Shadowplay

heard players and playhouses are the dregs of civilization, then know that anyone who says so has not seen the true cesspits of a place like Southmarch—let alone Tessis, which has Southmarch beat hollow for vice and depravity!” Feival chuckled. “I am rather looking forward to seeing it again.”

“There was a...physician in Southmarch,” Briony said, wondering if she might be going too far. “I think he lived in the castle. Chaven, his name was. Some said he was from Ulos. Do you know anything of him?”

He gave her a quizzical look. “Chaven Makaros? Of course. He is from one of the ruling families of Ulos. The Makari would be kings, if Ulos had such creatures.”

“So he is well known?”

“As well known where I grew up as the Eddons are in Southmarch.” Feival paused to make the sign of the Three. “Ah, the poor Eddons,” he sighed. “May the gods watch over them. Except for our dear prisoned king, I hear they are all dead, now.” He looked at her intently. “If you were perhaps one of the castle servants, I do not blame you for running away. They are in hard times there. Frightening times. It is no place for a young girl.”

“Girl...?”

“Yes, girl, sweetling. You may fool the others, but not me. I have spent my life playing one, and recognize both good and bad imitations. You are neither, but the true coin. Also, you make a fairly wretched, unmanly boy.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Stay away from Hewney, whatever guise you wear. He is hungry for youth, and will take it anywhere he can find it.”

Briony shivered and only barely resisted making the sign of the Three herself. She was less disturbed to find another player had penetrated her disguise than by what Feival had said about the Eddons all being dead now... Not all, she told herself, and found a little courage in that bleak denial.

They walked for several days and made rough camp each night until they reached the estate of a rural lord, a knight, where they had apparently received hospitality in past years and were again welcomed. The company did not have to perform a play for their rent, but Pedder Makewell —after being forced to bathe in a cold stream, much against his will, for both his cleanliness and sobriety—went up to the house to declaim for the knight and his lady and household. Peder’s sister Estir went along to watch over him (but also, Briony thought, to have the chance at a better meal than the rest of the players enjoyed down by the knight’s stables). She couldn’t really blame the woman. Had she not feared being recognized, she would have gladly taken an evening by an indoor fire herself, eating something other than boiled onions and carrots. Still, carrots and onions and two loaves to split between them were better than most of what she had enjoyed for the last month, so she tried not to feel too sorry for herself. As she was learning, most of her subjects would be delighted with such fare.

Teodoros left the gathering early, returning with his soup bowl to the wagon because he said he had thought of some excellent revisions for his new play—something he promised he would show Briony later. “It may amuse you,” he said, “and certainly will at least instruct you, and in either case make you a more fit traveling companion.” She wasn’t certain what that meant, but although she was left alone with the other players, she had spent much of the afternoon helping to haul the wagons out of a muddy rut, rubbing her hands bloody on the rope in the process, and so they were willing, at least for tonight, to treat her as one of their own.

“But in truth we are a desperate fraternity, young Tim,” Nevin Hewney said to her, pouring freely from the cask of ale the knight had sent down as payment, along with lodging in the stables, for Makewell’s evening of recitation. “You should never take membership, even in the most temporary way, if you are not willing to incur the opprobrium of all gods-fearing folk.”

Briony, who in the recent weeks had survived fire, starvation, and more deliberate attempts to kill her—not least of which had been demonic magic—was not impressed by the playwright’s drunken conceit, but she nodded anyway.

“Gods-fearing folk fear you, Hewney,” said young Feival, and winked at Briony. “But that is not because you are a player—or not simply because you are a player. It is because you stink.”

The giant Dowan Birch laughed at that, as did the three other men whose names Briony had not learned by heart yet—quiet, bearded fellows who did their work uncomplainingly, and seemed to her too ordinary to be players. Nevin Hewney stared at the Ulosian youth for a moment, then leaped to his feet, eyes goggling, his mouth twisted in a grimace of rage. He snatched something out of his dirty doublet and leaped forward, thrusting it toward Feival’s throat. Briony let out a muffled shriek.

