by Heidi Heilig
“A secret route out of the city,” Leo says. “The capitaine will certainly have the roads watched.”
I hesitate, almost afraid to ask. “Did he tell you what he wanted?”
“I was hoping you would know.” Leo glances at me, then winces. Holding the reins in one hand, he tugs a handkerchief out of his breast pocket. “There’s blood on your throat.”
“Thank you.” Gingerly, I press the cloth against the cut, eyeing his battered knuckles, the swelling skin on his cheekbone just below his eye, the faint bruise mottling the bridge of his nose. “Are you all right?”
He waves my concern away as if he doesn’t deserve it. “I should have checked the roof of the wagon. I should have known he’d have a sentry.”
I wet my lips. “Your brother?”
Leo stiffens. “I have no brother.”
I shift on my seat—but that is anger in his voice, not confusion. I didn’t misunderstand what the soldier had said. We roll along in more decorous silence. Vana buzz around my head, my neck. The cool night air kisses my cheek, and Leo’s shoulder is warm against mine. “I have a brother,” I say softly. “Or . . . I had one, once.”
All around us, the jungle is closing in, the fine homes turning back to modest cottages interspersed with stands of bananas along the hill. Luda has no walls, so the city is simply fading away. The road is rougher here too, rutted from long rains and little repair. I can smell the greenery, the scent of the flowers, the sweet hint of water in the air. Birds call to one another in the blackness, and insects bow their limbs over their legs, making music. Leo keeps his gaze on the road ahead, though his jaw is clenched. When he finally speaks, his voice is almost too quiet. “What happened?”
I take a breath. My memory feels strangely disjointed tonight. It’s all a jumble: the click of my brother’s lighter as he toys with the lid, his earnest smile, his hollow cheeks. The shame on Papa’s face when Akra first donned his newest costume. The way the uniform hung loose on his body. The way everything changed that day. “He joined the armée, three years back. During the famine, do you remember?”
“No room for rice,” he says, and I nod, remembering the whispers that swelled to shouts as the months dragged on. Rice is life—if there is no room for rice, there was no room for Chakrans. And while plantation owners moaned about their lack of income and how they couldn’t afford their dresses or their entertainment, the rest of us starved, unable to afford the rising price of food. That was the year the rebels coalesced around the Tiger—the year they first burned a plantation, the year they began to make war instead of trouble. “It wasn’t so bad at Luda,” Leo adds. “But we had a lot of country people move to town. That’s when Eve came to La Perl.”
I bite my lip, trying to imagine it. What would I have had to do to eat, if my brother hadn’t left? “That was before we . . . before the troupe was so well known. We didn’t have much, so he gave us his sign-up money, and sent us his pay at first—long enough for us to get by, till the rains came back. Especially since he ate so much,” I say, trying on a smile. It falls away quickly. “I kept all seven of his letters.”
“And the last one came . . . ?”
“Over a year ago.”
Leo bows his head under the weight of my words. “Did you ever hear anything from the armée?”
“No,” I say. “But sometimes silence says it all.”
“That’s true.” Leo sighs. “I suppose I could be grateful I was only disowned.”
My hands twist the handkerchief in my lap. “That’s terrible.”
“To be fair, the general’s original ownership was . . . tenuous.” Leo’s tone is deceptively light. “He would visit once or twice a year at best. When the rebellion started heating up, he was worried someone would use us against him.”
“You and the girls?”
“Me and my mother,” Leo says, and his laugh belies the pain on his face. “He told us we were on our own. Though he left us his gun. Self-protection, he said. Of course, that’s not how she used it.” Leo shrugs, his voice wistful. “She was a chanteuse, among other things. Very popular, before she died. Those were the glory days of La Perl. She always burned so brightly. It’s no wonder she burned out.”
My breath hitches; his words strike a chord in me. La Perl. His inheritance. And the red writing on the cracked mirror of the vanity in the basement: AU REVOIR.
The silence is delicate—the quiet of moonlight, of escape, of heartbreak and whispers. “I’m so sorry,” I say at last.
A smile twists the corner of his mouth. “Xavier never said anything, though I’m sure he prayed over it. But I had a letter from my . . . from Theodora. Just afterward.”
