The Dragon of Despair (93 page)

Racing down the corridors in a fashion he had not since he was a boy, Toriovico reached the large dance studio located in one of the towers near the center of Thendulla Lypella. The Choreographer—a highly ranked member of his sodality—was too assured of himself to be honored at Toriovico’s attendance, but he did offer a small sniff of approval at his lead dancer’s return.

For a time Toriovico had attention for nothing beyond the intricate movements of the dance. However, once the company had gone through the same passage several times—a handful of the younger fruit and vegetables were having difficulties—his mind was free to wander. A solution came to him about halfway through the practice. He tried it out, mapping it as he would the steps of a dance, and found no flaw in it.

It would mean hiding the two fugitives until the next day, finding a way to get them clean and more appropriately costumed, but it should work. Columi’s services should be needed, but happily the emeritus Prime was not attending Xarxius’s hearing.

Toriovico’s greatest worry was how to keep Melina in ignorance of her prisoners’ escape. Grateful Peace and Edlin had questioned Citrine extensively regarding how Melina communicated with Idalia and the slaves she supervised. From what Citrine said, communication was roundabout at best, involving notes dropped at public pedestals and then routed from there to Thendulla Lypella. Melina had preferred to go to Idalia herself, and Idalia was forbidden to come to Melina or to send any human messenger.

This, combined with the fact that Idalia would doubtless prefer to hide her failure from her mistress as long as possible, gave Toriovico hope that waiting until tomorrow would not be too great a risk to take.

At the conclusion of practice, Toriovico spoke with the Choreographer. The man was all enthusiasm for the Healed One’s suggestion.

“Just what we need,” he said, “during this time of doubt and crisis, a public display of all that is good about our land. Pageantry, color, respect for the wonders of the past. I am honored to serve you in this way.”

“Very good,” Toriovico said. “I will leave you to your preparations. I have one or two things to do myself.”

DERIAN FOUND THE NOTE
late in the afternoon, resting on the carpet in the front hallway. From scuff marks on the paper, it had clearly been slid under the door.

The folded paper bore no address, but somehow Derian did not think that a missive for Hasamemorri would have been so delivered. Despite her continuing support of her tenants—or maybe because of it—Hasamemorri had lost no respect with her friends and neighbors. The people who threw rocks at the shuttered windows or left offal on the doorstep were—at least according to Bee Biter’s eye and Blind Seer’s nose—strangers.

The tall redhead carried the paper into the room that had been Doc’s consulting room and now, in the absence of patients and the occurrence of their own semi-imprisonment, had become their sitting room.

Doc sat reviewing a text of medical drawings sent to him by Oculios the Alchemist while Wendee and Elise worked at the mending. Firekeeper disdained either reading or hand work but lay drowsing by the cold hearth, her head on Blind Seer’s flank. She was still mending from her injuries, and though he kept quiet about it, Derian was worried about her.

“I found this in the hall,” Derian said, holding up the folded sheet of paper. “There’s no address.”

Elise dropped her stitchery in her lap with rather too much eagerness.

“Let me see!”

Derian held it out of her reach, teasingly, as he might have with Damita.

“I found it,” he chided. “I get to read it.”

He broke the blob of wax that sealed the fold and frowned. He read some New Kelvinese, but except for a few words this was beyond him.

“I guess you get it after all,” he said, handing the paper to Elise.

She accepted the missive with an slightly arrogant arching of her brow—then stuck her tongue out at him.

“It’s very strange,” she said after puzzling over the writing for a long moment.

“Read it,” Doc prompted.

Elise did so without further hesitation.

“Be at the Processional Gate within the crowd at the noon hour. Seize the gem that is your own and additional riches will fall into your hands.”

Derian felt his blood thrill.

“Is it signed?” he asked.

“Not even with an initial or a sign,” Elise replied, turning the paper over in her hands and inspecting it carefully. “The paper’s very fine quality, though, even by New Kelvinese standards.”

Wendee extended her hand and Elise dropped the paper into it.

“‘The gem that is your own,’” Wendee read. “That has to be a reference to Citrine! I think someone is telling us that she’s going to be at the Processional Gate at noon tomorrow.”

Derian didn’t disagree, but he wasn’t as confident as Wendee that they’d understood the entire message.

“What’s that bit about ‘additional riches,’ then?”

Wendee gave an airy wave of her hand.

“Diversion. Something to make anyone who reads this think the note was about an assignation or maybe even thieves planning a crime. There are lots of messages just like it in the plays.”

Derian wasn’t going to give in so easily.

“Maybe,” he said. “Still, I don’t suppose we dare not show up at the appointed time and place.”

“Not in the least,” Elise said in her Grandmother Rosene manner. “What if this letter is from the Healed One? He would have taken great risks communicating with us—in addition to whatever he’s done to arrange that Citrine be within our reach.”

“What are we going to do about the crowds?” Wendee asked. “We hardly dare walk to Aswatano for vegetables. Now we’re going to go all the way across the city to the gates of Thendulla Lypella—and hide ourselves in a crowd?”

Doc grinned mischievously and leaned forward.

“Wendee, it is time you returned to your roots on the stage. The one thing certain to be overlooked in New Kelvin is a group of people dressed in some colorful or peculiar manner. We have until noon tomorrow. What can you manage by then?”

THAT WAS HOW
Derian found himself standing at the front edge of a festival crowd close to the Processional Gate. He was dressed like a giant carrot, Wendee having decided that each of their costumes must cover their heads at least to the hairline so that they wouldn’t need to resort to shaving their hair.

To escape that humiliation, Derian would have dressed as almost anything, but he thought that a carrot was going a bit far. Wendee had, however, quizzed Hasamemorri’s ever useful maids and learned that criers from Thendulla Lypella had announced a special preview of a portion of the Harvest Joy dance—with the Healed One himself dancing the part of the Harvest Lord.

