by Kim Smejkal
Cheers, song, some hushed awe, and hundreds of sets of eyes followed the chained devil, triumphant angel, and plague doctor overseer as they led the Rabble Mob of Minos caravan into the field.
Milloni and Ravino, who had ridden ahead to put up posters around the city and prep the field, directed them in, directed the fans to stay out, and shouted what sounded like the same warnings they’d been shouting for days. Milloni, sweat dripping profusely from their bald head, bellowed a hearty laugh as a soul dressed like their character, the Commander, took up the song the gate rider had been singing. “I’m getting too old for this!” they shouted at the plague doctor as the wagon passed, good-natured and lovely but looking too worn down for the beginning of a run.
As soon as they were all safely inside, Kitty Kay called Milloni and Ravino to her for an explanation. The gears in Anya’s head spun out of control as they listened in on the conversation. Celia saw it on her face, felt it in Anya’s grip on her upper arm. They’d known that the Mob’s fame was spreading—the glass-smashing finale in Asura, the mistico’s dramatic death in Sabazio, and the thematic changes to the content of the show had all stoked rumors and fueled gossip—the evidence in advanced ticket sales and in the herd of followers who’d been trailing the caravan in greater and greater numbers. But Ravino explained that the public response was actually bordering on fever, far more widespread than they’d thought. “There was a riot in Quantoro a few nights ago. A local theater group put on their annual Commedia Revel but weren’t prepared for the crowds. It spilled into the streets and got out of control.”
“Quantoro isn’t even along any of our routes,” Kitty Kay said. “Surely that had nothing to do with us.”
“It had everything to do with us,” Milloni said, still glistening from the effort of keeping the crowd back, patting a rag across their brow. “We heard the story from someone who’d been there, passing through Quantoro on his way here. And he wasn’t the only one taking a trip to our next advertised destination. People from all over Illinia are—” Milloni looked to Ravino.
“Pilgrimaging?” Ravino offered.
Milloni nodded. “Pilgrimaging to see us. We shared a pint with him and his friends, trading conspiracy theories about the meaning of the New Commedia.”
“They didn’t know we were part of the troupe.” Ravino’s perpetually frowning face twitched into a smile that showed too-pointy teeth in a too-large mouth, making Scary Ravino look even scarier. He nudged Milloni, almost knocking the smaller performer over. “Good thing, right? We barely made it out of there alive as it was!”
Anya’s grip tightened as Milloni said, “This ‘New Commedia’ strongly centers on the Devil in the Bell Jar. People think it’s canon in the making. They’re treating it like a puzzle to solve.”
Celia and Anya hadn’t noticed that Marco had joined them as they eavesdropped until he asked, “What is it about you that’s speaking to them?” If he didn’t sound so confused, it might have been a compliment.
“Okay, whatever you’re thinking”—Celia said to Anya, leading her away from Marco—“my answer is maybe.” The chink in Diavala’s armor had been tiny, maybe imagined, but Celia couldn’t ignore it.
“This changes things, Cece. We have a stage. We’re talking and people are listening. Imagine all the things we could say.” Her dark blue eyes gleamed with possibilities, all the frustration of the past days melting into determination. “We did this every day.” Anya was practically vibrating. “We inked Divine tattoos meant to convey one message, but we always put another message underneath. This is the same subtle art, but to a much wider audience.” She pulled Celia into a hug and whispered, “We’ve been practicing for exactly this our entire lives.”
Maybe they could think about pushing back against Diavala, Celia thought, but Vincent was their priority. They needed to go on a little field trip for him first.
* * *
The next day, as the Mob prepared for their first night on the Malidoran stage, Celia found Anya in the glass dome of their wagon with some unfamiliar, ragged costumes bunched in her arms like grim bouquets of wilted flowers. Though the crowd at the gates was already chanting and singing, there was still a bit of a wait before night fell and those gates opened.
Kitty Kay oversaw the preparations from behind her veil of gray hair, quiet and reaperlike, ensuring that there would be no repeat of Quantoro-type riots under her watch.
