Three Slices Read online

  Sure enough, painted on the side of the red wagon in elegant curlicues is Master Bailey’s Circus of Wanders, and I want nothing more than to slit the man’s throat and give him a lesson in proper spelling. Just as Merissa said there would be, there’s a book-sized window with closed shutters. A wooden plaque hangs from a nail, reading THE MASTER IS OUT, and I shake my head and flip it around.

  The other side also says THE MASTER IS OUT.

  There’s a bell cord, but it’s easy enough to follow its path up to the eaves and see the bucket of something or other poised to fall on the head of anyone foolish enough to attempt to ring it.

  “Bugger it all,” I mutter.

  Reaching into my pocket, I pull out not a bit of magic powder or a dastardly device...but a simple letter opener that doubles as a dagger in a pinch. Without a word of warning, I jigger the shutters open, careful to hold my face away should anyone be waiting within to give me a well-deserved punch in the nose.

  The wagon’s interior is dark and still, thick and heavy with the sort of constantly smothered fire favored by arthritic aunts, and ripe with a dozen smells, none appetizing. I see no sign of this Master Bailey.

  “What the blast, cretin?”

  I’m so startled that I stumble back and only barely manage to turn it into a courtly bow. The voice comes from everywhere at once, and I finally pinpoint it to a phonograph’s brass flower under the wagon’s roof. Ah, yes. The speaker Merissa mentioned. How quaint.

  “My lord, I’ve brought you the grandest magic show in the land of Sang,” I start, but a juicy laugh ends in a clearing throat, an oddly tinny quaver through the speaker. I barely manage to dodge sideways as the glob of tobacco lobs out of the window and splatters in the dust.

  “Got a magician,” he says. “Don’t need two. You’re welcome to duel the other fellow, if you need a job bad enough. But I suspect...” He trails off, and I can feel the cat’s claws extend. “If you really are the grandest magician in Sang, I’m sure you’re off for greener pastures than this little caravan, eh?”

  “I’m not much of a one for pastures, sir. But you’ll find me a Jack-of-all-trades. Ringmaster, acrobat, sideshow barker...”

  “Keep going, lad. You’ll eventually get to the bit where you’re poking at trash with a pointy stick.” Deep in his dragon’s lair, I can imagine him chewing his tobacco and thinking on it. And it’s not safe to let haughty hermits think too much when a fellow’s livelihood is at stake.

  “Bring me your magician, then,” I say, chin up. “I could do with a good duel.”

  The bastard cackles like a hen and spits again. “You’ll battle him on the stage tonight. Winner gets his wagon. Loser bunks with the wolf boy and shovels manure behind Merissa’s beasts. If he lives.”

  I don’t even have to think. “Done. And the name is—”

  “Don’t bother,” he says. “I don’t care about names until I’m having them painted on the sides of wagons.”

  MY NEXT stop is the dining car. It’s easy enough to find—they always are. Just look for braces of dead bludbunnies hanging from hooks on the side of the wagon, waiting to become tomorrow’s stew. I’m doubly disappointed when I step inside: Merissa isn’t here, and it’s clear where my people stand in the hierarchy. Just like in a city, the Bludmen are firmly corralled into a black-painted corner while the humans and daimons have windows, clean booths, and a buffet of whatever offal they desire. I see only two Bludmen, or rather, one Bludman with two heads, all four eyes fastened on me and glittering madly. I nod and head for the cauldron of blood and a tower of chipped teacups to make it seem like a civilized sort of drink instead of liquid flesh sold by the stoppered tube.

  “What’re you lookin’ at, mate?” A half-daimon the color of a November sky twirls a long railroad nail between his fingers, pointing it at me when I look him up and down by the beverage dispenser.

  “Lunch,” I say. “Or are you a daimon that feeds on idiocy?”

  He pokes the nail into his nose as if storing it for later and readies himself for fisticuffs, but his venomous tail has been cut off. Amputation is the price daimons pay to work for humans in cabarets and caravans, and without his tail’s magic and stinger, he can’t do anything more than leap around like a lizard. At least all I sacrifice is, temporarily, my freedom.

  Beside him, a dark red daimon lady in a dancing costume catches his sleeve. “Don’t be a fool,” she says. “Can’t you feel the desire flowing off him? He’ll tear you to pieces, and gladly.”

