by Heidi Heilig
The Aquitans have clustered on deck, eager for the home they didn’t know they loved so much. The spirits too have gathered, as though ready to embark for the temple. But to me, my own country seems a strange place. Unfamiliar. I have only been gone a few days, but everything has changed.
Camreon is waiting on the pier as the ship pulls in. At his back is a small force—a few palace guards and the local rebels he must have drummed up. As he welcomes the ship, I notice the dragon-bone crown on his head. I know I should feel relieved, but I don’t feel much of anything.
His new armée ushers the refugees to the barracks for housing and medical care. The spirits disembark too, drifting toward Hell’s Court in a river of gold. Only one stays behind: Leo’s.
It stands over his body, as though keeping vigil alongside me. In the golden light of his soul, I try to read the song he left for me.
It scrawls across the floor: a rushed and careless carving, but no less beautiful than the stories chiseled into the stone of the temple. I run my hands over the marks; I can read the words, but the notes are harder. Papa and Maman were the musicians of our troupe. Still, I can make out the melody. It runs on a loop in my head.
When I hear the cabin door open, I don’t bother looking up. “I told you to leave me alone.”
“You told me no such thing.” Cheeky—not Akra—is the one to reply, and her voice feels too harsh in the quiet cabin. “And how dare you think I’d listen?”
She barges in, Tia behind her, rushing to Leo’s side to touch him, to hold him, to whisper his name. I can’t bear the sight of their tears—the volume of their voices. Their open grief threatens the dull numbness I have wrapped around my heart, like a spark on a silk cocoon, with something tender and helpless writhing inside.
I turn away, but Theodora is hovering in the doorway, her face like a discarded page, crumpled and pale. Behind her, Camreon stands with his hand on her shoulder. Akra is behind them at a careful distance.
They all watch Leo—his final audience. But only I can see the bright light of his soul; the part that held his music and his jokes and the very essence of who he was. Why shouldn’t I bring him back? My eyes go once more to the song he had written, and I know I can’t.
I flex my empty hands. I feel like an outsider. Where is my power now? Going to the windows at the stern, I gulp fresh air as I stare out over the Hundred Days Sea. On the other side, Aquitan. I could go back. The king would have me if I groveled. There is very little that is familiar there, and nothing—no one—to remind me of what I’d lost here and now. I could live like Ayla did, my whole life a performance, my sins and secrets hidden away to everyone but me.
I am planning my escape when Tia starts to sing.
Her voice is richer with sorrow—like raw honey, like molten gold—and the sound of it washes everything else away. It is the song Leo wrote, but not the way it had looped through my head. It is not a dirge, but a love song.
Beside his body, his soul stirs. As Tia sings, I watch the golden light drift through the room, as though to greet all of us—or to say goodbye. And when he comes to me, I can almost feel the warmth of his arms, and the echo of his voice: au revoir.
“Au revoir,” I whisper as Tia moves to the chorus, and Leo’s spirit slips through the door and away toward the dock. Toward the temple. Toward his next life.
Theodora has seen me watching. “He’s gone, isn’t he?” she says softly, and with a start, I realize there are tears in my eyes.
Hurriedly, I dash them away. I could still call him back. I could. But I won’t. Instead, I take a deep breath, looking around at the people he loved—the people who knew him best. “No,” I say. “He’s still here.”
Chapter Thirty-One
The last month of the rainy season passes in a blur.
Camreon has given me a fine room in the palace, with intricate mosaic floors and ivory inlay on golden teak panels, but after my time in Lephare, it’s hard to see the beauty for the cost.
Luckily, Cam has always been a man of his word, and his coronation speech in Malao was not an empty promise. He and Theodora have started the endless work of tending the country.
They secure housing for the many refugees of the war—both Aquitan and Chakran alike. They bring the monks out of hiding to restore the temples and reopen the schools they used to run; Theodora even manages to let go of the Book of Knowledge, though I know she travels to the temple at Kwai Goo to consult the Keeper’s monks as often as she can.
The sugar fields are returned to Chakran farmers in time for the planting season to start, and the largest plantation houses are made into hospitals and homes for the wounded and disabled. Some of the Aquitans had the nerve to object to this theft of their rightfully stolen wealth, but Camreon managed to wrangle funding from Le Roi Fou to pay them off.
He also managed to reopen trade at more favorable rates than before, and while I’m sure it had something to do with the Tiger’s hard-headed negotiations, my own performance in Aquitan has certainly had an effect as well. Theodora and Camreon have gone back and forth a few times since, and she tells me that my skeletal fantouches have permeated local superstition—a threat for misbehaving children, or a curse bandied about between their elders.