“It is meant,” the maid explained, “to hearten our people. Many have been greatly disturbed by recent events within the Dragon Speaker’s court.”

“Lots of people will be dressing up following a harvest theme,” Wendee had explained to them later, “and Hasamemorri’s maids say that those who are costumed will be given privileged places at the front—it’s the usual custom apparently.”

Orange fabric had been what Wendee could acquire at both short notice and in sufficient quantities to cover Derian’s lanky form, so a carrot was what he must be. They didn’t have time to make entire costumes for each one of them, so a common brown robe made the foundation for a respectable potato costume for Doc.

Doc kept complaining, however, that the hooded upper-body garment, which had been cobbled from a burlap sack, itched and was full of dust. However, since shaving the front portion of his scalp was the only other option, like Derian, Doc surrendered.

Elise was rather more fortunate than either of the men. Among her belongings was a pale green New Kelvinese robe. This, when accompanied by a loose white silk coif and appropriate face paint, transformed her into quite a convincing young onion.

Wendee was either the least or most fortunate of the lot, depending on how one was inclined to think. Nothing in her wardrobe lent itself to the general theme of fruits and vegetables, and creation of Derian’s carrot robe had occupied all available hands. After some consultation, Hasamemorri herself suggested that Wendee attire herself as a wheat mother.

“The Mothers are lesser figures,” she said, “not the wives of the Harvest Lord, so you won’t be out of line. You’ve a woman’s figure,” Hasamemorri added approvingly, “not a mere slip of a girl’s like Lady Elise.”

Hasamemorri helped Wendee dye a plain robe golden brown. Braids of golden straw attached to a sturdy cotton coif, and a basket containing ears of wheat completed Wendee’s accessories. Her face was painted in a rather unsettling mosaic in which her eyes and mouth became elements within the harvest bounty.

“I think it is a shame and a disgrace,” Hasamemorri said, leaning back in her chair and inspecting her work, “that you Hawk Havenese have been treated so poorly this last moon or so. I take great pleasure in thinking how now you’ll go out and enjoy some of Dragon Breath’s brightness.”

But Hasamemorri’s shame on behalf of her fellow citizens did not extend to accompanying her tenants. She cried off on the grounds that her knees would not stand the strain, but Derian thought that Hasamemorri was far too acute not to have noticed that strange events seemed to be plaguing her tenants and far too canny to get intimately involved with them.

One other member of their party cried off as well.

Firekeeper said she hurt too much to put them at risk by accompanying them. No one doubted the truth of her words. Though the lacerations to her leg had closed and daily looked less angry, Firekeeper herself was becoming more and more withdrawn.

“Firekeeper seems worse since we went to Thendulla Lypella,” Derian confided in Doc as they helped each other put on their costumes. “Could she have caught something? Or could someone have cursed her?”

He offered the last suggestion hesitantly, but surely the New Kelvinese were capable of such.

Doc shook his head.

“Firekeeper’s not sleeping enough. Worried, I think, about the others. Maybe if we get Citrine back and see our way toward getting Edlin and Peace she’ll relax.”

Doc frowned slightly, then went on, hesitantly, as if confiding something in rather bad taste.

“In fact, I took the liberty of giving her something this morning that will help her sleep while we’re gone. I don’t want her changing her mind and doing herself—or someone else—an injury.”

Unspoken was the fact that Doc had done this without consulting Firekeeper, who barely tolerated medicines that reduced pain and hated anything that dulled her wits.

But Derian couldn’t waste energy worrying about Firekeeper or her possible reaction now. Indeed, as much of an asset as the wolf-woman could be in a crisis, as the hour drew closer to noon and the crowd surrounding the Processional Gate grew Derian was glad that she was not being subjected to this cacophony. Who knew what she would do?

Or perhaps “almost glad” was a more honest reaction. Part of Derian dreaded discovery as a foreigner as he had never feared anything before and knowing that Firekeeper would be there to get him and the others out would have been reassuring.

Promptly at noon, a series of resounding cymbal clashes and shouts from the guards at the gate announced that the event was beginning. The crowd hushed so rapidly that Derian was reminded of those days when King Tedric himself would come to address his subjects from the speaker’s balcony at Eagle’s Nest Castle. Even the vendors who moments before had been hawking everything from sweets to plaster figures shaped like various vegetables settled to watch.

Though the sense of expectancy was similar to what Derian had experienced, there was something more as well. Joyful anticipation mingled with intense reverence could be seen on face after brightly painted face. Derian was tall enough to see through the gates and realize that the crowd was two-sided. The inhabitants of the Earth Spires had left their daily round and were watching with expressions no less reverent than those of their less privileged fellows outside.

In those expressions, Derian was reminded yet again that to the New Kelvinese the Harvest Dance was no mere civic celebration like the fourteen society festivals in his homeland, it was a magical ritual meant to somehow influence the coming year. Today’s performance might only be a rehearsal, but that made it only slightly less important than the real thing. As Hasamemorri had explained, the magic would still be there.

The soles of Derian’s feet tingled and his heart beat more wildly than it had even when he had contemplated a potential riot. It took all his self-control not to rush away lest this magic—like that which had brought into being the Dragon of Despair—rage out of control. He calmed himself with a physical effort, straightening the point of his hat and looking toward the Processional Gate, which even now was swinging slowly and smoothly outward.

A series of deep drumbeats set the tempo, and then an unseen orchestra burst into a soaring piece that replaced the conventional melodies with which Derian was familiar with complex themes that evoked, even to his city-bred imagination, the entirety of the harvest.