Act I Scene III
By the time I reach the Dionysian Records, my lungs feel like they’re full of pine cones. Aunt Cassia will be inside the archive temple—but at the moment, I’d prefer to sulk peacefully alone.
I drop onto the lowest step of the temple to rest, dragging in sharp breaths. From here, the slope spills out into the District below, washed gold by the last sliver of sun.
Stretching my legs, I peer over my shoulder and up the steps at the statue of Dionysus towering from the top of the temple. I nod at the dead god politely. He doesn’t nod back. Statues rarely do.
Some people still pray to the gods for rescue. I stopped doing that a long time ago.
Dionysus is dead. I don’t think help is coming.
At best, I think, the gods are cruel for not intervening. At worst, they’re cowards for abandoning us with the Players. Though I’ve heard rumor of places far across the sea that found themselves plagued by monsters even worse than ours.
And right now, I just want to yell at someone. A statue will do.
“If you were going to bleed out, did you have to do it in Theatron?” I ask Dionysus. “Surely there are nicer mountaintops to die on.”
Dionysus’s long, chiseled arms do not move, eternally stretched out to the world. I take it as a shrug.
“Please don’t be insulted,” I tell Dionysus while studying my nails, which have started turning a funny gray color over the past few weeks. “If I bled out on a mountain, I probably wouldn’t have expected monsters to come out of my blood, either.”
Dionysus does not laugh at this, unmoved as a harsh wind blows through the columns and down the steps.
“One of your Players caused this, by the way.” I gesture vaguely at my crumbling self, not that I think Dionysus would care. “It didn’t start out so bad. Some nausea. Headaches. A bad case of influenza, the healers thought.”
Then came the aches that dwelled deep in my bones. A chill that settled over my skin unchanged by layers of wool or the heat of a fire. A tiredness eternally unsatisfied by sleep. No amount of nourishment added a thread of muscle to my bones.
The Player’s poison leeched the life from my flesh. I shudder, remembering her golden blood all over my hands.
I didn’t truly start to panic until the aches and pains dulled, though, overtaken instead by a vengeful ice that blustered through my veins like a winter storm and made my bones seize like frozen branches.
My body seems to have descended into the afterlife and left me behind.
As if to prove that point, the ground suddenly sways, dips beneath me, and my stomach lurches. I clutch the steps, my nails scraping the stone. Am I dizzy?
No. It’s the ground. The ground is really rumbling, shaking like it’s about to tear open.
A strange darkness rips through the clouds overhead, spreading like ink in water.
The world trembles again, and this time, shouts rise from the nearby Merchant Ring.
My heart thuds against my ribs as my gaze darts down the hill to the District.
Golden light blooms in the center like the rising sun. I wince, choking on a sweet, cloying tang in the air that tastes vaguely of perfume.
Move. I should not be here. The thoughts come in fragments.
Then I see it.
A sinister palace rushes up from the soil as if emerging from Hades itself. Its white marble towers tear free of the earth, roots dangling, clumps of dirt cascading down tiers that must span fifteen stories.
Hundreds of enormous columns glittering with bands of gold surface next, lining the center dome like soldiers standing guard, a haze of pale dust billowing in their wake. At its top, the carved shape of a crow, its marble wings stretched in eternal flight.
The Playhouse.
It’s returned. Today.
Now.
I should be frightened—I know this from my upbringing. The sight is unnatural and unholy, stealing the breath from my lungs. An intense draw to the Playhouse that I attribute to years of rage blankets my mind.
But for a strange moment, all is silent. The world seems empty, void of anyone or anything aside from me and the entity that ruined my future and stole my father’s. Its glowing stained glass windows peer back at me in the distance like the golden eyes of a beast.
What did you do to me?
A heartbeat later, chaos fractures down below. Worshippers from South Theatron race toward the Playhouse like moths to a flame, shrieking with glee. Meanwhile, those who bear marks scatter back toward the safety of the North’s wall, screaming at loved ones to follow.
“Riven!”
I startle at the sound of my name. Aunt Cassia flies down the steps of the archive temple, waving for me to stand, but even she pauses to take in the sight, frozen until she calls, “On your feet—now.”
The urgency in her face has me scrambling to push myself up, stumbling toward the steps after her.
But halfway there, I don’t know what possesses me. I can’t help but glance back—in time to see another burst of buttery yellow light. Warm wind breathes across my face, curling through the cool air.
The Playhouse doors have opened.
“Ladies and gentlemen!”
The voice is not human. It’s thunderous, beckoning, and everywhere all at once. It shimmers across the clouds and rumbles in the ground. Somewhere, a thrilled audience of Revelers shriek greetings. In their joyous cries, I make out a name: Silenus.
The Playhouse director.
He scares me almost as much as the Players. In some ways, even more. My hand hovers over my coat pocket, where my father’s golden knife hides.
“Thank you for joining us this fine afternoon!” Silenus’s voice thrums low, a rich baritone that strangely reminds me of a grandfather clock. It must project halfway across the city. I almost think I can feel it inside my own heart.
My mind goes to the solagraphs in the District Museum. Silenus is always pictured the same way: a head of thick white hair, fair skin, elegant spectacles, a fine suit. Smile lines etched into a face that has not aged in hundreds of years.
And always, always in his hands: a small leather-bound book, pages that emit a warm, soft glow. “The Script,” it’s called, an item long suggested to have belonged to Dionysus himself. I can’t imagine anything less than a god’s treasured possession could give Silenus the power to direct the Players.
“Wonderful people of Theatron, it is always a privilege to be amongst old friends. But none of us are here for sentiment, I understand.” He laughs softly, but it seems to echo through the sky.
