News Like Ignatia Travels Fast
A vampire, not-quite-a-duke-anymore, but always a policeman, Sam Vimes wandered the Disc. The Law was needed in Borogravia. The Law was needed in the desertous wastelands of the Klatchian Empire. The Law was needed, and wherever he went, Vimes brought it with him. He didn't bother with the name Vimes, instead falling back on Keel. A serviceable name, no one looked at it twice. Before his affliction, he trained watchmen who would serve in Quirm, Sto Lat, Bonk. And after his affliction he trained Sammies who would never know they were Sammies. They didn't need to know- all he asked was that they be damn good coppers.
Years passed, marked by the sending of letters and small parcels to his son on his birthday. Sometimes Young Sam wrote back. Sometimes he did not. When Vetinari passed away and passed the tyranny on to Lipwig’s kid, Vimes travelled home to see him and give him advice. Chiefly, don’t be a power-mad despot and you’ll never have to see me again.
Five years later, Vimes went home again.
Vetinari was dead. Vimes wandered down the streets, his streets, feeling as if he were walking in a dream. He wasn’t sorry. He wasn’t Vetinari’s friend—the old Patrician had no friends, from what he could tell. Oh, sure, there was Leonard da Quirm, but he was more prisoner than friend. For the duration of his career, Vimes was Vetinari’s terrier, an adversary and a master at once. There were times he downright hated the man. So no, he wasn’t sorry Vetinari was gone. He wasn’t bereft.
But they had an understanding of sorts. Vetinari ran the city and Vimes was one of his little cog wheels, well-oiled and made shiny with use. And Vetinari, at the same time, fell under Vimes’ purview. Because Vimes wasn’t shy about giving Vetinari a piece of his mind, and on one memorable occasion that piece also involved reading the black flamingo his rights. Five years later he didn’t miss Vetinari, but he never expected the man to really die, either.
Sir Samuel Vimes paused on his doorstep, a few biological texts tucked under his arm. “I know you’re there,” he said.
A shadow detached from the darker recesses of the house’s exterior. The Ramkin Manor, of course, possessed no natural dark recesses, which was how Sir Samuel knew he was not alone. Dark recesses followed the specter before him like the day follows the sun. “What do you want?”
Vimes squinted and fished about his person for a cigar. “Can’t I see my own son?”
“Now you’ve seen me. Good day, Father.”
“What are you studying, there?” Vimes asked around his unlit cigar.
That stopped Sir Samuel cold. Because his father used the Copper Voice. He might as well have asked him where he had been on the night of the twentieth of Grune. It was all steel and hard edges; he did not know when his father completed the transition between Dad and cop. His childhood ears never heard the Copper Voice directed at him personally. But somewhere along the way the transition had taken place, in full and irrevocable. Somewhere along the way Dad went from human to vampire, from Dad to copper, from the man who put the stars in the sky to the somebody he used to know. From Dad to Father.
“Anatomy and physiology, if you must know,” Sir Samuel answered as coldly as he dared. “I have a goblin patient with an unusual hereditary disease. It wouldn’t interest you.”
“I see.”
The silence hung between them, thick with all the things unsaid. “I must be going; Igor is waiting for me.”
“I see.”
Vimes let him go. “I reset all the bear traps. And I oiled the gutters!”
There was a circus in town. One of the larger squares had been cleared of carts and people, allowing the carnies to raise a gaudy tent. The scent of sickly sweet caramel corn and fried pickles hung thick on the air, jockeying for olfactory real estate with damp straw and circus animals. Vimes skirted the cluster of patrons purchasing tickets and carefully did not see the two or three individuals scalping tickets just a little way aways. In fact, he intended to skirt the entire encampment were it not for a sticky smell wafting from the tent, practically imperceptible under the stink of nervous animals and burning sugar, but which assailed his keen senses like a ballpeen hammer to the sinuses.
Someone, somewhere in that tent, committed a crime. The kind of crime that splashes the B word about the place in liberal amounts. He took stock of himself; he wore a Watch uniform, approximately twenty years out of date. It would have to do.
