Bloodmoon (The Scarlet Star Trilogy Book 2) (17 page)

‘Here we are,’ Yara announced, reaching the end of the spiral of cages. Just as before, the Shohari sat on a stool with his head in his hands. Merion could already hear Lurker growling in his throat. They must have missed this particular attraction last night.

Hearing the voices and footsteps, the Shohari looked up, and instantly bared his teeth at the woman standing by his cage door. He ignored the rest of them, even the young boy who had tried to set him free.

Merion had not noticed how thin he was in the dark. Now, in the light of day, he could see how the lithe muscle had sagged, and how the bones in his long limbs protruded a little more than they should have.

The Shohari hissed and shuffled to the back of the cage as Yara produced a key from somewhere in the folds of her skirts. She jiggled the lock, and there was a click as it sprang open. The Shohari now wore a confused, if not slightly fearful, look. Lurker stepped forwards with a gloved hand held high.

‘
Jah’na. Au me’te ansara
,’ he said softly.

Yara looked impressed. ‘You speak Shohari,’ she said, clapping a few spare fingers against an open palm. ‘How did you come to learn it?’

‘I’ve come across my fair share of them,’ Lurker muttered in reply.

The Shohari took a few tentative steps forwards and the others backed away. Yara opened the cage door wide and pointed towards the open desert. ‘You’re free,’ she said.

Lurker translated. ‘
O’sh alba teh
.’

‘Nobody will hurt you.’

‘
Neh na teh
.’

‘You’re free to go wherever you please.’

‘
Beh s’oh teh
.’

‘
Teh
?’ whispered the Shohari, his voice hoarse.

‘
Teh, mal roh
,’ Lurker urged him.

It seemed the Shohari needed no further encouragement. He sprang from the cage and ran as fast as his unused legs could carry him, breaking free of the draped cloth and back towards the west.

‘There,’ Yara said, looking between the three of them. ‘I hope that clears it all up. You were right, Merion.’

Of all the phrases Merion liked to hear, that one held a special place in his heart. ‘Well,’ he began. ‘I should hope so.’ He felt his aunt’s elbow nudge him. ‘And I’m sorry,’ he added, a phrase he did not care as much for. ‘For any inconvenience.’

Yara’s face broke into a wide smile, and she nodded. ‘No trouble. I shall have to find something new to bring the customers in.’

‘Well,’ Merion said, clutching for something to say. ‘I suppose that’s that then.’

‘We’d best be on our way,’ Lurker said. He was busy watching the Shohari disappear into the desert, quickly becoming a black fleck on the yellow sand. Whatever magic the circus had held for him had been soured. Like Merion, he stood awkward and unsure.

‘Won’t you stay for breakfast?’ Yara offered.

The body is a strange beast, so loyal and yet so capable of the easiest of betrayals: the trembling hand; the twitching eye; or, in Merion’s case, the rumbling stomach. The boy rolled his eyes as Yara smiled even wider. Her teeth were strangely white.

‘It sounds as though somebody is in agreement,’ she said, before striding out into the daylight, her skirts twirling, beckoning them to follow.

Merion looked at Lurker and Lilain, who both shrugged nonchalantly. Merion scowled at them as they began to walk. ‘You’re the one who wanted to travel with a circus, Nephew,’ Lilain reminded him.

‘Yes, but this circus? After that? And that woman is a strange one.’

‘We’ve all got a streak of strange in us, Merion, especially out here. Seems to me that we could be in good company for once.’

Lilain looked around at the circus folk, weaving between the tents and wagons. Merion had to agree with her. A bloodletting undertaker, a gold-sniffing prospector, and a bloodrushing orphan with a murderous faerie for a sidekick—what a strange group they made!

‘I suppose breakfast wouldn’t hurt,’ he relented. ‘But if it gets too strange, then we leave, do we all agree?’

‘I agree,’ Lurker replied. ‘Let’s see where this goes.’

And so it was decided. The three of them followed silently in Yara’s wake as she led them a merry path back towards the main tent.

