And so the room was crowded, and Graden and his staff bustled hither and thither, bearing platters of food and trays of foaming mugs of ale from the Holt of Vorn and goblets of dark wine from Vancha.
Some in the audience were impatient, and many asked when the performance would get under way.
“In a candlemark or so,” someone said.
“Ar, is that one of the ‘old’ candlemarks, or one of High King Ryon’s ‘new’?”
That simple question started an argument among those gathered concerning the merits of the old versus the new, an argument hearkening back some seven years past to the time King Ryon had made it so:
It was after the end of the Dragonstone War that the boy King declared that beginning on Year’s Start Day, with the onset of the Sixth Era, there would be a new candlemark instituted, where four of the “old” candlemarks equaled just one of the new. He said that with this change, instead of there being ninety-six candlemarks in a full day, there would be only twenty-four. No one knew for certain why ninety-six marks from noon to noon had been chosen as the old candle measure in the first place, and there were several explanations-none of them satisfactory. Regardless, King Ryon set about to partition the day into more readily remembered divisions, and he decided on a four-to-one standard, for that would make it straightforward to institute, since the chandlers could simply alter their existing wares with a red mark every fourth one of the old. Slowly the new standard-twenty-four candlemarks in all-was accepted, but for the most hidebound. In reality, given the quality of the wax and wick, most candles burned at something between twenty-one and twenty-seven new marks in a full day.
But in the Black Dog, even as arguments over candlemarks continued, Graden Finster stepped upon the empty stage and called for quiet. When-but for some murmurs-relative silence fell, Finster announced: “My lords and ladies, sirs and madams, and soldiers and maidens alike, I present to you, all the way from the secret land of the Boskydells, the Incredible Pip and Marvelous Bink, and their travelling show: Fire and Iron!” Graden then made a wide-sweeping one-handed gesture to point up to the rafters, where lines had been strung, along with stationary bars crossing from beam to beam as well as trapezes lightly held up and back by fragile string tethers. And upon a joist high above in the shadows stood Pipper. And even as the crowd turned about and looked toward him, Pipper leapt out into the light and into empty space. Women screamed and men shouted, as the buccan hurtled through the air like a red flame, with yellow and orange streaming after, and it seemed the wee one would plummet to his death. But in the last instant he caught hold of a tethered bar and swung down and through a deep arc, then up to the rafters again, where he released the one only to catch another lightly tethered bar to swing down and just over the heads of the gasping onlookers. Up he sailed once more, to release and somersault through the air, and grab onto one of the fixed bars to whirl ’round and ’round. Then he dropped straight down and onto a tightrope and he ran across to leap to another. And all the while he looked to be a Warrow trailing fire, dressed in scarlet as he was, with a multitude of bright orange and yellow ribands streaming from the backs of his arms and legs, and his fair hair flying out behind. And he spun and whirled and leapt and swung, all scarlet and gold and saffron.
The crowd ooh ed and ahh ed and called out in fear for the wee one’s very life. And women fanned themselves and gasped, while men leapt to their feet and shouted.
But then Pipper swung on a line down and through and up, and he released to land on a rope tied from a high rafter on one end to slant down to the stage on the other. And he glided down to the platform, where he sprang outward in a high-flying leap and flipped through the air like a swirling blaze to land upon a large iron- colored chest painted with flames, a chest that had not been there when Graden made his announcement.
He came to rest and bowed to the crowd, to wild cheers and applause. And he bowed again and then once more, the cheers only growing as he did so. But then, of a sudden, there came a flash and a bang and a great puff of smoke. Some in the crowd shrieked in fear, while others reached toward their waists for a weapon. And when the smoke cleared, Pipper was gone, but high above and dangling upside down from the ceiling and wrapped in dark chains secured with locks slowly spun a Warrow dressed in iron gray. Two men rushed out from the wings, and they took up the chest and rushed off, while two more men, one of them Graden, at the end of a rope dragged a bed of long, gleaming spikes to place them directly below the trussed Warrow.
And even as the men exited, there came a Ping! and a large silvery link flew to clatter upon the stage, and the Warrow dropped toward the spikes, only to be jerked up short, having fallen some third of the way.
And as the Warrow slowly twisted like a fly strung up by a spider, “Look!” cried someone-Graden, it seemed. “Look at the silver rings above!” High over the Warrow, the dark suspension chain dangled in two remaining big loops, held together by two more large and glittery silver links among the dark rings of the chain, and one of the silver links was slowly giving way.
Ping!
The link parted and clanged down, and amid a rattle and clatter the Warrow dropped another third of the way toward the gleaming spikes below.
And up above, the gap in the last silver ring began to spread.
“Oh, please, please, get him out of there!” shouted someone, female it seemed.
Men stood, and some started for the stage.
But in that very moment, the Warrow began shedding locks and chains.
But the silver link gave even more, as chains cascaded from the Warrow to rattle down among the spikes.
“Hurry! Oh, hurry!” cried the voice.
The silver link yawned, and by only a slim finger held on.
But the Warrow was now free, and with white and black ribands swirling about him, the dark-haired, gray- garbed buccan began climbing the chain, even as the link finally failed, and the last loop fell.
The Warrow plunged toward the spikes.
Women screamed and looked away.
Men shouted in despair.
Chang!
The chain came to an end, and the Warrow swung safely just above the sharp points of the long and gleaming tines.
The hall exploded in relief, and Binkton swung out from over the spikes and dropped to the stage, and bowed to cheers and applause, and to the relieved tears of many.
After several more bows by Binkton, Pipper came out from the wings, and, as helpers dragged the spikes and chains away, Graden jumped up on the stage and called out, “There they are, folks, Fire and Iron.”
As Pipper and Binkton took more bows, Pipper said out of the side of his mouth, “You cut that one mighty close.”
“Pah, I would have landed in the safe spot, had anything gone wrong,” replied Binkton.
Before Pipper could reply, Binkton held up his hands for quiet, and when it fell, he called out, “Blindfold, please.”
Pud, in his moment of glory, rushed from the wings bearing a black cloth. And Fire and Iron began the second part of the act, with Pipper roaming through the crowd and holding up various objects donated by individual spectators and calling out for blindfolded Binkton to identify what it was. Binkton, of course, slowly hemmed and hawed and circled ’round the identity of the object-brooches, daggers, cloak pins, coins, swords, and other such-making it look as if he were struggling to simply discover with his mental abilities what the object was that he could not see, while all the time knowing by Pip’s coded responses exactly what it was.
Most of the folks in the Black Dog had never seen such an act before, though one or two soldiers in the audience had come across such in the past. Even so, they were amused by the patter of the Warrows, such as the time Pipper held up a bookkeeper’s quill for the audience to see, and Binkton declared that he thought it might be something smaller than a horse. The audience roared.
The next night, Pipper again performed daring acrobatic feats, leaping and turning and tumbling across the stage and through flaming hoops, and he juggled blazing firebrands that it seemed would burn him to a crisp.
And this time at the end of his act, when he did a series of backflips and landed on the trunk, after his bows, he reached down and pulled up a large piece of cloth all ’round, to immediately drop it, but it was Binkton who stood there instead.
As men started to carry the chest offstage, a man leapt to his feet and called out, “Ar, I’ll wager t’other Warrow is in the trunk.”
Binkton called for the chest bearers to stop and open it up and tilt it forward so that the patrons could see inside, and when they did, Binkton waved his hand through the space within and called out, “Are you in here, Pip?”