Ignatia Wrathine screwed her pointy black hat on her head and slung her bag over her shoulder. Under her careful hand, the circus flourished. Her whole life, short as it may be so far, she worked over it as a gardener works over a Bonsai tree. Prune this here, turn the pot just so, a little more water this week. She was a witch, and a clerk of sorts, good with numbers and crises. She pulled the circus from the brink of bankruptcy and made it work, even going so far as to make it flourish. But she was a witch, and a clerk of sorts, and a woman, and the circus didn’t need her anymore.
Well, she knew which way the wind was blowing. She would not stick around where she wasn’t wanted. She stepped out into the cool morning air, her booted feet clomping dully across the cobbles. She did not know where she was going; a snarling sensation tugged inside her chest. Anger, she reflected dully. In the fullness of time it will flare into rage and then smolder into something hotter, something with which she could stoke the kiln of innovation and hammer out the white-hot irons of action. But until then she would nurse the anger there, feed it fuel and breath, and wait.
Her mind turned, cold and shiny and bright, cogs and wheels clicking along with nowhere to go but forward. She didn’t know where she was going, but gods save them all when she got there.
Sam Vimes was dead. This was not news to anyone, but it would horrify the general population if they knew he was still walking around. “Captain Keel, City Watch,” he said, waving his badge in the face of the first person to bar his entry.
“We’re not open to the public yet,” the young ticket master spluttered.
“Good thing I’m not public, then,” Vimes growled, and stepped around the kid. He peered over the lenses of his tinted glasses and scowled. An oil slick of red stretched out from what would have been the center ring of the circus, tacky in the middle and crusted around the edges.
A harried looking clown in all turbid shades of red and yellow loped to meet him, shoes flopping. “I say! I say! What do you think you’re doing, man!?”
“Captain Keel, City Watch,” Vimes snapped, waving his badge in the clown’s face. “What’s happened here?”
“The Watch need not concern themselves with—“
“Oh, I see! Then do assuage my worries by coming down to the Watch House and we’ll just make damn sure there’s nothing to worry about!”
The clown opened his mouth, shut it, and then spluttered. “This is circus business! We handle our own!”
“Welcome to the big city. What would be your name, then?” He took out his notebook and flipped it open to the first empty page. A pencil stub materialized in his hand and the graphite point waited, poised over the page.
Another man who had been waiting in the shadows padded to the clown’s rescue with a disarming smile. Charisma wafted off him like kerosene fumes. “Do forgive Blinkey,” he cooed. The clown shook himself and trudged back amidst his peers, who had formed a macabre ring around the pool of the B word. “Recent events have us all shooken up, I’m afraid.” He offered a hand. “Eugene Sonder, Ringleader and Master of Ceremonies. How may I help the Watch, good sir?” When it became apparent Vimes wasn’t going to shake his hand he dropped it by his side.
“I’d like to know what’s happened. Who was killed, to start with.”
“Ah,” the smile almost fell off Sonder’s face, but seemed to rally at the last moment. “A bit of in-feuding, I’m afraid. Our manager and my dear friend Mr. Campbell was assaulted in the early hours of this morning. The trapeze artists found him when they went up for an early rehearsal. It’s…a tragedy.” Something that was almost entirely, but not quite, like regret colored his voice and Sonder cast his eyes to the ground. “I believe he had quite the row with one of our clerks yesterday. We believe she is to blame; she has been sacked, quite without ceremony.”
Vimes nodded as he scratched shorthand into his book. “Does she have a name? And a description?”
Sonder’s eyes danced. “Ignatia Wrathine.”
Ginger sprawled out on the dilapidated, badly stained couch in the Watch House. She often lingered there for a bit before going on duty and a bit after. Despite her wiry frame she stood at nearly six foot and occupied the entire couch. No one asked her to move; if they did, she would smile at them. She believed a gentle word could turn away wrath, and found that smiles were more than enough to keep things civil. People treated her with the utmost courtesy, especially when she smiled at them.
Ginger Redmayne Ironfoundersson was the unholy spawn of a werewolf and a dwarf, spent her childhood amidst Watchmen, teethed on a badge, and was known to the greater mines of the Ramtop Mountains. Between her upbringing and her (ahem) breeding, she possessed both a keen set of senses and a straightforward mind, and enough old fashioned shrewdness to know when to make a fuss. She sat up.
A pall of startled silence fell across the Watch House. Even perps pricked their ears in the hush and swiveled their heads. Ginger’s hair stood on end.
