The main tent of El Gloriosa was a cavern of canvas and flickering oil lamps, smelling of crushed grass, old sweat, and the faint, metallic tang of stage fire.
Faust sat in the furthest shadows of the back row, his arms crossed over his chest, his amber eyes tracking every movement with the precision of a hawk.
As the show began, the heartbeats in his chest seemed to sync with the steady thrum of the circus band—a ragtag group of drummers and flutists who provided the heartbeat of the performance.
But Faust wasn't looking at the stage.
He was looking at the faces.
He saw a young boy, no older than Wilhelm had been, leaning so far forward he nearly fell off his bench, his mouth agape as Wunder made a bouquet of silk flowers vanish into a puff of colored smoke.
He saw a father, a man whose hands were calloused from the silver mines, looking not at the stage, but at his daughter, a soft, weary smile illuminating his face as he watched her laugh.
In that moment, the conviction Faust had felt during Mateus's performance solidified. Medicine could mend a broken bone, and a Duke's gold could fill a belly, but this—this collective suspension of disbelief—was a different kind of healing.
It was a momentary escape from the grinding poverty and the fear of the plague that defined the 17th century.
He wanted to be the architect of that escape.
His clinical eye didn't miss the darker edges, of course.
He watched the dancing bears and the tethered horses with a pang of professional concern; he could see the tension in their muscles, the slight dullness in their eyes that suggested the cages were too small and the whip too frequent.
But as he looked at the Boss's silhouette against the tent wall, he checked his judgment.
He was a "junior" now, a man without a past.
Who was he to judge the mechanics of a business he had only just joined?
As the show reached its second hour, Faust found himself increasingly impressed by the sheer logistical weight of the operation.
It wasn't just the performers; it was the choreography of commerce.
Between the rows of benches, vendors moved with practiced agility, balancing trays of honey-glazed nuts, sticky sweets, and wooden tankards of honey lemonade for the children. For the adults, there was thick, dark beer, served in vessels that never seemed to stay empty for long.
The coordination required to keep a thousand people fed, entertained, and seated in an orderly fashion for two hours was a feat of engineering that rivaled any university administration.
It was a machine made of people, and it ran with a relentless, profitable rhythm.
When the final bow was taken and the crowd began to filter out into the cool night air, Faust made his way toward the "backstage"—a chaos of dressing trunks and tired animals.
He found Wunder slumped on a crate, peeling off a layer of sweat-soaked silk.
"The three-cup shuffle," Faust said, approaching him without a sound. "You used the vibration of the table to settle it into the center cup while the left hand distracted the eye. And the card toss—the way you curved the trajectory... was that a flick of the middle finger or a shift in the wrist?"
Wunder looked up, his face pale and exhausted under the remains of his greasepaint.
He let out a long, ragged breath.
"You see too much, kid. That's your problem. You're trying to solve the trick like a mathematical equation."
"I am a scholar," Faust reminded him. "I need to know how the gears turn."
"You'll learn soon enough," Wunder grunted, standing up and wincing as his back popped. "But not tonight. Logic doesn't pack wagons, and theory doesn't move horses."
He gestured toward the team of laborers already beginning to strike the smaller tents and load the heavy crates.
"Get your things, whatever they are," Wunder said, his voice turning sharp with the urgency of the road. "We don't have time for a lecture. We have a show in a week in Amsterdam, and the road to the coast is a muddy hell this time of year. If we're not packed and moving by midnight, the Boss will have our hides."
Faust nodded, the "Professor" in him receding to make room for the "Apprentice."
There was some time he'd spent in this city in a very distant past...
He would be entering Amsterdam through the side door of a circus wagon this time.
"Amsterdam," Faust whispered, a familiar restlessness stirring in his blood.