The beginning of a short fiction work set in my unique world. I have a thing where my fiction just has to be read in Times, so sorry if the font bothers you. Enjoy!
Felix rubbed the rosin bag between his hands vigorously,
making sure to get plenty on his forearms and the back of his hands. He tossed the bag to Marta and proceeded to
grip each hand to the opposite wrist, pulling hard and feeling for the familiar
friction that meant safety during the show.
He had only ever dropped a partner once, and though it was a frightening
experience, the girl had landed and tumbled gracefully, avoiding both injury
and embarrassment. Indeed, the girl had
recovered so well that the even the ring leader thought it was merely a new
part of the act. Felix was careful since
then to both maintain his grip strength through his daily exercises and be
diligent about the rosin.
Marta dropped the bag a moment to adjust her skin-tight
costume: a robust weave of silk and cotton in wide vertical stripes of black
and gold that stretched from above her bare ankles to two straps on her
shoulders. Felix looked up a moment to see one of her bare breasts as she
fussed with the tight garment. He neither looked away out of politeness nor
stared; it was a type of immodesty that became typical after a long stretch on
the road with the same familiar faces. Immodesty
had, quite surprisingly, been a draw for the little circus, though of an
unexpected sort, for in the mountain principalities bare ankles and shoulders
were a great curiosity for men both young and old.
Felix smiled to himself as he stood up to stretch. He
thought about how flustered one of the members of the nobility would get
sitting in the little tent with them. The revealing costumes (even aside from
the nudity between the opposite sexes), the strange body positions as they
stretched, and the colorful makeup, would to the unfamiliar, make them seem
more like exotic prostitutes than acrobats.
He could feel his large back muscles begin to relax as he got further
into the stretch, leaning off to the left with his left elbow being pulled even
farther behind his head. He could feel
the excitement of the show begin to fade to a cool calmness and self-awareness
of his body as his breathing slowed. He
opened his to see Marta mirroring his body with a slight half smile.
Marta was lean and compact woman, shapely because of her
ample muscle and short stature, which made both her hips and bust appear
larger. The striped costume further
accentuated these assets. Her black
hair, which during the day was long and curly, was tied back in a ponytail,
showing a stronger neck than what was fashionable for polite ladies. Felix thought for that moment that she did
indeed seem quite beautiful, with her white face paint and bright red lips, and
wondered why they had always kept their relationship professional. As she gazed back at him, her smirk drawing
on him, he wondered if she returned the sentiment.
No time for such feelings,
Felix thought to himself. Business is
business and that’s that. Best not to
get involved. Soon enough she won’t be more than a memory anyway.
*
The
show that night was both quieter and louder than the previous night’s
peformance. During each attempt at a feat the crowd would
hush, waiting anxiously for Marta to land or be caught by Felix , then erupt in
cheers when their tricks were pulled off flawlessly. This was, of course, part of the art of
performance that all the members of the troupe had mastered during their years
of travel and from the feedback of countless audiences. Each action was designed to look hard, even
if it was quite easy, and the body language they employed reinforced this
illusion. Marta would stand on the platform with her arms held out, looking nervous, and Felix would stand below, breathing deeply and wiping
the sweat from his brow. They had done each motion many times before, and could
easily run through their whole routine in twenty minutes, but that night they took their time to
heighten the drama toward the end of the show, giving the crowd as much as they
wanted. Each tumble or catch
drew forth applause like at the end of a great concerto.
Occasionally, during the prestige, Felix would take a moment to look out past the
bright spotlights, which were often a wonder in and of themselves to outsiders, to see a crowd that was
noticeably more highbrow than the night before. The fact that the little motley troupe could have a fully lit circus indoors at night made
more than a few people in each town wonder about the legality of the technology
they employed to generate such illumination. Familiar faces in the crowd, all set above
rich cloth revealed that the nobility would
turn out for plebian entertainment, to the point of attending more than a single night, as long as there was a technical fascination
to catch their eye. To the peasants and merchants that were standard at a
circus, the strangeness of unfamiliar technical capacity was soon displaced in
their minds by the requirements of their own work. Only to those who had power did the draw of
the unfamiliar mean something substantial.
