It was not Rory, but Trist who glanced back as we left. Would they go back? I strongly suspected they would. “Let’s see the rest of the freaks and get out of here,” I suggested.

“I need a beer,” Rory countered. “I got dust down my throat what needs washing out. I’m leaving now.”

And so he left us, and I feared he had gone back to speak to the keeper. I told myself there was nothing I could do about it. I abruptly recalled I was supposed to be looking for Epiny. As the current of the crowd washed us along, I watched for her chimney hat in vain. By the time we had seen the firewalker, the tall man, and the bug eater, my fellow cadets had somehow melted away from me in the crowd. Despite myself, my mind pictured Rory tangled with the calico woman, and I knew an odd mixture of both envy and disgust. I made myself walk on.

I moved to a less congested area. I spat again, feeling queasy from the foul taste of the Speck dust in my mouth. I tried to clear my throat of it, and ended up coughing instead.

When I caught my breath and looked around me I found myself standing in a backwater in the freak tent. I’d seen the main spectacles. Here, at the outer edges of the tent were the secondary attractions, the ones that seemed trivial after the greater shocks of the main stages. A woman wriggled her deformed yellow feet at me while she cackled like a chicken. The insect man sat within a tiny tent of mosquito netting while roaches and beetles and spiders crawled about on him. Laughing, he set a caterpillar across his upper lip as if it were a moustache. It was too tame. The crowd shuffled past him, unamused.

The fat man stood up from his stool and wiggled his shoulders to set his naked gelid belly dancing. I stared at him. His bulk dwarfed Gord’s. He had greased his pouched flesh to make it glisten in the lamplight. He had hanging breasts like a woman and his bare belly drooped over the waistband of his striped trousers like a fleshy apron. Even his ankles were fat, I noted, the flesh puddling over the tops of his feet. Beside him, an obese woman dressed in a short pleated skirt and a sleeveless bodice reclined languidly on a divan. She had a box of candies on a low table before her. As I watched, she ate the last one, and sent the box to join its empty fellows on the floor around the table. Her face and eyes were painted, and when she lifted her gaze and saw me staring at her, she pursed her lips at me in a kiss.

“Look, Eron. A soldier boy. Did you come to see sweet Candy?” She beckoned to me. The way her arms wobbled put me instantly in mind of the tree woman of my dream. I took an involuntary step backward, making her laugh. “Don’t be scared. Come a little closer, lovey. I won’t bite you. Not unless you’re as sweet as sugar.”

The fat man had resumed his seat on his stool. He turned his head to look at me and smiled. His face was wreathed in fat; even his brow seemed heavy. I was, for the moment, the sole gawker. He spoke to me. “Soldier, eh? You a soldier lad? Oh, yes, I can tell. It’s in the bearing. What branch are you? Artillery man?”

He spoke in such a friendly way that I would have been an oaf to ignore him. Yet I was suddenly uneasy to have the spectacle turn into a person. I glanced over my shoulder. Most of the crowd seemed to prefer the more lurid offerings of the tent and shuffled past his little stage with scarcely a glance.

“I’m cavalla. I’m a cadet at the King’s Academy,” I said, and then I stopped. Was I? In a few more days, I was certain I’d be culled. The fat man didn’t even notice my abrupt silence.

“Cavalla! You don’t say! I was cavalla myself once, though you’re not like to believe it now. Jensen’s Horse. I started out as their bugle boy, I did, no taller than a flea and skinny as a whippet. Bet you don’t believe that, do you?” He spoke as casually as if we had met at a cabstand, as if there was nothing strange about him chatting with someone who had come to gawk at him as an oddity.

I felt embarrassed for him, and smiled awkwardly. “It’s a bit hard to believe, sir, yes.”

“Sir,” he said softly. Then he smiled, the expression pressing lines into his doughy face. “Been a long time since a young soldier has called me that. I was a lieutenant when this happened to me. I was on my way up, too. They told me that in a month, perhaps two, there would be a vacancy and I’d be a captain in my father’s old regiment. I was so happy. I thought it had all been worth it.” His face was transfigured by some memory, his eyes staring into the distance. He glanced down at me abruptly. “But you’re an Academy lad. Bet you wouldn’t think much of some ranker like me. My father had been a ranker before me, but he’d never risen higher than master sergeant. When I got my lieutenant’s bars, he was over the moon about it. He and my old maw sold just about everything they had to buy me a commission. I was shocked to hear they’d done it.”

He suddenly fell silent and all the old glory faded from his face. “Well,” he said, and laughed harshly. “My dad was always a good trader. I bet he got top dollar out of that commission when he sold it off.” He saw me staring at this revelation, and laughed again, more harshly. He gestured rudely at his body. “Well, after this happened to me, what was I to do? My career was over. I come back west, hoping my family would take me in; they wouldn’t even speak to me. Wouldn’t even admit it was me. My old dad tells everybody that his son died in battle with the Specks. Close enough to truth, I guess. It was the damn Speck plague that did this to me.”

He lumbered over to the edge of his stage and sat down heavily. The whole process of lowering himself looked awkward. He dangled his legs over the edge. His low shoes were run over and tired, near bursting at their seams. His feet looked fat and run over, too, wider than they should have been. I wanted to leave, but could not simply turn and walk away from him. I wished other spectators would come to distract him from me. I did not like that he was being so friendly and talkative. I had to force myself to look interested in his words.

“So I come to the city. Took up begging on the street corners, but no one believes a fat man who says he’s starving. I would have starved, too, if I hadn’t taken on this duty. It’s not that different from the cavalla, some ways. Get up, do your shift, eat, go to bed. Watch each other’s backs. Stick together. That’s what they say about the cavalla, isn’t it? That we always watch out for one another. Right, trooper?”

“Right,” I said uneasily. I felt he was building to something, some declaration of brotherhood that I didn’t want to hear. I needed to leave. “I have to be on my way now. I’m supposed to looking for my cousin.” The words came to me with a sour taste of guilt. They, were merely an excuse, and a stark reminder to myself that I had completely forgotten about Epiny and Spink and the danger that she might be in.

“Yeah, right, he has to go.” The Fat Lady spoke from her divan. From somewhere, she had drawn out another box of candies and was untying the blue ribbon that bound the creamy yellow box. She spoke without looking at either of us. “He knows you’re gonna touch him for some coppers. ‘I was in the cavalla, gimme a coin.’ Bores me to tears. I heard it too often.”

“Shut up, you fat old slut!” the man told her angrily. “It’s true! I was cavalla, and a damn good soldier once. Maybe I was a ranker, but I’m not ashamed of that. Every promotion I got, I earned. It was never give to me because I was some noble’s son, nor bought for me. I earned it. Earned these lieutenant’s bars. Looky here, trooper. You recognize the real thing, don’t you? And you wouldn’t mind giving an old comrade-in-arms a few coins so I could buy me something a bit stronger than a beer? Gets cold working in here in the wintertime. A man could use a good stiff drink after what I go through.”