Chapter 31
The moon was high, and the village lamps distant pinpricks by the time they led the horses into the circus camp.
The place glowed by its own little constellation of strung-up lanterns and banked cookfires.
It was a great horseshoe of colourful wagons, decorated in swathes of red and gold.
At the crescent’s heart, a firepit blazed, ringed by upturned crates and an iron pot bubbling with rabbit stew.
Master Clemens walked ahead, lantern swinging, while Tilda and Wren scampered by him, occasionally laughing and shoving each other. Richard followed at Kaelen’s shoulder, bereft of his pack—Kaelen had insisted on carrying it.
Smaller tents and washing lines had been pitched between the wagons, and animals wandered amongst them.
Two ponies nosed a trough, a donkey chewed on a glittering costume.
Three dogs lay near the fire, ears pricking up as Richard and Kaelen neared, and by the largest wagon, a black bear played with a ball.
Richard smiled. His great-grandmother, Queen Marian, had outlawed the caging and cruel treatment of animals for sport and show with a rage the bards sang poems of. It was heartening to see that even in Estara, the Mirthwell troupe kept to Ardenian custom.
“Oi!” Master Clemens hollered as they approached the fire. “Layabouts! Come and look at our new hands!”
The cluster around the firepit unfurled.
The first to rise was a thin, bald woman with a yellow python looped around her shoulders.
A dozen more grass snakes coiled around her waist and arms. As Richard gawked, a snake lifted its head near her ear and flicked its tongue. The woman nodded and whispered back.
By her, a wiry young woman had folded herself backwards, both feet planted beside her ears.
Wren plopped himself on a crate by the young woman. Tilda’s eyes flashed white, and a gust of wind buffeted her, raising her a foot from the ground. Crossing her legs, she lounged against the invisible current, hair streaming upward and clothes billowing.
A wind mage. Almost as rare as sorcerers.
There were others too—a scarred knife-thrower cleaning his blades, a pair of twin sisters darning stockings together, a freckled boy practising his juggling, and, sitting on an overturned barrel with his forearms braced on his knees, the strongman from the tavern.
“Boris,” Master Clemens said, following Richard’s gaze. “He’ll partner with you, Kaelen. Boris’s knees are buggered, so you’ll be doing the heavy lifting.”
“I shall do my best, sir,” Kaelen said.
A woman with long red tresses uncrossed her arms and pointed at Richard. “And what’s he meant to be, then?”
“Kaelen’s lover.” Master Clemens clapped Richard’s shoulder. “He’ll be minding the little ones while we travel.”
A collective snort of disbelief echoed.
Richard frowned. How taxing could it be? His own siblings were the most wilful children he had ever met. “I am sure I can manage a handful of children.”
“Bold words birth regrets,” a lady with a lyre chuckled. “Them little brats are wicked. We can’t take our eyes off them.”
“Exactly,” the contortionist unfolded herself and laughed. “Those rascals will have him crying by teatime.”
“Never mind them.” Another woman, covered in tattoos, slid off her crate and sidled up to Kaelen. “Tell me, gorgeous, is your lover the sharing sort?”
“If he’s open to generosity,” a beefy man called out, “my wagon is warm.”
“I assure you,” the tattooed woman murmured, “my wagon is warmer.”
Kaelen squeaked as she caressed his upper arm. “I—well, that is—” He glanced at Richard and went red. “We—we have not—we have not formally discussed our—”
“What is there to discuss?” The butterfly tattoo on the woman’s elbow fluttered up to her cheek. “Is your lover the sharing sort or not?”
“His lover is not,” Richard snapped, glaring at where she squeezed Kaelen’s bicep. “And he would thank you to keep your hands off.”
It came out flatter than he had intended. The cat tattoo above the woman’s bosom scowled and slunk lower. With a pout, the woman retreated, showing her palm in a gesture of surrender.
“Right you are, sweet. Right you are. No offence meant.”
“None taken,” Richard gritted out as Kaelen gave her a smile. Was the knight utterly incapable of refusing advances?
“Pity,” drawled a new voice from beyond the fire. “For my part, I should dearly have loved it.”