Vincent and a few others were heaving the bell jar onto a newly built podium, raising the viewing angle so the devil could be seen from anywhere. Grisilda and Fawn, Passion’s two halves, added alterations to the hems of each other’s dresses to match the pattern of Anya’s. The angel in the crowd would now have twin bodyguards, Kitty Kay insisting on protection for the one who roamed through the crowd, just in case the touching got out of control. As of that night as well, Cas, Sky, and Lilac would be at the edges of the crowd on their stilts, perched lookouts for “problems and perverts,” as Sky had so succinctly put it.
Celia’s eyes burned with the effort of holding back tears as she changed into the costume Anya offered her. A regular thing now—this pressure behind her eyes from lack of sleep and moving this way and that way and thinking in circles. Below, Vincent wiped his brow and shook his head at something Remy asked. Celia seemed hell-bent to find him wherever he was at any given moment. So aware of him, she swore in her more burned-out moments that she could hear his humming bones following her, haunting her, getting louder. Diavala skulked in the background and watched through Vincent’s eyes. Yet her steady presence couldn’t be ignored. In the weeks since Sabazio, Vincent had lost weight and paled; every time Celia looked at him, he appeared fainter, vanishing by degrees.
Checking the Roll of Saints wouldn’t help him, precisely, but it could give them information on the Touch, something to go on. It was the only thing they could think to do for him.
The Roll of Saints was an organic document in which the mistico logged everyone who had experienced the Touch. Celia and Anya knew about it from Zuni, who’d seen the original a few times: every skull on her shelf was an entry.
It wasn’t a holy relic like the Chest Majestic, but rather a practical bookkeeping item, a binding contract that the families of the Touched would be financially taken care of by Profeta. Each temple would have a fairly up-to-date copy, but it wouldn’t be easy to check.
Many years ago, while the plague ran rampant through Illinia, a pair of con artist siblings had taken advantage of the chaos and had falsified entries. A quick way to get a lot of free money, a scandal that saw them both executed in the temple’s main square when the scam was discovered. It was one of Zuni’s favorite stories.
Since then, the Roll had been for mistico only.
Hand in hand, dressed as the regal Salantia, a Commedia character with witchlike powers, and the bedraggled Cont, a servant, Celia and Anya quickly became intimate with the streets of Malidora. It was a large city, almost as big as Asura. By the count on the notice board near the city limits, it housed seventeen Profetan temples. Dozens, if not hundreds, of mistico.
But everything about the city felt foreign. The buildings sat on brick foundations at ground level instead of on stilts and piles to avoid floodwater, and they had front porches instead of high balconies. Roads and alleys crisscrossed without being interrupted by canals and bridges. Carriages pulled by a range of animals—horses, goats, even the occasional rickshaw powered by human muscle for hire—crowded the streets. The people roamed in larger packs, their dress less opulent than the richer port city of Asura but more colorful, a rainbow sea of scarves, coats, and hats.
Celia’s and Anya’s thick face paint, disguising their features into the gnarled witch and her dimwitted servant, was over the top, but they needed to be labeled frenetic fans of the Commedia. Their alter egos of Devil and Angel stared at them from Rabble Mob posters pinned to every lamppost and wall, their other alter egos of Wanted by the Profetan Temple filling any blank spaces b
etween. They couldn’t walk a block without seeing their faces looking back at them.
A couple of Commedia fans tried to bond with them. “Can’t wait for the show!” one said, clutching at Anya’s arm. With a slight paunch of middle age and rough hands from work, he proudly wore a purple and blue ribbon in his hair, a token from the plague doctor he must have picked up at a previous show. His eyes went wide and wild, and he giggled between his words. “We came from Sabazio for this. The Mob is creating new Commedia, but no one can figure it out!”
His companion knocked his arm and gave him an exasperated grunt. “Shod a horse, Fallan. I keep telling you that stuff wasn’t staged.” She turned a much more sober gaze toward the disguised inklings. “This oaf doesn’t get it.” She knocked him again, and Anya took the opportunity to peel her arm away. “The Mob plays around but they don’t play around, right?” she added, stomping her feet absently as her friend concentrated on staying upright.
