A Trickster in the Ashes

by Felicity Savage

  She shut her eyes, her mouth wilting.

  “All right, you two,” Crispin called lazily. “Enough gabbing.”

  The curtain had started to rise. Rae pressed herself back into her seat with a gasp, and her fingers closed again on Mickey’s hand.

  The cast assembled for bows a third time; then the curtain fell. It had hardly touched the stage before the villain, his black moustache slightly askew, ducked back out under the velvet folds. Renewed applause greeted him. Was Master Player Authrond himself about to deliver a closing epigraph? He jumped down into the center aisle and hurried, beaming, along the first row. Mickey didn’t even have time to apologize to Rae for having doubted her before the cravatted, frockcoated actor seized her hands and kissed them passionately. “My princess! My siren! My prima donna! At last you’ve come back to us!”

  “Only for the afternoon. But it’s been well worth it,” Rae said with marvelous presence of mind. “Vulvetta has improved with time; I wish I could say the same for Annette.”

  Authrond grimaced. “My poor, golden-tressed dear has never been able to master the tragicomic mode. And she is no longer, how shall we say, a maiden. Yet how could I prevent her from reprising her best role? Luckily, Vulvetta is more than just a vehicle for the leading lady.”

  “Absolutely. The new sets are breathtaking. And who was the boy playing the garage attendant? He has enormous potential.”

  Crispin pushed his way around Mickey and Rae, and said smoothly, “A flawless production, sir. My congratulations to cast and crew. Now I’m afraid we must be going.”

  Authrond frowned and stroked his false moustache as Vulvetta’s villain had. The moustache came off in his fingers. He put it in his pocket and asked Rae, pointedly, “Your husband, darling?”

  Rae shook her head and giggled. “A friend of my cousin, here. Crispin Kateralbin; Yoshitaro Achino; Thomas Authrond.”

  “Well, Sir Kateralbin.” Authrond turned to Crispin. Mickey could only imagine Crispin’s fury at being forced to acknowledge the actor. Members of the audience, filing out, shot them sideways glances, making overt rudeness impractical. “You have come so far from your home in the Mim.” Authrond gestured dramatically. “Your business in Kherouge must be of the utmost importance, of that I have no doubt. Yet you have spared an afternoon to sample our continental entertainments; can you not spare another few minutes—at the most, a half hour—for the sake of your lovely acquaintance, Miss Clothwright? (By the by, Rae, you never told us you had relations in Kirekune—although perhaps I should have guessed from the snowy refinement of your complexion.)” He reached out and playfully stroked Rae’s cheek. Even Mickey was startled at such impudence. “A lady of secrets, indeed! Is it possible that, in addition, you neglected to inform your Mime friend that you were once—”

  “In my salad days.” Rae smiled.

  “Not so long ago, my dear, and the years have not touched you. I wish the same could be said for all the members of my troupe—but it is true, sir,” and he turned again to Crispin, “that Miss Clothwright was once the leading lady of this poor band of players.”

  Crispin only glowered. If he admitted his ignorance, Mickey saw, he would be acknowledging Authrond had a prior claim on Rae. Mickey had never seen him so efficiently neutralized. Satisfied, Authrond took Rae’s arm, tucking it through his elbow. Beckoning to Mickey and Crispin, he led Rae out into the aisle. “Hildy came running backstage all in a tizzy, dear, to tell us you were in the audience. The troupe’s composition is largely unchanged—everyone remembers you—and we are all so excited at the prospect of an amicable chitchat! Kenneth, as a matter of fact, insists I persuade you to come back on the road. Now I’ll leave that delicate subject for him to broach, but I must just tell you that he has been saying ever since you deserted us so abruptly that no other actress can interpret his lyrics as touchingly, with such feeling…” He gestured for the others to proceed him through the tent flap. “It occurs to me to ask, dear—what are you doing with yourself these days?”

  Outside in the sunlight and the wind, Rae held on to her hat. “I’m a teacher. I teach theater at a school for—for—gifted children. They’re such quick learners; it’s a delight to see.”

  Mickey whispered to Crispin, “I never knew she could lie so well.” Then it occurred to him that he did know; hadn’t he been swallowing her lies for more than two years?

