Chapter 17
At breakfast the next morning it seemed that the pretty little house vibrated with the grumbling of the two women. The couples
left the three bedrooms and started down the hall, the women with their heads held high. The men trailed behind them.
“Bad night?” Tam asked Mekos.
He rolled his eyes. “How can a person complain so much?”
“The same here,” Tam said. “I left her room just hours ago. There is so much anger that I worry for the safety of the two
of them together.”
“I agree,” Mekos said.
Breakfast was set out for them and they ate in silence. The men had their heads propped on their hands but the women were
fueled by a lifetime of anger so they moved about quickly. “Ian is going with you,” Mekos said. “If anything goes wrong, he’ll
tell us, and Tam and I will come.”
“But . . .” Aradella started but Mekos’s look made her stop talking.
It wasn’t until midmorning that Qip showed up.
Darr lifted him onto the big wagon and he drove the silent women to the arena.
It was a huge half circle of stone seats facing an open area.
In the midst of it was a long building that had three rooms with curtains front and back, then a closed-in area on each end.
Aradella was looking at the barren area around the building. “Are the battles held here too?”
“Yes.” Qip nodded to the long stage. “Go through there, use whatever feminine wiles you have, and persuade someone to give
you the rose.” He looked at Ian as he sat on Aradella’s shoulder. “You should stay out of sight. Even here, you’re too much
of a curiosity. You might not be safe as someone might want to put you in a cage.”
Ian rubbed his leg above the carved, wooden prosthetic. He knew not to take chances.
Aradella got down from the wagon, then looked at Bree to see if she needed help. With a defiant look, Bree jumped out of the
back, landing firmly on the ground. “Please don’t break any body parts,” Aradella said. “We don’t have time to nurse you.”
Bree grit her teeth, said nothing, and the two of them walked to the end of the long building. When they turned the corner,
they heard voices. At the far end, they saw people and activity, all accompanied by a lot of yelling.
“No! No! You stupid girl,” a man shouted. “You’re supposed to be a princess. Act like one! Where is she going? What do you
mean she quit? And where the farken-el is that Never puppet?”
At that, Aradella and Bree halted and looked at Ian. “You must hide.”
There were two more of what they assumed were stages that had curtains drawn across them. One of the men at the end glanced
down at them and seemed startled by their appearance.
Bree tossed back a corner of a curtain. “Get in here!”
Quickly, Aradella ran onto the stage, with Bree behind her. They tried to look around but it was too dark to see much. Ian
flew up, hovered, then made his entire body light up.
“You are a very useful man,” Aradella said.
“Wish Arit thought so,” Ian mumbled.
As they looked around, Aradella and Bree saw it at the same time. On the mantel of the fake fireplace was a purple rose in a plain white vase. As Qip had said, it didn’t look like much.
“We could just take it and go,” Aradella said as she extended her hand.
Ian blocked her. “If this thing is magic, I better test it first.” There were other ornaments on the mantel and they were
dusty. Ian ran his hands over them until he had a ball of dust, then he tossed it at the rose. It went up in a sizzle. “I
guess it won’t let us steal it.”
“We should—” Aradella began but suddenly the heavy curtain was thrown back and light filled the room.
Standing there was a tall, bearded man wearing lots of makeup and a red dress. He glared at them. “You two don’t know where
you’re supposed to be? You didn’t have a clue when you saw all of us at the other end?”
Aradella looked like she was about to make a retort, but Bree stepped forward.
“We’re so sorry,” she said in her sweetest voice. “We’re new here and we don’t know how things work.”
“It works, sweetie, by you two getting into costume. They’re ready to open the gates and the ravenous hoard will soon be filling
the seats. Can’t you hear them?”
Aradella stepped in front of Bree. “We’re not players. We just want—” She pointed to the rose.
The man groaned. “Let me guess, a little old man sent you here and we’re to give it to you.”
“Well, uh . . .” Aradella said.
“The owner always says no. Oh look! There’s that Never puppet they’ve been looking for.”
Ian was still on the mantel and he’d frozen into a stance so rigid that he didn’t look real.
“This one is missing a leg but I guess it’ll do.” The man looked toward the end of the building and opened his mouth as though
to shout.
“Wait!” Bree said. “What if we do an exchange?”
He looked back at her. “Honey, I’m sure you have nothing I want.”
“You need players, right?” Bree said.
