The Norseman shouted out some curse in his heathen tongue and flung out his wounded hand, holding it wide, splattering blood across the bear’s chest, a pattern of red on white. ‘Madness!’ Even I knew not to let a wild thing see that you’re wounded.
The bear, more curious than enraged, bent down, folding up to sniff and lick at its bloody fur. And at that instant Snorri charged. For a moment I wondered if he could actually kill the thing. If by some miracle of war he could drive his blade just so into its spine while its head was down. All of us drew a single breath. Snorri leapt. He set his injured hand flat to the top of the bear’s head and like some court tumbler vaulted onto its shoulders, crouching. Roaring outrage, the bear snapped erect, reaching for the annoyance, powering up to its full height as if Snorri were a child and it the father carrying him aback. As the bear straightened Snorri straightened too, leaping upwards with their combined thrust and reaching high with his knife-hand. He drove the blade into the wooden skirts of the rail some twenty feet above the floor of the pit. He pulled, reached, swung, and in a broken second he was amongst us.
Snorri ver Snagason surged through the highborn crowd, trampling full-grown men underfoot. Somewhere in those first few steps he found a new knife. He left a trail of flattened and bleeding citizens, using his blade only three times when members of the Terrif pit team made more earnest efforts to stop him. Those he left gutted, one with his head nearly taken off. He was out into the street before half the crowd even knew what had happened.
I leaned over the rail. The hall was in chaos, everywhere men were finding their courage and starting to give chase now that their quarry was long gone. The bear had returned to sniffing the pit floor, licking blood from the flagstones, the red print of Snorri’s hand stark across the back of its head.
Maeres had vanished. He had a way for coming and going, that one. I shrugged. The Norseman was clearly too dangerous to keep. He would have been the death of me, one way or another. At least this way I’d put a three hundred crown dent in my debt to Maeres Allus. It would keep him off my back for a good three months, maybe six. And a lot can happen in six months. Six months is an eternity.
Opera! There’s nothing like it. Except wild boars rutting.
The only good thing about Father’s interminable opera was the venue, a fine domed building in Vermillion’s eastern quarter where a preponderance of Florentine bankers and Milano merchants gave the city a very different flavour. For the first hour I gazed up at the nymphs cavorting nude across the dome, somehow painted so that the curved surface presented them without distortion. As much as I admired the artist’s eye for detail I found the scene frequently interrupted by flashes of imagery from the Blood Holes. Snorri felling Norras with what must have been a fatal punch. Ootana falling forward from the pit wall, the back of his head broken open. That leap. That spectacular, impossible, insane leap! On stage a soprano soared through an aria as I replayed the Norseman launching himself to freedom.
In the intermission I searched for familiar faces. I had come late to the showing and had shuffled my way noisily to a seat blocking everyone’s view. In the dim light and separated from my more punctual companions I had to settle for sitting among strangers. Now under the lanterns of the intermisso hall and plucking glasses of wine from every passing tray, I found that despite my brother Darin’s dire warnings the opening night was surprisingly poorly attended. It seemed that Father himself had failed to arrive. Taken to his bed, the gossip had it. He was never a music lover but the Vatican’s coffers had financed this tripe of angels and devils wailing one against the other, fat men sweltering under wings of wax and feathers whilst belting out the chorus. The least their most senior local representative could do was attend and suffer with the rest of us. Damn it all, I couldn’t even spot Martus, or fucking Darin.
I jostled past a man in a white enamel mask, as though he were attending a masquerade rather than an opera. Or at least I attempted to jostle past, failed, and bounced off him as if he were cast from iron. I turned, rubbing my shoulder. Something in the eyes watching from those slits swept away in a cold wash of fear any inclination I had to complain. I let the press of people separate us. Had it even been a man? The eyes haunted me. The irises white, the whites grey. My shoulder ached as though infection ate at the bone … Unborn. Darin had said something about an unborn in the city …
‘Prince Jalan!’ Ameral Contaph hailed me with irritating familiarity, puffed up in ridiculous finery no doubt purchased for just this occasion. They must have been desperate to fill the seats if toadies of Contaph’s water were invited to the premiere. ‘Prince Jalan!’ The flow of the crowd somehow pulled us further apart and I affected not to see him. The fellow was probably just pursuing me for the fictional paperwork regarding Snorri. Worse still, he might have already heard the Norseman was running amok in Vermillion’s streets … Or perhaps he’d scratched off the gold plate from my gift. Either way, none of the reasons he might want to talk to me seemed to be reasons I might want to talk to him! I turned sharply away and found myself face to face with Alain DeVeer, sporting an unbecoming bandage around his head and flanked by two large and ugly men in ill-fitting opera cloaks.
‘Jalan!’ Alain reached for me, finding only a handful of my own exquisitely tailored cape. I shrugged the garment off and let him keep it while I sprinted for the stairs, weaving a dangerous path around dowagers sporting diamonds in their hair and gruff old lords knocking back the wine with the grim determination of men wishing to dull their senses.
I have quick feet but it’s probably my total disregard for other people’s safety that allowed me to open a considerable lead so swiftly.
There are communal privies at the rear of the opera house. For the men, a dozen open seats above water flowing in channels that pour out into the alley behind. The water runs from a large tank on the roof. A small band of urchins spend all day filling it with buckets – an activity I had occasion to note when using one of the cast changing rooms for an assignation with Duchess Sansera a season previously. I was banging away dutifully as a chap does with a woman of declining years and increasing fortune when hoping to cadge a loan, but every time I seemed to be getting anywhere a small boy would wander past the door, heavy buckets sloshing. Quite put me off my stride. And the old cow didn’t loan me so much as a silver penny.
That afternoon with Duchess Money-Buckets wasn’t a complete waste though. After I’d let her usher me out of there with a wet kiss and a goosing of my buttocks, I chased down as many of those ratty little children as I could and kicked some arse. It’s true that my foe outnumbered me but I am the hero of Aral Pass, after all, and sometimes when Prince Jalan Kendeth is roused to anger it’s best to flee, whatever your number. If you’re eight.
I had found three of the little bastards cowering in the tiny utility room where the buckets are stored along with assorted brooms and mops. And that was the pay-off – another hiding place to add to my list.
Racing along the same corridor now, with Alain and friends a corner or two behind me, I stopped dead, hauled the closet door open and dived in. The thing with closing doors behind you is to do it quickly but quietly. That proved a challenge whilst trying to disentangle myself from various broom handles in the dark without the teetering bucket towers crashing down around me. Seconds later when Alain and his heavies clattered down the corridor, the hero of Aral Pass was crouched among the mops, hands clamped to mouth to stifle a sneeze.
I managed to hold the sneeze back almost long enough, but no man can be in complete control of his body, and there’s no stopping such things sometimes – as I told the Duchess Sansera when she expressed her disappointment.
‘Achoo!’
The footsteps, fading at the edge of hearing, stopped.
‘What was that?’ Alain’s voice,