“Something’s coming,” she said abruptly, and got to her feet. She adjusted her sword belt so it hung at her waist less securely. “Something bad.”
“What is it, lassy?” Corporal Mudbasher demanded, knuckles whitening around his axe. “Is it an earth quake?”
“A fire?” someone else quavered.
“A tornado?”
“No.” Ginger turned to face the door, upper lip lifting delicately away from her teeth. At that moment the door swung open, admitting something worse than any natural disaster.
The witch ducked her head to keep the mantel from knocking off her pointy hat. “Hello, hello,” she announced. And it was an announcement. Eyes the color of steel bore into Ginger, pinning her onto the spot. “Blessings on this precinct,” she added, with a glare that promised very different accommodations could be arranged. “I would like to report a crime.”
Any witch worth her salt can project her personality ahead of her. Sometimes miles ahead. Ignatia, being a rather young witch, sometimes forgot to turn that aspect of herself off. She sat ramrod straight in her chair and sipped her tea, occasionally crunching through a biscuit. The tea and biscuits, to the bewilderment of the watchmen, just sort of happened. She did not request refreshment, and no one offered it to her; she took a seat at a relatively neat desk, and someone had brewed some tea, and a cup now steamed on Ignatia’s saucer.
“Tell It To Me Again, Miss,” Dorfl rumbled. No one, living or undead, cared to deal with witches. Fortunately, golems had no sense of fear, and the threat of being turned into a frog rolled off them like lightning off ceramic. Ginger found herself watching them intently from her place on the couch. The witch was all steel, cool and unyielding, her voice a beacon of certainty. She couldn't look away.
Ignatia told it again. “My name is Ignatia Wrathine. I was ousted from my position at the circus what is in town this week in celebration—err, remembrance-- of Lord Vetinari-may-he-rest-forever. I would like to report a wrongful termination of employment.”
“Why Were You Terminated?”
“I suppose that has to do with the dead body Mr. Sonder is trying to hide.”
The watchmen tried to watch surreptitiously as Dorfl wrote this down on his big, yellow paper pad. “Tell Me About The Victim.”
“Ah, Horatio Campbell was the ringleader of my troupe.” She sipped her tea, eyes distant. “Horrible little man with a horrible little mind and a great love for drink and women. Someone killed him.”
“They Suspect You.”
“They don’t, but I am an…attractive target.” She almost said an easy target, but that was stretching the truth. “I used to do the bookkeeping and odd jobs around the place before I trained as a witch. And then afterward I still did the bookkeeping and the odd jobs, just in a pointy hat.” She sipped her tea again. “I was good for business but bad for morale, I suppose.”
“Who Killed Horatio Campbell?”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea. Everyone in the circus is suspect. I didn’t have a chance to poke around before I left.”
Dorfl closed his notebook. “We Will Inquire Further. You Are Not To Leave The City.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” She brushed some crumbs off her lap and stood.
She stepped out of the Watch House and into the half-hearted drizzle, unbothered thanks to the wide, waterproof brim her hat provided. She walked. She did not know the city, but she did know of someone in it, a friend of a friend, as far as witches could have friends, and she would go see her.
But first…
Ignatia paused at the mouth of an alley. “I haven’t a speck of garlic or a stick of kindling, and I haven’t so much as a drop of holy water.” She glared into the second darkest shadow on the street. “Which means that I’ll have to get inventive.” And you won’t like me when I’m inventive, she didn’t bother to finish.
A plume of damp smoke and a dry chuckle drifted out of the shadow and the watchman stepped into the gray afternoon light. “My, you must be a joy at parties.”
“How much did you hear?”
“All of it.” He tapped an ear. “Very keen. Did you kill Campbell?”
“No. Did you?”
He blinked. He was a dour-faced man, middle aged, with a nose that had seen the business end of a fist a time or two and a gnarled scar down his face. A kind of shabbiness clung to his clothing and posture, a near-permanent 5 o’clock shadow stubbled his chin. Were she not paying attention, the term dishabille or rakish would come to mind. But she was paying attention, and what sprang to mind was vampire and suspicious bastard. “I’m asking the questions here, miss.”
“Are you really? And what would your name be, officer?”
“Keel.”
