Atara held the loaf over the candles, close enough to the flames that I had to wonder if it stung a little. She broke off a chunk and looked at me. I took the chunk from her. She broke off a second chunk, which was given to Karish. Breaking off a third chunk, she took a bite, so we did, too. The bread was dense and almost sweet.

  “Welcome to our cause,” she said. Then she looked at me, obviously expecting a response.

  When in doubt, go with “Thank you.”

  “We are honored,” Karish added when Atara looked at him.

  “Excellent,” said Atara, and she put the remainder of her bread on the table. So we did the same.

  “Come, we will see how good you are.”

  “Now?” Swallow down panic. “Really, ma’am, I am so far from my best right now. I didn’t dance during our voyage here—”

  “People are never at their best.” Atara grabbed my wrist, and I was too shocked to resist when she pulled me out of the tent. “People are always tired or ill or angry or grieving. You still must be able to perform.” She hesitated only long enough to pull on her footwear and allow Karish and I to do the same.

  Hell. I was tired. I’d obviously come from a great distance. She expected me to work tonight? Maybe this was a bad idea after all.

  “Ashti!” Atara called, and a young girl, about eight years old, came running up. “Fetch Fin, Panol, Setter and the drummers. Tell them to meet us on the practice grounds. Tell Panol to bring the dancing bars with him.”

  “Yes, Ma.” The girl ran off with a ridiculous amount of energy.

  Atara headed off in the direction of where I’d seen the children practicing earlier. “We will gather together what supplies we can for you, but that will mean that you are in our debt.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. I didn’t want to end up being indentured to these people. This was the only positive response we’d gotten, so maybe we had no choice. Still, not good.

  “I don’t pay you any coin. What you get from the speccies is what you get. A tenth of every taking comes to me, and if the tenth doesn’t equal at least five grays for each performance, we leave you.”

  I guessed good omens got only so much leeway.

  “Excuse me, Atara,” Karish said. “Is there someone I can speak to about finding what kind of work I can do?”

  What? He wanted to desert me? At this time?

  “Fin. He’ll be with us.”

  “Oh.” Karish frowned.

  What was the problem? Or maybe he just didn’t want to witness the horrific performance I was going to be putting on. Must be awful knowing someone else’s efforts were going to determine something so important. Then again, I’d trade places with him in a heartbeat. Why was I always the one who had to make a fool of herself?

  I was out of condition. I was wearing the wrong clothes. And while I wasn’t suffering from the heat to the same extent Karish was, it was unnaturally warm. And then, when a small group of men arrived, apparently the chaps the child had been sent to fetch, they had dancing bars, but no benches.

  “We have no benches,” Atara told me when I asked her about it. “We have the bars because sometimes Rinis uses them for her performances, but we’ve never had benches.”

  “I need the benches to stand on.”

  “The ground will suffice.”

  Spoken like someone who has never danced the benches. I hadn’t danced from the ground since I was a child, first learning to dance. Dancing from the ground was awful. Uneven and broken and more punishing on the feet. Plus it was supposed to be part of the challenge, making sure you landed back on the benches well enough to leap again.

  I pulled off my boots—no chalk to be seen—and retied my hair so it would survive the bouncing. I did a few warm-up jumps and stretched.

  This was going to be bad. Bad bad bad bad bad.

  And then a gorgeous mountain of a man—I was told his name was Leverett—began rattling rolls off his tall, narrow drum, and my breath hitched. The vibrations rolled down my back, loosening each notch, before shimmering low in my spine. That helped.

  Panol, who turned out to be Atara’s son, and Setter assured me they had seen enough bench dances to know how to handle the bars. Wasn’t that heartening? I didn’t point out that they were using only two stalkers for handling only two bars, when there were supposed to be four of each. I didn’t want to come out of this with a shattered ankle. That would really be inconvenient. Two bars were safer.

  As Leverett fiddled with his drum I tried to focus on the beats he produced and pull them into me.

