Act II Scene XIII
Taking Jude’s place onstage tonight was not part of the plan.
But then, neither was Gene Hunt coming back from the dead to try and kill him.
My memory swears by the nervous look she gave him, then me, before lunging at Jude with ungodly rage. Gene had been deciding something in that moment. She was confused.
She’d been unsure. She didn’t know who was who.
I catch a glimpse of the face I’m wearing in the mirror now—Jude’s face still. He hasn’t woken up, and Sil doesn’t seem to think that he will any time soon. Apparently, I am not very good at Reality Suspension.
If I’m not mistaken, the auditorium tripled in size around the time the lobby doors opened. Or at least that’s what it looks like through the slit in the curtain: an endless array of winding seats and balconies stacked in rich reds like a layered cake. I glance over Jude’s lines one final time.
MATTIA: “Alistaire is a novice.”
Her voice booms from the hall as she and Sil rapidly approach. I quickly tuck my script behind a crate before I further prove her point. I think I know his lines.
MATTIA: “This is a lead role, Sil—and a Playhouse cast performance. No auditionees are permitted onstage—”
SIL: “Exactly!” His shout is so loud, I startle. “We’re over the Cut now. I won’t have news of our incapacitated Lead Player making its way to reporters.”
MATTIA: “Jude can still go on tonight. He’s excellent at Reality Suspension, Sil—”
SIL: “Unexpected Reality Suspension is messy at best. Jude is in no shape to perform, and we will not appear weak during our first performance North of the Cut.”
“No auditionee could have done what—what Alistaire did here today,” Mattia accuses. “She’s conveniently still doing a perfect imitation.”
SIL: “She appears to have an affinity for—”
MATTIA: “None of us can do one this exact, much less for this long.”
“Places, Mattia. Now. Alistaire!” Sil calls to me while waving off a furious Mattia. She stalks back into the wings but throws me a look that reminds me of her warning—that she has her eye on me. Not to do something stupid.
And oh boy, am I about to do something stupid.
I clench my jaw at the unfamiliar bite of Jude’s teeth and turn to Sil. “Yes?”
From his breast pocket, Sil draws a silvery envelope.
The Playhouse symbol seals the flap—a single mask cracked in two, one half grinning wide and the other tilted downward in a frown.
A single arrow protrudes through both, binding them together.
“You take the role of a Player tonight. You deserve to be paid as one.”
A peek inside the envelope makes my hands go numb.
I’ve never seen so much money in my life.
“And.” Sil hands me several envelopes, plain and more tattered than the first. “These are for you. The audience often sends well-wishes to our final contenders.”
Final? It occurs to me I’ve hardly seen the other auditionees since I arrived. I’ve often felt like the only auditionee here.
Why?
I watch Sil’s eyes, certain there’s something unspoken between us. Something I’m not seeing. But before I can open my mouth, he stalks down the hall, calling for places.
Parrish hovers at the curtain, peeking through the crimson.
PARRISH: “Full house tonight.”
I grimace. It didn’t take long for Revelers to follow the Playhouse through the Cut and fill their velvet seats. I imagine every face in the audience as blissfully numb as Haris’s and shudder.
TITUS: “I hope you’re ready, Jude.” He waves mockingly as he passes. “A new master of Mimicry on our horizon, perhaps! Do me next, won’t you?”
“Come now, Titus,” teases Parrish. “I wouldn’t wish your face on anyone.”
My hands file through the envelopes Sil handed me: a shocking series of letters from strangers declaring admiration, love, promises of loyalty, and hopes for me in the casting call.
But when I tear open the final one, I inhale sharply.
“What is it? A lock of hair?” asks Titus, pocketing a prop ring that he uses to propose to Parrish’s character in the third act of tonight’s Comedy. “Don’t worry yourself, Alistaire. I once received a hand in a box!”
Arius whistles from the wings. “We still don’t know whose that was.”
But it’s not a lock of hair. It’s a note.
The lights begin to fall. I steady my breath, counting everything I’ll need tonight: my Eleutheraen arrow. Marigold’s chain. About fifteen minutes during intermission. Jude.
As the curtain rises, I look over the strange note once more, this one different from the others. It’s not full of pretty words and delicate scrawls.
It’s one line, and in a hand I know well.
i’m coming, little sister.
— G
Time moves in indistinguishable blurs of story and memory and emotion. Whether it’s measured in hours, days, years—during a performance, I’m not sure, and I don’t care.
Then it stops moving altogether as I burst into the wings, back into reality’s wintery grip.
Someone claps a hand on my shoulder and says something to the effect of, “I’ll be damned, Alistaire!” and the name clears my vision.
It takes a moment to remember what’s just happened onstage, the way a dream flees from your mind the moment you wake up. We’re in intermission.
Sil hurries backstage, clapping his hands and raving about the first act while I quietly excuse myself to get some water.
Then I’m bolting as fast as I can down the hall, rounding the corner and tearing through the door to the Labyrinth Steps.
By the time I’ve scurried halfway down the spiral stairs, I’m still shaking the Craft from my fingertips, and that strange dreamlike feeling that I’ve lived someone else’s life in the few hours I was onstage.
The farther I go, the dimmer the lights get.
By the time I reach the landing, spot the door leading into Marigold’s prop room, I can barely see the face of my timepiece.
It grimly reminds me I have nine minutes before the curtain rises for the second act and everyone notices the lead is nowhere to be found.
I check my hands before knocking on the door. Still Jude’s hands, still covered in heavy golden rings, with an ugly scar across my—his—palm.
I hope to Dionysus I’m right about all of this.
I knock.