“No, I think he’s right,” Anya said. “We’re watching”—she paused long enough for Fallan to lean forward, then she laughed and playfully nudged him, her acting skills fully tapped—“revolution.”
Since the pair didn’t seem inclined to let them pass, Celia huffed out her question. “We’re looking for the Viaggia temple?”
Fallan blinked, as if he didn’t understand her words, then nodded so enthusiastically that he almost lost his head. “Sure, sure. We were headed to the Rosso Pesta pub, but we could join you. Where are we now?” He swiveled around, getting his bearings, bumping into a group of rowdies who looked as if they’d drunk the taps dry at the Rosso Pesta. “The closest temple is the Viaggia site, right, Pia?”
Pia rolled her eyes.
Celia desperately grabbed Anya’s other arm as Fallan swept her away. Company wasn’t what they’d had in mind when they set out, but if it would hurry them to where they needed to be, all the better. Celia held her other arm out for Pia and forced a smile, and the four of them marched off together.
With each block, their herd grew exponentially. Many sported ribbons similar to Fallan’s or cheap mask replicas of their favorite Commedia characters. Celia’s and Anya’s painted faces no longer looked out of place.
Pia assessed the growing crowd. “Revolution . . .” She tasted the word on her tongue. “I like that.”
Celia nodded, trying to ignore the ridiculousness of leading a procession of Rabble Mob rabble toward a temple. A few had spontaneously erupted into song, dancing their way down the dim street. A group of young adults piggybacked one another in a ruckus game where they tried to knock other pairs over. Tenors of a hundred varieties flickered, as unique as the people attached to them, but with dominant hues that allowed for common identities.
“So you’re following the Mob as well?” Pia asked.
“Something like that. You know.”
Pia’s thick eyebrows knotted—no, she didn’t know at all—but she squeezed Celia’s arm again and smiled. They’d bonded over a shared love of Commedia and the Divine—what more was there to ask of a chance meeting of strangers?
A miniature version of the marble Divine besting Diavala greeted them as they rounded the next corner. The white statue, set into the recess of a red gabled roof, was the only indication of a place of worship. The whiteness of the statue gleamed against the deep crimson of the building.
As they approached, Pia stared at the statue with a wistful look, her steps lengthening. “Sometimes I worry, you know? Fallan has three tattoos already, so what do I make of her silence with me? Am I not important enough?”
The longing in Pia’s voice took Celia by surprise. “It only means your decisions are entirely yours, Pia.” It was one thing to understand that Profeta was everywhere, another thing to hear people wish there were still more of it. By Pia’s metric, someone as tattooed as Ruler Vacilando was enviable.
“But what if I’m making all the wrong choices?”
“What does that even mean? Wrong or right when it comes to your life? Don’t you know yourself best?” Celia was pushing too much, she knew. A true believer heading to a temple wouldn’t talk this way.
Good thing Pia considered herself a philosopher. “Maybe wrong isn’t the proper word. Mistakes, then.”
Celia laughed. “All the ink in the world won’t keep people from making mistakes, Pia. Those three tattoos on Fallan might have stopped him from making three mistakes, only to see him make three more.”
“Perhaps it’s a matter of degree.” Pia looked ahead at Fallan fondly. “He wanted to adopt a child, years ago. That was his first tattoo. Fool would have ruined his life, and perhaps the child’s, if he’d gone through with it.”
Celia stopped walking, swallowing a lump. “How do you know it would have ruined his life? Or the child’s? Maybe they needed each other.”
With a dismissive wave, Pia grunted and pulled Celia along. “Then he wouldn’t have gotten a Divine tattoo, now would he?”
Such sound logic, if you believed in an omniscient, altruistic deity. “Okay. You win.” Celia ground her teeth as her imagination spun out images of happy parent Fallan and happy adopted orphan. Maybe it would have been wonderful. Maybe it would have been a mistake. Either way, he should have made the choice for himself.