“Try that again. And do not lie to me because I won’t like to think what I’ll do. It’s been a trying day.”
The man who was not Keel watched her for a long moment. “Vimes.”
“There it is. What makes you walk the streets under a false name? Do you have a false badge?” Her eyes glittered, and for a moment she seemed very young—that is, she looked her age. “Are you a scoundrel, on the run with only a fake identity standing between you and the hemp fandango?”
“Um, no.”
She visibly deflated. “I thought Ankh-Morpork was the city of opportunity.”
Ignoring that, he said, “Where are you headed, Miss Wrathine?”
“The Lady Sybil Free Hospital. I have a friend studying to become a doctor there.”
“Then it might interest you to know that you’re going the wrong way. Allow me to accompany you.”
They walked. Ignatia had long legs and a habit of moving like she had somewhere to go, forcing Vimes to take longer strides or scurry to keep up. They skirted more than a few trash heaps. “Why is there so much garbage?” she demanded after stepping over a particularly fragrant pile.
“Worker strike. I’ve come to understand it’s becoming quite a problem,” Vimes answered. A problem we never had under Vetinari, he thought to himself. Say what you like about the late tyrant, the trash got taken out and the trains ran on time.
“What are they striking about?”
“Wages, equal-rights hiring procedures, pensions, safe work practices. Really, what are they not striking about?”
“Hmm.”
“Tell me about Campbell. Did he have any enemies?”
“The man’s dead, so we know he had at least one,” Ignatia sniffed. “He had a habit of docking people’s pay without telling them until the last minute. Or he would conveniently forget to give out some wages. Especially to our trapeze artists.”
“Any reason them in particular?”
“They’re goblins.”
“Ah.”
“Campbell also had a bad habit of bedding other men’s wives. Some of the wives weren’t keen on being bedded, either.” She shot Vimes a look. “I didn’t kill him. Murder runs against everything I am as a witch. But I’m not sorry he’s gone.”
Vimes nodded and made a mental note to check up with the trapeze artists. “Do you have any other information to give me, miss?”
Ignatia thought for a long moment. “Walk softly, Mister Vimes-if-that-is-your-real-name. I was born in the circus and it made me a right bastard. Most of the carnies weren’t; they were bastards before going in.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Ignatia walked to the head of the queue in front of the Lady Sybil Free Hospital and gave the receptionist a patient smile. “I’m here to see a resident? Spelly Garlick?” There was a chance Spelly wouldn’t be there that day, but Ignatia had no way of knowing her schedule without asking at the hospital anyway.
“Spelly?” the tired-looking man asked.
“First name of Esmerelda, last name of Garlick, from Lancre.”
“Ah, Esme. She’s in the Lawn Wing, should be doing her rounds.”
“Thank you,” Ignatia fished about in her pockets and dropped a round, blue river stone on his desk. The receptionist stared at it as she headed toward the Lawn Wing, at a loss. Someone, perhaps a small child, had clumsily painted a pair of eyes and a little triangle nose on the stone, and glued a length of rough twine to its other end.
The hospital smelled of harsh cleaners and harsher sicknesses, death and near-death clinging to the yellowed walls. The Lawn Wing was dedicated to surgery recovery, and Spelly was indeed making her rounds. Going round the houses, Ignatia tamped down the thought. Spelly was no witch; she was a doctor, or at least she was going to be.
As if sensing a change in air pressure, Spelly straightened up from a patient moaning on his bed and turned. “Oh! Oh! Ignatia. I didn’t know you were…I mean, I’m pleased to see you, but I…How are you?” She rubbed her hands down her apron, suddenly nervous. And that was Spelly all over; competent and smart but wet behind the ears.
“I’ve been better. When do you go on break?”
“I, uh, I don’t.”
Ignatia blinked. “Beg pardon?”
“I’m just a student. I don’t really get breaks. And, you know, there’s just so much to do! I couldn’t just walk away when there’s so many who need me!”
Ignatia looked around at the groaning, motionless patients. “They seem fine enough on their own.” She didn’t see any doctors. Or nurses. Or other students. “And they’re making you work all on your own?”
“Well, I mean, you know, there’s a lot of patients who need extra help in the OR, and the ER is a right mess. So I’m just here. We do our best.”
“Spelly, I need you to listen very carefully.”
