by Kate Elliott
“You miss her, don’t you? You’re homesick.” In her sad smile I see the kind heart of a decent person.
She leaves.
If I could rub the ache of anxiety out of my heart I would, but I can’t know for sure my mother is healing until I’ve seen her for myself, which means sneaking out to see her. And no matter what Thynos says, he and Inarsis have no reason to care about Bettany and our household servants. Whatever emergency called him to Princess Berenise has probably scoured Bett from his exalted highborn mind.
I can’t confide in my friends without compromising their and my family’s safety. Both Father and Kalliarkos are gone, and Thynos and Inarsis have cut me out.
The only person I can rely on is myself.
5
On the evening of Sixthday, also known as Rest Day Eve, Mis, Gira, Shorty, and I gather to walk down to the Lantern District to see a play. Last time we four did this I left them to meet Kalliarkos and rescue my family. Now I have to figure out a new way to slip away from my friends without making them suspicious.
As we leave the gate I nod politely to the guards, and they grin back. “Don’t drink too much, Spider! You need to keep your legs under you for your next victory!”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” says Gira as we stroll down the King’s Hill.
“Don’t worry. I won’t let it go to my head until I become an Illustrious.”
We all laugh.
The setting sun spills gold across the sea. Boats bobbing atop the quiet waters fade into twilight and flicker like spark-bugs as sailors hang lamps from their prows. The main avenues of the city flare lamp by lamp into life as the queen’s royal lamplighters kindle the night-lanterns.
On Rest Day Eve all the theaters run evening performances. It’s the most crowded night of the week, but with the bulk of the king’s army having marched east, fewer people than normal pass under the West Gate of the Lantern District. We have plenty of room to walk along the district’s streets hung with colorful banners advertising the plays on offer this month. Just as I had hoped, there is enough time for us to shop along a lane of clothing stalls, where I buy an inexpensive ankle-length linen dress in the sleeveless, straight cut that has always been the fashion in Efea.
“Why do you keep looking back?” Mis asks as we stand at a food stall stuffing ourselves on a Patron delicacy of fresh pancakes wrapped around a paste of chopped almonds, dates, and cinnamon.
Fortunately my mouth is too full of the sweet, hot filling to reply, because I have spotted two men wearing the Garon Palace badge depicting a horned and winged fire dog. Although they don’t seem to be paying attention to us, I am sure they are following. We are easy to spot: Commoner girls wearing long sleeveless jackets that mark us as members of a palace household. We also wear the fire dog badge to indicate our affiliation.
A group of Patron men I’ve never seen before approaches, and we four stiffen, wondering if they mean to offer an affront.
The eldest steps forward as the others whisper at his back. He has the muscular arms of a laborer but wears his hair long and bound up atop his head in the style of old Saro. He even speaks Saroese with the accent of old Saro, not the way Patron folk who have grown up here in Efea speak it. “Are you that one called Spider, who won the first trial at the Royal Fives Court in the victory games?”
I swallow. “I am.”
He nods at his companions, and they give me the kiss-off gesture familiar to every person who runs or watches the Fives. Here on the street it can be a mortal insult, or a sign of respect.
“Well run, Adversary,” he says. “You’re one to watch with those spins and flairs. We’ll be cheering for you.”
He pays for all our pancakes, and they go off without asking a thing in return.
Gira whistles under her breath, Mis giggles, and Shorty shakes her head. The Patron woman cooking the pancakes offers us a second round at half price because the exchange has drawn attention to her stall.
We are still licking our fingers when we reach a theater entrance spanned by a banner painted with an overflowing cornucopia and the title of its play: The Cupbearer’s Calamitous Contract. We pay our coins for the entry fee and a folded banana leaf filled with roasted chickpeas to keep us fed during the long play. Tonight, even with soldiers and mercenaries gone, Patrons pack their sections. Some spill over to sit in the tiers assigned to Commoners, who have to give way. Patrons love this popular comedy about the deified Serenissima the Third, called the Benevolent, and how her kindly but often misunderstood interventions help her frazzled royal cupbearer set to rights his disordered household.
