Arena by Karen Hancock

Author:Karen Hancock [Hancock, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: book, FIC027050
ISBN: 9781441270641
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2011-06-02T20:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

17

When Callie returned to the lobby half an hour later, only three people remained in the main salon—a couple watching a video on the large freestanding screen and a man in western garb facing the window. He turned as she stepped off the elevator, but only as he approached did she recognize him.

“Wow!” Pierce said as he joined her. “You look terrific.”

She laughed, feeling her cheeks flush. “You don’t look so bad yourself, cowboy.”

“All I need is my hoss.” He doffed his hat and grinned, and she wondered how she had ever thought him ordinary looking.

The Aggillon had parked their gold-gilt wagons and colorful tents in the flat outside Rimlight’s front gates. Electric heating columns warded off the chill, and strings of tiny lights festooned the wagons, their soft light glinting off the booths and tables of wares—clothing, jewelry, trinkets, audio discs, vid-discs, knickknacks, gadgets, and food, food, food. Meat pies, fruit pies, fry bread on sticks, French fries, tacos, hot dogs and hamburgers, soft drinks, beer, mulled wine, and cider— the air was redolent with the mingling aromas, alive with laughter and the music of roving minstrels.

Pierce had long been easy company, and Callie quickly relaxed. Friends and acquaintances jostled around them, calling out congratulations or greetings or witticisms. They ate meat pies and honey-glazed fry bread on sticks, drank mulled cider, and watched jugglers and tumblers, then listened to a minstrel with a voice so exquisite it raised goose bumps on Callie’s arms. A tooler worked intricate designs into a silver bowl, while beside him an Aggillon illusionist performed the deftest sleight of hand she had ever seen.

At the end of the performance Pierce confessed he’d drunk too much cider and went searching for a bathroom. Callie waited for him by a glassblower’s stall, first watching the man finish a delicate blue vase, then turning her attention to the crowd as it milled between the booths and streamed in and out of the red-striped tent set up for dancing. Music drifted from the tent in a lively, foot-tapping tune.

The faces were familiar, even those of the Aggillon merchants and entertainers. Traveling a circuit that also included visits to each of Rimlight’s thirteen sister training compounds, most had come through before as circus performers, and before that as a theater troupe.

Their arrival had surprised her the first time. Knowing the Aggillon’s power and intellect, she found it incredible that they stooped to the task of entertaining participants. Gradually, though, she’d perceived that their entertainment was anything but frivolous. Forbidden to speak to participants except in superficial business interaction, their stories communicated what their conversations could not. Their songs recounted their history. Even the magician’s show was instructive—a warning in disguise of what lay ahead. For the Tohvani were once Aggillon, sharing the same abilities and intellect. And while the Aggil-lon would never deceive participants beyond the benign illusions of a magician’s act, the Tohvani would.

Roving idly across the bright colors and moving figures, Callie’s gaze snagged on something out of place—a gray, spindly-limbed form, barely visible, like a wisp of shifting fog.

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