  I loved music. Whoever had invented it should be worshipped as a god.

  People were wandering close to watch. Wasn’t that just lovely?

  Then Atara raised her eyebrows at me. That let me know she was impatient for me to get started. I walked over to where the men crouched with two rather beaten and cracked bars and assumed the start stance, standing as though I had two benches beneath my feet.

  The men looked at Leverett rather than me for the cue to start. Which would have been normal in a competition but worried me right then. Fortunately, they started with the bars low and they moved them tentatively. They were afraid of hurting their hands as they smacked the bars together. Lifting my feet out of danger was easy enough, but predicting the movement of the bars was impossible.

  “You need to move to a beat, gentlemen,” I reminded them. If I couldn’t predict where the bars were going to be, I couldn’t dance.

  They improved immediately, moving with the music. Which wasn’t exactly how it was supposed to work, but I wasn’t going to complain about having both the aural and visual cues.

  It was nice to stretch out and work the muscles. Leverett was a good drummer, and the movement of the bars was so slow and low I could close my eyes for brief snatches and just feel the gorgeous rolls against the surface of drum.

  It would be too easy to let things continue at this easy pace. It wouldn’t impress Atara. “Could we speed things up, gentlemen?” I called out. “Raise the bars just a little higher.”

  Leverett obligingly segued into a gorgeous allegro. The other men raised the bars, but not by much, and moved them with the music.

  That was better. Muscles moved into well-remembered patterns. The drumming, unfamiliar to me but effective nonetheless, coiled through my blood. Very good. Strength I had forgotten in the course of our journey jolted through me and I found myself grinning with the pleasure of it.

  All I lacked was an opponent.

  And then it stopped. It took me a few steps to realize the bars had been dropped. I glanced at the handlers, and then the drummer, who had also ceased. Everyone looked all right, so what was going on?

  I looked to Karish. It appeared he hadn’t been watching, his gaze directed off to one side and his back angled a little toward me.

  “That will work,” said Atara, rubbing her hands together. “That will do.”

  “But I can do better.” And I’d just been getting into it.

  “I am looking for pretty, not athletic. Though a little of that is good, too.” She was looking me up and down again. “No silver. Just copper. Maybe we can find some gold. Yes, everything orange, yellow, gold. The Flame Dancer.”

  The Flame Dancer? Was she serious? I didn’t dare look at Karish, who was no doubt snickering and would start me off.

  “Dunleavy is no good.”

  I’d be sure to tell my parents they’d chosen an inadequate name.

  “Leavy. Leavy the Flame Dancer.”

  Oh my good gods. How could I possibly face anyone carrying a name like that? “I fear such a title would be more appropriate for someone more flamboyant.”

  “You can learn to be flamboyant.”

  Oh aye. As simple as that, was it? “I’m a Shield, ma’am. It’s the nature of a Shield to be sedate.”

  “By inclination or training?”

  “A little of both.”

  “Inclination can be overcome. And if you can be trained to be sedate, you can be trained to be flamboyant. Everyone!” She clapped her hands twice, and I realized there were even more people watching than I remembered. “This is Leavy and Shintaro. They will be joining us for a while. They are good omens, and a guide for our next path.” The fact that no one found this announcement startling disturbed me. “They have nothing. I think they will bring us much. We will provide them with what they need. We’re leaving tomorrow.”

  Not much of a speech maker.

  Everyone started moving. Some leaving, some disassembling the practice gear and carting it away.

  An older woman picked her way to me, easily avoiding the flow. She was dressed in the same manner as the younger women, and I had to admire her bravery and self-confidence. “I am Corla,” she said. “I read the future.” Zaire save me. “I can share my tent with you and your husband.”

  “Oh, we’re not married,” I said.

  “No matter. Many don’t bother. That does not impair the invitation.”

