“Who pays for them all?” Lioe asked.

“Civic groups,” Gelsomina answered, not taking her glasses from her eyes. “That’s Estens there–one of the Five Points Families, Na Lioe. They, the Five Points Families, I mean, and the Merchant Investors Syndicate, the Five Points Bank, cartels like Yardmasters and Fishers Co‑op, and the Lockwardens, of course, each one sponsors a barge. Once a group’s bought the framework, it’s just a matter of dressing it each year.”

“It’s a way of proving your importance,” Roscha said.

Gelsomina went on as though she hadn’t spoken, lowering the glasses into her lap. “I used to dress for Yardmasters, a long time ago, and then for the MIS. Before it got so political.”

Lioe nodded, not really understanding, and a second barge swept into view. This one carried a massively muscled male shape, naked except for a blue‑and‑gold loincloth and heavy golden bracelets running from its wrists almost to its elbows. Its head was the head of a bull, the horns tipped with gold as well, and its body glittered in the spotlight, as though its skin were sheathed in some kind of faintly mottled coating, a gold iridescence like tiny scales. It threw back its head as the crowd’s noise reached it, massive mouth opening in a silent roar, and beat the air with its fists.

“Five Points Bank?” Roscha said, and Gelsomina nodded.

“More money than sense. But that’s always been their problem.”

“It looks,” Roscha said slowly, frowning, “you know, it looks almost hsaia, with that skin. I wonder if they meant it?”

“I doubt it,” Gelsomina said. “I heard talk about this. They hired Marrin Artisans to come up with a new way to make the sheathing, out of sequensas–rejects and scrap, mind you, but still. You can imagine what that cost.” She stared at the figure for a long moment, and added, grudgingly, “Still, it does look pretty good from here.”

“It still looks hsaia to me,” Roscha said. “And the FPB does a lot of business with HsaioiAn.”

“And that,” Gelsomina said, “is what’s wrong with the parade these days. Remember the year the Five Points Families each did one of the Four Judges? That started it, once their candidate got elected that year. Everything’s got a political angle, some kind of message–even when you don’t mean it to, somebody’s going to see it. The old days were a lot better.”

Roscha looked away, her expression at once embarrassed and mulish in the dim light, and Lioe said hastily, “Who’s that coming?”

Gelsomina adjusted her glasses again, focusing on the third barge that was just coming into view its deck still empty of its puppet. “MIS.”

Merchant Investors’ Syndicate, Lioe translated, and leaned forward a little. On the distant deck, a dark figure lifted its head, rose forward as though to its knees, and hung there for a moment, an indistinct shadow against the thin bank of light that was the far bank of the Water. Lioe caught her breath, heard a shocked murmur from the people filling the seiner to her right, and the same questioning noises from the crowd on the bank behind her. Gelsomina smiled faintly, said nothing. Then the figure straightened fully, and the lights came on, revealing a shape in a nipwaisted coat and the blood‑red shoulder‑cape‑and‑hood of Captain Rider. She was a familiar template in the Game, one of the heroic almost‑pirates who defended the Scattered Worlds against the Imperium, and Lioe waited eagerly for her to lower her hood. The puppet lifted both hands–light glinted from the ring, Captain Rider’s seal, worn on its right forefinger, and Lioe smiled at the careful detail–and slipped the hood back. There was something not quite right about the face, though, something unfamiliar, added or taken away from the template. Lioe frowned, puzzled, and realized that the puppet’s eyes didn’t match, one blue, one brown. Behind her, the crowd cheered.

“Holy shit,” Roscha said, “that’s Berengaria.”

“More politics,” Gelsomina said, but did not sound particularly displeased this time.

“The governor?” Lioe said.

Roscha nodded, grinning, and raised her voice to carry over the cheers and shrill whistles from the crowd. “She’s one of theirs, the MIS’s, I mean. And they’re proud of her.”

“She’s favored them enough, you mean,” Gelsomina said.

For all she hates politics, Lioe thought, she knows a lot about what’s going on. Still, it was a clever move, associating Governor Berengaria–who from all accounts supported Burning Bright’s freedom from both the metagovernments, and leaned to the Republic, her friends said, only because they were less of a threat than the HsaioiAn–with Captain Rider, protector of the Scattered Worlds. Not subtle, admittedly, but clever.

“And Rider’s not what you’d call a Beauty,” Gelsomina went on, her voice rising, querulous.

“She’s surely not a Beast,” Roscha answered, and Lioe intervened again.

“What is the rule?”

“There isn’t really a rule,” Gelsomina said, grudgingly. “Not written down, anyway. But the tradition is to alternate the pageant barges, a Beauty and a Beast, and the figures are usually taken from mythology. Not from the Game.”

“The Game’s a kind of mythology,” Lioe said mildly, overriding something Roscha started to say, and after a moment the john‑boat pilot subsided.

“Oh, I know,” Gelsomina answered. “It’s just–oh, very God, I hate getting old. You always end up sounding like your own mother.”

Lioe grinned and saw Roscha relax even further. “Who designs the puppets?” she asked at random, hoping to turn the conversation even further, and saw a fourth barge pull into view.

“Who’s that?” Roscha demanded.

Gelsomina worked her glasses, shook her head. “Can’t tell yet.”

On the distant deck, a figure unfolded, barely rising out of a crouch before the spotlights struck it. A dancing satyr leered back at the crowd, goat‑legged, rude horns jutting from its forehead and implied beneath its gilded fig leaf; it was crowned with oak and ivy, golden acorns– they must be the size of melons, Lioe realized, too big to span in my cupped hands–and carried a double flute. The cheers were less than enthusiastic, to her surprise, and she looked at Roscha.

“It’s been done before,” Roscha said, and Gelsomina shook her head.

“It’s Soresin, too. I expected better, after what I heard they spent this year.”

Then, quite suddenly, the satyr began to move. As though it had heard the comments, it thumbed its nose to each bank in turn, still grinning, then lifted its flute to its thick lips. It began to play, and, seconds later, the sound reached the watching crowd, a thin, seductive melody that carried the urge to dance and weep in the same quick, minor‑keyed strain. A moment later, the puppet began to dance to its own piping, the movements timed so perfectly that for a long moment Lioe forgot the barge, forgot that it was a puppet, and saw only the ghost of an abandoned god dancing against the horizon.

“Now that’s more like it,” Gelsomina said, and her words were nearly drowned by the cheering from the shore. On the seiner next to them, some of the people were dancing, sketching the same quick steps to the satyr’s music. Lioe glanced toward them, saw a young man clasp a woman’s hands and swing her in a sweeping circle. She leaned back, eyes closed, bright skirt flying, her long hair tumbling loose from a Carnival crown of braids, brushing the decks. She came upright laughing, and Lioe looked away from the wild abandon in her face.

“If that doesn’t take all the awards,” Roscha began, and her voice trailed off into nothing.

Gelsomina nodded, but her expression was less certain. “Everything for puppetry, certainly.”

The barge that followed Soresin’s dancing satyr carried another female puppet, this one tall and very slim, dressed in a short, one‑shouldered tunic and carrying a spear nearly as tall as the puppet itself. Light flared from the fingers of her free hand; she touched the spear’s point, and fire ran up and down the shaft. It was impressive, but after the dancing satyr anything would have been an anticlimax.