Old faces, young faces, happy and unhappy faces, there were all of those in the smoke-filled room, but none of them seemed familiar to Dustfinger. He, too, sensed he was being scrutinized, but he was used to it. His scarred face attracted glances everywhere, and the clothes he wore did the rest – a fire-eater’s costume, black as soot, red as the flames that he played with, but that others feared. For a moment he felt curiously strange amid all this once-familiar activity, as if the other world still clung to him and could be clearly seen: all the years, the endless years since Silvertongue plucked him out of his own story and stole his life without intending to, as you might crush a snail-shell in passing.
“Hey, who have we here?”
A hand fell heavily on his shoulder, and a man leaned over him and stared at his face. His hair was gray, his face round and beardless, and he was so unsteady on his feet that for a moment Dustfinger thought he was drunk. “Why, if I don’t know that face!” cried the man incredulously, grasping Dustfinger’s shoulder hard, as if to make sure it was really flesh and blood. “So where’ve you sprung from, my old fire-eating friend? Straight from the realm of the dead? What happened? Did the fairies bring you back to life? They always were besotted with you, those little blue imps.”
A few men turned to look at them, but there was so much noise in the dark, stuffy room that not many people noticed what was going on.
“CloudDancer!” Dustfinger straightened up and embraced the other man. “How are you?” “Ah, and there was I thinking you’d forgotten me!” CloudDancer gave a broad grin, baring large, yellow teeth.
Oh no, Dustfinger had not forgotten him – although he had tried to, as he had tried to forget the others he had missed. CloudDancer, the best tightrope-walker who ever strolled around the rooftops. Dustfinger had recognized him at once, in spite of his now gray hair and the left leg that was skewed at such a curiously stiff angle.
“Come along, we must drink to this. You don’t meet a dead friend again every day.” He impatiently drew Dustfinger over to a bench under one of the windows. A little sunlight fell through it from outside. Then he signaled to the girl who was still stirring the cauldron and ordered two goblets of wine. The little creature stared at Dustfinger’s scars for a moment, fascinated, and then scurried over to the counter. A fat man stood behind it, watching his guests with dull eyes.
“You’re looking good!” remarked CloudDancer. “Well fed, not a gray hair on your head, hardly a hole in your clothes. You even still have all your teeth, by the look of it. Where’ve you been?
Maybe I should set out for the same place myself– seems like a man can live pretty well there.”
“Forget it. It’s better here.” Dustfinger pushed back the hair from his forehead and looked around. “That’s enough about me. How have you been yourself? You can afford wine, but your hair is gray, and your left leg .. ”
“Ah, yes, my leg.” The girl brought their wine. As CloudDancer searched his purse for the right money, she stared at Dustfinger again with such curiosity that he rubbed his fingertips together and whispered a few fire-words. Reaching out his forefinger, he smiled at her and blew gently on the fingertip. A tiny flame, too weak to light a fire but just bright enough to be reflected in the little girl’s eyes, flickered on his nail and spat out sparks of gold on the dirty table. The child stood there enchanted, until Dustfinger blew out the flame and dipped his finger in the goblet of wine that CloudDancer pushed over to him.
“So you still like playing with fire,” said CloudDancer, as the girl cast an anxious glance at the fat landlord and hurried back to the cauldron. “My own games are over now, sad to say.” “What happened?”
“I fell off the rope, I don’t dance in the clouds anymore. A market trader threw a cabbage at me –
I expect I was distracting his customers’ attention. At least I was lucky enough to land on a cloth-
merchant’s stall. That way I broke my leg and a couple of ribs, but not my neck.”
Dustfinger looked at him thoughtfully. “Then how do you make a living now that you can’t walk the tightrope?”
CloudDancer shrugged. “Believe it or not, I can still go about on foot. I can even ride with this leg of mine – if there’s a horse available. I earn my living as a messenger, although I still like to be with the strolling players, listening to their stories and sitting by the fire with them. But it’s words that nourish me now, even though I can’t read. Threatening letters, begging letters, love letters, sales contracts, wills – I deliver anything that can be written on a piece of parchment or paper. And I can be relied upon to carry a spoken message, too, when it’s been whispered into my ear in confidence. I make quite a good living, although I’m not the fastest messenger money can hire. But everyone who gives me a letter to deliver knows that it really will reach the person it’s meant for. And a guarantee of that is hard to find.”
Dustfinger believed him. For a few gold pieces you can read the prince’s own letters, that was what they used to say even in his own time. You just had to know someone who was good at forging broken seals. “How about our other friends?” Dustfinger looked at the pipers by the window. “What are they doing?”
CloudDancer took a sip of wine and made a face. “Ugh! I should have asked for honey in this.
The others, well” – he rubbed his stiff leg – “some are dead, some have just disappeared like you.
Look over there, behind the farmer staring so gloomily into his tankard,” he said, jerking his head at the counter. “There’s our old friend Sootbird, with a laugh fixed on his face like a tattoo, the worst fire-eater for miles around, although he still tries to copy you and wonders why fire would rather dance for you than him.”
“He’ll never find out.” Dustfinger glanced surreptitiously at the other fire-eater. As far as he remembered, Sootbird could juggle burning torches well enough, but fire didn’t dance for him.
He was like a hopeless lover rejected again and again by the girl of his choice. Long ago, feeling sorry for the man’s futile efforts, Dustfinger had given him some fire-elves’ honey, but even with its aid Sootbird hadn’t understood what the flames were telling him.
“I’ve heard that he works with powders bought from alchemists now,” CloudDancer whispered across the table, “and that’s an expensive pastime, if you ask me. The fire bites him so often that his hands and arms are quite red from it. But he doesn’t let it get at his face. Before he performs he smears it with grease until it shines like bacon fat.” “Does he still drink after every show?”
“After the show, before the show, but he’s still a good-looking fellow, don’t you think?”
Yes, so he was, with his friendly, ever-smiling face. Sootbird was one of those entertainers who lived on the glances of others, on laughter and applause, on knowing that people will stop to look at them. Even now he was entertaining the others who were leaning against the counter with him. Dustfinger turned his back; he didn’t want to see the old mixture of admiration and envy in the other man’s eyes. Sootbird was not one of those he had missed. “You mustn’t think times are any easier now for the Motley Folk,” said CloudDancer across the table, low-voiced. “Since Cosimo’s death the Laughing Prince doesn’t let the likes of us into the markets except on feast days, and as for going up to the castle itself, that’s only when his grandson demands entertainers loudly enough. Not a very nice little boy – he’s already ordering his servants around and threatening them with whipping and the pillory. Still, he loves the Motley Folk.”