Burn the body, speak the name.”
Mieka linked her arm through mine as we walked through the crowd, inhaling the smell of fresh baking from the sweetmeats that vendors were handing out from decorated baskets.I took a sugar rat on a stick and tried to maneuver it past the mask’s long teeth and into my mouth, making Mieka giggle. The sugar and excitement in the air were intoxicating. I found myself laughing aloud, accepting twirls and kisses on the hand from strangers as I walked.
“Being a porcupine agrees with you,” said Mieka.
I shoved her a little, gently, and she laughed.
The crowd started to part and move as if it were many creatures with one mind—a swarm of bees, or a susurration of evening starlings. The Hair writhed under its headdress of quills. It, too, seemed to feel the burgeoning energy and excitement.
“The parade must be coming past soon,” said Mieka. She was about to say more, but was interrupted by an irritated voice saying, “There you are.” It came from a bird skull wearing a peacock-feather headdress and an iridescent green-blue gown.
“Zlata.” Mieka raised her mask briefly to kiss her. Zlata’s impossibly large brown eyes flickered over me from behind the bird’s eye sockets, indifferent.
“Is that aporcupine?” was all she said. “Really, Mieka.”
“The parade will be passing in a moment,” said Mieka. “Have you seen it before, Netta?”
I shook my head.
“I’m sorry, I forget that you’ve never … Well, I’ve watched it every year since I can remember,” said Mieka. “I was so little the first few times that my father had to put me on his shoulders. It was the most exciting thing I had ever seen, then.” She smiled a little wistfully, and then, “Here it comes!” she cried, sounding like that excited little girl again.
Two figures danced at the head of the parade. As soon as they came into view, the crowd fell silent.
“The Plague and the Plague Doctor,” Mieka murmured in my ear.
The Plague Doctor was a simple enough costume: black robes and the tall, conical black hat that doctors wore for formal business even now. His skull mask was that of a stag,with immense sixteen-pointed antlers coated with gold leaf. Deer were a well-known symbol of healing and regeneration, I remembered Mother telling me, and gold and golden yellow were believed to be the colors of health in the old religions (co-opted by the Temple, of course). The Plague Doctor dipped and spun, charging at the crowd with antlers lowered and sending them jumping back, shrieking and laughing. Colorful silk scarves attached to the dancer’s arms, legs, and back streamed behind him like pennants as he moved.
The Plague was a skeleton. White-painted bones shone on a skintight black suit that covered the dancer from head to toe, with colored wooden clappers tied to her wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles that made a loud clacking noise as she moved. The skull mask she wore was human, but with a jaw hinged unnaturally wide so that the mouth appeared to gape—and the teeth inside were not human, but pointed and yellow. Canine, perhaps? The jaw had some kind of puppetry mechanism that allowed the dancer to snap at the crowd, and the sounds of the teeth and the clappers ricocheted off the brick walls of the buildings lining the street, so that they seemed to be coming from every direction at once.
The Plague and Plague Doctor entered into an intricate dance, the Plague closing her doglike teeth on the rainbow scarves that shimmered from the Plague Doctor’s limbs and back, tearing them free. The silks were so light that they floated in the air for a moment before drifting down, giving the impression that they themselves were somehow animated. Members of the crowd scurried dangerously close to grab them, snatching them from under the dancers’ feet and then waving them triumphantly as they returned to their friends.
The mood was jubilant, but I felt chilled to the bone as I watched. The antlers, the jutting teeth, the sharp angles of the dance stabbed my mind like thorns. Something about the dance reached long fingers into my gut andtugged.
I was relieved when the Plague and Plague Doctor movedon, whirling and snarling at each other and the crowd. More dancers followed, in flower garlands that trailed colored ribbons, and then more bakers to throw sugar into the crowd. Then came what looked like a royal guard, resplendent in plumes and braiding, with a litter following behind.
“Who is that?” I shouted over the noise, cupping my hands over my mouth to be heard.
“King Colin, of course!” Mieka shouted back.
I squinted to see over the crowd—and through the protruding porcupine teeth. A score or more guards rode before the litter, and the same number after, all heavily armed but smiling, decked out in gold braid. The crowd threw flowers at them, which caught in their hair and the buttons and trim of their uniforms. The guards laughed and talked amongst themselves, arms swinging free, seemingly relaxed. Now and then, they picked flowers from where they had landed on their uniforms and threw them back into the crowd, where young men and women scrabbled to catch them.
The king himself—well, he reclined on a litter shouldered by eight strong men, but looked so slight that probably just one or two would have sufficed. His hair was white blond, and against it his skin looked almost gray; dark petals of fatigue bloomed under each pale eye. An elaborate crown and many-layered gold necklace looked far too substantial for his brittle skeleton to support. As I watched, he lifted a heavily ringed hand to wave at the crowd, with a smile that was sweet, but strained. I could have encircled his wrist with my thumb and forefinger. I became painfully aware of the press of his bones against his fragile skin, as if they were straining to free themselves from it.
“He looks like he’s dying,” I murmured.
Mieka heard me over the noise and shushed me. “Don’t say that! I mean, yes, you’re right, but don’t say that where anyone can hear you. The palace guards and the Watch don’t take kindly to speculation on his health.”
“But he looks …”
“I know. Everyone knows. Don’t say anything until we’re behind closed doors.”
Was I imagining it, or did the crowd subdue itself a little as the king passed? There was still cheering and tossing of flowers, but the tone of it warped to something more ceremonial, almost funereal, as if they were bidding the king goodbye rather than marking his passage.
When his litter had finally moved past, there was a sense of relief and heightened revelry. A cluster of musicians with a ridiculous, mismatched assortment of instruments—one looked like an octopus studded with a dozen tentacle-like pipes—started playing together under the eaves of a nearby building, making music that was wild and chaotic and intoxicating, pouring itself like wine into your ears and setting your foot to tapping without any interference from your mind in between.
A dance began—where exactly, or how, I could not see. There were no formal steps, yet all the dancers moved in rhythm, and no one collided with anyone else, nor stepped on unsuspecting toes. Zlata clasped Mieka’s hands and pulled her close. Mieka grinned at me and swung herself into the dance, her mask tipping crazily to one side as she swooped and hopped with the rest of them. I felt that same mad urge to jump in, but held myself back … until a pair of hands grabbed mine and pulled me into the maelstrom. There was sugar in my eyes and on my tongue, stinging one and tempting the other, and I found myself laughing as we spun.
My dance partner was no taller than I—perhaps a hair shorter, even—and lean, slightly built, with long, elegant fingers that clasped around mine with a firm, cool grip. He wore shimmering black, and a mask of some kind of bird skull with a wickedly curved beak concealed his face.
