the boy.
Micha and Green Beth, two other clowns, died when they tried to roll the burning roof back onto its scrollworks. One more of Whitey’s family lay in a cool cave offered by Elder Lin, swaddled in soft bandages and driving a hard bargain with the Lord of the Dead. This was his wife, Melda, who took a minotaur’s axe and rushed into the burning fall of the southernmost canvas wall when it settled over the stone kraal where her oxen were stabled. She led every team free before she collapsed.
Now the troupe waited on word of Tobin and Mattias, who had disappeared into the spires before dawn. Trill was tied down, her efforts to take flight pathetic but dangerous to any who came near, so the goliath volunteered to accompany the old man in her stead.
From the fire, the efforts of Cephas and the twins, and his arrows, Mattias counted eleven dead minotaurs. Down on the road, where Trill descended on the attackers like an angel of death, the roustabouts found the corpses of twelve more, along with the lances and javelins they had used to poison the wyvern.
“Twenty-five,” Corvus told his old friend. “El Pajabbar always number twenty-five.”
Mattias nodded, signaled Tobin, and faded away, silent on his canes.
Escorted by Elder Lin, Cephas and the twins arrived at the wagons as they were leaving.
“I should go with them,” Cephas said.
“They should not go,” said the Elder.
Corvus shook his head, though it was unclear to which of them he was responding. “All the decisions are being made elsewhere,” he said, as if to himself. “That has to change.”
Sword in hand, Ariella Kulmina appeared in the air above the lowered facade of a circus wagon. Smoke rose in the near distance, turning the first rays of dawn a red that bathed the spires around her in a light the color of blood.
No living thing stirred.
The silver-skinned woman floated to the ground, holding her blade in a high guard position, and sent out her awareness, wary of enemies concealed by magic.
The enemy that found her did not strike from concealment.
Unbelievably fast, an earthsouled fighter in the regalia of a gladiator sprang from between two wagons, spinning an enormous double-headed flail as easily as a child wielding a sling. The swordmage had been told the genasi of the village were pacifists, but she had stepped through the WeavePasha’s teleportation portal with defenses raised nonetheless.
A lucky thing that was, or the spiked heads of the flail would have struck her down instantly. Instead, she breathed a syllable and brought her long sword down in a parrying arc. One flail head bounced off the eldritch shield raised at her command, and her sword struck the other with enough force to send it swinging wide.
The gladiator took her actions in stride, springing back lightly and setting his weapon to swinging in a figure- eight pattern that would be impossible to penetrate with just a sword.
Ariella had more than her sword to give battle with.
Mimicking the gladiator, she backed away from close contact. But with another arcane word and a flick of her wrist, a crackling line of energy extended from her weapon’s tip like a whip. She swept this extension of her will in an arc beneath the earthsouled’s defenses, surprising him. The line wrapped around the man’s ankles and, using both hands and all her strength, she raised her sword high above her head.
The earthsouled man’s feet flew out beneath him, and he landed flat on his back, while the eldritch whip bound his legs tightly together. Approaching warily, Ariella saw there was no fear in the man’s face. Instead, she saw only exhaustion and grief. And she swore she heard something from inside him-something that reminded her of the wind.
The man was staring up at her. He made no move to raise his weapon. “You are not a minotaur,” he said.
Ariella pursed her lips in confusion, but answered him. “And you are not a pacifist.”
The Argentori removed every sign of the previous night’s terrible occurrences with remarkable speed. They finished interring their dead, respectfully assisted Whitey’s family in the ceremony of their own tradition, then buried the signs of conflagration beneath the stones. The ground, at least, bore no scars.
The genasi also carried away the bodies of the minotaurs, no doubt to a gentler end than would have come if the circus folk had taken charge of the grisly task. Shock was passing from most faces now, except perhaps that of Whitey, the master clown who looked so stunned and haunted. The others were asking questions among themselves.
“Wait for Mattias to return from his hunt,” Corvus told them, and refused to say anything more. He would not even introduce the mysterious swordswoman who had apparently arrived at his request.
“She is windsouled,” the grieving Sonnett told Cephas. “She is genasi, like us.”
Sonnett was in the Welcome Terrace, working with her kin to restore the place to the function intended by its name. She looked to her mother’s serenity and made a great effort to match it. Cephas watched the crystal-haired windsouled woman study everything around her, and thought of the near-deadliness of their first encounter. Like me, perhaps, thought Cephas in silent reply to gentle Sonnett. Not like you.
And not like shattered Marashan, who had not left the spire where her brother now rested forever. The girl had spoken to no one-not even to her mother and especially not to Cephas, at whom she would not even look. She sat with her back against the spire, rocking and keening, arms wrapped around her knees.
“There is a storm inside my daughter,” Elder Lin told Cephas when he struggled to apologize. “You did not ignite it. Even those horned slaves of the Calimien did not plant it within her. It has always been there, and shielding her from the world has not prepared her for the way it tosses her heart now. But I knew no other way.”
Cephas had no reply, and Blue came for him then, dashing his hope that the Elder might explain further.
“My brother’s wife will live,” Blue said as they made their way back to the wagons. “I always said he’d married an ox, not an ox maiden. That strength is showing.”
Cephas clapped the man on the shoulder, relieved. “Perhaps I can show you how to work a crossbow later,” he said.
Blue shook his head. “No need,” he said. “My brothers and I had the ringmaster teach us while the rest of you buried our kin.”
Corvus had set out a circle of canvas chairs around a small campfire. He, the twins, the windsouled woman, and Whitey sat talking. As Cephas approached, he saw Mattias and Tobin joining the group. The two wore grim expressions.
Cephas joined the circle, finding a seat between Whitey and the swordswoman.
Corvus waited for them all to settle themselves, then spoke. “This is Ariella Kulmina, a swordmage of Akanul, a land ruled by genasi like the Emirates.”
The woman protested. “Not at all like the Emirates-”
Corvus waved her to silence. “Last night I appealed to the WeavePasha of Almraiven, our sponsor in this mad business, for aid against our attackers. He was sharing a meal with the swordmage, and she volunteered to travel here by means of his magics. We will speak more of this in a moment. First, I would hear what you found out there in the spires, Mattias.”
By way of answer, the old man spilled open a roll of roughly woven cloth. Two sets of horns, still joined by the polled ridges of bone they grew from, clattered onto the stone.
The woman of Akanul breathed in sharply, and even Whitey turned his empty eyes away.
Corvus said, “I make that twenty-four.”
Mattias nodded at Tobin. For the first time, Cephas noticed how wan the big man appeared. He had the thin-skinned appearance of a gladiator sent back into the arena too soon, with only a hedge shaman’s inadequate chants closing his wounds. Tobin had been in a dreadful fight, and recently.
The goliath turned something over and over in his hands-the jagged end of a single horn, dried blood crusting its broken end. “I could not hold her,” he said. “She was so strong. So terribly strong.”
Cephas realized the whole company was staring at him, and he looked down to see that he had risen to his feet. He shook his head, began to apologize, but then decided to give voice to the question so unaccountably
