Uneasy Alliances tw-11 Page 10

  "Shipri's Dugs!" Feltheryn swore, and his voice carried like Vashanka's thunder. The door to the dressing room next to his own opened and Snegelringe looked out, his facing looking oddly pale with only the base applied, and no eye or lip color.

  "Hold the house!" Feltheryn instructed. "Rounsnouf has fled, and I must chase him!"

  "To the Vulgar Unicorn?" Snegelringe inquired.

  "If so, I'll have the hide of the barkeep. I paid him to be sure the curtain was on time!"

  He went back into his dressing room, wiped the makeup from his face with a wet towel, then pulled on a tunic. Just to be sure he would be taken seriously he added the belt with the King's sword. He threw a short cloak over the tunic against the chill, then he left the theater. No matter that the sword was cheap iron, a hand on the hilt was all it usually took!

  He glanced up the alley from the stage door as he went and noted that people were already arriving. He would have Rounsnouf's skin for this escapade, and possibly a bit from Hort as well!

  He rushed through the gathering darkness, still running lines in his mind for the second scene of the first act. In a matter of minutes he was at the Maze, then within it. He was so angry that he barely noticed the patter of feet that fell in behind him, forced them in fact from his attention until they speeded up: until it was apparent that they were running after him, close and with intent.

  The skill most necessary to an actor upon the stage is the ability to adjust rapidly to changing circumstances. If a door sticks one must be ready to make it appear a part of the play. If a sword sticks in its scabbard one must be ready to dodge a choreographed blow and keep the action flowing while one gets it free. It was not so much self-preservation as stagecraft that made Feltheryn whirl upon his assailants at the last moment and slide his sword free, raising it over his shoulder in the menacing stance of a broadswordsman ready for the downstroke.

  The shadows before him skidded to a halt. There were five of them (poor odds) and he recognized them at once as the pickpockets who had tried for his purse that first day in the bazaar. Wicked sharp steel glinted in the scant starlight, definitely better weapons than the fake sword he wielded.

  The tallest one, the boy whom Snegelringe had wounded, gave a laugh. "King indeed!" came the young voice. "Nothing but an old player!

  One with too much gold on his person at that! And this time with no pudgy sidekick to defend him!"

  The youth was right, Feltheryn observed, but his words showed inaccurate judgment.

  "The gold is all spent," he said, keeping his voice carefully level and below the middle force. "As to the rest: I am old, but not without skills." "Skills to be tried!" snarled the boy, and they all came at him. "Die then!" Feltheryn cried, and this time he let forth the full power of his voice, a voice trained to reach at least the third balcony of the largest theater in Ranke. And as he spoke (for he did not have to shout to be heard from one end of the Maze to the other) he brought the iron sword down with his full strength and speed, straight at his opponent's head.

  One knife caught in his cloak as he swirled it with his left hand. Another thrust between his ribs, under his descending right arm; but its force was not sufficient to go all the way in, so startled were the thieves by the force of his voice. Two of the boys jumped back, terrified. The leader, primed on his pride, managed to avoid the iron blade descending toward his head, but not quite enough. The edge was not terribly sharp but it was moving fast enough to break his collarbone where it struck, even as his blade sliced across Feltheryn's belly, drawing blood but not managing to gut him.

  It was not unlike the fight in Rakesblade, and Feltheryn, barely feeling the wounds in the excitement of a performance, delivered his lines with force enough to rattle their teeth:

  "Is this your best, you unborn whoreson snakes?

  Is magick then your honorless defense?

  See too my holy blade I can enchaunt.

  So that its light your rude entrapment breaks!"

  The fact that they were not using magic against him quite escaped their attention at that moment, for the sword in Feltheryn's hand began to glow a bluish white, spilling its weird light into the shadows and illuminating the scene dramatically. They had no idea that the light from the blade was all there was to the magic of the spell contained in the play. They only knew that their leader was once more screaming in agony and that the man before them was much taller than he had seemed a moment before: that he seemed unharmed by their attack, and that they were not winning.

