How could that be? Look at him. Who wouldn’t pay to have him stand in a room and beautify their home?

  We went back to Vikor. Karish held out his hand with all the money we had in the world in his palm, and Vikor told us that while we didn’t have enough currency for two rooms, we could afford one. I didn’t know whether this was true or whether we were the recipients of pity. At that point I didn’t care. I was too scared to care about anything but being scared.

  We were shown to a small room with a huge window and no furniture aside from a mattress and a lantern. It smelled like dried grass.

  Karish insisted on sleeping on the floor. It didn’t matter much. The mattress serving as a bed was no thicker than the length of my thumb, and was laid directly onto the woven matting on the floor. We took advantage of the water sent up to wash off the grime of the day. Separately, one standing outside the room while the other bathed. And despite the early hour we blew out our candle and stretched out to sleep.

  Only I couldn’t sleep. How could I? We were deserted in a strange place with no means of support. What were we going to do?

  My breathing kept speeding up. Whenever I noticed this, I worked to smooth it out and slow it down, but as soon as I resumed thinking about our circumstances my breathing once more became fast and short. I couldn’t get comfortable; my muscles were clenched too tightly. After rolling over a few times I realized I was moving merely for the sake of moving, and I forced myself to lie still. While I didn’t feel the heat nearly as badly as Karish seemed to, it was too warm to be tossing about.

  Karish reached over and stroked my temple with his thumb. “We’ll be all right, Lee.”

  “I know,” I lied.

  I saw him smile. “Of the two of us, I actually mean what I say.”

  He would. But he was insane.

  “Honestly, Lee. It’ll turn out in the end.”

  “How?” I challenged him.

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “But it always does.”

  “Optimist.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” He continued to stroke my temple. The muscles along my back loosened despite themselves, worry swamped under fatigue.

  I fell asleep.

  I thought Vikor was generous with the amount of fruit and bread he sent up to us the next morning. It was more than needed to satisfy one person, which was all we had paid for. It was fruit like nothing I’d had before, bright and juicy and sweet. We freshened up with what was left of the water, and were almost—kind of—ready to face the day.

  Except for the lack of coffee. I wanted coffee.

  And, of course, the lack of money and of any hope of acquiring some.

  I couldn’t believe I was worrying about money. I was a Shield. I wasn’t supposed to have to do that.

  The performers were out again. So were the crowds, far thicker than they had been the day before. Perhaps the day before had been a work day for the villagers, while the current day was a rest day. To me it just meant more people to maneuver around, more people gawking at me, more people trying to paw at my hair.

  “I wonder,” Karish muttered, watching the contortionist.

  “What?”

  “Why don’t we ask them if they need any laborers?”

  “The contortionist?”

  “The troupe. Or circus. Whatever they are.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Do you not remember our dismal performance at the Hallin Festival?” Because I sure did. It was way up there as one of the most embarrassing events of my life.

  “Not as performers.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know,” he snapped with impatience. “But there’s no harm in asking.”

  True enough. And it wasn’t as though I had any ideas of my own. So we waited and watched the contortionist go through her routine, and I tried to be polite as I fended off the soft touches to my skin and hair.

  The contortionist, in time, stood upright for a moment, and we took that as a sign that she was done for a bit. The spectators tossed coins at her feet. Some of them moved on but many lingered, watching us. Apparently, the prospect of us speaking was a form of entertainment all its own.

  “Excuse me, my lady,” said Karish, flashing his brightest smile and dropping his voice about half an octave. “May I beg a moment of your time?”

  She looked at him with an amused smirk, lithe brown hand propped on her extremely bony hip. “First you take my speccies,” she said in the same thick, syrupy drawl of the roadkeeper, “and now you want my time?”

  Speccies? What the heck were those?

  Ah. Spectators.

  “Two such poor creatures as ourselves could never distract anyone from such a vision of beauty.”

  The woman, young and lovely, was entertained, but not, to my surprise, bowled over. There were some people immune to Karish’s charm. They were usually older, cynical, or jealous. This girl didn’t seem to fit the profile. She snickered. “Kai, charmer. What’s fly?”

  “I am,” he said after hesitating just a hair of a moment, “Taro Karish. This is Lee Mallorough. We’re strangers here.” She snickered again because, aye, obvious. “We are looking for work. Who do we speak to about such things?”

  “We travel, eh?” she said. “We’re here just a few days.”

  “That actually suits us.”

  The smile dropped off and her eyes narrowed. “Why?” she demanded, suddenly cold.

  Karish was surprised by the abrupt change in demeanor, but he rallied. “Because we need to get to another part of the island but lack the means to get there. If we can travel as we earn, it will be a benefit to us. Unless, of course, you’re traveling in the wrong direction.”

  The woman relaxed. She looked us over. Karish, she scanned fairly quickly, but her gaze lingered on me for a disturbing length of time. What, had I put my shirt on backward? She nodded. “Follow that road north,” she said, pointing. “Go left at the gray post. All the tents are there. Stop the first person you see and ask for Atara. Tell them Rinis sent you.”

  Karish gave her his biggest brightest grin, and she didn’t melt at all. Was she blind? “Thank you for your assistance, Rinis.”

