Beyond the square was the green that sloped gently down to the river, dotted with bright tents that billowed in the winter wind. Spink’s note had said that Epiny would find him there. I doubted it. I had never seen or even imagined so many people packed so closely and still filling such a large space. Nevertheless, I jumped down from the fountain’s edge and began a deliberate trek toward the green. The crowd did not give way to me. I edged between people and sometimes went around tightly packed knots of folk gathered to watch a performer. I did not move quickly; I could not. All the while, I kept my eyes open, hoping to spot either Spink or Epiny. The lighting was erratic, the masked and hooded people always in motion, and the din of voices and instruments pressed on my ears and wearied me.

The green had become the brown, the tended lawns already trampled to thick mud in this one night. The lamplight did not reach this far and the circus folk had lit their own lanterns. The lights gave colour to the parts of the tents that it touched. Torches illuminated garish posters and wildly attired barkers who perched on their stands and shouted their cant to lure the folk into the tents. The roars of caged beasts emanated from one flapping tent door, its sign promising me that within I would find Every Large Predator That The World Has Ever Seen! The next tent had a barker who shouted in a hoarse whisper that no man was truly a man until he had seen Syinese dancers perform the Dance of the Blowing Leaves, and that the next performance would start in five, only five, a mere five minutes from now, and that I should hurry before all the front seats were gone. I walked past, feeling sure that Spink and Epiny would not be in there.

I halted, staring hopelessly around me and praying for a clue. In that instant, I saw a hat go by. I could not see the face of the woman who wore it, for she was masked, but I recognized the foolish hat I had seen Epiny wearing the day she came to the Academy with my uncle. “Epiny!” I shouted, but if she heard me over the din, she did not pause. I tried to push my way through the crowd, only to have an angry drunk threaten me for jostling him. By the time I got around him, the hat had vanished into the mouth of a dark blue tent decorated with painted snakes, stars,” and snail shells. When I got close enough to read the poster beside the entry, it proclaimed that this tent held Freaks, Grotesques and Wonders of Humanity! Well, that would certainly attract Epiny, I thought. I joined the line of people waiting to go in. A few moments later, I was surprised when Trist, Rory, Oron, and Trent joined me. They hailed me heartily, slapping my back and asking how I was enjoying Dark Evening so far. I think their loud greetings were to make it clear to the people who were already waiting behind me that they were my fellows and intended to join the line where I was. In truth, I was very glad to see them. I immediately asked if they had seen Spink.

“He came with us!” Rory shouted over the general hubbub around us. “But he shied off on his own dam’ near soon as we got here. H’aint seen him since.” Drink had brought out Rory’s accent.

“Caleb when looking for free whores,” Trist enlightened me, as if I’d requested the information. “Nate and Kort went looking for ones that took money.”

I looked at their faces, flushed with drink and carnival, and thought of what I could tell them. The words rose like bile in the back of my throat. I swallowed them down. Soon enough they would know we had all been culled. I felt old as I decided that I would let them have this last holiday, merrily ignorant of their fate.

The line shuffled us along as Rory told me that, truly, I did need to see the Syinese Dancers perform. “I’d no idea a woman could bend like that!” he enthused, to which Oron sourly observed, “No proper woman can, fool!”

In the midst of the argument that followed, Trist poked Rory in the ribs and said, “Look at that! I doubt he was given leave to be here. I’ll bet Colonel Stiet thinks little Caulder is home and tucked up in his trundle bed right now!”

I had but a glimpse before the crowd closed off the sight. There was Caulder, his hat on crooked and his cheeks very red. There were several Academy cadets with him, old nobles’ sons, and most of them second-year cadets. Two I recognized immediately. Jaris and Odon had linked arms and were whooping and shouting back at the barker who was trying to persuade them to come inside his tent and see the Juggling Hidaspi Brothers from Far Entia. The other cadets were passing a bottle amongst themselves. I saw it reach Caulder’s hands. He took it and at their urging, tipped his head back for a drink. I saw his face as he lowered the bottle. He did not relish it, but he swallowed it anyway. He grinned weakly afterward, and I wondered if he clenched his teeth against his belly’s load.

“They’re giving that boy strong drink!”

Rory guffawed. “If he thinks chawin’ bacco made him sick, wait till that hits his belly. He’ll be shitting through his lips until the morning light!”

Trist and Trent laughed uproariously at the crudeness of Rory’s comment. Oron pursed his lips primly and looked disapproving.

“Someone should stop them,” I said, but the line suddenly began to move more quickly and I was carried along with it. The man at the tent door snatched the admission price from my fingers and reached for the next man’s coin. I told myself that Caulder would be all right, and that if he got sick as a dog, he well deserved it. A moment later, I entered the world of the circus sideshow.

The circus folk knew their business. The tent floor was coated thick with straw to keep the walkways from turning to mud. Lanterns hung from supports and the walkways circled through the tent’s interior, leading from one display to the next. Low canvas walls or cage mesh forced us to keep our distance from the attractions. Ostensibly, we could wander where we willed, but the push of folk behind us propelled us to the left. In a few moments, I am shamed to say I had nearly forgotten that I was trying to find Epiny in the midst of the chaos.

The first sight that met our eyes was a slender girl dressed in a short vest secured only by a chain across her breasts. The pleated skirt she wore came barely to her knees. Even so, her body was well covered, for it was draped in coil after coil of a monstrous snake that was lapped around her and the throne that she sat on.

She held the snake’s wedge-shaped head between her hands and stroked it as she spoke softly to it. The snake’s tongue fluttered forth and the girl extended her own pink tongue to meet it, earning a collective gasp from the audience. Rory especially would have stayed there, entranced, but the push of the crowd moved us on.

We saw the goat-faced man, with his protuberant yellow eyes, long teeth, and goat’s beard. He was tethered to an upended crate and he bleated at us as we passed, but I judged him a fraud. Next was the horrific sight of a man sitting bare-chested on a box, with, the body of his half-formed twin hanging from his ribs. I stared at that and could not look away until Rory took me by the upper arm and hurried me on.

The poster had promised true. We saw freaks, grotesques and wonders. A strongman bent an iron bar, passed it round the crowd for us to inspect and then straightened it before our very eyes. The skeleton man stood, bent, and turned round that we might see every vertebra in his back push out against his skin. Three midgets dressed in red, yellow and blue scampered around a ring, turning somersaults and cartwheels. They then advanced to shake hands round the crowd and win their tips of coins. A cone-head sat rocking on a tall stool, his tongue extended as he amused himself by shaking a large rattle at the crowd. A pretty little girl with long golden curls and flippers instead of arms stood on a chair and sang a song about the heartless mother who had abandoned her. “The poor little thing!” Rory exclaimed with heartfelt pity. Coins rang as we tossed them into the big china bowl at her feet.