Intermission Scene II
“How quaint,” Jude comments as I hurry us into the Diolkos station.
I take in the vaulted ceilings clad in stone, the high glass windows dotting the walls. A clock tower ticks at the center of the open space, reminding me that time is a luxury we can’t afford right now.
Hurrying Jude ahead of me, I note a series of seven platforms that line the Diolkos railways, their timber tracks laid in stone.
Nestled on three of them are enormous carriages that look more like ships to me, their sides polished and reinforced with oak.
I follow the thin retractable sails secured to their tops with my gaze, curious how they operate.
I’ve often wondered what else was lost during the time that the first Players walked freely, maiming and destroying as they wished. But they left the things they liked: printing presses to report on their movements. Limelights to illuminate their stage. Solagraphy to capture stills of their faces.
The piercing whistle of a departing train makes me cringe as we shuffle past the wooden timetable braced over the clock. My first ride aboard the Diolkos was meant to land me at orientation week for the Orkestrian Academy.
Instead, I’m herding a disguised Player to almost certain death while he complains about his shoes being uncomfortable.
“You should have let me change,” he says. “Cicero must have sworn vengeance on me while making these boots. If I lose a foot, it’s on you.”
My own costume boots make a conspicuous clip-clopping sound on the stone as I drag Jude to a small booth across the station and request two tickets to Syrene. The woman behind the counter sorts quietly through a stack of envelopes, though her eyes flip up to Jude more than once. And I do mean up.
“Runs in the family,” I blurt. “Giants. All of us.”
Though it hits me when she smiles a little too friendly in his direction for the second time that she isn’t concerned with his height. She may not recognize Jude as himself in this condition, but it’s done little to hurt his looks. And his charms are apparently not limited to Player magic.
Noticing the attention, Jude snaps his smile into place.
Gods help me. I roll my eyes. And do a very good job of ignoring a weird twinge in my gut when Jude leans into the wall and begins asking the girl if she always wanted to work in a ticket booth, because he “knows a place that might be hiring.” I elbow him.
This girl isn’t the only one who’s taken notice of Jude and his unusual height. And, for the record, mine.
A man with watery silver eyes and jet-black hair has peered in our direction more than once from the second platform. The first thing that registers is just how much I do not like his smile. The second is that he’s missing an ear.
The third is that he’s still staring.
With the exchange of another chunk of my Playhouse money, I swipe the tickets from the counter and nearly throttle Jude for suggesting the girl wear her hair down more. “What?” Jude asks as we hurry across the station. “If you had big ears, I’d tell you, too.”
“Quiet,” I snap as we head to the third platform.
“Ticket—thank you,” I hear ahead of us. It feels like I’m in a race with my own breath as we move up in line on our platform, until we’re called next by a stout man with beady black eyes.
I look over my shoulder, unable to shake the feeling that the man with the missing ear on the platform is still watching us.
Waved forward after presenting our tickets, I shuffle Jude through the steel doors and onto the Diolkos.
“Toward the back—go on,” I say, feeling eyes with each passing compartment. I wonder if bystanders can help it or if they just intuitively sense they’re staring at a Player without realizing.
Finally, we settle into a small compartment with poorly cushioned seats and gray walls. My mind tugs back to the one-eared man’s gaze, and I find myself searching the window for it, not bothering to mention it to Jude, who’s been prattling on for the last ten minutes.
“—and if you’re going to hold me hostage, it’s just good manners to purchase nicer seats—”
“If you don’t shut up, I swear I will tie you to the roof where you can’t bother anyone.”
Jude raises one dark eyebrow at me. “You swear? To do something we both know you won’t do? Getting awfully comfortable with language like that. That’s progress.”
I rub my temples. “What will it take to get some silence?”
“Well, for one, I’m starving.”
I pull open the pack of gifts he stole from that family and throw a piece of stale bread at him, praying it shuts him up.
“Players don’t need food much, Alistaire.”
My head is pounding now. “Fine. What do you need?” I ask, exasperated.
“Attention.” He pouts at me.
I groan and drop my face into my hands.
The Diolkos jolts into motion, the station rolling by us as we begin our trek west. I make a point of ignoring Jude and watch the window, still looking for the one-eared man.
“They won’t take you back, you know,” he says after a little while.
I cast him a side-eye. “The Playhouse?”
“No, the Playhouse would if you play your cards right.” His eyes drop to the place where my mark used to be. “The North, though. They’ll never take you back with a ruined mark.”
A lump gathers at the base of my throat where that ruined mark is.
“They will,” I say and try to believe it, “when I stop whatever horrifying spectacle you’re planning. The Great Dionysia isn’t happening.”
Something darkens in his expression. “Alistaire, neither you nor I can stop what’s going to happen at the Great Dionysia.”
I take that as all the confirmation I need. He’s plotting something. “We’ll see.”
As if a switch has been pulled, Jude’s face clears. His smile looks forced now. Cheerful but full of malice. “May I tell you a secret, Alistaire? From one soul to another.”
Jude shifts in his seat, as if trying to get comfortable with layers of chains binding his wrists behind him.
“I fear you and I are just the same,” he says. Appalled, I search his expression for a punch line as he continues. “Two sides of a shiny coin used to purchase terrible things.”
