blisserial

[blisserial]

Seventeen

Ross spent the entire summer in that tavern just north of the river, drinking his life away. I began to think maybe he loved Amy after all, if he was driven to mourn himself into death. It was a hard thing to believe. She had been naught but a pretty face with an insipid laugh and a tendency toward god worship. And as far as I knew, Ross had never loved anyone.

      But there he was, come first chill, skin and bones in the tavern bar. Yellowed and frail and still shrieking through nightmares in my bed. Sometimes he pissed the sheets in his terror. As the days grew shorter, he rose from bed less and less often. He grew wobbly and confused and I had to bathe him myself, once or twice a day, to keep the bedding from going ripe. It was a horrible, stomach turning job, but a man deserves dignity, even if he is an old bastard.

      The rest of the circus thrived. Shaara's small skills improved. Will found a new spotted cat to replace the tom and the animal, nicked 'Poot' by Maurice, never once tried to use the circus cart as its toilet.

      I repainted the cart with a bit of dye I traded off a tinker. After, the wagon looked brighter, wealthier. Even the mule seemed pleased to pull it.

      The tumblers, far from being lost to the local thief’s guild, picked a new group of acrobats from the sewers to add to their small set; now we had six.

      Remarkably we had enough coin to go around. That would change with the coming winter as lords began to close up their manses and move to court. It was, we all knew, time to think about returning south.

      "I won't go." Ross snarled when I broached the subject. He spat into the basin of water I had prepared for his bath. "It's a dangerous, ugly place."

      "What's this?" I cajoled. "You've been crossing the river every winter since you were weaned. You told me so. We cross the Anne poor as the peasants we are and return in the summer, rich as l lords. That’s the circus life, the way it’s always been."

      "Not any more." Ross rocked a little on the wool towel I had spread across the floor next to the basin, and buried his face in his knees. "Not any more."

      I paused in passing the ebony comb through his lank hair. How I hated nits, and Ross seemed to gather the insects with disturbing ease. 

      "We have to go, Ross. The others are ready. And hungry for Southern sapphires."

      In a rare burst of exertion he knocked the comb from my hand and, bony fingers fisted into a claw, bloodied my chin.

      I do not believe I even stopped to consider wisdom. I hit him back, a hard, vicious blow, not unlike the many he had sent my own way. I suppose we learn from what we know.

      I am small but sturdy. Ross had gone to skin and bone. He tumbled across the room and fetched up solidly against a bed post. I thought I heard bone crack but when I bent in alarm to examine the man, he seemed uninjured, except for the glaze in his eye. And that, in itself, was hardly unusual. Those days his head was fuzzed more often than not.

      I covered him with the wool towel and a blanket from our bed and sat at his feet, waiting for him to speak. He did not, for a very long while. Then he began to mumble and whine about sorrow and old curses and children manacled to trees by the tails of long, silver snakes.

      He was near to losing his facilities, and I knew it. The drinking had killed him, and the  years of hard living, and whatever soft-headedness had allowed him to fall in love with a doomed girl. Perhaps he had been fading even then, growing old, and pretty Amy had only taken advantage.

      I lifted him from the floor to our bed and brought him a cup of spring water. He dribbled and drooled, drinking slowly. And then he looked up at me with a clear eye.

      "If you go back," he warned. "You'll die. The lions will eat you, too, hair and teeth and small white bones, until there’s nothing left."

      "I'm not Amy." I wanted to knock the water from his crooked hand, but I refrained.

      "I know it, Bliss." He sighed and laid his head back upon the pillow I had stuffed with rags. In the process he dropped the silver cup, spilling water across blankets and floor. "Oh, don’t I know it."

      I cussed loudly at the damp bed, knowing if I left him in the wet bedding he would take a chilll and sicken.

      "We're going south," I said. He smiled vaguely back. "We're going south because we have to. It's what you've taught us. And you're coming with us, Ross."

      I crouched and stretched under the mattress, feeling about in search of the cup. The innkeep charged for utensils lost.

      "Bliss, my girl." Ross's voice dropped from above as I groped over the dusty floor. "The lions liked the taste of Amy's sweet, sweet flesh. You they'll swallow whole and choke as they do so. You'll sit in their gut and turn them sour and they'll come at us all, looking for ease."

      I found the cup and clenched shaking fingers about the handle, nearly bending the metal. "You're mad, old man. You always have been."

      We left the next morning, packs newly filled, Ross bundled into the bright painted wagon. It was only most of a day's ride to the river; we expected to be safely welcomed into a Southern village before the sun dipped into night.

      It was raining, but lightly. The wet did not bother the dogs, or the tumblers, or Maurice who rode the old mule and smoked his cigarettes. Will, however, hated water, and eventually sought shelter in the wagon with Ross.

      Just as we caught sight of the Anne's gentle waters, Ross began to cough. Deep, racking spasms that I had not heard before. Will tried to soothe the man and then began to shout.

      "Horrid, what a stink. Get back here, Bliss. The man's gone and shat himself."

      We stopped and I clambered up the back of the wagon under Maurice's watchful eye. Ross lay on his back in the wagon, unmoving, eyes rolled up in his head. He did not respond when I called his name, or when Will chafed his brow and cheeks.  

         True to his performer's dramatic nature, Ross’s body dad finally given out just one hill north of the river he said he would not cross.

                                                      *****

      The king's soldiers stayed far from the main road, skirting Southern villages, keeping to field and scrub and sandy dune. The small army started at a steady, lively pace, horses eager and fresh from two days in Emman's stables, but it soon became evident that Lord Shill was not quite as well rested as his men.

      A fever burned in his bones. Moire could see the flush on his face even through the dust stirred up by pounding hooves. The Southern sun did not help. The king's men did their best to keep their commander propped and watered but eventually the march trailed to a walk and finally, just as Shill began to slip from his horse, a disorganized halt.

      Shill's second in command was a ruddy-haired stick remarkable both for his ugly, tangled beard and the quick smile beneath it. He sat his horse for a moment, scanning the fields to either side, before glancing back at Moire.

      "Where are the tenants?"

      Moire yanked her gaze from Bliss's slack, white face. "Not close," she replied, uncaring of the scorn that spilled over, bitter on her tongue. "The fields roll on for leagues. There is no one out here but us. For now. I imagine the Seat is close behind."

      "No." The man shook his head, watching as three young men gently disentangled Shill from his stirrups and carried him from his horse. "He is not. We will camp here. Until milord has had a drink and sup. And you will clean his wound."

      "No," Moire parroted, harsh. "I will not. Unless first you bring water and bandages for Bliss."

      The soldier sneered. “Crow’s meat, that one.”

      "Not yet. Not if I can help it. Bring me water, and bandages, and a good supply of your whiskey. After I tend my own, then I will look at your lord."

      The battalion waited while Shill's second in command considered. Horses yawned and stamped, made lethargic in the heat. Lord Shill, now supported ungracefully between his rescuers, groaned. Moire supposed it was the man's audible pain that hastened the decision.

      The soldier dropped his reins and dismounted, boots crushing flax.

      "There," he said, nodding at a stunted scrub tree not far away in the field. "Put up a tent there, for milord. These croplands must be irrigated. You, lad, find the trenches and start filling bottles."

      Surprisingly, he reached up a gloved hand to help Moire with her burden. She knew better than to turn away the offering, no matter that she wanted to. Bliss was small and light, lighter now, it seemed, than a living creature had any right to be, and Moire was strong. Yet, she needed a moment to think, to regain the breath she had lost trying to will Bliss to health.

      Nevertheless, she dropped quickly to the ground and kept one hand on the soldier's embroidered sleeve as he carried Bliss through bobbing crop to the scrub tree.

      "There will be some shade," he said, "if we are lucky. Here. Lay her out on my cape. It’s relatively clean."

      Moire decided she did not hate the man quite as much as she first thought.

      "Water?"

      "Coming," he said with the assurance of one who knew his needs would be met without question and quickly.

       Indeed, a tent was already going up alongside the tree. The makeshift shelter was small and much squatter than the camp gain tents Moire favored. The fabric looked worn and weather-stained, but it was waxed against rain. Moire could see Shill tossing restlessly beyond the canvas even as the tent was put up around him.

      The man should be dead, she thought, coldly consigning Shill to her gods.

      The soldier watched Moire carefully as she spread his thick coat between the roots of the scrub. "He had your blessing to proceed as we did,” he reminded her.

      "He wanted the king's property back." Moire reached for Bliss. "He said nothing of murder or abduction."

      The soldier shrugged, dismissing questions of diplomacy. "You're bleeding, Holiness," he said, and then turned on his heel and hurried away, attention diverted by his commander's angry cries.

      Moire lifted a hand to her head. She’d forgotten the knot on her skull. Minor, she decided, when her fingers came away more sticky than wet. It would heal.

      And so would Bliss, Moire promised herself. But those same sticky fingers shook as she freed her knife and used it to cut back the leather at Bliss's shoulder. Tunic and jerkin were stiff with dried blood. Bliss, still and slack, did not so much as murmur when Moire ripped fabric from flesh.

      "Gods' shame you, woman," Moire made herself speak calmly. "The bullet's gone clean through. It's hardly a hole. Nothing to swoon over."

      "She's bled some, Holiness." A boy bearing a string of canteens and an armful of bandages appeared at Moire's elbow. "More than some. Close to the heart, that. Rolph always aims true."

      "May he rot for it." Moire took the water from the boy. "Where's the alcohol?"

      "Hain't enough to go round, he says. Milord needs it."

      "Go find me some. Or I'll leave your lord to rot with Rolph."

      The boy blanched. He nodded, and ran off. 

      Moire uncorked a canteen. Settling on the ground at Bliss's head, begin coaxing small swallows between the other woman’s dry lips. The water washed dust away and then overflowed again, running slowly over Bliss's chin.

      Moire tried again. Bliss refused to drink.

      The boy came back with half a bottle of whiskey. "My da's own." He explained, "I took it from his saddle bag. He's busy tending Lord Shill."

      Moire wondered if this meant she had been let off that particular duty. "Thank you," she said. "Here. Sit here. Try and get some water down her throat. Here, like this. Don’t let her choke."

      The squire hesitated and then obediently sat."What will you do?"

      "Make sure the bullet's free." Moire kept one eye on the boy as she probbed Bliss's shoulder. 

      "Unless she wakes, she’s not likely to take enough," the boy said regretfully.

      "Keep trying." But when Moire doused the bullet hole with a good slosh of whiskey and Bliss still did not stir, she felt her own heart go cold.

      "She's still breathing," the squire said, either in awe or reassurance.

      "Yes. Hold u[, lad. Let me have a look at her back."

      Carefully, she rolled Bliss onto one side. The scrub tree's scant shade seemed suddenly cold. The leather beneath Bliss’ shoulder blade was still wet with blood.

      "Bullet's there," the boy diagnosed, bending close as Moire cut leather and fabric away, baring angry flesh. "See, there? Like a pustule."

      "Just like." Moire wet her knife in another spill of whiskey. "Hold her firm, like this."

      The boy had steady hands. Moire doused the wound, said a quick and angry prayer to the gods she had so recently given her life over to, and then dug the tip of her knife. into the small hole. 

       Bliss didn’t stir. But she didn’t stop breathing, either.

      "You're good,” the boy said and this time she was sure it was awe.

      "Done this many times." But the bullet, stubborn, slipped and slid away from her blade.

      "You were in the Seat's army. You and her both."

      "Once, yes." Moire chewed her lip as she chased the bullet in Bliss's shoulder.

      "She was a hero. My da said so."

      "Yes."

      "I guess heroes go out just like the rest of us."

      "No," Moire said, and felt the tiny grate of metal on metal as her knife found the bullet. She tensed and flexed and the bullet popped free in a rush of fresh blood.

      The squire whooped.

      "Hold her steady," Moire reminded him, breathless again. She snatched bandages and whiskey and bound Bliss tightly before the last of her life could gush away.

      Shill’s second in command came back for Moire after all, as the sun began to sink behind the scrub tree. Moire acknowledged his wordless stare and left Bliss in the care of the eager squire.

      "She's still alive," the soldier said, disbelieving. 

      Moire nodded.

      "We've four days more on horseback, at the least. She won't survive our pace."

      "Will your commander?" Moire returned, harsh. She was weary, and angry, and more frightened than she wanted to admit to herself.

      "Yes. It's just a fever. You'll cure it."

      "I?" Moire paused outside the low tent. "I'm no healer."

      "Holiness," the soldier chastised. "Do you take me for a fool? You're Ordained. Even Northern men know what that means. Heal him."

      Moire almost missed a step. She had been acting as Major and soldier, rank and file on the field. Because it was what she knew, what she lived. She had forgotten, almost, the promise behind the red robes she wore. She had given up her former life, yes. But did not her gods promise blessing in return?

      "I will try," she said, dizzy with new possibility. She stepped into the tent, onto a thick wool rug, and crouched alongside Shill's cot.

      He turned his head to better see her.

      "She’s killed me," he said. "His majesty see justice done, I promise you that.”

      "His majesty will not care." Moire unrapped the bandaged arm and studied Bliss's cut. The wound was festering, clearly. But the tell tale streaks of poisonous red had not yet crept far from the broken bone.

      "You’ll keep your promise," Shill insisted. The he coughed, quivering beneath her touch.

      "I made no promise."

      "Make one now." He groaned, and lurched half upright as Moire squeezed puss into air. "Make one now. She that my king gets his property."

      "All this for a bag of painted miniatures." Moire swabbed the wound with rough hands, ignoring Shill's gasps. "I will do you and your king no favors."

      "You will," he said through gritted teeth. "Or I will have Rolph finish what he started, eh?"

      Moire froze. Shill's breath wheezed in and out past his tongue. Over her shoulder, Shill’s second loomed.

      "You are Rolph?" she guessed, gut twisting.

      "Yes," the red haired man said. He smiled genially.

      She might have hesitated longer, but she did not. She had ceased to care, truly, about the bag of pretty painted shells and the Northern King who would send men to kill for them. She wanted only to strangle Shill and his grinning second and return to Bliss and see that she lived.

      "Now," Rolph ordered. "Heal him. Do it now."

      Moire nodded and reclothed Shill's arm. Then she settled on her knees on the rug alongside the cot and, folding her hands on her lap, began to pray. Not for Shill or his king or even for wisdom. She prayed for herself and for forgiveness and for Bliss and for vengeance.

[blisserial]

Sixteen

    The boy was meant to care for the menagerie but he proved far better at nursing Ross. Something about the lad appealed to the old man, I do not know what. It was not the promise of an innocent between the sheets. Ross had aged ten winters in a handful of moon cycles; I do not think he could have tumbled the goddess Never if she had appeared on his lap and lifted her own skirts for the job.

      I think perhaps Ross saw his own youth in Shaara's childhood. I suppose the why hardly mattered. It was the result that gave me heart. Ross would take food from the boy when he would not disdain to swallow the stew I proffered. He would sleep when Shaara urged. And although Ross would not give up the drink, he would, at Shaara's insistence, swallow vials of the tavern's cool spring water in between tankards of ale.

      When he was not busy nursing our master,  Shaara learned the circus trade. He took to easily to juggling after only a handful of days under my watchful eye. He had a lad's high, clear voice and a mind quick enough to retain the cants. He could recite a tale with great enthusiasm, although the necessities of mimicry seemed to escape him.

      He had no great talent for riding and seemed terrified of the mule. When Will complained loudly and pointedly about his cowardice, I locked Shaara in the mule's stall overnight. By morning the long-eared animal and the boy were tentative friends and Shaara did not again shirk his stable duties.

      Shaara worshipped Maurice. He followed the man about whenever he found a rare free moment. He was fascinated by Maurice's flame. I imagine he wanted to discover the tricks Maurice kept but if Shaara ever managed to discover the secrets of fire eating, I never saw the signs. Maurice did, however, teach the lad to cook. The tumblers taught him to box. And I taught him to use the family pistol. The knife Shaara learned on his own.

      I think now that the boy brought us luck. And if I could not give him what he needed, those first several nights when Shaara crawled into my bedding and wept for his lost mother, well. I gave him food and warmth and employment and that seemed to be enough.

                                                   ***********

            Maurice hated rats. They stank. They ate a man's own food from beneath his nose and if there was no food about they might nibble a man's  flesh instead. They carried nits. And on particularly bad days on the battle field, rats could seem more slippery and vicious than the enemy ahead.

      He did not intend to become a rat's supper. He did not intend to die on a cold floor in Bliss's bare bolt hole with only the cracked window to breathe down warmth and life. He did not intend to die at all, at least in this city, murdered by a Northern lord for a few pieces of shell.

      Still, a very young soldier had run him through with a sharp pike blade while Maurice had fumbled unsuccessfully for flame. He did not think the green lad had pierced anything terribly important but the pike had lodged in rib bone and Maurice felt rather more like an offering to Trout than a man with two legs.

      He closed his eyes and opened them again and watched warm air meet with cold in a swirl of blue eddy above his face. Outside the window the morning birds were beginning to sing in the sycamore and below he could hear the sighing of the baker's bellows.

      He closed his eyes and opened them again and  in the triangle of window the sun was higher in the sky and the birds had stopped singing. The baker's bellows were still groaning but now he could smell bread. His stomach growled. That part of him at least had not yet died.

      He also needed to piss, which was an odd thing, because he still could not feel his legs.

      A man pissed as he died, Maurice knew that well. A dead man ruined his trousers and his breeks, and while the living knew to ignore that indignity, Maurice had a fleeting thought that the perfume of urine might attract those hungry rats.

      He supposed he had enough gut left to crawl into a corner and empty his bladder there, pike sticking upright at one end, prick flapping limply at the other.

      The image was enough to make even a wounded man laugh. He did, and then gasped at the resulting pain. The pike had to go.

      He’d survived a war wound or two. He knew that the anticipation was worse than the true agony itself. Even so he might wish for another hand to yank the weapon free, just in case his own faltered and failed.

     He managed to make the wall by the strength of elbow and forearm, pulling his numb legs behind. He vomited once, for the pain, but did it neatly to the side, damn the rats. He rested twice, and the sun climbed even higher. By the time he propped himself to kneeling against the window sill the yellow orb had begun its way back down the sky to evening.

      Slumped against the wall, chin hanging out the open window, Maurice tried one last time for his fire. It would have been easier, so much easier, to simply burn the shaft away. But the flame would not come. The place against his skull were the heat had once coiled was now empty and cold and unresponsive, ash in a whirlwind.

       Moire was right. Fox had somehow pulled his fangs. Or, Maurice suspected, stolen the fire itself away.

      Moire. Maurice took a shallow breath and reached around to grab the pike shaft. Lord Shill was a pig-faced fool if he thought the Seat would let him thieve a priest away to the Northern king. 

       Up until now Maurice had refused to look at the hearth. But it lurked at the back of his mind, that place where Bliss had fallen in an inelegant heap so unlike her living bone, and gone to sleep forever. He had seen her last shiver, heard her last sigh. He had been fighting to reach her when the soldier had struck him down.

      He looked now at the hearth because he could not help it. He looked backwards, following first the snake of blood that lead from the shattered door across the room to the small lake on the flagstones. That particular puddle was red, bright red, the color of Moire's new robes.

      He wanted to taste it, suddenly. An old soldier's reaction. Take into your body the one you have lost.

      But his hands were still on the pike and he needed still to piss and the rats would be coming and the heat from the window seemed to be infecting his flesh and suddenly he was sure he saw the rats in the firebox, making for the blood that was his to drink. His blood, his Bliss, his -

      "Away!" He forgot the pike in his ribs and fell, scrabbling forward. "Keep away, you filthy scavengers! She's mine!"

      He fell on his gut in the blood and his ribs cried protest. For a heartbeat the world went dark, dark but for the man sized rodent unfolding from the firebox, edging forward, knife gleaming, to finish him off and gnaw away his toes, and Maurice pissed his trousers.

      "Maurice?" the rat whispered. "Are you alive?"

      Not a rat, after all. Only grief and fever addling his brain.

      "Shaara?" Shock made Maurice choke. "Is that you, lad?"

      "Yes." The boy was shaking, or perhaps it was Maurice's sight quaking in and out. Shaara's face was white and wet with tears but his hands were firm when they grasped Maurice's shoulders.

      "What were you doing in the firebox?"

      "Hiding," Shaara whispered. His hands moved from Maurice's shoulders to the shaft of the pike and then along it. "Bliss told me to hide. And then she wouldn't let me out."

      "She's dead."

      "I know." Shaara tested the pike shaft and Maurice grunted but his ribs had begun to go as numb as his legs.

      "They dragged her across the floor like a butchered pig, they did. And then they took Moire. She was cussing loud as the night they beheaded Will. Remember?"

      "Yes." Maurice closed his eyes. "What're you waiting for? Now that you've come out of the flue, get it over with, yeah?"

      "Yeah," Shaara said and jerked the pike, sideways and up and free, scraping bone as he did so.

      Maurice screamed and the bolt hole dissolved.

        He awoke to the splash of ale against his tongue. Shaara was a slim gray figure silvered by moonlight. The ale tasted of Northern winter. His ribs burned and ached but the feeling was slowly coming back to his toes.

      "I've bread, too," Shaara offered. "From the baker's. If you can stomach it, sir."

      In the face of loss they were become a battalion again, Maurice realized as he took the triangle of rye. Bliss gone the way of Ross and their family shattered at last. There was not one person left capable of knotting those strings back together.

      Not one person left, he thought, watching Shaara, who did not want to move on.

      The bread tasted delicious. Maurice chewed carefully, wary of his uneasy stomach.

      "The wound looked mostly clean." Shaara said, "I bandaged it best I could. But it was getting dark. And I can't figure out what Bliss did with the wood. There was wood here. And then there wasn't."

      Maurice looked blankly about the dark room. "Tossed it out the window, I suppose. To make sure you weren't roasted. We thought you'd fled into the Temple, Moire and I. Safest place to be."

      "Maybe." Shaara sounded doubtful. "If you don't mind the Seat lookin' down your shirt. And the idol watching you with big beaky eyes."

      "Yes." Maurice thought of Fox and pressed his lips against rage.

      "Bliss and I were here for too long. Just waiting. Waiting for you."

      "It was a trap all along. I'm sorry. Moire set it."

      "Moire?" The lad's jaw dropped in disbelief.

      "She thought she was doing right, I suppose." Maurice set the bread aside and swigged down more sweet ale. "Red robes or not, she's born military. Maybe she's forgotten the king sets no store in honor."

      "They wanted the shells. They killed Bliss over a bunch of shells."

      "Milord killed Bliss because she shed his own beloved blue blood." Maurice curled his toes and then carefully rotated his ankles. "I saw the revenge in his smile too late."

      "They piked you before you could stop it."

      "Yes."

      "I didn't see that."

      "No."

      "I didn't see nothing but Bliss's eyes. She looked right at me. She wouldn't let me move."

      "Good." Maurice reached across and gripped the boy's arm. "She kept you safe and you've kept me alive, I think. You're doing fine. Don't puke now, corporal."

      "No." Shaara shook himself a little. "Never did, not even the first time in the field."

      "You're a hard man, Shaara."

      That silenced the lad and took him from whatever memories he did not want to see. Shaara chewed a knuckle for a moment before sighing.

      "Kindle a fire, sir, and I'll show you what Bliss saved."

      "What Bliss saved?" Lifting a brow, Maurice finished the last of the ale. He set the tankard alongside abandoned bread. "What's this?"

      But he knew what it was, small and smooth and sharp at the same time. A miniature. Stolen from the bag and secreted up the chimney with Bliss's apprentice.

      "Light a fire," Shaara insisted. "Take a look. Maybe you'll know her."

      "I looked at them all, Shaara. They meant nothing to me."

      "To Bliss either, not until last night." The boy was excited. "Take another look. Prove her right."

      "There's no wood."

      "You've never needed wood."

      "I do now." Maurice moved, gingerly. He made it to his knees before he had to gulp air, and then he bent in the dark over the painted shell, trying to see. "Things have changed."

      Shaara hesitated. Maurice could hear unasked questions floating in the room. Then the lad's shadow shrugged.

      "I've one match left," he offered.

      "Use it." 

      Shaara flicked the match stick against his belt and then held the little flame beneath Maurice's nose.

      There was just enough light to illuminate Maurice's calloused palm and the grit under his thumbnail, and against his dirty flesh the delicate painted shell. The woman on the smooth face seemed to dance in the fragile light. She was pretty enough, in her own way, he supposed, if somewhat too old for the king's rumored tastes. She had coils of silver hair and bright green eyes and the white skin of someone who rarely saw the sun.

      "I don't…"

      "Look closer," Shaara said. "Bliss knew her. Don't you?"

      It was the mouth that finally clicked the memory into place; the wide, straight mouth so carefully expressionless. He’d thought the first time he’d seen it such bland opacity could only cover a world of sorrow.

      "The lions," Maurice murmured, ignoring the pain in his ribs, bending even closer, as though he could read the woman's name through her flat eyes. "That summer. Amy and the lions. This woman was there."

      "Yes." Shaara nodded, relief in the quiver of his fingers. "You see her, too. Bliss knew."

      "The Jester. This is the Seat's Jester."

      The match smoked and went out, leaving only the moon on Shaara's tear stained cheeks.

      Maurice passed the miniature back to the lad. "Keep it," he said. "She gave it to you. Keep it safe."

      The boy tucked the shell back into his pack. "What did she want me to do with it? What do I do?"

      "Sleep, corporal." Maurice found his abandoned bread and forced himself to eat. "Rest while I think. When the sun warms the white city I'll have you an answer."

        It took three days, in truth. Three days spent easing sore ribs and battling a small wound fever and reaching for flames that would not come. Three days mourning Bliss and living off the baker's bread and watching the blood on the slatted floor dry to brown and began to flake.

      Three days and Moire would be already half way to the Northern court, if Shill intended to let her live that long.

      "He's a nasty one, Chrysanthemum," Shaara said when Maurice asked the lad to recount the mischief at the patisserie. The lad looked at the hearth and then quickly away again.

      "Hmm." Maurice rumbled. He found Shaara's new listlessness concerning. The boy would be mourning a mother as well as a master, he supposed. Bliss had, after all, raised him from youngling to adult. She had, at least, kept him alive and given him reason to stay so.

      On the fourth morning, as the hole in his ribs began to scab well and hard, Maurice sent Shaara out into the streets in search of a god.

      "A red haired boy dressed like a prince," Maurice said as Shaara wrinkled his brow, baffled. "Hanging about the temple. Or maybe the spire. Or…a dog." Maurice scratched at his scab. "Small, lean. Big ears. Bushy tail. Tawny, like a -"

      "Fox?" Shaara screwed up his face in an expression reminiscent of his dead master. "You want a noble lad, Maurice, you look for him on his nurse's apron strings. You want a animal, you look in the forest."

      "You see any forests about, Shaara?"

      "No,” he allowed. "No forests south of the Anne. Everyone knows that. No true trees but the sycamores and dogpink and the salty scrub around the deep waters."

      "Isn’t an ordinary animal, nor an ordinary lad." Maurice said, "Go and see what you can find."

      "What'll you do?"

      "Find a nice loud restaurant and an ale and sit in the corner and listen."

      Shaara smiled, the first real amusement Maurice had seen on his face in a long while. "Try the Blind Librarian. Everyone says it’s as wild as the white veils ever get."

        Shaara scoured the Low Temple halls and learned nothing but theology. Maurice sat on the boards in a sunny, smokeless restaurant and learned even less. The Initiation had passed without incident and, celebration over, most of the people of Emman were thinking ahead to harvest and the slight chill that served as a Southern mid winter. There was no mention of a fire in the bowels of the Temple nor word of a priest gone missing.

      "I asked at the barracks," Shaara reported one sticky afternoon. He fanned himself with a sycamore leaf, shrugging. "They say she's deep in studies, at the top of the Temple."

     Lord Shill’s men had disappeared, hunters melting away once the prey was run to ground.

      "The streets are quiet, back to normal," Maurice agreed, watching the sycamore sway. "Did he get what he came for, I wonder?"

      "Chrysanthemum?"  Shaara shook his head. "He got Bliss. And he took Moire."

      "But not the Jester," Maurice said, thoughtfully turning the dour image over behind his eyelids. "Not the Jester."

      As for Fox, the wily god had disappeared without a trace. Maurice would have thought the unnatural boy a product of the Temple perfume, if not for the hole in his head where his fire used to burn.

      That, in the end, was what decided him. That chill, empty ache.

      "We're going south," he told Shaara twelve days after Bliss's murder. "To the Capitol. For an audience with the Seat."

      Shaara gaped. "No one sees the Seat. Surely not you and I."

      "No," Maurice agreed. "But a man as clever as you and I might manage to see the Seat's Jester."

      "If she's still there. That was long ago, sir."

      "Yes. A life time ago. But it's all we have to go on, Shaara."

      The lad, rolled tight in his bedding as far away from the hearth as a body could get, twisted restlessly and squinted through the dawn at Maurice. "What about Moire? You just going to leave her gone?"

      "She'll be the king's by now." Maurice reached under his tunic and picked at the oozing scab beneath. HIs ribs were still healing, more slowly than his flesh, but he thought he could ride again. If their horses still waited inside Emman's gates.

      "Bliss would have gone after her."