  "Gralis, forget him!" cried one of the boys to their leader, and then they all bolted, leaving the wounded Gratis to fend for himself.

  Feltheryn stepped forward, brandishing the glowing sword at his agonized enemy.

  "Go thou into darkness!" he commanded, from later in the same play. "Take demons now for playmates if you will, and leave forever, these the lands of light!"

  Through the pain in his ruined shoulder the boy heard these words and, harking back to the terrors that had so recently reigned in Sanctuary, he lost control of his bladder even as he turned and staggered away, doing his best to run.

  Feltheryn stood triumphant, the light blazing from the sword in an unnaturally quiet and empty street. He watched the horrified and incompetent thief disappear into the shadows, then he realized that something was wrong.

  There was no applause!

  The light of the sword fizzled out as if it had been doused with a bucket of winter cold water, and the pain hit Feltheryn where the two blades had cut him. He shook himself, took a deep breath, then thrust the stage sword back into its stage scabbard. He felt the wound across his belly and determined that it was not going to be fatal, then checked the piercing between his ribs. That was more serious, and would require a chirurgeon: after the performance.

  He turned and headed for the Vulgar Unicorn, his anger returning full force.

  -But he was not prepared for what awaited him when he slammed open the door and raked the brown darkness with his steel-blue gaze.

  Rounsnouf and Hort were two of three sitting at a table engaged in animated conversation while the barkeep-a barkeep different from the one Feltheryn had bribed-poured dark beer in their mugs.

  The barkeep registered a look not much different from that of any other man faced with trouble, but it was the third patron at Rounsnouf's table who captured and held Feltheryn's attention. A daemon! They were drinking with a gray-skinned, wart-faced, wall-eyed daemon! "Oh dear," said Rounsnouf. "I believe I've upset my director." "Lady of Stars!" exclaimed the young storyteller. "You're wounded!" "Not so much in the flesh as in my heart!" Feltheryn proclaimed, a quote from the play he should now be ready to begin.

  "I would not have come just now ..." Rounsnouf said lamely, and he gestured to the daemon.

  "Snapper Jo's fault?" the daemon queried. "Just a little drink with friends. Very human thing to do!"

  "To the Theater!" Feltheryn proclaimed. And if the habitues of the Vulgar Unicorn had been familiar with the whole corpus of the sacred plays they would have seen in the fire of his eyes the conjuration of most ancient deities from the most ancient dramas.

  They were not, but nobody argued.

  Still, the night's difficulties were unended.

  Bandages, ointments to kill the pain, makeup, costume, light calisthenics to fill his blood with air to support his voice; all these were accomplished, and the curtain went up. From the wings Feltheryn listened to the love scene in the garden between Snegelringe and Glisselrand, running his lines and clearing his mind of all the nonsense that had slowed him. It was past, after all, and only the play now existed.

  The scene drew to a close and the curtain was drawn, then he and Rounsnouf and Lempchin, with the aid of the roaring boys provided by Myrtis, pulled the ropes, moved the panels, and in general changed the scene to that of the King's study. He took his place on the stage, seated at the King's great desk, and the curtain went up.

  Feltheryn came alive.

  There was an audie
nce and he could feel it, feel every living being as a presence, their eyes upon him, their breathing slowed, their minds involved-their emotions guided as they submitted themselves, for the duration, to the magic of the show. He began the monologue in which the King voiced his doubts, then Glisselrand entered and he began the part of the play that was his personal favorite, for it said, better than any words of his own could ever hope to say, what he felt about her:

  "How shall I call you then?

  Like some great bird, that though she be my slave can yet take wing?

  Like some famed horse, that though I hold the reins can race the wind?

  I call you love, and hold you in my arms, and yet you overpower me.

  I call you wife, and you must call me lord; and yet I worship at your shrine!"

  He ceased to exist as a separate person and became the tragic king, a man doomed by circumstance to destroy all that he loved in life, rescued from the ultimate humiliation only by the intervention of supernatural forces at the end: forces beyond his comprehension.

