Night has fallen while we laid our plans. The village unfolds before me in swathes of light and shadow: the silhouettes of stilted huts and grass thatch, the steeply pitched rice barns with their upswept eaves. The coronation feast is set up in the central square, on a little hillock where the rainy-season water won’t pool. Paper lanterns are strung on bamboo poles, and cookfires flare under steaming pots of rice and meat and curry. Smoke and music drift on the wind. The drizzle has stopped, but the evening air is damp and cool, and my hair is still wet.
Ignoring the chill, I start toward the square, suddenly eager to join the crowd. Even when I was a small girl, I loved the closeness of strangers, especially after a show. Maman was always tired by curtain call, but Papa and I were eager to set aside our fantouches and join the audience. To hear their praise, join their chatter, share their excitement. After being in the spotlight, I could lose myself in something even greater—something outside my own mind.
But as I try to join them, the villagers part around me. I feel their eyes on the back of my head, like centipedes crawling through my hair. Of course. I am no longer a shadow player, but a nécromancien.
But as the crowd parts, I see a familiar smile at last: Tia, standing behind a table that holds a small supply of imported champagne.
The erstwhile singer is pouring glasses for the assembled crowd; she and Cheeky had insisted on hauling the last of the Boy King’s bottles all the way to Malao, and now I’m glad they did. I’m equally glad that Tia is alone; I’m not quite ready to face Cheeky again.
When Tia sees me approaching, she passes me a glass, lifting her own in an Aquitan toast. “Santé!”
“À la vôtre.” I’d learned the reply long ago, at Madame Audrinne’s table. Lifting the glass, I take a sip. Champagne sparkles in the cup and fizzes in my nose. Before I know it, I’ve drained the glass.
“Champagne is meant to be savored.” Tia gives me a look that isn’t quite reproach, but is far from approval. “I’m no politician, but I doubt the import rates will be favorable for a while.”
“Then I should enjoy it while it lasts,” I say, holding out the glass for a refill. Tia is raising the bottle when Leo’s voice floats over the revelry.
“Jetta?”
Suddenly I see my thirst for what it was: another symptom. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d sought calm in a bottle. “Excuse me,” I say to Tia, leaving the glass on her table as I push through the crowd. But I can’t outrun the feeling that Camreon was right: my malheur has crept back after all.
“Jetta?” Leo catches up with me near the cookfires. I turn reluctantly, hoping the flames hide the color of my cheeks. When he sees the look in my eyes, he reaches out to cup my face, then hesitates with his hand an inch away. A smile plays on his lips. “How much space did you need?”
With a sigh, I lean into his hand. He wraps his other arm around my shoulders, then steps back, surprised. “Your hair is still wet,” he says, shrugging off his jacket.
“You don’t have to take care of me, Leo.”
“Let me do it anyway,” he says, draping the jacket over my shoulders. It is warm, and smells like rosin and varnish. “At least until you’re ready to do it yourself.”
I try to smile. “That might be awhile, considering the elixir is out of reach.”
Leo raises an eyebrow. “Is it?”
“You heard Camreon,” I say. “We don’t have enough time or people to send them for the lytheum.”
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any plans tomorrow morning.” The corner of his mouth twitches upward, and my own eyes widen.
“You think we should go by ourselves?” I look back at the hut, silhouetted against the night sky, then out over the paddies and at the dark jungle beyond. “Camreon would be furious.”
“When has that stopped you?” Leo says, and I can’t help but laugh. “And it shouldn’t change his plans. If we take the avion, we can catch up with them in Nokhor Khat by tomorrow night.”
“It’s too dangerous,” I say, but the words are odd in my mouth—echoes of someone else’s reasoning. “Isn’t it?”
“Your malheur is dangerous.” Coming from anyone else, his frank assessment would offend me, but Leo learned the danger in madness long before he and I met. His own maman had a similar malheur, and it led to her death. He gives me a crooked smile. “If you’re going to take risks anyway, let’s make them worthwhile. Meet me at the avion at dawn?”
“Why wait?” I counter, my heart beating faster as I start toward the edge of the village, where the avion is kept. But Leo catches my hand in his.
“Slow down,” he says, laughing. “It’s been a long day, and the docteur said you should rest, remember?”
“Right,” I say, disappointed. “Dawn, then.”
“I’ll go stow some supplies in the avion,” he says, kissing me gently before he goes. I watch him wind through the crowd, but the fire is back in my belly—from the kiss, or the champagne? Or perhaps it is only the promise of finally being able to make my own plans.
In the three weeks since my last dose of elixir, the warnings had echoed in the back of my head, and in the voices of my friends: be careful of your malheur. But perhaps I had been too careful—after all, it wasn’t as if I could avoid it. The only way to tame my madness is to treat it. Wasn’t it riskier, on balance, to do nothing?
The thought