  I give her a nod of respect. “I am hungry for my place in the world, madam. But I’m aiming a good bit higher than the freak tent.” I see it register in her eyes—she knows me or has at least heard my name. There’s nothing for it, so I stick out my hand. “Criminy Stain, at your service.”

  With a wry grin, she lets me kiss the back of her wrist. “Mademoiselle Caprice, dancing mistress. Charmed, monsieur. I’ve heard tell of your show. But we’ve a magician here already, you know.”

  “I was informed as such and will be murdering him tonight.”

  She takes back her hand and tucks a fist under her chin, thinking. “Tricky. He’s rather good, you see.”

  “But he’s not currently in this room?”

  “He is not.”

  I select one blood vial, and when no one stops me, a second. The top teacup is chipped, so I rub a finger over it, muttering under my breath until the porcelain is unblemished.“If you’ve any ideas regarding how to best this magician, you’ll find me around,” I say.

  She gives a polite nod. “Ah, but monsieur, is it better to help the devil you know or the devil you don’t?”

  I let my eyes twinkle at her and doff my hat. “It’s better to make friends with the more devilish of the two devils.”

  And since we both know that silly, arbitrary lines are drawn in this wagon, I’ve no choice but to head for the blackened corner where I belong. When I run my own caravan, there will be no such division. Fear does stupid things to a soft man, and Old Bailey is softer and more fearful than most. Judging by the crafty, sullen looks on the two-headed Bludman I’m about to dominate, there’s an undercurrent of dangerous neglect over the truly murderous, and it’s almost ironic that anyone would expect a simple coat of black paint to keep real monsters in their place.

  “Is this seat taken?” I tilt my head to the bench opposite him. Them? Damn, but proper grammar wasn’t made to address multiple heads.

  “Depends. You as frilly as you look?” snarls one head, and the other just raises a brow.

  I gently place the teacup and blood vials on the scarred black table. “If you’d care to go outside and have your throats ripped out, I’d be glad to accommodate you, but I’m afraid I’ve only the one handkerchief and I’m going to drink my lunch first.”

  “I’m Catarrh. That’s Quincy. Who the hell are you?”

  A vial in each fist, I pop the corks with my thumbs and let the warm blood mix in my cup.

  “Only allowed one vial per meal, new meat,” Catarrh says, and Quincy chitters.

  “I’m Criminy Stain, and I don’t take orders well. How do you get away with it?”

  As I sip my blood, and it’s not bad blood at all, Quincy chews his sharpened nails and Catarrh considers me more carefully, and I know now which head I’ll always have to watch out for.

  “Get away with what?” Catarrh says, feigning innocence and failing utterly.

  I toss down the rest of my blood and snatch his poorly tied cravat in my fist, jerking him across the table. My other fist smashes my teacup into Quincy’s face as my fangs find Catarrh’s neck and settle there, for just a moment, for just long enough, in the darkest sort of promise. I slowly draw a red line across his throat with a tooth and toss him back against the bench.

  “You drink from customers. And yet you still have a job. And that tells me that whoever runs this caravan is a damned fool who’s scared of you. I think you’ll find that I am neither.”

  It’s a tense moment, and I tap my talon
s on the table, one-two-three. Quincy sniffles to himself, trying to lick the cuts on his cheeks, and Catarrh touches the scratch on his neck and breathes hard through his nose for a moment before whispering, “I submit.”

  “Good.” I snatch Catarrh’s teacup and drain the dregs, exposing my throat in the sort of way that tells another predator that it is not now or ever a threat to me.

  Catarrh and Quincy watch, sullen and slumped against the back of the bench.

  “I didn’t submit,” Quincy snarls, and I set down his brother’s teacup and lean forwards with a ferociously mad smile and the all-too-sharp letter opener I’ve just whipped from my vest. “But I do. I do!” he whimpers.

  I relax and nod. “Smart lads. Now, tell me about this other magician.”

  They shrug, which tells me all that I need to know.

  “The Great Phaedro,” Catarrh says, flapping a hand. “Whoopty-doodley.”

  “Not great,” Quincy mutters, still compulsively rubbing the place where I took a divot out of his pimpled cheek with his own cup.

  “What’s his specialty?”

