Heroes Adrift (12 page)

Hardly Fare There was the next settlement along the road. Strangely enough, I was even more nervous upon entering it than I had been Shade Valley. Because, really, what were the chances that this village would be as superstitious as the last one? I was really going to have to perform that night.

As soon as we stopped, Karish took off to help unload the wagon. I had nothing to do. I stretched out on the ground in the shade cast by our tent, and earned some sounds of disapproval from the islanders. It was too hot to lie inside the tent, so they could just not look if they found it so disturbing. What was wrong with these people anyway, that they could prance around practically naked but found it immoral to lie on the ground?

I dribbled some water on my face. Rather than providing any relief, it seemed to make my skin sizzle.

Why did this place have to be so hot? I wondered whether any of these people had ever had a properly cold drink. If they knew what cold even felt like.

Snow. I missed snow.

But then I noticed someone standing over me. I didn't like it. I opened my eyes. It was Karish. “Back already?”

“You've been sleeping all this time?”

“I suppose so.” I noticed the sunlight was much softer. “I'm a lazy wench.” I sat up.

“You'll burn.”

I hoped not. I didn't need yet another thing to feel irritated about.

He sat beside me on the ground. “You have to dance tonight,” he said. “In front of other people, I mean.”

“Aye.” I preferred not to think about it until I absolutely had to.

“Are you nervous?”

“Aye.”

He looked surprised. What, had he thought I wouldn't admit it? Or that I didn't even feel it? Of course I was nervous. Anyone would be nervous.

“It is important to you that I watch?”

Damn it. I had been trying to avoid thinking about that. When I was honest with myself, I admitted I really wanted him there. I didn't want to be out there, dancing, exposing myself in front of all those strangers, with no one there who knew who I really was. But there was still that part of me that dreaded him seeing me do this ridiculous thing, this dance. My pride cringed at it.

“You don't want me there?” Karish asked in a neutral voice.

“It's not like proper bench dancing, Taro,” I said. “I feel so foolish when I do it.” Not entirely true. I felt foolish before I started doing it, and after I stopped doing it. While I was doing it, I kind of forgot what I must look like to others. “I look so stupid. I'd rather not have you see me like that.”

For a few moments, he just pressed his lips together and appeared to think about that. I didn't immediately recognize that he was trying to keep from smiling. “You're worried about looking foolish, what a shock,” he snickered.

“Oh, shut up.”

“It's only me, Lee. Is that the only reason you don't want me there?”

“Aye. And, because, bench dancing isn't your interest. If you don't think it's laughable, you'll probably find it boring.”

“I never found bench dancing boring, Lee. Just sometimes the tournaments go on a little long. And it's not my choice for gambling.”

“This isn't bench dancing. It's a horrible, ridiculous perversion of it.” With costumes and cosmetics. And people throwing coins at me. If I was lucky.

“Lee,” he said, sounding patient. I hated it when he sounded patient. “Do you want me there or not?”

I looked down at my clenched hands. “I want you there,” I muttered.

“Fine,” he said tonelessly. “Then I'll be there.”

He couldn't have sounded more disinterested if he'd practiced.

Most of the others, after resting briefly and eating, left the camp to set up their performances by the street. The children went out seeking age mates. Karish left me to fetch and carry for anyone who needed it. I was forbidden by Kahlia to oversee the setup of my performance area, as I might be seen by a potential “speccy.”

A large part of me was hoping someone would come back and tell me the residents of Hardly Fare There refused to be exposed to Atara's curse. Or that it was the wrong phase of the moon to have strangers within the town limits. Or that no one wanted to have to look at those hideous Northern freaks. Anything to get out of performing. Because I really really really didn't want to do it.

I briefly considered breaking my own leg. Except that it would hurt. And it would make traveling a nightmare.

I would have been happy going on as we were. Just walking from place to place, wearing borrowed clothes and eating donated food. Because really, how different was that from the usual life of a Shield?

Except that the food had run out. And if I didn't get any coins that night, there would be no food tomorrow. None. I just couldn't believe it. What if I was terrible? What if I got nothing? What would we do?

Well, I, for one, wasn't going to panic. At least, not until it actually happened.

Once the heat became a little less stifling, I gathered some water from the stream and washed the sweat from my skin. I went through my routine in my head. I thought about chewing my nails.

And then Kahlia came, bearing an armload of stuff. “Time to get ready,” she announced cheerfully.

I looked up at the sun, past its zenith but still high in the sky. “I thought I wasn't supposed to start before dark.”

She tsked, kicking off her sandals. “My, but you learn slow, Leavy-kin. It takes time to prepare. Shall we go in?”

I wasn't thrilled to be in the tent when the sun was still up. Even with the flaps up to let in fresh air, it was a stifling place, made worse by the lighting of candles.

“You really are spending a lot of time on this,” I said. It could be interpreted as an expression of gratitude. It was really more of a question. She was always there.

“I am moved not only by pure spirit.” She grinned. “If they love you, it flows over. More will come to see me and Corla and the others. You are strange and beautiful and word will carry before us to the next village and the one after that. If all is good people will hear of you in Center Circle long before we reach there, and everyone will want to see you and, also, us.” She knelt on the mat and started laying things out, producing lines of bowls, tiny corked pots, and short sticks of various colors. “There is only one first night, and it must go right.”

“No pressure,” I muttered.

