“I force a blood exchange,” Merissa says, deftly leaping to her feet to stand on the horse’s back. Her voice doesn’t even break; she might as well be standing on a chaise. “Just a few drops, and they become sisters, intimately connected in body and mind. You see, I’ve picketed Kali where she can watch Fausta go through her paces, and she’s absorbing it like a prodigy with an abacus.”
I glance quickly to the direction in which she’s pointing and see the magnificent young beast tethered to the ground and watching us all, her fine head cocked to the side inquisitively. If you gave the mare a quill and a pair of pince-nez, she might be mistaken for a studious clerk taking notes. Damned if Merissa isn’t right, is all I’m saying.
“I didn’t know horses possessed such keen intelligence.” I use the whip to nudge Fausta back out to the end of the rope before Merissa has to ask.
“Anyone can see that hubris is your sin of choice, Stain.” She grasps the horse’s mane in one hand and lifts one leg high overhead in a ballerina’s flawless arabesque that knocks the breath right out of me.
“Oh, but I don’t believe in sin at all, Merissa.”
The horse snorts on her behalf, and Merissa’s leg gracefully falls. She doesn’t speak again until she’s turned to face me, boot toes curled over the horse’s spine, hands on her hips, Kali’s gallop of no more consequence than the waves lapping at a great ship of conquest.
“Oh, but I do,” she says, nearly a purr.
And for the first time, I consider changing my beliefs.
Our eyes lock, and I realize I’m dizzy and on fire and possibly falling for this tiny virago who can clearly master the most ferocious of beasts. She breaks off the look of longing with a sharp nod and catapults off the horse’s back in a flip that leaves her standing on the ground as the horse slows to a walk and stares at me expectantly.
“Put her picket by Kali’s, would you?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer, just picks up her fallen skirts and sashays towards a wagon painted the dark, secret green of her eyes with Mistress Merissa and her Mesmerizing Mares scrolling across the side. The Great Phaedro is gone completely, and I wonder at which point our viciously mischievous conversational foreplay drove him away to snivel somewhere else.
As I’ve nothing better to do, I picket the great beast and pat her withers, for which she gives me an appropriately withering stare.
“Is being ridden by her as lovely as I dream it would be, mate?”
The horse snorts and turns her rump to me.
“Who’d have guessed you were such a genteel soul?” I say.
And I laugh, for the same has been said of me.
5.
I SPEND the next few hours wishing for my library of grimoires and two more pocket-honeycombed coats filled with powders and talismans. The only book I brought with me was a family heirloom, and no matter how I hunt and peck, I can’t find anything in it for killing rival magicians. Although I in no way doubt my ability to best this Phaedro, I always prefer to stack several decks in my favor. If nothing else, I’ve got my cloak, which has already proven useful for disposing of inconveniences, even if Phaedro might be a bit too tall to banish completely. I suppose his lower legs wouldn’t cause too much of a ruckus if left behind in a conjuring gone wrong. After all, tall boots look pretty much the same with or without feet still in them.
Without a wagon of my own, I head for a wooded copse on the other side of the caravan from the one where I met Merissa. I need to concentrate, not sigh longingly at her artistic splatters of ruby-red blood. I already know that birch trees will forever remind me of seeing her there, small and bright as a jewel in the snow.
Even though it wasn’t snowing at the time. In my mind’s eye, it was, you see.
These woods, sadly, have been ruined. A square tunnel violates the sanctity of the trees in the exact shape of the bus tanks that carry customers from the city over the hill—Shrewsbury, I think it is. And typical of Pinkies, instead of going around this quiet, lovely wood, they’ve barreled straight through the middle of it, leaving crushed branches and a few smashed bludsquirrels in their wake. I suppose I should be glad I don’t have thorns catching in my cloak and branches aiming for my eyes, but I can’t help hating how they treat the world so carelessly, as if they owned it. So like a prey species that’s never had to manage a population responsibly.
