Page 21 of Play of Shadows
Abastrini smiled– the tolerant, encouraging smile of a master illusionist watching a child attempt his first card trick. ‘Guide you? Teach you? Why, of course, my young apprentice.’
He tore the book from my hands, and flipping through the pages negligently, announced, ‘The Veristor’s art is simple enough, really. Where othersreadthe histories, you mustlivethem in your heart.’
Tossing the book down unceremoniously onto the floor, he pointed first to the stack on the table and then airily at the shelves all around us. ‘Find every reference to your subject within these pages, seek out every detail, every subtle nuance.Travel a thousand miles in every direction, speak to the descendants of every man or woman who knew Corbier a hundred years ago. Listen, learn, meditate; pray to the gods for inspiration. Drug yourself until madness creeps into the corners of your mind.’
He placed his hand on my shoulder, then leaned in to whisper in my ear, ‘Abandon food and drink for three days until you feel a devil’s breath upon your neck. Commit acts of heroism and depravity until not even your own mother would recognise the empty shell of a man you’ve become. And then, when there is nothing left inside you but a maddening, obscene intimacy with your subject, then my young Veristor. . .’ He patted me on the cheek. ‘You’ll still be a talentless hack who shouldn’t be trusted to channel the spirit of a dead alley-rat, never mind Archduke Corbier.’
‘All right,’ Shoville said, pushing the actor away. ‘You’ve had your fun, Ellias. Now, assemble the cast; we need to run through the play before—’
‘I gave them the afternoon off.’
In the silence that ensued, you could almost feel the heat rising from the director’s collar. This was tantamount to a declaration of war on Abastrini’s part. ‘Is this the day, then, Ellias?’ Shoville asked. ‘Are you making your move to take the company away from me at last?’
Abastrini snorted. ‘Oh, don’t be so melodramatic, Hujo. I’m saving this misbegotten venture of yours from your own incompetence. There’s no play without Corbier, yet here you are filling the boy’s head with pages of pointless speeches and volumes of irrelevant histories until his actor’s soul becomes trapped within those wasted words.’ He grabbed me by the shoulder again, this time squeezing painfully. ‘The role is in thebody, not the script. The lad can’t simply recite the lines, he mustlivethem.’
‘What does that even mean?’ I asked, a sudden tightness in my stomach suggesting I wasn’t going to like the answer.
‘It means, boy, that despite being noblemen, Pierzi and Corbier were soldiers, not scholars. Men of blades, not books. We must get you fighting ready if you’re to portray a warrior upon the stage.’ Abruptly, he released my shoulder and turned to go. ‘Broadsword practice in one hour. We have three duels in the play, so we’d best get you ready for them.’
Saint Zaghev-who-sings-for-tears, but he’s right: Corbier was one of the best swordsmen in Jereste’s entire history– and he’s about to be portrayed on the stage by an actor known only for running away from his first duel of honour.
Abastrini’s laughter trailed behind him on his way out of the archives.
Chapter 10
Practice Swords
There are any number of insults one might expect to hear while being pummelled to death with a wooden sword: ‘Die, you worthless piece of maggot pie!’ is a perennial favourite, although ‘Cough up your coins, canker-blossom!’ has made a resurgence lately among Jereste’s legions of muggers, bully-boys and bravos aiming to fill their purses with other people’s copper tears or silver grins.
Outside some of the less sophisticated drinking establishments, one might even hear, ‘I know you’re not him, moron, but you look like that rat-faced bastard and that’s damned well good enough for me!’
What Ihadn’tanticipated was being beaten senseless with a wooden practice sword while being repeatedly exhorted to, ‘Say the sodding lines, you incompetent measle!’
There was something perverse and yet entirely in character for Abastrini to be pounding me into paste on the rehearsal room floor while simultaneously criticising my acting.
‘All right!’ I cried out, flat on my back and shielding my face with my own battered weapon, one hand on the grip and the other on the blunt wooden blade as Abastrini endeavoured to chop it to bits. ‘I’ll say the line! I’ll say the bloody line!’
‘Then do so, you flat-mouthed foot-licker!’
‘The saints will sing. . . umm. . . oh Hells—’
Remembering lines seen in passing just an hour ago while contemplating my imminent demise was proving to be a bit of a problem.
With a feral growl, Abastrini flipped his own sword and, holding it by the end, swung it like an axe so the crossguard would catch my blade. An instant later, my only means of protection clattered to the floor several feet away.
I’d always taken Ellias Abastrini to be little more than a pretentious, overfed, under-talented buffoon upon whom Fate had happened to bestow the unearned prestige of being a Veristor in a city that unjustly idolised such individuals.
He turned out to be much more than met the eye.
Abastrini was, first of all, an outstanding fighter. On stage it had all looked so. . . well,rehearsed: the elaborate duel scenes, the melodramatic charging into battle with a dozen other actors pretending to rush a hill, shaking painted wood or plaster weapons at imagined hordes of enemy fighters. . . Anyone could do that– or so I’d always believed, until I had to try it myself.
Abastrini’s talent with a blade, together with those preposterous stories he always told about having served in the ducal army in his youth, had gained much credibility during the hour he’d spent knocking me about the rehearsal room with staggering ease and no apparent effort on his part.
Worse, though, he turned out to be– well, if not agreatactor, then at least acommittedone. Somehow, he’d memorised all of Shoville’s hastily composed lines with little more than a glance at the pages and was now effortlessly reciting them. At this moment he was giving a terrifyingly convincing impression of being the true Prince Pierzi come to get revenge upon his nemesis.
‘Say the damned words,’ he snarled. ‘Say them or I swear I’ll—’
Like an unearned blessing from a tender-hearted saint, the line came to me at last. ‘The people will sing my name through every street upon your death, Pierzi!’
