The Children of the Sky

The crowd was hooting laughter. Maybe nervous laughter. The prince’s private box was draped in deep acoustic quilting that might double as a form of armor. Guard and servant packs stood all around the box, but the interior was as dark as a cave. Pure this prince might be, but he did not project amiable lightness. Ritl didn’t seem to notice, and her boldness was rewarded. Ravna saw three bejeweled heads move into the fading daylight. There were other heads too, but still in the shadows. The prince boomed a response to Ritl, who preened and blathered some reply. Now the crowd’s laughter seemed more natural; Prince Purity too was playing to the audience. Ravna recognized the rippling of his heads as a mocking bow. Everyone but Ritl could see Screwfloss’ leash-carrier sneaking up the steps behind her.

The crowd hooted even louder when Screwfloss pounced and then dragged the arrogant singleton back down the steps. Screwfloss shambled once more around the square, bowing this way and that. Ritl was dragged part of the way, complaining loudly. Ravna made a note to check the beast for cuts and bruises. This was conventional local humor, but Ravna Bergsndot wouldn’t use such excuses.

Then Screwfloss was running back toward the circus pavilion, Ritl racing ahead of him. As she passed into the shadows, the singleton let out an impudent squeak and dived toward Amdi. The eightsome shrank away, and she honked singleton laughter.

“Damned animal!” Amdi said sotto voce. He slid the last of the wooden tines onto his paws, and pranced into the open. The sky was heavily overcast, so there was no risk in using the lamps: the spotlight tracked the Magnificent’s progress toward center stage. The light sparkled and coalesced, synthesized from emitters that Jefri and Amdi had mounted along the top edges of the pavilion. For pre-tech creatures such as this audience, the dissociation of lightsource from light was magical. Amdi was always careful to claim that without special knowledge, the gadgets were useless. That was close to the truth, though the control interface was pretty intuitive. So far no one besides Screwfloss-as-Idiot had tried to steal the lights, and Screwfloss’ attempt was a gag routine in which he made off with pseudo-sources that turned out to be kherhog patties.

The high point of the show was still the performance of the “clever singletons.” That was Jefri and his juggling, then Ravna and her rope tricks, and finally some bogus spelling tests intended to impress those who insisted that intelligence meant more than juggling and knot tying. As usual, Jefri got the most attention, though Ravna’s act now included a simple lasso trick. She walked around the square, followed by the spotlights and a sound show from Amdi. She got near enough to the front row packs that they could hear the silence of her mind, and see the awesome flexibility of her hands. As always, there was the goggling surprise of such first encounters, the combination of amazement and uneasiness and interest.

Then Ravna came to Prince Purity’s box. The guards below it were a sharp-eyed bunch. When they looked up at her teetering height, jaws twitched crossbows. No lasso flicking at these fellows. Ravna stepped back and played to the prince in his box. The three crowned heads came forward, and after a moment, another appeared with a puppy on its shoulders. The pack was saying something, complimenting her? Maybe not. One of him was looking back, into the darkness of the box. It was almost as if there was some other pack in there. Who could be so close?

She rose up on the balls of her feet, trying to get a better view into the dark. What if it’s a human back there? With that thought, she lost her balance and control of the lasso. She hopped around, trying to make it all look like part of the act.

“You okay?” Jefri’s voice was a shout from across the square.

“Yes!” She didn’t dare say the truth. Maybe there’d been no humans on that airship because Nevil’s gang had already landed here—and they were here, now!

Ravna danced away from the prince’s box, but now she was seriously distracted. She stumbled on her rope a couple more times, and even botched some of Amdi’s spelling questions.

Finally, thank the Powers, Amdi segued into the finale, the pseudo-impromptu invitation for the audience to come down and be introduced “paws-to-tentacles” to the marvelous creatures from beyond the sky. Prince Purity said something from his box, and the packs queued up for the privilege. These people were more orderly than any they had run into before. Maybe it was the armed guards that materialized from the side streets. There were more of those than they had seen before, too. Prince Purity’s operation looked more like tax collection than salesmanship.