Le Roi sent the fantouches themselves back aboard the ship he’d promised, and we’d sent the ship back to Lephare carrying quite a few living Aquitans. But others chose to stay, swearing fealty to the new king in their new home. The skeletal fantouches themselves have become part of Camreon’s palace guard—loyal and tireless, and a reminder of the link between the throne and the temples.
This news makes me smile, but not for long. I myself have made no new fantouches since then. My friends have come by with supplies—leather and paint and wood, bamboo and brass and brushes—to try to keep me occupied. Cheeky and Tia keep insisting that I need to put on a show at their new theater; Camreon has given them the Royal Opera House to run, although to hear Cheeky tell, she does most of the legwork while Tia spends every spare hour at the inn. Apparently the innkeeper’s eldest daughter is quite taken with her.
But both Cheeky and Tia have told me they want Chakran performances for their opening season. So far, they have commitments from many of the troupes returning from Aquitan, including the Ros Sook. But I have no inspiration. When I pick up a piece of leather or a strand of ribbon, my hands feel numb, and my mind is dark as an unlit stage.
Most days, I sit at the polished ebony table by my window, Leo’s violin case open before me. Cheeky and Tia brought it to me weeks ago, and I like to look at the sheet music inside. He had written many other songs, just as his own mother had. I had even heard him play them from time to time, never knowing they were his own. But when I hold the sheet music and close my eyes . . . sometimes I swear I can still hear the sound of his violin.
I am listening to it when a knock at the door shakes the notes out of my head. Is it lunch already? I have half a mind to ignore whoever is there, but the last time I did, Theodora barged in anyway. My friends are determined to keep after me—though in recent weeks, their constant company has eased into more manageable visits at mealtimes, and instead of trying to get me to come out of my room, they mostly just make sure I’m eating.
Still, I am annoyed at the interruption. Tucking the music back in the case, I stomp across the room and swing the door open. The sudden brightness of the hall makes me wince. Maman is there, her hand raised to knock again. Papa is just behind her, with my brother pushing his chair. And when Maman wraps me up in a tight hug, I realize how long it’s been since I’ve seen my family.
After a moment, I lean into her embrace. Then I reach over her shoulder to hold Papa’s hand. But Akra doesn’t so much as look at me—still under orders. “Come in,” I say, suddenly sheepish. Stepping back, I lead them all through the door. “Please.”
“You promised to write,” Maman says pointedly, peering around the room at the rumpled bed, the half-filled cups, the clothes scattered across the floor
>
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ve been busy.”
“I can tell.” She starts to pick things up, and it makes me feel like a child again. I turn to the bed, straightening my rumpled sheets, but it feels like I’m moving through molasses. Then I feel a gentle hand on my arm. “Let me take care of it,” Maman says, drawing me back to my chair. As I sit, she opens the shutters. Daylight spills in, brighter than a soul. “Sometimes it’s hard to realize how deep the shadows have gotten until someone else points them out.”
“We’re worried about you,” Papa says as Maman returns to her cleaning. Despite the slurred sounds of his speech, I have spent enough time listening to him to know what he is saying. “Have you been taking your elixir?”
“I have,” I say, nodding to the flask on the dresser; by the time the supply from Le Roi had run low, Theodora had found the stockpile Le Trépas had brought to Hell’s Court. “There are some things medicine can’t fix.”
“Moping doesn’t help much, either,” Akra says as he comes to my side. “The show must go on.”
I glare up at him, but the expression on his face quenches the brief spark of my anger. He rests a gentle hand on the violin case, and I remember that his own death had been to save Leo. But after a moment, he pushes the violin gently aside, making room for the bag he’s carrying. When he drops the sack on the table, it moves.
“What’s this?” I say, but before he can answer, a familiar fantouche bounds from the sack, then falls right off the edge of the table. “Miu!”
Rolling to her feet, the dragon fantouche lifts her chin as though daring me to laugh. Then she twitches her tail and leaps into my lap, butting her head up under my hand. “Fine leatherwork on that one,” Papa says softly, nodding at Miu. “But the handling could be better.”
“We’ll need quite a few more fantouches if we’re to rebuild our collection in time,” my brother adds.
“In time for what?” I say, stroking Miu’s leather horns.
“For the performance at the Royal Opera House,” Maman says as she makes the bed. Miu leaps down from my lap to slip underneath the sheet, and I frown.
“Who said anything about performing at the Royal Opera House?”
