Centauriad 1 - Daughter of the Centaurs (32 page)

Then she sees something that jolts her out of her thoughts. There are wild animals in the upper gallery, lurking behind the pillars. They are not costumed centaurs but real wild animals standing on pedestals. She walks up to a cheetah about to spring and waves her arms, but the cheetah remains frozen in place. “How do you arrest the animal like this? Has it been given russet bush willow?”

Orion laughs. “It is quite dead! It has been wired into this pose, stuffed, and carefully preserved.”

“It is one of the oldest Hands in Mount Kheiron, the taxidermical arts,” Zephele adds with a look of distaste. “And
if I were Apex, I would fulminate to get the Salient to pass an Edict against it.”

Malora listens, transfixed, as Orion explains how the slain animals are gutted, their bones bleached, and their innards replaced with sheep’s wool, their eyes by glass orbs. Malora, who has killed more animals than she can count, finds something unaccountably sad about these once-vital creatures who are doomed to pose for the amusement of others, like the poor grizzled centaur in the drawing atelier.

“Better to let the hyenas have at them,” she mutters.

But it is not the stuffed wild animals that are the focus of amusement this evening. It is the spectacle of the masked assembly costumed in wraps brightly painted to look like the skins of zebras and giraffes, of leopards and impalas, of lizards and snakes and crocodiles and birds and fish and even, in one case, a giant bright-orange scorpion. The Apex is impossible to miss in an elaborate long-trunked elephant mask and wrap of crinkled gray velvet. The rest of the Salient has followed their leader. They stand in a tight herd at one end of the room, their stuffed trunks swaying as they survey the crowd and confer from behind their masks. The Apex, Orion explains, will later award a prize to the buck and maiden with the best costumes.

“Excuse me while I have a word with Herself,” Orion says.

“Good luck,” Zephele calls after him. “Mother is very put out with Orion,” she explains to Malora. “He is refusing to entertain an offer from the House of Fairmane.”

“What sort of offer?” Malora asks.

“Why, for their daughter’s hand in matrimony, what
else?” Zephele says. “When the highest-born Highlanders marry, the purpose is to unite two families, Mane to Mane. It concerns the pooling of nubs. Never love. But Orion wants nothing to do with it. Like me, he is a romantic.” Zephele stops and peers through the eyeholes of her mask. “And who might
this
be?”

A centaur approaches wearing a leopard mask and draped in leopard skin. He is holding a staff topped with a melon.

“Guess who?” the centaur asks, knocking his staff against the floor in a commanding fashion.

The voice is familiar but Malora can’t quite place it. The leopard pushes up his mask. It is Orion and Zephele’s cousin, the mask maker himself, Mather Silvermane.

“Do you like my costume?” he asks Malora. “It reminds me very fondly of the garment you wore when we first met you.”

Malora remembers with her own fondness the leopard-skin pelt that Zephele sliced off her body and ordered burned. Malora’s arrival among the centaurs feels like a lifetime ago. Nowadays, it seems like Malora dons a new piece of finery every day. She bathes twice daily, washes her hair three times a week, reads and writes and does figures, and douses her canopy nightly in a scent custom-made by a highborn centaurean alchemist. Orion was right to say she was wild when she first came among them. But she is not wild now. Even when she steals away to go hunting with Neal, she is no longer a native fighting for her survival, but a visitor touring the bush for her own amusement.

“And look!” Mather says, removing the melon from the top of his staff, revealing a lethal point.

“That can’t be …!” Malora says.

“It can, indeed! It is the very one you brandished at the lion that attacked West!” Mather says. “I couldn’t resist taking it with me and smuggling it past the gatehouse as a souvenir of our bush adventure.”

“You had best be careful, Mather Silvermane,” Zephele says, quickly taking the melon from him and fitting it back over the point of the staff. “That does not look like a staff to me. It looks decidedly like a weapon.”

“Cousin!” Mather says in a tone of mock innocence. “I assure you, it is naught but a humble fence post. It is no more a spear than Malora’s sharpened butter knife is a dagger, am I right, Malora?” He winks at her.

“Right, Mather,” Malora says uneasily.

“You ladies must excuse me,” Mather says with a bow. “I will now employ my acute feral faculties to track down Canda Blackmane. If I succeed in unmasking her, she says she will grant me a jubilation. Wish me luck.”

