He stumped off to do so, speaking softly to several of the Murrey folk who paused in midscurry, looked fearfully about them, then ran to hoist one of the long tables onto the platform.
“I told them they’d forgotten,” whispered Asner when he returned. “Told them I was making a friendly reminder. Poor things, they believe someone forgot to tell them. So, we’ll put our things over there to one side, near the platform, but not on it. The light’s better there. The boss chief can see us, and so can everyone else.”
“What will Houdum-Bah think?” demanded Nela.
“What would you think, if you were the boss chief and arrived at your own banquet to find a table set high upon a platform?” asked Jory. “You’d think it was for you, wouldn’t you?”
“How about music?” Asner asked. “Nela, you and Bertran are the experts. What can we do about music for our show?”
The twins went with Asner to talk with the musicians. Coins changed hands. The two drummers nodded as the twins described drum rolls, clashes of cymbals, and when both should occur. After further explanation, the almost trumpeter attempted an almost fanfare, with some success.
Very soon thereafter the Houm and High Houm began to trickle in, each wrapped in gay fabrics and glittering with beads. Blue boys ran back and forth bearing platters of meat from the pits outside the doors and loaves of bread from a store against the wall. Pitchers were filled and emptied and filled again. All was dash and froth and noise. Against the wall, the sideshow set itself in readiness.
“Now’s the time to work the crowd,” said Bertran. “Curvis, let’s work the tables.”
“Work the tables?”
“Come on. Let’s do some magic.” The twins signaled the musicians and moved to the nearest table where they began pulling coins from behind ears, scarves out of women’s hair to the accompaniment of drums and bugles and the occasional whang of a timely gong. After watching them for a moment, Curvis followed.
Fringe said, “They’re right, Danivon. We’ll want the crowd on our side if there’s trouble.”
He shook his head over her naiveté in thinking Houm or Murrey were capable of taking anyone’s side but their own, but he followed her as she tugged the bulky machine to a clear spot near another table.
“Your fortune, ma’am,” she chanted. “Your fortune, sir.”
Danivon busied himself as her assistant, wafting the incense, summoning the powers of the future.
“Lost … Treasure … Returns,” cried Fringe, reading the shining capsules as they fell into the bin.
“What is it you have lost, ma’am?” begged Danivon, his nose twitching as he held out his hand toward the High Houm woman in her bright green gown. “Was it a pin? No. A ring! Your mother’s ring?”
The green-gowned woman responded with cries of delight.
“In the garden outside the window where your washstand is,” said Danivon. “That’s where it is. You laid it on the sill when you washed your hands, and you forgot it.”
“I did!” she wept. “Oh, yes, I remember now.”
Her escort dropped coins into Danivon’s outstretched palm while others at the table laughed and demanded their own fortunes be told. Fringe worked her way around the table, stopping when she reached the side of a child, a girl of some eleven or twelve years who was looking at her, half in terror, half in delight.
“What’s your name,” Fringe asked.
“Alouez,” the girl whispered. Her eyes were huge and shadowed in the pallor of her face under a misty cloud of hair. She was already beautiful, promising greater beauty to come.
Fringe pivoted, throwing her oracle’s dress into a dramatic swirl and taking the opportunity to glance at all the tables. No other children. No other children at all.
“Would you like to hear your fortune, Alouez?” she asked, keeping herself from scowling with some difficulty. Why was this the only child?
The woman sitting next to the girl put her hand to her face, hiding her eyes, not quickly enough to hide the gleam of tears.
“Yes,” breathed the girl. “Tell my fortune!”
She picked her own levers, pulled them, listened as bells rang and capsules fell. When they had done, Fringe picked them up, palming one or two to substitute others she had in her pocket. She wanted no message of fear for this child, no matter what the machine said.
“Riches, years, joy,” she read, putting the capsules down in front of the child. The tearful woman turned her head away and blotted her face on her sleeve.
“May I keep them?” the girl asked eagerly. The message had erased the anxiety from her face, but Fringe, watching the woman next to the child, knew the reason for that anxiety was still present.
She frowned as she went on to the next table, where Danivon came up to her and asked: “Who’s the girl child you were spending such time on?”
“Her name is Alouez,” she replied, glancing back at the child over her shoulder. “She’s the only child here, have you noticed? She seems very much alone, more than a little frightened. The woman with her is crying, trying to hide it. Something she knows the child doesn’t.”
“Nasty,” said Danivon, catching a whiff of the old familiar stench.
“She seems familiar, somehow.”
“The girl?” Danivon grinned fiercely. “Of course. She looks like you. Or as you probably did when you were that age.”
It was true, not in the coloring, but in the shape of the face and features. Perhaps in the expression, as well. Fringe had often been fearful at that age. And since, she admitted to herself, trying to think of something that would change the subject. “About that lost ring,” she murmured. “That was fortuitous. They were amazed.”
“I smelled it, even through all this stink,” he said. “Sometimes I do.”
“What happens if you smell imminent destruction?”
“I’ll scream loudly and we’ll all run.” He seemed half-serious as he said it, but then he winked at her and caressed her cheek, making her flush. No