      "Bliss loved her, in her way." Maurice studied Shaara. "But Bliss isn’t here. And we’d be two men against the Northern court. Not much use, I think. But." And he jerked a thumb at Shaara's pack. "The Jester may be."

      "You think she's who he wanted? The king I mean?"

      "I don’t know." Maurice admitted. And then repeated, "It's all we have to go on."

[blisserial]

Fifteen

After a few uneventful days spent engrossed in self pity, I decided to take Maurice's warning to heart. It was not so much that I feared he was correct in his assumptions but that I, like much of the rest of our family, had at last grown bored. Even the old mule seemed sunk in a dangerous lassitude.

Ross' role was not  difficult to fill. I knew his connections as well as I knew the feel of juggler's orbs in my hands. I knew which innkeep paid well for a hearthside troubadour, which tavern master would book the full circus for a winter's night of juggled flame in his courtyard, and which unctuous young lord would hire us for three nights and pay for only two.

We took to traveling again, short hops to the east and west and then longer forays farther north. Each time we left Ross behind to hold our rooms and, when needed, mind the menagerie. I am not sure he did much more than fill tankard after tankard with the inn's thin yellow ale. I do know that the longer we stayed away the less often he rose from his bed. I also know that one cold morning Ross decided the one-eyed tom was cursed and tried to drown the animal in the tavern's partially frozen over well.

The innkeep heard the tom's howls and Ross shouts and rescued the cat before too much harm was done. Ross nursed angry scratches on his hands and arms for a fortnight afterwards and the tom was never quite the same. The animal did not rejoin our company but stayed on at the inn as a mouser long after Ross’ Troop was but a memory. I suspect that he did well for himself.

During one of our longer journeys north, while performing overnight in the manse of a retired and extravagantly wealthy knight, Maurice discovered for us Amy's replacement.

Breaking my fast in the knight's cavernous dining room, I was unpleasantly interrupted when Maurice tossed a tangle of matted hair, boney limbs, and putrid stink at my feet. I snarled irritation. Maurice crossed his arms over his breast.

"That," he pronounced in disgusted tones, "was waiting for me in the garderobe."

The filth and hair was attached to a small lad. The lad, unaware of his predicament, dashed across to my plate and began stuffing handfuls of egg and bread into his mouth.

"Disgusting," I diagnosed, setting aside my fork with a sigh. "But what makes you think he was waiting for you in particular?"

Expressionless, Maurice watched the lad eat. "He wasn't, so to speak. Any unfortunate soul would have done."

"Mam said to whack 'em in the balls," the lad volunteered helpfully through stuffed cheeks. "Hit 'em where it hurts and take their purse and run fast as ye can."

Beneath the grime the lad had a stubborn mouth, soft eyes the color of a snowing sky, and agile performer's hands.

I stared between Maurice and the would-be thief. "Where's your Mam? Hiding in milord's chamber pot?"

The lad seemed to find this very funny. He could not have been more than six years old and did not seem to care at all that he was spraying crumbs all over the front of his dirty tunic. 

"No," he replied his amusement was once again under control. "They took her to be a slave in the court, to pay her duty debt, last time the moon was full. They wouldn't take me, on account I was too small."

"Where's your da?" Maurice asked.

"Don't have one." The lad took up my tankard and drank his fill. "Just me is all."

"And how's the garderrobe working out for you?" I could feel Maurice's gaze on the top of my head but I ignored it.

"Not so well," the lad admitted. He reached up and scratched his matted forelock. "Yesterday some cockeyed bastard knocked me down into the shit." He made an appropriate face. I took my tankard back before he could empty it.

"What's your name?"

"Mam called me Shaara. After the mountains."

"Shaara it is, then." I nodded at Maurice, answering his unspoken question. "The boy'll do. Clean him up and let him meet the dogs."

                                                         *****

Shaara thought he was dreaming. He could hear the steady thump of booted feet and the clank of armor and beyond that the vague hiss of the Seat's cannon charges. And so it must be a dream; the cannons were always rolled to the front, else the infantry be damaged by the carelessness of their own brothers.

Once a cannon had gone off badly and early, too fast in the middle of a priming, and Shaara had watched two of his own tent mates blown to red spatter and shattered bone.

But Shaara did not want to relive that particular horror so he forced the dream away, opening eyes to grey light. His neck hurt from sleeping on the cold floor and Bliss's booted feet were in his face, nudging at his cheek.

"Get up," she ordered. "We've got company."

The disjointed sounds of an army on the march had not disappeared with Shaara’s nightmare. The wood beneath his ear echoed with it: the faint boom of heavy feet and the ghosts of distant voices. The light in the bolthole shifted from grey to black and back again, carved by distant flickering flame.

Bliss prodded him again. Shaara rolled to his feet. Groaning, he followed her silently to the narrow window.

"Who are they?" Shaara rubbed his eyes, clearing sleep from gummed lashes. He peered down into the courtyard. The flames were not so very distant after all, but instead blocked here and there by the sycamore's thick branches. He counted fifteen torches and beyond those, four or five shadowy, unlit forms.

"I can't tell from here." Bliss sounded annoyed rather than frightened. "Maybe Chrysanthemum's men."

"Out the roof?" Shaara suggested. They'd only used that exit once before but he knew it was most of the reason Maurice had chosen this particular room. A rat always dug two ways from his lair, just in case the cat came to call.

"Most like," Bliss agreed. She pressed her nose against the thick glass, squinting to see beyond the bubbles in the pane. Then she made a rough, disgruntled noise and, grabbing the sash rope yanked the window up.

The heat rushed in, bringing with it the oily scent of torches and a low murmur of voices. This was not an angry mob, Shaara decided, craning to see around Bliss's shoulder. This was something else.

"Bliss!" A clear, familiar voice rose over the rest. "Grown lonely, yet?"

"Sit down," Bliss hissed at Shaara. "Out of sight." Then she raised her voice. "Maurice, you old bastard, what game is this?"

Shaara crouched low on the floor beneath the window sill,  Bliss's boots once again in front of his nose. The leather toes were wearing thin. Surely she could afford a new pair. He'd never met anyone who disliked change as much as Bliss did.

"No game," Maurice called back. The room grew gently lighter. Shaara supposed more torches were being passed about; by the slice of night he could see past the lip of the window dawn was still very far away.

"Do you expect me to believe you've planned this little surprise party all on your own?" Bliss's fingertips rattled on the lowered pane. Shaara, eyeing the set of her chin, knew she was growing angry. “Who else is there in the shadows? No, don’t tell me. I can guess.”

"Bliss. Come down." Moire didn’t shout. She didn’t need to. Long ago she’d learned the trick of making her voice carry, over battlefield and across courtyard.

"You're wearing red, Moire," Bliss said coldly. "So perhaps this is a celebration? If so, I’m not interested."

Shaara almost sat up to better see but Bliss stamped firmly on his shoulder, compelling stillness.

"We're not going to hurt you, Bliss. We just want to talk."

"So you bring an audience, well-armed?" Bliss laughed without amusement. "Moire, you never used to be so desirous of attention. Performance was my game."

"Lord Shill has taken Maurice into Northern custody." Moire continued steadily. "Until you return to his lordship what was…mistakenly lost."

"I don't know any Shill," Bliss said. And then Shaara saw her mouth curl into a dry smile as the torchlight beyond the shifted. "Ah. Chrysanthemum? How's the arm?"

Whatever reply Chrysanthemum made, if any, Shaara couldn't catch. He allowed his hand to inch slowly over the floor, toward the stolen pike and pistol, but Bliss gave a slight grunt of negation.

"And have you got my apprentice also in your net, Holiness?" Bliss let the title ring with mockery as she leaned over the sill, pretending to search for a familiar face.

"No." Moire admitted. 

"Chrysanthemum has lost interest in my sweet fingered lad?"

"No charges of murder will be brought against Shaara if you cooperate." That was their Chrysanthemum, and he did not sound particularly hale. Bliss's knife must have cut the strength from his bones. Shaara hoped he would rot.

"A trade," Lord Shill continued in thready tones. "One for one. Your man for the king's property."

"Maurice for a bag of badly painted miniature portraits," Bliss drawled. "Hardly seems a fair trade, that. How do I know you won't take both and leave me with a bullet behind the ear?"

"You have my assurance," Moire called. "Come down."

"No," replied Bliss, after only the briefest of hesitations. "You come up. You and Maurice. Bring Chrysanthemum, if you must, if he can make the climb without a faint. But leave your army behind. Not enough room for the whole lot, not in this space."

Torchlight shifted in answer. Bliss turned from the window and bent without appearing to, briefly pressing something small and hard against Shaara's hand.

"Take it," she muttered, soft as the warm air through the open window. "And up into the chimney flue with you, boy."

"But -" Shaara rose to his hands and knees.

"Go!" Bliss snapped, shoving the pistol into his belt loop. The cold comfort made Shaara shiver. "They don't know you're here and it's better that way. Go." She slapped him once on the thigh as she might have one of the old circus dogs.

And because he was used to following orders Shaara found himself across the slatted floor and across the hearth before he registered the impulse. A dog to the bone, he thought wryly, as he wedged himself crabwise up into the square, dirty chimney. He would never be more than what she had made him.

By the time Shaara had found a workable perch halfway up the flue, Bliss had company.

"Fox's balls, it's dark as a ditch in here. And cold as Horrid's tits,” Lord Shill again, petulant. "You couldn't light a fire?"

Shaara bit his lip to keep back hysteria. Bliss, however, sounded only further annoyed.

"I hate to waste the wood," she growled the lie. "We haven't the king's luxuries in our hidey holes, milord."

"The king," Shill replied, "has no need to hide."

"Bliss," Moire interrupted sharply. "The miniatures?"

"Here." Shaara could just make out the rattle of shells. "You well, Maurice?"

"Yes."

"Take them, then. And welcome to it." Bliss must have tossed the bag. Shaara heard a thump and Shill's pained grunt. Had she thrown them at his chest, knocking the wounded arm, or lobbed them onto the floor so the man would have to reach?

"Thank you," Moire said, relief obvious. Shaara grinned against bricks. "Now, come down, Bliss. Lord Shill is correct, it’s cold as the depths in here. Come and eat and we will send you on your way."

"On my way?"

"Home," Moire replied, gently.

"I'm not going anywhere." Bliss's disgust seemed to find its way up the chimney and burn even Shaara's ears. "Not until you explain, Moire, whatever it is that's stolen away your sense."

"Now is not the time, Bliss." Moire's chill was nearly drowned by Maurice's rising growl and then Lord Shill silenced them both.

"Nevertheless," he said, smooth as summer molasses and sticky with it, too. "I'm afraid the traitor has spoken true. She's to stay here, in this hole. As are the rest of you."

In the sudden hush Shaara heard Moire draw a harsh, affronted breath. Then there was the pounding of an army on the run and the crack and snap of wood. Maurice's growl became a roar. Shaara let go of the bricks and dropped, landing in the fire box, crouched awkwardly, just in time to see torches and Northern soldiers turn the tiny bolt hole into purposeful slaughter.

Moire fell first, clocked expertly from behind. She went down to her knees, choking on rage, long hair painted suddenly red and wet in the flame light.

Bliss yelled and jumped to her  defense but Shill, even sorely injured, moved like a snake. The man had been waiting, Shaara realized, for his moment to come. Shill lifted his good hand, steady, pistol balanced and steady. Then fired.

Shaara, frozen in the firebox, stifled a cry and reached for the weapon at his own belt. And then he could not move because Bliss, felled so easily, collapsed in a disjointed pile on the dusty hearth.

"Just as I thought!" Shaara heard Shill's cough of derision as if from very far away, as if the man spoke beneath the roar of cannon and across a bloodied field. "Useless in the end."

Bliss, cheek pressed against flagstone, watched Shaara. Her eyes were wide and dark and full of something Shaara refused to recognize. While those eyes pinned him, he could not move, could not breath, could not feel the beat of his own heart. In the distance Moire began to scream.

Blood was pooling on the hearth, mixing with the dust. Blink grimaced once, a small wrinkle of brow and nose.

"Take the priest," Lord Shill ordered. "The North wants her alive. And also the traitor's body, I've plans for that."

Bliss’s surmised stare went slack as life slipped her body. Shaara did not know how dear that spark was until it began to flicker.

"Leave the old man for the rats. By the time someone smells him, we'll be long gone. Douse the torches."

Light changed. Dawn crept in through the windows while Bliss died. Her empty gaze still clung to Shaara, imploring stillness. Moire had stopped screaming. He could hear her cursing, the faint determined swearing of a soldier who knew her regiment had taken grievous loss.

Then Bliss moved, the skin of her thin face compressing and then loosening as a squat, bare-headed soldier dragged her from the hearth by the boot heels. The dust did not want to let her go. The pool of blood became a stream, a trail attached to Bliss as the solder bumped her across the slatted floor.

Shaara tucked himself smaller in the firebox. He couldn't make his lungs work properly. He wondered if he had died with Bliss. Then he wondered if he was going to puke and reveal himself in a spray of bile.

He closed his eyes and fought his stomach and the lump in his throat. He gripped the stolen pistol in one hand and the sharp piece of shell in his other and reminded his heart how to beat. He didn't hear the dissolving of Chrysanthemum's trap, but he did hear the broken door fall to the floor, kicked to by the last man out of the room.

After that there silence fell. Shaara's horror left his stomach and leaked through his eyes, hot tears that made his nose itch and his mouth burn. He still could not move. The firebox had become his world. For a long time, nothing else mattered but grief and dust.

[blisserial]

Fourteen

Ross took me back into his bed, but for nothing more than warmth. I didn't mind. Winter in the north is a terrible thing and a wise person will do anything to keep warm, even if that anything is a faking attraction.

Ross did not bother even to pretend. Since we had crossed back over the border he'd dwindled in form and spirit. He looked old. He ate little and drank like a man possessed. At night he whimpered and twisted in his sleep, sometimes clocking me a glancing blow here or there.

If the others noticed my black and blue decoration, they said nothing. I suppose they thought he had taken to beating me again.

I started caring for the animals once more, out of boredom and necessity rather than any sympathy for Ross' plight. The dogs were lonely. I sat with them in the small barn behind our tavern and rehearsed stories and songs. The hounds were a good audience, better than the mule and the stallion who tended to interrupt my narrative with inappropriate sounds and smells.

Maurice sometimes came to keep us company. His little cigarettes seemed to warm the small building considerably, although sometimes I feared he would set the straw on fire.

"What's the matter with the man?" he asked one mid winter morning, watching as I fed the dogs meat pilfered from the new cook's cubby. "It's not like he hasn't seen death before. He lost his own son to the rot not ten summer's past."

I shrugged and watched the dogs snap and fight for their breakfast. "He never mentions his son."

"What does he mention?" Maurice leaned against the mule's stall. He crossed his arms over his chest. "If he's talking to you, Bliss, that's more than the rest of us can claim."

"He's not talking. Much." I was oddly reluctant to admit it. "He drinks and he dreams and he…rambles…"

The mule stuck his head over the stall door and lipped at Maurice's hair. Maurice patted the animal and chewed his cigarette. "Rambles? What does that mean?"

I shrugged again, annoyed. "About her. About Amy. About promises he made her. And about how…" I swallowed. "He wanted to bring her body back."

Maurice's jaw slacked. "Trout take us. I'm glad he changed his mind. What a journey that would have been, Amy's corpse stinking up the wagon."

"That's just it." I stuck a finger in my mouth and chewed the nail. "Ross didn't change his mind, Maurice. The Seat wouldn't let him have her."

Maurice stood silent, considering. Then he sighed. "Well, there wasn't much of her to take home. Best, truly."

"Perhaps." I gnawed harder. "Ross says the jester wanted her bones."

"The jester? The pinch faced lass looked like she'd been eating bad lemons?"

"That's the one." I recalled her green eyes but in the shock of Amy's little else about the lass. "Ross said she wanted the bones for a spell. Witchery.”

"Ain't no such thing as witchery, Bliss."

"I know it." And I did. "It's only Ross’ nonsense."

"He's been talking a lot of nonsense, lately, Bliss." Even without his cigarette, Maurice's breath smoked on the cold air. "And he hasn't been doing much about getting us business."

"We don't need much, do we? Not with Southern gold in our pockets."

“Some of us have already spent our pockets to let." He meant Will. "Circus folk have never given much thought to the future, Bliss. Not ones to pinch a penny for a rainy day."

"No." I thought of my own growing wealth, secreted behind a lose pipe in the latrine.

"You need to get us work, Bliss."

That took a moment to sink in. And then I started and stared, looking away from the snarling dogs and then back again. At last I waded between the dogs to stop the fight, and got a hand bit for the trouble.  "Me? Why me?"

"You're his apprentice."

"Ross goes through his apprentices like green apples through an angry gut."

Maurice laughed, but his mouth did not lighten. "You're his choice."

"Again." It rankled.

"Again. You're in his bed. It's your responsibility."

"I don't see how."

"I do." Maurice shoved himself from the stall and made for the stable door. "The bearded lady's gone. We have no dog girl. Will's threatening to split. And the tumblers are being courted by the local footpads. We're all bored, Bliss, and Ross' mood isn't helping much."

"Isn't or ain't, Maurice?" For a moment anger sparked. Maurice had been with Ross longer than any, was a better actor than most, and still he avoided the shackles of life with the ease of one of Trout's scaly fish.

Maurice laughed as he slipped into the afternoon. "Whichever you like, Bliss. Just find us a job, soon. Before our family falls apart."

                                                             *****

The priest stood over Maurice, staring. Then he knelt and fumbled at the silver chain with bloody hands.

"There's no key, Holiness," Maurice said patiently. "If ever there was, it's gone." He jerked his chin at the bonfire at the center of the room.

"There is no lock, either." The priest felt carefully along the chain binding Maurice's wrists, gnarled fingers searching. "But that one has ever been full of tricks. Ah!" He smiled and pressed a single link against his palm. The link popped audibly and disintegrated. The rest of the chain fell to the floor where it lay glinting in the firelight.

Maurice eyed the old man doubtfully. "I mean no disrespect, Holiness. But you might have found me easier to execute with the binding."

"I don't plan to kill you." The old man shifted on his knees, feeling about for the second chain.

Maurice looked down on the balding head. "No?"

"No." The priest popped another link. He pulled the remaining silver from around Maurice's boots. "I have not survived so long on foolish choices. This is my temple. I run it. And I don't waste opportunities."

In spite of himself Maurice laughed. "And the gods have naught to do with it?"

"He is not the only deity worshipped inside Low Temple walls." The priest staggered upright, tottering. Maurice held out a steadying hand, then discovered that the manacles had left his own legs wobbly. "And I might argue he is far from the most deserving." The priest's gaze strayed to the smears of grease on the floor, smears that had once been human.

"He killed good men."

"You killed those men," the priest corrected. "Do not fool yourself. This is your work." He sighed slightly and turned his frown to the leaping flames above broken furniture. "It will burn itself out, I suppose. But I fear he has pulled your fangs."

Maurice shook his head. He could not help but wonder if the strain of the last several hours had driven the old man mad, or somewhere close to it.

"Come, Holiness." He urged the priest away. "The room is not safe. Best hurry before the entire Temple catches fire."

The old man cackled but allowed Maurice to lead him in a wavering dance to the door. "They will not let that one ruin their place of worship with his foolishness. Besides, you’re needed upstairs."

Maurice shut the door on the burning room. The slatted wooden planks would not keep the conflagration back for long. And he was not so sure that the same gods who had sprung from shadow wanting his flesh would bother to save their supper from the cook fire.

"Come outside for a bit, Holiness," he coaxed, half leading and half carrying the old man up the steep staircase. "At least until evening bell, surely."

The priest staggered on the edge of a stair. He laughed. "You've lost time spent with Fox. It is deep night outside the temple doors. The evening bell sounded long ago."

He took a slow, rattling breath, then coughed. "And did I not say you are needed?" The priest paused, pulling something from his stained sleeve.

It was a Moire's old badge, engraved with her name and rank . Maurice knew the piece of pounded silver well enough. The badge was as deeply a part of his bottled memories as the war itself.

"She sent for you while Fox played his games. She's waiting for you, at the very top of the Temple."

Maurice blinked. The priest cackled again.

“The gods are, in some ways, little different than their lesser counterparts,” The priest explained, "They do not work in accord, rarely so. There are quarrels in that family, and duplicities, and a mortal man does his best to balance against the wind. The very unlucky," he paused and shot Maurice a pointed look, "are caught  in the storm."

Maurice felt the cold fingers of dread creep along his spine. Clenching Moire’s badge in his fingers, he resumed his climb.

"Save your energy," the old priest called after, breathlessly amused. "It is a very long way to the top."

 Moire eyed the man who sat slumped on the library chaise, his back against thick glass, a mere finger's breath from the edge of the world.

"My lord," she said prompted, because although by principle she would not give him military rank, she supposed he deserved his landed title. "How are you feeling?"

He was white from lack of blood but the fresh bandages wrapping his arm were clean. His left eye was swelling, blue and purple, but Moire knew her own guards had done that. Bliss, it seemed, had not paused to do more than butcher his limb.

"I'm thirsty," he answered at last. "Is that whiskey?" He glanced at a crystal carafe on the library's writing table.

"Water." She poured him a glass and passed it between the two guards flanking the chaise. They would not let him so much as lift a finger in her direction, Moire knew. She rather doubted he had the strength.

The man had spent more than an hour drifting in a puddle of his own blood on the shopkeeper's floor, a gutted honor to keep him company. That had butchering was Shaara's work: Moire recognized the lad's old skill and madness.

The city guard had not expected to find a survivor in the gore but Bliss's knife, while breaking bone, had not severed the life vein. So the guard had done as they were expected and hauled their prisoner to the Seat's nearest representative.

Now the man was her prisoner. Not because he may have murdered an innocent citizen - the shopkeeper was missing, presumed dead - but because the Seat did not approve of the sudden influx of Northern soldiers, thick as fleas, on the streets of his city. And because there was obviously more going on here than a brawl amongst sugar cakes.

"Do you have a title, sir?" Moire asked, tucking new, soft red robes closer about her throat. It was cold at the top of the world, kept that way to prevent the books from molding. "How are you called in the north?"

The soldier considered Moire expressionlessly and then shrugged, a languid roll of his shoulders. "John Michael Sevenson," he answered. "Lord Shill."

Moire poured herself a glass of water while she pretended confusion. "And what errand have you in Emman, Lord Shill?"

"I have been seeking a thief," Shill replied. He lifted his own glass to his mouth with his good hand, gulped, then swallowed convulsively. "I tracked her over the border. I thought I'd finally cornered her in your city."

"And had you?"

"Yes." Some color was beginning to return to the man's face. Anger? Moire wondered, or embarrassment? "We had her. She slipped away."

"Killing as she did so." Moire suggested, "Yet those slaughtered few were only a fraction of your entire hunt. Does it take twenty good men to capture one thief, my Lord Shill?"

Shill had very blue eyes. He narrowed them in disgust. "No ordinary thief, Moire Kler. Oh, yes. I know who you are. Just as you know who I'm after."

"Bliss."

"Yes." Shill huffed and then winced. "A traitor to her people, fallen so low she must resort to small time thievery. An embarrassment, truly. Or it would be so. But she made one more mistake, Holiness. She pinched from the king."

Moire kept her face still. "I wasn't aware the Bliss had lately been to the Northern Court."

"Not lately." Shill coughed, then shifted uncomfortably. "Not ever. The Northern Court would stone her for war crimes."

"Does the king then leave his treasures lying about unattended, my lord?"

Shill refused to rise to bait. "The land belongs to the king. As does every living thing upon it. And objects of such variation cannot all, each one, be kept under lock and key."

"Your king takes what he wants," Moire clarified. She glanced sideways at the stern faces of Shill's guards, wondering if they disapproved. She couldn't read their stoic expressions. They were good men. She'd trained them well.

"Yes," agreed Shill, unruffled. "And this day, he wants that which your friend has decided to keep."

"Rather pointedly," Moire said, nodding at the man's bound arm.

Shill didn't smile. Moire had not expected him to. Still, she wished the man did not look so resigned. His resolute acceptance was dismaying.

Moire rose from her chair. "Your men have been detained. All of them," she added, and saw him take a breath. "Until such time as I am ready to return them north."

"You?" Some of Shill's detachment started to melt. "You, Holiness?"

"Yes," Moire agreed, because she had no choice in the matter. "I will see the king's men and the king's property are returned over the border."

"Why?"

"Because," and Moire looked out past the man's head and through the glass at the warm blue sky. "Because it is required of us." The sky unfocused and Moire could see her reflection in the glass, bright and detailed as any painter's canvas. The myriad beads in her braided hair sparkled, too many to count. She had not tried to count them, as the beads were made hers, and as the beads had made her divine.

 She knew it was Maurice's hand on the library latch before the door banged open. Shill was dozing between his guards. He jumped at the noise and came immediately to attention. Sweat popped across his brow as damaged muscles pulled.

Moire felt some little sympathy for the wounded man. She felt a good deal more for Maurice. She watched his face as he skirted the edge of slanting bookshelves before coming to stand in front of her.

"I hate this place," he said. "I always have. Lists of the damned."

"Records of the blessed," Moire corrected quietly and then waited until he absorbed the change in her. She saw the moment he did; something shifted behind his eyes, an emotion kindling.

"What have you done?"

"Only what the gods have asked of me." She spread her arms, allowing red folds to fly wide, the wings of status. "I am ordained."

"Ordained?" Maurice's mouth set in disbelief. "You are not even full initiate. The ceremony is another three days yet away."

"There was need for expediency. The guardian of this temple, Jorgan, is grown weak and feeble in his elder years."

"I've met your guardian," Maurice said slowly. "He appears to have his wits about him still."

"A mind cannot rule when betrayed by the body. You know that as well as any, Maurice." Moire set her palms together. "We saw it on the battlefield, among the wounded elite. This, this was Jorgan's decision, Jorgan's design, from the gods' mouthes to his own ear."

"And what had you to say about it?"

Moire acknowledged Maurice's derision across and gave him the honesty he deserved. "Nothing. None of this was my idea, or my wish. They came to me in a waking dream, not long after you fled with Bliss. They told me to set down the sword and take up the robes. They told me I was needed."

Maurice set his jaw. 

"I have always served the Seat, Maurice." She let chill seep into her tone. "Since I was a child I have been his, in any form he so desires."

"The Seat called you to this?"

"The gods called me to this," Moire corrected, as she had Bliss.

 "Your gods are meddlers."

"My gods are your gods also, Maurice. And they have made me more than I was, so that I may serve them better."

Maurice stood for a moment, silent. Then he dealt with the uncomfortable as he always had, by turning away.

"Who's this fancy fellow?"

Lord Shill was drooping again, fever staining his cheeks pink. She hoped his wound was not already going putrid. She didn't have time to waste on a temple healing.

"John Sevenson Shill," he answered through clenched teeth. "Lord of the Yellow Wood and third warden to the king's fifth son."

"The king has too many sons," Maurice retorted. "What are you doing so far from court, Sevenson?"

"Hunting Bliss," Moire answered. "And badly, if I may say so. We never let one go so easily, did we, Maurice?"

"No."

"And we're not about to break our record." Moire walked laid her hand on Maurice's shoulder. "I need what Bliss has. Whatever it is she's hiding. I need it. And I want you to help me get it.”

[blisserial]

Thirteen

We were sent home with gold and Southern sapphires and a lion's skin; the prized animal made sacrifice to match Amy's own. We none of us came before the Seat himself but Ross was invited to sup with the courtiers in a tent more elaborate than our own. When he came back he was drunk as Trout and puked up most of his dinner. He spent the night in the Bearded Lady's arms and we all heard him weep for what was lost.

Adulation followed us home. Every temple in every village knew how we had pleased the Seat. Gifts of honey and cake perfume and woven linen appeared overnight wherever we stayed. Maurice grew surly and made us sleep out under the Southern sky, but the gifts continued to materialize every night on the edge of our small camp.

Will, who had earlier made noises about staying for life south of the river now called for haste. The Bearded Lady shaved  her whiskers. Ross took to wearing the lion's skin about his shoulders, even in the midday heat. The dogs whined for Amy and the one-eyed tom took to shitting in my bedding.

Of our troop only Maurice seemed unaffected and when more than once I woke from a nightmare vision of Amy's corpse in the lion's maw, he was there to hold my head as I retched.

When I'd finished, he lit one of his small cigarettes and passed it to me, tilting his head in invitation.

"Almost home. Two more days, I think."

Maurice's cigarette tasted like peppermint and eased both nightmares and stomach cramps.

"So soon?" I had lost time. "And what will we do then?"

Maurice sucked smoke thoughtfully. "I don't know."

"We're rich as Trout, but it's turned to blood money. I don't think I can keep it." Until then, I'd not admitted my fear even to myself.

"It's not cursed, Bliss. It's only coin and well earned at that." He puffed a chain of purple smoke rings before turning to study me with wise, sad eyes. "You'll get over Amy quickly enough. And then you'll be glad to have it."

Maurice was right. Not long after we passed back into Northern territory, the nightmares stopped. Amy became just another unfortunate mud-grubber lost to sheer stupidity.

I took two days away from the troop and traveled through deep snow to Derby. The climb up the hill to Granda's was slick and too dangerous to attempt. I left a wrapped package with Garve to deliver to the ruined estate at spring thaw. If Garve was greedy enough to strip back the stained fabrics and find the fifteen sapphires I had buried inside I cannot blame him. We all do what we can to survive.