“I’m listening, Ignatia.”
“In the past six hours I’ve been sacked, accused of murder, interrogated and stalked by a vampire. I would very much like a hot cup of tea, some advice, and a quiet place to have a little cry. And if anyone tells you off for neglecting your duties to have a ten minute tea break, you send them straight to me and I’ll explain the situation. Does that make sense?”
“The break room is just around the corner. Put the kettle on while I finish up.”
“My favorite figgin place is gone.”
Sir Samuel jumped easily three feet in the air and only narrowly avoided dropping the parcel of charts in his arms. “Bloody hells! Yes! What!?”
Vimes looked wounded. “You’re working too hard, my boy. You seem a bit…piquey. Is there a decent place to get a hot figgin in this part of town anymore?”
“No! Just let me work. Leave me in peace.”
The kettle whistled on the breakroom stovetop. Ignatia took it off the heat and poured hot water into two cups she had found, and steeped the tea. What was taking Spelly so long?
Cups in hand, she walked along the Lawn Wing until she found her friend perched on a patient’s bed, feeding him ice chips in small, measured spoonfuls. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Renal surgery. Um, we had an Igor take out his bad kidneys and put in a good one.”
“Your tea is getting cold.” She managed to almost keep the reproach out of her voice. Almost.
“Um, look Ignatia, I just have so much to do.” She took her cup, gave it a perfunctory sip and set it back on the saucer with a wet chatter. “There’s bedpans need emptying. Patients need rolling over. And soon it’s going to be tea time.”
Ignatia looked pointedly at her cups. “So let me help. Who needs rolling over?”
“Um! Um! I don’t think that’s—“
“You’re going to say that’s a bad idea because I’m not trained or certified or anything. All I know is I’m a witch, and as far as certifides go, you’re not certified either. And I don’t much like how this hospital operates; I might have to go speak to management.”
Spelly quaked. “Doctor Vimes’d go spare!”
Vimes again. Ignatia tucked that detail away for later. She set the tea on a nearby bedside table and rolled her sleeves up. “You know what they say about idle hands.”
Spelly frowned, and sighed, and finally relented. “Mr. Flannigan needs turning.”
“Alright! I’m on it!” Ignatia disappeared down the hall, only to reappear a couple minutes later. “Are you aware,” she said conversationally, “that your patient is three-hundred pounds?”
“Yes. Um. He can’t really turn himself so you have to do it for him.” Ignatia stared at her. “I’ll show you.”
They walked over to where Flannigan moaned on his bed. “You turn patients this big regularly?” she inquired, fastidiously polite.
“I’m just big boned!” he griped.
“Sir, I can comfortably say that you are big everything’d. Face facts,” Ignatia replied, her tone as close to kind as it ever came.
Spelly worried. Ignatia had a ferocious temper, and it was usually preceded by sweet smiles, vigorous nods of agreement and gentle tones. “See?” She took hold of the end of the sheet under Flannigan and lifted it, heaving her patient onto his side. He grunted and settled without much fuss. “Nothing to it,” she said, eager to have Ignatia’s attention on the next task. Because the witch was nodding agreeably, and she found the way the pointy hat bobbed worrisome.
“Oh yes. I see plenty. You work alone, unsupervised, over what looks like forty beds with no breaks, lifting very large patients all by yourself. Yes, my dear Esmerelda, I see alright.”
Spelly winced. “Ignatia, um, I know you’re having a bad day.”
“Yes. And I would like to spread it around. In fact, I would like to meet this Dr. Vimes and give him some food for thought.”
“Ignatia, please! You’ll get me sacked!”
“And how much does the good doctor pay you?”
She flinched. “Don’t be mad.”
“He doesn’t pay you, does he? I suspect you work for, what, tips? No, you work for experience, don’t you. Only really you’re selling your time and labor for nothing.”
“No!” Spelly snapped. “This is how you become a doctor! You do your time and you put the work in and then you get letters after your name and—“
“And what, Spelly!?” she hissed. “And then you get to begin your life? You’ll be a competent doctor after years slaving away alone? And then you’ll get to slave away, alone, but with letters after your name?” The anger drained from her face, then her shoulders, then her fists unclenched. She only looked very tired and worn. “What do I know? I’m a damn carnie, and a bad one at that. But if you dig the best ditches, your reward is a bigger shovel. And it seems to me you’ll get a shovel that’s too big for you, if you haven’t already.”