  The scene changed again and the pain hit him, then he launched back into his performance and it was gone. Only when the first act was complete did he really understand that he was seriously wounded. Instead of going out to the little secret passage behind the lobby (Molin had included it without question) to listen to the public reaction to the play, Feltheryn stayed in his dressing room, resting for the forceful and terrible interview with the High Priest, preparing for the cold and terrible act of burning his enemies at the stake, the auto-da-fe that was the play's most stunning spectacle.

  By the end, however, as the story ground to its inevitable conclusion with the ghostly figure of the King's dead father dragging his grandson Karel into the tomb, the pain was pushing past all Feltheryn's defenses. And there was something else, something that had tugged at him increasingly throughout. As the curtain fell and he dropped the character from him like a discarded robe, he placed it.

  There was no applause.

  No more applause than there had been in the alley earlier. Instead there was a curious buzz, something between anger and amusement, partaking of both; as if the audience didn't know what to do.

  He had felt it, had known with the back of his mind that something was wrong, but he had been too much at odds with the pain to pay attention. Now his mind focused on it with a clarity like sunlight on springwater.

  He started to go through the curtains for a bow, .if not to receive applause then to gauge the danger, but Glisselrand took his arm and stopped him.

  "I think not," she said, and he saw that there were lines in her face that age had not put there.

  "What's wrong?" he asked.

  "I don't quite know," she replied, "but I think we shall find out. The Prince and the Beysa have sent word that they are coming backstage. Let's get to the green room."

  They had taken the precaution of providing their own greens for the opening, so by the time Prince Kadakithis and the Beysa Shupansea swept in, Feltheryn and Glisselrand were seated behind a desk amidst baskets of flowers and fruit with potted palms to either side. It had not been easy to find potted palms in Sanctuary, but they had grown used to them in Ranke and they felt it would identify them positively with the capital in its days of glory.

  The effort was apparently wasted.

  "How dare you'" accused the prince, and Feltheryn instantly knew what it was that he had dared, though just how and why he did not know.

  Prince Kadakithis was clearly the young nobleman on whom Snegelringe had modeled his walk and manner! It must have appeared that the whole play was directly aimed at him, a warning or an insult or ...

  "Oh look!" said Snegelringe, entering on the arm of a beautiful young woman and accompanied by several more. "Here's the young man you pointed out to me! Kind Sir, you cannot know how grateful-"

  Snegelringe stopped.

  The whole world seemed to stop for a moment as one of the ladies in the pudgy actor's retinue stepped forward.

  "Daphne!" Prince Kadakithis exclaimed.

  "My husband!" said Princess Daphne, and the look she gave him could have frozen the oceans all the way to the Beysa's homeland. "I heard that you had made a gracious contribution to the evening, so how could I do less?"

  She stepped past him and drew out a small velvet bag which she dropped on the table in front of Glisselrand with just enough force to indicate that it contained metal; from the sound of it, gold. Then she looked back at the prince.

  "I hope that you enjoyed the evening as much as I did. For now you must excuse me. I have an appointment with Master Rounsnouf, the estimable actor. Then Masters Snegelringe and Rounsnouf and I will be going to the Vulgar Unicorn. It is amazing how much of Sanctuary I never used to see!"

  She swept from the room, followed by the other women who had come in with her.

  Snegelringe, perceiving that he had been duped, stood motionless while the full import of his actions crashed down on him. "I ..." he started, but then he stopped, clearly unable to formulate an appropriate apology.

  The Beysa laughed.

  "Master Snegelringe," she said, "your imitation of the prince was most enlightening. Only less so than the reason for it which we have just had revealed. But perhaps you might choose another model for the performance you will give tomorrow night."

  "Unless," said Feltheryn, the plot of the play before him coming clear, "Your Highness would consent to see it in another light!"

  The Prince and the Beysa turned to him and Glisselrand clutched his hand.

