by Patty Jansen
She could almost hear the voices. A foreigner? Playing Mirani music?
They had decided to lengthen the Lover’s Dance. Liran, with his hair dyed black, led Tameyo across the stage. Both were excellent actors and although the characters in the story couldn’t understand each other well, their love came out beautifully. They kissed passionately, for real, something that had also never been done in the state theatre.
Ellisandra studied the faces of people in the audience. The younger ones watched with wide eyes. Traditional plays were high on melodrama, but real, true emotion was not usually part of a play. An older lady whose name Ellisandra didn’t know held her hand to her mouth. This woman would have seen the play the previous time it had been performed and would know what was coming.
At the break between the second and third act Ellisandra went to her upstairs office and pulled open the curtains that covered the window. Downstairs in the hall, the councillors stood in the special area clutching drinks. Most were not talking. Several of them were glancing at each other or at the other people in the hall, who all stood clustered around the tables with food and drinks provided that morning by Vayra’s cook.
Sariandra came up and let herself drop into the seat behind Ellisandra’s desk. “I’m so tired. I think I could sleep for a whole day.”
“The babe is slowing you down, right?”
Sariandra put her hands on the lower curve of her belly. “He kicks me in the insides a lot. It hurts. I can’t breathe.”
“You kept this secret for a long time, didn’t you?”
Sariandra looked down. “We were hoping to have left Miran when I started showing. But then my father found out. I was terrified at first, but now I don’t mind. We’ll fight. We’ll get a couple of us in the council. We’ll defeat my father.”
Ellisandra wished she could be so optimistic. “How long have you got?”
“Healer Lasko says two months at most, probably less.” Sariandra smiled. “The world will be changed when he’s born.”
Ellisandra nodded. Every one of her muscles was tight with fear. So many people expected so much from her.
What if the council cracked down on the actors after the play was finished? What if she and the other Foundation families wouldn’t be allowed into the assembly hall? What if none of them came?
What if everyone would withdraw their support from her at the last moment?
The fear made her feel weak. “We better go back downstairs. The interval is almost over.”
When she pulled the curtain shut, she spotted a couple of familiar faces in the audience: Jintho and his friends, right down the back where the tiered seating met the theatre’s wall.
What were they doing there? There were guards all over the audience. Did Jintho want to get himself arrested?
The bell heralding the beginning of the last act rang while they were going down the stairs. The tail end of the orchestra was about to disappear between the curtains, and the actors were all ready, the prisoners in their leather gear and the guards in uniforms.
The third act was full of action. Fights, Mariandra’s arrest—beautifully acted with heart-rending screams that made a number of the ladies in the audience squirm.
Then a musical version of the Warrior Song, where Jihan goes to gather his mates to drive the foreigners out. Keldon looked so much like Enzo when he said those things.
There was a failed attempt at negotiation, led by Rana, who successfully escaped while his fellows were put in prison.
Could he get them out? There was hope on young faces in the audience and a measure of unease in the older ones. They saw him hug Mariandra through the bars of her prison cell. They knew he’d done nothing that justified the killing that was to come.
That embrace through the bars of the cell was a short musical interlude. Normally it was a trio between two lutes and a drum. But Ellisandra only needed to hear one haunting chord that made the strings twang to know who was playing this instrument. Vayra’s father rose from amidst the orchestra. The light glinted on his black hair and the panels of his lute.
Ellisandra raised a hand to her mouth. Whatever happened to making sure he looked Mirani?
For a breathless moment, he played alone. He played rough, unrefined, sliding his fingers over the neck of the instrument so that one chord seamlessly segued into another while his skin squeaked against the surface of the strings. Then he broke into the well-known melody.
The music was lilting, it was haunting, it was spine-chilling. When he finished his solo and the trio took over, a good number of people cheered in the audience. They ended the piece, not with the genteel sounds typical of the Mirani theatre music, but with a loud dissonant chord.
Some people in the audience gasped.
The escaped prisoners sneaked onto the stage one by one.
“How do we get out of here?” one said.
“Rana, do you remember?” another asked.
“Don’t leave me here!” Mariandra called from the cell. “I know I can’t live where you come from, but if I stay here, they’ll kill me!” Her voice sounded raw, as if she had really been crying.
Rana ran across the stage, but at that moment, Jihan and his guards burst in.
“Halt!”
Rana whirled around and shouted his line in Coldi. Numerous people in the audience turned to each other.
Rana scrambled back until he stood almost against the cell door. He held up his hands to show that he had no weapon.
Jihan pulled out his sword. Both men had trained extensively and not only were they healthy and skilled, the weapons had been improved so that they made big clanging noises. Several ladies in the audience winced. The first prisoner was wounded. The actor burst the bag of dye under his shirt. As it spread across the floor, a murmur rose up in the hall. More prisoners fell. Fake blood turned the white tiles in the floor red. Loret had done an excellent job in polishing the stage so that it ran off. Loret stood on the viewing platform in the backstage area. He had not been around when they had rehearsed the final scenes and had never seen the play.
