CHAPTER 11: Handfuls of Straw
It didn’t take long for Jela to talk Jazul into leaving with her. Jazul had apparently hired a carriage for the evening, and he seemed ready to set out for a full night of celebration. Aiyan peeked out and watched them go, the stiffness in his shoulders loosening visibly after they had gone the length of the street and turned the corner.
After seeing him dance with the princess, half the aristocrats wanted to corral Aiyan and find out who he was and how he knew the princess. He had to keep on the move to avoid conversation until at last Aerlyn sequestered herself at a table behind a barrier of flowers and called him over to sit with her.
Kyric busied himself with sampling the marvelous chilled delicacies, and with watching the couples who danced, trying to memorize some of the steps without going through the clumsy motions. All this time Aiyan and Aerlyn spoke in low tones, declining food and drink, often smiling, sometimes animated, leaning closer.
Kyric continued to watch for the return of Vaust or Morae, but they never came back. At length, Senator Lekon bulled his way to Aerlyn’s table and forced Aiyan to shake hands with him, engaging him for a minute or two. Shortly after Lekon walked away he scribbled a note to an aid, who left at once. Aiyan excused himself and sought out Kyric.
“I just now thought of something they might try,” he said, shaking his head as if to clear it. “My eyes are so full of stardust that I’m not thinking clearly.”
Kyric tried not to smile. “So you’re taken with her. What of it? It’s nice.”
Aiyan cleared his throat. “Anyway, it’s possible that Morae tipped Lekon as to my identity and he has now sent for the household cavalry to arrest me as soon as we walk out.”
“What about Morae and Vaust?”
“I think they’re already out there waiting for us, but we should go now anyway. I’ve done more here than I dared to dream.”
When Kyric gave him a knowing look Aiyan returned it and asked him, “Can you ride a horse?”
“If I have to.”
“Good. We’re going riding with Aerlyn tomorrow.”
Kyric couldn’t contain himself. “So it’s first names now?”
Mumbling something unintelligible, Aiyan led him to the waiters’ entrance near the orchestra platform and peered out. “We’ll go quickly,” he said. “Past the stores tent to those crates stacked against the fence, then over and into the crowd. Keep your head down and keep up with me.”
“Just don’t run like you did before.”
Aiyan shook his head. “No need for the gait of the wind this time.”
“Is that another weird that one may learn?”
“Yes,” he said absentmindedly as he carefully scanned the fenced area. “It’s not as hard as it looks.”
With a nod from Aiyan, they crossed to the fence in a quick trot and over into a dark space behind a row of empty booths. “We didn’t get shot coming out,” said Aiyan. “So far so good.”
A commoner’s procession, a line of men and women dressed in outrageous imitations of finery, some approaching clownish proportions, was moving past the booths. A handful of musicians led the way, and most everyone in the line sang along with them.
Aiyan took Kyric’s sleeve and led him around the booths and into the procession. “We don’t look so out of place in this line,” he said. “Let’s see where it goes.”
The line snaked down the avenues of the fair, past fire dancers, jugglers, and booths with bright awnings serving fried sweet-cakes and candied apples and all manner of finger food. Jovial fellows hawked bottled wine from the backs of donkey carts. Folks with children gathered along the path when they saw the procession coming, and the parading ladies threw hard candy and paper dolls to them, while the imitation lords flung handfuls of wooden coins into the air. Even the adults scrambled to catch these, and when Kyric managed to grab one he found it was merely inscribed with the words ‘good luck’ on one side. He tucked it into his sash, hoping that it was so.
The tall torches along the way cast flickering patterns into the moon shadows. The line moved along hesitantly, passing a small bonfire where pairs of sweethearts stood across from each other and the girls tossed wreaths to their boyfriends through the flames. Kyric had seen this in the country villages at midsummer — he who dropped his sweetheart’s wreath faced an unhappy season.
“I have that feeling on the back of my neck,” Aiyan said, looking back and all around, peering through gaps in the crowd. “I don’t see either of them,” he said, “but I can’t imagine Morae simply letting us go. Let’s take a run and see if that draws anyone out.”
They broke from the procession and into the open, dashing across a darkened green where boys lashed straw men to old wagon wheels, setting them aflame and rolling them through the night with short poles. The straw men crackled and the flames purred as the burning wheels rolled by, and Aiyan cut towards a large tent where two women were selling straw dolls at a brisk pace. With midnight quickly approaching, everyone would soon be tearing straw men to pieces. Beyond, in the shadow of a lonely elm, lay some wagons waiting to be loaded with empty barrels.
Aiyan stopped there, drawing his little pistol and crouching behind the barrels. He cocked the weapon. Kyric drew one of his own, the metal strangely cool in the warmth of the night. His hand shook a bit. A week ago he had been walking to the Games of Aeva. How had it come to this?