Theodora—La Fleur. His sister, I realize. “What did it say?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, but he’s a violinist, not an actor. “I never wrote back because I couldn’t find the words to . . . contain what had happened. To put it all down on a slip of paper. But I wonder what my silence meant to her.”
I stare unseeing at the winding road, trying to imagine posters of Akra, news of his wedding. Knowing he was alive and well—famous, even—but no longer mine. Hearing people refer to him by a ruler’s honorific, while never being able to call him brother. “You could still write back, when you think of something.”
“Maybe someday,” he says, in the way that means never. “And I still have the girls. They’re like sisters to me. Well, not Cheeky,” he adds. “She’s a human cannonball of filth and glitter, but I love her just the same.”
My ear tweaks at the word, spoken so openly. Is this a city mannerism, or is there something more between them? “Are you two together?” I ask carefully. But he only laughs.
“I’m not her type. You can tell by the level of sass. If she’s ever tongue-tied, you’ll know she’s found the one.”
“Ah,” I say with a theatrical sigh and a tiny pang. But we were never staying in Luda. “So I never had a chance.”
Leo laughs. “Very few do. But that doesn’t stop most from trying. The girls adored the show, by the way. I saw them cheering. Too bad we didn’t have time for an encore.”
Usually I enjoy praise, but his makes me shy. “You too.” I nod at his violin case, nestled at his feet. “You play beautifully.”
“We could turn this into a tour,” he muses with faux seriousness. “Stop in a few towns on the way to the capital.”
“Dodging the armée wherever we go?”
“No, no, we have to charge them extra. We could make a mint that way.”
“Divided equally between performers?” I say with mock hope; he gives me a stern look.
“Between acts.”
“But I’m top billing,” I say. “After all, they’re looking for me.”
“Fine,” he says, trying to hide a smile. He holds out his hand. “We make a good company.”
We shake, Aquitan style—and this time, he does not kiss my hand. But his fingers are warm and calloused where he holds his bow . . . does he hold my hand a little longer than he must? In my stomach, a spark of light, like the soul of a butterfly. I tighten my fingers as though to crush it. With my malheur, is his company a wise place to be?
“How did you do it?” he says then.
I blink at him. “Do what?”
“The puppetry, of course! Cheeky was convinced it’s done with wires from the flies, but I don’t think you could have rigged pulleys. Is it hot air? Like balloons?”
I pull my hand away. “Trade secrets.” The words fall from my lips—a line learned by rote—but my heart isn’t in them. What would he say if he knew?
“She and I made a bet, you know,” he says with a wink. He leans close and lowers his voice, as if Cheeky might somehow hear. “I’ll split the winnings with you if you swear I’m right.”
“Or I could tell her you tried to rig the game,” I counter. “My silence might be worth the whole pot.”
“Vicious!” he says, pretending to be shocked, but his eyes are intent. “And what yo
u did to Eduard? Is that another trade secret?”
My mouth goes dry. I pull back. “I—I don’t know what you mean.”
“All right.” For a moment, I wonder if he will ask again, but he is quiet, and the night flies by. Above the tree line, the glow of the rising moon smears the stars. Leo passes me the reins. “Hold these, will you?”
I take them, and he turns around to stand on the bench, looking back over the top of the wagon. “What’s wrong?”
“Just making sure we’re still alone,” he says. He slides back to his seat and I look at him sideways.
“Why?”
“Because.” He takes the reins back and turns Lani off the main road. The wagon bounces out of the ruts and onto a little path. “This is a trade secret too, remember?”
The jungle closes in overhead on the track; through the greenery, I can see lights glimmering. Souls? No—a little hut roofed in palm leaves, tucked into a clearing. Moonlight shines on a kitchen garden and a nearby shack, almost as large as the cottage. A goat house, perhaps, or a shelter for pigs. “Not a very well-kept one,” I say, but Leo only smiles as he pulls Lani to a stop.
Immediately, the water buffalo lowers her head, pulling up a wad of fresh grass as the cottage door creaks open. An ancient woman steps out—at least a grandmother, perhaps twice over. She’s holding a lamp in one gnarled hand, and a gun in the other.
