As the crowd began to wander off, Tanin cleared his throat.

"Ah, but juggling is not all I can do!" he announced. "I can sing while I juggle."

He launched into a baritone song—a tale of a buxom lass from a wandering tribe, her hair as thick as mammoth fur, her legs as long and pale as tusks, her breasts as large as—

He dropped one skull, losing his place in the song. For a moment he wobbled on one foot, then completed his embarrassment by crashing down onto the stage. His remaining raven skulls clattered away in all directions. He quickly raced around, scooping them up, and tried to resume his performance despite jeers from the crowd. One man in the audience, a beefy brute with red cheeks, burst into laughter.

Tanin sighed. Another village, another humiliation.

This village—a little place called Blueford—lay south of the Ranin River. While most folk north of the sea still lived in nomadic tribes, hunting and gathering across the plains and forests, a few villages now grew along the river, none older than three or four generations. The recent invention of bronze, a metal Tanin himself used to forge with his father, meant plows could now till soil. Food could be grown, not merely collected from wild plants. Nails could hold together fences, and animals could be penned, not hunted. Many of the tribes, Tanin knew, mocked the villagers for abandoning the old ways, for growing soft and lazy.

Banished from his own village a decade ago, Tanin himself preferred open spaces and solitude. But villages would barter. Villages would offer seashells, food, and even precious metal in return for juggling and singing—at least on days when he didn't end up on his backside, his skulls rolling around him. And so Tanin kept traveling along the river, juggling and singing his rude songs.

His sister, Maev, had it even worse. She traveled from town to town with him, wrestling, boxing, and earning her keep with fists and kicks. She joked that he fell on his arse for seashells while she kicked arses for them. He often countered that her face—covered with bruises and scrapes from her many fights—ended up looking like an ape's swollen backside.

My sister and me, he thought with a sigh. Two lost souls—outcast, afraid, always only days away from starvation.

Blueford—a village like any other. Looking off the stage, Tanin saw a collection of clay huts topped with straw roofs, a few gardens, fields of rye and wheat, a smithy, and corrals of cattle.

It looks like the village Maev and I were born in, he thought. The village that banished us. This place would banish us too if they knew our secret . . . our curse.

At the thought of his shame, Tanin stumbled upon the stage, falling again with a cascade of clattering skulls. The crowd jeered.

"Get off the stage!" someone shouted. "Let the dancer on, you lout!"

Sitting on the stage, his legs splayed out before him, Tanin turned his head to see a dancer standing in the grass, awaiting her turn to perform. She met his eyes and gave him a shrug and sympathetic smile. Seeing her only amplified Tanin's humiliation.