Act I Scene XVII
“They must have every piece ever worn in here,” says Thyone, moving between costume racks ahead of me. Her brother, Phileas, pinches expensive suits and elaborate dresses as we go.
“Do you think we’ll get to wear these?” Phileas asks with wonder in his voice.
I hope not, I think, eyeing a particularly gaudy contraption with a train the size of my bedroom at home.
The costume wing is a yawning golden chamber, two stories up from the dining hall, jam-packed with thousands of opulent fabrics and colors hanging upon long, mahogany rods.
One wall is stacked high with bolts of silk, gossamer, leather, and velvet.
The opposite is lined with mirrors and pedestals.
In between, a frightening display of mannequins dressed in costumes.
Even the mannequins are built to the Players’ muscular statures. My mind wanders once more to the test ahead. One Jude is certain I won’t survive.
“When do you think we’ll see the prop room?” Phileas wonders aloud.
I’m wondering the same thing. I need to get my hands on that Eleutheraen arrow.
“Touch someone else’s prop, costume, or otherwise, and you’ll have to answer to me,” replies an elegant, humorless voice.
I look up from the red coat I’ve been pocketing a gold button from to see a tall man with a broad chest and large framed glasses.
“Or the Prop Master. And I promise you, Marigold is scarier.”
Noted.
CICERO: “You can call me Cicero. I’m one of your costume designers.” He eyes the three of us. “They’re sending you in groups? Oddly considerate for the Players. All right, come along.”
I cough, lowering my voice as I follow the costumer.
“If one of the Players—” I pause, choosing my words carefully, sidestepping a lie.
Jude sent that arrow down to the Prop Master last night.
Marigold. “If one of the Players asked me to retrieve something from the Prop Master, how would I do that?”
Cicero stops short, turns. The pure and utter alarm etched into his expression is decidedly not comforting. “Marigold? Now, which of the Players did you anger so badly to deserve that fate?”
So the stories are true.
“She’s real?” Thyone pipes up. “Is she really more beautiful than the Players?”
“If you value your life, you won’t let the Players hear you say that,” Cicero says with a harsh laugh and continues down the aisle. “She was human once, I’m told.”
The most beautiful woman in Theatron, according to most books.
Or she was a few hundred years ago.
“What…what is she now?” I try to ask casually, though the nervous, high pitch the question comes out in doesn’t do me any favors.
Cicero turns and raises an eyebrow at me. “I promise you don’t want to find out.”
Before I can push for answers, he ushers us onto the pedestals, his lips immediately returning to their pressed expression whenever he stops speaking.
“You’re going to be a problem.” He pinches one of my shoulders buried under Galen’s jacket, and I cringe.
“What is this supposed to be?” He flicks my collar.
“Take it off. How do you expect me to measure you?” He waves a finger between the twins.
“You two, as well. You think I have all the time in the world? Dionysus have mercy.”
I fold my arms protectively over my chest. My mark itches in warning under the top button of my jacket.
If anyone sees my mark, I’m done for.
CORA: “Give them a break, Cicero.” A woman with a low bun of perfectly silver hair and a long, pointed nose appears at his side. “He’s right, though. We might as well fit you for a potato sack measuring you in this.”
Another costume designer, then. “I—uh,” I start as Cicero brushes by to wrap a measuring tape around Phileas’s neck.
“Shy, Alistaire?” teases Thyone, already halfway undressed.
The silver-haired woman laughs. “There are no secrets in the theatre, especially when it comes to costume changes.” I take a defensive step away from her.
Cora’s head tilts. “Dear, there are plenty of things to be afraid of in the Playhouse. I’m not one of them,” she adds more pressingly.
“At least this coat? It’s very large on you. ”
“Cora?” sings a familiar voice. Emerging from a row of sapphire-beaded costumes is Jude. “I hate to be a bother, but have you seen the atrocious stitching on my combat uniform? I refuse to be seen in it.”
Exhaustion falls across her face. “Again?” she asks.
“Yes, that was my thought as well,” Jude says primly as the woman throws down her measuring tape and hurries off through the maze of costumes, muttering about Players and vanity.
For some reason, I expect Jude to stay and tell me how to get out of this before someone sees my mark.
But when he sweeps back through the costume wing after the silver-haired woman, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised he exclusively came to complain.
On my own, then. Though I’m not plotting my grand escape for more than thirty seconds before the silver-haired woman returns.
“Heron is on it,” Cora calls to Cicero, who rolls his eyes and mutters something about tearing all the stitches out of Jude’s uniforms so he can’t complain about them anymore.
Without pretense, the woman tugs at my jacket. She doesn’t look surprised when I pull away from her with a scowl and, to my shock, says, “It’s me, Alistaire.”
Her eyes flash gold, then dull back to gray just as quickly. My mouth falls open. “Jude?”
The silver-haired woman—Jude, apparently—nods. Before I can ask questions, he turns my shoulders back toward the looking glass, and I’m not sure if I cringe more at the touch or at my reflection.