“I can handle myself.”
“That makes one of us. Do you know a place I could stay tonight?”
She blinked, taken aback by the change in subject. “I’d invite you to stay with me, but I sleep at the hospital most nights. Do you have a way to pay for lodging?”
“That was going to be my next question. I can do sums, I know my letters, I can witch pretty well and I’m a dab hand at knife throwing. Do you think I could get a job doing any of that?”
“I think you’ll find somewhere.”
That night, Ginger pulled on her civilian clothes and walked down to the circus to have a look around, badge clipped to her collar under her silk scarf. She shuffled through the throngs of curious Ankh-Morpork citizens, ticket money borrowed from the tea kitty clutched in one hand.
Once inside the tent, she found a seat in the middle—not too far back, not too close, just right—and let the sounds of excited civilians and the smell of bangin’ grains and spun sugar assail her. The seats filled quickly enough so that she was eventually sandwiched with a pair of elderly patrons on one side and a cluster of young men on the other. Not the least of which, a reasonably handsome man nursing a bag of salty, buttery grains tried to watch her without appearing to watch her. He stole furtive glances at her every few minutes, all of which she politely ignored. Young men always looked at her. She couldn’t imagine why. Once the seats were filled, the lanterns were shuttered one by one, until gloom dominated the tent. The crowd hushed.
A spotlight illuminated the center ring, and a fat, stocky man in formal evening attire lifted his arms. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he boomed, voice jovial and as oil slick as his hair, “Boys and girls! Gentry and fellow common folk! Tonight, we bring you the show, of a lifetime! I bring you wonders from across the Disc! Stories of woe and terror and humor. I bring you thrills, artists of light and movement and mischief! In loving memory of the esteemed Havelock Vetinari, all mime artists have been given the night off.” Here the audience chuckled, and some of their number clapped enthusiastically. The young man beside Ginger half turned and opened his mouth as if to say something to her, but thought better of it. He contemplated his paper bag of bangin’ grains as the man in the ring continued. “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce myself: I am Eugene Sonder, ringleader and master of ceremonies tonight. Let us begin the night with our very own, the one, the only Black Clown!”
An opaque shutter slid over the spotlight, leaving the tent in near total darkness for the human audience. Ginger’s keen eyes could make out the ringleader stepping aside and allowing a clown step into the ring and then the opaque shutter was removed. The clown wore all black with shiny brass buttons. His shoes did not flop and he did not have a bright red nose. Instead, waxen white covered his face and neck, and a dramatic black line formed an impossibly wide mouth, turned up at the corners. He painted a big fat teardrop under one eye and a big fat star under the other. And he opened his mouth. And he sang.
Ginger never heard such singing in her life. The words were in some foreign language, all vibrato with a vocal range that either plummeted to incredible lows or swung into impossible highs. It was beautiful. It was chilling. During the whole performance the audience watched with rapt attention. The young man on her left did not look at her once, his mouth slightly ajar. It was better than opera. Better than theater. It was, in short, an experience.
The trapeze artists came next, with death-defying stunts, well-practiced and carefully timed near misses and feats of acrobatic excellence that had their bewitched audience on the edges of their seats. Soon there were more clowns, this time with a slapstick comedy, interspersed with jokes that were actually funny. An illusionist took the stage next, pulling flapping pigeons out of improbable places, producing pennies from behind children’s ears and for his finale he had his scantily clad assistant lay in a box, which he sawed in half and put back together. The illusionist and his lovely assistant took a bow and then scurried offstage as the ringleader took the spotlight once again.
“Ladies and gentlemen! I bring to you tonight a rare gem indeed. Some call her the dragon lady, for she fears neither flame nor ember. Indeed, fire is such a dreadful dangerous thing, but tame as a kitten in her hands. I present you with our own, our dearest, the Astounding Florencia!”
A cord from the makeshift catwalk overhead dropped down, and Mr. Sonder, taking hold of it, sailed upward and away, tailcoat flapping behind him. A good thing, too, because all at once fire raced along the ring. Burning kerosene hit Ginger’s nose just as the flames completed a perfect circle, and from the dancing firelight a figure resplendent in red and gold sequins emerged, half of her face hidden by a white porcelain mask.