Commoners aren’t as fond of the play. Mother refused to allow Father to take our family to see it and explained why in a gentle tone that left him speechless and us girls openmouthed. Part of me wants to see the infamous scene, played for laughs, in which the cupbearer keeps comically forgetting which of his Efean servants he has just chastised so ends up whipping all of them multiple times, but I’ve already made my plan. As the actors launch into the traditional introductory hymn, sung after the opening acrobatics, I’ll excuse myself to go find a toilet. The play runs so long that I should be able to race through the city to the West Harbor District, check on my mother, and get back in time for the final hymn in praise of our current rulers, Kliatemnos the Fifth and Serenissima the Fifth. The pancakes make a perfect excuse: I’ll say the rich fare upset my stomach.
Stagehands carry out the many lanterns that light the stage, while we sit in dimness illuminated by just enough light to mark stairs and tiers. Attending a play at night, with stars glittering above and oil lamps burning below, casts a glamour over the tales told before us, making them seem bolder and more vivid than our own lives.
Horns toot a fanfare as acrobats flip onto the stage in advance of the actors. Two tiers down a few latecomers arrive to annoyed murmurs. Despite the gloom I recognize a tall, muscular young man by his shorn head and surly grimace.
Ro-emnu! The Efean poet jailed for writing a scurrilous play that, the censors claimed, murdered the reputation of the royal family. He helped Kal and me rescue my family from Lord Ottonor’s tomb, but then he kidnapped Ottonor’s holy oracle and abandoned the rest of us beneath the City of the Dead with no light and no way out. I haven’t seen him since.
A jolt of anger energizes me. I leap to my feet and shove my way past seated spectators just as Ro-emnu and his three friends bolt down the stairs and bound up onto the proscenium. He turns to face the startled audience, arms outstretched, as his companions run to the curtained entrances to block any actors who might try to come out onto the stage and interrupt him.
In an alarmingly powerful voice he shouts:
With what dull minds do you seat yourselves to hear these lies?
Friends! Do not listen to false tales fed you with your mother’s milk.
Hear my words! There will come a day when truth will bloom,
Not this pestilent flower whose venom has infected your very blood.
Benevolent, do they call the queen named Serenissima the Third?
She killed her father and her brother and her brother’s infant son!
All this she did so that her weak-willed uncle, whose reins she held,
Could become the kingly horse that pulled the carriage of Efea,
And she mounted as queen upon him!
The Patrons in the audience begin to jeer as the Commoners sit in stunned silence. His words burn like a poisoned blade.
“This is your ugly history! The truth you’ve buried beneath the tombs of your dead! Hear my words! Heed my call! Efea will rise. Efea will rise! Efea will rise!”
A censor and four entrance guards—required staff in every theater in the Lantern District—push forward to arrest the interlopers. A number of fist-shaking Patron men leap up to follow them down. The furious Patrons in the audience surge back and forth, throwing food toward the stage as Commoners cover their heads.
Ro-emnu has vanished into the rumble of acrobats. I
catch sight of him slipping behind a curtained exit. A shower of roasted chickpeas patters to the ground all around me and bounces off my back as I jump up onto the stage, dodge through the tumblers, and follow him into the theater-house. Guards push in behind me, their shadows rippling along the walls like monsters.
“Where did the criminal go?” they shout.
Almost invisible in the darkness, a tall form creeps up a ladder that leads to the aerial walkway, which the actors use for tricks and devices that dazzle the audience. The guards haven’t yet seen him. I grab a dangling rope and climb hand over hand to the walkway, marking his stealthy progress as I ascend. He’s so busy keeping an eye on the guards searching below that he doesn’t notice me swing up right behind him as he makes for a second ladder.
