Page 117 of Play of Shadows
I drew my rapier– and instantly realised I’d picked the wrong weapon. This waswar– why hadn’t I brought a longsword?– but there was nothing I could do about it now.
As my fellow players began miming the great Battle of Mount Cruxia, I allowed my sight to shift back to the unfolding chaos of a hundred years ago.
Was this where the Court of Flowers achieved their first victory?I wondered in horror as half-mad, filthy men and women dripped mud and blood and worse. With broken armour hanging off wounded torsos and shattered limbs, they swung their weapons in wide, desperate arcs as likely to decapitate their comrades as their enemies. The noise– oh, Saint Birgid-who-weeps-rivers,that noise:a constant scream of terror and rage and worst of all, the deranged, gleeful cackling at the death of an enemy who falls at last, sinking into the soggyground until mud fills their mouths and at last puts an end to their shrieking agony. . .
What did you think war looked like?Corbier asked.An endless series of elegant duels, each politely awaiting the magistrate’s bell to begin, followed by masterful displays of fencing, and all peppered with clever witticisms?
I don’t know. I thought. . .
You didn’t think at all, Player. That is the gift soldiers give to those they defend– not merely protection from the enemy but protection from the truth of what their safety costs.
Somehow, between the howling battle cries and wet, gasping death rattles, I began to hear complaints among the audience, wondering why the Raven wasn’t yet taking part in the action.
You need only watch and follow, Corbier told me.The end of my tale awaits us.
I found myself walking in Corbier’s shadow, stalking the field in search of the man he’d come here to kill.Wait!I called out, resisting the pull,we can’t just run headlong into a duel with Pierzi!
The Red-Eyed Raven’s laugh was brittle, almost feverish.What do you suppose happens when two men despise one another so greatly that they send five thousand soldiers to the slaughter, all for the chance to kill each other?
The Court of Flowers, I stammered,they must be here, somewhere in your memories. Help me find them befo—
My destiny is already written!Corbier roared at me.My doom is incontestable. You are here to witness my death, Veristor, nothing more!
I struggled against the Red-Eyed Raven’s indomitable will.Listen, you fool! We may not be able to change what happened a hundred years ago, but if there’s evidence that the Iron Orchids began in your time– that they aren’t some recent patriotic citizen uprising– then I can discredit them in thepresent. Please, Corbier, reliving your vengeance against Pierzi won’t save Ajelaine, but the truth could save my city!
But Corbier was no longer listening to me. He yanked me along like a puppy on a leash, forcing me to follow in his footsteps as he sought his final release from pain.
Everything I saw was tinted red.
Chapter 58
The Vendetta
‘Where are you hiding, Pierzi?’ I heard myself roar across two worlds.
Up and down the bloody slopes of Mount Cruxia, the Red-Eyed Raven searched for his nemesis, and on the stage, Duke Monsegino, barely ten feet away from me, appeared equally lost in a trance as he scoured the field for his enemy.
In the present and the past, the two of us weaved in and out of the crowd in a bizarre dance: one moment we’d meet and our blades would cross, the next, we’d be swept apart by the chaos of battle or by actors cleverly ploughing between us, sending the two of us spinning away to separate parts of the stage. The audience gasped each time Monsegino and I passed each other as though blind.
‘He’s right there!’ someone would shout, only to be clouted in the head and hissed into silence by an aggravated neighbour.
Drawn by those voices, I took a moment to look out into the audience. Flashes of soldiers fighting in the past appeared among them, but they never overlapped with the onlookers as they did with the actors on the stage.
They have no part of this tale, Corbier informed me.
It’s their lives at stake– their city!
Then someone should have taught them how to fight for it.
Before I could counter that cruel, cynical assessment, my gaze was drawn to the other watchers among the crowds, those whose fine clothes and noble bearing set them apart. As my awareness flitted back and forth between past and present, the distance of a few feet stretched out in the Red-Eyed Raven’s gaze all the way to a distant hill, where a group of equally elegantly garbed men and women on horseback were watching the battle. Behind each was a spear flying their House colours, held high by attendants dressed in liveries of the same colours. Glittering armour peeked out from beneath their raiments, but instead of fighting, these rival nobles were sipping tea poured from a single gleaming kettle. Although there was no way for Corbier to hear over the din of battle, I was convinced these ‘enemy Houses’ happily exchanging pleasantries were gambling on the outcome of one part of the battle or another.
What role do you seek to play in this tragedy, my Lords and Ladies?A sour taste came to my mouth as the battle swirled all around me.Is it just a game to you, spinning the rest of us like tops while you wager on which will fall first?
In that instant, my own smouldering rage overwhelmed Corbier’s control and in the present, I broke that sacred barrier between actor and audience to yell, ‘You who would make yourself sovereign are naught but the vilest malefactor in all of history!’
You chide me for seeking vengeance, Corbier mocked,yet here you are, weeping and wailing at enemies barely aware of your existence. You do no more than shout into a hurricane.
Normally I would have agreed, except. . . hadn’t those words I’d used been the exact ones I’d spoken on stage the night I’d fumbled the herald’s line? Why had I repeated them now?