The Astounding Florencia moved like art made flesh. She danced and twisted in the flames. There were hoops of fire, at first quite large and she danced through them, but then the hoops became smaller, smaller, and smaller still. The crowd watched with bated breath, waiting for the pained shriek, waiting for her costume to catch alight. Ginger tensed, nostrils flared for the telltale scent of burnt hair, burnt flesh, burnt fabric, that never came to be. The hoops were small now, too small even for her to dance through, and she took them and threw them in the air.
One hoop, two hoops, three. Soon six flaming rings paraded in the air with Florencia juggling them all. A clown with floppy hair and floppier shoes appeared at her elbow with a glass of water. Florencia kept juggling, one handed, as she took the glass, inspected it for an agonizingly long moment, took a long pull and then returned to the task at hand as if only just remembering she were handling dangerous materials.
And then, as if by some kind of magic, she plucked the hoops from their orbit one by one and extinguished them with a stroke of a palm. A darkened hoop hit the ground. She plucked another from its orbit, the other four tossed higher than ever to give her more time to extinguish it. They soon littered the ground around her feet, smoking sleepily, except for the last hoop. How can she hold it so casually without losing a hand? Ginger marveled. But hold it she did, long enough to take a dripping torch from her helpful clown partner. She tapped the hoop against the torch and flame bloomed, engulfing the head in orange and yellow. That done, she casually tossed the torch high in the air and extinguished the hoop as she did the others, caught the torch at the same time the hoop hit the ground.
The torch spun. It sailed in the air, lithe and lovely in a way the hoops were not, but the audience’s eyes were trained on the figure of Florencia herself. She danced. The torch was her partner, not merely thrown but it had a life of its own, a rhythm of bounce and rebound. Florencia flipped and rolled and sashayed and cartwheeled, one move followed by the next and gaining momentum so that she was a red and gold blur. Not once did the torch hit the ground. The handle slapped against her palm, old friends reuniting for only a fraction of a second, and then sailing away from one another again. Until the end, when the handle hit her palm and stayed. She spun, one toe hitting the ground to check her momentum, making her shoulders the epicenter, her arm a radius, the burning torch head a perimeter—another hoop of fire, made of flesh and blood and flame.
She stopped, straightened, cast the crowd a knowing look. For the first time Ginger noticed the white mask hiding half her face, with a single gap to allow her the use of the eye on that side. Florencia brought the torch to her lips as if to kiss the bare flame.
And blew fire.
A jet of white and gold arced nearly ten feet, causing the people in the front row to squeal and almost lose their eyebrows. The stunned silence lasted only a moment and then there was applause. Deafening applause, with hoots and hollering and stamping. Unlike the performers who came before her, Florencia did not take a bow. She waited, until the applause, after some minutes, abated. She flipped the torch through the air a couple times, jaunty, playful, as a man might toss a coin and catch it in one of the better neighborhoods of Ankh-Morpork. The woman who could breathe fire twirled her torch between her fingers, brought it to a stop before her face, opened her mouth wide.
“Oh gods!” the handsome young man beside Ginger gasped.
The Astounding Florencia closed her lips around the torch, the burning thing completely ensconced in her mouth. The crowd held its collective breath. When the torch reemerged, fully extinguished, she grinned at them, smoke curling lazily from between her teeth, lips unscathed.
The audience lost its mind.
And then she was shuffled offstage to make room for more clowns, this time with an attaché of elephants, camels, monkeys with little accordions, and, yes, a bear on a unicycle. Finally finding his nerve, the young man beside Ginger gave her a small smile and shook his paper bag of almost untouched bangin’ grains at her. She smiled, keeping her teeth hidden and shook her head. “I’m sorry, I had a big dinner,” she lied. Ginger was by nature an honest and straightforward person, but she considered little fibs fair game, especially when trying to spare someone’s feelings or pride.
“Do you think they have a wizard in the circus?” he asked, eyes bright. He bounced his leg nervously.
“Maybe,” she replied, and turned her attention to the camels trying to keep their balance on the elephants’ backs.
“Only there’s no way the guy with the top hat was just an illusionist.”