  Before I could explain that wasn’t exactly what I meant, Fin—a broad middle-aged man who still managed to carry off the scanty garb—approached. “We have enough spare fabric to fashion a sort of tent for you,” he rumbled in the deepest voice I had ever, ever heard. “It might scar the eyes, but it will keep the sun off.”

  “Thank you. That is so kind.”

  Karish was then spirited away by Fin. I spent the rest of the day introducing myself to people, those who weren’t out performing. They were, as a whole, a talkative bunch, and uncomfortably inquisitive. They wanted to know all about why we were there. I stuck with the same story I’d used in front of Karish—searching for long-lost family—with no embellishment, certain that they were questioning him as well. When they pressed me for details, I praised the beauty of their tattoos or asked them what they did for the show.

  I learned that there were thirty people in all, adults and children, performers and handworkers. The troupe had belonged to Atara since her mother, who had owned it before her, had died, and they spent all their time traveling from settlement to settlement, performing for coins. As the island was rather small, it seemed to me that the show would end up visiting the same settlement twice in a year, perhaps more. The solution to that was variety. All performers were pushed to constantly change their acts. And the performers themselves were not constant. A couple of rope walkers had left the troupe a few stops back. This was one of the reasons Atara, whom everyone called Ma, was so quick to take us on. We were new, and as Northerners we would draw an audience by our mere presence.

  Day slid into evening, and Karish found me sitting under the ovcas—what they called the extra flap suspended beyond the entrance of the tent—with a young girl named Glynis. His hair was ringed with sweat and there were streaks of dirt across his face and his bare torso, not to mention caked under his nails. And yet he still managed to look good. Regular freak of nature, he was.

  Of course, it might also have had something to do with the gleam in his eye and the odd glow about him. I was immediately suspicious.

  “What have you been doing all day?” he asked.

  “Uh, nothing,” I admitted, immediately afflicted with that most useless of emotions, guilt, because it was obvious he had been working like a dog.

  He grinned. “Nothing?”

  I nodded, wondering why he thought that was something to smile about.

  He chuckled. “Come along, then.”

  I took my leave from Glynis, who apparently found my manner amusing and giggled in response. I followed Karish through the camp, where most of the performers had returned and were showing signs of packing up. He led me to the edge of the camp, to a tent that was even more eye sticking than the others, each side a different color and pattern, the roof a faded, distasteful green. It was smaller than the other tents, and it had no ovcas.

  “This is our tent,” he announced with palpable pride.

  I smiled at him. “You put it up.”

  “I did.” Hence the glow. “I mean, Fin showed me how and helped me, but I did most of it.”

  The jokes that sprang into my brain, all about the likelihood of this effort collapsing or being blown away, were strangled into silence for being inappropriate under the circumstances. “I’m impressed.”

  “Really?”

  “I couldn’t do it.”

  Karish grabbed my elbow. “Look inside.” He pulled me forward and opened the tent flap, latching it up against the nearest wall.

  I was arrested by all the stuff littered on the floor of the tent. Bundles of clothes. Sandals of all colors. Pots and pans. Mats and sheets and small hard pillows destined to give me migraines. And things I didn’t recognize. All filling the small front space of the tent.

  “Atara showed me a list of everything that was here.” Karish unwrapped one bundle of clothing, revealing a flashy golden length of cloth that filled me with dread. “And what the expenses of traveling are. And an estimation of how long it would take us to pay everything back.”

  I didn’t bother asking for the numbers. They wouldn’t mean anything to me. “Did it seem fair to you?”

  He shrugged. “I really don’t know, Lee. Different places put different values on things, having different wage rates and different standards for prices. It didn’t seem outrageous to me, but”—he shrugged again—“I’m no expert.”

  “So how long will we be in debt to these people?”

  “It depends on how much you bring in as a dancer. But she gave me an estimate for that as well.” He pulled in a deep breath. Oh, no. “Something over two years.”

  My mouth dropped open, so I covered it with my hand. Two years? Two years? Were they insane? “Taro—”

  “I know.”

