His blood roared. It drowned the talk to which he had been listening while he watched a succession of performances. When he could hear again, the words felt dwindled and purposeless, like the hum of a midgeling swarm.
“Yes, I was briefly with two other nomad groups,” Erannath was saying, “the Dark Stars north of Nova Roma, near the Julia River, and the Gurdy Men in the Fort Lunacy area. The differences in custom are interesting but, I judge, mere eddies in a single wind.”
King Samlo, seated on his chair, the only one put out, tugged his beard. “You ought to visit the Magic Fathers, then, who I was apprenticed to,” he said. “And the Glorious make women the heads of their wagons. But they’re over in Tiberia, across the Antonine Seabed, so I don’t know them myself.”
“Perhaps I will go see,” Erannath answered, “though I feel certain of finding the same basic pattern.”
“Funny,” said the yeoman. “You, xeno—no offense meant; I had some damn fine nonhuman shipmates durin’ war of independence—you get around more on our planet than I ever have, or these professional travelers here.”
He had come with his grown sons to join the fun. Minors and womenfolk stayed behind. Not only was the party sure to become licentious; brawls might explode. Fascinated by Erannath, he joined the king, Padro of Roadlord, the widow Mara of Tramper, and a few more in conversation on the fringes of the circle. They were older folk, their bodies dimmed; the feverish atmosphere touched them less.
What am I doin’ here? Ivar wondered. Exultation: Waitin’ for Fraina, that’s what. . . . Earlier, I thought I’d better not get too involved in things. Well, chaos take caution!
The bonfire flared and rumbled at the center of the wagons. Whenever a stick went crack, sparks geysered out of yellow and red flames. The light flew across those who were seated on the ground, snatched eyes, teeth, earrings, bracelets, bits of gaudy cloth out of shadow, cast them back and brought forth instead a dice game, a boy and girl embraced, a playful wrestling match, a boy and girl already stealing off into the farther meadow. Around the blaze, couples had begun a stamping ring-dance, to the music of a lame guitarist, a hunchbacked drummer, and a blind man who sang in plangent Haisun. It smelted of smoke and humanity.
The flicker sheened off Erannath’s plumage, turned his eyes to molten gold and his crest to a crown. In its skyey accent his speech did not sound pedantic: “Outsiders often do explore more widely than dwellers, Yeoman Vasiliev, and see more, too. People tend to take themselves for granted.”
“I dunno,” Samlo argued. “To you, don’t the big differences shadow out the little ones that matter to us? You have wings, we don’t; we have proper legs, you don’t. Doesn’t that make us seem pretty much alike to you? How can you say the Trains are all the same?”
“I did not say that, King,” Erannath replied. “I said I have observed deep-going common factors. Perhaps you are blinkered by what you call the little differences that matter. Perhaps they matter more to you than they should.”
Ivar laughed and tossed in: “Question is, whether we can’t see forest for trees, or can’t see trees for forest.”
Then Fraina was back, and he sprang up. She had changed to a shimmerlyn gown, ragged from years but cut so as to be hardly less revealing than her dancer’s costume. Upon her shoulder, alongside a blueblack cataract of hair, sat the luck of Jubilee, muffled in its mantle apart from the imp head.
“Coming?” she chirruped.
“N-n-n-need you ask?” Ivar gave the king a nord-style bow. “Will you excuse me, sir?”
Samlo nodded. A saturnine smile crossed his mouth.
As he straightened, Ivar grew aware of the intentness of Erannath. One did not have to be Ythrian to read hatred in erected quills and hunched stance. His gaze followed that of the golden orbs, and met the red triplet of the luck’s. The animal crouched, bristled, and chittered.
“What’s wrong, sweet?” Fraina reached to soothe her pet.
Ivar recalled how Erannath had declined the hospitality of any wagon and spent his whole time outdoors, even the bitterest nights, when he must slowly pump his wings while he slept to keep his metabolism high enough that he wouldn’t freeze to death. In sudden realization, the Firstling asked him, “Don’t you like lucks?”