“What’s that?”
“I won it throwing knives.”
The crowd roared and surged forward against the rope. A dozen boys raced down the street toward her. David was leading; David had won. The people around her raised their arms and shook their bells, rattle-rattle like little tin leaves, and cheered.
“Aren’t you glad he won?” Ketac said.
“It seems to me you’re all winning everything.”
“That’s because we’re the best family in Matuko.”
David jogged up to her, hardly out of breath. Another garland hung around his neck. The people around him leaned out to touch him. They thought it good luck to touch a winner. Paula held out the wreaths, and solemnly he decorated himself in his awards.
Ketac pulled on the peak of her hood. “You should stay in the chair. You’ll get lost.”
“How can I get lost? Somebody always finds me.”
They went off toward the crowd. David strutted around, collared in grass, calling to his friends in a new deep voice. Paula ran her hand over his smooth head. They went down toward the lake. A little parade of the paper masks passed them, held up on poles.
Ketac left them. David wandered off into the crowd. Paula went slowly down the hillside street. She looked up at the lake, in the roof of the bubble. They were racing boats there; most of the race involved fighting from one boat to the next to knock the oarsmen into the water. She watched one boat roll over, presenting its long white belly to the air. Heads bobbed around it.
Pedasen was part of a small crowd watching a stick-puppet show near the White Market. She went up beside him and took his hand, and he startled. She smiled at him. The puppets declaimed in falsetto voices from the cut- out stage. The eunuch stroked her palm with his fingertips. When the play ended they walked away toward the lake.
“You ought to be in the covered chair,” he said.
“Illy teases me. I don’t know how Saba bears her, she’s that nagging.”
He swung their linked hands back and forth. “You’re more like her child. Or her little sister.” Through the tail of his eye he glanced at her. “You could always give her up.”
David ran up to her, streaming his white grass garlands. Pedasen moved away from her. His fingers slid out of her grasp. Her son bounced around her.
“Mama, buy me a poppet. Buy me a pala-cake.” He towed her along by the hand through the White Market. The Martian merchants had joined with whole hearts in the spirit of Krita, raising all their prices 10 per cent.
“When is the Kritaloi?” Paula asked. The ceremony was the climax of the festival.
Pedasen came after her, his hands in his tunic sleeves. “At three bells.” David scowled at him and moved between her and him.
“What’s he doing here?”
“He lives here,” Paula said.
David shot an angry look over his shoulder at the slave. “Come on. I’ll show you the poppet I want.” He ran off down the street ahead of her.
“I knew he’d get like that about me,” Pedasen said. “He’s a black, no matter what you do.”
A parade of Krita masks bobbed toward them. They passed the shop that sold illusion helmets. The street was sprinkled with bits of paper, mushed pala-cakes, ribbons, and grass. David turned and jogged back toward her, the grass like an Elizabeth ruff over his shoulders. Ten feet from her, a mob of little boys leaped on him.
They screeched. Their arms milling, they fought in the street. David kicked and struck at them; he was smaller than the smallest of them. Paula rushed in among them. They were tearing off his prizes. Her fingers in David’s belt, she pulled him out from under three other boys, and they turned on her. David struggled in her arms. She held him tight against her while the other boys slugged her and kicked her shins. In a moment they raced off.
Ketac said, “What’s going on?”
She let David go. His cheeks were slippery with tears, and he thrust her violently away from him with both hands. Bleeding scratches striped his forehead. His flags were gone. He shouted, “I don’t need you—I can do it—” Crying with rage, he wheeled on Pedasen. “You didn’t even stop her—” He ran off into the crowd. Paula bent and rubbed her sore ankle.
“Are you hurt?” Ketac asked her. Pedasen was going away.
Paula shook her head. “He’s too little to fight.” Her throat felt tight, and her eyes burned.
“So are you,” Ketac said.
Along the shore the men stood in rows, shoulder to shoulder, clapping their hands. The beating rhythm and the bells made Paula’s head throb. She put her hand on the covered chair beside her. Below her, beyond the mass of people, Saba walked into the water. Dakkar and Ketac followed him. The water purled around them. Saba went in to his waist and turned to face the shore. He took off his belt and his shirt and gave them to Ketac. The pale medal of his order swung across his chest. Dakkar held out a sheath, and Saba drew the curved knife out of it. He slashed an X in the black water before him and carved an X deep in his forearm. Paula jerked. Blood streamed down his arm. He plunged it into the lake. The people let out a great breath of a cheer, shaking their sleeves of bells, waving their belled hats. Ketac gave his father a piece of cloth, which Saba wrapped around his arm, and he put his clothes on.
“He bled quite a lot,” Illy said, inside the chair. “A good omen.”
Paula swallowed the bad taste in her mouth. Saba walked out of the water. His people cheered in voices half-drowned in bells: “Krita! Krita! Krita!” David came around the chair toward her.
“When I grow up, I’ll be brave as Papa.”
Paula turned away.
Saba told Illy that he was taking
VRIBULO
The mid-city gate was massed with people. Paula got off the bus in a tide of other passengers from Matuko and fought through the people trying to board to go on to Yekka, the next stop. Most of these were Yekkit farmers, with empty baskets on their shoulders, going home from the markets of Vribulo. She ducked a swinging elbow and slid between two fat veiled women toward the street.
“Paula.” Ketac came across the chipped tile floor. Two slaves carried a handtruck past her, and she went by it to meet him.
“I brought a chair,” he said. “What’s this all about?”
“Where is he?”
Ketac took a firm grip on her arm and maneuvered her toward a side door. “I found him coming in, as you said, but he got away.”
“He—”
“Easy. I caught him again, I have him in my room. He’s a slippery little nigger.”
The clear doors to the street had white X’s drawn on them, to keep people from walking through them. Outside, in the crowded street, a chair sat on its stump feet, the slaves who carried it squatting at the poles. Ketac hurried her inside. She sat facing forward, and he sat opposite her. The chair bucked up into the air, back end first,
