Act I Scene XIII #2
Jude nods. “One of the best, he claims. Better poisoner, though. Probably took a hundred lives before he ever came here.”
My understanding is that’s why Arius came to the Playhouse—a last resort to escape hanging after being caught helping those who asked him to poison their abusive partners. Some sources suggest he got carried away and extended his little hobby to whoever irked him. He didn’t have much to lose.
“Oh, and if you hear him sing, plug your ears. He’s known for his skill in Compulsion, particularly during—”
“The Battle at Melpomene Shoreline,” I say numbly.
In my head, my eyes sweep across a page detailing the massacre.
“He sang a song so convincing, an entire army marched itself off a cliff.” I sniff in disgust. “They say the Players went down to the shore later to collect the bones and turn them into props.”
Jude chuckles. “You know, I think we might still have some of those in the prop room.”
The wheels spin faster in my head. I need to get out of here, bargain or no bargain. But how…
“Let me do the talking. Focus on making a good impression,” Jude murmurs as we approach the Players, where the next two auditionees seem to be undergoing interrogation. I vaguely note that they’re obviously siblings, a boy and a girl with the same black eyes; fair, narrow faces; and icy blond hair.
Part of me strangely longs to speak to them, ask why they auditioned together when they both can’t possibly leave as two. Or at all.
I scold myself and look away. I can’t be that desperate for friends.
TITUS: “Enough! We get the idea. You both have dreams.” He rolls his eyes and waves a hand. “Dismissed. Go make friends.” His voice drips with condescension. “Or don’t. I don’t care.”
“That was rude, Titus,” chides Arius as the siblings scatter, his words welding together like soft, spun sugar.
“Boring me is rude,” Titus retorts.
Jude nudges me forward, a few paces away from the Players now. “Like I said,” he whispers in my ear. “Let me do the talking.”
He wants me to stay quiet, to do as he says. Because he certainly wouldn’t want me to…
Embarrass him.
An idea ignites in my head.
Players are vain creatures. Prideful. Ego is everything.
I turn to Jude. “Yes, Titus is very big and frightening!” I yell loudly. “I would be scared of him, too!”
Not technically a lie. Only an implication.
If eyes could kill, Jude’s would have turned me to ash several times over as every head turns in our direction. Titus bursts into uproarious laughter. Before Jude can so much as open his mouth to defend himself, I veer a sharp right and march over to the closest banquet table.
Maybe he won’t be as keen on keeping me if I’m a giant thorn in his side.
JUDE: “Alistaire, where are you go—”
I glare daggers at him while sliding a rather large platter of expensive-looking spiced truffles off the table edge. The porcelain shatters loudly.
Jude swears, prowling forward as I go for a wine basin next, toppling that over, too.
Right onto his shoes.
Now he looks ready to throw me off the terrace, but before my parade of chaos can continue, a voice calls out, “Arius, you’re in my chair.”
Player Parrish jingles when she walks, charms of silver fastened around her wrists and ankles, a girlish spring in her step.
And rust-red stains on her palms, which she wipes on her pleated cream dress.
I don’t need Jude’s commentary to know she has one of the bloodiest histories of them all. Parrish bounces over to a chorus of Where have you been? As an answer, she presents a box from her pocket and pops it open.
My jaw drops, revulsion churning in my stomach.
Inside the box are several…bloody teeth?
“I needed to retrieve a place to put these!” she chirps to a series of rolled eyes and groans.
ARIUS: “Gods above, Parrish.” He scoots a seat away from her. “You can’t keep telling auditionees this is a requirement for Playhouse entry.”
I’m going to be sick.
PARRISH: “They aren’t from an auditionee.” She pouts at her cast. “But imagine how lovely they’ll look with the rest of my collection in my rooms!”
TITUS: “Don’t take this the wrong way, Parrish, but I wouldn’t enter your rooms if my own fate were trapped inside.”
My mind grazes briefly over what I’ve read of Parrish. In the arena, she made her opponent’s death slow, pulling them apart in pieces and threatening to give them to spectators in the audience.
She laughs like a crow, anklets tinkling as she plops down next to Arius, who busies himself with combing his fingers through that golden mane of hair. “They’re from the imposter. Sil said I could keep them.”