Instead, he was following a theater troupe around in a drunken haze.
Pia’s smile faltered as they climbed the stone steps toward the entrance, a hooded figure with a battered Gemello mask holding the door open for them. “I’m just saying it would be nice to know that the Divine thought of me.”
Anya had already begun to pull Fallan inside when he hesitated, tucking his ribbon in his pocket before he went in. Others had removed their masks. Celia’s and Anya’s face paint was a calculated risk they hoped would cast them as wayward devotees rather than disrespectful hooligans.
All conversation halted as they crossed the threshold into the Viaggia temple. Compared with the noise the group had made outside, the silence fell as if at a funeral. Some wrote messages to the Divine on parchment; others approached the mistico for advice or hushed blessings. Pia made her way toward Fallan as he stared at a stained glass imagining of the Divine’s Return: smiling, bowing crowds overcome with emotion at a human-shaped spark of white, orange, and yellow lightning.
Anya had managed to corner three mistico, their lips tight as they assessed the out-of-place costumes in their holy house, but they all held their tongues against quips, listening intently to the questions Anya whispered. Celia heard her begin without preamble: “My cousin Dimdam of Asura told me that the High Mistico has resigned. Can this possibly be true?”
Celia snorted—Cousin Dimdam, how gossipy you are—but she knew that Anya had it under control.
She made sure the other mistico were occupied—the crowd had become a blessing—and pulled up her hood. She would stick to the shadows.
Celia casually weaved around lingering bodies, stopping to nod or bow in deference, one hand pressed to her heart, the rote gestures flooding back. Her heart drummed loud in her ears.
Access to the Roll would be severely limited. A private room, most likely.
She circled the nave. On pretense of admiring some iconic paintings, she rounded the altar at the apse.
Behind a curtain at the apse’s stage right, Celia found a door.
Opening it a Celia-size crack, dropping the curtain, taming its flutter, she stepped away, not having to pretend that her boot buckle needed tightening. She bent, she buckled, she scanned for robes. Anya had four mistico occupied in full conversation now, but she managed to signal Celia.
A message hastily scrawled in ink, written on her wrist right under the noses of four mistico, as they’d done countless times before at the temple. As they did onstage every night. Careful, had faded from Celia’s skin before she finished whisking herself behind the curtain and through the partially opened door.
Hope for Vincent pushed her onward. Anyone might have seen her sneak through that door, an
d Anya couldn’t hold the mistico’s attention much longer. Celia’s heart thumped as if it would give out.
The room was lined with bookshelves, and on an oak desk amid haphazard stacks of parchment was a locked glass box with a thin, leather-bound volume inside.
Dates. Names. Hope.
Celia blew her bangs off her sweaty forehead as she pulled on the tiny gold lock and stuck one of her hair clips in the keyhole. She’d never picked a lock before and had no idea what she was doing.
A quick snap of air movement told her that someone had come in behind her. She swiveled, thinking, Please be Anya.
It wasn’t Anya, but the person who’d held the door open for them as they entered the temple. Celia couldn’t believe she hadn’t recognized him before, even with the ratty Gemello mask. The posture, the jawline, the errant curls of hair at his nape, the silvery shades of his tenor. She made a quick decision and jabbed her finger at the lock. The plague doctor and his expert sleight of hand may as well be useful.
He understood what she needed. The moment after his slim gloved fingers touched the hair clip, the lock fell into his palm. She lifted the top of the glass case as he swept silently away to listen at the door.
Anya’s previous warning rang loud: Leave it exactly as you found it. They’ll notice. Oh, what irony it would be if Celia were caught tampering with the Roll and met her end at a public execution. As if all she wanted was money.
The ledger was arranged by date of affliction, with meticulous columns of data on every individual. She ignored everything in the distant past and began her search fifty years earlier—people who may still be alive—her fingers sweeping down each page. There weren’t as many entries as she’d imagined: about one a year, punctuated with the occasional cluster. Each one, a whole person before Diavala had possessed them. Each one, Touched when she’d left.