Kingfisher(40)

He took his eyes off the restless, mesmerizing roil and glitter of sea, and looked down at the movement below.

There seemed a number of things going on at once, some of which he recognized from programs that the antiquated television in the only sports bar in Desolation Point pulled out of the turbulent air around the cape. He had seen the ancient jousting games: riders and horses arrayed in colorful swaths of cloth galloping headlong toward a wooden figure that spun if it were struck by the long pole in the rider’s hand. It hit the rider with its own straw-stuffed cudgel if the rider missed. The scattered watchers seemed to be rooting for the wooden knight: they clapped and whistled vigorously whenever a rider got walloped by the cudgel.

They were knights, Pierce realized: the darkly clad among the audience in the seats, and the contenders on the field. They jousted; they raced; they shot arrows that spanned the millennium between longbows and tech bows. They fought with broadswords, with rapiers; they fought without weapons in a dozen different styles, none of which Pierce could name. On a far end of the field, behind which the seats were empty, they shot weapons that spat blood-red streaks of lightning; the most accurate of them caused their small, flying targets to mist into oblivion.

Pierce couldn’t see faces; language from the microphone came to him garbled with echoes. He moved impulsively, drawn by the knights, wanting to be among them. He slid off the tree branch onto the top of the wall, then rolled to hang by his hands before he dropped to the platform behind the last row of seats. He rose cautiously, not wanting to attract the attention of any of the wicked weapons on the field. He still wore the black kitchen uniform; at a distance, he might be unremarkable. He found an aisle between the tiers of seats, walked down the steep slope, and finally understood the announcer’s voice.

“Sir Val Duresse has won the Dragon Claw match. Dame Maggie Leighton’s team has scored highest in the jousting so far. Second place in jousting is still held by Sir Block of Wood and Straw. Team Sir Jeffry Holmes places third. Next team of challengers led by Dame Rachel Thistledon please get your mounts to the lists. Good luck to you against Sir Cudgel. Sir Alexander Beamus has won Section Three of the longbow tournament. Whoever it was that just dropped over the wall from the kitchen yard, please proceed down the aisle and onto the field, where you will be allowed to prove your right to be among us. Good luck, Sir Kitchen Knight.”

Pierce, one foot suspended, nearly lost his balance and bounced down the aisle onto the field. He righted himself, arms flailing, pack bouncing, and heard laughter, applause. If he turned then and there, he could make it back without anyone likely to recognize him later. But scrambling back over the wall using the backs of seats and dangling tree limbs would become an event in itself, to be won or lost by the red-haired chopper whose long black apron was luffing like a sail in the wind. It made no difference, he realized, whether he humiliated himself up a tree or on the field; one or the other was inevitable.

He untied the apron; it whirled off like a runaway shadow. He continued down, his face burning at the cheers and whistles from the crowd.

He saw the announcer gesturing to him as he reached the field. He dodged around a whirling pair of kickboxers and nearly found himself one of a row of targets in a sports bow contest.

“Careful, Sir Kitchen Knight.”

Sir Kitchen Clown, more like, Pierce thought grimly.

“Watch out for— Oops.”

Pierce dove across the grass, out of range of a pair of knights in full antique armor flailing broadswords half-blindly at one another. He got to his feet, looked around wildly for the next attack.

“This is not a country fair, Sir Kitchen Knight,” the announcer said reproachfully. “You can’t just wander around among the exhibits. Sir Guy Morton is now the top contender in the Ribbon Dance style of street fighting. Challengers welcome. Dame Cynthia Barkley has so far scored highest in the Wyvern’s Eye competition, obliterating eight out of ten targets.”

Pierce reached him finally, after coming unnervingly close to getting scrambled under the hooves of a charger finishing a gallop down the tilting list. The announcer was a burly blond knight with an easy, confident smile that Pierce guessed he had worn sliding out of the womb. He stood on a platform overlooking the field, with a microphone in one hand and an earpiece in one ear, receiving information from the enclosure high in the seats above him.

“Welcome, Sir Kitchen Knight,” he said cheerfully, then held the mike under Pierce’s nose. “Do we have a name?” Pierce opened his mouth; the mike was suddenly no longer there. “No? Then Sir No Name it will be, since a knight without a name is a knight without a history, kitchen or otherwise, and who can say what feats and marvels you might perform on the field? Who can say, that is, but you?”

The mike was in front of Pierce again; the announcer cocked a brow, said briefly into it, “Anything?”

“What?”

“What,” the announcer asked more precisely “is your weapon of choice? Hands, feet, longbow, lance, pistol, Wyvern’s Eye—”

“Kitchen knife?” Pierce said uncertainly, all he could think of. The mike swooped back to him; he said into it, “Knife?”

A cheer went up. “Knife it is. What style?”

“What?”

“Longshore Style, Double-Handed, Chained Blades, Eastern, Old Style—”

“Ah,” Pierce said, and got the mike’s attention. “Deli Style?”