“Change into your costume.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

While I was changing into the ridiculous, scanty outfit I hadn't gone near since it had been assembled, my tormentor was mixing pastes and lining up small colored sticks. “Spirits!” she hissed. “You haven't sewn the beads on.”

Oh. I looked down at the plain brown garments I was barely wearing and shrugged. “I don't know how to sew.”

Her eyes widened in shock. “You can't sew!” She sounded scandalized.

“Of course not.”

“What do you mean, of course not? What do you do when you lose a button?”

“I leave the shirt at the haberdashery and have them sew it on.” Or, more likely, simply got a new shirt.

“Can't you do
anything
?”

Back in my own sane, comfortable world, I wouldn't have felt the need to glare at her. Roll my eyes, certainly, but not glare. Here, however—“I am a Shield.” And that meant plenty, thank you very much.

She sniffed. “That's no use here.”

Oh aye. Then why was someone out there channeling?

“It's too late to do anything about it now. Sit down.”

I frowned, as I didn't care for her brusque tone, but I sat. “Did you play your games today?”

“You mean my shells?”

“Aye.”

“Of course.”

“Did you do well?”

“Well enough. It's always better on the second day.”

So it wasn't a poor day's earning that had her in her little mood. I didn't know where else to safely prod, and I realized for all her constant presence and her brutal honesty, I really knew very little about her.

And that was because we always talked about me, when we were together. My past, my dancing, what was wrong with my personality. I should make more of an effort to turn things around, so there would be more discussion about her.

The problem was that it would be an effort. Just being around her took work. I felt like I had to be so careful about what I said, to spare myself the blasts of her honesty.

“I'm going to put this on your skin,” she said then, holding out a small bowl of unpleasant-looking, opaque paste. “On your face, arms, shoulders and legs. It's to prevent your cosmetics from running.”

“Ah,” I said. Wasn't really looking forward to having that rubbed all over my skin. It looked vile.

She was quick but thorough as she spread the paste on my limbs. The paste turned out to be odorless and, while slightly greasy, not at all uncomfortable. In fact, it felt nice to have her spreading it on, her fingers light but slightly calloused, giving her touch a pleasant friction. It relaxed me.

“You'll have to sit still for this next part,” she warned me, wiping her hands off with a cloth. She picked up one of the small sticks.

She was working near my eyes. Joy. But the end of the stick was soft, her grip on my chin was gentle and sure, and her use of the stick was confident and careful as she drew along my eyes. The other stick was for my lips, an odd dark brown color that I couldn't think would look attractive. But what the hell, she was engineering the whole look. I had to trust her. I supposed.

Then there was another bowl. Another paste, orangey, sort of, and it glittered. “Now this is going to be fun,” Kahlia promised with a grin.

“What is it?”

“Your tattoos.”

“No tattoos,” I objected promptly.

“Only for a night, silly Shield.”

She said the word strangely. Not quite derogatory. Not with any sort of respect. Almost like she was trying to tease but, not having any real idea what a Shield was, missing the mark.

She dipped her finger into the paste, then drew her index finger down my nose.

“Do we really need to be drawing attention to my nose?” I asked.

“Hush, you foolish child,” she chided me in a low, gentle voice.

Next, just over my eyebrows, along the cheekbones, and over my jawline. She lightly tapped the tip of her pinky over my lips. She dipped into the bowl again and spread more of the cool mixture over my throat, along the jugular, and then following the line of my collarbones.

The paste was cool on my skin. The silence of the tent was soothing to my ears. I couldn't help relaxing a little. It was almost, almost, comfortable enough to make me drowsy.

The next step in the process was more artistic use of the paste, swirling it in coiling lines down my arms and legs, over my stomach and the back of my shoulders. This took a while.

“Are you nervous?” she asked.

For some reason, the question I had no difficulty with from Karish irritated me mightily coming from her. “I have been bench dancing most of my life,” I informed her coolly. “I won't let you down.” I hoped.

“You'll do better than that,” she said, drying the paste on my skin by waving a fan over it. “You'll steal everyone's breath tonight. Everyone who sees you will fall in love with you. If they haven't already.”

Something in her warm tones made me shiver.

I didn't want anyone to fall in love with me. That never ended well.

“Look,” she said, fanning that last bit of paint. She moved a couple of candles around, then took one of my hands and drew my arm out.

It was a shock. Glittering flames seemed to writhe over my arms and legs. With an expression of pride, Kahlia handed me a mirror. Wide green eyes, dramatically curving lines surrounding them, stared back at me. My lips seemed full and the lines of glitter over my cheekbones, jawline, throat and collarbones gave them a strange emphasis they lacked in the everyday.

The whole image looked uncomfortably bizarre. Like a caricature of myself.

“Imagine meeting her as a stranger,” Kahlia whispered. “For the first time, this is what you see.”

And at her words, it was as though my perceptions just flipped over. A grotesque perversion of me became a stranger, a glorious exotic stranger of flair and drama. Wide-eyed and vibrant and absolutely stunning.

I couldn't believe that was me.

I was gorgeous.

I'd never been gorgeous before. It made me feel strange. Not in a bad way, though. “Gods, Kahlia.” I reached up to touch a cheekbone.

“Ah ah. Wait 'til it dries.” With a thumb and forefinger she caught my wrist and kept my hand from my face. She was beaming. “I'm only showing what there is, to those too blind to see on their own.”