The Old Pearl was a testament to the generosity of the long-dead count who’d left it to the city. Though hardly a patch on the Eldren notion of longevity, the theater had been built to be taken for granted for centuries. Its walls and raised galleries were white marble, now weathered a mellow gray, and its stage was built from alchemically lacquered hardwood that might last nearly as long.
The circular courtyard was open to the sky, and though awning poles were in place to offer potential shelter from sun and rain, the awnings themselves were absent. According to Jenora, such comforts for the groundling crowd, like sanitary ditches, were one of the “free” theater’s hidden expenses that the countess had no interest in bearing herself.
There was no denying that the place was far more suitable than Mistress Gloriano’s inn-yard. The Pearl had a surplus of dignity to lend, even to their more ragged rehearsals, and what might have seemed silly pantomime twenty feet from a stable was somehow ennobled in the shadow of silent marble galleries.
Still, every new advantage seemed to come with a complication for a sibling. Each day began too early, with hungover company members packing unfinished costumes, props, and sundries into the wagon provided by the Camorri. The walk to the Pearl was two miles, and at the close of each day’s rehearsal they would have to stuff everything back into their wagon and reverse the journey. They were permitted to rehearse at the Pearl, not reside there, and the city watch would turn them out like vagabonds if they showed any sign of spending a night. Precious hours were therefore gnawed away by travel.
Although Locke and Sabetha avoided the worst of the debauches that were a nightly ritual (Mistress Gloriano, for all her loud moralizing, seemed incapable of refusing service to any drunkard who could still manage to roll a coin in her direction), there was little freedom or leisure to be found at the inn. For one thing, there was the simple press of time, and sleep was a precious commodity after long rehearsals and tedious trudging. For another, there was Boulidazi.
True to his word, the young baron became a company fixture, “disguised” in common clothing, and while Locke went to bed each night more exhausted than he’d been since his months as a farmer, Boulidazi seemed to have the stamina of ten mules. Word got around, somehow, that the Moncraine Company had come back to life with a slumming lord at the heart of its court, so opportunists, curiosity-seekers, and unemployed actors joined the taproom mess every evening, driving Moncraine to distraction.
Boulidazi, however, was never distracted. His eyes were fixed on Sabetha.
5
“CALAMAXES, OLD counsel,” said Sylvanus Olivios Andrassus, squatting on a folding stool in character as His Paramount Majesty Salerius II, Emperor of All Therins. “Not a bright day passes but you find some cloud to throw before Our sun.”
“Majesty.” Jasmer sketched a bow, expressing more tolerance than awe. “It is of sons I wish to speak. Princely Aurin has reached a hungry age, and wants employment.”
“Employment? He’s heir to Our throne, that’s his trade.”
“He wants distinction, Majesty. A blade unblooded and waiting to be drawn, is Aurin.”
“You take liberties, spell-sayer. Say you that birth to the blood royal sufficeth not to mark his merit?”
“Your pardon, Sovereign. By my soul, Aurin is worthy heir to worthy line. I say only that he longs to match attainment to inheritance, as the father did, and stir this stately court with new triumph.”
“He,” mused Sylvanus, “and dear ambitious Ferrin.”
“Rightly and loyally ambitious,” said Jasmer. “Have you not been served in your own course by friends and generals?”
“And sorcerers.”
“Majesty.”
“Well, it’s no fault of Ours that foes of old are lately grown so feeble!”
“Those foes would say otherwise, Majesty. You have been the architect of their sorrows.”
“Well, well. Some serpents flatter, ere they bite. So now let’s have your fangs.”
“Majesty, there is a discontent in Therim Pel that gnaws, as vermin at a house’s timbers. The matter of the thieves.”
“Gods above! Have We not seen your spells in battle wrought, and men scythed dead like harvest grain? Have We not seen thunder and lightning leashed to your whim? Now you tell Us to cringe from vagabonds.”
“Not cringe, Majesty, never cringe. But attend, for here’s a sickness that’s catching. Word I have of gatherings in great numbers, of boldness unbecoming, of deliberate contempt for your imperial throne.”
“All thieves scorn the law, else they would not be thieves. Why cry this stale revelation?”
“Majesty, they make society beneath bright Therim Pel and name a sovereign for their counterfeit court!”
“In jest. We too much dignify this nonsense with Our consideration.”
“Majesty, please, if you suffer scorn from base pretenders, how can it not breed by example in higher stations? I grant that you may laugh in private—”
“You grant?”
“Pardon, Majesty. I submit. I counsel most earnestly. Rightly should you thinkthis insolence trivial, but rightly for the sake of hard-won peace should you crush it in its womb! Lest it spread to those whose spirits are more matched to your own.”
“Slay wastrels now or courtiers later, you say? Who, then, would be this sovereign of thieves, and how are they grown so fearsome that your own agencies cannot weed them?”
“A woman, majesty, a woman of worthy temper, whose thralls call her Queen of Shadows. She guards well against my simpler servants. One of them was slain last night and left on a street, as warning and challenge.”
“And what of spells?” Sylvanus let the word hang heavy in the air for a moment. “By Our command, could you not slay her at leisure, swift as a cold wind?”
“By your command,” said Jasmer, grudgingly, “she could die this instant, yet thus would I murder opportunity.”
“What, then, do you submit and counsel earnestly?”
“Let Aurin and Ferrin be your instruments, Majesty. Their faces are little-known to the lawless. Let them enter this thieves’ warren, and win this woman to their confidence, and execute judgment on her.”
“The dust is not yet settled from the corpse of your former agent, and you would put my son in his place?”
“Peace, Majesty. Has not princely Aurin wondrous skill at arms? Is not Ferrin iron-strong as suits his name? I am the soul of prudence with your issue, and would set my arts and eyes upon him from afar, though he’ll know it not. He could not be safer in his own chambers … and he might do much good.”
“Strange conceit, to make an emperor’s son an assassin.”
“To make it known the coming lion has some fox to him, matches subtlety to strength, and dares personal return for personal insult!”
“Aurin desires this?” said Sylvanus softly.
“He burns for a test, Majesty. The gracious gods have put one before us. I would set him to it.”
“Long have you served Us, best and brightest of Our magi, sharpest wit and quickest counsel. Yet should this go bad for Aurin, know for a certainty you will share his doom, though it took all the magi of the empire to bind you.”
“Sovereign, if my counsel from its design so wretchedly strayed I would not wish to live.”
“Then make preparation to guard with watchful spell, and We shall see it done. Bring Aurin and Ferrin before Us.”
Locke crept out from the shade of the stage pillars and into the heat. The Pearl’s western galleries wore shadows like masks, but the middle of the stage was at the mercy of the late-afternoon sun. Alondo came from the opposite side, met him in front of Jasmer and Sylvanus, and together they continued the scene.
Scene by scene, day after day, the drama unfolded in fits and starts, as though capricious gods were toying with the lives of Salerius II and his court. Skipping forward, reversing time, shifting parts and places, demanding repetition of certain moments until every participant was ready to throw punches, Jasmer Moncraine conjured the rough shape of the story and then started to carve fine.