along the curved beam. So narrow was the space that they had to crab sideways with her. As others started out onto the beam, Soter snarled, “Back, back, the lot of you, or I’ll stamp you flat!”
Diverus smiled at the effect that threat had on the crowd. They skittered timidly off the beam. Then he happened to glance off to the side, and he saw in the darkness beneath the span’s surface what he took at first to be a reflection of the new buildings above, cast upon still water . . . until a door opened in one of them and a figure walked out upside down, went to the rail, and stared across right at Diverus. Above, upright in the newly recast lane, there was no corresponding figure. The upside-down man, as blue as lapis, lifted one hand, and it seemed that he waved, and Diverus answered with a wave of his free hand, swinging the gold chain and, on the end of it, a medallion in the shape of a broad face.
When he looked up again, the man had turned and gone back inside the impossible upside-down house. They were nearing the end of the beam then, and the edge of the span gradually cut off the vision. One of the citizens, unable to wait, jumped up and perilously walked the retainer wall to get around them. He glowered at Leodora and Diverus as he edged by and then leapt onto the brown tiles and ran, crying out, “Gods, I’m here, your devoted servant is here!” With raised hands, he rushed into the bowl, turning in circles, face to the sky, until the one who’d preceded him struck him down from behind. It’s starting, Diverus thought, and quickly pocketed the medallion.
They reached the end of the beam, and the people there opened a space, not from courtesy so much as to get them out of the way. The moment Diverus stepped down, the nearest ones knocked him aside in their surge up the curving beam.
Someone asked, “What did she get, what did she see?” and Soter replied, “We don’t know, do we? She’s unconscious yet.” A few eyed her as she was carried past, obviously weighing the desire to wait and find out what had happened to the girl against the immediate lure of the Dragon Bowl itself. They all chose the latter. Some slid by. Others touched her reverently as she was carried past. When from one jarring movement her head lolled, someone said, “Why, she’s dead,” and Soter growled, “No, she’s not, you fool. The gods dazzled her, the same as they would have anyone. Same as they will you.” That acted as an invitation to the speaker, who bounded toward the beam.
“They were really here? The gods really came?” asked the next man. Behind him a veiled woman with aristocratic poise reached forward and touched the man’s shoulder. She silently directed his attention to the front of the house beside him—to the hard, slick coating that edged it. The man licked a finger and reached across Leodora to run the finger along it. He licked his finger again. Then he covered his mouth with both hands and hurried toward the beam, all but knocking Diverus off his feet.
That left the veiled woman, their two undaya cases, the satchel full of Diverus’s instruments, and their wardrobe.
Behind the woman, two tall thin men with oddly shallow features beneath their cowls waited stiffly like servants. She, dressed in an embroidered ocher chemise and green overtunic, pressed a finger to Leodora’s sunburned cheek. “Oh, my. She was in the bowl when it happened?”
“Yes,” Soter replied with what seemed to Diverus an odd inflection of uncertainty.
“A blessing or a curse then, when she awakens.”
Diverus frowned at her air of mystical superiority. “Sometimes it’s both, and sometimes not worth anything to anyone,” he said, holding her gaze to make her understand that he spoke from experience.
Rather than being intimidated, the woman raised her head. He could feel her considering him.
“Diverus, can we lay her down on one of the cases?” Soter asked. “I can’t hold her up any longer.”
They lifted her onto the nearest undaya case, where she lay as if napping. Soter collapsed beside her. In setting Leodora down, Diverus noted the veiled woman’s gold sandals, her painted toes.
“You’re a troupe, are you not,” she said, and Soter nodded without looking up. “And what do you do?”
“We tell stories,” Diverus replied, still annoyed by her superior airs.