Burning Bright

“There you are. It’s twenty real. Or we can make a trade.”

Roscha stopped, her hand on the purse inside her belt. “What trade?”

“You needn’t sound so suspicious,” Gelsomina said. “Are you going to watch the parade?”

“We were, yes,” Roscha answered, and despite Gelsomina’s words still sounded wary. Lioe grinned, and then wondered if she should be more cautious.

“I’d rather watch it from the Water, myself, with all the stock aboard,” Gelsomina went on, “and I wouldn’t mind having some younger bodies to help me get this cow down to the canal mouth. I’ll trade you each a mask, and bring you back to your club—is it Shadows you’re playing at? as close as I can get, then—before the session starts.”

Roscha relaxed visibly. “That would make life easier.”

Lioe shrugged. “Can we get back in time?”

“When is the session?” Gelsomina asked.

“Twentieth hour,” Roscha said, and looked at Lioe. “It shouldn’t be a problem. The parade starts at dark—seventeenth hour.”

Lioe glanced sideways, checking the time, and shrugged again, willing to let herself be overruled. “If you’re sure, why not? It should be worth seeing.”

“It always is,” Gelsomina answered. “There’s nothing quite like our Carnival, not anywhere in human space.”

Or anywhere at all, Lioe thought. Under Gelsomina’s instructions, she and Roscha stowed most of the masks and costumes that cluttered the decking in the storage cells that ran along the gunwales, but left the ones that lined the mast. Then Roscha freed the mooring lines while Gelsomina took her place in the steering well. Lioe, knowing nothing of boats, crouched beside the mast and waited to be told what to do. The motor coughed and caught, settled almost instantly to a steady purr. Roscha shoved them free of the embankment, and the barge swung out into the channel, heading toward the Inland Water.

The people on the banks were moving toward the Water, too, knots and groups of them in bright matching costumes, a few who walked alone, families with strings of children going hand in hand under an elder’s watchful eye. There were more boats on the canal, too, some smaller than Lioe had seen before, little more than a shell with a racketing motor slung over the stern, and, of course, the inevitable mob of gondas. A Lockwardens’ patrol boat moved silently through the crowd, its flashing light sending blue shadows across the water and along its own black hull. The civilian craft all carried bright lights at stern and bow—the littlest shells had handlights rigged to the motors—and even as Lioe noticed that, lights blossomed along the sides of Gelsomina’s barge. They were directed outward, shielded from the boat’s occupants, but Lioe could see their brilliance reflected in the water. It was a beautiful effect, the shape of the barge outlined in light, but she guessed it was as much precaution as decoration. There would be a lot of traffic on the canals tonight: it was a good time to be visible.

Horns sounded as they came up on the wide feeder channel that carried local traffic down to the Water, and Lioe jumped as Gelsomina sounded their own horn in answer. The barge swung over, stately, Roscha standing ready in the bow, boatpole in hand to fend off any unwary craft, and then Gelsomina had tucked them neatly into the line of traffic. The canal was jammed with barges and gondas, and here and there a bigger commercial boat—heavy barges and seiners in about equal numbers—loomed above the crowd, their sides dripping with strings of chaser lights. A heavy barge swayed past, set Gelsomina’s boat rocking in its wake, the strings of lights dipping into the water as it heeled over slightly to avoid a passing gonda. Its open deck was crowded with people of all ages, from babies in flotation suits to old men and women in support chairs. Families of the regular crews? Lioe wondered, but it was too noisy to ask.

Blatting one-note trumpets sounded from the walkways that lined the shore—children, mostly, carrying the brightly colored horns that were a full meter long, taller than some of the children who sounded them—and were answered by another clutch of children on the heavy barge’s deck. Other boats took up the sound, and Lioe covered her ears, wincing, until the boats had passed and the shore children had admitted defeat. People called to each other, their words drowned in the general din, and a man dressed all in bells danced on a bollard, the clanging all but inaudible as Gelsomina’s barge slipped past only a few meters from the wall. A disk of light swept across the crowd, and Lioe looked up to see the familiar shape of a hovering security drone scanning the crowd. The Lockwardens’ insignia was picked out in lights on its stubby wings. A cheer, ironic but not hostile, rose from the crowd as the light touched them.