Page 46 of Play of Shadows
‘So? When I play old songs, it’s not to turn the audience’s thoughts to the past. It’s to bring something back: something that might help them now.’ She took my arm as we resumed our walk, the unexpectedly affectionate gesture taking me by surprise. ‘We Bardatti are the country’s memory. Our gift is to record those truths which others would see forgotten. Ourdutyis to make sure that never happens.’
‘You sound almost nostalgic, Lady Rhyleis.’
‘The opposite.’ For once, there was no mockery in her voice. ‘There’s a great deal of ugliness in our country’s past, Damelas, and no end of bastards who’d bring it back if they could.’
I caught her brief, sidelong glance at me. It vanished as quickly as it came, but it was enough to let me know I’d not met Rhyleis by happenstance, nor was this just a meandering stroll.
‘You knew I’d come to the Tavern-On-The-Ponta, didn’t you?’
She stopped to inspect the wares of a flower vendor. ‘Hmm?’
I pulled her away from the stall. ‘You might be a great Troubadour, Rhyleis, but you’re a lousy actor.’
She turned on me, her feigned surprise a three-act play that went from shock to dismay and ended with a grand flourish of outrage.
‘Don’t bother,’ I told her, holding up a hand to forestall any further theatrics. ‘Allow me to put the pieces together.’ I counted the facts off one by one on my fingers. ‘You already admitted you’d been at the Operato Belleza.’
‘I’m a lover of theatre,’ she said dismissively. ‘Imagine my disappointment.’
‘Second, you said I could be the first genuine Veristor in a generation– and you knew I’d be desperate to find someone who could guide me.’
‘And look at you, falling for Silga Swaybottom’s mediocre act at the drop of a hat– or was it the dropping of her dress that caught you like a slobbering fish on the hook?’
‘Third,’ I started as an old man enfeebled by palsy and relying on a cane bumped into me. Before he could make a show of apologising, I stomped on his foot, elbowed him sharply in the stomach and seized the gold coin back from him. The codger, miraculously recovered from age and ailments, took off at an impressive run.
‘Third,’ I went on, ‘you’ve been feeding me all sorts of sentimental garbage about the greatness of the Bardatti and how we’re just like Greatcoats, only better.’
She winked at me. ‘Well, that part’s true, anyway.’
I wasn’t finding any of this funny. ‘Why did you come to Jereste, Rhyleis? You said you were on a mission for the Greatcoats but you’ve been conspicuously vague about the details.’
Her smile gave way to anger, the most sincere expression I’d yet seen from her. She grabbed my arm and yanked me througha group of staggering revellers to a wall covered in graffiti and tattered posters. She tore one down and shoved it at me.
It was the Juridas Orchida, the list of ‘laws’ Zina had shown mebefore tonight’s performance.
‘Thisis what brought you here?’ I asked. ‘A bunch of idiotic edicts that aren’t even legal being proposed by a group of ignorant bully-boys nobody respects?’
‘And what happens when a weak and unpopular duke, frightened of his own subjects and pressured by his advisors, decides to pass a few of those laws to mollify those same bully-boys and their supporters? The laws of a nation define its people, Damelas. Change the laws, you change the people!’
She snatched the poster back from me and held it up to the passing crowds, shouting at them like a madwoman, ‘Theatricalblasphemy?That’swhat offends you? And this’– her voice suddenly dropped an octave to almost drunken pomposity– ‘“the rights of the common man to enjoy his drink and drugs shall not be abridged by any ordinance or edict”? Oh, and let’s not forget this one: “No money from the common coffers shall go to the wastrel, the vagrant or the foreigner”? How noble of you! How much better your lives will all be once your every venal prejudice is enshrined in law!’
Rhyleis tore the poster in half. ‘Is this what passes for patriotism among you louts and thugs?’
Several of those same louts and thugs were now eyeing her up and muttering to each other.
I took the Bardatti by the elbow and marched her away from the gathering mob. As soon as we were clear of the crowds, I whispered, ‘As it happens, fully half the population of Jereste consider getting drunk and stoned every night to be perfectly patriotic. And lately they’re becoming more and more convinced that offensive plays and songsaredetrimental to the soul of our once-noble city.’
She rounded on me, snarling, ‘And you’re just letting this happen?’
‘Me?What am I supposed to do about it?’
She grabbed me by the lapels of my shabby coat. ‘You’re Damelas-fucking-Chademantaigne, you idiot– ofcourseI was waiting for you to turn up at the Tavern-On-The-Ponta! You should already be out there unmasking whoever’s concocting these hideous laws before they take hold and begin to spread elsewhere.’
‘I’m anactor!’ I shouted back at her, horribly aware the two of us were attracting attention again. ‘It’s not my—’
‘Not your job? Your grandmother was Virany Chademantaigne, the King’s Parry. You’re a direct descendant of Damelas Chademantaigne, the first Greatcoat. Justice and swordplay are in your family’s blood. I’m surprised your grandfather hasn’t already challenged every one of these Iron Orchids to a duel—’
‘He’s nearly seventy years old—’
