Sandstorm by Christopher Rowe Read Free Book Online Page B

these things usually go. The twins and Mattias, they write these things out, you know? We huddle with Corvus and scratch pictures in the ground and count out the beats of songs.”
    “I don’t understand,” said Cephas, and added to himself,
Any
of this!
    Tobin said, “I mean like the time in Nathlekh City when we had to learn all those verses of ‘The Lonely Hunt.’
    “ ‘Don’t look back
Just draw your blade’
    and Shan pushes the crate into the alley so that it hits the wagon bed on ‘blade’ and
    ‘Down dark track
The kill is made’
    and that’s the cue for Corvus, of course, darkness and killing, but he was just to mimic the watch’s alert whistles and stir up some of his shadows, and
    ‘Don’t shout out yet
Just follow the cries’
    and Mattias looses a flaming arrow and ‘whoosh’ the crates go up before the coster guards have even turned around. See, I
can
remember all those things; it’s just not my way of doing. Though I do like that song very much.”
    Cephas decided it likely he would see Shan and Cynda soon, and also meet this Mattias, who was somehow connected to the wyvern, and also a Corvus, who Tobin had said had a way with killing. He decided that even if it were the mute halflings explaining, he would better understand them than he did this cheerful goliath.
    Cephas asked, “What
is
your way of doing, friend, if it is not to plan and sing, or—forgive me—to fight?”
    “Oh, you do not have to ask for forgiveness, Cephas. I know I am not a true warrior—that is why I left the mountains, partly. And as for the planning, well, the others know that improvisation is the center of my art.”
    Improvisation was something that Shaneerah had taught Cephas to avoid.
    “And what is your art, friend Tobin?”
    Cephas felt the goliath straighten in the saddle before he answered. “I,” said the giant, with enormous dignity, “am a clown.”

    They were the last of the circus to leave the mote, but Corvus and Mattias returned to the wagons long beforethe others by means of the kenku’s rituals.
    Corvus was not surprised to find the facade of his private wagon lowered on its chains so that it formed a platform facing away from the camp’s central bonfire. If the roustabouts had not followed his orders to lower the false wall, he and Mattias would still be on the mote, facing the Memnonar gladiator woman with their magical disguises fading around them.
    “ ‘More peace than you deserve,’ ” Corvus said, adding just a touch of melodrama to his imitation of Mattias. The kenku hopped off the platform and extended his arm to his friend. “Always a moral, isn’t there?”
    The ranger waved him off, parting the sorcerous joins that made a greatbow of his canes and already scanning the sky. “Better always than never,” said Mattias. “Trill will want feeding when she gets here—especially if she carries both of them the whole way down the canyon.”
    Corvus waited for Mattias to leave before performing his habitual check of the magical circle inscribed on the platform. Given enough time, Corvus could transport himself to this circle from anywhere in the world. He had even read of ways to travel to and from circles inscribed in other worlds altogether, but his growing ambitions and elaborate schemes had not yet taken him beyond the mortal realm.
    Against that day, though, Corvus crafted his personal circle with great care, describing its area with inlaid jet and setting the symbols of power as mosaics of onyx, black pearls, and silver. Every wagon in the circus train held its own secret treasures, but there was no greater concentration of wealth and power among the circus folk’s traveling homes than this circle.
    That is how an outsider would have judged things. For Corvus, the tools and materials on the workbenchhe went to inside the wagon were far more valuable, and while their power was subtle, it was vast. The bench was laden with carefully arranged pots of glue, a lump of wax