I aim for a tumbledown wall of gray stones and place my coat, grimoire, and cloak on the weathered rocks to take inventory of the weapons in my arsenal. Anxious as I am for tonight’s show, I’ve never fought to the death before using anything but my teeth and claws, when the beast inside me takes over and sings for blood. If I’m too sudden, too cruel, the audience won’t have time to clap and Merissa will think me a great brute. But a wise man never gives his enemy time to find his footing and pull something surprising and clever out of his bum, so I’ll have to time it just right for maximum pomp and annihilation.
I say my prayers to Aztarte, bite my finger, and let a drop of my blood fall onto the raw black soil. I want what I have always wanted: my own caravan and someone to rule it by my side. Merissa is everything I’ve ever wanted in a mate: beauty, humor, confidence, murderousness. If I can best Phaedro and dispose of Bailey, I can have both of my dreams in one fell swoop. I’m sure my goddess understands.
As the setting sun paints the countryside in broad brushstrokes of orange and purple, I draw on my coat and cape, every weapon I possess placed perfectly for success. The tanks are rumbling towards my quiet wood, so I hurry back to the caravan to mingle with the carnivalleros before the audience is disgorged and the show begins. Say it’s nerves and I’ll slit your throat in a smile; I just prefer to be among my own people, is all.
The lazy buggers have finally left their shoddy wagons to prepare for the impending show, and I can’t hide my moue of distaste at how all of this should’ve been done already, not to mention that they’ve wasted one full side of the caravan train and could stand to dream bigger.
On my way to Merissa’s wagon, where I’m hoping to catch her for a tender but charged moment before the show proper, something stops me. It’s a wee, high voice calling from a strange tent I didn’t see earlier. I have to step over the hooks between two wagon cars to reach it. Whereas all of Bailey’s other tents are gaily striped and topped with little flags, this one is a violent sort of orange and conical. The fabric glimmers and almost seems to melt under the sunset’s scrutiny, and a peculiar, all-too-human odor wafts out.
“Good sir, my cheese has something to tell you.”
That catches my attention. It’s not very often that anything in this world surprises me in a not unpleasant way, but...
The winsome creature behind the table can’t be older than nine, human and pale as a blossom with dark hair in tight pigtails. She’s done up in the most regrettable costume, an older woman’s skirts and jacket hanging off her and dragging the ground. A circlet of flowers sits on her head, and her face is deadly serious, far more serious than any child of any species has any right to be. And I can’t tell if she’s human or Bludman because I can’t smell her.
I poke my head in the door and sniff. “I’m sorry, but did you say...cheese?”
“Yes, sir.” She spreads small hands in fingerless gloves. “My cheese knows all.”
The table is indeed spread with a wide variety of the edible substance I know only through my ridiculous fondness for books. To be quite honest, I had no idea how many forms and facets could be found in a cheese, but there are round ones, tall ones, pointy ones, gooey ones, and mountainous mounds riddled with holes big enough to hide a bludrat in. The smell is wholesome and greasy and not altogether unpleasant, but as none of these cheeses have mouths to speak, I’m not sure what the sweet creature intends.
Each cheese, I note, is stuck through with a knife sized just to fit in the girl’s fingers.
“And how do I access this knowledge, dear child?” I say politely.
She holds out a small hand,
regal as a queen. “Cross my palm with copper.”
I duck into her tent, and it’s like walking into a glowing ember. There’s a small brazier on the table, lanterns and beeswax candles all around, reflecting off the gold and orange and aged ivory hues of the cheeses, and I can’t help thinking that even in a life as long and strange as my own, this is a particularly unique and unexpected experience. I reach out to touch a pierced lantern showing the old fable of Little Red Riding Hood, with a wolf stalking a hooded child among a scattering of stars. It spins under my fingertips, making light dance on the tent walls. When I look at the girl, she grins without fangs.
In the silence, I listen for the cheese to make a noise, to speak. It does not.
“The copper, sir,” she reminds me, and I chuckle and give her a silver instead.
Her widened eyes betray her, but she tries like hell to cover her surprise and pleasure. The silver disappears, and she produces a long-handled spoon, fire-blackened and bent.
With great authority, she says, “Select your cheese.”
