Act II Scene IX #2
It summons Players.
JUDE: “They belong to the Playhouse—”
RIVEN: “What about those?” I point past Jude’s head to a cavernous alcove of empty shelves looming eerily vacant by comparison to the rest.
Jude tenses. “Those aren’t available to us anymore.”
RIVEN: “Why not?”
JUDE: “We don’t know. There used to be more Players. Each death takes a toll on the Playhouse.”
The stories just vanished? “Where do they go?”
He frowns. “Probably back to the mortal world, to be abused and told poorly.”
That gentle rustling murmurs from the shelves again. Like spirits pacing the labyrinth. Ghosts. Gene Hunt flutters across my mind. Not a ghost. Alive.
Or alive enough to try to kill me, at least.
JUDE: “Here.” He plucks a book from the shelf and gestures to a dark mahogany table, but I stay where I am, watching distrustfully. “Whatever that question on your lips is, you might as well ask it.”
RIVEN: “Why did you pretend you didn’t see her? Gene.”
He saw her, too. I heard him tell Sil he saw her.
Jude blinks at me, unmoving. I stand my ground but let my gaze drift to the golden ring pierced through his nose instead. Looking Jude in the eye sometimes feels like staring directly into the sun.
JUDE: “Gene’s dead. Died in my arms. I remember it well.” He shrugs. “I don’t know what we saw. Now, please. Can we sit?”
I don’t believe him. But his apathetic expression tells me I’m not getting any more information. Stubbornly, I ignore the seat beside him and instead drop into the red velvet chair on the other side of the table, where a fireplace sputters embers at me.
JUDE: “I’m assuming you haven’t held a story before.”
RIVEN: “Does your atrocious script from yesterday count?”
JUDE: “The one you refused to read? No, it doesn’t.” I roll my eyes. “And that’s why we’re down here. I can’t have you raising Sil’s suspicion any further than you already have. We’ll start with this.”
He leans across the table and presses the book into my hands. It’s leather-bound and warm with golden lettering. The Last Spring. He taps the cover. “Do you know this story?”
I swallow, glaring at him. “I don’t know any stories.
” Most of the myths we have access to are regarding the Playhouse and generally presumed factual.
History. “We don’t live on lies where I come from.
” I try to thrust a sharp edge into my tone, but it comes out softer than I mean it to.
That’s what we’re taught. Stories are all lies. Harmful and ugly and manipulative.
But in spite of the angry sting dancing up my throat, I don’t put it down. My thumb rolls over the cover. They are lies, aren’t they? Stories are just one deception after another.
JUDE: “None?”
RIVEN: “When the first Players appeared from the well and took all its Craft, the storybooks were wiped clean, too. You Players swallowed the words and only passed them on to other Players.”
A question mark unintentionally tacks itself onto the end of my sentence as I take in the shelves around me. Suddenly, I can’t help but wonder. If stories belonged to us before the Players stole them away, doesn’t that mean there was a time when mortals like me held them, read them?
Were they bad then, too?
“Well, this story is based on history, so maybe it’ll be easier for you.” Jude reaches across the table and flips the cover open in my hands. “Go on,” he encourages. “Read.”
The book feels warm. Alive. Good.
After nearly a week in the Playhouse, I feel good. Better than I have since I can remember.
I focus on the first line, hearing it in my head, but it feels heavy on my tongue. “Once—once there was…” I stop, frustrated, and start over. By the third time, I slam the book shut and let my chair’s legs screech against the floor as I move to leave.
“That was good, Alistaire! That was good,” Jude calls after me, turning in his seat. The air in my lungs feels heavier, but something stirs inside. Something that wants to read, just a little more.
I pivot on my heel. Jude hasn’t moved, sitting patiently. Curiosity nudges at my mind.
“Why?” I ask.
Now he extends a hand heavy with golden rings. I stare but don’t take it. There’s a deep white scar etched into the top of his palm, running all the way to his wrist. I wonder when he managed to find the wrong side of an Eleutheraen blade. Players’ skin won’t scar by any other means.
“Because I have the most interesting theory.” He redirects his hand to the seat beside him, eyes glimmering. “And I’m not often wrong.”
I throw one more look at the exit. I know better.
Being down here is dangerous. Story is dangerous.
Jude is dangerous. Whatever envy I might have harbored over his behavior at the stage door last night was a fluke.
Even if I were some beautiful, mindless Reveler, I would know better than to fall for Jude’s charms. In fact, I’m lucky I’m not.
Clearly, she caught Jude’s attention, and I wouldn’t want that.
Furiously reassuring myself of this and feeling very justified over it, I march back, this time for the chair beside Jude.
He flips the book open again, placing one half in my hands, and I start at the crackle of energy that jumps from its pages.
Like the book has violently awoken, recognizing the touch of a Player.
That funny feeling squirms in my chest again when he braces one palm on the back of my chair and leans in to read with me.
JUDE the North would never—”
“Such moral high ground, you and the North have!” Jude laughs, a bitter edge to it. “When I was small, this group came to my parents’ home one day. Begged us to take them in, and we did. They waited until nightfall to make their attack.”
He describes the ordeal with little more interest than he’d discuss rehearsal.
“I don’t remember all of it. They bound us—me, my parents, my little sister—forced Eleutheraen gold down our throats: to cleanse us, they said.
Then slit my family’s necks.” He shrugs.
“Similar attacks across the city heralded the end for Thymele, long before your armies came. But please, tell me more about how much holier the North is than the rest of us.”