One time, as Felix came out of a bow, he looked out and saw an auspicious couple in the third row and thought, “Ha! I bet that’s my
mark.” The pair was made of a very fat man, easily identified as wealthy if not
truly noble, who had a jovial look, and a very young and beautiful blonde girl
who any streetwise person would recognize as a highly paid prostitute, or at
least an escort hired to provide someone with pleasant company and a good view.
As he rose out of the final bow at the end of the show he detected a faint smile
on her lineless face and laughed to himself, “Looks like she’s been given the
same mark.”
*
Felix
hurried down the narrow alley, pausing to pull on his hooded black shirt, then
refastening his bag to the small of his back.
He wondered if he looked more suspicious garbed from head to
toe in black, as
opposed to the colorful acrobat’s uniform beneath, but he knew that he was well away from eyes that
would notice him as such. He picked up
the pace, moving into a full run once he felt far enough away from the central square which held the troupe’s tent. The circus
would continue for another two hours while he was doing his real job; if he was
particularly efficient he could be back for the final bow, but Felix understood
that it was not wise to expect both effectiveness and timeliness, even
out of himself.
He
watched the closed doors in the alley wiz past his head, counting carefully the
number of doors before he slipped into the next alleyway. Minalay was an
ancient city, and because of its location, high up along a sloping mountain,
real estate was at a premium. The people of the city built new housing wherever
space could be found: against the city wall or even underneath or within its
ancient foundations, outside of it on (or into) a cliff, or most often, between
older existing buildings. This gave each street of the city the look of having one gigantic
house, with changes of color and a variance of
architecture to show where one house ended and the next
began. HeFelix had even
noticed a few houses barely a dozen feet wide during his planning of his route
the day before, and thought that most visitors from other cities (where land
itself was not so rare and expensive) would detest such living arrangements,
thinking that sealing up a narrow corridor
with two walls and a ceiling into a narrow house would be unfit for all but the
most desparate. Felix, who
spent most of his timing living out of a cramped wagon
with strange fellows, thought
otherwise.
Another
quirk of the city was its lack of underground sewers, which to some might
suggest that the city was old enough to predate their use, though speaking of such might earn more
than a glace or two from the devout.
To the people that lived in Minalay, underground sewers were simply considered
unnecessary, as the whole city sloped downward with the mountainside. Gravity was usually enough to keep the sewers
clear, and in an instance where it wasn’t, the frequent rains that pelted the
city
nearly year-round would wash
the waste away. There were, however, a
few inevitable stretches where the slope wasn’t quite true, and the sewers
would pool up. Felix turned a corner and found himself running down one such alley, pulling his hood against his
mouth and nose to deal with the stench. I’d
expect this to be some cheap property, he thought while biting back a surge
of bile behind his tongue. But
I suppose what you don’t pay in rent you are likely to pay in
misery. Almighty!
After
another quick turn he saw his destination: a large manor perched at the top of a steep hill. By the time he reached
it he was nearly out of breath. He looked down the hill as he waited
for his breath to slow, and took comfort
in knowing that the road back would be almost entirely downhill. The house
looked much more ominous in the moonlight than it had the sunlight, and the paler light made it look taller,
the wall around it older and more robust. No lights were shining in the visible
windows. Felix concluded that the owner
might
have used the prime tickets
for the exotic circus his contact had
supposedly sent. He
smiled, thinking his mark might have already watched him that night. Around the top of the wall was a tight line of iron
spikes, glistening slightly
with polished edges in the white
light, curved toward the street to repel anyone foolhardy enough to attempt
climbing over. The brightness
of the moon was not something Felix had considered when setting off, as on
the jog there the tall and
tightly stacked buildings had
obscured the light and made everything darker than it would be. Staring out
from the edge of the alleyway he knew that we would be very exposed on his
approach to the wall.