  “Kai, kai.” She rolled her eyes. “Go, will you? You’re disturbing the speccies.”

  We thanked her again and moved away. Too many people moved with us. Were we really that strange to look at?

  Karish didn’t seem to notice, or didn’t seem to care. He took my hand and walked with a buoyant step. “She wouldn’t have sent us to this Atara if there were no hope of us finding work.”

  “Unless she finds pleasure in sending ignorant strangers to get their heads taken off by her irascible employer.”

  “Pessimist.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  We followed Rinis’s directions, which were simple and correct. They led us, as she had said, to a huge collection of tents. No tents like I’d ever seen. Brilliant colors, every one of them, various sizes but all of them with large flaps suspended far beyond the entrance of the tent. They all shaded what I supposed were chairs, low to the ground and comprised of thick poles of wood, held together by thick sections of cloth that served as the seat and the back, so people could sit outside yet remain shielded from the sun. Ribbons hung from the flaps, tokens I couldn’t identify tied to the ends. People sat in these chairs and watched us, a little wary but not overtly hostile.

  A group of children ran by us with a chorus of “Kiyo!” I recognized them as the group who had run past us the day before. That explained why they hadn’t been watching the performers with the rest of the villagers. It was all old news to them.

  Slightly older children were practicing the stunts I’d seen their elders performing. Wires and trapezes were lowered, the items juggled were neither sharp nor on fire, but the activities still seemed too dangerous for children to me. Especially as adult supervision was pretty lax.

  “Excuse me,” I said to a youth who appeared to be standing around doing nothing. “This is Shintaro Karish. I am Dunleavy Mallorough. A woman named Rinis suggested we talk to Atara.”

  He looked me up and down and grinned. Karish, he barely glanced at. What was with these people? The youth started walking and, assuming he was taking us where we wanted to go, we followed.

  The tent he took us to didn’t look significantly different from the others, but then I couldn’t find any tent in my sight that suggested a person of authority lived within. As soon as the youth was under the tent’s flap he was toeing off his sandals. “Ma!” he nearly shouted. “Got seekers here!”

  There was no response that I could hear, but that didn’t keep the boy from ducking into the tent. A moment or so later his head popped back out. “Come now,” he said to us with a trace of impatience.

  We quickly divested ourselves of our boots and followed him in.

  And damn that place was hot. I heard Karish gasp beside me. Over a dozen candles and lamps increased the temperature, and I felt the moisture accumulating on my face and under my arms. In the brutal light I was well able to see the colorful carpets stretched over the ground, hangings suspended from ceiling to floor in a bid to create rooms in the tent, and the occupant herself.

  She was scary looking. That was the first, juvenile word to pop into my head. And I wasn’t sure why, because she was also beautiful. She was tall and lean, with that hard, chiseled beauty middle age brought to some women. Her skin was a darker brown than the others I had seen, almost black. The weight of her black gaze when she glanced at me seemed to hit me like a blow to my stomach. Her stance and her movements and her very aura rang with intimidating confidence.

  Her skirt and her shirt, as scanty as everyone else’s, were brilliant red, each ear was filled with earrings, and a gaudy collection of chains and torques graced her throat and both wrists and ankles. She wore rings on every finger and—and this made me cringe with imagined discomfort—every toe.

  I was surprised to see such a blatantly strong woman wearing such an excessive amount of decoration. I was also surprised to realize that I had previously assumed competence and extravagant frippery were mutually exclusive concepts. Always fun to learn new things about oneself.

  She was standing by a small table. Most of the candles were arranged in a large square on its surface. Within the square was what looked like a map. It appeared to be a map of the island, though its shape was slightly different from mine and it had far more detail. The woman held a length of silver, laced through the bored center of a small white stone, suspended over the map. She was slowly moving the stone above the map, up and down, side to side. “Ah, she said, cocking her head to one side as she slowed her movements, shifting the stone at a slower and slower pace. Then she stopped. The stone rested in stillness for a moment. The next moment, the stone started spinning.

  Frowning, I looked up the length of silver to her fingers. They were utterly still. There was nothing about the woman to suggest how the stone might be spinning.

  The woman grinned, a glorious wide smile that filled me with sudden envy. A smile like that could halt conversations. “Harvest Moon,” she announced, grabbing the stone into her palm. “Tell Fin, will you, Ori?”

  “Yes, Ma,” and with another curious look at us the youth ducked out of the tent.

  The woman straightened, raking over first Karish and then me with those relentless eyes. “I am Atara,” she said, and I realized her accent, although there, was fainter than any I’d heard yet. “You are seeking work?”

  Ah. Seekers. Seeking work. Got it. There were some real interesting language ticks at play. “Yes, ma’am.” I introduced us, then added, “We are from High Scape. Have you heard of it?”

  “I have.” The woman pulled a small bag from a dresser by one of the “walls,” dropping the chain and stone into it. “The place is popular with the dark spirits.”

  “The…dark spirits?” Oh no.

  “It is a place of turmoil, is it not?”

  “I suppose one could say that.” Though not so much, recently.

  “So, dark spirits linger there. Obviously.”

