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While Ashaki is providing the entertainment, a second, larger cage is wheeled into the circle by two of the other circus performers and positioned next to the first. Tobi runs up to it and leaps, grasping the bars and hauling himself up one of the sides. The cage is about eight feet high, it’s top open to the sky. Tobi uses well-practised moves with the blocky heels of his boots to grip the bars as he climbs, pulls right up into a handstand on the top of the barred wall and flips, landing lightly on both feet inside the cage.
He springs around to a clattering of applause and takes a bow from inside the cage. “This vicious creature,” he announces as he straightens and points to Ashaki in the adjoining cage, “has not been fed for three nights.” He leans down to pull a raw leg of mutton from an iron trough beside him. He lifts it and right on cue, Ashaki growls, pawing at the bars of her own cage.
As Tobi speaks, Darvo and Rathel open up one side of Tobi’s cage, pulling the barred wall open to create a corridor between the two cages, lining it up with a small hatch in Ashaki’s. Ashaki, knowing exactly how the trick goes, starts to paw at the hatch, frenzied, seeming as if she truly hasn’t been fed for three days and is desperate to get to the meat Tobi is brandishing. Or, to Tobi himself.
The audience is silent, watching mesmerised.
Tobi has performed this act the exact same way for years. And many people here will have seen Copperhead Circus before and seen this exact trick — knowing well that all of this is artifice. However the beauty of it is, no matter how many times his audience may have seen him survive this, they still thrill to the fact that they might be about to witness the time he does not.
Even if they saw it the previous night and know Ashaki cannot be as starved as Tobi claims.
“I will release the beast from her cage into mine and feed her now,” Tobi announces. “And I can only hope this meat is enough for her and she does not decide to rip me apart for her second course.”
As he speaks Tobi bends down and whisks a glittering gold cloth off a small raised platform.
He steps up onto it, the lamb leg dangling from his fingers, and slips off his embroidered waistcoat. “I wouldn’t want this to get stained,” he says as he reveals his bare chest beneath the rich fabric. “It was made by the finest seamstress in Attar. Or was it the Amber Forest?” He winks. A few of the audience laugh. The lewd Ambolk song about a seamstress is so well-known that even a reference to the Amber Forest is enough to amuse a select few.
That done, he sits down on the platform. He puts one hand on his bare chest, “Great Zai,” he says solemnly, “protect your chaste and true servant. Hold my soul as I encounter this savage beast.”
He lies on the platform on his back, takes the mutton leg and places it in his mouth, gripping the shank with his teeth.
The taste of raw mutton makes his head swim. Truly the most unpleasant part of the act is having to put the raw meat in his mouth. But it’s all for the performance, all for the show. The hunk of raw meat reminds the audience that Tobi, too, is made of meat. And holding it in his mouth? Pure showboating, making the eager watchers shudder as Ashaki’s jaws come so close to his face.
Tobi gives Darvo a signal and he steps forward and unlatches the hatch. Ashaki snarls and races from her cage, through the corridor of barred walls and into Tobi’s. She leaps up onto the platform, where she rips the meat from Tobi’s mouth. The crowd gasps. A few scream. But, of course, Ashaki only wants the meat. She was hand-reared by Tobi from a tiny cub. Tobi has never known her to attack any human. She sleeps in Tobi’s bed and he walks around every day with her on a rope halter while all the other circus folk pet her like she is nothing more than a friendly dog. But the audience do not know that. And Ashaki is well-trained to show her teeth and play at being fearsome.
Ashaki snatches up the meat, leaps from the platform to the cage floor and starts tearing at it.
Tobi flips up from his supine position onto his feet to cheers and applause. He reaches up to Darvo, who is now stood behind the cage on a barrel. Tobi jumps and Darvo catches Tobi’s wrist, hauling him up, out of the cage as if he was light as a piece of parchment. As he is lifted away, he whistles softly to Ashaki. She lifts her head from her meat and jumps up, racing after Tobi, snapping and snarling at his heels.
The audience explode with cheers and applause as Tobi races around in front of the cages. He takes several bows, drinking in the audience’s delight at the trick he’s performed hundreds of times. Finally, he shushes the crowd with his hands. “Thank you, thank you so much. Tonight Ashaki chose not to eat me, but I am sure, one day, I will succumb to her powerful jaws.”
He winks at a handsome man in the front row of the crowd as he takes one more bow before the band strikes up to announce Cyrus and the next act.
Much later, when the show is done and the audience are either spending coin on ale and dancing to the musicians or spending more coin to have their fortunes told by Old Mother and her arca cards, Tobi leads the handsome young man away from the lights of Copperhead Circus and into the dark of a small cluster of trees.
From this distance the tents and caravans in the dell are dark shapes sprinkled with the light from candles and braziers. The stars are bright as jewels in the sky above them.
The man says, “Those tricks you do are quite the spectacle, Beast Tamer. I cannot believe you are not scared that fearsome beast will eat you.”
Laughing, Tobi presses the man up against the trunk of one of the trees and kisses him, pulling back after a moment and saying, “Oh, I am, but I’ll let you into a secret. I like being scared.” And he kisses the man again, more deeply, letting his tongue wander lazily into the man’s mouth, teasing until he pulls back again, both of them panting.
The man gazes at Tobi. “I have never seen anyone with hair like yours.” He reaches out and touches it, running his fingers over the pale blond strands and then the black ones. “Does it grow so? Half white and half black?” He’s teasing, Tobi is sure. No one would think his hair could actually grow pale blond on the left side and black on the right.
“It does,” Tobi says, grinning at his bold lie. “Dark hair from my father Prince Rafus and white from my mother who comes from distant Archillia, where the people are born with dark skin and silver hair,” he laughs, tossing his head.
“Archillia?” the man says, sounding amazed, as he touches Tobi’s blond hair again. From his accent, Tobi would guess this man grew up in the countryside west of Ceruleum and has never travelled far from his home land. Archillia, the distant country over the Priam Sea, must seem like something from an old tale. “And Rafus Darek, Crown Prince of the Empire.” the man continues, moving his hand across Tobi’s head to touch his dark hair. “So it’s true. You truly are the son of a prince? Have you met him? Have you been inside the Ivory Palace?”
“Of course,” Tobi says. “I am my dear father’s favourite bastard son. Not only do I often visit my father in the Ivory Palace in Ceruleum, but it's true that when I was a boy of seven, he took me to Attar, the Jewel of the Empire, to live in the Tower of the Heir in the Great Rose Palace for a full year’s turn.”
The man lets out a long breath of amazement. “You’ve been to Attar? Truly? Is the Rose Palace as beautiful as they say?”
“Oh yes,” Tobi replies breathily. “A sparkling confection of pink stone. A great wonder of the empire. And ten times the size of the Ivory Palace.” He smiles. When the man says nothing more, Tobi leans closer. “So what is your pleasure tonight, my sweet sire?”
The handsome man has a broad face and sandy hair that is spun gold in the moonlight. He looks at Tobi with an unexpectedly wary expression. “Is it safe here?” he says.
“Of course,” Tobi chirps. He places a flat palm on the man’s chest and slides it downwards, over his belt to stroke the front of his breeches. “We are far from the eyes of the Empire here.”
The man looks warily over Tobi’s shoulder. “Perhaps we should not,” he says, although he does not stop Tobi stroking his cock to readiness through his breeches. “I came to the performance with some friends from Fort Serus.”
