Mark Lawrence - Prince of Fools

“Yes?”

“It’s quite possible, my friend, that we’ll both have had our lives saved by a big pile of shit.” I turned towards the retreating old man. “Hey!” I hollered down the road at his back. “Where’s the circus?”

The ancient didn’t pause but simply extended a bony arm towards an olive-studded ridge to the south.

“Circus?” Snorri asked, still transfixed by the dung pile.

“You’re about to see an elephant, my friend!”

“And this effelant will cure my poisoned hand?” He held the offending article up for inspection, wincing as he did so.

“Best place to get wounds seen to outside a battle hospital! These people juggle axes and burning brands. They swing from trapezes and walk on ropes. There’s not a circus in the Broken Empire that doesn’t have half a dozen people who can stitch wounds and with luck an herbman for other ailments.”

A sidetrack turned from the road a quarter of a mile on and led towards the ridge. It bore evidence of recent traffic, and large traffic at that-the hard-baked ground scarred by wheel ruts, the overhanging trees sporting fresh-broken branches. On cresting the ridge we could see an encampment ahead: three large circles of wagons, a scattering of tents. Not a circus set up to entertain but one on the move and enjoying a rest stop. A dry-stone wall enclosed the field where the travellers had camped. Such walls were common in the region, being as much a place to put the ubiquitous chunks of rock that the soil yielded as they were a means of containing livestock or marking boundaries. A sour-looking grey-haired dwarf sat guarding the three-barred gate at the field’s entrance.

“We already got a strongman.” He eyed Snorri with a short-sighted squint and spat an impressive amount of phlegm into the dust. The dwarf was the kind that resemble common men in the size of their head and hands, but whose torsos have been concertinaed into too small a space, their legs left thin and bandy. He sat on the wall cleaning his fingernails with a knife, and his expression announced him more than happy to stick strangers with it.

“Come now! You’ll offend Sally!” I remonstrated. “If you’ve already got a bearded lady I can scarce believe she’s as comely as this young wench.”

That got the dwarf’s attention. “Well, hello, Sally! Gretcho Marlinki at your service!”

I could feel Snorri looming behind me in the way that suggested my head might get twisted off in short order. The little fellow jumped from the wall, leered up at Snorri, and unhitched the gate.

“In you go. Blue tent inside the circle on the left. Ask for Taproot.”

I led on in, thankful that Gretcho was too short to pinch Snorri’s backside or we might be owing this Taproot for a new midget.

“Sally?” the Norseman rumbled behind me.

“Work with me,” I said.

“No.”

Most of the circus folk were probably sleeping out the noon heat, but a fair number worked at assorted tasks around the wagons. Repairs to wheels and tack, tending animals, stitching canvas, a pretty girl practising a pirouette, a heavily pregnant woman tattooing the back of a shirtless man, the inevitable juggler throwing things up and catching them.

“Utter waste of time.” I nodded at the juggler.

“I love jugglers!” Snorri’s grin showed white teeth in the cropped blackness of his beard.

“God! You’re probably the sort that likes clowns!”

The grin broadened as if the mere mention of clowns were hilarious. I hung my head. “Come on.”

We passed a stone-walled well beyond which, away down the slope, a scattering of headstones stood. Clearly generations had used this place to pause their travels. And some had never left.

The blue tent, though faded almost to grey, proved easy to spot. Larger and cleaner and taller than the rest, it stood centrally and sported a battered painted sign outside on two posts.

Dr. Taproot’s famous circus

Lions, tigers, bears, oh my!

By appointment to the Imperial Court of Vyene

Since knocking is difficult with tents, I leaned in towards the entrance flap and coughed.

“. . couldn’t just paint some stripes on the lion?”

“. .”

“Well, no. . but you could wash them off again before that?”

“. .”

“No, it’s been a while since I last gave a lion a bath, but-”

My second, more theatrical cough, caught their attention.

“Come!”

And so I ducked, Snorri ducked lower, and we went in.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the blue gloom within the tent. Dr. Taproot I judged to be the skinny figure seated behind a desk, and the more substantial form leaning over at him, hands planted firmly on the papers between them, must be the fellow objecting to bathing lions.

“Ah!” said the seated figure. “Prince Jalan Kendeth and Snorri ver Snagason! Welcome to my abode. Welcome!”

“How the hell-” I caught myself. It was good that he knew me. I’d been wondering how to convince anyone that I was a prince.

“Oh, I’m Dr. Taproot, I know everything, my prince. Watch me!”

Snorri passed me and snagged an empty chair. “Word gets around. Especially about princes.” He seemed less impressed than I was.

“Watch me!” Taproot nodded, birdlike, a sharp-featured head on a thin neck. “Message-riders on the Lexicon Road carry gossip along with their sealed scrolls. And what a story! Did you truly jump an arctic bear, Mr. Snagason? Do you think you could jump one of ours? The pay’s good. Oh, but you’ve injured your hand. A hook-knife, I hear? Watch me!” Taproot’s chatter came so rapid and moved so fast that without your full attention the flow of it would hypnotize you.

“Yes, the hand.” I latched onto that. “Have you a chirurgeon? We’re light on funds”-Snorri scowled at that-“but I’m good for credit. The royal coffers underwrite my purse.”

Dr. Taproot offered a knowing smile. “Your debts are the stuff of legend, my prince.” He raised his hands as if trying to frame the enormity of them. “But fear not, I am a civilized man. We of the circus do not let a wounded traveller go untended! I shall have our sweet Varga see to the matter presently. A drink, perhaps?” He reached for the desk drawer. “You may go, Walldecker.” He shooed away the scar-faced man who had stood in silent disapproval through our conversation. “Stripes! Watch me! Good ones. Serra has black paint. See Serra.” Returning his attention to me, he fished out a dark glass bottle, small enough for poison. “I have a little rum. Ancient stuff from the wreck of the Hunter Moon , dredged up by scallop men off the Andoran coast. Try it.” He magicked three tiny silver cups into being. “I’m always one to sit and chat. It’s my burden. Watch me. Gossip runs through my veins and I must feed the habit. Tell me, my prince, is your grandmother well? How is her heart?”

“Well she’s got one, I suppose.” I didn’t like the man’s impertinence. And his rum smelled like the stuff the herbmen rub on chilblains. Now that I had a chair under my arse and a tent about me and my name and station recognized, I began to feel a little more my old self. I sipped his rum and damned him for it. “Don’t know anything about how it’s ticking, though.” The idea of my grandmother suffering any frailties of the flesh seemed alien to me. She’d been carved from bedrock and would outlast us all. That was how Father had it.

“And your elder brothers, Martus, isn’t it, and Darin? Martus must be coming up to twenty-seven now? Yes, in two weeks?”

“Um.” Damned if I knew their birthdays. “They’re well. Martus misses the cavalry, of course, but at least he got a damn chance at it.”

“Of course, of course.” Taproot’s hands were never still, plucking at the air as if snatching scraps of information from it.