Page 3 of The Laws of Nature (Heirs of the Empire #3)

Tobi was given a new role, and a tedious one, as the page to his Emperor uncle, a position of honour which meant holding his uncle's robes as he went about the palace and sitting in his private shrine for hours watching him chant to his God.

Tobi had often failed to attend, preferring to spend his time seeking out other ways to impress his new family.

His mimicry had begun there. He was a born performer, first brought before an audience as a babe.

And as a boy of seven summers, he could do very accurate impersonations of the voices and physicality of many people in the Rose Palace.

He could copy the voice of Chancellor Vindar so accurately that he once convinced Emperor Selim that he was in the room.

This little jape had earned Tobi a ringing clip around the ear from one of Selim’s bodymen. But Damon had laughed so hard he’d been wiping tears from his eyes as he clapped Tobi on the back, saying, “Brother, you could bring down an empire with that skill.”

And Lukas had smirked and said, “You should.”

But Tobi has not used that skill to bring down anything.

He uses it to make the wretches of Northern Azuria laugh as he mocks the family he has not seen for a score of years.

He uses it to make people think he is still part of the cruel nobility of Azuria.

So it will be all the more delicious when they imagine they may get the chance to see him bleed in the jaws of a beast.

He mocks both his uncle the Emperor and Lukas his rebel brother, so that however his audience’s sympathies lie, they will see him as an adversary.

He knows it would be safer to simply mock Damon and Lukas, and Cyrus has even suggested as much, but Tobi knows his audience thrill to his act all the more when he has laughed at every member of his family of tyrants and luxorites and traitors.

And the show is all that matters in the end.

He loves how it makes tension crackle in the air. He loves the way this crowd of strangers watch him, thrilling to the idea that, at any moment he could be either ripped to pieces or arrested for treason.

“And now,” Tobi announces, as Darvo and Rathel wheel Ashaki’s cage into the circle, “meet Ashaki, my beautiful and deadly lykat. All the way from the distant Ibian plains.” At Tobi’s subtle hand signal Ashaki rises up to standing and gives a snarl, acting suitably ferocious, eliciting a wild cheer of approval from the crowd and more than a couple of shrieks.

Ashaki is Tobi’s most treasured possession.

He raised her from a cub and still calls her ‘Baby’ rather than her real, more fitting, name.

Ashaki is unusually coloured even for a lykat.

Most lykats — including the ones in the great menagerie of Ceruleum — are tawny, even Ashaki’s mother was grey and brown.

But Ashaki is a bright rich copper colour everywhere except the white on her belly, paws, face and the tip of her tail.

But for all her beauty, Ashaki can look savage when she needs to, and right now as she roars, mouth wide and teeth bared, she looks truly fearsome.

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.