Act II Scene X
“I know it! I know it!” squeals Parrish as Titus swaggers elegantly back and forth on top of the long banquet table. “You’re Sil!”
TITUS: “And we have a winner!”
ARIUS: “Only because you cheated.” Arius pins him with a withering glare as Titus slides into the seat and throws an arm over Mattia’s shoulders, which she immediately shrugs off. “We said no Craft in charades.”
TITUS: “Far be it from me to break the rules, Arius!”
ARIUS: “Your hair is still white.”
Titus twists his lips, hair fading back to black. “Oops.”
I pick from a bowl of candied plums by the railing, somehow hungry again after storming as far away from the Playhouse Archives as possible, which turns out to be the rooftop.
Jude lies, I remind myself. He lies all the time. He’s lying about the treaty, too. It doesn’t change anything. My plan will still work.
TITUS: “Alistaire, get over here! You fight like a Player. You might as well drink like one.” Reluctantly, I wander from my corner. “You wouldn’t happen to know where our least favorite prima donna is, would you? You two seem awfully close these days.”
I return a tight smile before remembering Jude specifically asked me not to tell anyone about bringing me to the Archives. So I say, “He was showing me the Archives. Probably still down there.”
Arius chokes on his wine. “The Archives?”
PARRISH: “Bound to learn the hard way about auditionees, that one. At best, they die.” She looks at me. “At worst, they don’t.”
TITUS: “Won’t matter. My girl Tig will see the light of the arena. You should have seen her in rehearsal today”—he gives me an unapologetic nod—“no offense, Alistaire.” Then turns back to the group. “Jude can count his days. His crown is mine.”
Bored of hearing about my impending doom, I drift back to my candied plums and ignore Titus’s boasting.
“You’re looking…well, Alistaire.”
I nearly knock the bowl over spinning around, alarmed—mostly because the words came from Mattia. Gods, how does she move like that? She could give Nyxene’s shadows a run for their money.
My brow knits in suspicion as I question both why that’s been said to me several times now and if that’s Mattia’s subtle way of indicating she recognizes something about me. Or rather, about my father.
Keen on not finding out, I turn my face to the city beyond the ledge and change the subject. “Must be strange, moving from one place to the next all the time.”
To my surprise, she joins me, leans her sculpted brown forearms onto the ledge, and sets a silver chalice between us.
“Depressing, more like,” she replies smoothly.
“We’ve been through every inch of this side of the Cut and hardly ever glimpsed any of it.
” She brings her chalice to her lips and drinks, leaving an echo of maroon lipstick on the silver.
“I came from this city at some point, I think.”
“At some point?” I ask, taken aback by the bitter edge cutting her tone—and still not trusting that Mattia came over here for a mere casual conversation.
“I haven’t walked those streets in hundreds of years. I had four sisters back then. Gone now, of course.” She shrugs, expressionless, blue-black braids falling over her shoulder. “If I could leave, I’m not sure I could even tell you where our old home is, if it still exists.”
“Why are you telling me this?” That was probably rude to say.
Her bright eyes flicker in my direction, then back to the city below.
“You surprised me the other day. I didn’t think you had so much fight in you.
” She seems to be speaking to herself as much as me.
“Almost reminded me of my first day in the Playhouse.” I raise my eyebrows, and she adds, “Don’t get it twisted; you’re a terrible fighter.
But you’re excellent at pretending to know what you’re doing, and that’ll get one far in the theatre.
” She drinks again. “Awful at pretending you want to be here, though, so I’m guessing Jude has something to do with that. ”
I tense, searching over my shoulder in case the others heard. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Sure you don’t.” She twists her lips, seeming deep in thought for a moment. “Be careful of Jude. All he knows is winning.”
“Why are you—” A vase shatters. Behind us, Parrish has challenged Arius to a duel.
Mattia looks out at the city. “I no longer have a stake in this,” she answers without needing to hear the rest of my question.
I fall silent. Her contender, Linos, is gone. Eliminated.
“All I’m saying is if you do find an out—” Mattia almost winces, like it’s difficult to force the words from her lips.
“You should take it.” She turns her eyes to her cast, suspicious.
“I don’t know what he’s up to, but I have my eye on you.
I suggest you don’t do something stupid, or Jude and his drama will be the least of your problems.”
I’m going to take a wild guess and say abducting their Lead Player indeed falls under “something stupid.”
JUDE: “You all might have the decency to at least look thrilled by my presence.” Mattia startles, and all of us turn to where Jude is standing at the stairs. “Much as I hate to break up a party, I need everyone to meet me downstairs.” He points at me. “Not you, Alistaire.”
“Why not?” I say, insulted.
“Because I can move the Playhouse or I can keep you out of trouble, but I cannot be expected to do both at once.”
The smile melts off Titus’s smug face. And mine. “Move? We just got here,” he argues.
JUDE: “I’ve heard stirrings in the mirrors. From the North.”
Titus snorts. “You mean for me to believe you stopped staring at your own reflection long enough to listen?”
JUDE: “They’ve been tipped off.” His eyes swivel briefly in my direction. “Our tour schedule has been compromised. They know we mean to cross the wall through the District and settle in Syrene in nine days’ time. So we’re moving across the Cut tonight.”
