Ila detached herself from the shadows and came to us. She had temporarily lost her audience escort. The central tableau must be in the process of shifting, drawing all eyes to it.
“Tempter, Imago, and Forger next, Kothin,” she said. “Left and then right at the next two intersections.” She knelt to adjust the damp hem of my robes with her black-gloved hands. I looked down at her silk-obscured form, and something inside of me wrenched. I must not flinch. Must not make a movement. Must not reveal the truth I had overheard only two days ago and to which I was by no means reconciled in my heart. To lose Ila—
She raised her gaze and straightened, and I stifled the thought. The whites of her eyes nearly glowed in contrast with her dark irises and granite skin. “You’re doing well. People are starting to talk about the Tempter. Kutum, start working your way towards the center.” Her voice was low and pitched for our ears alone. It held an edge I had never heard in it before, even when she was at her most merciless in rehearsal.
I slipped off into the maze, freezing in ominous positions as guests came upon me, sidling toward the next scene. The key to understanding this Variation was to follow the Shadow as much as the players. The audience, in the next few hours, must transgress their tacit agreement to consider the Shadow merely backdrop or stagehand.
With one hand, we forbade; the Shadow turned her face away and scuttled between tableaus. With the other, we beckoned the audience.
Watch but do not watch, we said with every pose, every tableau. Watch us, but also watch our Shadow.
Our hidden hand is moving. Beware.
* * *
“I can’t find Emmiu.” The woman who was complaining was behind the current group of guests who were viewing the three-person tableau. “She was just behind me, and then she was gone.”
“Probably got bored,” a man’s voice said. “Probably went to get something to drink.”
“She had a drink. And she just vanished without saying anything.”
The Tempter spent a lot of time crouched at people’s feet. I was getting a good look at the creatures that a number of the guests had brought with them. The liquid-eyed quadrupeds with all the fur and silky long tails were popular, but my favorites were the small things that darted around us, luminous stripes on their sides rippling as they scampered and scuttled and watched us with bright-eyed interest.
They were short-legged and long-bodied and had an engaging way of tilting their heads during the rare moments when they were still. The one currently observing me had something shiny in its fanged mouth, likely a dropped piece of jewelry. It was almost too bad that none but the nobility were allowed to own the creatures the Impia created. I thought I might like one of the striped rodent-things.
My neck was beginning to ache, and my shoulders were trembling slightly. I breathed through it, willing my body to relax into the position as much as I could, willing skeleton and sinew to support me with as little energy expenditure as possible.
The hedge I was staring at shifted, and a luminous, many-petaled flower opened.
I focused my eyes, snapped back into my body. The mind plays tricks during tableaus. The flower, a frilly white thing with toothed petals, had to have been open before we got here. I had just forgotten.
The small hairs on the back of my neck tried to rise, but instead prickled unpleasantly under my paint. Above me, the Imago breathed out. I tilted my face up and to the side, feeling the other player’s hand come close to my hair.
I put the flowers out of my mind, and tried not to lick my lips where the paint had dried and cracked.
* * *
The crime in the Isthmus Variation is murder.
Twenty players. Nineteen characters. Eighteen alive when the Slow Game began that evening. Our costumes were sun-bleached white, except for the robes that the Orphan wore. Those had been splashed liberally with fresh animal blood just after we laid Liio down in a dead end in the maze, a knife left by her side.
Over the evening the blood would dry and the night insects would gather, moths drawn to the salt. When I closed my eyes, I could see her robes covered with fluttering white, red-brown showing in the spaces between their wings.
Our current tableau was one of several scenes of questioning that we would portray that night, and my Tempter was in fine form, reaching for the Wastrel’s robe with one hand, casting the Imago away from me with the other. This was a scene of misdirection. The Imago and the Tempter fought in order to throw doubt on the Wastrel’s testimony later.
We rested in the pose as the audience moved around us. We were close to the center now, having worked our way through the maze. After this scene, the Imago and I would part. Ila would flit between us and the crowd, drawing their eyes away, and when they turned back to see us we would be gone, thirty feet away from each other, once again frozen.
Ila was long in coming. When she finally arrived to release us, my arm was trembling fire as it reached for the Wastrel. It was all I could think about, my breathing and my arm.
The Shadow swept past us. As the crowd turned to follow her, my eyes were drawn to the hem of her robe. It straggled strangely on the ground, and the grass darkened a little in her wake. None of the guests seemed to notice, fortunately. Dew was beginning to form on the grass, and a little extra dampness would go unremarked. By the time any of them might notice, they would all be too intoxicated to care, and it would be far too late for the outcome of this performance to change.