The fight between Jihan and Rana was in full swing and then Jihan tripped Rana up and without a thought stabbed him through the heart. Blood went everywhere. The practice with the paint bags paid off. Splatters landed even in Jihan’s face and all over his white shirt.
Mariandra let out a heart-wrenching cry.
A woman in the audience started screaming.
Jihan freed Mariandra from the cell, and she walked like a prisoner with him off the stage.
Then there was an intense silence.
The curtain shut.
And a roar broke out from the audience. Some people shouted, some cheered or clapped, or stamped their feet. Others cried.
Behind the curtains, the theatre staff worked quickly to turn the set around. The big turning platform left a trail of red paint.
All the actors got to their feet and clasped hands.
Ellisandra called for the others of the theatre committee. She held hands with Sariandra, whose palms were sweaty with nerves. The whole building shook with the thundering tumult in the hall.
The curtain opened again.
The people in the audience were on their feet. Guards were shouting for calm but the people ignored them. Some surged up to the stage, others tried to get out of the hall. A huge cheer went up for the actors. Keldon and Tameyo opened up the chain of hands and gestured for Ellisandra and the committee to come forward. They did.
The cheers were deafening.
Ellisandra noticed some people turn to each other, no doubt gossiping about Sariandra’s status. Not only were women supposed to marry before they fell pregnant, they had to stop all their public activities when they did so.
Ellisandra spotted Asitho Bisumar in the audience, his lips pressed together with anger. His poor wife was wiping her cheeks.
She motioned for calm. Slowly, the crowd fell into a hushed silence.
“Thank you,” Ellisandra said when it was qu
iet enough for her to do so. “I took a risk with this very different interpretation of Changing Fate and I am glad that you enjoyed it. The play is unusual, but I hope that the messages it contains make you think about the value of life—”
In the back of the hall, a male voice shouted, “We want elections, now!” It might even have been Jintho. “Ellisandra for the High Council!”
A good number of people cheered.
A tense moment followed, in which Ellisandra was afraid that someone would call the guards into action.
Then someone else shouted, “Down with the tyrants!”
“Elections now! Let the people speak!”
“No more blood, no more repression.”
“No more spying on our own citizens.”
“Down with the Citizens’ Corps.”
“Elections, elections!”
“Ellisandra! Ellisandra!”
Soon others took up the chant. Everybody stood on their seats, clapping and chanting her name.
At the front of the stage, a number of guards gathered, one of them a higher-ranking officer.
Nemedor Satarin sat unmoving in his seat, his lips pressed together. He was looking straight at her.
Then he smiled, a mean grimace that made her insides turn cold.
“Come on, quick,” Ellisandra said. She herded the girls into the curtain folds of the backstage area, where it was a mess of soaked clothes and costumes and props hastily discarded between acts.
“Don’t worry about cleaning up just yet,” Ellisandra shouted.
From here, the shouting and chanting in the main hall sounded muffled. There was also a lot of rumbling of people trying to get out, shouts of people to let women with children through.
“Take off your costumes as quickly as possible and go home. Be safe.”
“I’m not going home,” Keldon said in his loud stage voice. “That’s what we’ve always done: run home whenever there is trouble, so that the men in power can continue to do whatever they’ve been doing for years.”
“Agreed,” Liran said. He had to be cold in his skimpy outfit and covered in wet red dye. “If we want change, we should be out there helping the young guys call for an election.”
“Please. They’re not going to concede. There is too much at stake,” Ellisandra said. “Tomorrow, the council will be voting to change part of Foundation Law to make it harder for council decisions to be challenged. They’re repealing a whole raft of small provisions in the old law that on the surface look quaint and outdated, but that allow challenges to proposed new legislation, or election results, or anything the council does. Without them the council can do whatever it wants.”
“That power was in the hands of the Foundation families,” Keldon said. “And only you are left.”
He didn’t mention the important part: that Enzo, who had voting power as oldest son of the oldest son, was in the other camp.
“I’ve tried to bring the Foundation families together to veto this law change. I’ve contacted the other Foundation families, but none of them have sent anyone. My brother supports the law change. We can’t wait for any of the other families to arrive. We have to stop this change going through on our own. I don’t care if my family loses its powers in the council, but someone should have the power to block proposed laws. If this law goes through, only civil war can stop a power-hungry council. We need to go into that meeting tomorrow and make our concerns heard.”
“We’ll come,” Tameyo said.
Keldon said, “I think we should go to the council and demand to be let in now. We’ll have a sit-in protest in the hall and then go into the session tomorrow. That’s what used to happen with protests in the past.”
That was true. Ellisandra remembered that from history books.
“Yes, let’s go!” someone said.
There were a good number of agreeing noises, so after a quick change into more practical clothing, Ellisandra led the group through the corridors of the theatre building.
