up for the siesta, though the hardier – perhaps the more needy – were opting to stay on in spite of the heat. Nico scanned the jugglers and the tongue readers, and the begging monks seated before their bowls – fake monks, his mother had always claimed – until at last he came to a group of per formers barely visible for the surrounding crowd. He pushed closer for a better view of them.
They were a troupe of actors, two men and a woman he had never seen before. Without further thought, he squeezed through the crowd until he stood at the fore.
The play was a simple affair, the story of a poor seaweed farmer and his love for a beautiful witch of the sea. It was The Tales of the Fish, and narrated by the younger of the two men, himself no older than Nico, in that simple style of prose that was increasing in popularity these days over the long-winded sagas of old.
In a shaky, high-pitched voice the young man was recounting the story, while the woman and the older man played their parts in mime. It was obvious why they had attracted such a large audience. The woman, tall and lithe and wonderfully bronzed, played the sea-witch in appropriate costume, which meant she was naked, save for her straight golden hair and the strips of seaweed wrapped around a few select parts of her body. They were distracting, those delicate flashes of thigh and nipple, and kept snagging Nico's eyes as he tried to focus on the performance itself.
Nico liked to watch performers wherever he could find them, and he judged this woman a fine actress, whose subtle skills contrasted noticeably with her partner's lesser talents, which seemed few. The man was too pronounced and swaggering in his role, and few of the audience seemed to be paying him much heed. They were all ogling her flesh, like he was.
Nico was still gazing enraptured when a round of applause heralded the tragic end to the story – the seaweed farmer having swum to his death while pursuing his beloved out to sea. As the young narrator moved round the crowd with an empty hat, in search of donations, Nico found that his mouth was hanging open, and closed it with a snap. The actress meanwhile slipped a thin robe over her shoulders, and shucked the seaweed off from underneath it into a wooden pail. As she swept her hair back, she glanced around the crowd and caught his eye. Her gaze lingered.
A year ago Nico would have lowered his gaze straight to his feet in embarrassment. This past year, though, living in the city, he had gained more practice in meeting such glances, for he had received his fair share of them. He did not know why. Nico did not consider himself particularly handsome; even properly fed he had always been thin. And his face, whenever he had studied it in his mother's tarnished vanity mirror, had always looked strange to him: his nose turned up slightly at the end, he had lips too wide and full, his skin was freckled like a girl's, and, if he looked closely enough between his eyebrows, where once he had scratched at the childpox, he would see not one circular scar, but two.
In truth he did not understand why the actress's long-lashed eyes stayed fixed on his for so long. At least he was able to meet her calm appraisal for a while, sufficient time at least to be counted in seconds, before her confident gaze wore down his own and, his courage breaking, he looked away.
'You're blushing,' came a voice nearby.
It was Lena, standing right behind him in the crowd, her eyes narrowed against the sunlight. She looked pretty like that, without the usual frown cooling her Pathian features.
'It's hot,' he told her, and Lena's thin lips curled at the corners. With a tone of suspicion in his voice, he continued: 'I didn't notice you standing there.'
'I was following you,' she admitted, matter-of-factly. 'To make sure… you know… that you were all right.'
He did not believe that. So far, Lena had not shown herself overly concerned with the welfare of others. He wondered what she was after.
'Listen,' she continued, 'I'm sorry about your dog. Really. But we need to do something, Nico. We need to eat soon.'
He shrugged. 'They won't be handing out any more keesh until tomorrow. Anyway, I'm thinking it might be time for me to go home.'
'You don't really want to do that, do you?'
'Hardly.'
'Good, because I have a much better idea, if you're interested. A way for us to make some money.'
Ah, he thought. Here it comes.
She was standing close enough for one breast to brush across his front. That shocked him, physically, even more so because he suspected it was no accident. Nico studied her from beneath the brim of his hat, wondering, not for the first time, what it might be like to kiss her.
'Why do I have a feeling I won't like this?' he asked, his voice sounding coarse.
Lena swiped a lock of dark hair aside from her face, and spoke softly, intimately. 'Because you won't. But we don't have many choices left to us, do we?'
*
The asago rasped across the rooftops of Bar-Khos, bearing with it the fine grains of the Alhazii desert six hundred laqs to the east. The dust stung Nico's eyes and he squinted, grimacing, wanting to be down from here. He was not comfortable with heights.
Nico could clearly see the Shield from his rooftop vantage, and the Mount of Truth topped with its scalp of parkland, amid which rose the tall, many-windowed bulk of the Ministry of War. For a few welcome moments the breeze dropped, giving the sensation of an oven door closing. From the distance, he heard the regular percussion of cannon fire, followed by a scream, barely audible.
'This is crazy. What if we get caught?'
'Look,' she snapped from behind him, 'it's either this or I go down to the docks and lift my skirt for whoever will pay me. You'd rather I did that instead?'
'You don't even own a skirt.'
'Maybe after a few hand shanks I'd be able to afford one. You could become my pimp then. I'm starting to think you'd even like that – standing back, doing nothing.'
He sighed, and kept moving.
Nico had taken his shoes off, to carry in his hands, as suggested by Lena for better footing on the roof tiles. It worked, for sure, but the tiles were blisteringly hot against the bare soles of his feet. He was almost dancing across them. 'My feet,' he complained, 'they're burning.'
'You want to fall and crack your skull?'
'I want to get off this roof, Lena. That's what I want.'
She didn't respond.
They were working their way across the sloping roof of a taverna, three storeys above the streets of the city. The taverna encompassed two buildings, one taller than the other, and the remaining two storeys of the second rose up ahead, a wall of crumbling whitewash punctuated occasionally by narrow windows. Some of those were shuttered tight; others were open, flowing with curtains of fine gala lace.
Around Nico's feet, lizards sprawled across the hot tiles, casting ancient, baleful stares as Lena took the lead, her own eyes quick and nervous. She peered through one of the open windows, ducked away at the sound of voices inside. Crouching, she padded up to another, checked inside and rejected it, padded on to yet another.
Nico hopped from one foot to the other, the pain too much to bear. He slipped his shoes back on, wondering what in Ers he was doing here with this girl, wondering too if she had done this somewhere before. They were risking a public flogging if they were caught.
'This one,' she whispered, as Nico approached the window she had finally selected. 'Inside with you, and search the bag for a purse.'
Me? mouthed Nico.
'Yes, you. You haven't done anything yet but complain.'
'Lena, I mean it, let's go before it's too late.'
The scowl on her face tightened. 'You want to eat today or not?' she demanded.
'Not if it means going through with this business. Do as you wish. I'm leaving.'
She caught him in her grip as he turned to go.
'I mean it,' she hissed. 'If we don't do this, then I'm heading for the docks. Whatever it takes, I don't care. I won't starve to death like your dog did.'
Her words and grip seemed to hold him in a sudden spell. His stomach rattled, urging him on. He nodded