  “It’s not exactly a lie,” Crispin whispered. “She puts on plays with her kids and her Sisters’ kids. Traditional stuff, nothing modern. Although to hear them talk about it, you’d think she was giving the kids lessons in depravity.”

  “Delightful, delightful,” Authrond said smoothly. “Although nothing can quite compare to the thrill of being on stage oneself, can it? This way. The munificent sponsors of the fairgrounds have provided us a house of sorts; it doesn’t have the comforts of a city theater’s lodgings—we’ve grown used to the soft life, I’m afraid—but it is a step up from the tents and open campfires you will recall, I’m sure, without regret.”

  “What you call the soft life is only what you deserve, Tommy.”

  Mickey knew from her tone that at some point she and Authrond had been lovers. He wondered if Crispin had picked it up, too.

  Authrond laughed self-deprecatingly as they passed between parked trucks. “The most I will say is that, when you were among us, we were ahead of our time. Now the times have caught up with us. And although now we sleep in soft beds, I venture to judge that we ourselves have not softened. If there is a secret to our success, it is that.”

  “I’m sure,” Rae said.

  A low, wooden, stablelike structure appeared between parked trucks, its door propped wide. Clothes dried on the windowsills. Mickey smelled bread toasting. Beyond stretched the desert. Rae glanced over her shoulder and made a face at Crispin which Mickey interpreted as triumphant.

  “Everyone else will be along as soon as they’ve changed,” Authrond said with satisfaction.

  The actors straggled into the big, bare kitchen one at a time. Only the lyricist Kenneth Harper, a callow, dark-haired Ferupian, seemed as transported by Rae’s reappearance as Authrond had implied they would all be. He dropped to one knee, gripped her skirt, and embarked on a flowery, embarrassingly impassioned litany of reasons she should, could, would go back on the road with the troupe. Rae evaded his demands with giggles and jests. Undeterred, he sprang onto the chair beside her and proceeded to compete with Authrond for her undivided attention. It was a pointless endeavor. Every few minutes a new person wandered in, face shiny with washing and still bearing traces of stage paint, and Authrond proclaimed the obvious, whereupon the newcomer pulled Rae to her feet and embraced her. Rae’s mourning attire was pronounced, with apparent sincerity, “Ravishing!” and “Simply the latest thing! You must tell me your dressmaker’s name!” The compliments, and the searing stares with which the men invariably preceded them, became so predictable that after the third or fourth restaging of the scene Mickey wanted to laugh. Shunned for so long by the other brothel owners of Okimachi, he’d forgotten how members of professions tend to share a drastically limited vocabulary.

  Just as predictable were the ensuing volleys of questions and the closing rounds of air kisses. Some of the actors and actresses went on to enthuse vaguely: you ‘re not going to run away again are you, your type is so hard to find, we ‘re having so much fun nowadays, you simply must stay; others, less affected, procured tea and toast from the stove and sat down to eat at the big, ramshackle table. As they crunched and gulped they exchanged half-serious critiques of each other’s performances. Someone turned on the gas heater against the wall. Its filaments glowed like embers.

  They were all actors, and their simulation of relaxed informality was almost perfect. But Mickey, sipping his cup of incredibly bad black tea, half-listening to Harper (who’d given up trying to get Rae’s attention and settled on Mickey as his next best bet), noticed that the others were paying just as much attention to Rae and Authrond as they
were to each other. Crispin sat fuming silently in a corner. He’d refused tea, choosing instead to chain-smoke and stare out the window at the desert. He probably thought himself unobserved. He was wrong. The actors’ gazes went back and forth from him to the pair at the table, back and forth, as if they were watching an invisible shuttlecock.

  Clearly they were waiting for something to happen. But what? Did they expect Authrond to make a public declaration for Rae? Did they expect, in the name of Significance, a duel? Were they ignorant enough to think Crispin a Cypean with an old-fashioned sense of honor? And why did they all assume Crispin, not Mickey, was Rae’s appointed paramour? Did Mickey’s face, his dress, his manner speak that clearly?

  Then something happened. A plump, ravaged blonde stalked in and planted herself in front of Authrond and Rae. The other actors regarded her with dismay, and Mickey guessed that the script they’d agreed upon had been violated.