The crowd parted for a lean man to saunter through. He wore a purple coat over a low-collared vest that clung to his torso. His trousers were just as tight, highlighting the curves of his thighs, and between his bangled hands flicked a deck of cards.
“To be sandwiched,” the man continued with a lopsided grin, “between two such fine specimens. Why, the memory would warm the coldest nights. Such a waste, my friends. Such a waste.”
The crowd cackled, and the tattooed woman swatted at him fondly.
“This,” said Master Clemens with a long-suffering sigh, “is Silex. Our fortune-teller. Joined us at the border. Does palm reading and tarot cards—and bloody accurate he is at that! He’s also the only one with a wagon with enough space. So you two will be lodging with him.”
Richard stared. Kaelen, too, had gone still. They both knew this new man. The burn scar that marred the left side of his angular face. The dark hair that half spilled to his shoulders and half pulled into a ponytail. The heavy-lidded eyes twinkling with mischief.
And should the sleeve rise too, Richard knew, he’d find an intricate tattoo on the forearm of three blackbirds huddled together.
Lyell’s lover. Leader of the Raven’s Guild. Bandit.
Flint.
* * *
Flint’s wagon was small, cramped with stools, tent equipment and musty clothes, with three bedrolls in the far end. As Kaelen knelt to tuck the packs amongst the stools, Richard hung his cloak on a hook. Flint was already sitting on the middle bedroll leaning against the wall to shuffle his cards.
“The cards told me.” Flint flipped a tarot card up.
The lantern’s light illuminated the Three of Cups.
“Old friends in unlikely places. I wondered who it could be? A merchant I’d bedded in Kernwell?
The pretty barmaid from Bluehill? But no.
It was you, my handsome soldier—if you even are that.
And your vigilant friend, who scowls at me so sweetly. ”
Kaelen straightened. “What are you doing in Estara?”
“Straight to business, are we?” Flint clicked his tongue. “No matter. I’ll answer yours when you answer mine. What in the hells are two Ardenian soldiers doing in Estara, sneaking into a circus bound for the coastal city?”
“Crown business.” Richard crossed his arms and lounged against a broken dresser. “Nothing that needs concern you.”
Flint’s smile warped into a sneer. “Crown business, is it? Tell me, soldier. Do you know what your gracious king did to my lover?”
“If you mean Lyell of the Raven’s Guild,” Richard said calmly, “then yes, I am familiar with the case. Your sorcerer aided witches in an attempt on the princess’s life.”
“The fuck he did.” Flint cursed. “My Lyell wouldn’t harm a child for all the gold in the Seven Realms. Doesn’t even swat the pups when they nip him, the soft fool that he is, and those witches lied to him.
Used our lover against him. Edith’s forgotten her dogs, forgotten the children of our guild, damn near forgotten Lyell and me.
Those witch bastards told Lyell they had the cure—”
“And yet,” Richard said, “the princess almost died. By all accounts, the king showed mercy in freeing your lover, so take it and be grateful.”
Flint scoffed, sitting up. “Mercy? Lyell returned to me trembling—still wakes some nights screaming and don’t settle till I hold him.
’S not even the torture that haunts him.
That king of yours—the slimy bastard—threatened to castrate me and chain me at the foot of his bed like a fucking dog, and to send Edith to the northern mines to die of rock-lung.
Left a scar so deep no manner of whips and brands could rival it. ”
Richard’s jaw tightened. Guilt pricked—sharp and unwelcome, made worse by the weight of Kaelen’s gaze and the hate etched clear on Flint’s face.
If Flint ever learned who he truly was, there’d be bloodshed.
Kaelen broke the terse silence, his voice gentler, stripped of its earlier wariness. “Master Flint, are you in Estara because of Edith?”
Flint’s head swung to him. “Aye.” Grudgingly, he slumped back against the wall.
“Aye, I am. After Lyell came home to us, I went hunting. Tracked a witch of the Sanguis Order and ran him down in a barn outside Vellerswell.” His mouth peeled back from his teeth in a vicious grin.