Aiyan raised his pistol, ready for anyone coming around the tent, and waited. And waited. At length an old man appeared and headed to the tree to relieve himself.
“If we’re being followed, it’s by someone very good,” Aiyan said softly. “Probably Morae himself. If he wanted to kill me I think he would have taken his shot when we were in that line. But it’s hard to know.”
They were near the center of the fairgrounds, and there seemed to be a slow migration of folk towards a huge bonfire there. Aiyan and Kyric drifted that way with a loose-knit group, Aiyan watching behind them, almost walking backward. A low platform stood near the great fire, and hundreds pressed together there to hear a bearded poet in academic robes who stood in front of a green curtain and shouted his words, gesturing wildly.
Aiyan pushed into the crowd. Everyone was leaning toward the stage in anticipation.
“— as darkness bleeds from my heart,” the poet bellowed, “and my eyes are washed clear, Brother Sun comes ever near.” On the end of a slender pole, a large yellow ball rose above the curtain.
“Don’t stand so tall,” Aiyan said to Kyric as they picked their way to the other side of the audience.
The poet shouted even louder. “Strong in life is he. Death itself will flee.” Through a slit in the curtain an enormous man of straw was thrust, dressed all in black. This brought a sharp cry from the audience. It took both hands for the poet to hold it up. The crowd raised their arms chanting, “Carry out death! Carry out death!”
The poet stood there, expecting midnight to come at any moment. He temporized. “Tonight is Solstice Eve, the night we carry out death. And when we feed the fire with the body of death we cast out our bad luck, and Brother Sun smiles upon our fields — “
At that moment a distant bell began to strike the midnight hour, and audience cried out as the poet cut short his improvisation and threw the straw man into crowd. They fell upon it like a pack of jackals, tearing into it with their bare hands as firecrackers began to pop all around them and across the fairgrounds.
Everyone rushed forward into a melee of reaching arms and handfuls of straw, and when a straw arm came flying out of the center there was another rush and suddenly Kyric and Aiyan stood in an open space. Fifty paces away, where the edge of the audience had been, stood Kleon Morae.
Aiyan and Morae saw one another, drew and readied pistols before Kyric could take one step, Morae dropping to one knee and Aiyan sliding to the side as they fired at nearly the same instant. A lock from Morae’s wig flew away, and Aiyan had a new hole in his co
llar, but neither man was hurt, nor were any bystanders hit. Amid the flurry of straw and firecrackers, no one seemed to even notice.
A straw leg was flung backward from the throng and the crowd surged back, coming between Aiyan and Morae. Kyric managed to get both pistols out. Aiyan drew his sword, and holding it low began to circle the crowd, but everyone quickly got their handful of straw and ran to the fire with it.
Morae was still there, a sabre in his hand, and far beyond in the shadow of a tent, stood Stefin Vaust drawing a bow.
“Aiyan!” Kyric called. “Next to the tent.”
“I see him.” Aiyan said, coming to a halt and raising his sword as if to strike.
It seemed a very long shot for a pocket pistol, but Kyric took careful aim at Vaust. Morae started forward. Two figures were passing behind Vaust, and Kyric couldn’t risk hitting them. He held his fire. Vaust loosed his arrow. Aiyan cut sharply and the two halves of the arrow spun lazily in the air as they fell somewhere behind him. Kyric pointed his pistols at Morae and he stopped short.
A few late-arriving girls, running to join in on the grab for straw, nearly ran into Morae, one of them screaming at the sight of his bared sword. A head turned, then another. Morae backed away, sheathing his sabre. Vaust nocked another arrow but didn’t draw back.
Aiyan backed away as well. “Get behind me,” he said to Kyric. The crowd began to disperse as they moved away.
“Morae’s role as gentleman financier is working against him — he can’t afford to be recognized sword fighting in the middle of the night. But if he didn’t have Vaust backing him, I wouldn’t give him a choice.”
More people drifted into their wake. As soon as they lost sight of Morae and Vaust, Aiyan sheathed his sword and turned saying, “Now we run again.”
They ran between bonfires and past dancing couples all the way to the far corner of the fairgrounds. A few cabriolets sat waiting across the street, and Aiyan ran to the nearest one calling, “Are you free, cabbie?” When the man nodded Aiyan tossed him a half-ducat as they climbed in and said, “To the river if you please, and hurry. We are pursued by a woman scorned.”
The cabbie’s face brightened when he saw the size of the coin, and he urged his horse to a fast walk. “’Fraid this is quick as it goes on Solstice Eve,” he said.
They weaved down to the avenue toward the river, the cabbie dodging foot traffic and cursing at those who got in the way, Aiyan looking behind the whole time. Kyric said to Aiyan, “How do you have so much coin all of a sudden? You even paid the bill at dinner last night.”
