Chapter Seventy-Five
"Hold out your hand, please," Brinowy said.
Syaoran obeyed, moving as if in a trance. If he didn't act perfectly, the ringmaster might begin to believe he was lucid. If that meant listening to the costume designer while she covered him in cosmetics, that was fine.
"This shade of red looks lovely on you," Brinowy said as she drew the tiny black brush across his nails. Fire-red nail polish dripped from the edge of the bottle as she plunged the brush into it again. "Like glowing embers. The crowd is going to love it."
He kept his face expressionless. He had no idea if victims of hypnosis were supposed to answer questions posed by people other than their master, but since the comment required no reply, he kept his mouth shut.
"There. Now hold out your arm. We're going to paint it for the show."
Brinowy unscrewed a bottle of orange paint and began outlining what appeared to be lines of flame. I'm going to be roasted alive, and they want to paint flames on me, Syaoran thought. How fitting.
The painting process took almost half an hour, during which Brinowy called three other girls over to work on him. By the time they were done, his only garments were the orange shirt, crimson shorts, and a pair of red and yellow wings attached to his arms. The rest of his body was painted as if afire. When the audience sees the flames burn this all away, will they think I died, or see it as part of the show? he wondered.
"You are such an adorable little phoenix, aren't you? It's a shame the ringmaster wants you to burn."
He said nothing, but the woman must've seen his jaw tighten because she sighed.
"You poor boy. I wish there was something I could do to help you, but I have little say in what the ringmaster does. I'm just his concubine, after all." She blinked. "Oh my, your cheeks are flaming! Do they not have mistresses where you come from?"
"No," he said softly. Not in Clow, anyway.
Brinowy gave him a small smile. "Many cultures frown upon extramarital relations," she said. "But I have always been of the mind that there are worse things to be than a rich man's mistress. I'm well provided for."
"Don't you ever want to leave?" he asked.
"Sometimes. But it is not something I speak of. Close your eyes. We need to apply eye shadow."
He obeyed. A moment later, he felt the pressure of a brush on his eyelid.
"This will make the gold in your eyes stand out. The ringmaster said you would be taking on your special form."
"People of my kind are often referred to as vampires," he said, giving her the name for what he turned into.
"Vamp . . . ire," she echoed, tasting the word. It sounded quite foreign on her lips, and he was willing to bet they didn't have a word for what he was in her language. "Is it a common occurrence in your country?"
"No."
Brinowy was silent for a while, applying makeup to his face. It was rather like the Yuka-ku, in Shara. Dressing up for a crowd. Except no one burned to death at their circus, Syaoran thought, frowning.
"Well, whatever you are, I'm sure you'll make it out okay."
"I have a request," he said, suddenly remembering something. "There was something in the pocket of the clothes I wore here. A little metal screw, about this long." He indicated the length with two fingers. "Can you bring it to me?"
The woman seemed confused. "Why? Do you intend to use it to get out?"
He shook his head. "It has sentimental value. It belonged to this girl . . ."
"Ah. Say no more. Erii, can you bring this boy's clothes over here?"
The blonde woman glanced up. Syaoran recognized her vaguely from Outo. She wouldn't know me in this world, he thought, a little sad. "Sure thing, Bri." She picked up the bundle of clothes Syaoran had bought in Avantine and tossed them over. Brinowy dug through the pockets until she produced the metal screw from Sakura's leg brace.
"Is this it?"
"Yes, thank you." He reached for the little trinket and clutched it close to his chest. Here we go, he thought. If I don't survive this, I'll never see Sakura again. This may be the closest I ever get.
"I'm sure she was happy to know you cared so much for her."
He looked up, feeling oddly vulnerable. "I never told her."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"And she's still alive, so . . ."
"I didn't realize . . ."
He folded his fingers around the little bolt. "It doesn't matter. Even if I did get to see her again, she would never love me."
"You don't know that."
"But—"
"No. If you love someone strongly enough, you'll do whatever it takes to make them love you back. Even if she doesn't love you now, I'm sure that once she sees your devotion, she'll be moved by it."
He didn't look up from the bolt. "Maybe," he finally said, just to appease her. If I make it through tonight, I might even believe it.
"It's almost time to go. You can hold onto that bolt, if you want, but I don't think it's going to help you."
