Wait, a quiet voice said to him.

He closed his mouth.

“What was that?” the dead man said. “Who was that? You can’t touch him! You can’t speak to him! That’s not how it works. That’s not the rules! Unless…”

Gavin was about to say something aloud, but whatever it was, he forgot it immediately when he heard a sound. Something from outside the cell.

No! I’m in here for months and months and nothing happens, and then two vitally important things happen at the exact same time?

The air changed and light streamed into the black cell like a sledge smashing Gavin’s good eye. Gavin blinked against it, putting out a three-fingered hand to block the assault, and the man turned down his lamp. Then he set it on the floor.

Grinwoody.

Chapter 70

“In the circus when I was growing up, we had this act,” Big Leo said, as the Mighty followed Kip toward the Dúnbheo gate. They hadn’t heard what Conn Arthur had said. Cruxer told them only that he was leaving.

They weren’t taking it well.

Big Leo continued, “We’d take the scrawniest kid we could find in the village, or some feeble old codger, or just the kid whose parents we wanted to please the most, and we’d pit him against my dad, who was my size now at least. Bigger. We had these funny illusions where we pitted him against my father in feats of strength, and somehow he won every time. And at the finale, my father pretends to be furious and picks the skinny guy up and sets him on a teeterboard, determined to bounce him out of the place. He jumps on his side of the teeterboard—and just slowly rises, not even fast enough to bounce him. Then my father looks at the teeterboard like it’s got to be broken. Picks it up, moves it around, sees that it’s just a plain old teeterboard: one piece of plain wood over a fulcrum.”

“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—”