Neveryona (59 page)

There was a beautiful princess, played by the leading lady, who somehow looked much younger than Pryn knew her to be from the time she’d eaten with the mummers back in the Kolhari market. There was the great and glittering monster, operated from offstage, who wanted to eat the princess. There were several dashing young men, some of whom had mothers and some of whom had girlfriends, and all of whom seemed to be in furious, comic competition; there was also a slave, who seemed, as far as Pryn could tell, to belong to everyone, since everyone gave him orders. He received many comic kicks and beatings, but nevertheless was always getting away with something – now a glass of wine from a fine supper that had erupted into a comic argument, now with a piece of gold from a stupidly mismanaged bargain. Both the
slaves on one side and the workers on the other laughed. Indeed, two slaveboys, no older than she and both with brimming mugs, poked each other in the sides and made such loud comments, and seemed so generally tickled at seeing themselves represented on stage at all, it looked to Pryn as if it might grow into a real disturbance. Some of the workers were clearly annoyed; but none of the slaves seemed inclined to stop it. A few musicians still moved about, taking some last coins. In the excited state the collar produced, Pryn grew sweatingly uncomfortable at the rowdiness beside her. Finally she lifted her sack and moved toward the back. At the ledge, she just glanced down at the lower beach –

Along at the water’s edge, kicking bare feet at the wet sand, were Yrnik and big-eared, gawky-elbowed Tetya! They were laughing about something. Indeed, Tetya did not look like a boy who only that morning had beaten an old woman into insensibility. But then, Pryn thought as she stepped away, she probably did not look like a girl who’d just freed one.

Certainly they hadn’t seen her. Nor did they look as if they were headed up here.

The idea had been with her. But at a glimpse of someone from the brewery, idea became movement. Vatry was not in the skit. Two other mummers’ wagons – for props, scenery, and sleeping space – sat either side of the rocks. Pryn took her sack off beyond the wagon she’d recognized as the prop cart in which, when she’d last seen them in the city, Vatry had been housed.

The side wagons were angled back to the tree. Some musicians not in this skit stood at the wagon’s end near the horses. The musician who’d passed Pryn with her cloak of coins now cuddled the feedbag around one red muzzle. She stroked the bony forehead while the creature ate. Pryn felt something of the tingle again; she went further along beside the trees. She planned to work her
way through the brush into the backstage area. But the further away she was when she started in, the less chance there’d be of someone shooing her off. Sack over one shoulder, she pushed in among saplings and undergrowth. If she’d gotten through here last night, certainly she could get through it today. When she reached the shadow of the larger trees, the undergrowth lessened. She worked her way to where the wagons must be, then started out.

She saw the rocks; she saw the wagon tops.

The center one had painted houses hanging on its back. Behind the wagon to the right, five mummers in their costumes hauled away a third of the monster, who’d apparently devoured the slave and just met defeat for it at the hands of the most sympathetic of the young men, who’d been played by a very tall, very beautiful, very black actor. On stage, the young man and some fishermen and the princess were singing about it now –

There
was Vatry!

The little dancer stood in the door of the nearest wagon, talking to a man with a dark, muscular back. He wore a dark loin-rag wrapped around his hips and between his legs; a shaggy sheath hung at his belt.

Vatry’s hair was wild and unkempt.

The man’s was black and tied with a rag. He was handing Vatry a sack, not much larger than Pryn’s.

Vatry took it and thrust it inside behind the wagon’s door jamb.

The man turned to walk away – and became a woman!

Pryn caught her breath.

Of course it had been a woman all along – she’d only thought it was a man! The black rag that held in the thick hair did not go across her forehead, but across her eyes. In it were two eyeholes, though Pryn could not have been more surprised if there’d been three, or five, or seven!

She walked toward Pryn. Her breasts were not large,
but they were definitely a woman’s, not just muscular pectorals, for all Pryn tried to read them as such.

She strode right into the undergrowth, pushing back leaves. As she passed, she looked at Pryn with only mild surprise.

It was the first anyone had looked directly at her since she’d moved off with the slaves.

Between frayed slits, the eyes were intensely blue.