“That belongs in the pot, not at my gullet,” said Feival, pushing the carrot away. Hewney continued to stare ferociously for a moment, then lifted the vegetable to his mouth and took a bite.

“The new boy was frightened, though,” he said cheerfully. “A most unmanly squeal, that was.” Sweat gleamed on his high forehead. He was already drunk, Briony thought, her heart still beating too fast. “Which makes my point—and underscores it, too, thinketh I.” He turned to her. “You thought I would murder our sweet Feival, did you not?” Briony started to shrug, then nodded slowly.

“And if I had instead played the gentleman...like this...and begged this tender maiden for a kiss...?” He suited action to words, pursing his lips like the most lovesick swain. Feival, the principal boy, lifted his hand and pretended to flutter a fan, keeping the importunate suitor at bay. “Or perhaps if I turned seductively to you, handsome youth,” Hewney said, leaning toward Briony, “with your face like Zosim’s smoothest catamite...?”

“Leave the lad alone, Nev,” rumbled Dowan Birch before Briony’s alarm became something she had to act on. She did not want anyone coming close enough to see that she was a girl, but most especially not an unpredictable drunk like Hewney. “You are in a bad temper because Makewell was invited to the house but not you.”

“Not true!” Hewney made a careless gesture, then found himself off balance and did his best to turn his stumble into something like a deliberate attempt to sit down on the ground by the small fire. The frozen earth around it had thawed into muck, and he had to perform an almost acrobatic twist to land on the log the others were sharing. “No, as I was saying when I was interrupted by the princess of Ulos, I merely demonstrated why we are such a fearful federation, we players. We display what all other people hide—what even the priests hide. We show what the priests speak—but we also show it as nonsense. The entrance to a theater is the door to the underworld, like the gate Immon himself keeps, but beyond ours terrifying truth and the most outrageous sham lurk side by side, and who is to say which is which? Only the players, who stand behind the curtain and dress themselves in such clothes and masks as will tell the tale.” Hewney lifted his cup of ale and took a long swig, as though satisfied that he had made his point.

“Oh, but Master Nevin is talkative tonight,” said Feival, laughing, “I predict that before the cask is empty he will have explained to us all yet again that he is the round world’s greatest living playwright.”

“Or fall asleep in his own spew,” called one of the other players.

“Be kind,” said the giant Birch. “We have a visitor, and perhaps Tim was raised more gently than you fleering lot.”

“I suspect so,” said Hewney, giving Briony an odd look that made her stomach sink. The playwright struggled back onto his feet. “But, pish, friend Cloudscraper, I speak nothing but truth. The gods themselves, Zosim and Zoria and artificing Kupilas, who were the first players and playmakers, know the wisdom of my words.” He took another long draught of ale, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve. His beard gleamed wetly in the firelight and his sharp eyes glittered. “When the peasant falls down on his knees, quaking in fear that he will be delivered after death to the halls of Kernios, what does he see? Is it the crude paintings on the temple walls, with the god as stiff as a scarecrow? Or is it our bosom companion High-Pockets Birch that he remembers, awesome in robes of billowing black, masked and ghostly, as he came to take Dandelon’s soul in The Life and Death of King Nikolos?”

“Would that be a play by Nevin Hewney?” gibed Feival.

“Of course, and none of the other historicals as good,” Hewney said, “but my point has flown past you, it seems, leaving you as sunken in ignorance as previously.” He turned to Briony. “Do you take my meaning, child? What do people see when they think of the great and frightening things in life—love, murder, the wrath of the gods? They think of the poets’ words, the players’ carefully practiced gestures, the costumes, the roar of thunder we make with our booming drums. When Waterman remembers to beat his in the proper time, that is.”

The company laughed heartily at this, and one of the bearded men shook his head in shamed acknowledgment —obviously a mistake he had not been allowed to forget, nor probably ever would be.

“So,” Hewney went on, draining his cup and refilling it, “when they see gods, they see us. When they think of demons and even fairies, it is our masks and impostures they recall—although that may change, now that those