On the floor, a pile of clothes rumpled up to look like a body bursts into flame. As the guards shout and converge on the fire, he glances back to make sure no one is following him. With a curse he sees my shadowy form. Bracing himself for a fight, he raises a fist. His broad shoulders give him breadth and solidity.
“Keep going,” I say, making ready to leap backward if he swings. “You must have an escape route already planned. Did you soak the clothes in oil so they’d burn?”
“The sullen schemer. I should have known.” He grabs the second ladder, which spears up into the shadows concealing the eaves. “While they’re dealing with the burning clothes I’m going out through a trapdoor on the roof.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Stop me.”
With an angry grunt he begins climbing. I’m right behind him, wishing he would move faster, because the guards are going to look up very soon.
A hinge creaks. Air curls in from above. He pushes up and out. I follow, sliding onto the flat roof beside him. As he lowers the trapdoor behind us, I look around. There are two ladders hammered lengthwise along the rim of the roof, from which actors can be “flown” as winged spirits or courageous birds along the front of the proscenium. In the seating tiers the agitated crowd is pushing and shoving, trying to get to the exit, everyone shouting, children crying, half the lamps extinguished so darkness makes things hard to distinguish. A horn blows in the distance, the summons for the city militia.
I’m so furious at the memory of him taking the last lantern and abandoning us in the dark of the buried ruins beneath the tombs that I can’t keep my mouth shut.
“How dare you leave my mother to die under the tombs!”
“Shh!”
He crawls away into the darkness toward the far side where an alley runs between two theater walls. To my amazement someone has strung a rope ladder high over the alley between the two roofs to make a bridge: his escape route. But he hesitates. We are a long way up, far enough that a fall will break bones or even kill.
“Surely an audacious poet like you isn’t scared?” I chide, mocking him. A swift tug on the rope indicates it is securely fastened. The guards will search up here very soon, and I can’t afford to get arrested, whatever happens to him.
“I was supposed to meet a confederate up here,” he says. “To disengage the rope so the guards can’t guess how I got away.”
“Well, that’s piss-poor planning, isn’t it? Or maybe a conniving, dishonest person like you doesn’t have any loyal friends.”
“You’re one to talk about loyalty, Jessamy Tonor. Especially since it’s Jessamy Garon, now that you’re a high-and-mighty adversary running for the Patrons as a harnessed mule.” He practically spits the word.
The urge to shove him off the roof surges through me so hard that I flatten a hand against his chest. “Call me what you wish, poet, but never, ever insult my mother by using that word to describe the children she gave birth to.”
He tenses, and I brace, and then he gives a one-shoulder shrug as he relaxes. “No insult was intended toward your honored mother.”
I snort because I can appreciate a good comeback. But I don’t take my hand off his chest. It’s like pressing into rock. With lightning swiftness a plan forms in my head, of how I can use him to help me. “I’ll stay here and cover your getaway if you’ll swear by the gods to tell me where I can find you to arrange recompense.”
He glances at the rope ladder bridge, presses a hand to his eyes, then drops it to meet my gaze. His eyes have the intensity of a person smoldering with banked anger, waiting to erupt. “All right, it’s a fair exchange. But I won’t swear by Patron gods. I make an oath by the Mother of All that on Rest Day afternoons you can find me at the Heart Tavern in the Warrens.”
I would be shocked at his swearing an oath by invoking the Mother of All, the outlawed old goddess of Efea, but voices clamoring from the proscenium grab my attention. “Where is that?”
“If you can’t find it, you don’t deserve to find me. The watchword for entrance is ‘Efea will rise.’”
“What does that even mean?” But as I say the words, I sense through my whole body the vibrations of people searching inside, their hands grasping ladder rungs, feet testing the aerial walkway, lamplight drawing closer and closer to the trapdoor.…
“Go now!” I command.
