Court of Fives

Page 52

“How did you get started running the Fives?” I ask.
“My grandaunt ran them back when she was my age. The whole family goes all the time to trials. So they decided I might as well have a go at it. They paid my way in.”
“How many siblings do you have, that you can train while they work?”
“I’m youngest of eight, five girls and three boys.”
How like Efeans! Five girls and only three boys! But I don’t say that aloud.
“I have three years to prove myself. If I don’t make Challenger in that time, I’ll just go back to the family business.”
“What business is that?”
“Perfume. It’s how I got my Fives name. I reeked of the distilling factory when I got here.”
I laugh. “Because your Fives name is Resin. I wondered.”
“What about you, Jes? There’s a rumor going around that your father’s an officer in the army.” She hesitates, then goes on hastily as if she has already said the cruel thing out loud and now must apologize for it. “You know what they say: Patron eyes and Commoner skin.”
We walk for a while in silence. I don’t know how much I can say, how much I want to say, how much is prudent to reveal.
She finally says, “It’s just you have such a Patron way of talking and acting, like you’re kin in a lord’s household. But you can’t be.”
I am a Patron, I want to say, and yet I know I am not. I cannot defend the people we girls all pretended we were.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I meant no insult by it.”
“It’s all right, Mis. Yes, my father is in the army. And my mother is Efean. It’s hard to talk about.”
“You have nothing to be ashamed of!” she says stoutly. “And if anyone says you do, you can just run their ass flat on the court.”
We’re laughing as we reach the West Gate of the Lantern District. Two huge brass wheels are suspended from the underside of the gate, each hung with a thousand ribbons fluttering in the breeze. According to the decree of the king and queen, all public entertainment must take place in the Lantern District. At night people congregate on the tiered stone seating of its many small amphitheaters. Whether Commoner or Patron, the people of Efea take their poetry and theater very seriously. The old epic plays can last until dawn if the audience keeps demanding new scenes be added or if they argue with the actors over their interpretation of a famous dialogue. I once saw a death scene repeated five times before the jeering audience was satisfied. The best-beloved playwrights and poets are as celebrated as any Illustrious.
As Mis and I walk down the main street she points at the different banners advertising the many plays. “See that gap there? That’s where the banner for The Poet’s Curse was hanging, but they’ve taken it down.”
The empty space in the row of banners looks suspicious. “What reprehensible story did The Poet’s Curse tell?” I ask.
“Shhh! If the playwright was arrested, then we don’t want anyone to hear us talking about it! Come on, the market is this way.”
It’s so strange not to have to bow to Father’s strictures. If I win prize money I can come here as often as I want with my sisters, when I find them. The day seems so glorious. Possibility opens everywhere around me, as if my five souls swell with well-being. What felt like bad fortune looks like good fortune if I turn it over and examine it from the other side.
Because the theaters open only at night, during the day the Lantern District is called the Lantern Market because you can buy other pleasures there. At the street stalls a person can buy protective amulets; perfume; every sort of cosmetic; jewelry, cheap and expensive; and little gifts suitable for lovers. It is emphatically the kind of place a proper Patron girl would never, ever walk, even with an ill-wisher in attendance, and certainly never alone with a friend. I can’t stop staring. What goes on behind these closed gates is the sort of thing Father wished to protect his daughters from, because girls like us who aren’t really Patron or Commoner sometimes end up selling sexual favors. Such acts are the lowest thing a Patron woman can do. That it isn’t seen as shameful among the Efeans makes Patrons scorn Commoners even more.
Mis browses along a lane with amulets meant for newborns: shell anklets to ward off sickness, polished stones to weight their souls to their flesh until they fully attach, and carved amulets as a shield against shadow-walking.
Having no coin to spend, I am content to watch people. Because of Saryenia’s harbors, people come to this city from all over the many lands strung along the shores of the Three Seas: handsome Amarans so famed for their administrative skills that every kingdom seems to have a few serving in its officialdom; straw-haired Soldians who work as sailors all along the Three Seas; a pair of seafaring Tandi guildwomen taller than most men; bowlegged cavalrymen from the grasslands of Dey; veiled desert men; and more besides. Like ribbons they come in every variety, wide and narrow, bright and muted, precious and ordinary. Three different times a passing Efean man catches my eye and smiles, nothing more, leaving it up to me whether to call after him.