He thought
back to the previous day, very glad he had taken the time to case out the immense mansion
and plot out his actions. He relaxed, remembering that despite the exposure of the
street, the buildings between which he
was standing had no windows facing toward the mansion.
His breath finally slowed and the pulse
in head lessened. He checked the tightness
of his shoes, belt, and bag, looked out the long and wide street for any
passers-by, and bolted. His soft-soled shoes
made only
very slight footfalls on the stone
street, and if anyone were near and keen enough to listen, all they would have
heard
distinctly was the faint
sound of breathing. He sprinted at the
wall and leapt up at it, pushing hard against its ragged edifice with one foot, and exploding away and up. He reached up as he did this and grabbed two
of the iron prongs that stuck out from the top of the wall, suddenly relaxing
and letting his feet dangle far above the street. He then began to swing back and forth. Once he got close to the wall he began
pushing off from it with his toes.
Finally in one great burst he swung himself over the sharp ends of the
spikes, his momentum pausing for but a fleeting second as his
plank-stiff body stood feet-up above the iron spikes before he fell to the
other side. He
hit the wall hard with his toes, which absorbed enough of the impact that his
body and face did not slam into the stone, then he relaxed an hung again, this
time on the inside of the wall, his face nearly against the wall.
He looked around him to take in what was not visible
from the street: A large yard (which seemed a dreadful luxury in Minalay) with
a very well kept garden, a fountain, and under a bough of a small tree, a dog
house. Shit! Felix thought to himself
with the understanding that dogs
were often more perceptive (and noisier) guardians than people. At the same he
smiled, knowing that things worth taking were often well guarded. He wasn’t
officially permitted to steal beyond that for which he had been contracted, but he
often did anyway as time allowed, knowing that even if it was not
condoned, it was at
least partly expected. The jewelry and odd trinkets he stole were
easily sold at the circus’s next stop, and he always put the “earnings” (as he
called them) into his “retirement fund,” which for him was a heavy chest half of the way filled with gold.
Hanging over the wall he weighed his options with the
dog. The edge of the house was too far
away to jump, as he hung at a wide stretch between the wall and the mansion. If
he dropped, his landing
would be in darkness and on unknown terrain. He chose to drop, pushing off from the wall and falling
into darkness. A soft moisture met his feet and he tumbled on the soft, well-mowed lawn. He looked quickly back toward the dog
house to see nothing stirring, and began to relax. He took one extra step and
heard something crack loudly. Craning his head toward the noise, he saw a crow flying away from branch as
it fell from one of the small oaks in the garden.
Nasty coincidence. His heart leapt into his throat as he turned toward
the dog house, his muscles tensing for a quick escape.
What emerged from the darkened opening of the dog
house, which looked much like a miniature of the mansion, was not what Felix would have considered a dog. It was tiny, with a fluffy tail and a mane
around its squashed face. It
came running up to him and began to wag its tail happily. It was a toy dog: the fancy of many nobleman, which were valued not
for their usefulness, but their beauty. He thanked his luck that this was not a variety that liked to bark. He bent
down and began to pet the dog.
“Good boy,” he whispered, “Do you know where the
bedroom is?” The dog continued to wag
its tail and began licking Felix’s hand. “No matter, any gentleman would pick
the room facing south for his bedroom, eh pup?” He casually walked toward the
southernmost corner of the house. The
house was made of large cut stone, as old as the wall outside, which is to say very old
indeed, and was covered in ivy. There were
lots of little cracks and footholds among the stones and
the foliage was strong, which made
climbing up very easy. Though other men might have seen such a feat as impossible, Felix found it trivial, and within a
matter of seconds he had reached the top floor.