“Took my time with him. I’ve come to learn a great deal about pliers, and about salt, and about the soft parts beneath a nail.
Gathered enough details about a cure ‘fore the man’s heart gave out. Turns out there’s a flower.”
Richard leaned forward even as Kaelen blanched. “A flower.”
“Aye. Green petals with red at their corners. Brewed with the right roots, it’ll unwind any curse of the mind.
The witch called it Skullbreath. Grows on the cliffs of an island off Vexmara.
The locals call it the Singers’ Teeth. Any who sails near it does not come back.
” Flint’s grin returned roguish. “Thus, I am here, handsome. My woman is ill. My man is worried sick. And I therefore journey to set matters right.”
Richard cocked a brow. “And the boat with which you plan to sail?”
“I’ll acquire one.”
“Steal one, you mean?”
“I mean the poor sap who currently believes they own it shall come, in the fullness of time, to a different understanding of their property rights.” Flint jutted his chin at them. “Now, your turn, handsome. What is the crown’s business that two of its soldiers must come pretending to be lovers?”
Kaelen’s eyes bore into Richard, no doubt trying to gain a hint of their aliases, but—Richard squinted at Flint—was there a need to lie?
He’d long suspected that Flint possessed a Threadbourne magic greater than his cards, a magic used to shield his bandit group from Ardenian and Estaran soldiers alike in the border forest. Not a safe man, but an honest one, in his particular fashion, and one who could well prove exceedingly useful.
A risk worth taking, Richard decided. “We, too, mean to sail to Singers’ Teeth.”
“My—Richard!” Kaelen hissed.
“And after that,” Richard continued, “we mean to battle the siren living there and collect its heart.”
Kaelen tried to stifle a groan but did not quite manage it. Instead, he flexed his arms and glared at Flint, seeming ready to reach for his sword.
Flint, for his part, had gone still, cards mid-shuffle. Both eyes—the one slitted from the burn and the heavy-lidded one—fixed on Richard.
“Well, handsome,” he said softly. “The Three of Cups indeed.”
“Our purposes overlap.” Richard shrugged. “There is strength in numbers when the water is monstrous. So do we have ourselves an accord?”
Flint laughed and smoothly rose to his feet. “An accord.” He extended a hand, bangles clinking. “You help me with the flower. I help you with your creature.”
Richard took the hand. “Very well.”
Flint adjusted his grip so his thumb stroked across Richard’s knuckles. “Black suited you better. But the sandy hair does grant you a certain softness.” He winked. “Makes me yearn to wring out the sweetest sounds.”
Richard rolled his eyes and had barely yanked his hand away when Kaelen was between them, shoving Flint back.
“You will not speak to him so,” the knight spat, his back almost entirely obscuring Richard’s view.
Flint peered around Kaelen’s bulk. “Not interested?”
“No.” Richard strode past Kaelen and made for the bedroll in the furthest right. “And neither is Kaelen before you proposition him next. Now, let us sleep. It has been a long day.”
Kaelen dashed across the wagon to take the middle bedroll. He dropped himself flat and stared at the curved ceiling, hands on his chest.
Flint blinked at him, then pouted. “You think I cannot be trusted near your handsome friend?”
“I think,” Kaelen said tightly to the ceiling, “that I do not care to trust you, even if my companion has deigned to do so.”
Richard tried to study his face. Was Kaelen upset with him for including Flint on the mission? In part, he could understand the frustration. Flint did complicate matters.
And yet, a part of him was gladdened to meet the bandit leader again.
Perhaps it was a vestige from his younger days as Crown Prince, when he’d heard tales of the Raven’s Guild—of highway robberies and kind deeds at orphanages.
And there was also the matter of why Flint, Lyell and Edith hated his true royal self so deeply. Maybe now, he could learn why.
“Sleep, Flint.” Richard shifted onto his back, mirroring Kaelen’s posture. The wagon’s floorboards dug into his shoulder blades. “Turn off the lamp.”
“Anything you say, handsome.”
There came the sound of footsteps. Flint blew out the lantern, and darkness fell.