  Quincy snickers, and Catarrh says, “Cutting girls in half. What’s yours?”

  “Cutting magicians in half.”

  But the small hairs on my neck rise up. I don’t just cut girls in half; I make them disappear completely.

  IF THIS caravan is like the other two in which I’ve worked, then no matter how poorly it’s run, things will start to warm up just as the sun is setting. Sure enough, some of the more talented carnivalleros who actually have jobs are practicing, as they should be. There’s a sprightly old man on the tightrope, gray and wrinkled but still wiry as the twisted metal under his slippers. Far below him, on the ground, sit two small girls in outlandishly bright costumes, doing their sums on a chalkboard as they share stale popcorn. A middle-aged lady with horse teeth checks her flea circus with a monocle screwed over her eye, while a young blonde Bludwoman slips into a tailpiece and prepares to launch herself into an unkempt mermaid’s aquarium. A patchy, defanged wolf boy is manacled to a stake in the ground, which he’s trying to dig out with bloody paws.

  Further on, I meet a troupe of daimon acrobats and, surprisingly, a strong woman with arms that each weigh more than my entire body. Mademoiselle Caprice dances with a handsome Bludman covered in tattoos, while a voluptuous dwarf lady does her makeup in a cracked mirror. The Freak Tent is at the end, a cluster of fraying pavilions that sets me frowning when I find the entrance unguarded.

  It’s bad enough that this Bailey fellow never leaves his wagon, but if he doesn’t have a second-in-command capable of maintaining order, he’s just begging me to snatch this languishing jewel from his crusty grasp. I duck under the striped canvas and nearly run into the light blue daimon I met in the dining wagon as he double-checks his bed of nails.

  “Want to have a curl-up?” he says mockingly, and I try not to roll my eyes.

  “I know the trick, fool. If you want to impress me, learn to hammer a nail into your eye.”

  “That’s impossible,” he says, and I laugh.

  “Give me a nail and a hammer then, if you’d care to wager.”

  With a rude snort, he picks up his hammer and tosses it in the air, catching it expertly. “What are the terms, then?”

  “If I can successfully hammer a nail into my eye, you’ll stop being a prat and accept that I’m most likely going to stick around and one day become your boss.”

  “And if you end up in an eye patch?” He hands me a nail, and I grin, because there are a dozen ways he could’ve sabotaged me, and he’s far too stupid to have even tried.

  “If I lose, I’ll give you a spell to make your skin brighter.”

  Considering a water-colored half-daimon’s skin is his greatest shame, I take a certain joy in watching his eyes take on a holy shine. The brighter the daimon, the better the show, they say, and it’s no wonder this poor faded fellow is so cranky.

  “You’re on, mate,” he says.

  We shake hands, and I hold the small nail to the corner of my left eye. Three sharp and dramatic knocks, and it’s lodged flawlessly. I hold out my arms and shout, “Tada!”

  “That’s impossible,” he says, half in awe and half starving to possess my trick.

  “That’s five years in the freak tent,” I say. But I make a little show of prying the nail out because no geek deserves to feel out-geeked in his own domain. Poor lad just needs better training, a firmer hand, and some manners, all of which I’d be glad to give him once I’ve murdered a few people. Tossing the nail to him, I balance the hammer on my nose and say, “Now, what can you tell me about this Phaedro fellow?”

  The daimon’s yellow goat eyes go all shifty as he turns the nail over in watery blue hands, still hunting for an illusion that isn’t there. “Doesn’t seem right to tell a gent’s weaknesses to a stranger.”

  “My name is Criminy Stain,” I say, holding out a hand. “And I might be strange, but that’s just part of my charm.”

  “I’m Laraby.” We shake hands and I return his hammer, and he finally makes his decision to not infuriate someone who clearly knows how to handle weapons.

  “Phaedro’s act is mostly illusion. When he cuts a lass in half, it’s the legless lady from the third booth down in the Freak Tent. When he makes someone disappear, it’s a daimon with good control over color-changing. And when a bludbunny pops out of his hat, it’s because he keeps a toothless bludbunny in his hat all the time.”

  “So, he has no real magic?”

  Laraby shrugs. “Not much, by my count. But he mostly keeps to himself to himself. Seen him among the other Bludmen, from time to time, but never really talked to ’im. Now, about that trick with the nail?”