“Cheeky did,” my brother says. “And if you think your orders are hard to disobey, you’ve never seen the consequences she can mete out.”
“We heard about your solo performance in Aquitan,” Maman says over her shoulder. “Are you too good for your troupe these days?”
“The Shepherd and the Tiger,” Papa adds, a wistful look in his eyes. “I would have loved to see your version.”
“I think the next one will be even better,” Akra says, pulling something else out of the bag. “We still need a tiger, but I made a new shepherd.”
The fantouche he holds is almost as tall as he is, with graceful jointing and finely scraped leather. I can see the care and the time Akra must have put into it—he was always a better artist than me. But it is not the pains he has taken that give me pause, but the appearance of the fantouche itself.
In the story, the shepherd carries a staff, but this one holds a pen, and instead of a sarong, he wears a linen suit. But the face itself is new and familiar all at once—the features unmistakably Leo’s. “It’s . . . beautiful work,” I say at last.
“It was a lot of work,” Akra replies, laying the fantouche down gently over the back of another chair. “But there’s still more work to do.”
He turns to the pile of supplies Cheeky brought me. Leather and silk, paper and paint. . . . Picking up the shears and a roll of leather, my brother sets them before me on the table, but I look out through the open window over the city below.
The streets are full of souls, both living and dead. A line of monks winds through them on their way back to Hell’s Court from the market near the docks. There are ships in the harbor—trading ships—from Aquitan and the Lion Lands, and the doors at Le Livre are open to visitors.
If I lean out a little farther, I can see the Royal Opera House, and I can imagine the empty space on the marquee. The show must go on. Life must go on, even though death is a part of it. And there is still so much to tell of all that happens in between.
Turning back to my brother—to my family—I pick up the tools they have given me and set to work.
Author’s Note
When I set out to write a series with a bipolar main character, I didn’t realize how my own mental health would affect the actual writing process. It seems silly in retrospect, but I had assumed I would be studying my own madness through a glass—observing and recording from the outside.
Surprise—the glass was a mirror all along.
However, it’s worthwhile to note that some of the ways that I have written “malheur” will not always align with the experiences of everyone with bipolar disorder. (They don’t always align exactly with my own, either.) Rather, I have used my reality to inspire the story—though I have stuck more closely to reality when it comes to bipolar than I have in, say, my references to history, technology, or language.
Still, while this is a work of fiction, the heart of this story is strong and true: art is a powerful weapon, and love is our best defense.
Acknowledgments
Writing a series can sometimes feel like a fight, and battles are never waged on a single front.
In the hard-won victory of the final book in a three-book series, my editor Martha Mihalick has been the most capable general I could imagine. I would follow her anywhere.
My agent Molly Ker Hawn is an expert quartermaster. It’s thanks to her that I know what I’m doing, and when, and what to expect when I get there.
Thanks also to Mike Pettry, my old buddy in the writerly trenches, and to the team at Greenwillow, who ride quickly and boldly forward into new territory.
Speaking of ride or die, I’m forever grateful to my husband, Bret Heilig, and for our kids, one who speaks softly and the other who carries a big stick.
And now that the battle is through, I’d like to thank my readers most of all, for believing in the justness of the cause.
About the Author
HEIDI HEILIG is the author of The Girl from Everywhere, an Indie Next Pick and an NPR Best Book of the Year. She is also the author of the acclaimed novels The Ship Beyond Time, For a Muse of Fire, and A Kingdom for a Stage. Heidi Heilig holds an MFA from New York University in musical theatre writing, and she’s written the book and lyrics for several shows. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family.
www.heidiheilig.com
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Books by Heidi Heilig
The Girl from Everywhere
The Ship Beyond Time
For a Muse of Fire
A Kingdom for a Stage
On This Unworthy Scaffold
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Copyright
Content notes: Mental illness (bipolar), blood magic and self-inflicted wounds, colonialism, war, kidnapping, descriptions of dead bodies and gore, mention of suicide, death of a child, death of an animal
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
ON THIS UNWORTHY SCAFFOLD. Text copyright © 2021 by Heidi Heilig. Map illustrations copyright © 2021 by Maxime Plasse. Music for “The Lights of Lephare,” “A Good Time,” and “Leo’s Song” copyright © 2021 by Mike Pettry; lyrics copyright © 2021 by Heidi Heilig. Repr
inted by permission of the authors. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art © 2021 by Leo Nickolls
Cover design by Sylvie Le Floc’h and Leo Nickolls
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021933813
Digital Edition APRIL 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-265202-7
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-265200-3 (hardcover)
2122232425PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
Greenwillow Books
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