The Diolkos jolts again, and I grip the table between us to steady myself. “I don’t see how we’re similar at all.”
“You don’t? I do.” He leans forward and lowers his voice. “You can be a great many things, dear heart. But you cannot be fewer.”
Galen’s voice bursts through a door in my head. You laugh too much, Riven. You frown too much, Riven. You talk too much, Riven. Too loud, too angry, too much.
Even at my softest, I am too hard for most people.
For a moment, I wonder if Jude is, too.
“That’s enough.” I clear my throat and retrieve the two bottles I purchased earlier.
Jude tenses, eyes on the Eleutheraen gold. “Alistaire. Be reasonable.”
“For what it’s worth, I wish this wasn’t necessary.” I can’t risk him being at full strength during this trade, especially if Galen is there. Gods know what Jude might do, who he might hurt.
“Stop!” he almost shouts when I’m ready to pour the Eleutheraen gold into the second bottle—the diluted solution.
“One drop at most, or—” Jude shudders. “I know you don’t trust me, and you have every right not to.
But I am a Player, and more than that could do…
bad things. And frankly, you don’t have the weight on you to drag me around. ”
I grit my teeth and use the dropper to squeeze the smallest drop of Eleutheraen gold into the solution before instructing Jude to lean his head back. He stares stubbornly at me instead. His olive skin has paled to the same shade as the melting snow flying by outside.
“Why?” he says. “If all you want is to get home, why go to all this trouble?”
“I am far past only wanting to get home,” I hiss. “Do you know how they formed the first treaty, Jude? How they caged you Players to begin with and kept the likes of your cast out of the North?”
Jude grows very, very still, a lethal sort of calm settling over his features. “I’m familiar.”
“They captured a Player,” I push on anyway. Granted, that capture entailed an army. I seem to be doing just fine going at it solo, though.
“They took three Players,” he corrects, showing all his teeth when he does.
Fine. Maybe I couldn’t manage three. Whatever. “The North held them for ransom,” I go on. “Then traded them in exchange for the five-hundred-year treaty.”
“Held for ransom!” Jude laughs pleadingly. “Gods. They tortured them, Alistaire! Took three and traded the only one they hadn’t killed yet.”
I go still. I didn’t know that. “They…tortured them?”
Jude’s face darkens. “I’m sure mortals love to omit that last fact from the history books. And they didn’t ask for a single bit of information from the Players they tortured, by the way,” he says. “They asked their questions of the Player they forced to watch.”
My hands go cold.
“Which is damned stupid.” He falls back in his seat, bored. “Leave one of us alone long enough, and we’ll be begging to tell you our secrets just for attention. So!” Jude tilts his head, humor vanishing. “You plan to trade my life for…what exactly?”
I set my shoulders back, gathering my resolve. “I am willing to bet that Sil will do nearly anything to get one of his Players back.”
“He will.” Jude bares his teeth at me. “We all would.”
“And I think that includes signing whatever contract is presented to him. Maybe an oath to never tour the North or even enter the District again. Permanently this time.” I smile smugly. “In exchange, to keep the life of his Lead Player.”
Jude’s eyes brighten with a dark glimmer. “All the world’s a stage. You think I’ll give up half of it?”
Not easily, I don’t. Admiration. Love. Devotion. It’s what Players feed on, a drug they can’t get enough of. They’ll kill for it. They have killed for it.
And the larger their audience, the stronger their power.
Gods know how strong they’ll become if they take the rest of Theatron, too.
“Drink up.” I lean over the table with the bottle as Jude laughs. The cool exterior he’s worn most of today is melting off, giving way to something darker.
“I have been in this position before, you know.” Jude stares at me, and there’s something like hurt in his eyes that I try not to notice. “You should. I shared that with you.”
Guilt clouds my mind. I’ve been doing my best not to think about that—those terrible people who forced him to drink Eleutheraen gold when he was only a child. Not even a Player at the time.
There it is again, that same wrenching sensation from earlier—the wave of nausea that hit me square in the gut at the sound of Marigold’s body hitting the floor. Is this what I’m capable of?
I draw my eyes from the bottle to Jude, wondering at what point he stopped looking like an immortal monster and started looking like—
Well, like Jude.
“I didn’t tell you the full story, though. Do you know what I did to them?” Those people who took his family. He tilts his head at me. “I waited,” he whispers. “Sent them messages for years, telling them exactly when I was coming for them. So they’d know.”
I swallow, stalling. “Why?”
“I had a sister. They had a daughter. I thought I’d let them get attached, let them know they’d be ripped from her the way my family was ripped from me. As you said”—he nods at the bottle in my hand—“fair is fair.”
There it is. Monster. A vengeful one, at that.
Before he can say more—because gods, I don’t want to know more—I lunge across the table and force the bottle to his lips. Predicting this, Jude doesn’t bother fighting. The rest of the gold drains from his eyes by the time I lean back in my seat. He wavers like he’s about to keel over.
“I probably deserved that,” Jude mutters and turns to cough. Bits of gold splatter onto the seat beside him, and he’s fighting to keep his eyes open. “But for the record, that was a really bad decision.”
I lower my brow. “Why?”
“Because we’re being followed,” he says, groggy. Then passes out.