“Daiyu!” Leo waves from the seat of the wagon; she squints at him in the dark. “It’s Leo,” he says; only then does she nod.
Tucking the gun into the rolled waist of her sarong, she totters over to the shed. Leo twitches the reins, urging Lani to follow. The water buffalo obliges, always ready to rest. I am too. I stand, preparing to hop down from the wagon, to unharness Lani, but Leo shakes his head a little. “Not yet.”
Frowning, I sit back as Daiyu hands Leo the lantern to fumble with the door. “You’re always hanging around with the prettiest girls,” she murmurs, shaking her head.
I try to hide my smile, but Leo winks as he hangs the lamp on the wagon’s eaves. “None to rival you, Daiyu.”
“I was talking about me, Leo.” She cackles as she swings the doors open. But instead of a pen and the smell of goats, a cold gust swirls out of the blackness inside, where a wide tunnel leads down into the dark. Spirits glimmer among the roots that writhe through the earthen walls.
“What is this?” I whisper, awed.
“I told you. A secret route.” Leo winks and flicks the reins; tentatively, Lani steps into the tunnel. “The Souterrain.”
I sit back on the bench. “You’re a smuggler too?”
“Music doesn’t pay all the bills,” he says with a winsome smile. “But what about you, Jetta? What are you?”
“Just a shadow player,” I say, but my voice breaks on the words. The fading light turns his smile wicked as we ride into the dark.
Act 2,
Scene 13
Back at the encampment, all is blood and chaos. In the dark, in the confusion, in the rapid fire of the guns, XAVIER LEGARDE takes cover behind a tent as men fall around him in the night. As he loads his weapon, another soldier scrambles through the smoke to huddle beside him. Young. Chakran. Green. Another farm boy. His eyes are wide in the dark, and he is breathing fast and loud—a panicky sound. XAVIER glances at his nameplate.
XAVIER: Vang.
Beside him, the boy startles at the sound, looking up as though dazed.
VANG: Sir?
XAVIER ducks his head, putting his face before the young soldier’s, trying to catch his eye—to make him focus.
XAVIER: What did you see out there?
VANG blinks, as though he hadn’t expected the question.
VANG: Rebels, capitaine.
XAVIER: How many?
VANG: I don’t know. Dozens, maybe hundreds!
XAVIER frowns.
XAVIER: Did you actually see them?
VANG: No, sir. But who else would it be? Probably came back with the guns they stole. Trying to kill us all!
XAVIER listens. Sure enough, the sound of repeating rifles tatters the night air. But he shakes his head.
XAVIER: They’ve never had the numbers to risk a direct attack on a battalion. And how could they get all the way to the center of camp without a patrol noticing? Cover my back.
VANG only stares as XAVIER creeps out from behind the tent.
Come on, soldier!
Startled, the boy follows. Rifles crack, soldiers cry out. Horses have broken their tethers; they careen through the dark, trampling limbs and tents alike. Turning his face so VANG can’t see, XAVIER mouths a prayer to his god as they slip behind another row of tents for cover.
But as the men catch their breath behind the tents, a bullet rips through the canvas. Without a word, VANG topples over face down in the dusty field. XAVIER’s heart thunders into a gallop, and his own breath starts to come fast. The tents are no protection. His hand goes to the pendant hanging around his neck, but now his prayer changes—whispered to a different god.
XAVIER: Are you a coward now, too?
Gripping his gun and gritting his teeth, XAVIER springs from cover and runs toward the fray. Dodging around wounded men and blazing tents, he rounds a corner and sees an armed figure taking aim. The capitaine lifts his gun, but he doesn’t shoot. The man is silhouetted against the flames, and it takes a moment to recognize him.
XAVIER: Eduard!
The questioneur is bleeding from a dozen gunshots, but he stands firmly on his own two feet. The capitaine hesitates, just a moment. EDUARD does not. There is a flash—a bang. A bullet hits XAVIER’s thigh.