  In the title role of Vulvetta, the blonde had worn picturesque rags. Now, like the rest of the troupe, she wore loose, dull-hued Ferupian peasant garb. Her feet were bare. Without stage paint, she looked twenty-five at the most, though her figure was swollen by excesses. “Whore.” She addressed Rae. “Shadowtown flotsam. I wouldn’t have thought”—her voice stuck in her throat, clotted with tears or rage—“even you would stoop so low.”

  Everyone in the kitchen fell silent.

  “I’m overjoyed to see you, too, Annette,” Rae said.

  “And—and you have the gall to be facetious!”

  Mickey saw all the other actors suddenly remember what they were supposed to say. Not according to the script they’d devised for the drama which the woman Annette’s entrance had disrupted, but according to common etiquette: this, after all, was Annette’s big day—

  “Nettie, you were fabulous!”

  “Brought tears to their eyes!”

  “Three bows! Three!”

  “It’ll be a standing ovation tonight!”

  Annette turned in a circle on her bare feet, surveying them all, her gaze passing over Crispin and Mickey with a dreadful, empty lack of curiosity. “It’s a little late for that now, isn’t it?”

  The chorus of praise dwindled to scattered, doubtful voices. “The solo in the second act was a showstopper…”

  “Spectacular…”

  “You upstaged us all,” someone said so uncertainly that it amounted to a condemnation of the leading lady’s performance.

  “I’d hoped everything would be forgiven and forgotten,” Annette said viciously. “But no! You still can’t resist an opportunity to steal the limelight! Look at you, sitting there so smug. I bet you spent all morning in front of the mirror, scheming.”

  On the gas stove a kettle shrieked. Someone leapt up to silence it. Annette stared at Rae, who raised one hand uncertainly to her face.

  “And now it’s happened just the way you planned, and you think you’ve made a coup de théâtre, don’t you? Huh. Well, I feel it’s my compassionate duty”—Annette put a sarcastic emphasis on the words—“to let you know that you may’ve stolen my thunder, and much joy I wish you of it, but there’s one thing you can never steal. Something that’s been freely given. Go home, dilettante,” she whispered; and her eyes focused on Master Player Authrond with an intensity somehow devoid of emotion.

  “Annette, love.” At last Authrond rose to his feet. The blonde stood rigid, unyielding, as he clapped her on the back. His voice grew warm with sympathy. “It was the best performance you’ve ever given, and it’s no wonder at all that you are a little overwrought. In fact, in light of that probability, I had intended to save until later the joyous news that Miss Clothwright is rejoining us. It is absolutely essential that you get some rest before the evening performance; after all, word will have spread, and the audience will be expecting great things of you. My prediction is that once your head touches the pillow, you will sleep like a baby. No fussing, now. I insist.” He seized the luckless Kenneth Harper, dragging him bodily to his feet. “Kenny, Nettie’s utterly wrung out. Be a squire and lend her an arm. Nettie, did I remember to say how impressed I was? Don’t tell anyone, but if you keep this up, I shall feel compelled to give you star billing.”

  “Don’t try to bribe me, Tommy,” Annette said dully as Authrond pushed her and Harper out of the far door. The Master Player let the door slam. It rent the silence like a shout. Quickly recovering, Authrond checked the latch, nodded in satisfaction—a nice bit of stage business, Mickey thought—and faced his audience again, debonair in his frock coat, shaking his head sadly.

  “I’m afraid Nettie was a little overwhelmed by singing lead in front of such a crowd.”

  “Bit off more than she could chew,” the motherly actress named Hildy said ambiguously.

  “Indeed. She really isn’t Vulvetta, and I think she knows it now.” Authrond nodded to Rae. “Now that the true Vulvetta is back with us. Better late than never; yet still, what a pity, Rae, you couldn’t have returned to us before opening day! The sooner we can take the pressure off poor Nettie, the better; and rehearsals and, ahem, refittings”—titters at the reference to Annette’s bloated figure—“these things take time. Oh, my dears!” The Master Player threw open his arms and beamed, inviting them all to share his sanguine mood. “We are going to be busy!”

  No one responded, beyond a few more titters. Authrond had taken control of the situation belatedly: he hadn’t acted until Annette had forced his hand. This, Mickey thought, fascinated, was his troupe’s implicit condemnation of his stagecraft.