By the time I slogged back three villages over to the inn Maurice had commandeered for our troop, Ross was so far gone in his cups he couldn't remember his own name, the Bearded Lady had run off with the innkeep's prized cook and Will had lost most of his Southern take to games of chance.

                                                       *****

Fox - for that was how Maurice had begun to think of the boy - pulled a walnut's worth of opiate gum from his satin purse and slipped the sticky stuff casually between pursed lips. It was his third such indulgence since the evening bells had vibrated faintly through the walls. Any other man would be out flat on his back but the boy, although his pupils had gone to pinpricks, seemed mostly sober.

He didn't offer his hostage any of the drug. For that, Maurice was glad. Opiate was a danger every  soldier understood. Maurice had long ago given up the habit for his little cigarettes, but if a man was to slip back the circumstances were clearly ripe for it.

All but one of Fox's candles had burned out long ago. The last was down to an inch of white wax. The looming dark did not seem to bother the boy but to Maurice, scrunched up against the cold wall, hungry and breathing in the scent of charred flesh, it seemed as though the room were slowly turning to his tomb.

And perhaps it was. Fox did not seem inclined to let him go. Maurice supposed it was likely he would die here, in delicate silver shackles, untouched grapes rotting to nothing at his feet.

"Don't be so dramatic," Fox said, then coughed a little as the gum reacted to saliva.

Maurice glanced up, alarmed. "You can read my thoughts?"

"No." The boy laughed. "If I could, what need of this?" His small hand swept the room. "No. It is your face I can read, sir." His cheeks puffed as he rolled the gum on his tongue. "You're starting to sweat. Stop worrying. I don't plan to kill you here."

"Wonderful," Maurice muttered. On the table by the empty platter the last candle began to gutter.

"Don’t like the dark much, do you?"

Maurice looked away from the candle but the boy was too busy studying the gleam of his boots to meet Maurice's incredulous eye.

"That I heard from an old companion of yours," Fox explained, wagging the tips of his boots back and forth. "Amazing the things a person will tell her bed companion once that foolish little carnal act has petered out." He sniggered. "She said you'd make her get up in the night and light tapers if the moon was black."

"Lilah," Maurice said, resigned. The gods must have conspired, pulling threads in the skein of his life, just to trap him in the miserable little room. 

"Was that her name?" Fox picked up the guttering candle. He balanced it on the palm of one hand. "I'm afraid I didn't bother to ask." He lifted his fingers a few inches and the flame grew smoky. "You came to light a remembrance taper for her, eh? A good thing. She's been dead a very long time, her bones gone out with the temple rubbish."

Maurice grunted and launched himself from the wall. The boy slid from his seat, at ease. "Stop. Will you force me to pick up my pretty pistol again? Or shall I simply…" As Maurice fought the drag of his shackled ankles, the boy pinched wick between thumb and finger and the room went black as charred bone.

"…snuff the candle?" The unnatural child laughed as Maurice staggered and fell flat. "This fox can see in the dark."

Maurice lay still. He could hear the boy moving about, but only, he knew, because Fox did not care to hide.

"The dark is older than the light," the boy's high, piping voice hushed to a whisper. "Did you know? Before the sun bloomed in the sky, the land was long cloaked in black. Chill, but not empty. Things came out of the dark, born of shadows and the night. Can you see them?"

Maurice, eyes wide, thought he could. Flitting forms of blacker on black, ghosting in the abyss, just out of reach.

"We came out of the dark," Fox hissed. "Pulling our essence from the ebon soil, patching form and consciousness from the bones of night. Horrid first, because she was made impulsive, and then Trout and Bell and quiet Never and her shifting brother who has become less than mortal. And Fox last, because I have always been wary of change - the wiser for it."

Maurice could not tell whether his eyes were open or clenched. The roiling shadows had taken on form, in the flat empty space or against his lids: the forms his mother had taught him, weaving tales of the gods on winter nights while she patched his father's clothes and Maurice, an enraptured child, tended the hearth. Horrid, with her poisonous, sagging breasts. Trout who preferred to drown his enemies, and Bell who sang warning. Pretty, weeping Never and her twin who could not hold form long enough to free himself from the night.

Now they reached for Maurice, eager, and he could feel their hands plucking at his flesh.

"Oh, yes," Fox agreed. "We were hungry. And what was there in the night to eat, but dirt and rock and rootless souls? We were hungry, like to starve, until Never, desperate, called the light to flower on our horizon and lost herself to birthing stars and we learned, then, that warmth is always worth the sacrifice."

Horrid's shadow stood over Maurice. She bared her black teeth. Her inky fingernails scraped his cheek and he could feel blood flow. He strained to open his eyes and then knew that they were already open. Horrid's mouth gaped wide. Maurice felt himself being sucked into that black maw.

"Warmth is always worth the sacrifice," Fox said from beyond Trout's towering disapproval. "Light the room, Maurice. Show me how it's done."

Maurice's heart had gone cold and cowardly and even if he had fooled himself into voicing protest, Horrid would only swallow it away. Swallow him. Nothing left but mist and shadow and the endless dark. Maurice thought he could hear Never sorrowing aloud.

He was barely conscious of the twitched nerve that sent live flame spiraling forth. The table crackled and then went up, a small bonfire, warm enough to make the room daylight and chase the shadows back against the walls. All of the shadows but one.

"Thank you." Fox flickered with the burning furniture, from grinning boy to sleek, bushy-tailed vulpine and then back again. "You've returned to me what I needed to remember." The fox licked its red muzzle, a predator well satisfied. "And I shall not forget again. Holiness!"

The old priest opened the door. Maurice, prone in the warmth of the blaze, saw that the blood on the fellow's robes had dried brown.

"Do with him what you will tonight, Holiness," the boy said, smiling to himself as he stretched out a hand and coaxed flame into his hand. "But do make sure his bones go out with the morning chamber toss."

The flame ran across the child's arm and up his neck and into his eyes. The fox danced once and snapped at the air and then was through the door and away. The thin priest looked down at Maurice, rheumy eyes wide, and sighed.

 Shaara arrived late to the bolt hole because although the white streets were as he remembered buildings had reared up in new places. He had to double back four times before he found the first marker. After that it was easier, but not so simple that he did not have to crouch in two doorways and duck behind one open door to avoid Northern men. Overnight Emman had grown thick with the king's soldiers.

Emman's citizens, waking to this new casual invasion, did not seem pleased. Tempers were short and Shaara was laid into by more than one disgruntled merchant as he dodged through their customers or risked overturning their livelihood.

He was not frightened, exactly. But he was relieved when he found the old cobblestone pavilion empty of soldiers. He crossed quickly, ducking beneath stretching sycamores, and climbed the winding staircase up past the baker's shop and the old scribe's quarters to the attic apartment above.

The door was locked, as it should be, and the key was surely still behind the loose stone. Shaara used his copper wires instead, because they were quicker, and because he had a reputation to keep.

The door swung open on a gust of cold air. Shaara stepped through, shivering. He hoped there was wood, still, for a fire.

"Lock the door behind you," Bliss said from where she sat on the floor. The narrow room was empty of every luxury but for a rough, badly woven rug which Shaara's mistress wore tucked around her shoulders, presumably for warmth.

The pile of kindling waited, untouched, next to the equally ignored square fire box.

"Not today," Bliss said without looking up. "New smoke in the morning sky will provoke unwanted questions. Lock the door and wrap yourself up."

Shivering, Shaara reset the latch. The Seat's architects had made his buildings thick-walled to keep the heat out. Shaara had never understood before just how well the trick worked.

"Open a window?" he suggested. "To let the sun in?"

"No. Open window's as bad as new smoke."

Shaara sighed and dropped his pack. He snaked out his bedding and wound it about his torso and, crossing the uneven wooden floor, dropped at Bliss's side, cuddling closer for warmth.

Bliss had new cuts and bruises above the grime on her face. Blood lurked under her fingernails and from somewhere she'd adopted a pike and a pistol. They lay on the floor near her right hand, forgotten for the moment. Spread between the pike and Bliss's knees were Tamner's miniatures.

The king's miniatures, Shaara corrected himself, leaning forward for a better look.

"Do you think they really are? His, I mean?"

"Yes," Bliss replied. "Have you seen the swarm of Northern soldiers about in the streets?"

"A blind beggarman wouldn't miss them." Shaara picked up one of the pieces of shell. The painter had a good eye but a rough hand. The girl on the shell smiled as if she knew a secret. Her eyes were green as the miller's pond in which Shaara had once spent a whole day splashing about. Her hair was coiled about her ears in the style cultivated by Southern nobility.

"Who is she?"

"I've no idea." Bliss glanced at the woman in Shaara's hand and then away. "I've no idea who any of them are. Probably nobodies."

Shaara traded the smiling girl for another with a dour expression but a seductress's wicked eyes.

"They resemble each other, do you see?" Bliss said. "Eye color, age. Even, if one allows for the artist's vagaries, in complexion. Fair, most. Maurice pointed it out."

"Where is Maurice?" Shaara replaced the shell and shoved his fists into his armpits for warmth. Outside the single window he could see the white rooftops begin to steam.

"Not here." Bliss didn't sound overly concerned. "Moire will bring him, once he's found."

"Found? He's gone missing?"

"Moire will find him." Bliss gathered the shells into a loose pile and shuffled them. She dealt the miniatures out with a gamer's skill, reordering the group.

"If the Northern soldiers don't find him first. Shouldn't we - " Shaara reached very casually for the pistol.

"No." Bliss slapped his hand away. "We'll wait. At least until dark. Think with your head, boy, not your balls. If we charge out into the white streets now -" She stopped. Drew a breath and let it out slowly. Her hand, balanced over Shaara's, came to rest gently, palm down, on one miniature.

"Horrid's teets." She picked the shell up and held the painting to the cold light.

"What is it?" Shaara stretched his neck, trying to see. The woman on the bit of oyster seemed unremarkable. Her eyes were small and green, her cheeks prominent, and her long hair more grey than golden. She wore no smile. In fact, Shaara thought, she wore no true expression at all.

"I know this one." Bliss turned the miniature over, forward and backward and then forward again. "Trout take me, I know her. From where? From where? From long ago. Southern. She's Southern. She was weeping when I saw her. Expressionless, just like this. But tears on her cheeks. She's…" Bliss frowned in concentration and then her scowl deepened in baffled recognition.

"The Seat's jester. She was the Seat's jester. The day Amy fell to the lions."

[blisserial]

Twelve

We were a circus, yes, but never before had we plied our talents beneath the shelter of a proper tent. Ross claimed he hated tents and that the fabric walls and the disappearance of the sky gave him vertigo. I think he simply didn’t want to split with the coin necessary to procure such an expensive prop.

When we saw the jeweled beauty staked beneath the Capitol's white spire I think we all began to dream of endless, cheering crowds and previously unseen acclaim. I know I drew my shoulders back and lifted my chin. Summer south of the border had taught me that we were more than mud grubbers. Now I think I began to realize that we could be near royalty.

"It's sewn all over with sapphires," Will marveled, tattoos flexing as he stretched to stroke the gleaming fabric.

"I imagine they can be cut free," Maurice replied. He tossed Ross a speculative look.

"No," Ross replied quickly. "Let them be. Don't take anything isn't ours. There's danger in that."

Because I caught Amy's nod and frightened genuflect, I made a rude noise. Ross turned his glare my direction. "I mean it, Bliss. Don't tempt fate." Absently he patted the chrysanthemum pin now stuck through the leather of his belt.

The tent was larger than most of the Southern hotels we'd frequented. Beyond the door flap a footman waited. He bowed so low his chin nearly touched the ground then motioned us to the center of the ring.

We were without our mule and stallion. No hoofed animals were allowed beyond the first circle of the city. Instead, the Seat had gifted us with a pair of lions.

I thought fanged animals were a far road more dangerous than hoofed but Ross appeared calm. He'd worked with large cats in his youth, leopards and striped mountain cats, and we'd been promised that these two shaggy beasts were well trained by the Seat's own personal jester.

"They sit at her feet," the footman reported, reaching past thick wooden bars to ruffle a tawny coat. In his cage the lion began to purr, a deep, rumbling growl. "Or do summersaults while she plays a pipe. Gentle as lambs, these two."

I doubted it, but when the footman released the animals in order to demonstrate their talents, the creatures were indeed better mannered than our one eyed tom. Will soon had their cues down and Ross was fairly bristling with excitement.

"Beloved by the people." The footman nodded and preened subtly as one of the big cats rolled on the ground. "We truly cannot have a performance without them."

"We'll work them in." Maurice nodded. "My troop is nothing if not creative."

Creative assuredly. Our Bearded Lady had deft hands with a tailor's needle and also a pack rat's addiction to odd rags and bits of fine fabrics. She went to work piecing together elaborate, ruffled skirts made of feathers and damask. The skirts had lion sized waistlines and matching paste crowns; an example of the Bearded Lady's odd sense of humor.

The costumed lions were meant to dance with the dogs in the center ring while Ross's tabby queen strummed her guitar and the one eyed tom howled vulgar accompaniment. Amy would preside over them all. In this the dog girl reached the highest pinnacle of her career, I am sure.

It all ran surprisingly well. Our dogs and cats did not, as I expected, turn tail and run the moment the lions were introduced. I suppose Ross's menagerie feared his hand above the lions' hunger.

The elegantly coiffed, perfumed Southern audience roared and clapped at all the appropriate places. The shadowed pavilion at the far end of the tent remained opaque but the Seat's courtiers, arranged at the foot of his throne, nodded and smiled. Ross took their smiles as encouragement. That, and the showers of coin raining at our feet from above.

The adulation must have gone to Amy’s head. I was juggling in the far ring and did not see her leap to the lion's back, but I heard the increasing roar of the crowd. I might have continued on oblivious if the Bearded Lady hadn't screamed.

As it was, I looked over just in time to see the affronted animal turn its shaggy head and casually rip Amy's thigh to clots of meat and gristle.

Maurice quenched colored flame as he jumped to the dog girl's aid. The Bearded Lady continued to scream. Eager, frenzied cries from the audience above rang in my ears. And at the foot of the Seat's pavilion, his courtiers clapped and nodded in genteel approval.

                                                              *****

      The boy was dressed as he had been at Tamner's party, a proper pampered little lord head to toe. The white silk of his stockings had none of the stains one expected in a lad. His velvet doublet was unwrinkled. He stank of Southern perfume. Only the child's ruffled mane was out of order; burnished curls fell over narrowed brown eyes and onto the collar of his tunic.

He held the pistol steady, small hand loose and practiced, while he shook his head.

"A simple question such as I asked demands a simple truth, Sergeant." He spoke in the fluting tones of a lad whose balls had not yet dropped. He pursed his lips in dramatic regret. "But you lied. I thought so then. I know so now."

The silver pistol looked as though it had been fashioned to fit that particular miniscule hand but Maurice did not doubt the delicate thing could put a hole in his chest. He found himself clenching his teeth, and forced his jaw to relax.

"I've no idea what you mean."

"Witchery." The boy pronounced the word as though it tasted sweet on his tongue. He used his free hand to gesture at the blackened walls. "Or do you expect me to believe that conflagration was the result of an oil soaked rag and well timed distraction?"

He laughed as though he found himself terribly amusing. From somewhere behind Maurice the thin priest cackled a nervous echo. That sound, far more than the pistol, made Maurice begin to sweat.

The boy must have seen something on Maurice's face because he wagged his head carefully from side to side. "Don't try it, sir. Burning me won't do you a bit of good and I'll still put a bullet through your heart. Besides," the weapon remained still and steady as the lad crouched at Maurice's shoulder, "surely you've killed enough for one day." He leveled a meaningful past Maurice.

For the first time Maurice noticed the rank, charred stink rising about the room: blackened bone and hair. He knew the taste of ash well.

"I didn't kill them." Because he was sure he hadn't. Most of the priests had been still in the hall and the man closest behind had been hale enough to send Maurice tumbling to the floor.

"No?" The boy's brows quirked. "That isn't supper I smell, nor dinner I see."

Maurice lunged upward. He managed to knock the pistol from the lad's hand, but only, he thought, because the little monster allowed it. He did not quite make it to his knees before the muzzle buried itself again in his rib cage.

"Look your fill," the boy said. "And tell me that isn't murder."

The guards lay where they had fallen, inside the door and beyond, across the bottom of the stairs. The leather of their uniforms had turned brittle. Their boots steamed. Their hands were gone to blackened bone and what remained of their faces made bile rise in the back of Maurice's throat.

Only the elderly priest stood untouched, leaning hard against one blackened wall. His weathered face was set in a rictus of adoration and fright. And it was not, Maurice slowly realized, the fire the old man feared.

"I didn't do that." Maurice said quietly. Because he had always had far more control on the battlefield and he would not think that disuse had eroded his grip. "Who are you?"

The pistol jumped against his flesh as the boy exhaled a thoughtful sigh.

"He," the child said at last, "and his like prefer not to give me name. You.  Well. Often enough, your people call me Fox."

 The boy bound Maurice hand and foot with fine silver linked chain he produced from a small chest on the table and, pistol adamant, sent him to stand against the far wall. Then he made the old priest clear the room of the ruined bodies. It was a grisly, horrifying task to watch, but the man did not complain.

When the priest was finished he bowed, shaking, bloodied hands clutched to his robes, leaving vivid smears.

"Stand outside," the monstrous lad ordered. "Shut the door. I will call you when I want you."

The priest bowed again and shut the door. The soft, faint sounds of temple life above muffled to non existence.

The boy set his pistol on the table and parceled fruit and bread onto a small china plate. This he set on the floor in front of Maurice as one would feed a dog.

"Eat." He said, "I arranged it especially for you. You'll be hungry, I imagine.”

Maurice was not, but he slid down the rough wall until he sat on his heels and freed a grape with manacled hands.

"Northern grapes," he noted. The small purple fruit was cold and firm between thumb and fore fingers. "Fresh."

The boy plucked a grape from the platter on the table and burst it between sharp teeth. "They are my favorite." He scraped juice from red lips with his tongue and then smiled. "You don't believe me."

Maurice rolled the grape between his fingers but did not lift it to his mouth. "I never question a man's tastes, lad."

The boy's delighted laugh rolled and then vanished as quickly as it had come.

"No," he said, suddenly cold. "About the other. You don't believe I'm your Fox."

"My Fox is a god." And a wise man never ate a god's offering. "He runs in a beast's form, when he runs at all." Maurice tilted his chin at the abandoned pistol. "A god has no need of a man's weapons."

"There is ease in the mechanical." The boy sat on the floor a body's length away from Maurice. He pulled his knees up under his chin. Despite the ash in the room, the lad's white stockings were still clean. "And Fox is clever."

Maurice released the grape. It bounced on the china, rolled, and dropped to the floor. He regarded the boy silently, hoping he looked a good bit more indifferent than he felt.

"Do you plan to keep me prisoner?"

The boy appeared to give this idea great thought. "We've enough food to last a day or three. If the grapes do not sour. I abhor soured grapes. But this room gets cold. And we cannot expect Father Geschke to stand out there forever. The man's joints are bad and he's not got but a small family of days left to him."

"It would be," the lad continued, "easier on us all if you just explain."

"Explain?"

"The witchery!" The boy displayed a child's petulance beautifully, even sitting still as he did. "You are right. It doesn't exist, it shouldn't exist, I've mad sure of it. And yet there you were, sir, at Tamner's celebration, displaying your unnatural flame for all to see." His ivory skin grew flushed and mottled. "It does not exist, and yet you have it in spades. Where did it come from? How did you get it? Tell me!"

"You're mad."

The boy chewed his lip and muttered to himself. Then, quick as the child's Jumping Jack Maurice had once seen on display through a toymaker's window, he hopped to standing and spread his arms wide.

"How old am I?" He challenged.

Foolishness, Maurice thought. But: "Ten Summers, no more."

"And how old are you, fire eater?"

"Thirty and seven."

"The day you were born," the lad bent like a hinge at his waist, scowling into Maurice's glower, just out of reach, "your mum slaughtered her best goose and your father caught its arterial blood in a silver cup and left the whole on the cornerstone of my cottagers' church."

Maurice opened his mouth and then closed it again. The boy continued on.

"On the day you turned five your father picked an entire tree's crop of apples and your mother bundled them into a freshly woven basket and left the whole on the cornerstone of my cottagers' church. To bring you luck. Your mother," he straightened up again, seeing something Maurice could not, "had a bit of the rot in her left foot. You stole an apple from the basket. Your mum lost that foot soon after and you've never been particularly rich in luck. You shouldn’t have taken what was mine."

"Enough," Maurice said, despite himself, remembering his mother's gulping cry as the village surgeon cut off her putrid foot. She had not been quite the same after.

"And do you remember," the lad asked, spearing Maurice with a charming smile, "when you turned ten and five?"

Maurice did not, at first, and then, reluctantly, he did. He felt color rise again, this time along his own throat.

"Your mum in her grave and your father not long from his," the boy said. "You convinced the Matron Clark to lie with you, in the scrub alongside my church. And after, you left your offering wet upon my cornerstone, all because young Horace Redding told you, sir, that such a hedonistic ritual would bring you Fox's favor."

Maurice could not speak. The boy took bread from the table and broke it casually into two.

"You've never deserved my favor. And only because of the blood in your mum's silver cup do you have my mercy. So, best speak now." He bit into the bread, sighed easily, and spoke through a full mouth. "The witchery. How did you come by it? Who gave it to you? Speak! Was it that old meddler, that stolid fool, my brother Trout?"

                                                        ********

Moire could not find Maurice. He hadn't been seen in the barracks since sunrise. His cell was all but empty. He'd left his knife behind and the pack that contained his circus tricks.

Sometime since his arrival Maurice had picked up a cake of soldier's hard soap. It sat on the end of his neatly folded bedding along with a battered washing ewer. The man had always been obsessive about cleanliness.

Moire did not feel much compunction searching his quarters, because Maurice had never, in the time she had known him, locked a door. And because she was and always would be his commanding officer, and so had long ago earned the right. And because if Bliss had revealed her troubles to anyone, it would have been Maurice.

But she found nothing of Bliss, nothing out of the ordinary, and certainly no sign of a struggle. If the Northern king's soldiers had come for Maurice, they'd not come for him here.

Moire left the cell and stood for a moment in the subterranean corridor, thinking.

She remembered the old bolt hole. A small, possessive part of her heart wanted to throw off her priestly robes and responsibilities and find Bliss again, shake her until secrets spilled out, fix whatever scrape her friends had gotten themselves into.

Once, that would have been her right. But no longer.

Now, she belonged to the gods. And as if those self same gods heard her traitorous heart, they sent her a gentle reminder, in the form of the officious Corporal Aansi.

The man had, lately, somehow become her conscious.

"Major." Aansi appeared wholly relieved. "Thank the highest. I've been looking for you since afternoon bell. They said you were doing your wash."

"I was." Moire folded her hands into the sleeves of her robe. The fabric prickled but she'd grown used to it. "Something came up."

Aansi eyed the door at Moire's back. The corporal could not quite keep his disapproval hidden.

"You're wanted ." He said, with emphasis, "At the temple."

"Of course I am," Moire replied, smothering a sigh.

 Daily obeisance appealed to Moire's warrior self. It was, after all, only another form of patience, not so different from days and nights spent in formation, waiting for the enemy to make his move. The temple floor was nearly as cold as a camp tent in winter and far more uncomfortable than a day spent in the saddle.

During obeisance Moire was never alone. To her right and to her left the other initiates spread in motionless rows, brows pressed to the floor, eyes closed.

Moire could hear her companions breathing, when she was not distracted by the beating of her own heart. Often she became lost in the inhale and exhale until that ocean of life lifted her chest and she grew light and full of certainty. Then every lingering doubt fell away and nothing remained but the companions at her side and the promise of her new future.

But for once Moire could not focus. The rhythmic breath of the men and woman sprawled around her became a distraction, an irritation. Time seemed to inch forward, painstakingly slow. Her forehead grew numb against the stone floor.

She wanted to open her eyes and roll her head and look up at the towering altar. She needed to seek answers to new questions in its glittering, all-seeing eye. She waited for that light, that certainty.

It didn't come.

Outside midday grew into evensong. Soon the bells would ring again and free her from supplication. Moire wondered if Maurice had returned safely to his cell.

A throat cleared, startling against the susurrus of breath. She forgot not to look up.

A young priest looked down at, expression kind. "Initiate," she said. "You are expected in the library."

Surprised, Moire glanced side to side at the motionless, scarce breathing bumps that were her brothers and sisters. The priest shook her head and lifted one finger to her lips.

"Take the main staircase," she said. "They’re waiting.”

[blisserial]

Eleven

The Capitol is surrounded by endless fields of flowers. The flowers are said to be the favored blossom of the gods. The Seat guards them jealously. In the north we no longer grow the poppy, just as we no longer plant oilseed. It's forbidden.

Some Northerners even claim the poppy flower is cursed. Eat of the seeds and one will quickly die of the bloat. Touch the petals and ware the resulting hives. Look too long upon the spiny stem and go mad.

The dried, crushed roots are smuggled over the border for use as a poison, but I have never yet heard tell of a soul successfully murdered in such a way. Use of the opiate is punishable by hanging but that's never stopped addicts, in bad years it's said the opium chewers crowd the king's gallows to bursting.

That first ride across those rippling fields made my young self shake.  I had no real horror of standing before the Seat; as yet I knew no better. But, as we traveled the thin dusty path between rows and rows of thriving flowers, I felt strangely as though the end of my world waited on the other side of the massive field.

Ross, riding alongside Amy and slightly to my front, dug something from beneath his belt. The size of a lump of coal, it glittered in his palm before he clutched it tight.

"What’s that?" I wondered aloud, and then thought better of speech. The bright flowers seemed to loom closer and my words lingered in the musty air.

"Chrysanthemum." Reluctantly Ross opened his fingers. Past Amy's mount I could see the weathered silver brooch in his hand. "Wards off bad luck."

"I've never heard that." I lowered my voice a notch. "Granda grew them. It's just a flower."

"Like those in these fields are just a flower? No," Maurice said from behind me. When I glanced back, he smiled and shrugged. "The king soaks chrysanthemum petals in spring water and drinks the liquid as a healthful tea."

He continued, quoting: "'And so Trout plucked the chrysanthemum and made the petals into mash and ate them with his bread and in doing so brought health and honor to the land and to his sons.'"

I scoffed, trying to ignore the whisper of wind through the dancing poppy fields. "What is that? Poetry?"

"Legend," Maurice replied. "Have you no learning at all, Bliss?"

Amy laughed, a shrill giggle that made my teeth clench. Lately I had begun to wish Ross would tire of the lass and send her back to sleep with the dogs.

"I need no learning," I said, glaring at Ross's back. "I have wit."

Still, as we continued down the path, watched by the nodding poppies, I considered Maurice's legend and thought seriously of stealing Ross's silver flower. Better that protection in my pouch than in his.

                                                             *****

"I don't have them," Bliss said through clenched teeth. "Are you deaf? How many times must I tell you so?"

Chrysanthemum shifted irritably on his stool. "You expect me to believe you sold them in some back water Southern village?"

"We were hungry," Shaara said indignantly. "A man's got a right to eat. And what good's a bag of painted shells when your stomach's grumbling? They weren't even pretty painted shells."

Chrysanthemum shot Shaara a hard look. Shaara kept his face still and rolled his shoulders. Chrysanthemum scowled at Bliss. Bliss mimicked Shaara's shrug.

"We got a fair price for them," she said. "Enough for a sup and a good room."

A crimson flush rose up Chrysanthemum's throat and across his cheeks. "A fair price? A fair price! Have you any idea -"

"No," interrupted Bliss. "I haven't. What is a bag of painted miniatures to you? And why have you come all this way to retrieve Tamner's goods?"

Chrysanthemum swallowed back visible fury. "They belonged not to Lord Tamner, but to our king."

Shaara glanced at Bliss. She met his eye in perfect understanding, then shifted almost imperceptibly on her stool. "What was the king's property doing in Lady Alyce's sewing drawer?"

"Trout grant her peace," Chrysanthemum touched his brow in automatic reverence. "Milady made a mistake."

"A mistake?" Shaara echoed before he could help himself. Beneath the table, Bliss kicked him in the shin, a sharp warning.

Chrysanthemum swiveled. He considered Shaara carefully. "You've grown, Corporal , since that day in the rain on the field."

"You were there?" A shiver ran up and down Shaara’s spine.

"Yes, lad. I was there. Most of us who matter now to the north were. Many who waited in the mud that day were lost. You were a lucky."

"It wasn't luck." Bliss picked the spoon from the empty bowl. She tapped it on the table. Trying to distract, Shaara knew.

Chrysanthemum shook his head. "Enough." He held out one brown, calloused hand. "I know you have the miniatures. I'd not have come into this stark city without some certainty. I want them. Now." Shaara felt the men standing in the shop tense. He did not dare glance around.

"I told you: I don't have them," Bliss drawled. "Nor am I interested in the king's lost property. Obviously, the man should keep a better hand on his jewels."

"Watch your mouth, Captain," Chrysanthemum hissed. "You come dangerously close to treason." His extended hand dipped as he reached for Bliss's pack.

