Page 59 of Play of Shadows
She shook off my grip a second time and continued forging her way through the increasingly crowded streets. ‘I hoped that if you saw for yourself the efforts our city has made to bury the secrets of the Iron Orchids and their masters, the Court of Flowers, that you’d refuse to aid Firan any further in his mad quest for the truth.’
‘But my Lady,why? If you love your nephew, why wouldn’t you—?’
I stopped and stared at the Operato Belleza just ahead, trying to see what was causing the commotion outside the stage door. All I could see was a mass of people blocking the side alley.
This time it was Kareija who grabbedme. ‘My father understood politics and intrigue. He knew the limits of a duke’s power. What does it tell you, that he stole and destroyed the one book which might have given Firan the answers he now seeks?’
There was something important in what she was saying, but I turned back towards the theatre and the shouting of the crowds.
Kareija’s fingernails dug into my arm. ‘Youmustlisten to me, Damelas! The axe my father feared for me now dangles above my nephew’s neck. Firan has always been obsessed with the tale of Corbier and Pierzi and that obsession now sees him beset by enemies from within and without his court.’ She had finallydropped the pretences now, and her games. ‘I love my nephew, Damelas, as I love my home, and I will do whatever I must, whichever plots and schemes are necessary, to protect him and, above all, this duchy.’
Shouting turned into screaming outside the theatre and a sickening feeling rose inside me, like hands squeezing my intestines. ‘My Lady, why did you delay my coming to the Belleza today?’ I asked.
What might have been genuine grief – or perhaps shame – came over Viscountess Kareija’s ashen features. ‘It was you they wanted, Damelas. Had I let them have the actor upon whom Firan’s apparent favour shines, my nephew’s enemies at court would have seen it as a sign of his weakness and begun to move against him. I couldn’t allow that to happen.’
It was you they wanted. . .
I flung off her grip and pounded across the street, shoving through the horde of gawkers until I broke into the gap the rabble had left in front of the stage door– and saw the object of their sick fascination.
The sight cut my knees out from under me.
I stumbled to the ground, my gaze focusing only on the filthy cobblestones beneath me. I prayed more fervently than at any other time in my life that I’d been mistaken, but the steady back-and-forth creaking of the lantern-post put the lie to that false hope.
Barely able to breathe, I forced myself to look up. First I saw the bare feet, the shoes already stolen. Blood trickled between the toes. My eyes traced those crooked paths up pale legs and soiled dress, and higher still, past the slackened jaw and matted hair, to the five iron spikes impaling flesh and puncturing bone, letting all the promises of life and love leak away for ever.
I heard footsteps, growing louder as they approached. I felt Kareija’s fingers touching my hair for a brief instant. ‘The play’sthe thing, Damelas,’ I heard her murmur. ‘The play’s always the thing.’
By the time I turned around, she’d already gone.
Chapter 28
The Third Sign
Roslyn dangled from a frayed rope barely a foot in length tied to the lantern-post by the stage door of the Operato Belleza. Around her neck hung a wooden sign bearing a mocking rejoinder in red paint:Let actors give us merry tales, lest we make them melancholy. Her body swayed in time to the groaning from the curved iron pole bearing her weight and the wailing from the crowd witnessing this depraved coronation. The late afternoon sunlight glistened off the blunt ends of the five iron spikes hammered into her skull.
I wanted to flee, to shut my eyes and pretend I’d never known Roslyn, never walked the stage with her. . . never shared a kiss.
No, I thought, rising to my feet.
I shoved back the gawkers, returning their snarls, daring even one of them to make a move.
I won’t look away,I swore to myself and whichever gods or saints could be bothered to listen.Not now, not ever again.
I turned back to Roslyn, clear-eyed and cold-hearted, determined to commit every last detail to memory. She was wearing the blue Lady Ajelaine gown, which was odd because she’d removed it last night before going to celebrate with the others. The only reason she’d had it with her was because shewanted to fix a loose hem on the sleeve.
Which means they caught her on the way home.
Roz had always been meticulous about removing her stage make-up at the end of every performance, but her face was covered in a thick layer of gaudy maschiera-paints. Blue irises had been painted within ovals on her closed eyelids to make her look like she was staring down at the crowd in the alley. The hideous lipstick smile smeared on her face perversely distorted the gaping mouth that was still crying for help, even in death.
They wanted to make a mockery of the woman she was,I thought, wishing for the first time in my life that I had a sword in hand and an enemy before me.
There were other cruelties to catalogue: her fingernails were broken and torn, which meant Roz had fought her attackers, yet I could see no trace of blood or skin beneath what was left of her nails. She’d always struck me as a formidable woman, confident, savvy, imperturbable. She would have gone for soft flesh, had there been any to reach, so the men who’d attacked her must have been wearing armour, and helms, too, or leather hoods of some kind.
Cowards, I thought.You didn’t want anyone seeing your faces, only those damned iron orchid brooches.
I read the wooden sign again, its mocking words:Let actors give us merry tales, lest we make them melancholy.
Had it been only yesterday that I’d dismissed the absurd new Orchid ‘laws’ when Zina had first shown me the poster, especially the prohibition against ‘theatrical blasphemy’? But this sign bore the real message the Orchids were sending to the Knights of the Curtain: end the seditious rehabilitation of Archduke Corbier and return to performing the pacifying historias of brave Prince Pierzi. Never again question the past– andneverdare to put the truth on stage.