Tables and benches had been stacked in rows on the sand and filled with folk. There must have been two score of them there, and as they entered, the busy conversations weakened to a curious whisper, before shuffling off their mortal coil altogether. Merion was already beginning to regret his decision when Yara strode forward, hands held up high.

‘Brothers and sisters,’ she announced. ‘We have visitors.’

Merion felt a little heat rising in his cheeks. Lurker was already trying to shuffle backwards. Yara turned and bade them come forward. ‘Welcome them as our own,’ she said.

An awkward smile spread across Merion’s lips.
Manners, manners, manners
, he told himself over and over. The crowd nodded and murmured a greeting before going back to their bowls and chatter. Yara led them to a few spare seats and then went to fetch them some food. Whatever it was, it smelled tantalisingly good. Merion’s stomach rumbled all the more. He patted it under the table, ordering it to be quiet.

At the other end of the table sat a man and a woman. The man had a long mop of dark hair on his head, and a face that was slowly being swallowed by a beard and a pair of tangled eyebrows. He was brawny, and the arms poking out from his shirt were a dark nut-brown and covered in thick black hair. A pair of thin spectacles balanced on his nose.

Merion nodded to him, and then went to do the same to the woman. Somehow he got stuck halfway, frozen in shock. The woman’s face and arms were also swamped with dark hair, and her beard—Merion had to look twice—yes, her beard could have vied with the man’s for bragging rights. The young Hark’s eyes were unable to tear themselves away. Twice that morning he had been betrayed by his body.

The man began to chuckle, and the woman winked knowingly. ‘Never had breakfast with a bearded lady, it seems,’ he chatted conversationally. His accent was thick and garbled, Prussian perhaps.

‘Er …’ Merion stammered. Bearded ladies were not your usual sight in London’s upper echelons. He wondered what his old etiquette tutors would have made of this occasion.

‘It’s alright, young man,’ the woman told him. ‘Stare all you like. Want to pull it, see if it’s real?’ She smiled and twirled some of the thick black hair of her chin around her finger.

Merion did. Merion really did, but something inside him told that would have been severely impolite. He shook his head, cleared his throat, and extended a hand instead. ‘It looks real enough,’ he said. ‘Merion Harlequin.’

Both the woman and man shook it, and Merion smiled as he tried to ignore the very odd feeling of hairy palms gracing his.

‘Sheen and Shan Dolmer. Brother and sister. Not husband and wife,’ said the man, Sheen.

‘That would be a little too strange,’ Shan tittered. Merion smiled politely.
Yes, because that would be the step too far
, he said to himself.

‘Lilain Rennevie.’

‘Lurker,’ came the other introductions. Lurker stared straight down at the worn table-top, picking his grubby nails, while Lilain looked on as if the woman’s bushy beard were invisible.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Sheen said. ‘Will you be staying with us long?’

‘Oh, no,’ Merion shook his head. ‘We’re just here for breakfast. At Yara’s request.’

The Dolmers swapped glances, as if the boy had just accidentally told a joke.

‘What?’ he asked.

Sheen twirled his spoon like a conductor warming up. ‘We came just for breakfast three years ago now. Haven’t left since,’ he said, with a smile.

Merion looked confused. ‘Are you not allowed?’

Shan tittered again. ‘Oh, no. We can leave whenever we want. What my brother is saying is that once you’ve tasted what we do here, you won’t want to.’

Merion flicked a glance at his aunt. She seemed to be making a habit of shrugging this morning. That was usually Merion’s answer.

‘Speaking of tasting, what is for breakfast?’ she asked, craning to peer into their bowls.

It was at that moment that Yara returned, cradling three steaming bowls in her arms. ‘Beans, with bacon too,’ she announced. ‘I hope you like that?’

Lurker grabbed his bowl so quickly he almost spilt it. If there was one thing in this world the prospector truly loved, it was a bowl of beans. And it had been far too long since he’d had some.

*

Merion’s head was so full of names and titles he was beginning to get a headache.

‘Meet Jackabo Boston, our resident fire-eater and more.’

‘This is Hoarse Hannifer, who’ll tell you your greatest fears before you even knew them.’

