Page 39 of Play of Shadows
‘Mol’s right,’ one of her fellow Grim Jesters declared, ‘and ’sides, she’s the one got us organised, so we Jesters oughta go first!’
I gasped for air, winded from a surreptitious elbow to the stomach someone had snuck in. ‘Friends, players,’ I wheezed, ‘let’s settle this like actors: whoever can present the best monologue on why theirs is the career I’ve most damaged should get to go first.’
Instantly people began shouting arguments in various poetic meters on how the upstart’s outrageous hubris had traumatised them– until Gin Bruti forced his way to the front of the pack.
‘Think you’re so fucking clever, don’t you?’ he asked, thick fingers digging painfully into my jawbone.
‘Honestly?’ I mumbled. ‘Until tonight, I considered myself rather clueless, but you lot have given me cause for optimism about my intellectual poten—’
My glib retort was cut off by a brutal punch to my chest– not anywhere soft and vulnerable, but straight to the muscles on the left side, where it should’ve been hardest to hurt someone. I felt like I’d been struck by a battering ram.
‘You feel that?’ Gin Bruti asked, and when I nodded, panting, he promised, ‘Now I’m gonna do that to your face, and none of us are gonna hafta to worry about you taking the stage again tomorrow night and discrediting our profession.’
Being hit in the face is any actor’s worst nightmare. The eyes and eyebrows, the mouth, these are the locus of the player’s art. Also, nobody hires an actor who looks like he’s been run over by a horse cart.
‘Do it,’ I spat, surprising myself.
Between Abastrini nearly choking me to death and the Black Amaranth awaiting the duke’s cue to skewer me, maybe getting pummelled so badly I couldn’t perform was the best chance I had at surviving long enough to figure out what in all the Hells was happening to me.
Gin Bruti smiled, a big, idiotic grin that revealed a surprisingly healthy set of teeth. He opened his mouth to speak just as a brick landed on top of his head and broke in half. A cloud of filthy crimson dust crowned his bald pate.
The alley went silent as Gin stared at me, the confused expression on his face wordlessly asking,Why would you do this to me? I thought we were friends?
Then the big man fell unconscious to the ground.
‘Up there, look!’ someone called out, pointing up to the rooftops. There, thirty feet above us, balanced on the roof of the building opposite the Belleza, was a diminutive figure standing beside a stack of bricks.
Zina?
‘Best you come down now, love,’ Pink Mol urged with blatantly false sweetness. ‘If I have to come up there, I’m not going to be gentle.’
A second brick came hurling down, missing Pink Mol, but landing on Creave Reaver of the Grim Jesters next to her. Those nearest shuffled about, trying to get away, but Zina’s aim was dead-on and each brick found its mark.
‘How many times must we cross swords on this same battlefield, you blood-eyed bastard?’ the girl shouted.
Mad child, I thought, impressed that she’d remembered the line. Had it really only been a week ago that the two of us had staged our version of Pierzi and Corbier’s duel for the alley-rats?
Pink Mol was less dazzled by Zina’s performance. ‘That’s enough, little girl!’ she shouted, arms overhead to protect herself from more falling debris. ‘I din’t come here to hurt a child, but I will if—’
‘Among the dead of this hill shall your flesh be picked clean by the cows!’ the girl called down, pairing her words with another brick that crashed onto Mol’s foot, setting the big woman to howling.
‘Crows,’ I shouted back.
‘Cows sounds better!’
Pink Mol was a hard woman; neither a broken foot nor the impending threat of a cracked skull were enough to dissuade her. ‘You’re all alone up there, you nasty brat, and you’re running out of bricks!’
Not only that, but the Red Masques counted acrobats among their company and they were already making for the alley wall, nimble fingers and toes finding easy purchase in the gaps in the failing mortar. They’d soon reach her, but heedless, the girl hurled her last remaining piece of artillery at the nearest one before calling down to Pink Mol, ‘At long last will I revengemyself upon you, abdominal Pierzi.’
‘Abomina—Oh, the Hells for it,’ I sighed, and kicked out at the man in front of me who’d been too busy watching the acrobats climbing for the roof to notice my boot heel driving into his belly.
‘Oh, and who said I came alone?’ Zina asked. I looked up, and even from this distance I could make out the wicked grin on her face.
For the barest instant, a stunned silence overtook the shambling battlefield as every head turned towards the far end of the alley, just in time to witness a mass of shadowy figures rushing towards us, roaring with righteous outrage as they crashed into the mob. Beretto, in the lead, was still wearing his fake steel breastplate, armed only with a pewter beer stein from the corner tavern. Shoville, not normally an imposing physical presence but terrifying in his fury, was close on his heels, and behind were more Knights of the Curtain. Ornella might be more than sixty years old, but with her silver hair tied back in a soldier’s knot and a pair of tavern knives in her hands, she could have been a warrior out of legend. Roslyn, no longer wearing her too tight Ajelaine gown but instead an equally snug green shift, was brandishing the iron bar she always carried with her to ward off unwanted attention. Even sullen Teo was charging into the fray, wielding rocks in each hand.
And the loudest and most brutal of my rescuers, swinging a broadsword like some gargantuan lumberman chopping down trees, was none other than Ellias Abastrini.
‘Away, thou rankest of bunch-backed toads!’ he bellowed, dipping into his endless supply of theatrical insults. ‘Thou pinch-lipped arse-faces! Thou darest come here? Toourterritory? To attack a member ofmycompany?’