On
the third story he was able to stand on
a piece of wood trim, judged by its strength and hardness to
be added a long time after the house
proper was built, that jutted out from the stone about three inches and hold himself up to the window. What he
saw inside was a very large bedroom which included an entire library and
sitting area on one side. On a table by one of the windows sat the
oddment for which he had
come. He was happy to see that the
windows were unlocked and unbarred, and rotated in their middle, letting him
avoid the awkwardness of pulling open a window which only swung outward
whilst standing on a toe-length ledge.
He
slipped in face first, landing on the soft carpet inside on his hands before
pulling his feet in from the window. Once inside he noticed that the room displayed a
level of wealth that he had not expected, even from a rich man with a
garden in a city like Minalay. The bed
frame and the frames on the paintings were enriched with gold leaf, the bed and
sitting furniture were upholstered in shiny silk, and all the ornaments of the
room, from the lanterns to the inkwell, were cast in silver. He wondered
if might not be robbing a merchant, but the child of some very well-off duke, or even the
bastard son of a king. I’m not paid to respect birth and title
you
sir, whoever you might be, have something someone else wants very badly, he thought as he stood up.
The object he was contracted to acquire, which he now
examined with curiosity, was apparently called a “microscope.” Felix had no real idea how it was used, but
knew enough from the brief he was given what it should look
like, and even if he had been given
nothing in the way of information he would have chosen this as the correct article
based entirely on its strange appearance. He had never seriously studied any of
the scriptures, but had lived enough in the world to know that this was
technology not found in the canon of any deity. It was made of brass
and glass and steel, but he was sure neither Ferrul nor Silus had provided any
direction to the church for its construction. It was, however, bigger than expected considering
the prefix “micro” and barely fit into his bag. The top barrel of brass still
stuck out of the opening as he gave up on stuffing it inside
and drew the strings around the opening taught.
“Now what was the second thing?” Felix thought to
himself. He remembered the missive he
had been handed back in Haroux:
Besides acquiring the instrument itself, we have
reason to believe that the subject in question also has possession of a bound
set of notes, detailing the dimensions etc.,
radii etc.,
materials etc.,
and construction methods etc.
of the device, not penned in the subject’s hand, and it is imperative we recover this as
well.
The table was free of any paper, bound or unbound,
and Felix turned to the large bookcase at the end of the room feeling a strange
mix of humor and despair. Fitting
that I should think of getting back for the final bow only to be forced to find
a needle in a haystack. He tried to think of how he might narrow the search
without checking each book. First he
looked for anything that was bound without a spine, but each book had a spine.
Next he looked for any hand-written labels, but every book that had a label was
printed. He decided his best chance was to check all the books without anything
printed on their spine at all, hoping that he could find the text before the owner
returned home from the circus. The search
quickly as he opened each book, evaluated its contents, then cast
it down upon the ground. Cooking. No.
Casting. No. That’s a novella. He chuckled at a roughly bound book. This is a sex guide. He flipped through
deeper pages. And a bad one. No.
Within minutes he had reached the end of the books.
Well, either it’s disguised as a different book or he’s got it somewhere else, he thought.
He started opening up drawers and tossing the articles aside.
After the books, he no longer cared about leaving an unsuspicious scene. He pried open a jewelry box on
the bedside table, which
contained a fine set of rings and necklaces (which he put in his pockets; he might have been in a slight state of panic but he
was still practical). It was while he was shoving the last gold ring down his
pants pockets that he noticed something touch his leg. Wheeling about, he saw
nothing, but looking down, he saw a familiar pair of brown eyes set in a puffy
mane looking up at him.
Before he could ask the dog how he got in, his
question was answered by a crash at the upper stair landing and a flurry of
laughing.
“Not to worry, not to worry! It’s
only a few hundred years old, I’ve dozens more!” A brash voice said just
outside the bedroom door. Felix had no time to think. His heart was pounding and he shook with adrenaline.
He couldn’t think straight about what to do, and so he did what many scared and desperate people
have
done before: he hid under the bed.
More to come soon. Thanks for reading!
-DVS