“They’re all the same to me, love.” My fang-disclosing grin aims for a shared joke and not a threat.
Her head falls forwards, and she intones with all seriousness, “The cheese will call you.”
And damned if I don’t believe her. With a shrug, I hold out my hand and slowly move my palm over the table of foodstuff. A range of strange odors assaults me, and I detect everything from nuts and fruit and ale and chocolate and mold to a scent reminiscent of the inside of a goat’s mouth. But then, the strangest thing happens. I smell something...amazing. A mix of fine red wine, crushed vines, wildness, and sex. It’s entirely separate from the cheeses, has utterly nothing to do with cheese, and I’m so surprised that I turn to look over my shoulder to see if someone else has followed me into the tent wearing altogether too much decadent perfume.
There is no one there. Just me and the waif and her cheeses. My hand hovers over a boring little wedge of creamy ivory. When I move my hand, the delicious smell disappears, but so long as my hand is over this one, plain cheese...ah, the scent! I bend closer, noting a small tag that reads Leigh Cheese, but the block itself smells nothing like the scent that screams to me of dreams and promises and victory.
“What the bloody hell was that?” I say.
The girl finally smiles, a deep dimple in her cheek. “That was the cheese whispering, sir. Let’s see what it wishes to say.” She holds out the spoon. “Please slice off enough to fit in the ladle.”
“Fair enough, lass.” I take the spoon, pluck the knife from the cheese, and whittle off an obliging corner, marveling at the peculiar texture. There’s a fleshiness to it, but a crumbliness, too. After stabbing the knife back into its slot, I hold out the spoon to her, handle first.
She takes it with a queenly nod and holds it over the brazier. I step closer despite myself, fascinated by this interplay. I’ve had my fortune told in tea leaves, in love lines, in the curled skins of apples I’ve never tasted. I’ve thrown bones and scried in the messy guts of half-dead bludrabbits. But I’ve never found the answers I seek, and the fortunetellers all seem to share the same sly smile at some knowledge they hold back for reasons of their own, and not for lack of my coin. One old crone just laughed and said, “You’re asking the wrong fortuneteller, me boyo,” and I never asked another.
As I watch, mesmerized, the wedge of cheese melts into a bubbling puddle.
“Look into the cheese, sir. Let your heart ask the question your mouth fears to speak.”
My mouth doesn’t fear anything, but I respect her pageantry too much to break the spell. The question at the top of my mind, of course, is “Will I best Phaedro and take this caravan for myself?” but the words I hear chime up from my soul are far different, and as her eyes roll back into her head and she tips the molten cheese onto a black marble slab, I think, “What will it take to truly satisfy my hunger for conquest and love?”
The slab must be charmed to coldness, for the cheese coagulates almost instantly, reminding me more than a little of blood clotting on winter-frosted cobbles. I think I see shapes in it, but I look to the girl, hoping the cheese doesn’t reveal me to be a romantic.
Her eyes pop open, and she looks down and smiles. “What does it take? What it always takes. Magic, time, tenacity, sacrifice. One will happen soon, but the other won’t happen for decades. Your love comes with rubies in a birch forest, naked and unafraid.” For just a second, her somber expression breaks, and she points at a long, pointy streak of cheese. “This arrow is going to hurt,” she says quietly, as if she’s not supposed to mention that bit. “And there’s a witch.”
“Good to know,” I murmur, trying to see anything in the streaks of gloppy white goo. There are no hints, no symbols, no runes. Merely fetid bits of teatmilk from overwrought cows, and so how can it speak in anything but opaque riddles?
With quick, practiced gestures, she scrapes the cheese off the slab and into a bucket on the floor. When she stands again, her face is a professional mask belied only by the quick replacement of a fallen strap on her gown.
“Thank you,” she says with great solemnity, and I know well enough when I’m being dismissed. After all, the real customers will be here soon.
I give her my most gracious bow and pull another copper from behind my ear to place on her marble slab. “Oh, no, my little one. Thank you.” I’m about to leave, but something stops me. “What does the cheese tell you, love?” I ask.
