Page 19 of Play of Shadows
What did he say?
‘Didn’t you say you were at some bar? How did the Black Amaranth know where to find you?’
Shoville gave a shudder. ‘Didn’t even think to ask. Now I’m even more terrified of her.’
‘Was this foreign bloom, who even now grows within the once barren garden of our Damelas’ heart, as irresistible as I imagine her?’ Beretto asked, giving a knowing bob of his head. Not even the prospect of poverty could wilt his incessantly optimistic licentiousness.
The beleaguered director looked up at Beretto as if he’d forgotten he was standing there. ‘I thought you preferred men.’
Beretto spread his big hands in his customary rendition of a penitent’s helpless plea to the gods. ‘I’m an actor. I love whomsoever the script requires.’
‘Well, that’s all very well, but we still have a problem,’ Shovillereplied. ‘We have been given seven days to mount a new play, with a new script, and this one comes with troubling prerequisites.’
‘Prerequisites?’ I asked. ‘What “prerequisites”? Is there. . . ?’
The question died on my lips. I’d been about to ask Shoville if there was to be a part for me in the new script. What kind of louse was I to even think of asking such a thing? The Knights of the Curtain had given me a home, protected me from the duelling laws that should have thrust me onto the Vixen’s blade a year ago. All I’d done in return was bring misery and discord to heap upon their own troubles.
Beretto tried to rescue me from my own knavishness. ‘What Damelas meant to—’
‘I know precisely what he meant to ask,’ Shoville said, though he wasn’t sounding nearly as infuriated as I would have expected. ‘That is, in fact, our dilemma. Damelas, the duke has specified that you no longer be permitted to play the role of the herald.’
‘Well, that’s not so bad, then,’ Beretto said, slapping me on the back. ‘He hasn’t asked that you be cut out entirely– all we have to do is work on Abastrini until he relents and—’
‘Abastrini’s not the star of the show any more,’ Shoville said, unrolling the scroll as if even now he couldn’t believe what was written there. ‘Prince Pierzi is no longer even the principal character. Bysuggestionof the duke– which is to say, hisabsolute fucking command– Damelas here is to lead an entirely new play, starring in the role of. . . Archduke Corbier.’
‘Wait,what?’ I stammered, convinced I’d somehow misheard him. ‘But. . . but Corbier’s thevillain! He’salwaysthe villain. He’s so reviled we don’t even have him on stage until the last act, and then it’s usually just his corpse—’
‘Think of it this way,’ Beretto offered. ‘At least if you’re playing a dead body, you won’t have to worry about forgetting yourlines.’
‘You’re not listening, you fool,’ Shoville shouted, and it looked like he was trembling in panicked fury. ‘We are commanded to stage a playfeaturingCorbier. We must write the archduke as the tale’s protagonist and Damelas will have to play him forthe entire show.’ The duke’s edict slipped from his fingers and drifted to the floor. ‘Once word of this new play gets out, the mob will come with torches to burn down the Operato Belleza– probably with the doors chained from the outside and us still on stage.’
Lady Shariza’s parting words returned to me:‘From this moment forth, nowhere in this city is safe for you, and the stage least of all.’
And she was right, too: Firan Monsegino, the newly crowned Duke of Pertine, had just turned the Operato Belleza– my only refuge from the Vixen– into a cage.
Even Beretto looked shocked as the implications of this new predicament dawned on him. He patted my shoulder awkwardly. ‘Tits up, brother. Tits up.’
Chapter 9
The Dignity of Actors
Every actor, no matter how humble, quietly dreams of that improbable day when fickle fortune will, at long last, smile upon them. Like a gleaming crown, the lead role will be graciously bestowed. Rich costumes–newcostumes– will be fitted to their exact proportions. The entire city will gossip over their newly discovered genius, speculating on exotic origins and romantic affiliations. And when opening night arrives at last, wealthy patrons will queue for hours, desperate to bear witness as the city’s newest obsession takes to the stage and utters their first astounding lines. . .
‘New pagesagain?’ I groaned as a dozen more hastily written sheets were deposited on top of the pile teetering on the battered table.
‘You think this is easy?’ snapped Shoville, hovering unsteadily over me like an exhausted vulture. ‘Rewriting an entire heroic saga in seven days to feature the bloodyvillainas the lead?’
I squinted. My eyes were so tired I could barely read the lines, but I needn’t have gone to the trouble: these weren’t new pages at all– just another rewrite of the damned prelude.
‘The prelude is important!’ Shoville insisted when I tried to point that out. ‘Must set the right tone at the start, or else theaudience—’
‘Forgive me, Lord Director, but I fear it’s what happensafteryour finely crafted prelude that matters. You know, when the audience notices the entire cast milling around the stage in silence because they haven’t been given their lines?’
In the week since Duke Monsegino had commanded this ill-omened experiment in theatrical sedition, everything had gone to seven Hells. Poor Shoville had been struggling to mangle the old Prince Pierzi script into a story told from Corbier’s perspective, but despite his valiant efforts, none of the scenes made any sense. This in turn sabotaged the rehearsals, for which everyone except Beretto blamed me. In fact, except for when they were spouting their newly butchered lines, most of my fellow players were refusing to speak to me at all. Meanwhile, word around the theatre district was that both the Lords of Laughterandthe Grim Jesters were preparing to petition the duke to grant them the charter over the Operato Belleza.
I made every effort to live up to the new role for which I was both unsuited and undeserving, spending every spare moment of the day– and night– researching in the operato’s archives. Despite poring through dozens of leather-bound chronicles, biographies and stacks of crumbling, yellowed scripts filled with long-gone directors’ scribbled notes, all held together with fraying string, I’d found preciselynothing. There were no grand insights into Corbier’s past, no clues as to what had driven him to murder and sedition. The infamous Red-Eyed Raven was like a ghost: a confused lunatic who’d spent his youth devoted to his country, until, at the age of twenty-six– the same age I was now– he suddenly slaughtered his best friend’s wife and children in an inexplicable bid to make himself prince.
Somehow, I had to contrive a credible performance, otherwise the operato would be a laughing-stock, the Knights of the Curtain would be ruined, and I’d be back on the streets, wherethe Vixen would surely be waiting for me.
