“No, thank you,” I said, forcing myself to smile rather than wrinkle my nose in disgust. “Do you know where I can find this place?”
I showed him the map.
“Right over there.” He indicated a direction. “But it has been closed for years. Why do you need to go there?”
I changed the subject hastily. “Who was that, on the litter?”
“The corpse? No idea.”
“But you …”
He shrugged. “I’m paid to prance and jingle.” He wriggled his wrist, demonstrating the cheerful noise. “It’s a living. Nice bird, by the way.”
Baldbeakraark-ed at him and snapped his beak, unimpressed.
“So why are you so interested?” asked the Fool. “Watch a lot of funerals, do you?”
“No, this is the first I’ve seen here,” I said. “I was wondering why it was all so grand.”
“The grander it is, the safer they believe it will be,” said the Fool. He leaned in so close that I could smell the tobacco and ale on his breath. “You’ve heard the rumors?”
“What rumors?”
“Some say the Plague is coming back.” He widened his eyes and stepped back, as if to take in my reaction.
“What?”
“I don’t believe it,” said the Fool. “Some other sickness, maybe, but not thePlague. We have the Temple, after all, and what’s the point of having them if they can’t keep the Plague away? Anyway, the rumors are good for business.” He cut a little caper and spat the remains of his cigarette onto the icy ground.
I remembered asking Mother about the Plague, long ago—what it was really like.
“Not many records survive,” she had said. “We have some artists’ depictions, of course, but many were made long after the sickness died out. There are some commonalities—the sufferers are often portrayed as skeletally thin, for example, and drained of color. Some say they came out in boils or blisters, others that their skin blackened or shriveled off to leave their flesh exposed.
“The superstitious say the sufferers died, then rose again to walk. No one is sure. As far as we can tell, no one recovered from it.” She had paused. “There was a saying, at the time: ‘The Plague knows no master, no mage, no king. There is a new king, and his name is Plague.’ A little dramatic. The royal family did survive, after all, although some of their members died. And the world rebuilt itself, after a fashion. The Temple believes that the One-Eyed God intends magic to be used only under their purview, to make sure it is used only for good.”
“And the Temple uses it only for good?” I had asked.
“Well, that is what they say,” Mother had answered. “And the Temple certainly has succeeded in placing restrictions on the amount of power that can be wielded by any one individual. The spell-writing process, the books, the practitioners themselves. It is all very tightly controlled, now.”
Some of what Mother had told me about the Plague felt right, but some of it felt … wrong. Subtly wrong, like a reflection warped by the curve of a glass.
“I won’t have much longer here,” said the Fool now, startling me from my reverie. “Just waiting for the family to comeout so I can dance them back to the Temple for the final ceremonies. Now, how about that kiss?”
“Thanks,” I said quickly, pretending I hadn’t heard that last part, and started to walk away.
“It’s good luck!” the Fool called after me.
I was fascinated by the spectacle and wanted to see it from closer up. The mourners milled about by the entrance while, inside, the great tracks that took the corpse into the oven rumbled, and the first belches of thick smoke escaped the chimney.
“… just rumors,” I heard a woman say from behind her handkerchief.
“If the Temple is bothering to …”
“What could the Temple possibly gain from covering up such rumors? If anything, it furthers their cause. It will drive the people further into their arms.”
“But it will cause widespread panic,” said the woman I had heard first.
“You don’t think the Temple knows how to profit from panic?”