‘Itch Magrey, whose skin can tolerate more punishment than you can imagine.’

‘This is Cabele the Cat, acrobat and rope-walker.’

‘Nelle Neams, tamer of all sorts and our beast-keeper.’

‘Spetzig, a fellow from the old country, our clown, who can juggle anything you put in front of him.’

‘Mr Jacque, Francian and gentleman pickpocket.’

‘Kasfel, queen of the clowns and yet she never smiles.’

‘And Devan Ford, our best strongman—don’t want to challenge him to an arm-wrestle any time soon!’

‘Follust, a man of the Empire like you, who never forgets a thing.’

‘This is Rahan, from deepest darkest Indus, who can speak to cats big and small.’

‘Hashna, his young assistant.’

‘Miss Mien of Cathay, who has bones of jelly, it seems.’

‘Big Jud Jepson, who is the big man of the circus, the most obese fellow this side of the Red Palace.’

‘And I believe you already know the Dolmers?’

And my, were they a strange bunch. They were friendly of course, and interested in the newcomers, but odd to the core. The sort of odd only a career in a circus can spawn. The sort of odd that lingers just beneath the surface, flinching from the daylight. The sort of odd that only comes out at night, when the lanterns are fierce and the crowds are roaring.

They smiled and they chatted for a few minutes with each one, their eyes sneaking over their bright clothes and strange luggage, their tattoos and obvious talents; the muscled, corded arms of Devan; or the monstrousness of Big Jud, and the way he sweated buckets just talking. They were peculiar and yet they were alive in ways Merion could not quite yet fathom. Each talked differently, Each looked far-flung and different, as if their individuality had been painstakingly and intricately carved, each quality analysed and exaggerated.

The circus folk grinned the widest when talking about the circus, or how long they had known Yara, or the places they had seen. They painted Merion such a vivid picture he was almost exhausted by it. It was like trying to read ten books in an hour. By the end of it he felt dizzy.

Lilain and Lurker seemed happy with it all. Lurker was even gifted a pouch of tobacco by Jackabo, the tall and muscular fire-eater. The prospector packed a pipe in the blink of an eye, and spent a few minutes sharing it with the man, something Merion had never seen. Jackabo had blown smoke rings, and Merion had flicked them apart.

Merion smiled and shook their hands, receiving more than a few charcoal or grease smears in the process. There were plenty of others that they did not meet, and even though they nodded and waved, they did not pause to chat or learn names. Merion got the distinct impression they were being introduced to the core of the circus, its inner circle.

By the time they had spiralled around the main tent several times, and shaken far too many hands than Merion liked to think about, it was several hours past noon, and the circus was quickly vanishing before their eyes.

‘Our time is nearly at an end here,’ Yara said, as she kicked dust, absently strolling beside Merion, half a dozen paces behind Lurker and Lilain.

‘Then I guess ours is too.’ He felt a little unease growing in his chest, though for whatever reason, he hadn’t the faintest clue.

‘Where are you headed, might I ask?’

Merion told the truth. ‘We’re headed east, hopefully to Boston or New York to find passage back to London,’ he explained.

‘Going home, I take it?’ Yara licked her teeth again.

The young Hark nodded. ‘That’s right, back to my father’s house. Where I belong.’

‘Your father waits for you there?’

Merion mulled over that for a moment. ‘In his own way, I suppose he does,’ he replied, in a low voice.

‘My home is also over the sea, where the borders of the Prussian Kingdom meet those of the Rosiyan Empire.’

‘So you’re even further away than I am,’ Merion replied. It was boyish logic, but true nonetheless.

‘That I am, Master Harlequin,’ Yara said, and she gazed off into the distance, narrowing her piercing green eyes. ‘But I am making my way back slowly. Town by town, we are heading in the right direction. Many of us want to see the shores of our homes again– or in my case, the mountains, where the only way to catch a rabbit is with a dagger.’ Yara flicked her hand and there was a flash of steel as a dagger appeared between her fingers. Merion had to laugh. She winked at him. ‘That is how I learnt,’ she said, and with another flash of her hands, the dagger was gone.