  "While it is true," he continued, "that the role of Karel is tragic, it is also noble. Karel, like His Highness, spends much of his time in a backward land; so much so that he comes to love its people, even to the point of standing up for them against his father, the King."

  A different tension now came into the room, for the relationship between Prince Kadakithis and his half-brother the late emperor, was well known.

  "If it were spoken in the palace that the Prince was pleased with our seeing him in such an heroic light, tonight's performance could not be taken as an insult by anyone, no matter how it was instigated. In fact, I doubt anyone would believe that it was anything but the best compliment we poor players could offer. More, it is known that Your Highness has supported our efforts, so it might seem that it was with Your Highness' compliance that we performed the play thus."

  He did not dare say further. The seeds of the idea were planted, it would be up to them to keep them watered. The magic in the plays was subtle, but it might be sufficient to transform the image of the Prince from that of a "kittycat" into that of a tiger.

  The Prince and the Beysa looked at one another. The Beysa's snake slid out of hiding in her sleeve.

  Molin Torchholder stalked into the room, his face full of the lightning of the god he worshipped, but before he could speak the Beysa turned to Glisselrand.

  "Turn out the pouch the Princess Daphne gave you," she instructed.

  "Daphne?" echoed Molin, clearly outraged.

  Glisselrand did as she was bid and dumped the sizable pile of gold coins onto the table.

  The Beysa eyed the coins, then reached down to her dress and plucked off several large jewels. Smiling, she placed them on the table next to the gold.

  "I believe your next play should be The Queen of Tarts, "she said with consummate modesty, considering that the play was accounted too lascivious to play in many towns. "In case you do not remember, it is the one about the noblewoman who sells herself in the marketplace. I have never seen it, but here, far away from home, I believe I can risk it. These jewels should serve in earnest of the costs."

  "Oh, Your Highness," said Glisselrand, looking at the jewels. "We could not possibly accept such a gracious donation ..."

  -Now what was she saying? Feltheryn wondered; for at that moment the pain between his ribs began to blot out his thoughts and he was sure that he must immediately slip from consciousness. The Prince and the Beysa might be nobility, but opening n
ight was over and he needed a physician-

  "Not unless," Glisselrand continued, "Your Highness would accept a small token of our thanks."

  Feltheryn understood and plunged back to consciousness, but he was not quick enough. Before he could intervene Glisselrand had pulled out the object she had been knitting, a multicolored tea cozy that would have put the S'danzo to shame for its garishness, and she was proffering it proudly to the Beysa.

  RED LIGHT, LOVE LIGHT by Chris Morris

  Sunset gilded Sanctuary's domes and spires as Shawme, the new girl at Myrtis's Aphrodisia House, sat upright in her backroom bed. Fists clenched, she took deep breaths, shaking off her bad dream.

  Her blue eyes wide, she stared hungrily out the window, at the sunset to which she woke, at the window frame itself, at the whitewashed walls of her little room. The room was plain by Aphrodisia House standards, but not by Shawme's. The room had a real window with glass panes; it had a feather bed and clean sheets; it had a writing desk cum dressing table on which were such luxuries as pots of body paint and makeup, kohl and powdered cowrie shell, even a hair brush made from boar bristles, and a bone comb; it had a closet with clothes in it-clean clothes, free from holes, dresses of fine sheer silk and even a coat to keep out the spring chill.

  It was a room of unimaginable luxury, high above the street, not like the room in the dream from which Shawme had awakened to flee. In the dream, she'd been back in her old Ratfall burrow, shared with five other orphans, fighting over the raw and bony thigh of a dead cat they'd found in the street. In that dream, the other kids had teased her that all of this was a dream. They'd been sure there was no room for her in the Aphrodisia House, no job among the perfumed women of the evening, no marvelous future unrolling day by day.

  In the dream, Shawme had been back in Ratfall where no one had a future and no one had a past, not a chance or a hope. Except Zip. And Zip didn't pay any mind to the youngsters. You couldn't matter to Zip until you weren't a kid anymore ... until the PFLS found a use for you.