He stood. "I'm ready."
Brinowy's smile wasn't as radiant as Sakura's smile, but it was sincere. She leaned down, taking his face between her manicured fingernails, and kissed his cheek. "There will be a mechanism at the base of the cage, where the flames come out," she whispered in a rush. "It won't be activated until the flames have crawled up to the top of the cage, but as soon as they do, reach down and pull the lever. The bottom of the cage will open right up."
He looked at her with wide eyes, and she grinned again. "Put on a good show, darling. The master loves skilled performers."
"Thank you," he said, knowing it was the only thanks he could give without tipping off the other performers. Brinowy waved at him, and two of the other women who'd worked on his makeup took him by the arms and unshackled him. They led him into a metal cage, sitting atop a wheeled support stand. In minutes, he was crammed beneath the circular stage, ready to rise up from the floor as soon as the current performers finished up their acts.
I hope Brinowy was right about that mechanism, he thought, just as the trapdoor opened above him.
When the boy didn't return after an hour, Seishirou went looking for him.
It wasn't that he was worried. The boy could handle himself well enough in a fight, especially now that he was a vampire. But Seishirou knew from years of traveling that it was better to be cautious and stumble into peril than to allow things to spiral out of control without even checking on them.
Everyone's eyes were fixed on the performers—a bunch of fire-dancers cloaked in sequined silk dresses—which made it easy to slip past the stands unnoticed. He walked toward the concessions stands, since that was where the flow of traffic directed him. From his new vantage point, he scoped out the tent. Where would the boy look first? he wondered, keeping his expression smooth and cheerful. Probably wherever the ringmaster went during intermission. Perhaps a private room of some sort.
His eyes fell across a section of the tent blocked off by a thin cord. From the twine hung a label that read "performers only."
Seishirou took that as an invitation.
Security was astonishingly lax for such a big event. It wouldn't have mattered either way, though. The closest Seishirou had come to getting killed in recent memory was during his fight with the red-eyed ninja in Cirrus. He wasn't about to be done in by a troupe of acrobats or their security guards.
He made his way down the corridor, trying to ignore the gaudy red and yellow stripes of the tent as he passed. When he saw a sign proclaiming the "Ringmaster's Room," he stepped through the curtain.
No one was inside, but he could tell from the scent of the place that people had been in and out all day. The Little Wolf was here, too, at some point.
He moved swiftly, not caring to get caught in the event someone walked in to retrieve something for the ringmaster. He rifled through the drawers of a portable costume trunk, finding more flamboyant outfits than he'd ever seen in one place. One drawer contained only jewelry. Much of it was cheap costume jewelry, meant to be worn at a show, or perhaps tossed to the audience after a performance, but some of it looked quite expensive. Better leave it, he finally decided. No sense in revealing my presence when one of us could already be in danger.
He searched the rest of the room, upturning the bed. Aside from several knives and a machete, there was nothing interesting under there. He put the mattress back. No sign of the feather. No sign of Syaoran either.
Far away—probably from the stage, given the theatrical quality of the voice—the ringmaster spoke. "Tonight you have witnessed feats of strength and agility, but there is one more act yet to come. If you brought young children, you may wish to have them look away, for there is no trick more dangerous, no creature so fierce, as what you are to witness tonight! Ladies and gentleman, put your hands together for the first—and perhaps the last—act by The Phoenix Boy!"
Seishirou looked up as a cheer rose from the audience. Everyone's so excited to watch someone get burned to death. It's like the gladiator matches I saw in Rome. Barbaric. But still . . . No sense in missing the grand finale.
He abandoned the little room, hurrying down the hallway before anyone saw him. He stepped over the piece of twine that separated the performer's resting place from the main part of the tent.
The crowd was still raving by the time he got close enough to see what was going on. The promise of such a daring escape had turned this group of relatively civilized human beings into a bunch of animals. Not the kind of crowd you want at a high-tension event like this, Seishirou thought, frowning as he took in the oil-soaked cage rising up from center stage.
In the cage stood a boy dressed in flowing silks, with wings made of red and yellow feathers obviously meant to resemble fire. His skin was painted with tongues of flame, and even his nails were a glistening crimson. But all those details were lost on Seishirou the moment he recognized the face behind the makeup. "Little Wolf!"