Bliss flipped the spoon. It  flew in an elegant, perfect arc and caught the closest soldier across the face. The soldier grunted. Chrysanthemum, startled, paused just long enough. Bliss buried her belt knife in his forearm.

Blood burst across the table. Chrysanthemum screamed in pain and rage. Bliss slid from her stool, pack in hand.

"Run," she ordered Shaara, and darted toward the door.

Since the kick in the shin Shaara had known a brawl was iniment. Even so, Bliss did not usually brawl with her knife. The sight of blood and bone through sleeve held Shaara rooted on his stool.

"Shaara!" Bliss shouted, barreling as she did so head first into a looming soldier. "Run, you idiot!"

Shaara ran. His stool toppled as he dodged Chrysanthemum's wobbling lunge. His knife was in his hand of its own accord and his hand remembered what to do.

There was a trick to it, a simple dance to distract, then a duck and a lunge and a quick twist of the knife in armpit or neckline, where a soldier's leathers were most vulnerable. Northerner or Southerner, they all had soft flesh beneath. They all bled the same, bright red gushes, across a table or in floods along the grass at Green Hill. Men shrieked as they died, or fell without protest, exhaling thick fluid along with their lives.

"Shaara." Bliss's hand was on the scruff of his neck. He almost drew his knife across the pulsing blue vein in her throat. "Enough," his Captain ordered. "Drop it."

Her other hand squeezed his left wrist until his fingers began to go numb. The belt knife, blunted from bread and cheese and now wet with blood, fell from his hand to the floor with a thud.

"Leave it," Bliss said. "Leave them." It took an effort, but Shaara returned to himself. He blinked at the three dead men sprawled beneath the tables in a sludge of gore and sugar. Chrysanthemum stood leaning on his stool,  gasping but still alive.

"Leave him," Bliss said, pulling Shaara from the shop. Outside in the street too bright sun bounced across white buildings and made his eyes water.

“What now?” His head felt full of wool, his stomach full of snakes. He’d forgotten how easy it was to kill a man. 

"Now we split up." Bliss set her brow briefly against his own. She pressed  another knife into his hand, a new knife with an ivory handle, an officer's knife, Chyrsanthemum's knife? Bliss was always been efficient.

"And Horrid's tits, don't go back to Moire. They'll be looking for us there." Her breath whispered across his lips. "The old bolt hole, remember?"

"Yes."

"Good. Go. I'll find Maurice." She clenched the back of his neck again, a promise. Then she was gone, the stark walls rising up in her absence. Shaara heard Chrysanthemum begin to bellow from inside the shop.

Clenching the knife in his fist, Shaara turned back up the street and fled.

 Moire was washing her new prayer shawl in the barrack's spring when Bliss found her.

"You're predictable," Bliss said, lingering beneath the shade of an old drooping willow. "Although it used to be saddle blanket and sweat cloth."

"It still is, occasionally." Moire's back ached from scrubbing but the cool water felt good against the insides of her wrists. "One can be a soldier and a priest."

"Not easily." Bliss leaned against the willow's thick trunk. "So far as I've noticed. Soldiers are afraid of a priest to take her orders on the field. In fact, some say it's bad luck."

"You've always been too superstitious, Bliss. Ross ruined you with that." Moire rose to her feet. She rung out her shawl, water dripping onto the grass. The wool, even clean and wet, was already beginning to look a trifle worse for the wear. "Hardly worn." She sighed. "Have you come to return my other?"

"No," Bliss replied without sympathy. "I'm keeping it. To remind me."

"Of?" 

"Betrayal."

"Bliss." Moire laughed despite her herself. She spread the dripping shawl over a round, warm boulder and stepped up the hill. She felt calm again, in control, determined.

They would smooth things out, here in the sunshine. Bliss would be sullen but resigned, as Bliss was wont to be, and Moire would send her on her way home with a chaste kiss and goodwill. Moire would miss them all but the world would right itself again.

But as she approached the willow, Moire's contended musings fled. "You're bleeding."

"Not mine." Bliss grinned, bearing teeth. A gash across her nose split open, giving lie to her words.

"Come here," Moire ordered. "Into the light. Let me see.”

"If it's all the same to you," Bliss said dryly. "The tree is a better cover than your angry Southern sun."

"It's the same sun. The north has the inconvenience of clouds." Without waiting for permission Moire ran practiced fingers up and down Bliss's limbs, searching. Bliss winced once or twice, but it seemed she spoke ture. The majority of the blood, it seemed, belonged to someone else. "What's happened?"

"The king's soldiers have come hunting in the Southern heat."

"For you?" Moire prodded Bliss's ribs. Bliss grunted but did not flinch. "What have you done?"

"What have I done?" Bliss's black brows plunged. "What have I done? Why do you always assume the fault is mine?"

"Because you're a thief and a scoundrel when you're not a hero and because it usually is." Satisfied that the score across Bliss's nose was the worst of it, Moire dug free the small jar of honey she kept in her pouch. She used the sweet ointment to seal the split. 

"What do they want, then?"

Bliss squared her shoulders, then sighed. "Something I have, something Shaara found."

"And where is Shaara?" Alarmed, Moire glanced into the willow's shadowed depths, but Bliss was alone. "He said he was off to find you, that he had something to discuss with you."

Bliss shrugged. She wouldn't meet Moire's eye, a bad sign. "He's in the old bolt hole, if he's followed orders. We had a nice game of cat and mouse and then a passable dessert on Roth Street. Lovely, really, until we were interrupted by a bad tempered officer on a royal errand."

Moire capped her honey jar and secreted it away again. "Shaara stole something that belonged to your king? Careless."

"Of both our king and my apprentice." Bliss stared thoughtfully across the creek, seeing something that Moire did not. "I tried to run down Maurice, but he's not in the barracks and the wench at the front desk hasn't seen him all day and then I ran into another clutch of the Northern men behind the Spire. He's sent more than a squad, Moire."

"He means business, then." Moire kept her tone light, but she knew a sudden waking of fear. "What is it you have, Bliss? What is it worth?"

Bliss's lips set. She shrugged. "I don't know."

"You won't tell me." Moire felt the sharp, bright sting of heart ache. She slapped it away, stern. The gods knew Bliss had never given anything away willingly.

"I don't know." Bliss strode away, leaving the tree behind. She squatted above the spring, cupped water, scrubbed blood from her hands, cupped again and took a quick drink. "Find Maurice for me, Moire. Send him to the old spot."

"Where are you going?" Moire kept her hands straight at her side, in that empty space where her sword and pistol had once lived.

"I don't know that, either.” Before Moire could voice protest the shadows once again swallowed Bliss up.

[blisserial]

Ten

By the time summer rolled to an end we were rich as newly made lords. I had gold in my pockets and in my pack, and jewels on my fingers and rich, well cut fabrics to keep me in the highest fashion. We had more invitations to perform than we knew what to do with. We made a game out of it, selecting a date to play in the muddiest town or the farthest reaches of the Seat’s shadow or for the ugliest politician or the most bitert priest.

But as the season ebbed we began to count the days until Ross decided it was time to trudge back over the river back into our own country, to familiar places and faces and food. I cannot say I was reluctant to leave Southern oddities behind, but I also cannot say I was eager to return to a life of poverty. I determined I would guard carefully whatever wealth I did not first give to Granda.

Ross had finally begun to make noises about packing up for home when we received the most unexpected and frightening invitation of all.

The embossed piece of linen paper was delivered by courier on a cool afternoon to the tavern we had been frequenting most often in our last days. The courier, a dusty and weathered lass with the Seat's emblem emblazoned on her leather jerkin, seemed to have no trouble picking Ross from the tangle of loud patrons.

She marched straight across the brick floor to our table and set the linen paper beside Ross's fat goblet of red wine. Then she stood carefully to one side, at attention, waiting.

I remember noting that she had pierced her ears with gold wire and wondering if that was the way of the Seat's army.  She had a pistol at her belt. I thought she looked as though she would not hesitate to use it.

"Imagine that," Ross murmured, fingering the embossed paper. I couldn't make out the runes scrawled along the edges, but I recall thinking the deep purple ink was unusual. "Horrid butcher me and Fox take the remains, in all my years I've never…" Then he paused and shot the waiting soldier a hooded look.

Will, who had been passing the time playing kanoodles under the table with my bare feet, reached a tattooed hand across the boards and snatched the paper.

"What is it?" Amy, the new dog girl, a tiny Southern wench, pressed against Will's other side, trying to see.

"An invitation to play at the Capitol." Will marveled in a near whisper. "During festival at High Temple."

"High Temple," Amy, devout to annoyance, touched her brow in quick respect. "It must be for Gallows Day. Tis only a fortnight away."

I had absolutely no interest in Southern festivals other than our place as entertainment, but I did find Ross's face a curiosity in itself. He looked as though he had swallowed a hunk of sour cheese.

"They say the Seat himself attends Gallows Day," Amy continued. She seized the invitation Will had dropped back onto the boards and ran a finger along the inked runes. "They say he sometimes pronounces blessing on those in attendance."

"Don't be stupid, girl." Ross snatched the invitation back, then passed it to Maurice. Maurice, without so much as a glance at the runes, made the piece of paper disappear. "Even us Northern mud grubbers know your Seat doesn't mingle with the common folk."

"Gallows Day is different," Amy argued, breathless and avid. "Why, my uncle would have given his last leg for an invitation to Gallows, and gods know he was a master at the craft."

"He was a small time tumbler." Ross snapped, "Why do you think he sold you to me?" He finished his wine in one gulp before glaring with muzzy fury at the messenger.

"No," he said. "We're busy."

Amy gasped. The grizzled soldier bowed and departed without a word.

"Ross," Amy complained. "It would surely bring us honor -"

"Honor is a landed man's concept," Ross interrupted. He grabbed Amy's arm, hauling her up from the benches. He was recently insatiable where the sprightly girl was concerned, as he was whenever a new lass joined our family.

Amy did not seem to mind his lust. Whatever further protest she might have made was smothered by Ross's mocking laugh. The two climbed the tavern stairs and then I could hear their staggering footsteps across the floor overhead.

Will wrapped an arm about my shoulders. Maurice lit one of his everpresent cigarettes. One of the dancing dogs, curled beneath the table at my feet, sighed in its sleep.

The next evening a second invitation arrived and this time the wording was more precise. Ross blanched when he examined the purple ink and then nodded sharply at the courier. That day she had a ruby in one ear and a sapphire in the other.

The next morning we packed quickly, rented five horses to join our mule and stallion, and, striking west, turned their noses to the Capitol and the honor of Gallows Day.

                                                            *****

Shaara tailed Bliss for an entire morning. He did not usually tempt fate so readily, especially where his mistress was concerned. Bliss could be a heavy hand and she had no patience with her people, and as a mere apprentice he was worth less than nothing. Or he might have been, if their troop had not dwindled down to a paltry three.

He'd followed her once before, years past, as a near babe only three days under her protection. He'd wanted to see where this fierce woman spent her days. He'd needed some indication that he could trust her.

That particular day she had spent the day drinking in a smoky tavern and then wasted a night sitting in the cold beneath an alder tree, singing drunken Northern love songs to the stars. He'd not seen any strong indication that she was worthy of his fragile trust until she'd fed the majority of her untouched supper to the cobbler's cat. That small kindness convinced Shaara that Bliss was worth a try so the next morning he had stayed on, instead of running off with the back alley urchins as he’d originally planned .

He was grown now and he knew beyond a doubt that Bliss would protect him with her life, even if that life was battered almost beyond repair and hardly worth more than the dirty clothes on her back. But lately Shaara had begun to think again about running. This time it wasn't a babe's dream of romance in the streets but a man's need to tend to his own future.

He rather thought that Emman City was as good a place to make a new life as any. Shaara gave no thought to returning north. Like as not if he did he would end up a conscript in the king's service, digging trenches and fighting the endless war. He'd rather take his chances in warmer weather. In Emman, Shaara knew, he would have a friend, for it was obvious Moire remembered him fondly. Perhaps she could even find him a job that did not involve singing for his supper.

Not that he regretted his training, as such. But what man did not want more than circus wages? Besides, life with Bliss was fluid and of late Shaara wanted to put down roots.

He followed her through the white streets because he intended to take her aside and tell her his plans, firmly and kindly, but he could not quite find the courage to make his approach.

He could see she was in the midst of a frothing temper. Shaara understood. Bliss would rather lay with a snake than walk with a priest . Still, they all knew it was Bliss who had run and she could hardly have expected an easy welcome. They were lucky Moire hadn't tossed them in the brig for breaking and entering. But Moire had always been a fair commander, just so long as she could see the sense in a thing.

Bliss didn't head straight for the bars as Shaara expected and instead wandered the streets without any purpose he could determine. Shaara thought maybe she was looking for trouble and she did indeed pick a fight with a particularly belligerent tulip merchant. Bliss resisted punching the man in the eye but she did knock the dirty fedora from his grizzled head before she stomped on.

Shaara paused to pick the hat up, dust it off, and return it to its furious owner.

"They say that one was always a whirlwind," the man huffed, looking after Bliss. "We should expect bad days. Still, it's lucky you guard her. Things are not the same as they once were.”

Shaara smiled and hurried on. He wondered if every person in the city remembered Bliss's face. It seemed unbelievable, but then, she had hardly been invisible when Emman had been her home.

He nearly lost Bliss when he paused to admire a lass swathed in white veils. He found again in a cul-de-sac, eyeing the sugary treats through the window of a confectionaire's shop. Shaara hadn't expected the dead end. Bliss, apparently, had.

"Stop skulking about," she growled without turning from the window. "You're no sneak thief, boy."

"You've Fox's own ears," Shaara returned, disgruntled. He trudged across cobblestones to her side. "Hungry?" The elaborate pastries on display reminded Shaara of the temple at the center of the city; too bright, too rich, too sugary.

"No," Bliss replied, but at that moment the proprietor stuck his head around the door with cries of welcome.

"Come in, come in," the man caroled. "For you I have my very own special, sweet enough to make the Seat himself weep - rhubarb and custard!"

Bliss shook her head in refusal but Shaara was suddenly ravenous so he pushed past Bliss and the proprietor into the small shop. Three heartbeats later he found himself perched on a spindly white stool, Bliss scowling at him across a matching table, fruit and cream towering in the shopkeeper's very best bowl.

"Eat," Shaara urged Bliss, scooping up the confection. "You can't starve yourself to death just because Moire doesn't want you back in her bed."

Bliss's scowl creased to rage. "Who said she didn't?"

"She knows how you feel about braids and robes. Would she wear them if she wanted you back?" Shaar knew he was treading on thin ice. Yet he couldn't keep his mouth from flapping.

"It's not that simple." Bliss protested. She turned her frown on the pile of rhubarb and custard. The tower did not whither beneath her displeasure. But just in case, Shaara took a hasty bite. "It can't be that simple."

"Well," Shaara allowed through a mouthful of confection. "She did send you the shawl. So perhaps it's not all bad. Maybe…ah…" Shaara wrinkled his brow and thought of the pretty girl in her white veils. "…a gift of flowers or…ah…pastries?"

Bliss's look of disgust should have turned the cream to curd in Shaara's mouth. Defensive, he shrugged. "Well. You always said it was the presentation caught the marks, yeah?"

"She didn't send the shawl."

"No?" Shaara glanced up and saw that Bliss's lips had gone pinched and white.

"She didn't send it,” Bliss repeated.

Shaara scrambled for some bit of wisdom that might save his skin. He wished he had decided to go with Maurice to the temple instead. Today was not the day to seek Bliss's understanding.

His mistress's stern glare focused. Shaara was immediatly certain she knew could see the the thought circling in his head. He opened his mouth to fend off her rage and found unlikely rescue in the shop's proprietor.

"Captain." The man smelled of bitter chocolate. Sweat glistened on his upper lip. "There are visitors."

Bliss's black brows went up. She turned her head slightly. Shaara shoved another spoonful of rhubarb into his mouth before swiveling on his stool, curious. Surprised by what he saw, he swallowed too hastily and nearly choked.

Northerners were not rare on the edge of the Seat's shadow, but they were unusual. Merchants and traders found ways across the river, as did a riffraff of mercenaries and arms runners. The king's infantry had, for many long years, passed in an endless stream across the bridge until an uneasy truce had been purchased at Green Hill and the bridge gates locked tight.

It was rarer than rare to catch glimpse of king's soldiers in a Southern city. They were no longer murdered upon sight, not now, but they were about as welcome as three-day old fish.

The men standing in the confectionaire's doorway were without a doubt Northern soldiers. They wore the king's insignia openly.

They were all a strong,  muscled sort and for a split instant Shaara wondered if they would get caught in the doorway like cattle in a herder's funnel. Then they shifted and twisted and popped free into the shop, bringing with them the reek of oil and leather. Shaara noted the mud drying on their boots and along the edges of their capes. He deduced they were very new to the city, only hours in.

"Welcome," the proprietor said, resorting to the smooth smile of his kind. "Can I be of service? Chocolates, perhaps, or strawberries dipped in molasses….?"

"No." The foremost of the group was clean shaven and young. The delicately fashioned silver chrysanthemum pinned to his collar spoke of the king's favor. "Thank you. We're here to speak to the captain."

Shaara knew the shopkeep had sensed trouble from the very beginning but the man was a Southerner and therefore gifted with more hubris than the god Trout himself.

"She is in the middle of dessert," he protested with a sniff. "A very fine dessert, if I may say so. Perhaps you would like to sit and wait -"

Shaara didn't see the officer move but some signal must have passed because one of his fellows grabbed the poor man about the throat and dragged him without ceremony out of the shop and into the sunlit street. The three wavered on the other side of the window, a tableau of weakening struggles past the display of fruit and pastry, before the the soldier hauled the limp confectionaire out of sight.

"You won't kill him, I hope." Bliss said, entirely without inflection. "His desserts are delicious. And if I recall, the Seat prefers his subjects alive."

"So long as they are obedient, yes." Chrysanthemum stripped off his soiled gloves. He tucked them into his belt, hooked one booted foot about the leg of an empty stool, and scraped it across the floor to Shaara's side. Then he sat with a sigh, audibly weary.

"Unlike the Seat, we don't require mindless servitude. Jorge won't kill the man, no. But there's no reason to tempt a fellow. Even a prosperous shopkeeper will sell gossip to the temple. What I have to say is for Northern ears only."

Shaara set down his spoon. Chrysanthemum snagged it and tucked into cream and rhubarb, obviously starving. His remaining men arranged themselves about the shop.

"What do you want?" Bliss asked, wrinkling her nose in dramatic disgust as she eyed the officer's simpleminded greed.

Chrysanthemum looked up from rapidly diminishing cream, narrowed his eyes, and laughed. "Don't look so offended, Captain. It's a six day's ride from king to Emman. We ruined two horses. Lived on jerky and warm ale. Besides, I haven't had rhubarb since I was a lad. You're right," he added, scrubbing a hand across his mouth, "the man's a genius with a dessert."

"What do you want?" Bliss repeated, cold. Shaara caught her quick, nearly invisible glance about the room and saw she was tatting up odds.

"Tamner's dead. Hung from the gates two days ago, by royal decree."

Shaara flinched. Whatever he'd expected, it was not this. Bliss appeared unsurprised.

"Pity," she rocked her stool backward and forward, easily balancing on two legs, a tumbler's trick. "His wife?"

"Tripped over her little cat and fell down the scullery stairs a day after." Chrysanthemum scraped the bowl clean then slouched comfortably on his own stool. "Broke her neck. Still alive when we left,, but in a bad way."

"Imagine that," Bliss replied. "What has it to do with us?"

"I hear tell your troop performed for His Lordship, not long past."

"We’re not a troop," Bliss corrected, calm. "We're but three and we did our job and left without fuss." She paused. "Why was Tamner executed?"

Chrysanthemum shrugged. "Not for the likes of me to wonder. But if you ask Jorge, he'll tell you any man keeps a Southern wife is asking for trouble. The place was ripe with Southern fripperies and temple perfume."

"Stank worse than a sow's arse," Bliss agreed. "I ask again; what has it to do with us?"

It was Chrysanthemum's turn to consider. Then he shrugged. "Cut to the chase then, aye? When you left Cliffhouse, Captain, you left with more than a fat purse of gold coin."

Shaara's gut flipped. He'd known, from the very start, that Tamner's odd tastes would bring trouble. And if trouble had come after them all the way across the River Ann it had turned to danger.

[blisserial]

Nine

Ross's Troop crossed the River Ann with more fanfare that my younger self expected. The king's soldiers spat and threw clods of mud as we pushed the cart over that limestone span but once we were past the arch and through the gate, I had to duck to avoid a different barrage of flowers and coin and, somewhat shockingly, wads of raw bread dough.

"Spice cookies," Ross laughed, bowing again and again to the gathered crowd. "To honor the gods' troubadours.  Their crust tastes of salt but their innards are thick with rush wine. Eat."

Gingerly, I rescued a cookie from the old mule's path, brushed away grass and grit, and took a bite. The salt made me grimace and gag but the sudden burst of warm liquor slid down my throat like honey. The sky seemed to brighten and the cheers of our eager audience grew to a roar.

Will, the tattooed mummer, glanced across the mule's muzzle at me and laughed. "Be wary, Bliss. One cookie will warm your heart, two will knock you flat." I noticed he had gathered a number of the doughy balls himself.

I spent my first four days across the border drunk on spice cookies. At Ross's command I ran endless displays of wit and skill from dawn to dusk and then fell into the role of musician and storyteller from sunset to moonset. We all ate and slept well, either in the jongleur’s cell every Southern inn kept free for just such an occasion, or in the home of any particularly ambitious small time politician looking for goodwill.

It soon became clear that I had fallen into good luck indeed. Ross was well regarded in the south and the members of his troop were treated with a lavish respect usually reserved on the other side of the border for the landed.

I felt as though I had obtained divinity, that first foray across the river, and long after the spice cookies were eaten I remained dizzy and drunk on that intoxicating taste of fame.

Most of Ross's adopted family had been across the border many times already. Seasoned players, they knew what to expect and how to keep in good graces.

But one young tumbler took the same heady sip of life I was savoring and let it drown her good sense. I do not recall her given name. Her given name was Lilah but Ross called her Whelp for the lively dance she did with our costumed dogs. Maurice called her darling and took her often to his bed.

In my own head I named her Red, not for the color of her scarlet hair but for the webs of pink sleeplessness her new addiction to opiate gum left in her eyes.

Our Red was lovely enough, so it was no surprise when, during a long stop over at a large village bordering Emman city, she was taken up by an ordained Temple priest. I do not know if she loved him. I suspect it was his sumptuous gifts and the  thin reek of power that snagged her heart.

It came time for Ross's Troop to bow a last farewell and Red refused to leave her priest. Ross might have let her be but Southern tongues wag. Her priest had not been particularly subtle about his new attachment. The Seat is a jealous lord and his gods have not a single finger bone of mercy.

A small group of soldiers from the local barracks came for Red our last evening in town as we worked a small private performance in a barrister's manse. They swept in amongst the guests, an inexorable tide of leather and sword point and pistol. They took Red from her dancing dogs before most of us noticed her absence.

The barrister appeared apologetic but resigned. Ross was unsurprised. He delayed our departure one more day while he and I rode the mule into Emman. We sat on the white temple steps under the weight of a sizzling sun and waited  until bells rang for evening prayer. Soon after an acolyte brought us a rough wool bag neatly packed with Red's blouse, and hose, and boots, and a few pieces of jewelry she had chosen from a Southern silver merchant the day we crossed the River Ann.

                                                            *****

Maurice didn't often think of regret. A man could not live his life forward if he always looked back over his shoulder. He'd killed his fair share of men and women, but he took no real joy in violence. He did what a man must to survive and he tried his best, day by day, to please both himself and his gods. And, of course, to please Bliss.

He did regret Lilah. He had loved her, he supposed, in his own way. He'd loved the way her red curls tangled about his fists, and the way she saved him the choicest bits of supper before the others descended on the communal cook pot. He loved the low songs she sang to him, late at night, as they lay wrapped together in his bedding.

But he'd found her temper annoying, and her arrogance, and her disdain of his little cigarettes. So he'd sometimes snapped at her when she was late with his dinner, or when she sang off tune, or faltered during performance. Which made it his fault she had at last one night tossed dinner in his face and walked away. The very next day she'd taken up with a scrawny Low Temple priest.

Lilah he regretted.

So Maurice was not surprised when his feet led him eventually away from the barracks and the shadow of the Seat's white spire,and then along the curving busy roads to Emman's center, and at last up the one hundred steps of the Low Temple.

The red was unfurled here, too. Crimson flags flew from needle thin pinnacles. Wide red silk swathed the Temple pillars. Maurice climbed the steps slowly, each boot heel placed carefully upon planed limestone so as not to slip. He'd seen penitents fall while climbing the steps, from grief or fear or weariness. He'd seen them slip and slide and tumble on the sharp edges, and he'd heard their bones crack.

The stair was full of pilgrims, jostling as they climbed. Maurice ignored them. Under the Seat's shadow god worship was more than a man's choice. The Temple's blessing was as essential as bread and water. A Southern lord would give up his single heir to an unnamed god without so much as a shudder, or slit his mother's throat upon a gilded alter at the Seat's whispered suggestion.

Maurice had no interest in mindless avidity. He knew far better. A Northern man, landed or peasant, loved his god as best as possible but sacrificed blooded kin for no less than the king.

The gods watched as a man made his own destiny. No amount of time spent in the glare of whitewashed walls or endless heat would ever convince Maurice otherwise.

The priests waiting at the top of the stairs blessed Maurice with a scattering of perfumed water. He made the proper knee bend as they murmured at him in tones no less sweet than Lilah's own.

He almost paused, almost asked the questions he had not dared voice nine summers earlier, but Ross's old warnings still echoed between his ears: make your sale, collect your coin, and smile as you walk on.

Maurice found a smile as he shoved his way into the crowded Temple, aware always that no pilgrim went unnoticed. The dozen or so of solicitous and grave priests ranged around the front altar were as watchful as hounds.

He felt their eyes on him as he dropped his last silver pennies into the elaborately carved receiving box just inside the wide doors. For an instant he sympathized with Bliss's distrust of all things godly.

Maurice scrubbed a hand over his face, callusing emotion away.

"Fox's balls, man," he scolded himself quietly. He desperately wanted a cigarette. "Show some courage, soldier."

A woman robed all in gray glanced up from her obeisance. She wore her hair long, in the way of the priesthood, but the braids and curls were still free of beads. An initiate, Maurice guessed. Praying for acceptance or mourning lost freedom. He shrugged and hurried on.

The Low Temple had more tiers than a baker's butter cake. The main floor was reserved for the penitent, and above that, a floor for private worship. Another two floors for the entombment of the blessed or wealthy, and yet another three filled with cots; the ordained were allowed little in the way of privacy. The topmost floor sheltered the Temple Roll, shelf upon shelf of books as regimented and ordered as the beds on the floor beneath.

Maurice had seen that endless army of volumes once already in his life. He was not eager to do so again.

"Pilgrim." A skeletal hand reached through the throng and grasped Maurice by the shoulder. "Are you lost?"

"No." 

The hand belonged to a bony priest wearing a welcoming smile. The multitude of sapphire beads in the fellow's hair glittered in the candlelight.

Maurice slipped from beneath the priest's fingers. "No," he repeated. "Not lost, Brother. Only meaning to light a candle for one I miss."

"Ah." The priest's smile became, if possible, even wider. "You'll find we have votives set in all three alcoves this day. So many people! The city simply buzzes with celebrants eager to pay their respects before ordination."

"Ordination." Maurice paused in mid flight. He eyed the smaller man. The priest was growing bald between his carefully detailed beads. "Not just initiation?"

"Oh, no." The priest patted Maurice's arm gently. "This year we are lucky enough to have a few pure enough of heart and intention to rise straight through the ranks. Nearly unheard of, I know! Why, the last time such a thing happened I was barely an initiate myself."

"The year this Seat was born." Maurice knew the tale. He'd heard it over and over to numbness on the muddy Southern battlefield.

The priest nodded. "The year our Seat was born."

 Maurice found a wedge of space in the second alcove and knelt before a village of bright candles. The woman to his left was weeping over her votive. The boy to his right was stiff-lipped and angry where he bowed over his candle. Maurice drew his own small flame from his sleeve and lit a votive. Regret seemed faded as he bowed his head in respect, whispering Lilah's name.

"Dead or damned for bedding a priest," he murmured over the wick, "may you find a parcel of peace."

When he looked up the boy and the old woman had gone. It was not until Maurice found his feet and steadied his bones that he missed the faltered, crowded breathing that had, until a moment ago, been the music of his surroundings.

He turned slowly and found the alcove cleared but for the elderly priest and his new escort of solemn guards.

"Sergeant," the priest said, still gentle. "Have you spoken your remembrances to the lost?"

"Yes." So after all they knew him. Maurice clenched his fist to keep the fire quenched. He wished fervently that he had been brazen enough to wear a knife.

"Then, come with us, if you please."

The priest gripped Maurice's arm, inexorable, and the guards closed in.

 They took him down instead of up, down a long straight staircase as slippery and dangerous as the one hundred outside, although far less busy with life and movement. The guards did not let him fall. The held him fast, shoulder to shoulder and breast to back. The thin priest proved surprisingly nimble. He led the way, robes pulled up about his knees to bare naked feet. He paused occasionally to turn and see that his hostage still followed.

