The Talisman

group. They shifted on their feet, their shoulders sank. They began to drift away. The officer watched them go, then turned back to the guards for a final word.
    For a moment while the officer faced in Jack’s direction, in effect shooing the group of men away with his presence, Jack saw a long pale lightning-bolt of a scar zigzagging from beneath his right eye to just above his jawline.
    The officer nodded to the guards and stepped briskly away. Looking neither to the left nor to the right, he wove through the crowd, apparently headed for whatever lay to the side of the summer palace. Jack took off after him.
    ‘Sir!’ he yelled, but the officer marched on through the slow-moving crowd.
    Jack ran around a group of men and women hauling a pig toward one of the little tents, shot through a gap between two other bands of people approaching the gate, and finally was close enough to the officer to reach out and touch his elbow. ‘Captain?’
    The officer wheeled around, freezing Jack where he stood. Up close, the scar seemed thick and separate, a living creature riding on the man’s face. Even unscarred, Jack thought, this man’s face would express a forceful impatience. ‘What is it, boy?’ the man asked.
    ‘Captain, I’m supposed to talk to you – I have to see the Lady, but I don’t think I can get into the palace. Oh, you’re supposed to see this.’ He dug into the roomy pocket of the unfamiliar pants and closed his fingers around a triangular object.
    When he displayed it on his palm, he felt shock boom through him – what he held in his hand was not a fingerpick but a long tooth, a shark’s tooth perhaps, inlaid with a winding, intricate pattern of gold.
    When Jack looked up at the Captain’s face, half-expecting a blow, he saw his shock echoed there. The impatience which had seemed so characteristic had utterly vanished. Uncertainty and even fear momentarily distorted the man’s strong features. The Captain lifted his hand to Jack’s, and the boy thought he meant to take the ornate tooth: he would have given it to him, but the man simply folded the boy’s fingers over the object on his palm. ‘Follow me,’ he said.
    They went around to the side of the great pavillion, and the Captain led Jack behind the shelter of a great sail-shaped flap of stiff pale canvas. In the glowing darkness behind the flap, the soldier’s face looked as though someone had drawn on it with thick pink crayon. ‘That sign,’ he said calmly enough. ‘Where did you get it?’
    ‘From Speedy Parker. He said that I should find you and show it to you.’
    The man shook his head. ‘I don’t know the name. I want you to give me the sign now. Now.’ He firmly grasped Jack’s wrist. ‘Give it to me, and then tell me where you stole it.’
    ‘I’m telling the truth,’ Jack said. ‘I got it from Lester Speedy Parker. He works at Funworld. But it wasn’t a tooth when he gave it to me. It was a guitar-pick.’
    ‘I don’t think you understand what’s going to happen to you, boy.’
    ‘You know him,’ Jack pleaded. ‘He described you – he told me you were a Captain of the Outer Guards. Speedy told me to find you.’
    The Captain shook his head and gripped Jack’s wrist more firmly. ‘Describe this man. I’m going to find out if you’re lying right now, boy, so I’d make this good if I were you.’
    ‘Speedy’s old,’ Jack said. ‘He used to be a musician.’ He thought he saw recognition of some kind flash in the man’s eyes. ‘He’s black – a black man. With white hair. Deep lines in his face. And he’s pretty thin, but he’s a lot stronger than he looks.’
    ‘A black man. You mean, a brown man?’
    ‘Well, black people aren’t really black. Like white people aren’t really white.’
    ‘A brown man named Parker.’ The Captain gently released Jack’s wrist. ‘He is called Parkus here. So you are from . . .’ He nodded toward some distant invisible point on the horizon.
    ‘That’s right,’ Jack said.
    ‘And Parkus . . . Parker . . . sent you to see our Queen.’
    ‘He said he wanted me to see the Lady. And that you could take me to her.’
    ‘This will have to be fast,’ the Captain said. ‘I think I know how to do it, but we don’t have any time to waste.’ He had shifted his mental direction with a military smoothness. ‘Now listen to me. We have a lot of bastards around here, so we’re going to pretend that you are my son on t’other side of the sheets. You have