“I wagered on you at the games.” He continued looking behind them.
“You took money from honest men, knowing we were cheating?”
Aiyan glanced at him. “I don’t know if those men were honest, but I would have made triple off them if you had won.”
He smiled broadly and Kyric laughed, and suddenly it was the funniest jest he had ever heard. He laughed harder, the way Pitbull had laughed at the games, and this thought made him laugh even harder. “Aiyan,” he gasped, clawing at the upholstery, “I can’t stop laughing.” His eyes began to water. “It’s not even funny anymore . . . and I still can’t stop.”
Aiyan placed his hand on Kyric’s shoulder. “It’s alright,” he said. “It’s just nerves.”
By the time they came to the river Kyric managed to regain himself, and Aiyan told the driver to turn south. About half a mile along they stopped and got out, letting the cabriolet go. “I don’t think we’re still being followed,” Aiyan said, leading them down to the riverside jetties, “but this is a pretty good way of making sure.”
They hadn’t gone ten paces along the jetty when a boatman called, “Ferry you across for a penny apiece, gents.”
Out on the river, in the dark, they floated quietly between two shores of fire and tumult. The bump of the boatman’s oars echoed on the water. Aiyan watched behind them the whole way across, but no other boat followed. They landed at a tiny riverside quay and climbed the steps to the street, quickly hailing another cab.
“New Market Square isn’t far from here,” he said, “Would you like to see if Jela and the lion wrestler made it there, or do you think she’s seen enough of us for one night?”
Kyric smiled wistfully. “I don’t think I’ve seen enough of her for one night.”
They were in the new city now, with its wide, straight boulevards, and they went all the way to New Market Square at the trot.
The square was big and loud, with dancing and an orchestra on one side, and a bonfire with straw and shredded cloth scattered all around on the other side. Across the enclosing streets, hordes of laughing, talking, drinking, smoking people spilled out of cafes onto the sidewalks.
Kyric stood on a bench and looked over the square. “We’ll never find her in all this.”
“It will be hard to miss Jazul,” Aiyan said. “So go and find her and have some fun. I’ll be lurking about, keeping an eye on everything.” He waved Kyric away. “Go. Enjoy yourself.”
Kyric started across the square. Well past midnight, he thought, and the night still seemed young, endless rather. He swept up some loose straw with his hand and fed it to the bonfire with no small sense of irony. There. I’ve cast out my bad luck for the rest of summer.
He easily found Jazul, dancing with a girl Kyric didn’t know, and from there found Jela and all her friends at a sidewalk table. Jela had quite gotten over her pouting about the royal reception. In fact she was still enjoying a bit of celebrity with her friends at having been there.
They recognized Kyric from the archery tournament. The girls wanted to know if he had been at the reception too. The guys pushed goblets of wine at him and proposed toasts for everything they could think of, and he found himself not declining.
He was a little surprised when Jela’s friend Sercey suggested that he ask her to dance. When he told her he didn’t know how she pulled him aside and spent some time showing him the basic steps before dragging him to the open pavement. The music here ran lighter and more lively, the dance steps more loose, and all the young men swung their young ladies by the arm.
It reminded him of a summer dance in the village when he was younger. Mother Nistra had allowed, nay, made him go to it. The one dirt street had been crossed with strings of paper lanterns like the ones they carried here, and all the young folk of the village had danced and flirted and sipped lemonade and had played games like blind pony and sleeping bandit. Kyric had stood the whole evening in a deep shadow where no one could see him and watched it all.
Sercey counted time at first, to get him going, and then suddenly he was dancing, and it wasn’t so hard. Sercey was pleasant to dance with, but he felt his own clumsiness held her back. He couldn’t swing her as smoothly as the others did, but it was fun anyway.
He was surprised again to find Jela waiting for him when his dance with Sercey ended. As he took her hand and waited for the next song to begin she said, “This is what it’s like to dance with someone who knows how.”
It was true. Rather than he lead and she follow, it was as if they both led and followed at the same time. He spun like a wheel and she floated like a feather. He didn’t know that two people could move together like this. Perhaps this was what Aiyan had felt with Aerlyn. New horizons began to open to him. The fellows at the table had liked him. They didn’t mind that he had little to say. And it hadn’t been so hard to talk to Sercey or the other girls either.
He looked into Jela’s eyes and saw an unexpected future there. This business with Aiyan would be over in a few days. Kyric could sell his silver arrow and find a place to live. With this nice suit he now had, he could get the work as a teacher that Aiyan had mentioned. He knew that Jela felt something for him, and he realized that she was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He would court her. He would have friends and a sweetheart and a normal life. All he had to do was keep placing one foot in front of the
other. Yes, it was possible. He could see it clearly as he spun deeper into the night and the stars sped away from the coming dawn.