Ginger bit her tongue. As an honest and generally straightforward person, she tended to think the best of people. Granted, this was a major personality flaw in a copper, but it was the truth. But there was a small part of her that wished that people would think before they opened their mouths. “Illusionists must work very hard to do what they do,” she offered. “And this circus travels all across the Disc, so he must work very hard to be noticed.”
“Yeah…” The young man had the puzzled face most young men wear when they spoke to her. “Supposing he stole some tricks from a wizard, though? Would be scandalous in a city like this. Would be trouble with the University.”
“I wouldn’t like to think so.”
“What about the fire lady, huh? It’s not proper, a woman wearing nothing but a leotard made of sequins,” he prodded.
“I’m rather inclined to think that a woman who puts live torches in her mouth for a living can wear what she likes,” Ginger said mildly.
The young man stared. “Dressed like that, though? Makes you wonder what else she puts in her mouth, eh?”
Ginger frowned. “How do you mean?”
“Well, you know.”
“I don’t.”
She really doesn’t, he realized. He scrutinized her inflection and face for any note of disingenuousness and found none. Only polite puzzlement. “Yeah, me neither,” he said weakly.
Ginger’s brow furrowed, bewildered. “You are a strange one, but I suppose we all have our little ways.” She turned back to watch the monkeys weaving between the elephants’ legs. “As they say, it would sure be a strange world if we were all the same.”
She really believes that, the young man thought to himself. She really did.
After the show, Ginger filed out of the tent with the rest of the crowd. A dark shape detached from the throng and struck out for the wrong side of the tent, so Ginger bid the friendly young man a good night, and drifted the other way, around the big circus tent, past the small petting zoo and the line of tents marked Freak Show, to the caravans and tents beyond.
This was where the carnies lived. There were small cooking fires with people still in bangles and sequins warming their hands. Washing lines heavy with linens crisscrossed the encampment, creating a kind of maze for Ginger to duck under and walk around. Rarely did Ginger feel out of place; Ankh-Morpork was her home, and she belonged to it as much as it belonged to her. This square was familiar to her—she walked the area enough on her beat to know it like the back of her hand—but the tents and caravans made it strange. Alien. No, she realized, the tents and caravans were not to blame. It was the circus. Because a circus is its own kind of city, its own kind of people with their own little ways, their own habits and aspirations and practices that she had no part in. They had their own kind of law.
But the circus came to her city, and a crime was committed in the circus in her city, and she would investigate.
A shadow detaching itself from another shadow caught her eye and she followed it, both of them heading towards the most piquant scent that stood up against soap and starch and wood smoke. She followed her nose and ignored the prickle on the back of her neck that meant that carnies were watching her. She kept a safe distance from the figure in black, glimpsed a dingy caravan with yellowed curtains in its dinner plate windows, and Ginger ducked behind a tent so she could eavesdrop unobserved.
She heard a door squeak open and a woman say without heat, “As I live and breathe, child mine, you’ll be the death o’ me yet.”
“I had to say goodbye, Mama.” Another female voice, younger but firm, steel at its center but a little soggy around the edges. The young speaker sniffled, as one does when trying to stave off a bout of tears. “Mama, I don’t think there’s a place for me in the city.” She cleared her throat, and continued in a more even tone, “And there’s nothing I can say to tempt you to leave with me?”
Ginger pressed a hand to her mouth. That could be none other than the witch herself! Ignatia, wasn’t it? Possibly a murderer, but someone’s daughter too. “I’m in too deep now. Only way for me to leave the circus is in a pine box, as you know. You mustn’t tarry, lamb, else you’ll be leaving in a pine box, too. I gathered some of the things you left behind. Go quickly, now! Don’t look back unless you’re looking for the back of my hand! And never you mind about no place in the city for you. I never want to hear quitter talk from your mouth again.”
“No, Mama,” Ignatia promised.
“Go on then! Quickly! Sonder mustn’t catch you!”
Ignatia scurried for the shadows, hood pulled up, but once out of her mother’s line of sight slowed to a stroll. Ginger followed again at some distance. She wanted to get a look at what Ignatia had tucked under her arm, but that wasn’t to be. Luckily, though, the smell of the circus clung to Ignatia’s clothes, her hair, her very skin, making it that much easier for Ginger to tail her from a safe distance all the way to her temporary residence.