XAVIER staggers left, barely escaping a second shot. But despite his wound, his own aim is true—a single bullet, right between EDUARD’s ice-blue eyes. The soldier stumbles back in silence, falling against the fiery canvas of a burning tent. As XAVIER slumps to the muddy earth, he looks up at the night sky.
His fingers creep toward the golden pendant he wears around his neck, but his hand stops halfway across his chest. His next whisper is not a prayer, but a curse.
XAVIER: Nécromancien.
Chapter Nine
Moonlight follows us into the tunnel, but stops a few feet past the entry. Then Daiyu shuts the doors behind us, and all the light in the world seems to shrink toward the lamp swinging from our eaves. My eyes adjust slowly. There aren’t many spirits here, so we move through the long dark like a falling star drifting through an endless void.
The silence between Leo and me is deeper still. I knew he had contacts on the black market—but so do we, back in our little valley. Everyone always needed something, a little iron to fix a plow, a bit of dye for wedding silks. And so many plantation mansions are lit at all hours by kerosene lamps . . . and the owners’ extravagant parties fueled with rationed liquor. Buying contraband was one thing—smuggling it was quite another.
Rumor is, the smugglers fund the rebellion, routing sapphires stolen from the mines in Le Coffret to buyers in Nokhor Khat. The offense was technically punishable by imprisonment, but the more likely penalty was an armée bullet. I wet my lips and look once more to the violin case at Leo’s feet, half intrigued, half afraid. Is there anything in there aside from the violin—anything else that could get us in trouble? “You never told me why you need to go to Nokhor Khat.”
“Didn’t I?” He follows my gaze down to the violin. “Maybe I’m going to seek my fame and fortune.”
“You’re smuggling something in the case.”
He laughs then—sudden, surprising in the dark. “Are you going to turn me in?”
I blink. “You’re not even going to deny it?”
“Why should I? You’ve made up your mind.”
“But . . .” I falter. “Am I right?”
“No.”
“Are you lying?”
“Yes.”
“You’re impossible!” I say, throwing my hands in the air.
“For someone who won’t answer many questions, you expect a lot of answer
s.”
“Shall we trade?” I say then. “One of mine for one of yours.”
“A fair deal,” he says, appearing to mull it over. “Though I suppose you want to go first.”
“What’s in your violin case?” I ask, triumphant.
He grins. “A violin.”
“That’s cheating.”
“It’s true,” he says, nudging the case closer with his foot. “Go on. Open it.”
Suddenly less sure, I take the case, placing it across my knees. It is carved of mahogany, and the hardware is faded brass. I flip the clasp and lift the lid. The violin gleams back at me in the low light, nestled in a bed of red velvet. “There must be a secret compartment.”
“There’s a slot for the bow in the lid. Some rosin, wrapped in the handkerchief there. And sheet music underneath. Careful with it, please—it’s precious to me.”
Reaching beneath the instrument, I find the folded sheaf of paper. I flip through it gingerly, looking for a secret letter tucked into the packet, or a set of plans—something worth smuggling, but it’s only music, written in a delicate, graceful hand. I don’t recognize the song titles—they’re all in Aquitan—but beneath them, a woman’s name. “Mei Rath,” I say, sounding it out.
“My mother.”
“She wrote these?”
“It’s my turn for a question.”
“Right.” Gently I tuck the music back into the case, feeling a bit ashamed of myself for not believing him. And worse, I am certain he will ask about the puppets again, and now I will have to answer with a lie. I run the line in my head—the one Maman always gives: strings, the thinness of a spider’s web. But Leo surprises me.
“Why do you really want to go to Aquitan?”
I take a breath, taken aback; to cover, I close the violin case, tucking it carefully at his feet. No one has ever asked that before—fame and fortune are too believable a tale. My mind races, trying to formulate a new story, but nothing comes. The silence pulls at me—an empty stage, a waiting audience. How many secrets am I keeping? What was the last true thing I said? There is so much danger in being myself, and danger always draws me. Who better to tell than a boy I’ll never see again? “I’m told there’s a spring in Aquitan,” I say at last, speaking slowly—testing these new lines. “Just outside of Lephare. Le Roi Fou makes a monthly trip there to take the water.”