  “Business first. But I do appreciate your help, and so I’ll thank you with this.” I pull a tiny bag out of my pocket, for my jacket has hundreds of such pockets sewn into the lining, and I’ve memorized exactly where everything is and have the proper bits and bobs apportioned for just such an occasion. “Place one grain—only one, mind you—on your tongue, and you’ll find it far easier to hold onto brighter colors, at least for a few hours at a time.”

  He takes the small bag, pokes it with a finger the color of melting snow. “Not permanent, then?”

  “Sorry, lad,” I say, walking on. “Nothing is.”

  FURTHER EXPLORATION of the Freak Tent shows me nothing new. I’ve seen all these freaks before and in better form. The dwarf is drunk and abusive, the wolf boy has sores from his manacles, the legless lady wants more than the going rate for being sawn in half, and the two-headed boy simply sits sullenly on a small chaise and stares. Pizzazz is lacking and morale is nonexistent.

  I smile. This place wants me, needs me.

  Outside again, I turn right to see what the other side of the wagon train holds and find...nothing. Blank spaces and darkness. I guess I know now how Catarrh and Quincy get their dessert—by dragging customers back here and charming them before releasing them, dizzy and confused and down a few pints of blood, back into the well-lit crowds. The wildlife creeps close on the dark side of the train, thanks to the lack of lights. The grasses crunch and whisper as bluddeer and bludbunnies stalk and hop and drool and wait, mere inches from innocent flesh. There’s not even a sign warning the audience not to come this way. This traditional setup is foolish, but so are most things that need changing. It feels good, pissing on the nearest wagon. That’s how we predators claim things, after all.

  Back in the light, I find Merissa working a white horse and fuss with my cravat. I haven’t seen a mirror since I left my old home, much less a pitcher of water or a wardrobe wagon. Not that she’s watching me—she has eyes only for the white mare, which has been brushed to an incandescent sheen, her long mane and tail as white as driven snow as she trots majestically in the circle, her big red eyes pinned lovingly to the delicate lady holding the golden rope and a long, flexible whip.

  Merissa’s eyes shoot to me, and her brow wrinkles adorably before she looks
behind her. Standing there is a comically gothic fellow, slighter than me and wrapped in a long, black cloak more than a little like mine, although the cut of his is out of date and the quality is shabbier. I had my cloak lined in emerald green to match my waistcoat, but this fellow’s cape is in a traditional blood red, as if the world couldn’t otherwise tell that he was a Bludman. In all respects, he is less than me. A little shorter, a little narrower about the shoulders, his slicked-back hair a bland brown, his eyes a muddier blue enhanced by a cool rage that I can feel, even with a girl and a horse between us.

  Oh, but this is going to be fun.

  “What an enchanting creature,” I say, stepping to Merissa’s side and moving fluidly with her as she trains the horse.

  “Don’t flatter me while I’m working,” she mutters, but the corner of her mouth twitches just so.

  “I assure you I was speaking of the horse. But where is the one from this morning? Kali?”

  Her eyes flick to me, a ripple in an emerald-green pond, and her smile is suddenly genuine. “How did you know it wasn’t her?”

  I cross my arms to better broadcast my muscular superiority over the weedy gent standing out of the horse’s orbit. “This one has longer fetlocks and her mane falls mainly to the left. This morning’s Kali was younger, probably still has a hand to grow, and her mane fell to the right.”

  “Well played, Stain. You’re correct. This is Kali’s new partner, Fausta.”

  “I am curious as to how two bludmares can be coerced into cooperation. It was my understanding that they would battle to the death, should they meet in the wild.”

  Her laugh sends ripples of want up my arms, her voice as warm as puddled blood. “They would if they did, sure enough. But I’ve developed a new technique for fostering sisterhood.” She puts the rope and whip in my hands. “Keep her trotting, please.” With a dramatic rip, her skirts fly off and flutter to the ground at Phaedro’s feet. Her legs are revealed, clad in green suede breeches and high, padded boots. She watches the horse for a moment, and I tap the mare’s hip gently with the whip before she can falter. With a nod, Merissa skips, catches Fausta’s mane, and swings up onto her back. The horse doesn’t break her speed, shows no indication that she’s been mastered other than an elegant bowing of her head as if to a greater queen.