“Tell me this story is ending soon,” Winsen said. “The awesome wonders of the circus are too much for my provincial mind.”
“It’s going somewhere, all right? It got a little longer than I was expecting, but—”
Tisis gave a significant glance to Kip—‘Not too long, okay?’—and said, “I’ll go stall them.” She flicked the reins of her horse and darted away.
“He’s right at the climax of the show, Win, I want to hear what happens,” Ferkudi said.
“What happens? Like it’s still going on? Big Leo’s parents and that whole damn circus were killed, Ferk,” Winsen said. Always was the diplomat. “It’s not what happens. It’s what happened.”
“Thank you, High Lord Pedant,” Ben-hadad said. “We don’t know the story, so we don’t know what happens next in the time stream of the story. You can put it in any tense you want. It’s like it lives in a hypothetical fairy story land where anything may or may not happen. And we just want to find out what that happening is.”
“What? Hypothetical what?” Winsen said. “It’s a true story. Something really did happen. And it’s over, so it happened.”
“I have to admit,” Big Leo said, “it does kind of sound like you’re talking out of your ass with that hypothetical fairy story whatever, Ben-hadad.”
Ben-hadad threw his hands up. “So it’s a true story composited from many instances of a mummery act facilitated with illusions, fine. That’s totally different.”
“Yes,” Winsen said.
Ben-hadad nearly shouted, “No, it isn’t! It’s a fucking story for the purpose of illustration! It doesn’t matter if it even actually—”
“Shut it, Ben. I was damn near getting to my point,” Big Leo said. He grunted as they passed a burning pit. “I know I’ve said this before, but I really don’t like the smell of burning human.”
“I dunno,” Ferkudi said. “I mean once the hair’s burnt off, I think it’s kind of appetizing. I missed breakfast. I’m hungry. Anyone else hungry?”
One of the burning pit workers, a rag tied over his face, looked at Ferkudi aghast.
“That’s what I don’t like about it,” Big Leo said. “You don’t remember that we’ve had this conversation before?”
“It did seem kind of fermiliar.”
“It’s our third time,” Big Leo said. “Annnnyway. Wait. I wanted to get this out of the way before we get to the wall. No, they see us. They’ll wait.
“So my father’d put the teeterboard back down and we’d play it a few different ways, but he’d wobble it up and down, see that it was a plain old teeterboard, and finally ask this tiny kid to jump on the other side. And of course we had it rigged so that my father would be blasted not just high in the air, but all the way through the roof of the tent and out into some nets outside that none of them knew about.
“Brought some people to tears the first few times. They thought he’d been killed. But eventually we sighted in the humor and he’d come back in for the applause. Great bit. Dangerous as hell. Way too easy to miss the net. My mother hated it.” He shook himself. “Anyway, that was supposed to be shorter than all that. Point is: What. The. Hell. Just happened?”
Kip sighed. Double damn and triple damn. He wanted space from this right now.
“The reaction doesn’t seem proportional to the event, right? I mean, his brother’s bear died. I had a dog die once. I was sad. And I know the Foresters enjoy their drama, but—”
“I dunno,” Ferkudi said. “His brother died not long ago, satrapy’s all tore up, maybe he just—”
“O’s mercy, don’t do it,” Cruxer said.
“—couldn’t bear it?” Ferkudi asked. “Get it? Bear it?”
“Balls, Ferk,” Ben-hadad said. “You think it’s appropriate to make jokes when a man bares his soul—”
The rest of them groaned.
“Jokes aside, I hear you,” Winsen said. “It does seem like a bit of an overreaction. When my cat Fluffles died, I grinned and bore it… Damn. That didn’t really work, did it? Grinned and beared it?”
“Now you’re beating that joke like a dead—” Big Leo said.
“Don’t…” Cruxer said.
“—bear,” Big Leo finished. “Oops.”
“You motherfuckers!” Kip seethed, rounding on them. They didn’t know. They didn’t know, but he went red. “You shut your fucking shitholes, or I’ll—”
The conversation broke like ice over a puddle on a cold fall morning. They plunged into the mud beneath, the grime that was Kip.
He’d never spoken to them in anger. Not once in the year and a half—the lifetime—he’d known them. And it was going to shatter their friendship. All because Kip couldn’t control his mouth. Kip the Lip. God. Damn.
“Breaker,” Cruxer said quietly. “They don’t mean anything by it.”
“It wasn’t even Conn Arthur’s bear,” Ben-hadad complained. “I know he’s a moody—”
“Stop,” Kip said, looking away. He turned his back, but didn’t keep walking to the gate. Not yet. “You’re done.”
“Don’t you turn your back on us, you asshole,” Winsen said.
“Don’t,” Cruxer warned Winsen.
“No. Shit gets awful, we have a few laughs. You’ve joined us every other time. Now you pull high ground on us? Go fuck yourself. What’s your problem, boss?” Winsen demanded.
“Let’s forget it,” Kip said.
“Sure. We can joke about that guy’s head we found two hundred paces from his body back at that wagon ambush, but some fuckin’ bear is beyond the pale. Sure, boss, you get to decide what’s funny, too. Because you’re the Lightbringer.”
“I’ve never said that,” Kip said.
“Yes, he is,” Cruxer said at the same moment. But he went on, “And if you doubt it at this point, what the hell are you still doing here?”
“I like the food,” Winsen said. “And I get to kill people.”
Aside from Kip, the rest of them chuckled, but it was forced. They’d all known Winsen long enough to know that the first half was probably a joke—it should be; any spices the cooks laid their hands on had to be sold for actual necessities. But the second half probably wasn’t a joke, and they’d all known him long enough to be uneasy about that.
Long enough, not well enough, because it didn’t seem that any of them did know him well. If there were hidden depths to Winsen—and one expects depths—they remained hidden. He seemed unaffected both by the physical difficulties of a life at war and the moral ones.
“Bad people,” Ferkudi amended for him. He was probably the only one of them who wasn’t a little unnerved by Winsen from time to time.
“Huh?”
“You get to kill bad people.”
“That’s a bonus,” Winsen said. He grinned at their drawn faces. “I am joking, guys.”
But Kip didn’t believe him. Winsen was on their side, but he didn’t actually care. He liked the excitement. When religious or moral conundrums came up at the campfire, the look on his face was akin to the one Kip imagined his own must wear when Tisis talked about fabrics for her eventual ‘real’ wedding gown.
Kip didn’t think Eirene was going to spring for the big wedding. He also didn’t think they were going to live that long, so it was a moot point.
“Oh shit,” Ben-hadad said. “That wasn’t just his brother’s bear, was it?”
“It’s over now,” Kip muttered. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What are you talking about?” Cruxer asked. When Kip started walking without answering, he asked it again, this time of Ben-hadad. Of course it was Ben who’d figured it out.
“You all didn’t stop to think how weird it was that a non-will-cast bear attacked at just the perfect place and time? What? He was just trained that well?” Ben-hadad asked.
“Hadn’t really thought about it,” Ferkudi said.
“That wasn’t Lorcan,” Ben-hadad said. “That was Rónán in Lorcan.”
“Oh shit,” Cruxer said.
“Orholam’s beard, I’m so sorry,” Big Leo said. “I didn’t mean…”
“So wait,” Winsen said. “That was really his brother? In the bear? Didn’t his brother die before we even met him?”