For hostage Maurice was, if wrapped only in the silken chains of the priest's polite smile. By the time Maurice decided that he was willing to risk fire for escape the chance had long passed. He could feel the weight of the earth and temple above his head and in the heavy air. He did not think he would find his way free even if he murdered every one of the six soldiers.

He wondered if this was the way they had taken Lilah. And then he wondered what Bliss would do once she noticed his disappearance.

"Sergeant." The climb ended abruptly. An unlatched door loomed of the very foot of the staircase. The priest pushed the door open and gestured Maurice through.

He might have hesitated. He wanted to. But if no one else knew he died a coward, still he would know.

He stepped past the priest into darkness and then because he heard the sudden scrape of sword on scabbard and could not help himself, he lit the room with a burst of flame and smoke. The priest protested in shrill tones until one of the guards brought Maurice down with a heavy blow to the back of the head.

The world tilted. Maurice's flame went out but the room remained bright. He blinked hard. Eventually the world steadied just enough so that beyond the throbbing in his head he could recognize a small round table set with fruit, and bread, and ale.

From beyond the table stepped a young lad with an oddly familiar face. He cocked the silver pistol in his hand and leveled it, taking careful, precise and steady aim at Maurice's heart.

"How beautiful your flame is, conjured from thin air! And yet you told me, did you not," the lad said gently chiding, "that there was no such thing as witchery."

[blisserial]

Eight

Ross kept nearly a score of performers in his circus troop. Most of the players were human as I.  Seven were not; two dogs, three cats, one parrot and a hog. The mule who pulled the circus cart was not officially counted as one of the players, nor was the old stallion Will rode during the conclusion of his axe-throwing performance.

The Menagerie, as Ross billed his trained creatures, needed a good deal of attention. Their care always fell to the newest member of Ross's family. That first summer their care fell to me.

My mother had a kitten when I was a child. An owl took it one night. I think I wept into her skirts at the loss. I think she wept with me. I do know she never replaced the cat and that although she enjoyed the canaries in Her Ladyship's solarium, she later turned away the stray mutt my older self cajoled home from the fields.

My mother had no patience for grief.

So the performing animals in Ross's Menagerie were my first attempt at a nurturing instinct. I found I enjoyed the two little dogs and their dancing tricks. The one-eyed tom who road a miniature bicycle had never been sand trained and preferred to shit in the caravan. It was my job to keep him from his choice of latrine. He and I soon became mortal enemies although he would sometimes deign to warm my feet on especially cold nights.

The other cat, a small female who could strum a guitar with her front paws, wanted the parrot. The parrot wanted to live and so spent any uncaged moment on my shoulder, thinking to hide behind the scant protection of my right ear.

As for the hog, when she was not playing 'dead' on command, she ate. And ate. I was rather fond of the hog. She had big brown eyes and he muttered deprecations in the language of her kind whenever food appeared.

"No good circus troop is complete without animals," Ross explained one evening as I cussed and whined and angrily cleaned cat shit from the my bedroll. The parrot on my shoulder echoed my curses with enthusiastic panache.

"The marks come to see jugglers and flame," Ross continued, smoking one of Maurice's small cigarettes as he watched me toil. "But they won’t go home happy until they've seen at least one four footed creature dance."

And he was right. I soon learned that the pig had her own following and that the guitar- strumming cat was a legend in the back country. The parrot, who sang the King's Lay in high, spine shivering tones, often brought in more coin than even Will and his axe.

So when the bird unexpectedly flew free one afternoon in the middle of a particularly well attended show, I expected a beating. It was after all my responsibility to see that the wing feathers were clipped close and the parrot kept flightless.

Ross struck me once, gruff. And then he sent me away.

"You'll not come back unless you bring my bird," he said. "Maurice will care for the rest of the Menagerie until you return. We're heading east in five days. Don't tarry."

At first I didn't understand. The surrounding countryside was fenny and wet and plagued with willow trees, a parrot's perfect small kingdom. I searched for the rest of that long day and when I returned to the circus empty handed, cold, and starving, they pelted me with stone and stick until I was forced away again.

Four days passed before I finally found the bird hunched in the branches of a drooping willow. He was nearly as miserable and starved as I; we were both covered with mud and grit.

Elated, I set him on my shoulder and rushed back to camp. I daresay he recognized his home and regretted his flight. He began to sing as soon as he heard Ross's voice.

Ross fed me and Maurice dug up clean clothes. I washed and ate my fill and, as I sat tending my blistered feet on the edge of the wagon, looked up, startled, into Ross's seamed face.

"You've learnt your lesson, Bliss," he said as I paused, ointment stinging my toes. "But so's you don't forget it." He bent forward and dropped the parrot's limp body onto my lap. The bird's spine was broken. The small body was still warm.

"We all have our own parts to play," he said as I stared, mute, at the ruffle of blue and green feathers. "And there's no excuse for shirking."

                                                           *****

As soon as the shawl was stolen, Moire Kler knew their arrival was inevitable. Expectation was a torment. Joy and fear and hunger and grief mixed to form a knot beneath her breast bone. She beat that pain back with work and with prayer and, as the ache grew larger rather than smaller, with fasting and penance.

Every morning of those three fortnights she opened her eyes on anticipation and every evening, when she returned home to find her cell unoccupied but for her own belongings, she had gone into sleep carrying regret.

When they came, she told herself behind the shelter of tightly closed lids, she would be ready.

But time passed and they did not come after all. Winter ripened and the rains came to ease some of the heat. Moire knew there would be snow above the River Ann and roads would be dangerous with ice. She began to relax. Perhaps the thievery had not been what she thought. Perhaps she had no reason for anxiety or hope.

She relaxed. Oh, yes, she relaxed and forgot to listen for Bliss's strident tones. Initiation was approaching and that meant Moire was very busy, sometimes worn to the edge of exhaustion. She dismissed the lost shawl and she stopped endlessly waiting.

And now, a scant seven days before her induction, here they were.

She felt her hard-won calm threatening to shatter as she strode down the barracks hall, Corporal Aansi and his irritation riding her wake. Indeed, when the corporal had arrived with his news she had been briefly dizzy, lost, even short of breath. She'd wanted to run, and she nearly had.

But of course in the end she didn't. Moire Kler had never run from anything in her entire life. She had risen from soldier's whelp to captain to field major and on to become one of the Seat's twelve right hands. She was honored and would soon be glorified. Old matters of the heart held little consequence in the now.

She did have to pause for a moment outside her quarters. But when she finally stepped through the door she had herself under control again, her expression one of genuine pleasure.

Because she'd learned long ago that pleasure was always easier than regret.

"Sergeant," she said, holding out her hands in welcome. "You bastard. You haven't aged a day."

Maurice smiled. It was the old, shy smile she remembered and missed. He did not take her hands, of course. But he didn't fall back on the formality of salute, either. He bowed, in the way of the north, shaking his head in disbelief.

"Major," he said, and fumbled in his belt for a cigarette. The familiar nervous habit turned Moire's throat dry. "How goes the war?"

"Bloody but true," Moire answered, the required response, and met faded blue eyes with mutual understanding.

When she turned, Shaara blushed in the amber light.

"Ma'am." Her youngest remaining soldier stood rod straight. "The door -"

"I understand." She spoke gently to hide the sudden surge of fondness. Shaara had grown. Somehow he had filled out, and stretched nearly as tall as Maurice. Moire had never been able to ruffle his hair, not this child who had done murder on the battlefield at her command. But he was no longer the lad she'd snuck sweets to beneath a brigadier's disapproving eye.

She'd forgotten Corporal Aansi. He shifted and coughed. "Ma'am," he said, unconsciously echoing Shaara. "Perhaps you might remind your honored guests that smoking is not allowed on barracks."

Maurice regarded the little man calmly through  pastel smoke. Moire laughed and turned to the corporal, because it gave her one more excuse to ignore the living disapproval lurking on her cot.

"Let it be, Aansi," she said, easing the soldier with a light touch. "Maurice is an old carnie, you'll never be able to break him of the habit." And then, more firmly, "Back to your desk. We're well enough here."

"If you're sure." But Aansi saluted and departed eagerly enough, no doubt relieved to be free of this new and peculiar burden.

Moire shut the cell door on his retreat. When she turned around Bliss had moved from the cot to the floor, soundlessly, and now stood so close Moire could feel the heat of rage radiating from the other woman's flesh.

"You've let your hair grow," Bliss said, sharp as a pike. "It's a bird's nest. And it's gone grey."

Moire pressed her lips together. "And you look as though you've been grubbing in the mud, Captain. Has work become so very hard to get above the river that you've taken to performing in the Northern sewers?"

Maurice chuckled. The perfume of his smoke, so different from that of the Temple, made Moire feel suddenly light and free.

"No matter," she continued as Bliss glowered, "we'll find you a bath. We'll find you all baths. And proper clothes and a room. Two, perhaps. And something to eat. Surely you're hungry? You’re all too skinny. You look near to crow bait, Maurice."

"The pickings have been slim, lately." Maurice admitted quietly. "But we'll do." He lapsed and Moire felt a prickle of anticipation.

Surprisingly, it was Shaara who ventured the obvious, dangerous question.

"Major," he said, "you're dressed like a priest. And we've found a shawl. A temple shawl. Embroidered with your mark."

Moire steeled herself and crossed the room, deliberately avoiding Bliss as she did so. To borrow time she lifted the shade from her lamp and carefully checked the oil in the basin. The wick burned true and clean. She would not have to fill the base until morning.

"And that," Bliss said from directly behind. "Is a temple lamp."

"So it is," Moire replied, mild. She could feel the woman's breath on the back of her neck and for a brief, secret moment she allowed herself longing. "Although I'm surprised you would know that, Captain. As you've never set foot in a temple even once in your life."

"And I'm all the better for it." Bliss tangled long fingers in the sleeve of Moire's day robe and yanked. Because it was Bliss, and because it had been three long years, Moire allowed herself to be pivoted.

"What are you doing?" Bliss demanded, suddenly and impossibly nose to nose. She must be standing on her tiptoes, Moire thought from somewhere very far away, for surely she would not have grown as well. "What have you done?"

"Use your eyes, Bliss." Maurice said, calm. "And stop being stubborn. Our major's joined the order, obviously. The robes are a nice touch, ma'am. They suit you."

"They do not." Bliss returned, breathing hard. "They do not suit her at all. They make her look sallow, and timid, and old.”

Inexplicably, the words hurt. As they were meant to. And because they did, Moire plucked Bliss's cold hand from her sleeve and dropped it.

"Three years is a long time, Captain. Some of us have changed, grown up."

"What?" Bliss spat, fierce. "Horrid, woman. You couldn't live without me in your bed, so you took the vows?"

Shaara twitched audibly, and gasped. Maurice finished his smoke and sighed.

"I think the lad and I'll go in search of that bath you promised, Major," he said. "And maybe a bite to eat. Steam room hasn't moved, hain't it?"

"No." Moire found a smile. "Come back when you've finished and I'll see about quarters."

"Coward." Bliss snarled. "Run and hide because you don't want to look at your commander in a priest's dress."

"You are my commander, Captain." Maurice replied. He took Shaara by the elbow and before the young man could form a protest, walked him firmly from the cell.

Moire forced back anger. If they had been on the field she would have slapped down Bliss’ insolence without hesitation. If they had been in bed she would have found it amusing and chased it away with hands and mouth.

"You didn't send for us," Bliss said through clenched teeth. "I thought you had. That you were in trouble or…" She turned away and paced the room twice. "You didn't send it, did you? The shawl."

"No. It was stolen. Nearly a season ago. Do you have it?"

"Yes." Bliss jerked her chin at a battered pack decorating Moire's cot but made no move to retrieve the shawl. "Are you going to tell me why?"

Moire shook her head. "Not every question has an answer.”

"Were you called to service?"

"By the Seat?" Because she felt too off balance to sit, Moire made herself drop neatly onto the edge of her cot. The pillows smelled of Bliss. Mud and sweat and smoke and below that, something much more intangible.

"I wasn’t. Not by the Seat." She folded her hands in her lap. The scrape of the rough dun wool she had chosen over leather still startled. "But by the gods? Yes." And that, too, still surprised.

Bliss hovered again, eye to eye. "No. You've done this to punish me. Because I left you."

Laughter bubbled free, a trifle too shrill. "Listen to yourself. You sound like the spoiled, self-centered child I dug out of the conscript's pen, Bliss. What has become of the hero of Green Hill?" Moire shook her head. Bemusement felt safe. "Have you forgotten everything I taught you so easily?"

Slowly, Bliss drooped to her knees. For a frightened, hopeful moment Moire thought she would lay her head in Moire's lap, as she had done that last night, before she ran. But she did not. And seeing that she would not, Moire could breath again.

"I am not sorry I left," Bliss said. "I'm not sorry I left. But I am sorry I didn't take you with me."

Moire had waited so very long for that particular apology. So very long. And after so very long, it meant nothing.

"What?" She said, amused. "You would have thrown me over Maurice's shoulder and stolen into the night? Impossible." She grinned. "I would have killed you first chance I got."

"You never," Bliss said, hoarse, "forgave me for being a peasant."

"No." And to Moire's shame it was she who reached out, spreading steady fingers to touch one dusty, muddy cheek. "Bliss. I never forgave you for being a Northerner."

Bliss jumped to her feet. She spun with an acrobat's practiced grace until she stood with her back against the cell door.

"Moire," she said, "you still haven't told me why."

"I did, but you don’t listen. I will say it again: the gods called to me."

Bliss snarled. For a brief moment Moire saw the unbendable will that had so impossibly won for the Seat his victory.

"Horrid take you, woman." Bliss said in a whisper. "If you won't tell me the truth of it, I'll find someone who will."

The door slammed and she was gone, leaving behind a scattering of mud on the cell floor.

 Moire swept the tiles clean because she found the simple, menial task soothing. She worked the broom until the plain squares shone and then she swept on. The broom felt right in hands that missed a sword. The rhythmic scratch of twig and bristle calmed her thrumping heart.

When the floor was clean and more than clean Moire set the broom aside and dipped her hands in the tepid water she kept in an earthenware bowl near her cot. She scrubbed her palms together, then massaged her eyes and cheeks with damp fingers. After she dried her hands on the hem of her robe, she bent over the flickering amber lamp and slowly inhaled. The warm cloud of perfume brought the world back to center and the knot she had been carrying since Bliss's reappearance relaxed.

The floor vibrated, a nearly imperceptible thrum, the subterranean echo of the world above. The giant bells lodged in the Seat's white spire were singing, and on the grounds of the Low Temple priests and initiates alike would be prostrate and proper, spread across the floor in worship, glorifying the gods.

Moire need not fall on her face away from the temple arches. Her vows were not so stringent, at least not yet. Nevertheless, she dropped to her knees on the newly swept floor and bowed her head.

It could not hurt to remind herself of the choices she had made.

[blisserial]

Seven

Ross came back to the Cat'n Hammer five days running. He spent until his coin ran out and he had nothing left but the pretty stones. On the sixth day he traded one stone for an entire afternoon in the attic.

"Opals," he said again. "They're all I've got left, love.  And each is worth more coin than you'll see in a week."

I didn't believe him but I took the stone anyway. It warmed in my hand.

Ross made me pile all eight mattresses in one corner of the attic and then he took me on the floor, despite the splinter and the damp. He was less enthusiastic, this time. Perhaps the frenzy of lust was finally wearing away.

Nevertheless, when he had rutted his fill, he wanted me to stand in the center of the drafty room and turn about in a circle on my toes.

I humored him, but only because I could see he had something other than his prick in mind.

"You're small," he said. "You won't grow much more. How old are you?"

"I don't remember," I lied.

Ross propped himself on one elbow. His brow  creased over the scars on his face. I wondered what he was thinking. And then I decided it didn't matter. The draft had prickled my flesh and I'd had enough of his avid stare.

"You've got long fingers," he continued, watching as I squirmed back into my shift and trousers. The smell of him lingered on my hands. "And you're quick."

"Quick?" I looked up, suddenly uneasy. It was much safer, at the Cat, to be remembered as stolid and loyal.

He stood and stretched. "I've watched you. You're careful. You pay attention. And you don't intend to stay here long, do you, Bliss?"

"No." I showed him elaborate unconcern. "I imagine I'll move on, eventually."

"Got some wage put away for travel? You don't send it all to your grandfather, do you?"

So he’d been asking questions. I felt a knife edge of fear and masked it with annoyance. I wondered who had spoken so freely about my life. If it was Shel, I would make her regret it.

I must have taken a step backwards because he laughed.

"I'm not in the slave trade, Bliss. I'm looking for a juggler."

"A juggler?"

He nodded and collected his strewn clothing, separating boots from tunic. "I own a circus troop. Performers, yes?"

When he saw that I understood, he nodded. "We're about to head south for summer's end. And I've just lost my juggler. To a pretty widow and her passel of brats, Fox save me."

"I don't juggle." And I did not intend to start. Circus folk were little more than beggars. And also thieves, more often than not. That very last thing I needed was a right hand lost to the king for stealing.

"I'll teach you," Ross replied. "Like I said, you're quick. By the time we reach the border, you'll juggle in your sleep."

"I'm happy here."

"You don't belong here." He pulled his tunic over his head, then tossed me a lumpy bag. "It's time for a change."

I could feel the juggler's props through the felt. "I'm not going with you."

"You'll stay here and die of the rot?" Ross mocked. "Or perhaps you had ideas of joining the king's court. They'll never take you, Bliss. You're a peasant and a whore and you look it."

I had not  thought of the court, not exactly. Still, I shivered.

"Come south with me, for two seasons. We'll be back in the spring. By the time the buttercups blossom, you'll be in Derby again but this time rich as a lord."

He saw my face and smiled. "Southerners love our kind, Bliss. You'll be fed to bursting, clothed in silk and weighted with jewels. Opals are just the beginning, love. Wait until you earn a Southern sapphire."

I cannot remember if I believed him, truly. But the pretty stone was still in my hand, glinting as I rolled it between thumb and forefinger.

"Come," Ross cajoled. "Let me show you."

I told myself I would be back in the spring, with enough coin and riches to set Granda up nicely. But I think I knew, even then, that there would not be any home waiting for my return.

                                                            *****

 It was six days' ride from the River Ann to the center of Emman. Bliss would have taken it all in one lump with hardly a stop in between if Maurice had not put his foot down and insisted on wisdom.

"Fear has made you blind and bullheaded," he said. "And you are not doing any of us any good."

She'd listened, for once. Which might have worried Maurice if he were not so grateful for the rest. His body no longer took to the saddle as it once had. He wobbled in the mornings and collapsed, numb, into his bedding each sunset.

Shaara had more energy. The boy went into the nearest village every evening and returned at moonrise with any bits and pieces of interest he could glean.

Which, in truth, was not very much.

After the very first temple the boy disguised himself. Or so he said. There were no more offers of cooked meat for the prodigal heroes.

In the snatches of sleep between dismount and dawn, Maurice dreamt. He dreamt of small faces painted on smooth shell, and of the Southern perfume he could smell on Shaara at the end of the day.

In his dreams the miniatures spoke in urgent, blurred tones. Maurice strained in his sleep to understand and woke with an aching head for his troubles.

As they gained on the Lower Temple he began to dream instead of the past, of the dead lying broken in the mud, and of the sound of pistols and cannons. In one nightmare grapeshot throbbed in his shoulder, the wound searing his flesh. He could smell char as Moire, insubstantial as the rest of the dreaming, bent to tend his wound. In his sleeping mind her hair had grown long and her eyes were bright and dilated, opiate touched, and when she spoke it he could not understand her any more than he could the faces on the painted shell.

"She hadn't a head for healing," Bliss said, unaffected, when he relayed the dream. "And she would never let her hair grow long. Too dangerous."

"It was beaded," Maurice said, slowly, remembering. "And knotted."

This unwelcome news silenced Bliss, but only for a moment. "Was she wearing a temple shawl?"

"No."

"Good." Bliss waved a hand, dismissive. But the rest of that day she'd ridden the pony at an unfair speed, as if trying to outrun Horrid himself.

 Emman City lived on the very edge of the Seat’s shadow. Another fortnight’s journey south and the weary traveler would be standing before the High Temple. But a man did not have to be not quite as careful on the streets of Emman, was not quite so afraid that he did not dare mutter about the price of ale, or the constriction of evening curfew.

The city was surrounded entirely by a smooth, white wall made of crushed sea shell and blood plaster. Maurice knew very well how carefully that wall was tended. Once he had spent the daylight hours of every fourth week mashing shell and massaging plaster into a paste used to patch any hole or crack the city watch might report .

Bliss's small troop paused before the city gates, waiting in line to be passed through.

"We'll visit the barracks first," she declared, standing high in her stirrups, trying to see over the milling crowd.

Maurice grunted. He doubted they would find any welcome in the soldiers’ quarter, especially if Bliss barreled in all venom and anxiety, demanding to see Moire.

But by the stiffness in Bliss's stance, there was no point in arguing. She’d never been one for caution, even on a good day.

"Look," Shaara said. "They've the red up, yet."

Bliss on her slow, squat pony, cursed and abandoned stirrups for the saddle. Even standing lightly on the animal's spine, she was too short.

"I can't see it."

"It's there." Maurice could just make out the crimson banner hung high above Emman's gate. "You'll glimpse it soon enough."

The red had been hanging the very first time the’d entered the city, and was still up on the day they finally left it. A call sent out to the young, a search for both initiate and soldier, the banner graced the white walls only during time of war. Maurice had supposed the draft long over. He wondered uneasily whether the red had come down at all during Bliss's self exile.

"Who are they warring with?" Shaara wondered. "If not us?"

Maurice shook his head. Bliss ignored them both.

The sun rose high in the sky and then dipped again before they faced the white gate. Ten soldiers here, and obviously far better trained then their Northern cohorts on the bridge over the River Ann. Their captain, a grizzled ex-slave, looked Bliss and her companions over from head to toe. He knew they were Northerners. He passed them through anyway. The Seat had no fear of spies.

The red banner flapped and snapped above their heads as they entered the city.

Beyond the gate a circle of hotels, brothels and three penny restaurants waited for the casual visitor and off duty soldier. The square courtyard between the buildings bustled. Here and there hawkers pushed through the crowd, singing their wares in the peculiar clipped accent that, to Maurice's ear, was ineffably Southern

They stabled their mounts in a wide building built for exactly that purpose; the Seat did not allow horse or cart into the center of his cities. The scrawny woman who walked the animals to their paddock and took Bliss's coin smelled heavily of opiate gum. She kept her gaze cast down, and spoke in a whisper.

"Nothing's changed," Maurice said, resigned, as they left the horses.

"Of course not." Bliss threw him a mocking smile. "Did you really think things would have? 'In the shadow," she continued, quoting a Temple chant, 'time is as nothing.'"

Emman's narrow cobbled streets were quiet beneath the midday sun. On either side white plaster walls rose into the sky, slit here and there with thin windows, brightened once or thrice by a revealing flash of indigo curtain. Here were the city flats, housing multiple families. The pristine façades reflected sunlight, cooling the rooms within, doubling the heat in the narrow streets. Maurice shed his cloak and loosened his tunic.

"Winter," Shaara marveled, following suit. "And it's warm. I'd forgotten."

"I hadn't," Maurice replied, and sent a prayer of thanks Trout's way.

 Emman's barracks clustered in gentle humps at the very center of the city, a squat beehive at the foot of a single, slender white tower. The tower belonged solely to the Seat. Most often the stained glass windows remained dark, the chambers beyond closed and deserted.

Bliss paused and looked up, considering the spire without expression.

"Do you suppose he's been here since Green Hill?" Shaara mused. Maurice saw the lad shiver and wondered if he remembered enough that day to be afraid.

"No doubt," Bliss said. Then she shrugged. She made as if to duck into the first barracks but then paused.

"We should have gone to the Temple first," she said. Maurice heard her teeth click together.

"You'd climb the steps and cross the threshold?" Maurice let deliberate disbelief ring. He didn't like the sudden uncertainty he read in her eyes and he wanted to shake her until she regained bluster. "Is even Moire worth such sacrifice?"

"I'd send you in," Bliss spat. "And wait in the clean air."

She stalked through a doorway so low even she had to slouch. Maurice bent after and gestured at Shaara. The boy looked reluctantly away from the Seat's spire before following.

 "Major Moire Kler," Bliss repeated for the third time, elbows on limestone desk, nearly nose to nose with the officer on the other side. "Is she here or not, man?"

"She is not." The officer, a corporal by Maurice's best guest, took visible hold of his courage. The first time Bliss spat her question, the fellow had been too irritated to reply. The second time, understanding began to dawn and he had gone mute with shock or fear.

But the officer was a man in the Seat's barracks and as such no doubt used to both fear and distasteful surprise. He rallied quickly enough and he was not going to let Bliss pass so easily.

"The Major is not available," he said, spine stiff. "If you would be so kind as to leave your name, I might send a messenger -"

"Don't be daft." Impossibly, Bliss inched her compact frame further across limestone. "I can see by your face you know who we are. In fact, I'd bet Horrid's first you've been expecting us."

Maurice had decided the same and he did not like the implication.

"Let us through, soldier." He set his hand on the desk and leaned with Bliss. "Or at least tell us where to find her."

The officer seemed unable to look away from Bliss's scowl. "She will not be back before nightfall." He swallowed but continued gamely on. "And I have orders not to let you pass."

"She still sleeps here, then, does she? In the Major's chamber?"

"Yes."

"Alone?"

Maurice saw sweat bead on the officer's brow. "I'm sure I do not know, ma'am. Captain." He took a breath. "She left something, in case you…If you came."

Bliss snatched the square of paper and unfolded it with steady hands. Love notes, Maurice thought wryly, remembering Shaara's tease. But Bliss's mouth set and she tore the paper into neat scraps, linen threads scattering.

"We'll wait." She rolled her shoulders and paced once back and forth in front of the desk.

The officer released a relieved sigh. "If I can bring you anything? Meat, or tea or temple birds for the evensong?"

Maurice winced. Bliss's chin came up.

"Inside," she added. "We'll wait inside."

She brushed the corporal aside. The man quivered, hands flexing. He could decide to leap, Maurice planted himself in the way.

"She doesn't fight fair," he said, pleasantly. "And neither do we. Best just to go and fetch the Major."

 The corridor past the limestone desk was cool and, for the most part, quiet. Muffled voices and the faint boom of training drums slipped through thick walls. The beehive remained a place of shelter and secrets and lives given entirely to the Seat. Maurice felt the old sense of peace descend, and caught himself relaxing.

He could have found his way to the Major's quarters in the dark.

The heavy wooden door waited at the end of the old hall. Maurice could not help but lay his palm against the rough planks. The scars were the same; the cluster of burns where he had snuffed endless cigarettes, the crack Will's axe had cut in the lintel, and the slivered dent Bliss had left a finger span beneath the bronze latch on the night they had run.

That dent Bliss touched, lightly, a slender thumb against splinters.

"It'll be locked," she said. "Shaara?"

For once, Bliss's apprentice blanched at the challenge. "You're sure?"

"Yes."

Shaara shrugged and took his copper pins to the key hole. The latch resisted. Shaara his lip and muttered. Maurice wondered if he was imagining Moire's imminent ire. He set his hand on the boy's shoulder. Shaara twitched and shrugged him off, and the latch gave and the lock snicked open.

Maurice expected darkness. Instead, a single wick burned in Southern oil beneath an amber shade. The cell was as small as Maurice recalled. A single cot on the floor resided still against the same eastern wall but Moire had added color in the form of vibrant, dyed wool pillows and a woven blanket. An earthenware bowl waited on a wooden stool and Moire's leather wrapped dress sword rested against the wall in the farthest corner.

Shaara slipped his pins back up his sleeve and dropped crosslegged to the bare floor, resignation in the slump of his shoulders. Bliss padded carefully into the room. She touched the earthenware bowl first, regarded the lamp beneath lowered lids, and then paused to plump the pillows on the cot.

"Color," she muttered, bemused.

Maurice found himself drawn to the weapon in the corner. He touched the wrapped scabbard and then drew a finger back in surprise. Dust. Yet when he drew the blade free the metal gleamed, well oiled. That, at least, had not changed.

When he turned around Bliss had settled on the cot among the pillows, elbows on her knees, eyes on the open door.

They did not have to wait long.

They heard her before they saw her. Boot heels ringing on cobblestone, which was entirely on purpose, as Moire could be quiet and wily as Fox when the mood took her. Shaara swallowed audibly. Maurice took a breath and fell into parade rest, wishing suddenly for the protection of a dress uniform. Bliss didn't move but Maurice could see her pulse beating fast in her throat from across the room.

The clatter of Moire's haste stopped just outside the cell. A tick of silence, an unheard inhale, and their Major stepped through the door, the affronted corporal three strides behind.

Shaara jumped up, a puppet yanked by invisible strings. Maurice, unable to help himself, stepped from the edge of the room to the lad's side, rank awaiting new orders, the old habit far too deeply engrained to shake.

Bliss did not stand, as friendship or etiquette might require. Instead she took her elbows from her knees, crossed her arms on her chest and slouched more deeply into the nest of cushions. Without uttering a single word, she spoke eloquently of insolence.

And so Bliss certainly would, Maurice realized, between one slow heartbeat and the next, for his dream had spoken true.

