Prince of Fools

“I was born this way,” he had said. Not unkindly, though I had stared at him as if he were a sin. His skull bulged as if overfilled, misshapen, like a potato.

He lay propped up in his bed, a jug and goblet on the table close at hand, lit by dusty sunlight. No one came to him in this high tower, just a nurse to clean him, and sometimes a small boy clambering through the window.

“Born broken.” Each sentence gasped between breaths. “I had a twin, and when we were birthed they had to break us apart. A boy and a girl, the first joined twins that weren’t both boys or both girls, they say. They broke us apart. But we didn’t break even. And I got . . . this.” He lifted a twisted arm as if doing so were a labour of Hercules.

He had reached out from his sheets—a grave shroud, that was what those sheets made me think—he had reached out and given me that locket, a cheap enough thing but with my mother’s picture inside, so fine and real you’d swear she was looking right at you.

“Garyus,” Taproot agreed, breaking a silence I’d not noticed.

I shook off the memory. “He’s well enough.” None of your damn business, I wanted to say, but when you’re far from home and poorer than church mice it pays to curb your pride. Garyus was the only one of them I had time for, really. He couldn’t leave his room. Not unless someone carried him. So I visited. Possibly it was the only duty I’d ever kept. “Well enough.”

“Good, good.” Taproot wrung his hands, squeezing out his approval, a pale wrestling of too-long fingers. “And Hauldr Snagason, how stands the North?”

“Cold, and too far away.” Snorri set down his empty cup, licking his teeth.

“And the Uuliskind? Still fair? Red goats for milk on the Scraa slopes, black for wool on the Nfflr ridges?”

Snorri narrowed his eyes at the circus-master, perhaps wondering if the man was reading his mind. “Have you . . . been to the Uuliskind? The Undoreth would remember a circus, and yet I’d never heard of an effelant before today. And that reminds me. I must see this beast.”

Taproot smiled: narrow, even teeth behind thin lips. He uncorked the rum again, moving to replenish our cups. “My apologies, but you can see how it is with me. I pry. I question. I devour travellers’ tales. I store each snippet of information.” He tapped his forehead. “Here. Watch me!”

Snorri took the little cup before him in his good hand. “Aye. Red goats on the Scraa, black on the Nfflr. Though none to tend them, most like. The black ships came. Dead things from the Drowned Isles. Sven Broke-Oar brought this doom upon us.”

“Ah.” Taproot nodded, steepled his fingers, pursed his lips. “He of the Hardassa. A hard man. Not a good one, I fear.” Pale hands shaped his opinion. “Perhaps the goats, the red and the black, have new herders now. Boys of the Hardassa.”

Snorri drank off his rum. He set his poisoned hand upon the table, the knife wound a livid and weeping slot between the tendons. “Mend me and you’ll have to change that tale, circus-master.”

“Of a certainty.” A quick smile lit Taproot’s face. “Kill or cure, that’s our motto. Watch me.” His hands moved around the Norseman’s, never touching, but framing it, following the line of the incision.

“Go to Varga’s wagon. The smallest, with a red circle upon the side. In the grouping close to the gate. Varga can clean a wound, pack it, stitch it. Best poultices you ever saw. Watch me! Even a sour wound may yield to them.”

Snorri stood, and I rose to go with him. It had become a habit.

“You might stay, Prince Jalan?” Taproot did not look up, but something in his tone kept me there.

“I’ll find you later,” I told Snorri. “Save you the shame of weeping before me when this Varga sets to his work. And watch out for that effelant. They’re green and like the taste of Vikings.”

Snorri answered with a snort and ducked out into the blinding brightness of the day.

“A fierce man. Watch me!” Taproot eyed the tent flap, swaying in Snorri’s wake. “Tell me, prince. How is it that you travel together? I didn’t imagine you as one for the hardships of the road. How is it that the Norseman hasn’t killed you for the pits or that you haven’t fled for your home comforts?”

“I’ll have you know I learned a sight more about hardship in the Scorron Heights than—” Something in the slow regret with which Taproot shook his head took the bluster from my sails. I feared if I mentioned my heroism at the Aral Pass, he might laugh at me. That’s the trouble with men who know too much. A sigh escaped me. “In truth? We’re bound by some enchantment. A damned inconvenient one. You wouldn’t happen to have a—”