The tribes didn’t have much use for a boy like him. The last time they’d passed through the lands of the Four Together, there’d been so little work for him that Madam Aeronwen had lent his bond to the Merry Cooks. And this time there’d be Kenric to lure away what trade there was.

  He knew where Lahiru’s shipfort was. The Ashaneman hadn’t told Eric himself, but it had been easy enough to find out. Eric could go there instead, to Smallwood. He pictured it: he’d ride the bridge across the lake to the gates and they’d be opened for him before he got to them. Lahiru would have seen him coming and rushed down to greet him. He’d fling his arms round Eric in full view of all his men, then draw him inside the shipfort and tell him that this was his home now.

  You’re such a dreamer, my Eric, Madam Aeronwen would say to him. When will you learn to live in the waking world? But he liked his dreams better. And Lahiru did love him, he was sure of it. He simply lacked the courage to act. Well, Eric would act for him. He’d be brave enough to find happiness for both of them.

  Smallwood lay to the west. Eric turned his back on the sun and began to walk.

  5

  The mountain lion was hungry enough to be desperate, but not so weak it couldn’t kill Krish if it caught him. The sky was the same grey as the rocks on which it crouched, the sparse grass shrivelled, and the world seemed leached of all colour except the hunter’s yellow fur and fierce golden eyes. The animal was barely fifty feet away, its gaze flicking between him and the herd. It had approached the goats from downwind, and they had yet to smell their stalker. Oblivious to their danger, they must make the more tempting target, but Krish couldn’t let them be taken. His da would be furious.