Somehow in their absence Moire had given up her soldier's leathers for the dun priestly raiment of the Lower Temple.

[blisserial]

Six

I met Ross in the Cat'n Hammer on a hot summer's evening not long after Rorik had gone to the worms in the paupers' graveyard. Such rare hot weather brought every soul with a penny to his name in from the fields for a drink and a game of chance on the boards and, if one was feeling especially rich or lonely, another roll of the dice on an upstairs mattress or in the alley behind.

Ross was one of those who appeared to be feeling both lonely and flush. He sat on a keg at the front of the tavern, near an open window, swigging tankard after tankard of Garve's best brew and ogling the maids with obvious intent.

I think I expected him to take Shel. Blonde and big arsed and more and sweet, Shel always appealed to the ones who had waited too long. And it was obvious Ross had been without for a spell. The way he sat his keg, it was a wonder his trousers didn't spring forth on their own.

We laughed about him, Shel and I. She had already lined up an assignation with an elderly gentleman who hadn't spent all of his pennies on drink. The gentleman had sprung for a mattress and also a meal before the hearth. Shel and I figured she could do the eager fellow in the alley and be back long before her wealthier customer had finished his bread.

I passed full tankards from hand to hand, whirling to keep up with shouted demands, and yet managed to keep a bemused eye on the man on the keg. Shel approached him once and then once again, subtle and then pointed in her interest. He shook his head, twice. I wondered if the man could not afford her or if perhaps he was looking for a male companionship instead. If so, he was out of luck. Garve had not yet gotten around to finding a replacement for Rorik.

"He wants you, Bliss," Shel said, returning several rounds later with a platter of empty tankards, lips pursed. "He says he prefers 'em swarthy. Like hisself."

I glanced over my shoulder. The man on the keg lifted his drink in a silent toast. He didn't smile. He was a bit weathered for my tastes but tastes are malleable in the face of need.

"He still got coin?"

Shel shrugged and rushed off. Her elderly gentleman was calling for more ale. I finished unloading the tankards, made up my mind, and marched purposefully across the tavern.

"You still got coin?"

Instead of answering he dug under his belt, freeing a money pouch, and tossed it onto the floor. The pouch landed on packed dirt with a fine clank.

I quirked a brow. Any fool could load leather with pebbles and a few pennies. It was an old trick, one Rorick had warned me of early on.

"Take a look," he invited. His voice sounded rusty. Old, badly healed scars seamed his face cheek and brow.

He wanted a show. I decided to give him one and bent over in a way guaranteed to make even the wizened spring up and take notice. He grunted deep and wordless approval. I opened the pouch as I straightened.

He still had coin, plenty of it. Gold and silver and copper and large, fiery jewels the size of my thumb.

"Opals," he said, noting my interest. "Southern. Worth more than a lord's fine horse, each one."

"I only take coin." Though the jewels were pretty things. They reminded me of the stars through frosted greenhouse glass.

"What's your name?" he asked, finishing his drink and standing up.

"Bliss." Arrogant, I took my choice of coin from his pouch and then tossed the purse back.

He only smiled, amused. The smile made his creased face ugly.

"Bliss," he said. "They call me Ross. And I never waste good coin on a mattress.”

He wasn’t gentle, but at least he was quick. After, as I fastened my trousers, he squatted in the mud and muttered a few phrases in garbled, musical tones.

"What's that?" I asked, wondering if my right eye, inconveniently elbowed while he groped me, would swell.

He finished his strange song, touched his brow, and stood up.

"A prayer," he replied absently, dismissive now that his needs had been met. "A prayer for both our souls."

                                                           *****

Bliss would not step foot inside kirk or temple. She never had, so far as Shaara knew. Not that it mattered. He was not a terribly religious person himself, except for when it mattered: when food had been scarce for so long he had forgotten the taste of meat, or on the rare occasion he had met trouble he could not handle on his own.

Then, mayhap, he would say a prayer. To any god or goddess he thought might listen. Trout, or Fox, or wise Mouse. Even to ghastly Horrid, if the sun had set and the night was dark.

Bliss put no weight in the gods, not at all. She had told Shaara so when he was five, after she had snatched him from the poor house because she had approved of the way he sang the marching canticle.

"Sweet and clear as Bell," she had said, as they rode ripe for dash straight away from pursuit. "Your voice will change, sure, but by then I'll have taught you more profitable skills ."

Later that day, as she fed him  bread and bean curd by the warmth of a fire, Shaara had dared ask Bliss if she thought Bell had sent her to him.

In response, Bliss exchanged a quick glance with Ross, who laughed aloud. 

"Gods don't work that way, lad,” Ross said. “They have better things to do than meddle with the likes of you and me."

"The king's Cardinal says if you speak loud enough and leave your kirk tithe every fifth-day, then you've always got Fox's ear,” Sharra had protested. “And if you always toss the clean bones of his brothers back into the rivers, Trout'll see you fed. And Mouse -"

"The Cardinal hasn't spoken a true word since the day his mam left him on the king's doorstep," Bliss interrupted. "You'll learn, as you grow. I do my best to stay away from the kirks, boy, and you'll do better to follow suit."

Shaara had not thought about it much after that. He'd been too busy trying to learn the ways of Ross's Troop and find his place around sometime jealous entertainers. And Bliss had been right. As he grew, he had come to realize there was not much room for religion in a jongleur's life. The gods' names became no more than cuss words and he he'd nearly forgotten the sound of his mother's voice singing the fifth day prayers.

There were gods in the south, too. Different gods. Different names. Different needs, different wisdom, different worship. Shaara had found them interesting, at first, and the temples with their low ceilings and perfumed fog and bright colors alluring.

Again, Bliss had warned him away. And he'd soon learned, again, that she was right. The gods that had no interest in a jongleurs life had no mercy on the battlefield.

                                                        *****

"Go and visit the village temple," Bliss ordered Shaara after they finished Maurice's rabbit stew. "It's Weaving Day. The village was teaming and the temple will be full. Go inside. Earn a few coins. And listen."

Shaara shrugged, amiable. Southerners treated traveling players a far sight better than their northern cousins ever did. A man of the south would keep a good performer on in his hall as a mark of status. A man of the north would sooner feed a sow at his breakfast table.

"What am I listening for?" He'd not dared ask straight out, earlier. He'd been happy Bliss had finally braved the border and he didn't want to brew more trouble.

Maurice studiously fed the fire pine needles. Bliss scowled into the flames.

"Anything interesting. We don't know what the Seat his been up to in the last few years. As far as we know, his shadow has shrunk."

"Unlikely," Maurice muttered, still bent over the fire.

Bliss ignored him. "Lady Alyce believes they're building up the Low Temple. Find out why."

"Temple whispers, then." Shaara nodded.

"Yes," Bliss said. "Temple whispers."

Shaara kept his face straight and squelched a laugh. He'd not dared to ask questions but he was never one to hide from answers. He also knew his mistress. He’d dug into Bliss's pack, three nights earlier, as she'd slept. He’d wanted to look at the miniatures, again. And there he’d found the Temple shawl.

He couldn't read southern runes. He had never bothered to learn. But he recognized the seven-edged leaf and he had many guesses as to what it might mean.

 The village temple was not large, not as village temples were wont to be. Nor was the building new. Cracks ran through the twelve stone steps from earth to threshold, and moss grew in swirls about the entrance columns. Shaara supposed that any structure set so close to the River Ann would suffer the effects of a near Northern winter. He also knew the Southern priests tended to let the temple façades go as their gods intended.

In the south worth was measured from inside out.

Shaara stopped between the columns and took a breath. A priest in mud colored robes stood on the threshold between daylight and inner shade, welcoming all who passed with a pleasant smile. He wore his hair in the braids and beads Shaara remembered; too many knots to be a novice, too few to be a fellow of any consequence.

The priest returned Shaara's careful bow. Hiis eyes lit up when Shaara displayed his juggler's pouch.

"Oh, yes," the man said in the precise, clipped tones that Shaara still occasionally dreamed of. "We've not been blessed with the pleasure yet, today. Go in, please. Take your place before the altar. The weavers will be more than pleased by this treat."

Shaara bowed again and stepped out of the afternoon.

He’d forgotten the weight of the perfume in the air. Even here in a small temple, in an outlying village of no real consequence, the reek of the scented oil hit a man like lung fever.

Shaara coughed and tried to breathe through his mouth. He could taste the oil even on his tongue; spicy and floral. His head spun and for three breaths he had to lean against the cool temple wall.

By the time his lungs agreed to work again and his nose had stopped its alarming complaint, Shaara's eyes found the faint light filtering through heavy shutters. Shadows resolved into color and form.

Bliss was right. Weaving Day appeared well begun. Shaara, standing to one side in the perfectly square room, could not count high enough to determine the number of men and women and children squatting on the inlaid floor.

They looked like industrious beetles. Swathed in ochre and red, bent nearly double, hunched mounds anchoring the rugs they tended. They made no sound but for the gentle rush of air as they inhaled and exhaled, inhaled and exhaled.

Shaara shook his head, trying to focus. He walked carefully up one side of the square, taking care to watch the breadth of his feet. Bliss would kill him if on their very first day back he trod upon temple-blessed silk and ruined their welcome.

The weavers glanced up as Shaara approached the altar. First one interested face and then another, and another, and then smiling groups. Their pleasure was obvious. If the villagers marked him for a Northerner, they did not care.

Shaara flung himself on the floor at the idol's four-toed feet. He lay prostrate, counting through the required six heartbeats. He imagined he could feel the gaze of the bird-faced statue on his shoulder blades, and he wondered if this was why Bliss would never step foot on religious ground. Bliss bothered bow down to no creature, living or otherwise.

When Shaara rose, the idol released his imagination and was again only a badly sculpted man with an egret's head and lion's feet. Garlands of flowers hung around the statue's stubby neck: red and yellow and white and one made of black raven's feathers. Stone hands balanced wide, shallow bowls of perfume. Some especially attentive villager had smeared wax across the tip of the grey beak. An adulteress, Shaara supposed, or a man with the rot in his gut; wax was an expensive offering.

But he had come to listen, not to gawk, and if he returned with nothing of interest, Bliss would have his head. Shaara sneezed one last time and then looked at his audience.

The weavers were all waiting, colorful skeins briefly abandoned, every single face lifted in eager expectation.

Shaara smiled back, bowed low, and then began.

 He juggled and sang and told Bliss's tales until the small light in the temple windows turned to stars and the weavers lit forests of candles to save their eyes. Then they fed him the sweet banana pudding reserved for honored guests. Shaara dipped into the bowl with his fingers, eating crosslegged on the floor, as the weavers murmured back and forth over their creations and the braided priest came to squat at his side.

"How is it," the man asked, "across the river?"

"Cold," Shaara answered lightly. "Cold enough to freeze piss."

The priest only smiled wide, showing a gap where his front teeth had once lived. "Even your king's piss?"

"The king pisses in silver buckets," Shaara returned. "And not in the slippery streets like the rest of us."

The man rocked on his heels and considered the idol over Shaara's shoulder. "Your people do not mind the cold, I suppose."

"We're used to it."

"They say your winter is three times longer than your summer and that you have no spring at all."

"We have spring ," Shaara said, and setting aside his empty bowl. "Sometimes." He paused to watch the weavers shuffle and bend. "Where are the rugs going?"

"When they are finished they will be taken by cart and mule and boat to Emman."

"What's in Emman?" Shaara asked, although he knew well enough. "A fine lord with many rooms to furnish?"

"Our Low Temple." The priest explained. Pride sparked in his eyes."The Seat is building up, closer to the heavens and the kingdom within. The rugs will be this village's gift, unrolled beneath the feet of young initiates the very day the Temple's blessing is renewed."

Shaara remembered the initiates. Southern temples were always hungry. Priests wore out quickly, sacrificing their life for their beliefs. And there were always young lads and lasses, ready to step forward, ready to grow or cease as the Seat commanded.

"Are you sending anyone?"

"From here?" The priest shook his head. The beads in his hair rattled. "We have no one to offer. This time around, the Seat is calling for those of clean blood."

Nobles, that meant. Milords and miladies or maybe an especially wealthy trader's daughter. No village hopefuls or stable lads with dreams of perfume and temple rite.

Shaara shivered despite the stuffiness of the crowded room. The priest's grin creased.

"Perhaps you recall," he said. "The last time the Seat demanded purity?"

Shaara blinked. The priest snorted.

"We remember the stories," he chided. "Did she think we would forget? They are written rune and rune on linen, rolled in the library of the Highest Temple. We know them word for word, though no one dares speak them.

"Tell your Captain to come," the man continued, "and we shall cook meat in her honor."

 Bliss would have none of it.

"We ride on," she said, after Shaara had delivered his report. "I've no time to play the oddity just so the man can scratch his curiosity and I will not break bread with a priest ."

"You make your living playing the oddity," Maurice pointed out, calmly. The old man had decided to shave his beard. Shaara watched him, enthralled. In the dark of night, without even a bit of mirror to ease the way, Maurice scraped flesh smooth.

"I entertain where I see fit," Bliss returned. "And I have no intention of telling war stories to a bloodthirsty eunuch."

"You send me instead," Shaara said easily, and stretched out on the grass at Maurice's side.

Bliss scowled. "No wonder they knew you. I'm sure I taught you discretion, boy."

Shaara grinned and closed his eyes. The rasp of Maurice's razor slowed.

"They were the only Southern tales I knew," Shaara explained. "And they have no use for Northern songs. I remember Ross's lessons, even if you pretend not to."

"Hush, lad." Maurice said mildly. And then, "They're none of them eunuchs."

Shaara could hear Bliss huffing about beneath the night sky. He was tempted to sleep, but he suspected Bliss would have them up and on horseback just as soon as he began to snore. She was restless. He supposed it was a delayed reaction to Southern air. Or could be she was beginning to realize just what might lie ahead.

He'd thought about it, himself. He liked a happy ending to a story, well enough. Who did not? But he was not so sure Bliss would get hers.

"Do you think she sent it? The shawl, I mean,” he ventured after a moment.

Maurice's razor quieted completely. Bliss took a long breath and then let it out in a grunt.

"You're not supposed to be going through my pack, Shaara. I should whip you."

"You can't. I'm too old, now, Bliss. Old enough you should be treating me same as you treat Maurice."

"Maurice doesn't dig through my things." She stalked across the grass. He could feel the heat of her anger as she loomed. He did not dare open his eyes for fear of a kick in the ribs.

"He doesn't need to." Stubborn as she was, she had taught him the way of it too. "You tell him what he needs to know. You treat him like an equal. As you should be treating me. I not a child sciffing off your take any more, Bliss. I sing for my supper and I earn it."

"The lad's right, Bliss." Maurice had resumed work. The strop of his razor against leather meant his face was clean.

Shaara sat up. "Even you, Maurice. I ain't a lad. I'm a man, or haven't you noticed?"

Bliss knelt in the grass, a dark against the gray hummock. "You aren't grown until you've had a woman and killed a man."

"I've killed plenty," Shaara said, soft. He swallowed the lump that sprung up in his throat. "You know it. You were there, blood to your own elbows. And if you think it takes a woman, well. I'll go down the road tomorrow morn and buy an hour or two."

Maurice laughed. Shaara stiffened. Bliss spat a handful of filthy curses into the campfire but relented.

"She didn't send it," she said, harsh in her surrender. "She wouldn't. She'd not want me to know."

"Could be it’s a mistake," Maurice said, rolling razor and leather strop back into his pack. "Could be it’s a game."

"The king doesn't play games," Bliss argued, but Shaara could hear reluctant suspicion in her tone. "He decides and he takes. He never tests."

"The Seat, I meant. Could be the shadow's playing a game with us."

"With us?" Bliss laughed, harsh. "I misdoubt the Seat even remembers Green Hill, Maurice. The war carries on and battles are forgotten, yes?"

"Our victories are archived in the High Temple," Maurice returned, wry, and Bliss stopped laughing.

Shaara could smell dawn in the air. Man or lad, he knew his duty. Staggering upright, he found his scattered bedding and whistled for his horse.

He had another question but he was not quite brave enough to speak it.

Maurice only hesitated until the ashes of the fire were covered over.

"What will you do, Captain? If it is no mistake?"

"Knock her over the head." Bliss didn't hesitate. "And bring her home.”

[blisserial]

Five

Derby grew rich, as some villages do. A cousin to our king, one of many bastard by- blows, headed the ruling council and as such carefully retained royal favor. Derby, as it happened, was also blessed with low, sandy hills easily adapted to the king's new favorite crop; oil seed.

During the short summer the villagers of Derby farmed. During the long cold months seeds were pressed and every hand became slick with oil. The product was shipped north and east in tiny stone bottles. As the king's approval grew, so did Derby.

Any village can be quickly judged by the number of good taverns along the main street. Derby had six. I found work in the oldest of the group: a sagging two story building known as the Cat'n Hammer.

The Cat belonged to a middle aged ex-infantryman whose title was Rickson but who preferred to be called Garve. He was a big man, and merry. His face was pocked with old shrapnel scars and he limped when he walked but he seemed to have survived military service relatively intact.

Garve ruled his workplace fair and proper. The cook kept his hands washed, the bar maids took their own private customers to bed only after tavern close, and the dish boys drank the absinthe Garve left out in the back room, but never the good ale behind the bar.

I started work as a dish 'boy', and despite the addling affects of absinthe, quickly mastered that skill and moved on to the duties of the bar. I'd learned the battle of coin versus hunger very well and was rather naïvely determined to make Granda rich as Fox. I had no real qualms about taking customers to bed for good coin, so long as they were free of disease, but I was not quite sure how to begin.

Rorik, a barkeep with freckles across his nose and perhaps too much experience in the way of after hours commerce, came to my rescue.

"Go and watch old Jessica's puppet show on Broad Street. Pay attention. Come back after moon's up and I'll show you the rest."

Jessica's anatomically correct puppets were very explicit. I imagine I blushed. But the crowd about the small brick and stone theatre grew heated and the boil of the blood was contagious. I remember that a harlot with garish ruby on her cheeks attached herself to my arm and stole a kiss. I remember the warmth of her tongue in my mouth and the scrape of her long finger nails against my flesh, and then the  sudden flush of understanding.

Sex was not only about coin, after all. This was hunger again, in a different guise.

Rorik was a good mentor. He deftly taught me the commerce and principles of village whoring. When he died of lung rot three springs later he left me what little coin he had not spent on cosmetics and ale.

                                                         *****

Bliss waited to unwrap Shaara's bundle until they were half a day's ride north of the border. 

They found shelter from the weather in an old barn well off the main road. The barn stank of chicken shit and mold, but Maurice managed to kindle a small cook fire to life as the sun set. Thin white smoke rose straight through the pockets in the roof. The snow had turned to rain. By the time they crossed the border, Maurice hoped, winter would begin to feel dry.

Shaara snored contentedly in the sagging hayloft. The horses, equally weary, stood tethered out in the wet, lazily lipping up muddy grass.

"These fields used to be rich with flax." Maurice picked a shriveled seed from the sole of his boot and flicked it into the fire. "Now they're all but barren."

"Flax went out of style two life times ago." Bliss folded back velvet sleeves and bent closer to the firelight. "Oil seed is cursed. And so are the fields it was farmed on."

"Villages starved to dust on a king's whim."

"May He Reign Forever," Bliss quoted absently. Whatever she had found in Shaara's cloak rattled beneath her hands.

Maurice grunted and rummaged about in his pouch. His cigarettes were running low. He needed to save them for the next performance. But the damp made his bones ache and thoughts of the next day made his spine itch, and he wanted a smoke now.

He shrugged his shoulders, lit one tiny cigarette, and inhaled gratefully. "What is it?" He asked at last, as Bliss did not seem inclined to reveal Tamner's gift.

"Art." She glanced up, puzzled. "Portraits."

Maurice stood, knees creaking, and walked around the fire to crouch at her side for a better look. Bliss spread the velvet out, a puddle of color over packed mud. Sorting in rows onto the fabric, as she might have dealt cards before a companionable game, she laid out armies of broken sea shell.

Maurice had to lean forward to see that the shells were not, after all, broken, but filed into near perfect ovals and then embellished with what appeared to be milk paint.

"Coastal style portraiture. Mementos" He rocked a little on his heels. "Old Andrew carried one very like, do you remember?"

"Of his two sons, yes." Bliss took the cigarette from his hand and sucked thoughtfully. "These are all women. Young women." She handed the cigarette back and then began rearranging the painted shells, this way and that. Maurice could make out no pattern to her shuffling.

"What do you suppose happened to them?"

"Andrew's sons?"

"No." Maurice blew contemplative pastel smoke rings. The rings drifted away after the camp smoke. "The villagers. The rivers and rivers of villagers who could no longer farm this cursed land."

"Went the way of the rest of us, I suppose." Bliss tapped fingers on her thigh. "Conscripted, if they were lucky. Moved on, if they were not."

"Moved on where?"

"How should I know?" Bliss speared him with an irritated glance. "I've learned better than to go about asking stupid questions. So've you, I thought."

Maurice finished his smoke and sighed. "The stars make me want to ask questions."

Bliss glanced up through the torn roof and made a rude sound. "Leastways the rain has stopped. Look at these, o seeker of answers." She stabbed a finger, demanding his attention. "Why would Lady Alyce need one hundred and twelve tiny coastal portraits?”

"Perhaps milord enjoys the female form."

"No. They were Alyce's. Shaara said he found them in her sitting room. In her writing desk. Milady's desk would not be Tamner's province."

Maurice shrugged. "Well, then. Perhaps milaldy enjoys the female form."

Bliss glowered. “Nay.”

Maurice sighed again. "Could be she collects them. Coastal portraits. Southern mirrors.”

"Why hide them, then?" Bliss held a bright shell to the firelight. "Shove them away in a drawer. Why not display them, like the mirrors, and the little cat?"

In the hayloft above, Shaara rolled and mumbled in his sleep.

"There's nothing to connect them but their gender," Bliss continued after a moment. "And, roughly, their age. Look, here. This one's obviously of good blood, Northern. And here's a Southern priestess. This pretty princess looks as though she's spent every hour of her every day struggling on your barren farm, Maurice. And here's another with jewels through her hair."

"They've eyes in common."

"Ah?"

"Eyes," Maurice said, leaning over Bliss's hunched shoulders. "They're all green. Green eyes."

Bliss frowned. "Trout and Fox, but you're right. You've still got your wits, old man, and hawk's gaze to match. Eyes. Some of them are faded, but they've all got green eyes. That’s something, I suppose. But what?"

Maurice straightened, stretched, and grabbed his pack. His spine cracked. "Come up into the loft. Roof's better there. Sleep warm tonight, Captain."

"In a moment," Bliss replied, absently reshuffling the miniatures.

Maurice started to haul himself over the edge of the hay loft then paused. "The artist, too. They're all done in the same hand. Whoever he was, he had some talent, but he’s no master. Look at the noses. They’re all the same, and crooked at that.”

He waited for a properly mocking retort but Bliss sat silently. He pulled himself into the hay alongside Shaara and waited several hear beats longer. Then, vaguely alarmed, he stuck his head back into thin air.

"Bliss?"

He couldn't see her past the fire but he could hear the sudden understanding in a breath exhaled.

"Same age, eye color, gender." Bliss said. "Same artist. It's a map, a record. She's looking for someone, Maurice. She's got some idiot with a bit of skill and a box of milk paints sending her samples. And so far I reckon she's had at least one hundred and twelve misses."

 Maurice always found the River Ann baffling. The clear water was not terribly deep, nor dangerously wide. Nor was the bed softened with curves or joints. Ann ran straight as a pin, she did, never deviating from her chosen path, even during flood season.

It was exactly as if the land, prescient, had cut a swath of wet precisely across the center of the continent and said: Here is north, here is south, and never shall they cleave or bend together.

Maurice said as much to his companions as they sat their horses beneath a clump of alder trees and watched the river race.

"Foolishness," Bliss scoffed. She'd shed her gaudy finery and gone back to the threadbare tunic and trousers she favored. Maurice suspected she had also rubbed grit through her hair and dirt across her face.

"My gaffer used to float stick rafts across the river," Shaara added, sliding from the saddle, groaning as he stretched kinds from his legs. "Mama used to tell stories of the children he'd meet, fielders from the other side. One family had twelve biddies, all red hair. They grew grapes." Shaara sounded properly amazed. "And they sent good wine home to my gaffer's ma, every Summerfest."

Bliss ran her fingers through her pony's mane. The pony bobbed and snorted, unnerved or enticed by the river's faintly sighing rush.

"Your Great Granda must have been one of those first to see the border closed," she said. "And the twelve biddies across the way. Did they mourn long when the bridge was closed, I wonder?"

Maurice shifted in the saddle. He knew very well that any river homesteads had long ago been razed, on both the Northern bank and the Southern. Even so, he felt vaguely like a trespasser.

"Do we cross here, or on the bridge?" He pressed his horse forward, eager to move on.

Bliss's pony clopped after. Shaara was slow to follow.

"The bridge," Bliss decided after a brief hesitation. "Takes longer, but I'd rather not run the horses out before nightfall."

Only one bridge spanned the River Ann. Built of hewn granite and rare limestone, it grew from the earth in a perfect half circle, arching more than Ann's shallows required.

The loam at the foot of the bridge on the northern bank was clean, burned clear of weed or sapling every new moon. On the southern bank, stalks of lavender bobbed.

Ten good strides up the northern curve the southern king had ordered a gate built of steel and barbed wire. The Seat, apparently, had no need for such ostentatious display; there was not matching gate on the southern half of the arch.

Two guards dozed against steel in the light rain. One straightened as Maurice dismounted and led his mare onto the bridge. The other did not so much as twitch beneath his crested helm.

"Nobody crosses but soldier and supply. Go back."

The guard was petite and cocksure, and obviously bored and uncomfortable in her heavy leathers. A pistol hung at her belt. She wore a thin sword across her back.

"Go back," she warned again, and when Maurice did not move, she spat on damp limestone. "And if you ford downstream we'll shoot you, sure as you stand. The weather's miserable and I ain't going out in it so as to rope up three runners and send 'em home. We'll shoot."

"Where are the others?" Bliss tossed her reins to Shaara and squeezed past Maurice's mare. She looked the guards up and down with distinct, elaborate disgust. "There are supposed to be four guarding this gate. Where are the other two?"

The first soldier stiffened. The other, warned by Bliss's tone, decided to pay attention.

"Supply wagon got caught in the mud over the ridge," he jerked his chin past the grove of alders. "Needed a push."

"One goes, three stay." Bliss pulled a sheaf of dirtied paper from her pack and slapped it across the woman's palm. "Or have you forgotten how to count? Mayhap the rain has washed all good sense from your head, wench?”

Maurice coughed. Shaara sneezed. The pony nibbled at the mare's tail and earned a halfhearted kick for the insult. The first guard unrolled Bliss's papers as the second, now wide awake, tried to save face.

"Ben couldna handle a mired supply wagon hisself. He ain't got the strength of a tadpole. Ryan went along to lend a hand, see. And me and Myra, we stayed behind as we're -"

"The best hands with a pistol." The petite conscript returned Bliss's papers, rigid with disapproval. "Open the gate, Wen. They're rank. Just barely."

Wen unlocked the king's gate, silver key glinting in his hand. He stood, attentive, as first Maurice and then Bliss and her apprentice filed through. Myra spat again.

"Wench, is it?" she shouted after as the gate closed. "Leastways I ain't no camp grubber. Too afraid to pick up a knife in the lines to be of any real use."

Shaara made an ugly face and then laughed as the pony farted in affront. Maurice swallowed back his own amusement.

Bliss led her pony off the bridge and into southern lavender. She snapped a sprig of purple and stuck the flower behind one ear.

"How things change," she said, tossing Maurice a crooked grin. "Four years ago and they would have thrown tomatoes, at the very least. Lazy young conscripts. Have they no passion to speak of? I fear for our future."

Bliss rolled her eyes mockingly at Maurice, lavender flower bouncing in behind her ear, and the tight, cold pinch he had been carrying at the base of his spine melted away.

 Shaara caught a hare amongst the lavender. Maurice set it to stew for supper on a hummock just out of sight of the river. Bliss, dropped her pack with a grunt and set the pony free to graze.

"I'm going down the road," she said. "Put the last of Shaara's yams in that stew. I'll be back with bread afore it boils."

Maurice nodded. He rummaged in Shaara's bag for the roots. The boy took a handful of scrub weed to Bliss's pony. He sang as he brushed damp from the animal’s coat.

Bliss stepped off the grass onto the wide southern road and slouched away, whistling low accompaniment to Shaara's tune. Maurice watched until she disappeared over a dip on the horizon. There would be village and temple just over the next hill. It was the way of the Seat and the shadow.

"She took it well," Shaara said from behind the pony.

"Took what well?" Although, of course, he knew. Maurice began to dice the two remaining yams with his belt knife. They smelled of sugar and the earth.

"I thought she'd balk at the gate," Shaara said. "Or break into weeping over the flowers."

Maurice glanced up, wry. "Have you ever seen her weep?"

"No." Shaara paused in his ministrations. "Not even when we buried Ross."

"I thought she'd want to ford wet," Maurice admitted after a moment. He dumped pieces of root into the pot after the rabbit, wincing as hot water splashed. “Swim the channel.”