MATTIA: “The Revelers of Diazoma won’t appreciate our time with them being cut short for the sake of Syrene.”
JUDE: “We aren’t going to Syrene. That’s where they expect us. We’ll go east and move the Playhouse through the Paraskenia border.”
“What?” I blurt, panic spilling into my veins.
No. No.
Titus blanches. “You can’t be serious, Jude.”
JUDE: “Sil made the call.”
My plan crumbles before my eyes. I need more time. And I promised I’d deliver Jude when we crossed into the North, when the Playhouse arrived in Syrene—
Titus sticks one foot out and points at it. “Sil wasn’t the one who got lanced by a godsdamned Eleutheraen arrow.”
“If we’re lucky, they’ll get your mouth this time,” Jude calls, exiting. “Downstairs. Now, Titus.”
At night, the Playhouse shines like the sun as the doors shriek open. The crowds hovering around the gates cry desperate welcomes to the Players filing out.
I watch from my dressing room’s high window, alone and sick to my stomach as Jude calls out, “Good people of Diazoma.” They fall still at the unmistakable pitch of Jude’s Syrenian accent, listening carefully. “I am afraid we must take an early bow. You can blame our friends in the North.”
The audience dissolves into wails, like each word of Jude’s announcement has sliced into their flesh. The sound is so awful, I’m tempted to cup my hands over my ears.
As the other Players spread out, Jude doesn’t move, looking to the distance like he can already see the barrier from here, its limestone strong and towering and running deep into the earth.
Strong enough, I pray. Though I don’t think anyone is listening.
“Perhaps you will meet us there when the wall is gone,” he announces, the dark timbre of his voice soaring over their cries.
The ground mists, unsteady and unsure of itself. A thick black fog rises around the Playhouse, ready to whisk it away. Ready to breach the Cut.
I close my eyes as the Playhouse descends into the mist like a sinking ship.
The Playhouse is more illusion than material, Jude said. The “moving” of it all is mostly just for spectacle.
A deceitful illusion. But surely, one too enormous to cross a divide built with Eleutheraen gold.
Galen’s admission comes back to me.
Parts of the wall were never sealed with pure Eleutheraen gold.
A horrid, splintering sound fractures the air, like the ground is splitting in half.
But I know it’s not the ground. The sound came from far, far away. From the Cut, pushing back against the Players and their magic.
The Playhouse stills before shaking violently. And when I dare to open my eyes, we aren’t in the heart of Diazoma anymore.
All I can see is limestone running in both directions, webbed with veins of Eleutheraen gold carved into swirling symbols. The wall.
The mist thins where it presses up against the threshold of the Playhouse, right at the Cut’s border. The golden gates press into the limestone, emitting a violent screech as dark water from the moat seeps over the Playhouse’s sparkling terrace.
I grip the windowsill, banging my knee and cursing when the Playhouse jolts.
The wall outside prevails, sturdy and immovable, as if to say, You will not come through this way. But I see the cracks threading up its face, accompanied by a wretched snapping sound.
Squinting through the mist, I make out the line of Players down below by the glow of their skin, their hands raised. Mattia swears loudly while Titus shouts, “It’s that damned wall; I told you it’s…” I try to listen, unable to make out the rest.
But for a moment, I almost relax. The Playhouse can’t cross after all. I won’t need my plan. The North will be safe from—
Jude prowls up to the golden gates and throws them open, where they slam into the limestone wall beyond.
The Playhouse feels slippery beneath my hands as I grasp onto the purple curtains to steady myself, but they tear like tissue paper.
The candles around me blow out and relight themselves frantically, unsure of themselves.
The Players are holding us in limbo—somewhere between what is real and what is not.
Below, Jude flattens his palm to the wall, upon those ancient engravings filled with Eleutheraen gold.
He shrieks so horribly, I have to avert my eyes—but not before catching something.
I narrow my gaze. Jude’s left foot is inches across the Playhouse’s border, where the gates meet the outside world, water from the trench washing along his shoe.
Past the confines of Playhouse grounds.
Mattia calls something to Jude, but I can’t hear what it is over the screams that have begun to tear through the air—not from the Players. From people. Though I’m not sure if they’re on this side of the Cut or on the other. Maybe both. And then I realize why.
The Eleutheraen gold veins in the wall are pulsing with light, heating.
Melting.
A labyrinth of cracks dances up from the place Jude’s palm is pressed, like lines on a map. Molten gold bleeds from the crevices, those ancient symbols becoming empty, ugly smears on the limestone. The wall groans loudly.
I shut my eyes, cover them with my hands. I don’t want to see. I don’t want to know.
The sound of limestone crumbling crashes through the air.
And when the world finally, finally falls still, I blink my eyes open and dare a single glance through the window. But I already know the Playhouse has slipped out of one place and into another.
Into the North.
It’s over.
Behind the Players, who all look ready to drop from exhaustion, a violent fissure yawns open at the Playhouse stairs like a cracked vase, curling into the foundations of one of the towers. A toll for crossing the Cut.
As the Playhouse settles in unfamiliar territory, and as the black mist begins to clear, I can at last grasp what I saw: Jude’s foot sliding past the threshold.
Jude is able to leave Playhouse grounds.
And the realization hits me all at once, with dread, that he has.