Imposter. I straighten, remembering Jude’s comment about Dorian’s “sheep” being slaughtered—spies sent in under the guise of auditioning. My blood runs cold.
I’m marked. The daughter of the dead Peacemaker. What will they do to me if they find out—when they find out…
A hand pinches my sleeve, ushers me away from my mess. “Now,” Jude growls. “What will it take to get you to quit destroying things and act like a civilized person?”
I return a lethal glare. “Release me from the bargain.”
PARRISH: “Have I missed anything exciting?” She scrunches her nose, smattered with freckles that shimmer like stardust.
TITUS: “Yes, indeed!” He studies his nails. “Jude’s little hyena in the corner has been the most entertaining part of the night. We think she might try and kill him next.”
All the Players turn to me, and I clutch the railing.
“Speaking of,” Titus prompts with a wolfish grin. “What have we here, Jude?”
Does he recognize me? I wonder and immediately regret calling attention to myself. Can he see my father’s face in mine? Can he have been the one who killed—
“Were none of the breathing auditionees good enough for you?” Titus’s tone turns cruel. “Whose grave did you rob to drag that into the Playhouse?”
I grind my teeth. Like the others, Titus is devastatingly handsome, and the comment strikes a chord.
“Watch your mouth, Titus.” Jude marches forward, shoes squelching with the wine I spilled. He points at me. “Sweetest girl I met in my whole life, on my honor.”
Titus snorts. “What honor—”
“This way, Alistaire.” Jude motions me forward, a warning in his eyes.
I make no movement and spit in his direction.
Arius chokes on his wine. “Gods, what have you done to the girl, Jude? Anger in that one.”
“Anger is an actor’s best asset,” Jude defends, flashing a smile.
“Indeed.” The steady voice comes from Mattia. The oldest Player watches me with interest now, which I gather is a bad thing.
Resentment bolsters in my chest. Paranoid, I look away, more and more certain she knows who I am. Her cutting tone. The searching way of her eyes.
“Allow me to prove she’s the gentlest little fawn you’ve ever laid eyes on,” Jude announces, then turns to me. “Be nice,” he utters, seething. “Act normal.”
I pinch my eyes at him. “No.”
“My, you are ghostly, aren’t you?” Parrish calls as Jude throws me a biting smile that clearly reads: Walk. I return one I hope conveys: You too. Off a cliff.
TITUS: “Is one ghost in the Playhouse not enough for you, Jude?”
Jude stops cold beside me.
“Ghost?” I ask stiffly, defying Jude’s order not to speak.
PARRISH: “Gene Hunt’s ghost! You have her old dressing room.” She makes a tsk sound when my jaw drops. “You haven’t told her, Jude.”
Ghost? She can’t be serious.
“You can have that portrait removed if you like,” offers Arius while I pin a new look of shock and betrayal on Jude. Behind him, Parrish volunteers to keep the dead Player’s portrait in her rooms instead.
“There isn’t actually a ghost,” Jude says before I can ask. “Just a myth. Gene is dead.”
TITUS: “They say your name is Hunt as well? Why, what are the odds?”
ARIUS: “Jude, feed this girl before she passes out.”
RIVEN: “I don’t want—”
MATTIA: “Why are you here?” Her voice slices through the flurry of conversation.
The group falls silent at her accusing tone. Mattia keeps one eye on me, her maroon-painted lips pressed together, sending a shiver through my blood. She knows. And she’s daring me to acknowledge it.
“I…” I search for something to say. A lie. But nothing surfaces, my tongue bound to truth.
Titus stands to a full, terrifying height that rivals Jude’s. He cocks his head, and a few strands of dark hair fall loose across his face. “Well, Alistaire?”
ARIUS: “Leave her, Titus.”
TITUS: “I’m feeling rambunctious, Arius. I want to play.”
Jude leans onto the back of one of the couches, crosses his arms. “Play with an audience. She isn’t an option.”
“The world is my audience, and I’ll not settle for less,” Titus says through his teeth, then turns to me. “Tell me, Alistaire! Why are you here? Because it certainly isn’t to win.”