“We can’t—” Aradella began, but then she changed her course. “What play is it?”
“The same as always,” he said in disgust. “They don’t have the brains to understand anything else.”
The women waited for him to answer the question.
“It’s The Beautiful Princess and Her Jealous Maid. Again.”
“Does the maid try to steal the prince?” Bree asked.
“Of course. They never get tired of seeing it, but I’m sick of it.”
“But the beautiful princess wins.” Aradella’s tone was so heavy with sarcasm it could have been weighed on a scale.
“Of course she does!” the man snapped. He looked them both up and down in an insolent way. “If you have no experience, how
can you do this?”
“For my whole life, I’ve been acting as part of a lie,” Aradella said.
He looked at Bree as though for verification.
“Both of us have done that.”
Aradella said, “We’ll do it if you’ll give us the rose.”
“For free,” Bree added. “I mean, we won’t charge anything to be in the play.”
The man looked from them to the rose then back again. “What is the use of that thing?”
“It’s for a collector,” Bree said quickly.
“He’s obsessed,” Aradella added.
“All right, let me ask the owner.”
They expected him to leave but he didn’t. Instead he shouted, “They’ll do it if you give them that ratty old purple flower.”
A male voice, filled with amusement, yelled back. “If they make the audience stand up and clap, they got it.”
The man turned back to them. “Better kiss it goodbye. Those morons don’t appreciate anything. Your collector is going to be disappointed again. We better get you suited.”
“I guess she’ll wear a crown,” Aradella said. “And some divine dress. Do I scrub the floors?”
The man looked at Aradella like she was crazy. “Her?! Are you mad? She’s too ordinary looking to be a princess. What color
do you want your crown?”
“What?” Aradella asked.
Bree said, “Remind us of the story.”
Again, the man groaned. “She isn’t too bright, is she?” He nodded at Aradella. “But then, with a face like hers, she doesn’t need to be, right? The plot
is that you, the maid, are so jealous of the princess’s great beauty and the man she’s to get that you want to kill her.”
Aradella was still trying to understand. “But I am the ugly one.”
The man rolled his eyes. “It looks like the casting is perfect.” He spoke to Aradella slowly and clearly. “You’re beautiful
but dumb. That won’t be too difficult for you, will it, sweetie?” He nodded toward Bree. “As you can see, she is ugly, but she’s very smart. Got it?”
Aradella still didn’t fully comprehend. “But she’s the beautiful one.”
“Not here, baby. Here we like unique, not something that looks like an Empyrean robot. We—” He didn’t finish because he was
pushed aside by a large woman who was followed by two young women carrying heavy dresses.
The woman looked Aradella and Bree up and down, then gestured for the other two women to remove their outer clothes. Since
they were both princesses, they were used to this and didn’t fight it. With the speed of lightning, the young women were corseted
into dresses that had very low-cut tops. While the cousins didn’t resemble one another in any other way, they were both well-endowed.
“My goodness,” Bree said. She was popping above the neckline like bread on its second rise.
“You got it, flaunt it, honey,” the wardrobe woman said.
One of the young women rapidly put makeup on Aradella. “You should let them grow out.” She meant Aradella’s pale eyebrows
and lashes.
The older woman looked at Bree and sighed. “She’s hopeless. There’s nothing you can do with her.” No makeup was applied.
Bree did her best to ignore the little smirk that Aradella gave her, but didn’t succeed. She wondered how much she could take
before she betrayed her promise to Kaley and let Aradella have it.
Outside, the audience was arriving.
The man on the auditorium seats was frowning. “Ethel, if I see this play one more time, my eyes will fall out.”
“They said they have new girls so it’s bound to be different,” his wife said.
“Is it still two girls fighting over the same man?”
Ethel gave a heavy sigh. “Bart Ollen. Oh yes. He is perfection in a man.”
Under his wife’s direction, he put the cushions down on the hard stone seats. She knew he hated the play so she’d brought
his favorite cheese and beer. By the end of the performance, he’d be smiling—and she’d get to fantasize about Bart.
Behind the stage, out of sight of the audience, Bart Ollen waited for his cue to enter. He had on a loose white shirt and
trousers so tight his bulge could be seen. So what if it was a tiny bit padded? The women loved it.
The stage manager—Bart could never remember his name—was listening to the play that had started. The princess and her maid
were talking. Whatever was being said made the stage manager have an odd look on his heavily painted face.