My legs cramp as Cassia and I fly up the steps to the temple, and I push myself to keep going.
“Such wicked rumors lately.” A sigh. “But the Playhouse is most happy to negotiate a new agreement with our friends in the North as our revered treaty comes to an end. But! In exchange—”
I can’t catch my breath. My lungs burn.
“We expect utmost cooperation as we hold our most beloved tradition here in the District, one that was so unluckily disrupted last time.”
At this, Cassia freezes. My mind races. Beloved tradition—
“We are proud to announce a casting call—and a Great Dionysia!”
My heart stutters, shocked as an explosion of cheers rocks the District.
A casting call.
The words send a shudder through me. I don’t know much about casting calls, only that they involve a mortal taking the place of a Player.
Becoming one. Through the most brutal and violent of means, should they win—part of a five-day festival known as the Great Dionysia.
A massive spectacle, during which the Players are released from the Playhouse and allowed to roam freely.
Cassia whirls, her eyes widening.
“Perhaps a new Player stands amongst us here today,” the director calls. “We hope to see you all later this evening for this most exciting opportunity.”
A great cracking sound splits the air as the Playhouse doors slam shut.
If anxiety were a person, I think it would look a lot like my aunt Cassia right now.
She made us wait inside the Dionysian Records for several hours before she’d so much as entertain the idea of letting me go home, claiming it would be safer once the Revelers are inside the Playhouse for the casting call and not causing trouble outside of it.
Then again, if I devoted as much time as she does to studying Theatron’s darkest corners of history, of what has happened and what could happen again, I might be anxious, too.
But Cassia says our best weapon against the Playhouse is our knowledge of it, devoting her life to protecting what historical records the Players failed to destroy.
“Let me take you home,” she says. “While the Revelers busy themselves with all this casting call foolishness.”
My pride wants to be stubborn about accepting the arm she offers, but the ice twisting around my stiff spine wins. I loop my arm through her sleeve, just this once.
As we depart the Dionysian Records, my eyes stall curiously on a set of oak doors that remain forever locked. Unlike most, I know what sleeps beyond them: empty storybooks. Thousands, robbed of their words, their contents devoured by the Playhouse.
Which is for the best. Stories are nothing but lies. Tools of manipulation for Players.
“Gods damn it all,” Cassia mutters under her breath, taking in the empty streets. The Revelers are nowhere to be seen, and anyone North of the Cut has clearly made themselves scarce.
“I’m pretty sure they already have,” I point out. “What do we do?”
The question feels vague and awkward under the circumstances. The papers have speculated of the Players’ return to the District for ages, long before their bulletin confirmed it, but a casting call—
It doesn’t make sense.
“Absolutely nothing,” Cassia replies, like the answer has been waiting on her tongue for a while. “We knew they were coming. Stay home, stay away from mirrors. Let the Players have their bloodbath. It’s no business of the North.”
Unless the Players will make it our business. They’ve been confined to South Theatron for nearly five hundred years, an agreement they were forced into. And they haven’t risked coming this close to the Cut in over a decade.
“I don’t see how a building itself can move.” It doesn’t seem possible.
“It can’t. But buildings are also built,” Cassia replies glumly. “The Playhouse never was. It just appeared around the same time as the Players.” She shakes her head. “One big illusion, if you ask me.”
I think for a moment. “What if the Players try to cross the Cut—”
“Let’s not dwell on what is not yet a problem.”
Not yet. A half-truth. But I’ve played mental gymnastics with my mark for as long as I’ve had it.
I can think an untruth to myself easily enough.
On occasion, I’ve written out a few lies just to see if I could.
But every time I open my mouth to speak a barefaced lie, the words never seem to find my tongue.
And right now, there is something Cassia is trying to avoid admitting.
“While I do not approve of you traveling into the District alone,” Cassia begins, running a hand over her slicked-back hair. New threads of white peek out of the auburn. “I have something to show you.”
She peers down the quiet side street we turn onto, her eyes narrowed at the dimming light. Then, she extracts what looks like a faded solagraph from her pocket.
The Player depicted in the image has a sharp grin and silver-blond hair that tumbles down her back. Searing eyes that look like they might burn through the paper.
My shoulders slump. I’ve probably studied the Players almost as obsessively as Cassia has and don’t recognize this one.
Much of my childhood was spent immersed in their histories, a means of distraction when kids my own age stopped including me in their games.
In a strange way, the Players’ faces are as familiar as those of old friends.
Loneliness does strange things to your brain.
“This is Player Iris—one of the cast members executed in Syrene,” Cassia explains. “It’s been suggested that some of the cast could have escaped the destruction—if she is the one who poisoned you, it’s possible that—”
“That’s not her.” I shake my head, picturing the guilty Player’s face. “I know what I saw.”
The only thing more infuriating than being cursed by a Player is being cursed by a Player who doesn’t exist. I should know. I’ve studied every gold-encrusted inch of the Playhouse’s history, searching for answers in its chronicle of lies. I have learned the faces of all its remaining cast members.
There are five Players left.
The Player I saw as a child—whoever she was—is not among them.
There’s no record of her. Then again, there’s no record of someone being poisoned as I have, either. Only cases of minds tormented with never-ending songs, or claims of madness evoked by Playhouse performances.
My curse, though—this strange, slow decay that rots me from the inside out—it’s an anomaly. One that Player is surely responsible for.
Come with me or you will suffer.
Cassia frowns, slides the picture back in her pocket. “I’ll keep looking, Riv.”
I drag a hand through my hair and laugh bitterly when a few brunette strands fall right out, floating to the ground. That started happening about a week ago. “Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”