A group of centaur musicians disguised as green-masked bush rabbits strikes up a sprightly tune. Torches blaze from the pillar sconces. Malora and Zephele wander away from the crowd, over to the gallery railing.

Zephele heaves a put-upon sigh. “Oh, Great Hideous Hand of Kheiron, this is every bit as deadly dull as I feared, in spite of the costumes. This ought to be a good place for me to hide,” she says, wedging herself between the railing and a pillar. “I warn you, I’m horrendously popular. It’s just a matter of time before the bucks find me and line up for their turn. I wonder if Orion should ask you to jubilate. Do you suppose it is the done thing? A centaur jubilating with
his pet? I don’t imagine my father ever jubilated with Honus. Still, this seems different somehow. Orion is a very able jubilator, but my dear papa, sadly, cuts a shambling figure on the jubilation floor. And imagine if he stepped on one’s hoof!”

Malora assures Zephele, “I really don’t need to dance—jubilate, I mean.”

Zephele breezes on. “Honus is a most courtly jubilator. Better than us centaurs. It’s the split hoof, I daresay, which makes him so much lighter on his feet. Not to mention that he only has two of them to coordinate. You have no idea how busy and complicated things get when there are eight hooves vying for position in the same jubilation floor. Honus can teach you—”

“Really, Zephie. I’m fine,” Malora insists. “I don’t care to jubilate with Orion or Honus or anyone. I am perfectly content just to be here and watch. And Honus is right. This must be the best view in Mount Kheiron.”

From where Malora is standing, she can see north, west, and east out to the flats, where big bonfires burn brightly, and even farther beyond, to where the endless pitch-blackness of the bush takes over. “Why are there so many fires out there?”

“It is Midsummer’s Eve for them, too,” Zephele says. “And they are probably having a good deal more fun at their jubilation than we are at ours, although I don’t believe they jubilate exactly, so much as carouse. Lucky them.”

A centaur done up in an elaborate kudu-horn headdress and mask peeks around the pillar. “May I have the pleasure of this jubilation, Lady Zephele?”

“You may, Milus Greatmane,” Zephele says regally to
the buck. Then to Malora: “So much for hiding … and disguises. Are you quite sure you’ll be all right?”

Malora waves her away. Zephele and Milus join the other centaur couples on the jubilation floor. The males hold staffs in their right hands. As if by unspoken agreement, they knock the bottoms of the staffs against the floor. The music begins. The bucks remain in place while the maidens dance around them. The maidens make a smart percussive sound as their hooves beat the floor. The bucks respond with a rhythmic tapping of their staffs.

Malora sees Orion being circled by a pretty green-and-red parrot. Malora wonders if the parrot is of the House of Fairmane or someone of Orion’s choosing. She sees a flamingo jubilating around a hippo, a gazelle around a buffalo, and a giraffe circled by a black horse with a long black mane. Theon the zebra jubilates with a sleek white cat in a white feathered mask glinting with diamonds. Off to the side, Malora catches sight of Mather the leopard, skulking along a row of pillars.

Now the maidens stand still, and it is the bucks’ turn to circle them. The bucks are as graceful in their movements as the maidens, lifting their hooves high and crossing one over the other, sidestepping with elegant ease. Zephele is right: Orion jubilates with grace, and the pretty parrot clearly cannot take her eyes off him.

In the Settlement, the grown-ups danced on warm spring nights in the Hall of the People, after the children were all bedded down. Malora wishes that she sat up and watched them so that she would now know how to dance. As it is, the
only dancing she knows how to do is with horses. And since there are no horses present, and no People other than her, she is destined to stand off to the side like this, a
portarum curator
, like Honus the faun. Only, what gate is hers to guard? Then she finds herself wondering whether Lume, the silver-haired man, knows how to dance, and if she will ever dance with him—or was he a figment of the gaffey?

Suddenly, her wandering thoughts are intercepted by a loud shout and a clash of sticks. There is an explosion of violent movement on the jubilation floor. The music comes to a crashing halt. The leopard and the giraffe have crossed staves. The other centaurs pull back to give them room. Mather knocks the staff from the hands of the giraffe and rips off his mask. Even from where Malora stands, she sees that the unmasked centaur has irregular teeth, the sharp incisors nature intended him to have.

He is a Flatlander!

“Interloper!” a male centaur on the dance floor shouts.