Pryn thought for an awkward moment:
Her hair’s blue, too!
But it was only sun-dappling slipping across the blue beads she wore chained in her hair. Sun flaked over terra-cotta shoulders. And she was off among trees; was only a shadow; was a sound in leaves; was – like Bruka – gone.

Pryn stood, astounded.

Beyond the leaves, Vatry lingered in the wagon door, still in her bells and scarfs. Slowly, she stepped back inside.

Pryn swallowed. Then, sack bouncing, she pushed from the undergrowth, crossed the clearing, was up the wagon’s single step, and through the colorful hanging. ‘Vatry …!’

Inside the wagon was a smell of incense and old varnish. Paintings of castles, of waves, of forests, of houses, of mountains leaned against the walls. Ornate armor hung from the ceiling. A trap in the roof let in sunlight. Sitting on a shelf-bed against the back, Vatry pushed away a hanging blanket and peered through dusty sun. ‘Yes? What do you – ?’

‘Vatry,
who
was …’ Pryn lost her question to the strangeness of the wonder-cramped wagon.

Vatry frowned. Her eyes were winged with paint. ‘What do you … ?
You?
Oh, that girl … from the city!’ She stood up, pushing the blanket further back on the rope over which it was strung. ‘It’s Pryn … ?’

Excited, Pryn nodded. She’d really thought Vatry might not remember her at all.

‘
What
are you doing here at this … ?’ Suddenly the little redhead’s hand went back against her breasts. ‘But you’ve been captured!’ she cried in her odd accent. ‘Oh, you’ve been taken! That’s awful! Is there anything anyone can do?’ She leaned forward in complete sincerity.

Which bewildered Pryn – till she remembered the collar. ‘Oh, this … ? No, it’s just a … it’s not real. I mean, it’s broken!’ She dropped her sack to the floor, raised her chin, slipped a finger into each side of the iron band, and tugged – of course this would be the moment when the broken lock held …

But the hinge gave.

Pryn took the iron from her neck. ‘I was only pretending – using it, as a disguise.’ Then she said: ‘It’s for you!’

Vatry frowned. ‘What?’

‘I mean for the skits. You do skits with slaves in them. I thought they might use it … for the show.’

Suspicion found its way into Vatry’s voice. ‘Oh …’

‘Vatry, I have to get away from here! I want to get back to Kolhari!’

‘Don’t we all!’

‘When you pull out this evening, could I ride along – ?’

‘This evening?
Oh
, no!’ Vatry shook her head. ‘We don’t hang around these places till evening! These local shindigs get a little rough by sundown. Everyone’s gambled away all their money, or gotten too drunk to follow a skit anyway. Every local hooligan thinks the holiday isn’t complete unless he’s stolen something or other from our props as a souvenir. And any little tramp diddled behind the rocks, who decides she doesn’t like it, always finds it easier to blame it on one of
our
boys instead of the leering local lout who actually got to her. It makes less trouble for them later. Well, I did it myself once – but I’ve been paid back many times over! No, we don’t
hang around these kinds of places. We should be packed up and rolling inside an hour.’

‘That’s even better!’ Pryn said. ‘Oh, please,
can’t
I come? You see, there’re some people looking for me – at any rate, they
may
be looking for me. I did something that they won’t like. Of course, I don’t know if they realize it was me, yet – ’

‘What did you do? Steal some old geezer’s hard-won hoard?’ Vatry pointed toward Pryn’s sack.

‘Oh, that’s just food I got for the trip.’ Pryn took a breath. ‘What I did was free one of the old geezer’s slaves!’

‘
That
was noble,’ Vatry said, ‘I suppose – if foolhardy!’

The sack the masked woman had brought lay on rumpled cloth at the foot of Vatry’s bed. ‘What’s in that?’

‘What’s in what?’ Vatry said.

‘That bag the woman gave you?’

Vatry pulled in her small shoulders. Her forehead wrinkled. ‘What woman?’

‘Well, she
looked
like a man, but I’m sure – I
know
it was a woman. In that sack there.’

Vatry considered a moment. ‘There wasn’t any woman here – or man.’

