Act I Scene I
ten years later
If I had a coin for every time I was warned about the Playhouse, I’d have enough to buy a front row seat.
One for last week, when the papers warned of its rumored grand return and the looming end of the treaty.
And then about a hundred more for this morning, when news broke the Playhouse had posted a bulletin announcing their next tour stop—the District of Dionysus—and all hell subsequently broke loose.
To make things worse, the bulletin listed no date. No arrival, no performances scheduled, nothing. Like the tense speculation of their return—and the fear it drives into the air—is just another glorious part of the show. I’ll bet they do it on purpose.
I push myself to tread faster, my eyes focused on the afternoon sun dipping lower on the horizon as I weave through a sea of faded coats and skirts blurring into gray streets, the word “Players” swarming in the air.
They’ve been closing in for weeks, their theatre sinking and vanishing beneath the earth, only to impossibly rise up somewhere else.
I tuck my chin and urge my legs to move.
You will cooperate, I command my limbs, most of which have already gone numb and cold. You will work today and not—
As if to argue with the thought, the wind smacks me with a gust that soaks through both of my coats and unfurls a paralyzing chill down my bones. I buckle and swear under my breath.
“Cursed, I heard—” someone utters to their companion in passing, eyes flickering in my direction. I bristle at the word, straightening. Cursed.
The Player’s promise from ten years ago hovers at the edges of my memory, sending a shiver down my spine.
Glass smacks the sidewalk in front of me, shattering, and I shriek, shielding my face.
“Sorry—gods, so sorry!” calls a woman through a window two stories up, who just nearly murdered me with a slab of falling glass. What a way to go that would have been. “Can’t be too careful.”
She isn’t the only one. The path ahead is littered with broken mirrors catching the light like specks of gold. The Playhouse is moving closer every day, and people are still harboring them? Gods help us.
Mirrors are practically an invitation for a Player to come inside. Or worse, to snatch someone through their reflection. I wait a beat, just in case anyone else feels like chucking more glass out their window, before moving again, taking care to sidestep a large chunk.
I avert my eyes from the shards; I haven’t seen my own reflection in years.
From the way people stare, I gather this is a good thing.
Glass crunches under my boots all the way to the Cut—a deep trench of dark water on either side of a wall rising out of it. Both look a little ominous today.
The Cut divides Theatron in half, separating us in the North from the Player worshippers of the South.
In the center between them is the only shared territory, the District, which sits low and flat like the bottom of a bowl.
It’s a wildly unhappy marriage, and probably the only place you can find a temple dedicated to the Players just two streets away from an apothecary that sells the Eleutheraen gold that kills them.
“Did you miss me, Jak?” I call mockingly to the usual guard from the footbridge as I approach the closest gateway.
Jak’s face pinches at my greeting. “Riven. Still alive, I see.” He doesn’t sound pleased by this, nor amused by the little bow I offer in response.
“When do you think it’ll be?” I ask.
He huffs a humorless laugh, but there’s a strained edge to it. “I’ve heard guesses ranging from three days to three months, based on their patterns. What, you want in? Some of us are taking bets.”
“I’ve lost enough on the Players, thanks,” I say, throwing a look to the black water below, and the wall rising out of it.
Despite its name, the wall wasn’t built high to keep the Players out.
It was built low, sealed with Eleutheraen gold to ward off Players.
I’ve heard rumor that the Cut gained its name because they dug so deep that they accidentally severed Theatron in two.
I hope it does run that deep. That it’s enough.
The gate groans open, and Jak takes several exaggerated steps backward to offer me an extra-wide berth. Everyone acts scared to catch what I have. Like the Player magic that poisoned me will simply leap into anyone who gets too close.
I ignore him and tug my coat tighter as I pass over the other side of the footbridge.
The District of Dionysus greets me with a strange mix of activity—some shoppers make panicked last-minute purchases, while others seem to be putting on a show of indifference to the news, like the world didn’t shift under the weight of a single announcement—or maybe that’s just denial.
It isn’t hard to spot the exuberant Playhouse worshippers flocking into shops to purchase offerings of jewelry and fine wine. Though that isn’t particularly new.
I cast a sideways glance at the news racks as I go, full of sensational headlines about the Playhouse’s looming return:
500-year treaty ends, terror begins; will the playhouse breach the cut?
no new agreement reached with players; north braces for attack
playhouse to return to district for first time in 15 years: what we know so far
“SPOTLIGHT FALLS ON PLAYER JUDE!” bellows a newspaper hawker over the piercing whistle of the nearby Diolkos Railway.
Enormous, marble statues of famous Players line my path as I breeze past a man trying to barter a playbill signed by the entire cast. Across the street, another woman rivals him, selling copies of the Playhouse treaty.
I duck low while passing the courthouse, just nearly taking an elbow to the face, but my eyes graze over a few of the signs as I round the corner.
