Shadowplay

Briony felt oddly content. She was almost happy, she realized—for the first time in too long to remember: the miseries that dogged her thoughts were not by any means gone, but for the moment she could live with them, as if she and they were old enemies grown too weary to contend.

The men brought out the pieces of the stage and joined them together in one large rectangle, then set it on top of the barrels and lashed the whole thing together. Briony herself, as one of the lightest, was sent to stand on top of it to test its resilience. When she had bounced up and down on it vigorously enough to assure everyone, they continued preparing the rest of their makeshift theater. The smaller of the two wagons was rolled into place at the back of the stage where it would serve as a tiring-room for entrances, exits, and quick changes, as well as a wall on which to hang painted backdrops. They lifted up the hinged top of the wagon, folding it upward so that it could serve as a kind of wall or tower-top from which actors could speak their lines or, as gods, meddle in the lives of callow mortals from on high. Briony could see the persimmon-colored sunlight of fading afternoon on the uppermost peaks of the mountains southeast of Tessis and wondered if the gods were truly up there as she had been taught, watching her and all the other petty mortals.

But Lisiya said they were...what? Sleeping? They can hear us, she said—but can they still see us?

It was strange to think of the gods being blind and only faintly aware of the existence of Briony’s kind, like vastly aged grandparents snoring in their chairs, barely moving from the beginning of one day to its end.

No wonder they long to come back to the world again, as Lisiya said. She was immediately chilled, although she could not quite say why. She bent and returned to bracing the wagon wheels with stones.

The morning meal, a surprisingly hearty fish stew the tavernkeeper Bedoyas had served them in a big iron pot, with a spicy tang that Finn told her came from things called marashis, was not lying quietly in her stomach. It was no fault of the tavern’s cook, though: Briony was fretful. The tavern yard was already starting to fill, even though the play would not begin until the temple bells rang in Blessed Lady of Night to call the end of afternoon prayers, which was most of an hour away. She had never performed in front of more than a few dozen people in any of the villages or towns along the way, but there were twice that many here already and the yard was still half empty.

What are you frightened of, girl? she asked herself. You have fought a demon, not to mention escaped a usurper. You have stood before many times this number and acted the queen in truth—or at least the reigning princess —a far more taxing role. Players don’t lose their heads when they fail to convince, as I almost lost mine. She thought of Hendon Tolly and a little shudder of rage passed through her. Oh, but I would glory to have his head on a chopping block. I would take up the ax myself. Briony, who although rough and boyish in some ways, as her maids and family had never ceased pointing out, was not or bloodthirsty, but she wanted fiercely to see Tolly humiliated and punished.

I owe it to Shaso’s memory, if nothing else, she thought. I can’t make amends for imprisoning him, but I can avenge him.

Shaso had been innocent of her brother’s murder, but she still did not know who exactly was guilty, beyond the obvious. Who had been the guiding hand behind a murder by witchcraft? Hendon Tolly, however dark his heart and bloody his hands, had seemed genuinely surprised at Anissa’s maid’s horrific transformation—but if the Tollys had not had her brother murdered, then who was to blame? It was impossible to believe the witch-maid had conceived and executed such a scheme on her own. Could it have been one of Olin’s rival kings? Or the distant autarch? Perhaps even the fairy folk, reaching out somehow from their shadowy land, a first blow before their attack? In truth, the lives of the Eddon family had been completely shaken to pieces in a matter of months by magic and monsters. Why had any of this happened?

“Hoy, Tim.” Feival was already pulling his shirt over his head as he squeezed into the cramped wagon. “You look stuck—do you need help with your dress?” As the company’s principal boy he was more familiar with putting on a gown than Briony herself, who had always been assisted by her maids.

She shook her head, almost relieved. The workaday had returned to push out other things, no matter their importance. “No, but thank you. I was just thinking.”

“Good house today,” he said, stepping out of his tights with the indifference of a veteran player. Briony turned away, still not used to seeing naked men, although it had not been an infrequent experience since she had been traveling with the troop. Feival in particular was lithe and well-muscled, and it was interesting to realize that she could enjoy looking at him without wanting anything more.

Maybe I really am boyish, as Barrick used to say. Maybe I’m just fickle of eye and heart, like a man. There was no question, though, that she wanted more in her life than simply a handsome man at her side. She could feel it some nights, different from the yearning she felt for her lost brothers and her father: she did not want a particular person, she wanted somebody, a man who would hold her only when she wanted, who would be warm and strong.

But sometimes when she had such thoughts, she saw a face that surprised her—the commoner, the failed guardian, Ferras Vansen. It was exasperating. If there was a less appropriate person in the world for her to think about, she could scarcely imagine it. Who knew if he was even alive?

No, she told herself quickly, he must be alive. He must be fit and well and protecting my brother.

It was odd, though, that Vansen’s not-so-handsome face kept drifting into her thoughts, his nose that bore the signs of having been broken, his eyes that scarcely ever looked at her, hiding always behind lowered lids as he stared at the ground or at the sky, as though her very gaze was a fire that would burn him... She stopped, gasped in a short breath. Could it be? “Are you well?”

“No—I mean yes, Feival, I’m well enough. I just...I just poked myself with something sharp.”

It was madness to think this way. Worse, it was meaningless madness: if Vansen lived, he was lost—lost with her brother. The whole of that life was gone, as if it had happened to another person, and unless she could somehow find help for herself and Southmarch, nothing like it would ever come again. Her task now was to be a player, at least for today—not a shareholder, even, but an assistant to the principal boy, working for meals in a tavern yard in Tessis. That was all. She knew she must learn to accept that.

“We are not in the March Kingdoms any more, so speak your parts loudly and broadly,” said Pedder Makewell, as if any of them did not know that already. “Now, where is Pilney?”

The players were all crammed into a little high-walled alley behind the tavern because there was not room for them all in the tiring-room and the yard was filled by their audience, a large group of city folk finished with work and eager for the start of the Kerneia revels. One end of the alley was bricked off, the other sealed with a huge pile of building rubble, so the spot was fairly private, but a few people in the buildings that backed on the alley leaned out of their windows to stare at the crowd of actors in their colorful costumes. “Where is Pilney?” Makewell asked again.

Pilney, younger even than Feival Ulian but far more shy and not half so pretty, raised his hand. The heavyset, red-faced youth was playing the part of the moon god Khors, and although this had thrown him much together with Briony, he had scarcely spoken a word to her that Teodoros had not written.

“Right,” Makewell said to him sternly. “You have spattered me quite roundly with blood the last two performances, boy, and you have spoiled my costume both times, not to mention my curtain call. When you die today, do me the kindness of facing a little away before you burst your bladder, or next time you’ll die from a real clubbing instead of a few taps with a sham.”

Pilney, wide-eyed, nodded his head rapidly.

“If you have finished terrifying the young fellow, Pedder,” said Finn Teodoros, “perhaps I might essay a few truly important points?”

“It is an expensive costume!” said Estir Makewell, defending her brother.

“Yes, the rest of us, in our rags, have all noticed.”

“Whose name is on the troop, I ask you?” Pedder demanded. “Who do they come to see?”

“Oh, you, of course.” Finn made a droll face. “And you are right to warn the boy. Otherwise, tavern gossip all over Syan would whisper that in the play about the death of gods, Pedder Makewell, at the end of the particularly bloody slaughter of his archenemy, was seen to have blood on him! Who would pay to witness such a ludicrous farce?”

“You mock me. Very well. You may launder Perin’s fine armor, then.”