My heart hammers furiously as Titus saunters closer, until I’m enmeshed in the cloud of rich perfume he must have bathed in. Jude is throwing me wide-eyed looks that scream, Answer the damn question.
How did my father do this? Walk into a cage with these monsters and negotiate peace with them. I can barely keep my legs steady.
Craning my neck up, I meet the sparkle in Titus’s gaze, sizing me up with the curiosity of a cat that’s just spotted an injured mouse.
Don’t look a Player in the eye, I remember with startling clarity and drop my gaze.
Titus laughs. “What, do I not hold enough interest for you?” He clicks his tongue, offended. “Impolite, I say. Sour expression, too. Won’t you smile at least?”
“Fuck off,” I growl, then immediately panic.
What the hell possessed me to say that?
Jude’s eyes widen as he quickly pushes off the couch. Titus’s narrow.
Gods, Galen’s right. My temper is going to get me killed.
Titus’s fingers play at the blade at his belt. Jude’s posture suggests he’s about to pounce between us. “I could force you to cut yourself a whole new smile if I wished.”
The disturbing images of my attackers outside who did exactly that flash through my head.
Well. This is it, isn’t it.
Then it all seems to happen at once. A splinter of gold, like a shooting star, zips through the night behind Titus with a whoosh.
Titus’s smirk goes blank, his face full of shock, then rage, then agony as a scream erupts from his throat, the sound gut-wrenching and visceral as he crumples.
Confused, I stumble back as my eyes fall to the ankle he’s clutching.
To the shaft of an arrow sunken into the flesh above his heel, like a needle in a pincushion.
Chaos fractures the stillness.
I yelp as something collides with my back, knocking me to the ground, before registering Jude has pulled us both to the floor and is shouting at the other Players to follow suit.
Gold pours from Titus’s ankle like sunlight as he shouts every curse known to man.
I frantically scoot away to carve space between the injured Player and me as Arius dashes across the terrace, kneeling.
In soft tones, Arius instructs him to stay still, but Titus only howls louder when he wrenches the arrow out.
In the corner of my eye, auditionees rush messily for the stairs.
Escape. While Jude’s distracted. Hastily, I crawl for the stairs, the ice in my ribs feeling like splintered tree bark from the fall.
“Alistaire.” I peer over my shoulder at the sound of Jude’s voice, where he helps Arius tend to Titus. “Are you all right—?”
“Jude?” Arius interrupts, face white with worry as he extends the arrow in a clutched fist.
I study the golden tip. Eleutheraen gold, based on Titus’s reaction. Whoever shot that arrow shot to kill.
For a moment, the Players don’t seem nearly so invincible.
Jude unravels a crude note looped around the arrow and scans it with annoyance.
ARIUS: “Would you hold still? You’ll make it worse.”
TITUS: “Get off me. I’ll hold still when the bastard who shot this is—”
“Dorian. One of his followers, probably,” Jude concludes, crumbling the note in a fist. A smug smile tugs at my lips.
Apparently, not all of Dorian’s hunters came inside.
“Take this to the Prop Master and get Sil to kill the lights.” He hands the offending arrow to Mattia, who throws a concerned look at Titus before vanishing downstairs.
I watch her. With my knife gone, that arrow could be very useful for coaxing Jude out of this bargain and going home.
“I’ll cover us.” Jude’s tone sours. “Get Titus inside, and everyone meet me at the gates.” He spares me a glance before adding, “We’re departing a little early.”
The smile falls off my face as the Players file for the stairs, Arius and Parrish carrying Titus between them.
No. No. The Playhouse can’t leave until I get out—
I turn to plead my case once more, but Jude is on the move, irises glowing, as if someone has struck a match in each pupil. Gold pulses through the veins in his neck, through the hands he raises, crossing the terrace.
Then it begins: a great fog, too thick to find the stars above. It smothers the night, the entire Playhouse, in a vaporous wall. One by one, torches flicker out.
Then nothing—just the wailing of dismissed auditionees clutching onto the gates below in mist and darkness.
“Come now,” a voice says, and I startle to find Jude has reappeared behind me, his face back to normal. “Those arrows aren’t known to miss more than once.”
For my sake, I decide he’s exactly right.
Once I get my hands on that arrow, I won’t miss.