"Chased after by gunshot?" Shaara laughed. "No turning back or lead in your thigh."

"Yes." The lad was growing up, Maurice realized. Shaara had always seen clearly but the boy was gaining wit to go with clarity. Maurice wondered, with a pang, how long yet they would manage to keep him before he flew the nest.

Bliss had taken Shaara on out of sympathy and duty, and because Ross had insisted. They had raised him best they knew how. And the lad was a fair hand at the trickery and the show.

But they would never be a full circus troop again and Shaara deserved better than living hand to mouth. He was growing up and soon, gods willing, he would find a way out.

And then Ross's troop would be only two. Which was right and proper, Maurice supposed, as they had always been the heart of it.

"Have you?" Shaara asked, turning away from the pony.

Maurice started. "Have I what, lad?"

"Ever seen her weep?"

"Oh," said Maurice. "Yes. Once. Just the once, but it was a long time ago."

[blisserial]

Four

After my mother was taken, Granda edged toward madness. He refused to abandon his precious gardens. He continued to tend the herbs and orchard as though the estate had not overnight become both crypt and charnel house, as though the snow drifts, at mid winter, were not now up around our ears.

We were safe enough, I suppose. The people in the surrounding villages left the land alone, fearing either haunts or the taint of the king's disapproval.

That first winter, we grew hungry very quickly. The chickens in the small coop kept our bellies full for a hand's count of weeks, but they diminished steadily. I was still very young and Granda was in a state of black shock or fierce denial; he did not think to remind me not to slaughter the hens and soon we were out of eggs as well as meat.

We slept in the greenhouse beneath looming fronds, watched over by odd specimens of orchid and rose. The great house waited in silence, uninhabitable, mostly burned and become a morgue for those few the king's men had not forcibly enlisted.

Finally our hunger became so great that I braved the building, searching for small treasures to steal and sell. It was a mostly futile task. Very little of any worth had been left behind. Snow had snuck in through broken windows and doors, soaking furniture and ruining the tall damask curtains.

I dragged the ornate rugs through the front door and spread them as best I could about the green house, hoping they would dry clean.

In the scullery I found food in the form of yams and potatoes, smoked meat and canned beets. I also found Her Ladyship's ancient footman, sprawled face down on the packed dirt floor, arms spread like a bird in failed flight. There was no blood; his neck had been neatly broken. The cold had kept the pests away, mostly. But his eyes had run and his mouth gaped wide, white tongue desiccated.

I sat on my heels and watched him for a long time. I do not remember feeling sick or frightened. I do remember wondering if I would find my mother in a similar position, perhaps in an upstairs sewing room. For what use would the king put a delicate, flighty thing like our Rose?

I rifled the footman's pouch and discovered a few missed coins. After a moment of thought I stripped him of his coat and shoes, knowing they would bring a price at a cobbler's, so long as I was circumspect about their origins.

I took the shoes and the coin and as much food as I could bundle into the footman's coat, and left the house. I would not go back, after that, no matter how my Granda insisted. I did not want to find my mother, bones broken, mouth open to the world.

I sold the rugs to a gypsy three towns over, at a short price for their blackened edges. Even so, we inevitably grew hungry again and spring seemed very far away. Granda began to lose his teeth and my hair started to fall out in clumps.

Halfway through winter, the scent of smoke and fear still lingering in my nostrils, I went down the hill to the village called Derby in search of employment.

                                                         *****

Shaara relieved the drunken squire of his coin purse. The squire snorted and sighed and rolled over in the hall, but did not bother to wake up and defend his belongings.

Unhurried, Bliss's apprentice leaned against the wall between looming mirrors and carefully counted his treasure: four silver pennies and one slip of paper money. Not a bad find, all in all. And, as the squire was Shaara's fifth tag, the riches were pleasantly piling up.

Shaara pocketed the money, dropped the purse back onto the lad's chest, and walked on. He remembered similar parties from long ago. He remembered the scent of sugar and drink and wine and sex and vomit. In the south, they tried to cover the whole mess with pungent sandalwood incense. In the south, they were very sensitive about their noses, and always terrified of offending their gods.

Shaara grinned. He didn't believe in gods, not he. But if he did, he doubted the almighty spirits would have much interest in the reek of good mortal celebration gone on too long.

Dawn had come and the entire house was sodden or asleep, easy pickings. Shaara was mostly sure the old celebrations across the border had ended in much the same way. He was also mostly sure Bliss would have never sent him off to steal from a Southern host and his guests.

Then again, Shaara thought, pausing to adjust a dangerously crooked mirror, he had been a child then and maybe he just didn't recall clearly.

The door to Lady Alyce's dressing room was tightly locked. Shaara pulled a hammered copper wire from his belt and sprung the latch. He held his breath, said a small prayer to the gods he didn't believe in, then stepped over the threshold.

The room was, happily, empty.

He supposed Her Ladyship's maids had long gone to bed and, if luck were smiling, Bliss would keep Lady Alyce herself well entertained.

Shaara stood in the center of the carpet, exactly where Bliss had stood hours earlier, and turned slowly in place. The wall space was overly populated with chests and hooks and the occasional dress dummy. Fabric hung in swathes from the hooks and over the chests, pooling on the floor.

Shaara supposed it was a typical landed woman's fitting room. He eyed the tangle of jeweled neclacess tossed across the back of Lady Alyce's chair but left them. Bliss had been very explicit. Take only what would not be missed.

A spindled writing desk sat under a narrow window. Shaara crouched in the thin, dawning light and dug through top drawers. Nothing there but carefully flattened sheaves of vellum: correspondence, all personal and in a lady's hand, if Shaara was any judge.

He hesitated and then set the vellum aside.

Beneath the letters he found a small map of the southern coast, nicely drawn, beautiful in pen and ink and vibrant color. Shaara set the map aside as well. Pretty it was, but no merchant would pay good coin for possible treason. Besides, Maurice knew the lands across the border better than any other man living.

"Assuming Bliss doesn't duck out at the last minute," Shaara muttered to the room at large. He ignored the small voice in the back of his head when it whispered that perhaps it would be that much better if she did refuse to cross south.

The writing desk’s final drawer rattled as Shaara tugged it open. Inside it was deep and narrow, and so full of shadow that at first Shaara could not quite make out the details of its contents. He dipped his hand into the depths and discovered that the rattle belonged to a collection of small, smooth, rounded pieces of -

"Shell?" Shaara wondered aloud. He lifted a handful into the light.

Oyster shells, or clams. Buffed seamless and then painted over with small, carefully detailed portraits.

Baffled, Shaara let the first batch slide to the floor and reached into the drawer for more. Surely there were twenty of the delicate things, maybe twice twenty. In groups Shaara pulled them free and laid them out. Female faces, all of them; each young and ranging from ugly as a mule to groin-stirring beauty.

Shaara sat on his knees and spread his hands above the collection, hesitating. He had never seen the like before and he would bet all six of his precious juggling spheres the lovely little things were worth a good chunk of coin.

"Take them, man. For Horrid's sake, take them away."

Shaara jumped and whirled. The fellow standing in the doorway only shook his head.

"How many are there? More than you have time to count. More than I have heart to count. More than one life is worth."

Shaara wished he had convinced Bliss to let him bring his knife after all. But a peasant caught with steel on a landed estate was a dead man and the fellow in the doorway swayed where he stood, belching lightly. So perhaps Shaara was not about to lose a hand for thievery right this moment.

"What are they?"

"Dashed hopes, all of them." The man loped awkwardly into the room and bent to finger a piece of patterned cloth. "Desperation. The hook that bloodies my gills."

The fellow did look a trifle fish faced. Shaara wondered if he would puke on Alyce’s carpet. Then he decided he would rather not wait to find out and began edging toward the door.

"Take them, I said." The man dropped the cloth he had been examining. He pierced Shaara with a bright and surprisingly sober eye. “Good riddance."

Shaara put on his best boyish smile and pretended confusion. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean, milord. My mistress -"

"Bliss," the man interrupted. "Needs to see them for her self. And so she would have, if she'd bothered to show her guileful face about this morning as I'd requested."

Shaara darted a glance at the man's ringed hand and swallowed. "Lord Tamner."

"Since the day my father left his blood all over the Geen Hill sward. For king and for title." Tamner sounded pleasant but the sudden appearance of a pistol in his right hand belied his mild expression.

"Wrap them in your cloak and take them to your mistress. Do not let Lady Alyce see you've found her treasure. And get out of my house, the lot of you, heroes of Green Hill be damned."

Shaara unfastened his cloak and began scraping shell onto it with shaking hands. He kept his head down, not daring to peek back over his shoulder, but he could hear Tamner's harsh breathing. He imagined he could feel the eye of the pistol between his shoulder blades. Shaara might not be carrying steel, but a titled lord needed no excuse to murder any soul he wished under his own roof.

For all their apparent delicacy, not a single seashell cracked or chipped as Shaara wrestled them onto velvet and then tied his cloak shut. He turned, slowly.

Tamner's eyelids were drooping but his hand on the pistol remained steady.

"Go," His Lordship said.

Bliss had not raised her apprentice to be a fool. Shaara ran.

 "You might have killed her." Maurice rebuked. He shoved at the stable door with one foot. Apparently Tamner kept the hinges less than well oiled. The door swung smoothly, but not without a groan of protest.

"I might have," Bliss replied. "If I thought she'd aught to do with it."

A boy appeared along the row of stalls, torch flaring.

"Where's your master?" Maurice asked, genial. "I've a horse needs readying."

"Up at the big house," the boy said, eyes wide. "But I -"

Bliss knocked the child under the chin with more force than Maurice thought necessary.

"Bollocks, Bliss. You've broken his tooth." Maurice knelt to staunch the flow of blood.

"He'll live to brag." Bliss stomped out the dropped torch before fire could spread. "Hurry up. Pick your nag. A party this large and the stable lads will be thick as nits." She melted away. Maurice could hear the creak of leather above the music of restless and sleeping animals.

Sighing, he propped the unconscious stable boy against mounded hay and felt his way along the stalls. "What made you decide she'd naught to do with it?"

A horse whickered, soft. Bliss said, "Milady knew she had me by the tits, but she didn't know why. She didn't know so much as she pretended. She never said her name."

Maurice had not needed to tack up a mount in near pitch dark since his days as a youthful conscript. His hands remembered what to do. He silently thanked whichever lad had so neatly arranged the horse's tack on a bale outside the stall, stable master correct and perfectly cared for.

The horse herself, for she stank pungently of mare, appeared unconcerned. She rolled her eyes as he cinched her girth but took the bit in her mouth without any fuss.

By the time Bliss reappeared, leading a shaggy pony and nursing a bitten wrist, Maurice had two nicely turned out mounts on his arm.

"Animals," she said, succinct and disgusted. "Shaara's late."

"We'll wait." Maurice shushed his grumbling mare and glanced beyond the stable door at the clearing sky. The sun was beginning to make a solid appearance and soon all of the stable would be up and wanting breakfast.

They could not afford to wait.

"We move on. Shaara will find us," Bliss said, reading his mind. She led her pony forward, tossing a scatter of gold coins across the lap of the unconscious stable boy as she went.

A puny offering, Maurice thought as he followed after. Not nearly enough to make up for the stolen livestock. The lad would be lucky if he managed to hold onto his job, never mind escape a whipping.

Even so, as he urged the mare and the second horse - an excitable, farting bay - under the eves of the building, Maurice dropped his own rain of guilt money in near the door.

 They rode steadily, but not quickly. Shaara caught up half way down the hill. Out of breath and shivering, and soaked to the waist, still he smiled as he flung himself into the bay's saddle.

"Raided the kitchen," he reported, sharing out winter sausage and ripe pears.

The lad looked far too pleased with himself. Maurice bit into fruit and considered. "No hounds set on your heels?"

"Won't be." Shaara leaned across withers and passed Bliss the sodden remnants of his fine cloak. "A gift from milord."

Bliss arched dark brows but showed no interest in the dripping bundle. "Pleased to see us go, is he?"

“Very." Shaara fastened his juggler's pouch to a stirrup and relaxed into the saddle, arms crossed. He yawned. "Horses. Planning to travel a fair bit, are we, Bliss?"

Bliss regarded her apprentice. The boy refused to look up but his satisfaction was near palpable. Maurice held his breath.

Bliss turned away. Snow cracked under the pony's hooves, ice turning to slush as the sun rose higher.

"Yes," she admitted at last. "We're planning to travel a fair bit."

[blisserial]

Three

I spent most of my childhood tromping about Her Ladyship's orchards. In the summer season the oranges were sweet and plentifull, and the latticed, leafy roof provided relief from the otherwise nearly intolerable heat.

A old aqueduct ran through the orchards. Granda quickly shaped the waterway to his satisfaction, digging and damming until it irrigated every thirsty root. By the time I was four, most of the essential troughs were beginning to age and crumble. I toiled away afternoons in the spring, clear water bubbling past my knees, as Granda demonstrated the perfect mix of straw and clay one used to pat the trough sides back into place. In my young mind I was heroic, saving water-starved trees and fruit and perhaps even Her Ladyship's life in one muddy swoop.

My mother never minded when I trundled home soaking wet and plastered with straw. Nor did she seem to notice my innocent joy when, after many months of labor, the troughs began to run clean again.

The winter season brought drifts of snow, great piles that climbed the trunks of the trees, making the orchard seem newly short and dense. The bees disappeared and the aqueduct froze almost solid. I learned how to climb bare trunks despite their slick skin of ice, how to carve castles in the snow, and even more importantly, how to trap the small rabbits and marmots that floundered through the drifts in search of surviving greenery.

Her Ladyship ran an organic garden and so, while most groundskeepers spent winter fortnights mixing and perfecting bug blight, root grow or other essential chemical doses, Granda used the time to care for his tools and architect the next year's plantings. His  dreams did not always match Her Ladyship's pocket book but I still remember the beauty of the elaboratet blueprints he drew with pen and ink as he sat crosslegged on the floor of the largest greenhouse.

And I remember he was sketching when, in my seventh year, the king’s soldiers came for us. I recall the hushed crack of many hooves on ice and the doleful singing of sleigh bells. I remember Granda's sudden start and the spill of his ink as he rose too hastily and hurried to the greenhouse door. I pushed past him, wanting to see what had so thoroughly caught his attention, but he thrust me back before quickly, quietly locking the expensive glass portal.

We huddled low, beneath the fronds of a Southern palm. He kept one soiled, loamy hand clapped  over my mouth.

By forcing me to share his cowardice as the world disintegrated around our green shelter, I have always believed, he took from me the luxury of fear.

                                                          *****

 Lord Tamner's mistress was a big woman with a wide mouth and Southern manners. She had no real personal interest in the evening's entertainment, other than to see that the hired players were properly dressed and knew exactly which bits of ribald humor were acceptable and which snippets of royal innuendo were not.

Bliss stood unruffled in the middle of a worn carpet while slaves and servants hurried back and forth, putting Her Ladyship to order. When asked to recite a canticle Bliss did so, in cold clear tones appropriate to the lay. When asked to spring a step or two in demonstration of the latest trotting fad, Bliss complied, stone faced and light of foot about the bustle of stays and fabric.

When asked to incorporate the mistress's small lap cat into the self same dance, Bliss balked.

"Children, gimps, swords and flame," Bliss said, steady under the flare of Southern temper. "But no animals."

"Tamner said you would surely do as I wished." Her Ladyship sat on a velvet settee, straight as an arrow. Three maids fussed over her thin curls and another two hemmed her skirt.

If fur and velvet had been in two seasons ago, Maurice thought, eyeing swathes of opaque netting, then surely this season the fashion was strategically bared flesh.

"And she is magnificent," Tamner's mistress continued, eyes rolling over one motionless shoulder in dignified annoyance. "Straight from the Begnian swamps. A cat striped like a deep forest parrot and smaller than a terrier."

"No," said Bliss.

"She will dance on her hind quarters if you but dangle a fish from your fingers -"

"No. No animals. No parrots, no terriers, and especially no dancing cats."

The woman's mouth set. Maurice saw coin slipping away. He took one step forward, intending to argue, but Bliss hissed in annoyance and clear warning.

"Lord Tamner knows very well what my troop will and will not do. And as milord is the one who both sought me out and promised payment, I suggest you take up the argument with him." Bliss shrugged. "It is perhaps not too late to find another group of players yet willing to work with…cats."

"Although it is dark outside," Shaara spoke for the first time, pulling guileless eyes from a fluttering maid. "And icing over. And I have heard no word of another troop in town. Maurice?"

"No." It was an old game; Maurice played his part without effort. "Although I've heard tell there is a cyclist but one village over."

"A cyclist." Shaara scoffed. "Nothing but fidget artists on wheels." The maids tittered appreciatively.

Milady looked less than pleased. Silence fell and then grew long. Bliss, still standing in the center of the room, waited. She would caper and sing to win her meal, but she would not bend principles, even when confronted with the sudden growl of Shaara's empty stomach.

"Very well." Tamner's mistress relented. A quick clap of her hands summoned a footman. "Take them to the hall. Show them where they must stand. Do not feed them yet. And then tell milord I am waiting upon his convenience."

Bliss bowed low and turned on her heel. Maurice and Shaara followed, soldiers caught in their commander's wake and whim.

 The footman, sternly silent, bowed Bliss into a dark corridor, then marched ahead. Bliss slowed to molasses's pace, pretending to admire the rows and rows of gilded oval mirrors that hung, regimented, on every wall.

Maurice supposed she was deviling the servant for his mistress's sake, until he looked more carefully at the beveled glass.

"Southern work." He was not exactly surprised, but he was beginning to wonder how Lord Tamner managed to remain in the king's good will. Loyal men had been shot or hung for smaller displays of Southern sympathy.

"His wife's collection, I suppose." Bliss watched the impatient servant beneath lowered lashes. "She's too arrogant or stupid to know better."

"We did work with animals, once." Considering a particularly large mirror, Maurice clasped hands behind his back and rocked gently on his heels.

"A boy in a donkey suit does not an animal make," Bliss scoffed.

"I had in mind the Reidwhich goat." He enjoyed deviling Bliss as much as Bliss enjoyed deviling the footman.

"That was a sacrifice." Bliss replied, calm. "And you're lucky it was the goat's throat and not your own I slit." She turned from the decorated walls and allowed the footman to finish his duty.

"Come, Shaara." Maurice said, hiding his smile. "Let's get you fed."

The boy lengthened his stride. "Bad luck."

"Ah?"

"The mirrors," Shaara explained, glancing back once. "Hung across from each other. Bad luck. Any Southern infant knows that."

"Arrogant or stupid," Maurice agreed, repeating Bliss's judgment to ease the sudden twitch in his gut. "Or perhaps wily as her swamp cat."

 Milady's swamp cat was in fact far from wily. Tamner's woman, whose name Maurice quickly learned was Alyce, got her way in the end, if judiciously. The stripy beast made an appearance early on in the celebration, just as Tamner's trumpeter began to announce titled guests.

Two slaves with pierced brows hoisted the animal's golden cage onto a banquet table across the cavernous room from Bliss's troop. Lady Alyce, glittering and fierce, set herself up at the head of the cage, apparently awaiting courtiers full of eager questions. The cat, a tiny thing with slitted eyes, curled itself into a nest of felt and immediately went to sleep.

If Alyce hoped her exotic pet would become the evening's entertainment, she must have been sorely disappointed. As far as Maurice could tell, Tamner's guests preferred the drink first, the victuals second and Bliss's quick tongue a close third. The Begnian swamp cat was mostly ignored. So much so that Lady Alyce was eventually forced to give up her station and join her own party.

Maurice, in between gulps of blue flame and the running patter that came automatically to his tongue, found himself watching the cat. He told himself that it was the gold that had caught his interest. He had seen plenty of caged animals. Birds in miniature bamboo palaces, wolf cubs behind steel and wire, even an elegant fish in a glass bowl, but he had never before seen such riches wasted so obviously. Gold, while no longer scarce, was still hoarded by most of the landed nobility. It was said the king himself had taken, years past, to wearing only silver in his own particular expression of caution.

The Northern king kept his treasures locked away out of sight, but here in Cliffhouse livery was picked out in bullion and the household pet slept behind the gleam of gold.

 "Doesn’t it burn?"

Maurice let the flame lick about his fingers before he quenched the torch between his teeth. "No."

"Is it witchery?"

That gave Maurice pause. He sent the baton spinning as he considered the small boy at the edge of his circle. "No such thing as witchery, lad. Only quick fingers and a leathery tongue."

"Is your tongue truly made of leather, then?" Doubtful, the child edged closer.

"Bliss says so." Maurice smiled. He relighted his torch with a puff of hidden fire. "A tongue of leather and a head of stone, she says."

"Bliss is the Storyteller?" The boy reached into a pocket and pulled forth a fistful of paper money. "She makes her hands into dragons and can stand on her head."

"Yes." Bliss was hidden in the growing crowd but Maurice had yet to meet a lad she could not charm.

"If there isn't witchery, is there dragons?" The boy squatted to drop his offering into the small brass bowl Maurice kept on the edge of his invisible theatre.

"I've never seen one." Maurice nodded his thanks before pulling a large twig of wintered fir from thin air. His circle of admirers clapped gently. "But I hear there's a major in Corkeslea keeps the head of one nailed to his library wall."

"Corkeslea is over the border." The lad grew thoughtful. "My da says only soldiers and turncoats go over the border."

"And circus folk." Maurice passed the twig, now magically festooned with tiny paper birds, into the child's greedy hands. "Put it under your pillow tonight, lad, and you'll dream of dragons."

Face bright, the boy bowed once, clicking immaculate boot heels together, and then darted away, trophy held high.

In the near distance trumpets sounded again and Maurice's audience began to quickly thin. Supper, he supposed, as he squatted to collect his brass bowl. Coins scraped amongst the muffle of paper money. For the first time in a very long while, good fortune seemed to be smiling. Maurice swirled the brass container thrice, a player's superstition, and then paused in mild surprise.

The weight of good linen paper settled amongst the lighter bills. Maurice snagged the bit free of coin, only to find it was in fact a neat wad, folded precisely in thirds.

A biting snake might have been more welcome. Maurice frowned briefly into the pot, and then, quickly collecting his pack, went in search of Bliss.

 "Perhaps it's a lover's note." Shaara licked grease from his fingers and reached for bread. His juggler's pouch hung at his belt, distended with orbs and coin. "Open it."

"No." Maurice paused to gather up bread and meat, then pulled Shaara from the supper benches. "Where's Bliss?"

"Near the drink, most like." Shaara said cheerfully. "Or on the couches with another restless lordling. She don't even bother wait for an invitation -"

"Not on a job." Maurice fought back a small lick of uncalled for and unexpected rage. It was not the boy's fault time obscured memory. "Not on a real job. Step to, lad. Tamner'll want us back on the floor as soon as our bellies are filled."

Shaara whistled a dancing tune under his breath. "Have you met him, yet? His Lordship, I mean."

"No." Maurice searched the crowd. Waves upon waves of white gauze and bare flesh but no sign of Bliss.

"Why not open it yourself?"

Maurice took a deep breath and paused to listen. Surely, if she were performing, there would be a ripple here or there. "Tain't for me, lad." And if she were not performing…

"How do you know?" Shaara patted absently at his spheres. He smiled at a young lass with bleached bird bones strung about her neck on a silver chain.

"I don't get love notes. Nor notes of any other kind." Maurice said, disapproving. And then, "There. Over there."

Shaara made a smug noise. Maurice bristled but kept his temper in check.

Bliss had indeed found a couch and drink, red wine floating gently in a goblet of pocked glass. She glanced up as they approached, met Maurice's gimlet eye, and set her looming companion free with a tilted smile and a nod.

The gentleman melted gracefully away but not before Maurice had glimpsed the signet on the fellow's thumb. He was not sure if the resulting gripe in his gut was relief or unease.

"Was that Tamner?" Disdaining the couch, Maurice crouched on his heels at Bliss's feet, back set carefully to the thronging hall.

"We were discussing overtime." Bliss sipped at her wine, then passed the goblet to Maurice. "He'd like a private performance after dawn."

Shaara made another small noise. Bliss ignored her lad and instead examined the folded bit of linen Maurice had traded for the wine. "What's this?"

"The boy thinks maids have been passing old Maurice love poems. I told him I've far too many wrinkles to catch a jaundiced eye. Open it."

Bliss did so in quick, efficient movements, all the while appearing only to sway in time with the faint strains of harp and troubadour. The heavy paper unfolded on her palm to reveal rough black ink on expensive stationary.

"Why," Bliss purred. "Imagine that. She's missing us already."

Maurice shifted forward and squinted at the scrawl between Bliss's thin fingers. "Lady Alyce."

"Yes." Bliss took her wine back from Maurice's hand. Obedient, he made the crushed missive disappear. "She'd like to break her fast. With us. At sunrise."

Maurice kept his face still. Bliss glanced sideways, finished her wine, and rose. "Fine work, lads. Apparently we've become popular as sweets before even the moon sets. We'll be back on the circuit in no time."

"And not enough of us to go around at dawn."

"No." Bliss smoothed the ruff at her neck. Maurice watched, patient, and knew the instant she made her decision.

"Tamner will have to wait. Tomorrow morning, we see the lady of the hour."

 By the time the sun rose, spreading a sickly light through the great hall's narrow windows, Maurice was sweaty, rumpled, and feeling age to the very marrow of his bones. He was also, thank the small gods, far richer than he had been in many seasons and nearly full to choking with sweet meats.

He stood blowing colored smoke rings for a drunken and elderly matron when Bliss came to collect.

"Hungry?"

"Far from it." Maurice felt the sweets in his gut turn over. "I'd forgotten the tendency of the landed to treat the entertainment as children." The matron's eyes had rolled shut and she was beginning to snore, yet Maurice was careful to bow a proper farewell.

"Sing or starve," Bliss replied, quoting Ross. "As for me, I prefer to sing."

"No doubt. You've gone hoarse." Maurice left his small cigarette burning. He puffed more rings as they picked their way across the hall, stepping gingerly over the guests who lay slumped across flagstone. Hounds, snuffling beneath the benches, stopped in their foraging to watch Maurice's creations burst against the low ceiling.

"Where's Shaara?"

"Running an errand."

Maurice closed his eyes for a brief moment and let peppermint fumes roll about his tongue before he blew through his nose. "Another errand? Let me guess, an ensemble of gauze and bird bone to go with the velvet and feathers."

"He's my apprentice." Even past a bruised throat, Bliss's irritation was clear. "Keep your nose out of it."

"He's you’re apprentice, yes. But what exactly are you teaching him, Captain?"

"I said, keep your beak out of it."

Maurice sucked on his cigarette and wondered when he had gone from silent partner to whipping boy. Sometime in the last three years Bliss had forgotten to be gracious and he had not paid much attention until now. He'd let her grieve because he thought it best. Perhaps he'd let her grieve too long.

"Wrong hallway."

Bliss shot a burning look over her shoulder. "What?"

"No mirrors. Wrong hallway."

"Milady," Bliss said, cold and precise, "wishes to dine in the kitchens."

"Nobility lurking in the kitchens." Maurice finished his cigarette and ground the papery remnants to nothing between his back teeth. "And you're warning me to keep my nose clean."

Bliss only walked more quickly.

The kitchens must have been a very early addition to Cliffhouse, if not entirely original to the sprawling structure. The corridors narrowed and the ceilings dropped and Maurice suspected he could feel damp through the walls. Lintels sagged until he had to duck his head and then he could smell wood fire and grease.

The kitchen itself was built of brick and clay and skinned log and was a great deal smaller than the grand hall they had just vacated. A lone slave stood at the hearth, tending a small family of cook pots. He did not look up as they entered.

Lady Alyce sat waiting at a high, battered table. Her curls had fallen down and her gown was no longer pristine. There were poached eggs in a trencher between her elbows and she set a dented tankard beside them as Bliss approached.

"You did well, I assume?" The lady's brows drew together. Maurice saw no sign of the little swamp cat or its gilded cage.

"Well enough." Bliss sat herself at the table without waiting to be asked. Maurice, more circumspect, remained standing. "We owe milord our thanks."

"You owe me your thanks." Lady Alyce picked up a clump of egg and consumed it neatly. "Roger had little to do with it. Although, admittedly, he needed some convincing. He recognized your name, you see."

Alyce reached into the folds of her skirts and produced a leather satchel.

"Your three hundred in gold," she said, setting the bag on the table boards. "Count it if you like."

"You're very predictable," Bliss said. She did not deign to touch the money. "Are the mirrors your own?"

Milady blinked and then allowed herself a slow smile. "They are, now. The collection once belonged to a viscount with too much pride. The king had him executed for sedition. I arranged to purchase the mirrors. I find their glass faces lovely."

"And was that wise? Milady fears not a noose about her own neck?"

Alyce scooped up more egg and lifted her trencher. "The king allows Tamner some leeway. And Tamner's lady much more."

"Tamner's lady," Bliss said slowly and even from two steps behind Maurice could see the twitch of her lips.

"Well. The title is honorary, yes?" With an elegant shrug, Tamner's mistress slid the trencher of eggs in Bliss's direction. "One can hardly go about in polite company as Roger's whore."

Bliss picked through the eggs and ate. Yolk dripped over her chin. She wiped it away with the back of her wrist. Alyce sat calmly, waiting. Maurice allowed his eyes to drift across to slave at the hearth.