  “We’re not even going to be here two years!”

  “I know. But, Lee, what else can we do? We have nothing here. No suitable clothing or gear.” He looked at the cloth in his hand and shoved it back into the bundle. “No useful skills.”

  I sank to my knees on the mat that served as the floor. “Hey, you can erect a tent.” I unwrapped a small leafy bundle and discovered a cool hard ball of cooked rice. “It’s just…two years.”

  “The way I see it, we travel with them, find…the line…then sneak away—”

  “Taro!”

  “Let me finish. We sneak off when we can, and when we get back to Erstwhile, we have the Empress send them back whatever money we still owe.”

  “They’ll think we’re thieves when we leave. And it’s a poor way to repay them for taking a chance with us.”

  “We’ll leave them a note. And aye, they probably won’t believe it. But they will when they get the money.”

  I didn’t like it. I didn’t like any of it, being beholden to these people, belonging to them for two years, making a fool of myself for money and sneaking off once we didn’t need them anymore. Reeked of dishonor. But Karish was right. I didn’t see an option. And I was furious with the Empress for putting us in this position.

  “So what will you be doing?” I asked to sort of change the subject.

  The glow, which had dimmed when he revealed our financial situation, disappeared completely. “Fetching and carrying, because I don’t know how to do anything. Useless aristocrat, indeed, eh?”

  He was not useless. In any sense of the word. He had a rare, valuable, dangerous ability that the people on this damned island lacked the brains to appreciate. “You can raise a tent,” I reminded him. “You can learn. So can I.”

  He hissed. “You don’t have to, do you? You have something they want.”

  I looked at him, tucked a lock of his hair behind his ear. “Are you jealous?”

  “Yes.” His tone was bitter. “I’m here on sufferance. Because you can do something that appeals to them and they figure they can’t have you unless they take me, too.”

  “Actually, we were both taken on because Atara thinks we’re good omens. She obviously isn’t guided by reason. And you’re the one who knows how to handle money.”

  “No, I don’t, Lee. Not really. Stop it.”

  Damn it. He was sliding into one of his moods. Damn all these people, anyway. “Ah, I know what the real problem is. You’re just all bent because Atara doesn’t think you’re gorgeous.”

  Outraged was better than downcast. “That has nothing to do with anything!” he snapped angrily.

  “Oh aye. After a lifetime of getting everything you wanted just by batting those eyes and flashing that simpering smile.”

  “I neither bat nor simper!”

  “Please. You expect to be able to work your way around anyone.”

  “I do not manipulate people.”

  This was getting ugly. That hadn’t been the plan. “That’s not what I’m suggesting.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  I sighed. “Taro, we are in a strange place, with different rules. We both have to learn. And if you think I’m happy to take a sport I love and tart it up for the entertainment of ignorant—” I halted. The only words ready to leap off my tongue were derogatory, and they didn’t deserve that. “Well, I’m not happy about it.”

  “Nice try, Lee. So you have to wear some flash and dance at something less than your standard. Doesn’t change the fact that you can contribute something that these people want, and I can’t.”

  I didn’t comment. He wasn’t believing anything I was saying, anyway.

  We had a solemn, quiet dinner, and I didn’t know what to do about Karish’s mood. After years of being near worshipped for being a Source, it had to be a blow to have one’s principal skill dismissed as useless. And no matter what he said, it had to be hard to be told he was plain. He wasn’t used to being seen that way. I would have been annoyed if someone had said that right to my face, and they would have been telling the truth.

  The remainder of the tent had been separated into two tiny bedrooms, little larger than the mats we were sleeping on. Lying on the mat, I realized the tents provided no protection from noise. I heard others moving around, talking, shouting. I heard things I really didn’t need to hear. Very embarrassing.

  And, unable to sleep for thinking of the bizarre mess we’d found for ourselves, I heard evidence of the return of Karish’s emotional equilibrium. He started chuckling. “Leavy the Flame Dancer,” he snickered.