‘Of course there was. With a black rag mask.’ Pryn was trying to remember the tale-teller’s tale.
Blue Heron …?
But that had been
her
name. ‘She passed right by me when – ’

Vatry leaned over, reached into the sack, and pulled out something small and black. ‘What’s this?’ She held out her hand.

Pryn looked. ‘I don’t … know.’

Vatry closed her fingers, turned her hand over, threw the black pellet down on the wagon floor –
thack!
It bounced back into her hand. She turned her palm up to show Pryn.

‘It’s a ball … ?’

‘Yes. A child’s playing ball, that you see the children tossing about on the streets all through Kolhari. It’s nothing special – absolutely not worth a mention.’ Her odd accent gave her a measured tone. ‘It’s not worth any kind of mention at all, is it, now?’

‘Oh, no.’ Pryn shook her head. ‘Of course it’s not!’

Vatry rolled the ball between thumb and forefinger. ‘These come from further south of here. I’ll bring this bag of them with me up to Kolhari. I’ll sell them for a few iron coins to some vendor in the market, who’ll sell them to the passing children for their end-of-summer games. It may keep me from having to break my back carrying sacks of onions for noisy barbarians in the eating halls for a day or two, when the troupe here lets me go. Certainly there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’

Pryn shook her head again. ‘Of course not.’

‘Certainly it’s not worth
any
sort of a mention – to anyone. Do you understand?’

Pryn remembered the smugglers she’d come south with, and their cartload of contraband, against which this minuscule enterprise seemed laughable. ‘Vatry, there may be
other
people after me too. What ancient custom I violated or bit of intrigue I might have tripped over, I don’t begin to understand and don’t want to. But they tried to
poison
me last night! At least I
think
they did. They may try again – and maybe they won’t. But they’re bad people. They order slaves to be whipped for nothing. And I don’t want to stay to find out why – and no, I saw
no
woman here. Did she give you a sack?
I
certainly didn’t see it! What was
in
it? I wouldn’t have a clue!’

Vatry looked serious. She pulled the sack into her lap, put the ball back in it, then pushed it behind some bedding at the bed’s other end. ‘You say they tried to
poison
you because you freed one of their slaves … ?’

It seemed hopelessly complicated to explain right then that it was the other way around. Pryn nodded.

‘Well’, Vatry said. ‘I’ve heard of stranger things in this strange and terrible land.’ She looked at Pryn a little sideways. ‘I tell you what. We’ll go to the director. I’ll ask – just once, mind you – if you can come along. I won’t insist. I’m not going to make a nuisance of myself just for your sake. If he says yes, fine. But if he says no, you’ve got to promise me you’ll go on about your business as best you can and not make any fuss.’

‘If he’ll just let me ride along with you for fifty stades – ’

‘We’ll
ask
,’ Vatry said. ‘He may say yes; he may say no.’ Now come on She stood and stepped around Pryn.

On the rumpled bedding, where the sack had lain, was a very long knife. It wasn’t a full sword; but two inches beyond the hilt, the blade became … two blades! Both bore the file marks of sharpening on inner and outer edges.

‘Vatry – Oh, Please …
one
more question?’

‘What?’

‘That
is
the kind of blade they use in the west – in the Western Crevasse?’

Vatry looked put out. ‘How would I know such things?’

‘I just thought maybe, with your accent – I mean it isn’t southern, it
certainly
isn’t northern. And it doesn’t sound like island speech – you might be one of those women from … ?’ Pryn suddenly wished she hadn’t spoken. She was overcome with the conviction Vatry would turn on her and accuse her of spying from the bushes. She felt herself start to deny it before the accusation was made, and thought desperately: By all the nameless gods, let me be silent! Let me keep still!

And the real Vatry before her, who after all was as good-hearted and sentimental as it was possible to be in such primitive times and still survive, said: ‘It’s just a
prop. For the skits. Like this thing – !’ and she pulled the collar from Pryn’s hand, held it up, then tossed it back on the bed, where it clinked against the twinned sword. ‘Come on. And no more about this silliness or I’ll send you on your way right now!’