Muttering a string of curses under his breath, he grabs at the rope ladder and, like a big awkward bug, begins crawling across. I would laugh if I weren’t wishing I could kick him along faster. As I feel along the hooks that secure the ladder I berate myself for the impulse that drove me after him instead of for the West Harbor District under cover of the turmoil.
The moment he hisses out, “I’m safe over,” I unhook the ladder and let it go. The ropes swing down and hit the far wall with a slap. He reels it in and crawls away across the opposite roof as I drop over the side of the building and, hanging by my hands, search out a toehold in the wall.
Fortunately, these popular theaters aren’t sleek marble buildings like the temples and the Archives. Efean masons love to build patterns into their walls, using regular courses of brick interrupted by four-pointed star shapes and stylized flowers. The protrusions give me easy toe- and fingerholds.
I climb down into the alley serving as a firebreak between the two theaters. A file of city militia runs past on the main street, and a moment later I see my friends hurry in the other direction. Praying they will get away without any further trouble, I use the shadows to strip out of the palace livery with its badge and into the nondescript sheath of a dress that I just bought. With my old clothing folded into a net bag and slung over my shoulder I slink out the other end of the alley.
The guards searching the streets pay no attention to a Commoner girl like me as I make my way through the food carts and merchandise stalls of Lantern District’s night market. After passing under West Gate to the Avenue of Triumphs, I walk briskly down the broad avenue toward the harbor. The disturbance not only has swept away the men following me but gives me an even better excuse to be missing for some time without anyone thinking it odd.
Women sweep up horse dung into a wheelbarrow. Servants carry bundles on their heads, headed for home or on evening errands for their Patron masters. My racing heart has finally slowed although Ro’s speech beats time in my head like an echo of my footfalls. Did Serenissima the Third really kill her father, brother, and nephew in order to install a weak-willed uncle on the throne beside her as Kliatemnos the Third? Or is the insinuation merely a story Ro-emnu has made up, as with any theatrical play that entertains us with lurid murders and assignations?
But Ro is a poet, and in Efea the gods give poets a special dispensation—and obligation—to tell the truth. One of Mother’s elderly servants once told me that before the Patrons came and began bricking up holy oracles alive in the tombs of the lordly dead to whisper prophecies, it was Efean poets who spoke the divine word. What nags at me most is how Ro bound his oath to the Mother of All. The Patrons forbade Her worship when they conquered Efea, and it is against the law to give Her offerings or to build any kind of altar or temple to glorify or recognize the old goddess.
The memory of his voice makes me shiver, its raw passion more chilling than an oracle’s hoarse whisper. What did he mean? What does he hope for?
Efea will rise.
6
West Harbor is where ships from all across the Three Seas off-load trade goods and afterward fill their holds with Efea’s grain, cloth, paper, perfume, glass, and precious oils used for cooking and lighting and medicine. It’s lively in the West Harbor District in the evening, with sailors from every shore of the Three Seas awaiting their next tide, stevedores still unloading cargo, and drunks vomiting on the street in front of taverns.
Father never brought us girls down here, so I have no idea where to go to find the Least-Hill Inn, where my mother has taken shelter. Roaming bands of foreign sailors give me the eye, and a few blurt out rude suggestions when I ask for directions. I have to slap away more than one groping hand before a sympathetic oyster-seller points me down a dim side street.
The Least-Hill Inn has a brown door, its sign lit by the night-lantern required by law of each household. Inside I find myself in a run-down establishment with no customers except our former Junior House Steward, Polodos. He sits slumped at a table in the empty main room with his head resting on his hands and a full mug of palm wine at his right elbow.
“The inn is closed,” he says, still staring down at the table. Then he looks up and leaps to his feet. “Doma Jessamy! Thank the gods you have come.”
I grab his arm, suddenly scared. “Has something happened to my mother?”
A drab curtain separates the front room where drink and food are served from the back where they are prepared. I smell bread grilling, but it is the familiar voices of my older and younger sisters rising behind the curtain that capture my attention.