pity, or need it,’ said Piper. ‘We need your help. Your swords, and your soldiers.’
‘We both know that can’t happen.’
‘Then we have nothing further to talk about,’ I said.
He scanned my face. I didn’t look away.
‘You’ll change your mind,’ he said. ‘When you do, come to me.’
He made to turn away, but I called after him.
‘You want us to trust you,’ I said, ‘but you haven’t even told us your real name.’
‘You know my name,’ he said.
‘Not your Council name. Your real name.’
‘I already told you.’ His voice was granite – it yielded nothing. ‘What would it change, if I told you the name my parents gave to me? Why would that be any truer than the name I chose for myself?’
I refused to be dismissed by him. ‘Why choose The Ringmaster then?’ I said.
He raised his chin slightly, appraising me.
‘When I was a child,’ he said, ‘a minstrel show came through our town. They put on a hell of a show: not just bards, but jugglers and acrobats too. A horse that danced on its hind legs to the music, and a man who’d trained snakes to crawl all over his body. It felt like half the town turned out to watch. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. But when everyone else was oohing and aahing at the dancing horse, and the man who walked on stilts, I was watching the man who introduced them. I saw how he got us hyped up for each act, and how he jumped in to cut an act short if it wasn’t grabbing us. He orchestrated the whole thing. The performers were impressive enough, in their own way, but the Ringmaster was the one running the show. He had the audience performing like that dancing horse, by the end, and they filled his hat with coins without thinking twice.
He bent closer, as if he were telling me a secret. ‘I never wanted to be the man on stilts, or the snake-charmer. I wanted to be the Ringmaster: the one who makes things happen. That’s what I am now. You’d do well to remember it.’
He stepped back, and began to walk away to where his soldiers waited, barely visible in the darkness.
‘Tell me why we shouldn’t kill you now,’ Zoe shouted at his back.
‘That’s what your twin would do,’ he said, turning to me. ‘The Reformer would have a knife in my back before I got three paces away.’ He gave a grin – the quick twist of the mouth, a flash of teeth like the glint of a blade. ‘I suppose it’s a question of how alike you are.’
And it was a kind of courage, to turn his back on us and take those steps. His soldiers were too far away to help him. His death would be a matter of moments. I knew exactly how Piper would draw back his arm. The precise movement with which he would throw the knife: his arm straightening; the knife not tossed but released, unwavering, to bury itself in the back of The Ringmaster’s neck.
‘Don’t do it.’ I grabbed Piper’s raised arm, his muscles taut beneath my fingertips. He didn’t shift when I wrapped my hands around his forearm. His knife was poised, his eyes following The Ringmaster’s path amongst the broken ghosts of poles. Next to him, Zoe had a knife raised too, assessing the soldiers waiting beyond The Ringmaster.
‘Give me one good reason why he should live,’ said Piper.
‘No.’
He looked down at me, as if hearing me for the first time.
‘I’m not going to play that game,’ I went on. ‘It’s the same thing you asked me on the island, when the others wanted me dead. I won’t do it – trading lives, weighing lives against others.’
‘He’s a risk to us, now,’ Piper said. ‘It’s not safe to let him live. And he’s a Councillor, for crying out loud. A terrible man.’
All of that was true, but I still didn’t release Piper’s arm.
‘The world’s full of terrible people. But he came to talk, not to harm us. What gives us the right to kill him, and his twin?’
In the silence that followed, The Ringmaster’s words rang in my head: I suppose it’s a question of how alike you are.
The Ringmaster had almost reached his soldiers when Piper shook free of my arm and strode after him.
‘Wait,’ Piper commanded.
The soldiers rushed to surround The Ringmaster, who had turned back to face Piper. The swordsmen had their weapons raised. Even the archer, his right hand still clutching the knife hilt buried in his shoulder, had drawn a dagger from his belt and raised it towards Piper with his shaking left hand.
‘You have something of ours,’ Piper said, leaning forward and calmly pulling Zoe’s blade from the archer’s flesh. The man inhaled sharply and gave a strangled curse, but under The Ringmaster’s impassive gaze he didn’t retaliate, just pressed his hand tighter against the wound. Fresh blood surged between his fingers and spilled down his knuckles.
The Ringmaster nodded once at Piper, then looked beyond him to me.
‘When you change your mind, come to me,’ he said. Then he turned and walked away, calling his soldiers to follow him.
‘You need to learn to fight,’ Zoe said the next morning. Piper was on lookout, and Zoe and I were supposed to be resting, but our encounter with The Ringmaster had left us both edgy.
‘I can’t,’ I said.
‘Nobody’s suggesting that you’re going to become some kind of super-assassin,’ she said. ‘But Piper and I haven’t got time to save you every five minutes.’
‘I don’t want to kill.’ I remembered the blood smell from the battle of the island, and how each death had been doubled for me, my visions showing me not just those slain in the battle, but also their twins, ambushed by their own deaths.
‘You don’t have a choice,’ she said. ‘People like The Ringmaster – they’re going to keep coming for you. You need to be able to defend yourself. And I can’t always be here. Piper either.’
‘I hate the idea of it,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to kill. Not even Council soldiers. What about their twins?’
‘You think I enjoy it?’ said Zoe quietly.
I was silent for a few moments. Finally, I said, ‘I won’t fight unless I’m being attacked.’
‘Only a few times a week, then, the way you’re going lately.’
When she raised one eyebrow like that, she reminded me of Kip.
‘Get out your knife,’ she said.
From its sheath at my belt, I pulled the dagger that Piper had given to me on the island. It was about as long as my forearm, the blade sharp on both sides, and narrowing to a vicious point. The hilt was wrapped in leather, wound tightly and sweat-darkened to almost black.
‘Could I learn to throw it, like you and Piper?’
She laughed, taking the dagger from me. ‘You’d be more likely to take your own ear off. This isn’t a throwing knife, anyway – not balanced right.’ She spun it casually between her forefinger and thumb. ‘And I’m not giving you any of my knives. But you can learn some basics, so you won’t be completely useless if we’re not around to save you.’
I looked up at her. Despite our arguments, it was hard to imagine her not being around. Her sarcastic asides were as familiar to me now as her wide shoulders, her restless hands. When we sat around the fire at night, the flick of her blade on her fingernails was as normal as the cicadas’ rasping.