Silence stretches between us for a moment. “How did you escape?” I ask quietly.
“I don’t know.” Jude stares at the table. “It feels like I shouldn’t have. But I did, alone.”
Alone. For a strange moment, the word slices through my anger.
I hate Players, I remind myself. I hate Craft. I hate—
None of these thoughts are enough to stop my hand from reaching for Jude’s before common sense can catch up to me.
Jude goes still, eyes flickering to the place where my palm rests over his rings. Probably a breath from laughing and pulling away. So I do it for him, wrench free to tuck my hands into my lap before I can embarrass myself further.
He catches my hand instead and tugs it back, as if to argue with the thought, fingers closing firmly around mine. I can’t help but notice the sharp pinch of his Finders Keepers ring pressing into my skin, gleaming warmly in the light.
Jude might be horrible. Violent. A Player. But Cassia might have been right, too.
There’s no winner in war, and the North is far from innocent.
“I’m sorry,” I say, alarmed by my own words—that I mean them. I’m not sure why. I didn’t hunt down his family or force Eleutheraen gold down his throat.
Guilt drapes over my shoulders. I’m going to do something much worse to Jude.
Can I? I’m suddenly not as sure. He doesn’t look like an evil, emotionless monster in this light. He looks lost.
But monsters can look lost, too.
I succeed the second time I try to pull my hand away, and Jude clears his throat.
“So, no one’s taught you how to sing.”
I shake my head, desperate to get out of here all of a sudden. Somewhere far away from Jude and the heavy guilt building in my chest.
JUDE: “Mimic this sound.” His eyes shift, simmer to a brighter gold when he casts a soft, entrancing hum from his throat. Reluctantly, I try.
The note falls flat, cracks right in half. Then turns into a string of curses that sends Jude hollering with laughter. “Well, you might try breathing first. Again, yes?”
He takes a dramatic inhale for me to mimic and repeats the note.
I follow suit, and the sound feels smooth in my vocal cords, strong and easy.
Jude’s pitch goes up, and mine shadows. Then back down, and I follow again.
“There! Good!” he applauds, and in spite of myself, I laugh, the corners of my mouth pulling up for the first time in I’m not sure how long.
Something loosens in my chest. I feel ridiculous, in a nice sort of way.
A peculiar expression crosses Jude’s face. “You know, Alistaire,” he says, head tilting, “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you smile before.”
Just like that, my chest tightens again and I stiffen, defensive. “What of it?”
But Jude just loosely shrugs. “It was worth the wait.”
The selection of quips and insults I was preparing to hurl back at him shrivels. That almost sounded like a compliment. I think I’m supposed to say thank you.
But Galen’s stern warnings to never sing chime through my head instead, and I tense. Plucking the little book off the table, I go to return it to the shelf. That’s when I catch a peek at the spine and the words printed finely at the bottom, below the title:
Acceptance of Change
I look where Jude pulled the story from: a shelf with a large A engraved over it. Below it, more labels on the spines of each book.
Admiration, Agitation, Amazement, Amusement…
They go on and on. “Jude,” I say, quiet. “Say this is not what I think it is.”
These stories are organized. By their intended evils and manipulations.
When I turn accusingly back to him, Jude’s jaw tightens. He lifts his head proudly. “We’re Players. We’re the keepers of story, and we use them to—”
“That’s not your right!” I shout, voice clapping against the stone ceiling. “It’s true, then.” My eyes spin around the library, catching gold plates dotting every inch of it. “The audience doesn’t stand a chance. You choose what they feel. You manipulate our thoughts and emotions until—”
JUDE: “Why do you assume the worst for how we use them?” He makes a sweeping gesture around the shelves. “Don’t you think we’d have taken ownership of the entire world by now with access to this many stories if we wanted to?”
“Who’s to say you haven’t tried?” I snap, pointing to where my mark used to be. The mark that used to protect me from manipulation like…
My eyes fall back down to the book in my hand. “Are you using it on me—right now? To make me feel—”
Jude stands quickly. “No. No, Alistaire, I wouldn’t—”
RIVEN: “How many of these stories do Players know?”
JUDE: “I— It depends. I think Parrish only knows the ones she likes. Titus rarely follows the scripts anyway…”
RIVEN: “And how many do you know?”
Jude chews his lower lip. “Lead Player has to know all of them.”
Do you know where the word “actor” comes from, Riv? The memory of Galen helping me with my coursework as a child comes back with startling clarity. It traces back to the same root as “hypocrite.” Players costume their words just as much as their faces.
I turn my eyes to the shelves. Too tall, too many to count. All of them full with glossy tales, words coated in sugar to soften the manipulation of their magic. The vileness of Craft.
Jude steps toward me, but I back away. “It doesn’t matter how you use them,” I say. “This is power no one should have. Least of all creatures like you.” With that, I head for the stairs.
“You’ll be relieved to know that you’ll be home soon, Alistaire.”
The cold shift in his tone freezes my steps on the stairs. I turn.
“What?” I say.
Any remorse has vanished from his expression, replaced by that usual bored aloofness.
“That treaty your council so loves. That keeps us out.” There’s something in his eyes I can’t read as he tilts his head.
But I don’t like it. “They tracked its expiration rather poorly over its five hundred years.”
How wrong? It ends in four days when the Playhouse crosses into Syrene and I can—
I inhale, measuring my next question carefully. “And when does it end, then?”
Jude raises his chin. “It already has.”