In one way or another, the guards had managed to calm the crowd down and ushered most of the people out of the theatre. A few stragglers still hung around, while theatre staff had started the task of cleaning up.
“Good night, lady Ellisandra,” one of them called. There was laughter in his voice. The theatre would get paid by the council for the number of people in the audience. Theatre Day was always good for them, but today would give them a bumper payout.
In the foyer, one of the orchestra’s drum players had been holed up by a merchant.
“You’re sure you don’t know his name at all?” the merchant was saying.
“Not a clue,” the woman said. “He was never at any of our rehearsals.”
“If you see him, tell him that I organise weddings and I have quite a few customers who would pay handsomely for good music . . .”
The orchestra member responded, but by then Ellisandra had walked too far to hear the reply.
The merchant’s voice was louder. “I don’t care, frankly. If he can play like that, that’s all I care about.”
The column of actors and other artists went out the theatre up the hill. The night was blustery, with low clouds chasing each other over the city, but no snow fell.
Ellisandra walked with Tolaki and Aleyo.
Jintho and Sariandra were behind them, holding hands.
But when they arrived at the council building, they couldn’t get in because the gates were closed. Ellisandra had never seen those gates closed.
The group bunched up in the place where you could normally walk through into the main entrance that led into the foyer of the assembly hall. That foyer where they had planned to camp overnight.
“They’re already in lockdown,” someone behind Ellisandra said.
Ellisandra felt cold. The council could have ordered all their councillors to come here straight after the performance had finished and no one would need to go in or out of the building until morning.
A lone guard walked across the entrance porch, in between the columns
“Let us in,” Keldon called out. He rattled the gate.
“The hall opens tomorrow morning.” The guard went into the main door.
Tomorrow morning, they would open the little gate to the side, and there would be such a long queue to get in that surprise, surprise, a lot of people wouldn’t make it to the council session.
Ellisandra glanced at the fence—it was not that tall—and noticed Keldon also looking at it. He probably had the same thought.
She jerked her head. “Come.”
The main group of actors who had followed them here stood mulling in the square, hands in their pockets and collars pulled up around their necks. More still came walking up from the theatre. They clumped together, huddled in their cloaks for the cold. Keldon put on his acting voice and explained what was going on.
“You can go home if you wish,” Ellisandra said. “Come back tomorrow morning when the gates open.”
“We’re going to stay with you.” A man who had played one of the prisoners said. His face was still tinted with oil.
“I don’t know where we can go.” She also realised that someone at home would need to look after Father if she wasn’t there to do it. Were they even free to go or was the square surrounded by guards?
Ellisandra walked up the steps of the Foundation monument to look over the heads of the people. There was no sign of any more guards than usual, or at least it was too dark to see any, but as Vayra had said, people would be watching.
She leaned against one of the five pillars, the stone rough under her hands.
This was where, many, many years ago, her family and the other Foundation families had gathered to sign an agreement with the Nikala people about the division of tasks in Miran. The laws had worked for many years. There was a line in one of the later classics, where Esintho Andrahar, High Councillor says, “Whatever happens to Miran, we have this document.” She said it aloud to herself. “We have the agreement that safeguards us
against destruction, both from outside and within. We must not stray from it, or doom will come to us, because we are a nation of two halves, and we are bound by honour to keep it this way.”
Her voice had risen while she spoke, and a number of people had followed her up the steps to the platform. One of the minor actors had brought a storm lamp from the theatre.
Now Tameyo came forward, and spoke in her loud theatre voice. “The chaos is of our own making. We were greedy and complacent and more interested in bettering our own lives than the wellbeing of Miran as a whole.”
These were lines directly from that play, The Days of Pain and Love, which was the final instalment of the Classics and dealt with political upheaval caused by a group of power-hungry councillors. This was set in the time that the five High Councillors were still those from the Foundation families, but there were disturbing passages that resonated today. The theatre had performed it a few years ago.
Speaking in the role of Esintho Andrahar, Ellisandra said, “We challenge the people of Miran: if anyone breaks the agreement, speak up. If forces gather to silence groups in our community, speak up. If men in power, even if they are in the High Council, try to push out or overpower other groups, for all that is dear, if you love our fair city, speak up!” She raised her fist, as the script required.
The entire group of actors had gathered on the steps of the monument. Someone at the back shouted, “Speak up!”
Others joined in the chant.
“Speak up, speak up, speak up.”
Over their heads, Ellisandra could see the guards at the gates to the council building. They had been joined by a group of colleagues and stood in a group arguing.
“Speak up, speak up, speak up!” The sound of many voices echoed over the square.
From the shops, the apartments in the commercial quarter, from the markets came small but steady streams of people. Many carried lights. A small group came even from the building of the Mirani chapter of the Traders Guild. They were Nikala, they were Endri. They were shop owners, business owners, Lawkeepers, administrators, account keepers, domestic staff. They were . . . Loret and his men, Aleyo’s younger sister, workers from the place where they often bought the midday meal—