“Go back to the flats and dance with your filthy wenches,” a maiden says.

“Turn him out!” another maiden joins in.

The rumble of protests rises. The Flatlander struggles to free himself, but Mather has pinned him to a pillar with his staff.

The Highlanders cheer Mather on: “Oust him! Oust him!”

Biceps flexing with effort, the Flatlander thrusts the staff, and Mather, away from him. Mather staggers backward. The centaur maiden costumed as a black horse lets out a shrill scream. Mather regains his footing and rips the melon from the head of his staff. Mather menaces the Flatlander with the sharpened end of the staff.

“No, Mather! Please don’t!” Zephele’s voice rings out.

Mather raises the staff over his shoulder and hurls it
point-first at the Flatlander’s head. The Flatlander dodges, but the point makes contact. Blood blooms from the centaur’s bare shoulder.

A moment later, Malora hears the loud clomping of hooves marching up the wide stairway. Neal Featherhoof emerges, carrying a real spear, with its steel point glinting in the torchlight. He is dressed in the red-and-white wrap of the Peacekeepers, with a gold band around his neck that reminds Malora of the collars around Pel and Mel. Behind him march two more centaurs, dressed the same and also holding spears.

Neal barks an order, and the two Peacekeepers spring into action. They latch on to the Flatlander’s arms and drag him down the stairs, protesting.

“It’s not fair!” His voice carries up the stairwell. “I came here unarmed! I made a harmless wager with my mates that I couldn’t break in to the jubilation, and I did it easy!”

“He won the wager, but the price will be dearer than he bargained for,” Mather says to the crowd as he retrieves his staff with its bloodied point.

Neal steps up to Mather and snatches the staff from his grip. Mather cries out in pain and staggers backward, rubbing his arm. The crowd grumbles. Neal darts a questioning look at the Apex. The Apex wags his head. Neal’s jaw flexes. Malora can tell he is working to keep his anger under control. He cocks the staff over his shoulder, along with his spear, and sweeps down the stairs after the others.

Malora has trouble reconciling this cold and menacing soldier with the relaxed and charming rascal with whom she has passed so much time in the bush.

Mather stands next to the centaur maiden who must be Canda Blackmane. Who else can she be, disguised as a black horse? She peels off the mask, and the crowd gasps. Her tears have caused the dye to run all over her face and it is streaked with black, but Malora recognizes her from the vision she had so long ago in Mather’s tent, after smelling from his scent vial.

Zephele approaches her and hands her a flowered cloth. It will smell of wild jasmine, Malora thinks.

“Mather Silvermane, how
could
you?” Canda sobs.

Mather replies, “Canda, how could I
not
? A Flatlander dancing with a Highlander maiden! This cannot be tolerated! Isn’t that so?” he says, looking to the other centaurs.

They turn away from him, talking among themselves. The din of their gossip rises.

The Apex steps to the fountain, his heavy hooves clomping loudly. The centaurs scurry before him. The crowd falls silent. The Apex’s voice, over the sound of the trickling fountain, sounds louder even than the crowd at its zenith. “This jubilation is over! There will be no prizes. You have displeased me mightily. Now leave here, all of you. Go home and speak no more of this!”

Malora finds Honus at her elbow. “Come with me,” he whispers, “down the Twanian staircase.”

Malora follows him down a torch-lit set of narrow, winding stairs only a two-legger could negotiate.

Honus says as he trips down the stairs, “A great philosopher and social critic once said, ‘Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.’ I could not agree more.”

Malora doesn’t answer. She is struck dumb by what she has seen. She is also exhausted and feels a sense of having been poisoned by the ill will in the air.

When they get back to Honus’s rooms, Malora begs his leave and retires to her bedchamber without a bath, leaving her lion costume in a heap on the floor and crawling naked between the covers. She doesn’t even shake Breath of the Bush on the canopy, and yet the fabric must be saturated because it sends her, the way it always does, to where Sky waits for her.

She rides Sky across the dreamscape of the bush, letting the cold night air wash the evening’s turmoil from her head. Suddenly, they come upon a pride of lions. A male—big and vital—and two hefty females crouch on the path just ahead. Cubs coil and whine hungrily. Sky rears. The lions roar and swipe at his legs with their claws. Malora hangs on to Sky’s mane and digs her heels into the stallion’s ribs.