NO PLAYERS
Our world is not your stage
The protests have spread almost as quickly as the Playhouse’s announcement.
I feel eyes on me as I pass by the most recently erected statue, built in honor of their Lead Player, Jude Stepharros.
Face chiseled to sharp angles, hair so artfully tousled it almost looks as if it wasn’t made of stone.
It stands some twenty feet tall at the center of a rippling fountain, rare gems and coins cluttering the water below his carved sandals—offerings.
A dreadful waste, if you ask me. I consider dipping my hand in the water to swipe a few, but I’ve heard doing so can invoke all sorts of terrible curses.
I can barely afford the curse I have.
“Riven! Riven Hesper, you come here,” rasps an all-too-familiar voice that catches me mid-step. I turn. The words don’t come from the statue, mind you, but from the man propped against its base.
Haris. He’s dressed in the same garish robes as always—a discarded costume from the Playhouse that he claims was as red as the auditorium curtain when he snatched it, though with time it’s faded to the same gray as everything else.
I can’t recall a time I’ve seen him wear anything different.
Once, when I brought him an old change of clothes my brother left behind, Haris looked at me like I’d suggested stripping off his own skin.
“Hi, Haris,” I say, wrestling my bag from my shoulder. “I was just looking for you.”
Haris may be a Playhouse fanatic, but he’s also just about the closest thing I have to a friend, the only person around here who doesn’t call me cursed.
In fact, he’s under the bizarre impression that I’m blessed to have been touched by a Player.
Granted, the rest of them assume I was deemed unworthy, and that’s why the monster’s golden blood is slowly killing me. Maybe they’re right.
As far as Playhouse worshippers go—Revelers, we call them—Haris is hardly the worst I’ve encountered.
He smiles, revealing rows of even teeth as he whispers, “It’s coming, Riven.”
Pity fiddles at my heartstrings. Every performance he attended—thirty-two, he claims—is written on his face. The same telltale sign of every Reveler: a filmy coating of gold over each pupil.
During one of the Playhouse’s tours, Haris literally followed the theatre as it traveled from city to city. On foot for hundreds of miles. At night, he camped outside its gates, leaving the Players expensive offerings with every last bit of coin to his name, including the deed to his house.
And worse, he couldn’t help it; Haris was never marked.
“I can hear them,” he whispers, grinning wider and raising his most prized possession: a hand mirror. He prays to the Players through it daily. “They’re coming home.”
If I wasn’t marked, I’d probably look and talk just like him.
“Oh, I’ve heard,” I mutter and glance up from rifling through my bag. “That’s why I’m here—I brought you something.” Now, where did I put it…
Most days, I bring Haris whatever food I can hustle out of the house without too much notice—he’s often so absorbed with thoughts of the Players it doesn’t occur to him to eat. Today, though, I brought him something even more important.
“You’ll take me to it, won’t you? You’ll come with me,” Haris presses, eyes narrowing. “You and me, we’re different—but you understand, don’t you? Friends understand.”
“The Playhouse isn’t even here yet,” I remind him, and spot the shine of a thin chain gleaming at the bottom of my bag. Ah! Found it.
Pinching the chain, I extract the pendant and approach him.
“Please, Riven!” Haris wails, stretching his hands out to me.
The sleeves of his robes fall back, revealing the loose skin of his forearms, sagging off the bone like bread dough.
Puffy, pink-white scars spell out JUDE STEPHARROS.
I swallow back the bile that rises in my throat.
We’re both victims of the Players, just in different ways.
“It’s finally coming home,” he pleads.
“Here,” I say, and bend to offer the pendant dangling from my fist. “This is going to help keep you safe—wear it if you go near the Playhouse. Especially if you see one of them, okay? I got it from the Merchant Ring. It’s pressed with Eleutheraen gold and should—”
At the word, his face twists with rage, and I barely have time to react before he lunges and grabs hold of my wrist so quickly that I cry out in surprise, the pendant clattering to the ground.
“Take me to it!” he keens. “Bring me to the Players—” His nails dig into my skin, and I gasp.
My wrist breaks mercifully from his grip, and I stagger backward, falling on the stone.
My skin crawls like spiders are skittering over my body. I think I might throw up.
I hate being touched. Hate it. I always have.
Catching my breath, I get to my feet again and study my palms. The pale, waxy color is already bruising a deep purple. Damn it. Bruises, sprains, everything takes longer and longer to heal these days—if not just failing to heal altogether. Like the poison has made my body forget how.
Wiping my hands over my coat like I can shake off the touch, I turn to leave. I still have another stop to make before I get home, and even I know better than to hang around the District after dark.
But as I gather myself, I throw one more concerned look over my shoulder at Haris, who coughs and settles his filmy gaze on me. Then grins wide as he raises that hand mirror. Like he knows something I don’t.
“It’s coming home, Riven.”