  Obviously. If you’re the sort of nut to believe in dark spirits. I looked to her bared temples but saw no sun-shaped tattoos. I supposed, though, that one didn’t have to be a Reanist to be superstitious.

  I was hoping none of those thoughts were showing up on my face. The woman’s personal beliefs, provided they didn’t include plans to sacrifice my Source, were no business of mine. “We’re looking for family in Golden Fields.” That was the location of the Bryants, according to the information the Empress had given me.

  “Ah,” the woman said with satisfaction. “That explains it.”

  Cryptic babble. I hated cryptic babble. “Your pardon?”

  “I have been calling for direction for nearly an hour.” A languid hand waved over the map. “Never has it so long taken me. You enter my tent, and krechek, direction comes to me. It leads me to Harvest Moon, which lies in the direction of Golden Fields.”

  Coincidences. Had to love them. Those so inclined could make so much of them. On a positive note, they were heading in the right direction. That was something.

  “Have you tents?” the woman asked us.

  “I’m afraid not.” I hesitated to call her by her name. It seemed inappropriate to address a person of authority in so familiar a manner. But I didn’t know her proper title. “All we have is what you see.” Well, except for our boots, which were hopefully still waiting for us outside the tent.

  “Hm. I’m sure I can find someone willing to share.”

  “Excuse me?” Had I missed something? “Are you hiring us?” It couldn’t possibly be that simple.

  “When the spirits send me a good omen, I don’t send it away.” She rolled up the map with quick, efficient hands. “What can you do?”

  “Uh—” While I could admit to myself that I could do nothing, I preferred not having to say it out loud.

  She was looking me over again. I wondered if this was how a horse felt. “You will perform. You have beauty.” While I was trying not to swallow my tongue over that pronouncement, she turned her critical eye on Karish. “You are plain. I will find handwork for you.”

  Karish’s initial response to that was nothing more than the widening of the eyes.

  Plain? Karish? Was plain? Was the woman blind? Yes, Karish wasn’t at his best. But it was obvious once he was back in full health he would be stunning. Any fool could see that.

  The woman’s face softened from the clinical scrutiny she had been employing. “Your forgiveness, please.” She dipped her head a little. “Your shoulders are square. I thought straight speaking would not dim you.”

  It wasn’t the straight speaking so much as the wrongness of the straight speaking. Look at him. Do you not have eyes? And who in the world thought I was beautiful, when they were sober?

  “No offense is taken, ma’am,” Karish said faintly. He was blushing. And suddenly I found myself wondering what the Stallion of the Triple S, toasted for his beauty, felt upon hearing that someone thought him plain. Not even his most jealous detractors could deny he was beautiful. “It is only that such a comment is not common where I come from. It surprised me.”

  I’d wager it did.

  “And I would be happy to perform any handwork you can find for me.”

  The woman nodded, momentary awkwardness forgotten. “You have no gear and, what, no training?” We had to nod at that. “No decent clothes?”

  That all depended on one’s definition of decent, didn’t it? “We have no clothes like we’ve seen on people here,” I said.

  “They’re all like those?” She gestured at us and curled her lip at what she saw.

  Hey, one of my shirts paid our road tax, woman. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “They are ugly.” More straight speaking. “And looking at you makes me feel hot. You cannot wear them.”

  “We’d rather not, but…” How to say this without annoying our new desperately needed employer. “I couldn’t comfortably wear the clothes you all wear here.” The short short skirts, the clinging tops. I’d feel naked. And ridiculous.

  She waved that thought away. “You’ll learn.” She bit on a red-colored fingernail, looking me up and down as she circled me. I did not like that.

  “Can you sing?”

  “Not really.”

  “Dance?”

  “No.”

  “Well—” said Karish.

  Atara looked at him. “Yes?”

  “She can dance the benches.”

  Well, aye, but that wasn’t what she meant.

  Or perhaps it was, for her eyes lit up. “You dance benches? Are you professional?”

  “No.” And the light disappeared. “But I’m a Shield. We dance the benches a lot.”

  “And she’s good,” Karish added eagerly. “She’s beaten professionals.”

  “Our circuits here are poor compared to the North lands,” Atara mused. “Real skill will impress. With that hair—” I almost touched my hair at that. What was so great about my hair? It was red. “And a decent costume.” She snapped her fingers. “Music. Not the regular drums. Change the music. Some sand singers. You dance at night. Under the pull of the moon. We’ll put silver and copper bobs in your hair and they will reflect the torchlight. Make it less of a sport. But, oh! We can offer a challenge—if you really are that good—after they’ve seen you dance they can pay to dance against you.”

  It was a bit alarming to hear all those ideas coming out of her mouth. The pull of the moon? Bobs in my hair? What? “What do they win if they beat me?”

  She shrugged. “The pleasure of knowing they beat you. All they are paying for is the right to dance with an exotic beauty of the night.”

  I didn’t like that. It sounded perverted.

  Atara moved some of the candles, placing three of them in the center of the table. From a basket on the floor, she retrieved something wrapped in dark cloth. It turned out to be a small loaf of bread, thinner and darker than what I was used to.