Her eyes twinkle with a cunning streak. “That when you get what you want, I’ll get what I want.”
“And what’s that?”
She smiles sweetly. “What everyone wants: revenge and freedom.”
“Aren’t you a bit young to need revenge?”
With a giggle, she flicks aside the back curtain of her tent. “We’re none of us as young as we seem,” she says, and then she’s gone.
Outside in the darkening night, I realize that I received no answers about my showdown with Phaedro the Great. But all the other bits can’t come true unless I live through this bit, can they? I know too much to ever believe I’ll lose this battle. If love comes in a birch forest with ruby splatters of blood, then love is a doll-like Bludwoman riding a saddleless horse, unafraid of anything. The circus, I suppose, will simply take more time. But the girl’s cheese confirmed my suspicions: I’ll have it all, one day. I just have to kill Phaedro first.
Merissa was right. Pride is definitely my favorite sin, but wrath and lust call me, too.
6.
THEY’RE WAITING for me, and I can only hope I don’t stink of cheese. No man who is master of his fate should ever reek of cheese. A dab of powder from pocket number eighty-two renders me odorless, and I’m dabbing cologne from pocket eighty-three against my pulse as I near the crowd.
“Wizard duel at eight o’clock sharp,” Bailey screeches over the speaker. “See some rude and foppish young upstart battle Phaedro the Great! An extra copper buys a stageside seat.”
Sure enough, the mad fools have set up a corral of velvet ropes around a stage. The wagon behind it is indigo blue, the stage uneven and lined inexpertly with steel-cupped lanterns. No one has noticed my approach, as they’re all focused on a gold-and-blue sarcophagus standing upright in the middle of the stage, its arms crossed and its eyes unblinking.
I draw in a deep breath and shake my head as I take on my mantle of power. At just the right moment, I throw out my arms and appear in a puff of smoke, my face set in wicked determination.
As if on cue, the crowd turns to me and gasps, parting before me like the Red Sea, the sarcophagus utterly forgotten. I stalk through and among them, cape billowing, head down at the angle between glorious and furious. Near the front of the stage, Merissa stands, arms crossed, inscrutable as ever in a deep red gown that displays the perfect curve of her neck and shoulders. If I look at her too long, I’ll lose focus, so I merely raise a dark, dashing eyebrow at her and leap to the stage in a swirl of black and emerald, cutting through a puf
f of lavender smoke.
The crowd applauds and whistles, and for just a moment, I know a daimon’s hunger for attention and adulation as I drink in their wonder.
A spotlight cuts to the blue and gold sarcophagus as tinny music rumbles over the speaker, and the crowd turns to gape at the papier mâché coffin that surely holds my rival. Before he can do whatever he has planned, I plant a boot firmly in the thing’s chest and kick it to the ground, where it crumples and reveals a neat hole cut in the boards. Phaedro’s head pokes up like an idiot mole, and I have to stop myself from kicking his face off his spindly neck like a bloody football. I toss a packet onto the sarcophagus and it catches fire, glowing green and throwing sparks. In moments, the gaudy prop is completely gone.
“Your turn,” I say, throwing out a dramatic arm, and Phaedro disappears in his own puff of smoke as the curtains swoop closed.
“Show-off.” Merissa has somehow hopped onto the stage in her voluminous skirts. “That wasn’t fair.”
“Of course it wasn’t fair, love. It’s a duel. Please tell me you’re not his assistant.” I check through my pockets, palm a few possibilities. “I’ve more respect for your horses than a ninny like the Great Phaedro.”
“You’ve been here less than a day, Stain. You’ve never spoken to him. It’s the height of savage ignorance, really, the way you sauntered in and decided to take over a system that worked very well. I might venture to say you’re acting rather...human.”
I put a hand over my chest. “Such insults from my lady love.”
She stares delicious daggers at me. “I never claimed to be a lady, and I certainly never agreed to be your love. No promises were made. Had I known how much trouble you would cause, I’d have killed you and left you for the horses.” With each whispered word, she steps closer until she’s right up in my face, a finger jabbing into my chest. I’ve never been so enamored, nor so conflicted.