There was no reason to watch it. Shadow seldom did anything. When it was angered, and as far as I knew no one knew what made it angry, it attacked. Otherwise, it simply lay. Anything that stepped into shadow, of course, would be better off dead sooner than it died.
Moved by a fleeting curiosity, I took off one boot and set my bare foot on the ground. There was a tingle there, very slight, which meant there was a remnant of the Old Road buried deep beneath us. I’d had the suspicion for some time that the shadow gathered mostly where there were remnants of the Ancient Roads, though I had no idea what it meant. Seeing Queynt’s curious gaze focused on me, I flushed and put my boot back on.
We led the birds around the shadow patch, though I think they were fully capable of avoiding it on their own, and then back up through the meadow to the road once more, where the stack of shattered trunks was now blocking the way behind us. Since hearing those Zoggian brats chant their litany to Storm Grower, I had a pretty good idea where this kind of damage came from—not that we could verify it. Ever since we’d first seen this random destruction, we’d asked about it.
Those we’d asked didn’t answer. Since we had no Demon with us to read minds, we had given up asking, but we hadn’t given up wondering. We went on, with me still suspiciously looking for shadow as we rattled along the road.
“There’s the city Peter heard,” said Queynt.
We had topped a rise and looked down into a green valley, a city cupped at the center. The place was crowned with ostentatious mansions, much carved stone and lancet windows and so prodigious a display of banners—which were either excessively pink or blushed by the sunrise—some festival must have been in progress. I sighed. Towns of any kind seemed to mean trouble recently, and I was too tired even to fight for my life.
“I wonder if there’s an inn with a good cook?”
“Burials make you hungry, do they?” I swallowed my protest. Fact was, they did make me hungry. As did traveling, practicing the wize-art, talking to animals, or virtually anything else one wanted to mention. “Good appetite, long life,” I said sententiously.
“I suppose you’re right.” He sighed, peering down at his own round belly. “My appetite is very good, and I seem to have lived some time.”
“Which is a story you have promised to tell me, Queynt. About long life, and immunity to crystals, and things.”
“Ah, well, Jinian. Sometime.”
“I’ll make you a deal, Queynt. You tell me about you and the crystals after breakfast, and I’ll tell you something you don’t know.”
“It’s a long, dull story.”
I snickered. Queynt didn’t tell dull stories. Oh, he could be dull, but if he was, it was for a purpose. At storytelling, he was a master. I said, “I presume as much, and we haven’t time now, anyhow. The city will be all around us shortly. But when we find lodging? Is it a promise?”
“You won’t let me alone until I do. You’re a presumptuous chit. A nuisance. Still, there’s no real reason not to tell you, and it may gain me a little peace.”
I held out my hand to clasp his, making a bargain. I’d wanted to hear that story for a long time, but Queynt always seemed to evade telling me about it.
A difference in the sound of the wagon wheels rang in my ear. Paving. The talons of the krylobos scraped upon cobbles. Beside the wagon a sign. BLOOME WELCOMES YOU. Another, only slightly smaller. SHEBELAC STREET.
CHAPTER TWO
We rode on Shebelac Street, paved as far as the eye could see with glistening cobbles, shiny as turtle backs from the night’s rain. At either side were high, carved curbs, and above that, slabs of walk-stone, embellished with an incised serpent’s twist, to make them more interesting to walk on, I suppose. On either side of the walks, the houses and shops of the outskirts of Bloome were still quiet against the jungle in the dawn time, not bursting from doors and windows with banners and bells and drums as they would on the morrow.
It took us very little time to learn that five days before had been the procession of Jix-jax-cumbalory and that tomorrow would be Finaggy-Bum. It took us no time at all to learn that today the procession route would be announced, and every house and shop holder attentive in the forum to know whether he would need to spend the night getting ready or might sleep for once.
Those along the Forum Road, Tan-tivvy Boulevard and Shebelac Street had given up sleeping long since. All processions came to the Forum along one of those three and left by another of the same. A one-in-three chance of sleeping the night before procession meant less and less as the season picked up speed. Five days hence, we were told, would be Pickel-port-poh, with Shimerzy-waffle three days after. The cloth merchants would rise early. The banner makers not long after.
Tent and marquee manufacturers would be in their shops even as we rode. As I say, we were soon to learn all this. And more.
And in the high mansion upon Frommager Hill, reached from the Forum by the twisty peregrinations of Sheel Street, Dream Merchant’s man Brombarg—whom we were shortly to meet—woke in an unusually foul temper. Time had come to make a decision. Time to go on or get out, one or the other, and he couldn’t make up his mind. If he decided to retire, he’d need a naif to lay the job off on, and there weren’t any strangers in Bloome to choose from.
He rose, fuming, yawning, scratching his crotch with erotic insistence. (I am not certain about this, but it seems in character.) The
