Act III Scene IX
First, Cassia is there. Then the glass ripples, darkens, and she’s gone.
The curtained entrance to the arena shivers with light, sways with the swell of music pounding beneath my feet. There’s a pull in the air, like someone’s thrown a hook through my chest and is tugging on it. My eyes search for the invisible string lifting my hand to move the curtain aside.
The arena is dark. Familiarity coats the scene around me.
Then, a voice.
TIG: “Gods, I hate waiting here.” A whisper I’ve heard before. It comes from my left.
No. It doesn’t. But it should—
A great crack startles me as lights flash on within each of the archways, illuminating us.
Except I’m alone this time. Around me, each auditionee from my first day in the Playhouse should stand as a glowing silhouette in the darkness. They aren’t there.
I look up and watch a series of spotlights piercing the five empty spaces on the platform above, where the Players should stand. Or did.
Eerily, their spaces are empty, too.
Finally, a long, elegant shadow emerges from the sixth and largest entrance in the arena. My face hardens as Sil materializes within the arch.
SIL: “Ladies and gentlemen!”
Even from this distance, his eyes slice through me as the director marches into the arena.
SIL: “Congratulations! You should all be proud—a round of applause for this year’s cast!”
Applause crashes in around me as Sil’s arms stretch out to the audience.
No—applause doesn’t come. There’s no applause. No audience.
But I’ve lived this scene, and so I know there should be.
“Enough, Silenus.” The voice that rips from my vocal cords sounds nothing like mine. It’s earsplitting, drenched with the theatric pitch of the Players that should be standing over me.
Sil levels his gaze on me. “Act One, Scene Seven,” he says. It takes more effort than it should to move forward; I can feel the reluctance in disobeying now. Challenging my own blocking.
“Tell me, Riven—since you’re so aware.” Sil speaks slowly, nodding at the pages still clutched in my hands. “What is it, do you think, that controls the world? Is it money, fame, love?”
My eyes drop to the loose pages. I release them, and they flutter to the floor.
“Stories, Riven!” he announces when I don’t answer. “It is not what we’re taught, who we know, what we have. What controls us—” He inclines his head, waiting for me to finish the sentence.
The answer rises in my throat, but I swallow it.
Sil sighs. “What controls us is what entertains us. And so I am going to tell you a story, Riven. One that will sweep the masses.” He winks.
“There once was a girl who grew up much the same as many. Without Craft, fearful of Players. Only, the division did more than break the world she lived in. It broke her own family. Took a parent from her grasp.”
The air constricts in my lungs as the truth collapses in on me, heavy as steel.
SIL: “She’s taken and branded with their righteous marks and made to fade into ordinariness. Just like everyone else. She is raised to hate and fear the Playhouse, just like everyone else. That is the point. She is just like everyone else.”
“Stop,” I say without meaning to, bringing a hand to my mark, feeling the scars tingle at my throat.
SIL: “Then, one day, she comes to the Playhouse and finds no evil to fuel her hate. In fact, it becomes a home. It feels like home. So, torn between the two, she becomes the bridge that bonds them. A bridge for the Playhouse to return to the North and be welcomed. Because if she can forgive the Playhouse, why shouldn’t everyone? ”
The carefree tone of Sil’s story vanishes in his next sentence.
“Or, that’s how the story was supposed to go.”
The arena is still. The absence of my fellow auditionees feels overwhelming now. “Where are they?” I demand.
“They aren’t in this scene, Riven.”
Scene.
I kneel and grasp the fallen pages from my dressing room. They glow like the skin of a Player. Like my own skin, humming with life in my hands.
Like the Script in Sil’s.
My eyes scan more of the words, dated the night of the Playhouse’s return:
JUDE:
No need to be nervous. Between you and me, this crowd is nothing but a pack of weeds with only a handful of flowers to pluck.
RIVEN:
I’m not auditioning.
JUDE:
Oh?
This is my first conversation with Jude. Written and somehow hidden away by Gene Hunt in her own painting, fifteen years before it ever happened.
RIVEN: “Jude—he spoke these words to me.” The gold-leaf papers bend in my hands as I clutch them harder.
SIL: “I’m sure he did!” He laughs. “In fact, I’m certain it’s one of only a handful of times either of you recited your own lines. I’ll admit, I’m disappointed. The improvisation was wildly unprofessional of both of you.”
RIVEN: “These pages—they were in Gene’s painting.”
No, not pages. Script.
This is a script.
My eyes fall to the book that Sil clutches in his hands, the one that never leaves his side. The realization settles in as I note the glow of the pages. The Script that Jude is so afraid of, that he warned me to stay away from.
Sil gestures at the words in my hands, the stolen pages. “I should have known she’d go and do something like that after she tore them out. Gene had become a liability.”
“You murdered her,” I accuse. He poisoned that cup she drank from. I’m sure of it. My hands shake. “She didn’t deserve that. She was a person, Sil!”
“Gene is not a person!” roars Sil, throwing his arms out. “She is a character, Riven.”
The world stops, the silence pounding in my ears as he levels a telling glance at me.
“And so are you.”