JUDE: “Arius tells me you’re desperately missing me. I’m so sorry to deny you my presence this morning, but I’ve been out bargaining for your life.”
I whirl around, horrified. “You told Sil.”
“Not to be morbid, Alistaire, but if I told him, you wouldn’t be here in one piece right now. Say, I risk my neck borrowing one of Mattia’s costumes for you, and you insist on covering it up with this?”
I hug my arms over my jacket. “It’s too big anyway,” I say and kick a leg out to emphasize where the scarlet fabric bundles at my knees. Though maybe I’ve grown a little fond of the color.
“Well, your new costumes will be too big as well if I can’t measure you.” He reaches past the mirror and snags what I can only describe as a glorified nightgown hanging behind it. “It’s a slip. Same as they’re wearing.” He nods to the other auditionees. “Be quick about it.”
I snatch the flimsy excuse for fabric out of his hands as Jude steps away, but taking off Galen’s jacket feels like discarding my armor.
Somewhere, a few costume racks away while I change, Jude complains loudly in the costume woman’s voice to Cicero about how “poor Arius’s performance was in last week’s show” and that “Sil really should have given that role to the far more talented Lead Player.”
By the time he returns, I’m making pitiful attempts to arrange my hair to cover the mark at my neck and pondering what the hell the point of a slip even is.
JUDE: “Stop wincing away from the mirror. They only do that North of the Cut.”
I reluctantly shift back to the glass, palm angled over my mark while Jude plucks a measuring tape from a sewing box and cinches it around my shoulders, calling measurements to Cicero.
“I can get you out of this part. But I won’t be able to help you in stage combat.
Turn this way.” The tape wraps around my ribs next, and Jude stills, looking a little sick.
His eyes flash up to mine, down again, and then, gritting his teeth, he calls more numbers out to Cicero, who swears loudly at the measurement.
I shrug off the strange reaction, focusing on what must be a perfect imitation of the costume woman. Everything down to the beauty mark above Cora’s lip is intact. “Did you—” I’m not sure how to ask this. “Hurt her? Cora?”
Jude blinks up at me with Cora’s face. “Are you asking if I’ve skinned a woman in less than thirty seconds?
That would take me at least ten minutes to do.
” Finding no humor in my face, he rolls his eyes in a distinctly Jude-expression.
“No, Alistaire, I did not skin anyone. It’s called Mimicry.
You’ll learn it, too, if you survive today. Which you won’t, at this rate.”
I’ve read of Mimicry, but like Reality Suspension, the North doesn’t have an inkling of what it entails. From the stories, I was inclined to believe the worst.
RIVEN: “Jude, what is…” I throw a suspicious glance at Thyone, paranoid someone will hear. “What is Craft binding?”
Jude raises an eyebrow. “Something you cannot do with that mark of yours. Oh! That reminds me.” He reaches into his back pocket and places an item in my palm. “A gift.”
I examine the small silver blade between my fingers as he goes on.
“I asked Sil to shift the assessments. You don’t stand a chance if Reality Suspension is first, which it is, since he refused me.
So, when you slash the seal of your mark, do so with that—it’s prop metal.
Shouldn’t hurt as badly, and certainly better than that atrocious gold blade you were waving around—”
He snatches his foot away from my aim, barely in time as the blade comes down hard, spearing through the wooden pedestal. I straighten, lean forward, and whisper, “Make another mention of slashing my mark, and I’m taking one of those pretty golden eyes.”
“So you think they’re pretty?” Jude asks wryly. I frown. “If you get yourself killed, it’s on you, then. If not only for your sake, but for—”
RIVEN: “For what? Yours?” I restrain the laughter catching in my throat. “Let me be clear, Jude. We might have a bargain, but I don’t care what happens to you.”
I startle, confused by the twinge in my throat.
JUDE: “You know? I’m starting to think you don’t like me much. And everyone likes me. I’m delightful.”
RIVEN: “I hate you.”
Jude’s costume slips, gold bleeding through the gray eyes. Abruptly, he goes back to measuring, and a brush of skin draws a yelp from both of us. “Why does your skin always feel as though it’s been dunked in ice chips?”
“Why does yours always feel like hellfire?” I spit back.
He stares hard at me for a moment, then at my mark. “You don’t hate me.”
Gods above. He’s so used to being adored, he can’t handle this.
RIVEN: “Jude, I’m not sure how many times we have to go through this, but I can’t lie to you. I do hate you. I hate this place. I hate all of it.” There again—that strange twinge.
Jude shakes his head at me, smile recovering, with too many teeth this time.
“What is the difference between love and hate? Just that one is the sweeter of passions. It’s a fine line in the theatre.
” He allows me no time to respond before vanishing back into the tunnels of clothing racks, leaving me to gather my jacket.
But when he’s gone and my anger cools, I peer at the blade and press a hand to my mark, starting to suspect only one of us will make it through the day.