"Alan is mute," Alyce said, smiling small. "And, unfortunately for Cook, also deaf. But he has a fine hand on the ladle and a light touch with the spices."

"You're a spy," Bliss said, mouth full of eggs. "Or something worse."

"My father is a trusted advisor under the Seat's shadow. My mother presses perfume for the Low Temple. My family is highly valued for its service."

"Does Roger know you fuck him for the south?"

Maurice flinched. Lady Alyce appeared only amused.

"You mistake me," she said. "I adore Roger. And I am a loyalist. I work only for the north.

Maurice felt Bliss's surprise, although he doubted Tamner's mistress noticed.

"You misliked the heat?" Bliss said dryly.

"I misliked the gods," Lady Alyce replied in kind.

Bliss pushed the empty trencher back across the table. "The bit with the swamp cat was well done."

Alyce arched one fine brow. "You mistake me again."

"I think not." Lazily, Bliss shifted on the bench, pulling knees under chin and rolling her shoulders, a child's restlessness. "What do you want?"

Alyce rose and took the trencher and tankard to a keg of water kept warm near the hearth. She dropped the dishes into the water, tapped the slave lightly on his shoulder, and sent him away with a gesture.

"He is not blind, after all," she said by way of explanation, when the room was empty but for the three. "And I'd hate to lose such a valuable slave."

Bliss drummed her fingers on her knee, quietly mocking. Milady shrugged and reached again under her skirts, this time producing a thick bundle of fringe. Spread across the table with a flick of the hand, the fringe unrolled to become a shawl of crudely felted wool, trimmed with coil upon coil of curling fringe.

Maurice could not help himself. He left his position at Bliss's back and sat down on the bench by her side, elbows on the table. At Alyce's nod, he reached for the fringe and let it slide over his thumb.

"You recognize it, then." Tamner's lady nodded.

"A Temple shawl," Maurice said because Bliss, suddenly stiff, refused to speak.

"The red and purple fringe," Alyce said. "Means Low Temple. My mother sent this out, several fortnights ago, along with a small bundle of silk and muslin and the latest report on the Seat's movements. This," she tapped the wool, "I did not see fit to pass onto the king."

"Why?"

"Turn it over."

Maurice took the white wool in careful hands and flipped it. Leaves patterned the far side, muted yellow and green embroidery in a precise, practiced hand, repeating in gentle rows until art met tassel.

Maurice dropped the shawl and shoved smarting fingertips into his armpits.

Bliss launched herself over shawl and plank and seized Lady Alyce about the throat.

[blisserial]

Two

My mother was called Rose, after the rare flower in the garden her papa spent most of his life tending. Granda Jorge is a scrawny, gnarled man with no proper sense of humor. Sold into service at the age of ten, he showed an uncanny ability to keep green things alive -  first in Her Ladyship's solarium, later in the herb plot, and finally as groundskeeper of the household's  extensive ornamental gardens.

He still talks incessantly of land that isn’t his. He can describe every seedling he tended in thirty years of servitude but he cannot remember the family he lost to the king's war.

Perhaps this is not an elderly failing. Perhaps it is a calculated adaptation. I shouldn't resent his choices. Yet I do.

Rose was a pretty child and an even prettier maiden. She had absolutely no interest in either Granda's botanical passion or her own place in Her Ladyship’s  household. Rose had eyes only for the bright young conscripts who came marching by in an endless stream, season after season, away south on the dusty road that bypassed Her Ladyship's stables before curving away over the horizon.

To my young mother those untried soldiers must have represented mystery and adventure. Certainly, as she grew older, they became objects of desire and then pleasure.

I do not know how many men she bedded behind the boxwood hedge in Her Ladyship's lavender garden, but I do know I was the unsurprising end result.

She named me not after a flower, or shrub, or herb, but after the apparently impressive stead her last conquest rode. Blisstide Run, she said the nag was called, and I got the entire mouthful, thankfully shortened to Bliss in my very early years.

I am endlessly grateful that horse was not christened Knottytail Leap or Muskrat Gallop.

My mother, though a kind soul, had not a lick of sense. In the end that was her downfall.

                                                          *****

After more than fifteen years in the north, Maurice was still not accustomed to the bitter, bone chilling cold. He had become used to the drifts of snow, drifts that on either side of the king’s road grew as high as a man’s shoulder. He had become used to the spears of ice that dripped from gabled roofs, beautiful sculptures Maurice imagined could easily pierce flesh and bone if ever dislodged.

He had even become used to the endless grit of sand that lodged in boots and shirt cuffs, between eyelashes and in the ears and even between the teeth. Urchins and old men spread the sand over the king’s road in small, regimented armies, feeding hungry families with the coins they earned. The sand itself, Bliss claimed, was hauled from the infertile fields of abandoned border towns.

Maurice swallowed grit with his cider every night and regularly mused over the  fields that must now be scraped to deep trenches. And if the dirt in those fields had been laid low by black spells, was not the king tempting fate by sprinkling the same earth over his icy roads?

The clogging sand made Maurice nervous but the cold darkened his very spirits and made long days seem without hope or purpose. The wind snuck under his cloak and between skin and woolens, leaving chill blains on bits of his body that had never even seen the sun.

Fifteen years, and he should be used to the winter doldrums. He had heard tales of whole villages, years and years past, before even the king had come, who had burnt their very children in god offering, hoping only to chase the cold away.

“Nonsense,” Bliss scoffed when Maurice muttered such stories aloud. “The north has always been cold and Northerners have always been hardy. We do not try to change anything we cannot. Besides, no sane Northern family would send a child to the gods; a terrible waste of an extra pair of hands, that would be, come summer and harvest.”

Bliss managed to keep the ragtag remainder of her small company going through the winter. She did her best to keep them fed and warm, but even she could not turn winter to summer. In the right town circus tricks provided food and shelter, and in the wrong town Bliss’s gambling and Shaara’s quick fingers kept the company from famine.

Maurice refused to learn the role of thief. He had signed on with Ross as an honest man, an honest man looking for clean livelihood. Even after so much had changed, some principles could not be broken.

He would not lower himself to steal. But neither would he let Bliss starve.

                         “Maurice.” Juggling finished, upturned hat jingling with a few burnished coins, Shaara settled in the rushes at his feet. “Bliss wants to move on again tomorrow.”

“I know it.” Maurice had foregone drink and food this night. The tavern Bliss had chosen seemed especially dirty, the men slumped over the tables especially taciturn. Even the obvious regulars appeared to be avoiding the fare which was enough to make Maurice wary.

It made one wonder, it did, how exactly the tavern master kept his little industry afloat.

“She’s taking us south, again.” Shaara pulled a dried turnip from his pocket and, munching delicately, began to sort the coins from his hat. “Two more days at this pace and we’ll hit the border.”

“I’ve eyes, boy.”

“She swore she’d never set foot over the border again, not if the entire Northern coast came after her with fish hooks and bloody spears.” Shaara’s solemn face brightened some. Despite a multitude of worries, no boy of fifteen summers could resist Bliss’s particular imagery.

“It’ll be warmer south, a few days across the border.” Maurice’s stomach growled. He wanted food. And more yet, he wanted drink. Even so, he was too wise to risk his gut on an unclean hearth. He'd learned Northern hygiene the hard way.

To distract himself from Shaara’s mostly devoured turnip, Maurice let his roaming gaze settle on Bliss.

For lack of stool or chair she had settled herself on the bar, knees tucked under her chin, compact and still but for the elaborate gestures she made with her hands as she spoke.

He was too far away to hear just what tale she was whispering so solemnly to her captive audience, but captive they were, and that was what mattered most. She'd gained a mug of cider and half a loaf of bread. Northern grime never bothered Bliss.

“She’s telling the one ‘bout Amy and the Seat’s lions,” Shaara said with elaborate unconcern. “They’re a blood thirsty group, tonight, enjoying the savage stories. Do you really think she’ll take us across?”

“Three years and she hasn’t yet.” Maurice studied Bliss’s mobile face. The dirt had grown so thick across her cheeks she appeared bruised in the faint light. “Some day she will have to.”

“Pride?”

“Passion.” Maurice snatched the stub of turnip from the lad’s hand and bit deep.

  Bliss took a soldier to her bed that night, thus proving to Maurice that his suspicion about the tavern’s true industry was indeed correct. He did not begrudge her the pleasure, nor the coin spent on companionship, but he did wonder, briefly, what she would do for breakfast the next morning if she used all her coins on companionship. A hungry Bliss was not an exceptionally likable Bliss.

Apparently breakfast came with the deal, or else Bliss had stolen from the local baker, because when she roused Maurice and Shaara from their shared pallet, she carried fresh bread and a pot of butter. The butter looked rancid but in the end Maurice couldn’t resist the bread, Northern hygiene be damned.

“Snowing out,” Bliss said, attacking the butter with relish. She smelt foul, of smoke and sweat and sex, but she looked more rested than she had in a fortnight.

“We are surprised?” Maurice glanced about the attic loft. Most of the other pallets, full to bursting in the night, were now empty.

“I let you sleep in.” Bliss said, reading his expression. “Tis after midday. You needed the rest. Besides, we’re in no hurry today.”

“We’re not?” Bread eaten, Shaara squirmed free of borrowed bedding. “We’re always in a hurry.”

“Not today. Today we’re playing with a lord’s good will. And tonight we’re performing for his mistress’ entertainment.”

Shaara’s mouth dropped open, showing bread between his teeth. Maurice closed the boy’s gape with a gentle fist, eying Bliss.

“Where did you find a lord willing to hire a green lad, an old man, and a soldier’s unwashed toy?”

Bliss’s eyes snapped but her smile was well satisfied. “Last night’s sturdy soldier is not a soldier in truth. No longer. He guards Lord Tamner’s stables, has for the past handful of months.”

“He must guard Lord Tamner’s ear and balls if he can arrange the man’s entertainment,” Shaara marveled. Maurice finished his breakfast silently, all the while watching Bliss pretend not to squirm.

“Lord Tamner was also a soldier,” Bliss said. “In the south. Before he earned his title and his land. In the battle of Green Hill.”

Maurice stilled. “That’s it, then. He’s heard of us.”

“Most of those who survived Green Hill have.” Bliss waved one long hand. “Last night’s bed companion wasn’t convinced until he had wormed his way under my shirt. And this morning he ran tattling to Tamner.”

“Resourceful man,” Maurice said blandly. He brushed crumbs from his cloak and began to set the bedding right. “Especially if he convinced Tamner to take the bits of us that are left.”

“Tamner offered three hundred gold,” Bliss said.

Shaara gasped. Maurice set down his half-fastened pack. He stared. “To entertain his mistress? The lord’s surely mad.”

“The mistress is inconsequential.” Bliss hopped up, restless. “Tamner’s apparently a loyalist. It’s a coup, feeding Ross’s Troop at his boards. Even the ‘bits of us that are left.’”

“A coup,” Maurice sighed. “Or trouble.”

“Trouble we can handle.” Bliss paused in her pacing to stare through the attic’s dirty window. Whatever she glimpsed beyond hardened her features. “Myself, I’m more worried about Tamner’s boards. It’s been a very long time since we’ve performed for a landed audience.”

“For three hundred gold, I’ll walk Trout’s watery river.” Shaara’s face suffused with sudden joy. “Think of it. Supper every night from winter to winter.”

Maurice shouldered his pack. Extending a hand, he hauled Shaara to his feet. “Supper every night it is, then. When are we expected?”

“Sundown,” Bliss murmured to the window. “They call it Cliffhouse. We’re to knock at the servants’ entrance.”

“Ah.” Maurice nearly laughed aloud. “The heroes of Green Hill we may be, but it’s still the servant’s entrance for Ross’s Troop.”

“And so it will always be.” Bliss whirled away from the glass. She winked. “Come. I’ve found us hot water.”

  Bliss’s hot water steamed in an old whiskey barrel in a crooked stable behind the local blacksmith’s shop. The blacksmith, charmed either by Bliss’s smile or the promise of future payment, had erected a privy curtain contrived of dusty horse blankets pinned across worn rope.

Maurice could not remember the last time he'd enjoyed the small luxury of privacy. As for hot water, surely it had been since spring.

“You’re going last.” He told Bliss before ducking behind the horse blankets. “You’ll turn water to mud with the dip of one toe.”

“Oh, yes.” Bliss followed after, ignoring Maurice’s glare. “And you’d prefer I was pillaged every second stop.”

“If you mean rape,” resigned, Maurice shed his clothes and slid into the whiskey barrel with an audible sigh, “you’re fooling yourself. You’re woman enough to stave off any danger of that, even if you hadn’t Shaara and myself as shadows every step of the last year.”

“You think I’m wearing dirt because I like the itch?” Bliss snapped. She walked once around the barrel, then settled on a rusted anvil. 

Maurice shrugged. “You were clean enough at the height of our popularity. Cleaner than most. I seem to remember screaming tantrums if the hot water wasn’t quick enough.” Maurice dipped up a rag the blacksmith had kindly left over the barrel edge. He began a single minded scouring. “I think you’re hiding.”

“Hiding?”

“From men like Tamner. Men with long memories.” Maurice agreed. “Truth told, you’ve been hiding long enough I thought you’d forgotten the game. What changed your mind, Captain?”

Bliss growled, whether at the title or the impertinence, Maurice did not dare guess. “We need the money. The boy’s gone thin as a worm-riddled goat.”

“Speaking of the boy,” Maurice squeezed the rag over the crown of his head and sighed again as water dripped into his eyes. “Where’ve you sent him?”

“Shaara is running an errand. I’ve a seamstress cobbling together our fancy dress.”

Maurice paused. “You’ve been mighty free with forthcoming coin, Bliss. Lord Tamner had better be an honest man, or we’ll be chased over hill and dale with pitchfork.”

Bliss rolled bony shoulders. “Luckily you’re still spry, old man. Finish up. I didn’t hire the water for you alone.”

Maurice rose from the barrel, shedding streams of water. “And what am I supposed to do until sundown?”

Bliss met his eye as she tugged at her tunic. “Practice.”

  Cliffhouse was reached by way of a winding, recently sanded and well maintained path. The cobblestones beneath the layer of grit were sturdy and unbroken, if still icy. The sun had disappeared long before sunset, overcome by an ornery bank of gray clouds.

Snow fell as the remaining members of Ross’s Troop trudged uphill through pine and forest scrub. Lord Tamner was a Royal Hunter; leather pennants rose from hills of snow along the edge of the forest, promising a hangman’s noose for any who dared poach on the consigned property.

“Surely his lordship wouldna miss a grouse or four,” Shaara muttered, glancing thoughtfully at snowy branches. “Or a fat turkey. I can smell the bloody birds, the spoor is so thick.”

“Touch not a feather,” Maurice warned although he, too, could sense the birds sheltering above. “I’ve no desire to cut your body free from a hangman’s knot. Leave the birds to our king and his licensed hunters.”

“And pick your finery up from the mud,” Bliss growled. “Or the hangman’ll have no use for you once I’m done.”

Shaara sighed and hoisted his velvet cape over one shoulder. Bliss’s seamstress had been unusually quick. The garb was most certainly second hand and from the profusion of lace and fur several seasons out of style, but the opulence suited their profession and the seamstress had been skilled enough with the needle where it mattered. Maurice’s cloak had been altered in several important places and Shaara’s sleeves slit and edged until they were a drape of lace over elbows, baring delicate wrists and leaving quick fingers unhindered.

“You remembered the oil?”

Maurice swallowed a snort. “Three years out has not turned this old hand into an idiot, Bliss.”

“You were one from the beginning.” Bliss paused beneath a rustling fir. The torch she held in one hand brightened the old trunk, sending snow in the branches directly above to hissing. “We can’t foul this up, Maurice.”

Maurice rolled a shoulder. Bliss had never been one for pre-performance jitters. In fact, she had always been the coolest of the lot. Cooler, in the end, even then Ross.

“Something you want to tell us, Bliss?” Softly, because if he knew Bliss, she was bracing for a fight.

“Nothing at all. I want my year of hot dinners, just like the boy. And maybe a bed without nits once every full moon. I’m tired of living off the dregs.”

Snow sighed above the trees as Shaara shifted and muttered. Maurice ignored the lad. Bliss ignored Maurice.

In the drip of the snow and the flicker of the torch she looked almost as young as she had a four years earlier, fresh and full of triumph, clothed in riches and honor and Southern perfume. Before she had finally broken and fled home.

The seamstress had cut most of the lace away from Bliss’ tunic and then made up for its loss with a fluff of white fox and coon. The velvet trousers tucked into freshly blackened boots were almost the same color as the purple stone Bliss wore on her thumb.

She glowed, within and without. It was determination, Maurice realized, and then he wondered what had finally woken Ross’s protégé from her hibernation.

He meant to choose suspicion, but instead he found himself smiling at the defiance in the set of her shoulders.

His smile faded as the wind in the trees sharpened to rustles, the crackle of purposeful steps in the underbrush, and as Bliss wheeled, the mutter of audible voices.

“Not one feather, I said!” Maurice growled at Shaara, groping at his belt after a knife he had sold for supper more than twelve months earlier.

“I didn’t!“ Shaara protested. The boy snapped a branch from a drooping sapling and held it over his head as though he intended to club the king’s men into submission. Little good that would do, Maurice thought, grim, as he bent to unearth a log from the snow. Even so, the lad had the right idea. No man wanted to die an empty handed coward.

“Maurice,” Bliss cautioned. “Stop. He didn’t. I didn’t. They’re not –“

“No?” Maurice interrupted, counting spearheads and bearded grins. Five. Five men, and they had not troubled to be silent, because they did not need to be. They carried far more steel than any gamekeeper could innocently excuse. “Then what?”

“They’re here for us.” Bliss lifted her torch. Rich gold thread gleamed on red breasts; a half moon rising. No royal insignia, that. Not the king’s indentured souls, then, but Tamner’s  men.

“Come,” said the tallest of the group. There was white in his beard and amusement in his smile. “Milord is waiting. Dinner will be growing cold.”

 The fellow took the flame from Bliss’s hand and set off into the night. Bliss, without so much as a twitch of protest, followed after.

Maurice hesitated. Four pairs of black eyes watched impassively. Maurice dropped his makeshift weapon. At his nod, Shaara did the same. Tamner’s men, jingling carelessly in the wind, closed behind, herd dogs in a nobleman’s finery.

[blisserial]

One

The first time I dropped a ball Ross simply plucked it back from the grass and returned it to my hand. The second time I dropped a ball, he knocked me across the brow. The third time he awarded me a clap in the jaw. And after the fourth slipped ball, he took his belt to me.

The beatings made his point. I never dropped a single colored ball again. The spheres became a part of me, as integral as the fingers on my hand and yet as unimportant as the freckles across my chest.

"Eat with them, wash with them, dream with them." Ross reminded me every night before candle snuff. "Treat them as king or whore. But never let them out of your sight."

He sewed for me a juggler's pouch from a clutch of velvet I’d stolen in the King's Market, and used horse hair as thread and dirty ribbons from his travel case to tie it about my waist. The pouch chafed at first, but soon my flesh became used to the scrape. Eventually I began to feel naked without it.

"The balls are your foundation and your luck, Bliss." Ross repeated in my ear, a mantra. "They will always keep you fed."

Well. Perhaps not always. Ross was, deep down, a scoundrel who enjoyed the sound of his voice.

But I never forgot his lessons.

When Shaara dropped his first ball, I retrieved it from the straw and placed it back on his palm. When he dropped his second, I cuffed him across the face. The third drop earned him a knock into horse muck. And the fourth, a whipping to rival even Ross's strength.

Shaara  will not drop a fifth. 

                                                       *****

“She’ll be drunk by sunset,” the boy complained, frowning over his cider.  “She’ll break something. And we’ll have to sleep in the stables.”

“She won’t break anything.” Maurice forked up a bite of thick stew. “She’ll remember the last time.”

“She won’t. She never remembers.”

“She’ll remember.” The stew tasted strongly of Southern salt. Maurice wondered how the tiny inn had managed to beg, borrow or steal even a handful of the precious stuff.  Last he heard the king’s whores were going for less than a teaspoon of Southern spice.

“Ten hands!” Bliss crowed from across a herd of plank tables, directly on cue as always. “Ten hands, and we’re out! That, my young gentleman, will lose you your purse. Hand it over, beautiful.”

The ‘young gentleman’ gave a shout of disbelief. Shaara’s thin shoulders slumped. Maurice swallowed another bite of stew before meeting the innkeeper's concerned gaze.

“Bliss,” Maurice warned without turning around. “The rooms are bought and paid for.”

“And isn’t that a wonderful thing. Hand over the purse, man, and we’ll go another round.”

“I’ve no coins left!”

“Your word is as good as the king’s.” To Maurice’s jaundiced ears, Bliss sounded like Temple bells when she laughed. “One more round before supper!”

“Supper’s nearly gone, Bliss.” Shaara ventured, “Better come before Maurice cleans out the bowl.”

“Shut your mouth, boy.” Maurice picked up his own cracked mug and washed the salt from his tongue.

“Shaara!” Bliss blinked as though she had just now recalled her apprentice’s existence. “Come and entertain us. And bring me the last of the stew.”

Maurice watched as the boy rolled his shoulders and shoved back from the table.  Even balancing a heavy bowl of stew and his mug of half-finished cider Shaara had grace. If only the lad could discover confidence as well.

Maurice glanced the innkeeper's way again.  The wiry man appeared not to notice the gathering trouble, but Maurice knew better.  Likely the missus was already in the back room totting up possible losses. Four nights spent in Auberg Town and Bliss was already a legend.

“Another cider,” Bliss called from her perch before the fire. “And another jug of ale for my pretty friend. Shaara, sit there. And for Trout’s sake, don’t step on the bugs.”

Maurice tilted his head, watching Shaara through wreathes of stale smoke. The boy stepped gingerly around the gaming ribbons and set the bowl of stew in Bliss’s lap. She snatched it up and bent, using long fingers to dig mutton free, while dirty curls fell over her face. The avid look in her eye had Maurice coughing back a sigh. Apparently, it would not be drink tonight after all, but fighting.

She had picked the perfect stage. The Inn of the Star was packed from bar to window, patrons slowly crushing shoulder to shoulder as more weary souls abandoned the dusk in favor of heat and warmth and entertainment. The somber missus returned from the back room and installed herself before the keg, pulling ale with practiced ease and taking coin with a greed that mirrored Bliss’s own.

In a far corner, safely away from the roaring fire, a clutch of young wealth played a loud game of Catch and Drop. They wore the elaborate finery of the lucky, all feathers and satin; they gleamed with easy coin. Closer to the warmth of wood and flame those with less to call their own played simple cards on wooden bench and table. Farm folk and king’s infantry, free of servitude until dawn.

Just beyond the planks Bliss sat high on a stool, deep on the hearth, nearly in the fire itself. A handful of admirers crouched at her feet, pretending interest in the game. Maurice noted the expressions on their young faces and marveled that they could find any beauty behind Bliss’s coat of grime.

Crickets milled about in a box clamped between the knees of Bliss’s young gentleman. He was a gentleman in truth, Maurice realized with some surprise. Despite a dusting of grit his hose were plainly silk and he wore rings on his fingers. His soft hands fluttered, one tenting the box in an attempt to keep the bugs from escaping, the other cradling the jug of ale Bliss had cajoled from the innkeeper’s tight fist.

Shaara settled himself behind Bliss, his back to the flames. Four tasseled spheres rolled from his threadworm sleeves. A flick of one wrist and he sent the balls leaping into the air. Beads on the tassels clicked and hummed, persistent even beneath the mutter of the crowded tavern.

“The brown hopper, this time,” Bliss decided, licking mutton juice from one finger. “He looks a veritable Granda. Let’s see what the old man can do.”

The young lord wet his lips as he teased a bug from the box. One of his companions straightened the ribbons laid out on the hearth.

“For or against?”

Bliss snorted. “And what did I just say? For. Fifty says he’ll make twenty hands.”

“There isn’t room,” the lord protested. “Twenty hands will land him under the boards.”

“Watch him then,” Bliss said. Above her head Shaara’s spheres spun and twittered. “Take the bet?”

A chorus of ayes and nays rose above the popping fire. Three more crickets were added to the lineup. Maurice watched as coins changed hands. The young lord slipped an amethyst from his finger and set it at the foot of Bliss’s stool. The jewel, if genuine, was surely worth more than the rest of the pot combined.

Maurice briefly shut his eyes. They would be sleeping not in the stables but in the young gentleman’s scullery, there indentured until winter.

“Odds up?” Bliss grinned, unperturbed.

“Aye!” A farmer’s lad laughed back, smoothing the ribbons straight. “Give ‘em go!”

The crickets did not much like being set legs to fire. Maurice wondered if Bliss hoped the heat would make her champion jump all the farther. She slithered from the stool and crouched with the others, fingers arched loosely around the frightened bug.

“For king, for country,” the young lord chanted, voice gone high. “Jump!”

The crickets, set suddenly free, sprang. They were mute souls jerking in instinctive fear, flashes of shadow against the brighter fire light.

A shout went up. Bliss climbed the lord’s shoulders, lithe and laughing. Throat dry, Maurice set down his mug and stood up to better see.

“Granda! Granda!” Bliss whooped. “Legs of iron! He went twenty hands at least! Where’s the chalk? Mark it!” She squirmed, dropped free of the young gentleman and pushed forward. “Mark –“

Shaara loosed a ball.

Free of Shaara’s hands, the tasseled orb had little speed. But it had weight and direction. Maurice had to give the boy a nod for aim.

The ball clocked Bliss between the shoulders. Bliss was strong but she was near drunk, and distracted. She stumbled, grunting, knocking the young lord with one sharp elbow. He hissed and sidestepped, and the resulting crunch of bug beneath foot was audible even beneath calls for more drink.

The group before the fire froze. Then Bliss’s scream of rage split the smoke.

“Idiot! Wretch! Twice cursed son of a – “

Maurice took three quick steps, forded an already overturned bench, and grabbed Bliss before she could send Shaara tumbling into furniture.

“Fate,” Maurice warned, a low murmur into one grubby ear. “Let it go.”

Bliss twitched beneath his hand. “He dropped it! Horrid’s tits, he dropped his ball! Did you see –“

Maurice flexed fingers against her shoulder blade and she paused. Before the fire the lord picked crushed brown insect from the bottom of his boot.

“Mine,” Bliss groaned. “Did you see? Twenty hands if it was five.”

“Let it go,” Maurice said again as he righted the overturned bench with elaborate care. Shaara and his errant ball had wisely disappeared.

“Game forfeit,” the little lord drawled. “We cannot possibly take the measure now.”

“Because Granda’s smeared all over your boot, you clumsy arse!” Bliss clenched her fists. “Twas a clear win! You saw it! You all saw it.”

The indentured, the nobility and the king’s infantrymen all kept silent. The tavern waited with obvious expectation. The young gentleman smiled and reached across the planks for his purse. Bliss cursed and snapped dirty fingers around his pale wrist.

“Hands off. That’s mine. Won fair and square last round.”

“Entire game’s forfeit,” the lord replied, smug. “S’written in the rule books. ‘In event of unfortunate accident –‘”

Maurice grabbed and missed. Bliss’s knuckles burst the young man’s pedigreed nose while her knee found his groin. The unfortunate man went down, screaming, doubling halfway into the flames. Velvet and lace flared up. The crowd released bated breath in a roar.

“Fox take us!” Maurice lunged past cheering gamblers and tackled the young fool, snuffing angry flames with hands and chest. Out of the corner of his eye another bug twitched, smoking. Past the lord’s panicked whimpering he could hear the missus’s angry shouts and Bliss’s rising vulgarities. “And hang us all.”

   “You needn’t scowl so.” Bliss picked bits of straw from her curls. “It might have been worse.”

“I’m not exactly sure how. You missed his purse.”

“I didn’t miss it.” Bliss said, “I left it. After a shock like that the man might have forgotten his teeth but never his purse. It was a decoy.”

“For?” Maurice frowned as he spread his cloak at the foot of the bale. The wool was charred, blackened in patches; punishment for a good deed done. The night air blew ice cold. One pasture over cows grumbled at the coming winter.

“That,” Bliss said, pointing one slender finger.

Maurice turned. Shaara, settled with his head on his pack, held a gleam of amethyst up to the moon’s faint light. The boy’s eyes were very round.

“You didn’t.”

“I did,” Shaara answered, full of wonder. “It’s bigger than my thumb.”

“A family signet.” Maurice stretched lengthwise on his bedding and wrapped up tight against the chill. “We’ll never pawn it.”

“Not here.” Bliss tilted her chin, appearing to study the moon. “Next town over. Maybe two.”

“Not as easy as coins.”

“Worth more,” Shaara opinioned, suddenly wiser than his years. “Perhaps we can pry the stone free.”

“Perhaps.” Bliss tucked her own cape around worn slippers. She sighed.

“What is it?” Maurice asked, knowing the answer already. She had no trouble burning landed gentry on a tavern hearth, but her heart had its own moods.

“The crickets,” Bliss said to the stars. “I regret the crickets. Did you see that poor Granda leap? Like a stag in the king’s woods. Tomorrow he’ll be scraped up with the offal, just so much grease on the bricks.”

Shaara snorted. “You’re no philosopher-priest, Bliss.”

“No.” Bliss rolled over and closed her eyes. “I’m much, so much more.”