  “Tom—Authrond,” Rae said in a voice no less audible for its timidity. “I think you’re being just a wee bit premature—”

  “Nonsense, nonsense,” Authrond said heartily, seating himself beside her again and looking into his teacup, which was empty. “No fussing now. I insist.”

  “The fuck you do,” Crispin said. Everyone turned: the invisible shuttlecock had landed. Crispin stepped on the stub of his last cigarette, crossed the room, and held out his hand to Rae. She made a quick, apologetic face at Authrond and rose. Mickey found himself standing automatically, as if his body were on strings. Crispin hadn’t half of Authrond’s extroverted, effortless confidence, but suppressed fury radiated off him like heat. Those actors who had risen to their feet gave him a wide berth as he led Rae across the kitchen and exited without a word, without looking back, leaving the door open. Mickey realized it was up to him to deliver some sort of a valediction. He spread his palms.

  “I enjoyed the performance very much. Value for money. And the after-show was even better. Thank you all.”

  “V welcome,” said a fair-haired young man, ironically. The others were already returning to their tea and toast and shop talk. He had to raise his voice. “Do come again. It’s different every day, but always entertaining. And the plot isn’t so dauntingly intricate as it may seem.”

  Mickey couldn’t catch Authrond’s eye. He gave up and turned to go. “Spectacular,” a female voice called after him lazily as he went out. “Absolutely breathtaking. Tell the Mime he’s a real showstopper.”

  The sunlight sluiced over Mickey like cool water: yellower now, the great disc low in the sky. He saw Crispin and Rae standing between two of Authrond’s trucks. The wind blew their words to him. He stopped.

  “What did you want me to do, cut him dead?” Rae shouted. “I had no idea he was still involved with her, Crispin! That’s what hurts! I thought it was just a fling—but it’s been almost four years, and he’s still fucking her! She’d never have made such a scene unless she’d jumped to the conclusion I came to steal him back again! And the way he put his arm around her—Queen, everything points to it! I feel so stupid!”

  Crispin said brutally, “Look, she’s uglier than a third-rate snailgirl. The man hasn’t an ounce of taste. You can do better. What I want to know is this. Is the funeral still going on?”

  “What? Ye-es, I should think so. My Sisters will still be there, even if the others left. I daresay they won’t get back unti
l night. Why?”

  “We’ve wasted enough time already. Who’s at the Enclave now, then?”

  “Just Lightning and Tornado—minding the babies—”

  “What about the older children?”

  “They mind each other. Why?”

  Crispin swung her about by the arms, her skirts flaring in a bell, her ribbons and her hair flying. Oh, Significant, Mickey thought. He never lets up. “Do you want to make it up to me?”

  …if Simpkin had been able to talk, be would have asked: Where is my MOUSE?”

  “Alack, I am undone!” said the Tailor of Gloucester, and went sadly to bed.

  All that night long Simpkin hunted and searched through the kitchen, peeping into cupboards and under the wainscot, and into the teapot where he had hidden that twist; but still he found never a mouse!

  —Beatrix Potter

  The Smell of Blood

  1 Marout 1900 A.D. 5:45 P.M.

  Cype: Kherouge: Center City: the Enclave of the Moot Patriotic

  Consecrated Sisters. Here we are again!

  Joy had taken Crispin’s breath away when he saw the familiar big top rippling its sides above the crowd at the Abbatoir Fairgrounds. It was Smithrebel’s, no question about that. As he pushed closer, he saw the midway, heard the sideshow barker’s familiar patter, and he knew the story behind every patch on the black tops.

  But it wasn’t the Fabulous Aerial and Animal Show. He couldn’t smell elephant dung or cotton candy. He smelled diesel. The music coming from the flap door of the big top wasn’t the brassy tantara of the Tulip 5 Band; it was Cypean. The trucks he could glimpse behind the circus had been repainted, their namesake flowers replaced with SMITHREBEL’S SHRIKOUTO CIRCUS in three-foot lettering. Showbills on boards clustered around the entrance of the big top. The girl in the tutu surveyed the matinee queue with enigmatic calm from a dozen different vantage points. Crispin read: #1 SHRIKOUTO I AM THE HUMAN KNIFE.