I smoothly shifted out of position and began to walk back into the maze as the Imago and the Wastrel moved towards where vines parted and the twinned fountains could be seen. I tried not to think about the darkness I left when I moved, the circle of scentless oil that my hem would transfer to the grass when I performed in tableau.
The back of my neck tingled, and I froze. The weight of a gaze landed full on my shoulders. I had one hand stretched out, the other trailing behind me, head tilted slightly as I studied one of the flowers of the hedge. This was one of the standard poses of the Tempter, who was of all the characters the most engaged with the beauty of the world.
I could not see the person whose gaze was on me. He was male, from the timbre of the breathing and the faint scent of cologne that came to me, muskier than these sweet flowers I stared at. He shifted in his place, but did not step away. I was a player. I was patient, more patient than any audience might ever be. I would outwait him.
Something within the hedge stirred. Animal, I thought. One of the rodent-things. A day-flying bird woken from its slumber by the lights and the noise. Do not stir from your nest, little bird. Sleep you must, this night when the lights dance.
Such are the thoughts that trouble players, when we are frozen in tableau.
The flowers moved. Slowly they closed, and slowly they opened, all in unison. The flowers in the hedge were abruptly thirty white eyes without pupil, all of them looking at me. Their petals were ragged against the foliage, hung all around with coldlight orbs that made the shadows harsh-edged.
The man had left—how long ago? How long had I stared at the hedge in horrified fascination? How long had it been staring back at me? Rumors came to mind, whispers of the Impia’s magics, that he could alter plants as he did animals....
I moved on. I took care not to brush the hedge with my sleeve or my hand.
* * *
The Orphan had been discovered at last; the murder had been revealed. The summer night gathered chill to its bosom, and we had been playing the Slow Game for six hours. I was in solitary tableau at the edge of the central area. Ahead of me, I knew that the Sufferer and the Accused were frozen in the same poses that they had been in since the beginning. I was not looking at them; the time had not yet come for that pose.
My Tempter this night was perfect. My spine told me that I was taxing the muscles on either side of it; my shoulders reported suffering from the great effort it took to remain perfectly still with my arm outstretched or above my head. The pain sang in me and I used it, fed on it. The Tempter
is beautiful and terrible, the face that one must not look at and yet cannot turn away from.
Even with my focus soft so that my gaze would not be felt, I could see small oddities in the crowd that moved around me, swaying like water-weeds in a current. Here was a scarf untied and rumpled; there, kohl was smeared, giving the eye it surrounded a deep-set and dazed look. Hands trembled and eyelashes shivered.
I could hear slurred voices swirling around me. I had almost fallen a few minutes ago when the same young woman who had happened upon me earlier in the evening had stumbled into me. I’d seen her several times. She mumbled apologies as she staggered away, and had gotten only a little distance from me before she collapsed.
Nobody bothered to check on her, and I could not break the pose to do it myself. She looked so vulnerable, lying there, with her curly hair escaped from its ribbon and tumbling over her face. Her little animal was nowhere to be seen. I ached, knowing her fate. She had arrived early, and now she would be the first of many departures.
I entertained thoughts of calling for help. I was a player, therefore by definition I had been destroyed. These people would no more pay attention to my words than they would wear shoes. Being destroyed is a death where your heart keeps beating: name, occupation, status, property, all are stripped away. The rungs of nobility are greased with temptation, and it is so easy to fall when reaching for a higher station.
My face was turned towards the girl, and I had a clear view. She was far enough away that I could not hear any rustling, but I saw a tendril of vine snake over to her. Someone capable of motion would have recoiled from the vines, broken the pale green threads.
The tendril touched her hair, slipped underneath to caress her face. It grew and thickened and was joined by several of its fellows, draping themselves over her body. As the vines touched her, they began to bloom, those toothed white flowers opening. One tendril slid up under her dress, and I could see the shadow of it moving beneath the cloth.
Soon her body was hidden beneath a carpet of white flowers, unfurling like wings. Guests went by and did not even seem to notice the new mound of vines. My gut was twisting, though I knew that she was already dead. These people are nothing, I reminded myself. We are never called to play the Isthmus Variation without reason. The words were hollow in my mind. Unlike Kutum, I was still close enough to being one of these people to feel horror at their fates.
By the time it was my moment to give the reward and move into another tableau, the vines had retreated back to the hedge and the girl was gone. Only the silk ribbon that had bound her hair and now lay twisted in the grass bore testimony that she had ever been there at all.
* * *
The fountains of bubbling drink were still flowing, but the long tables of food had been decimated. The tasters had joined the audience, their bare feet taking them drifting to watch us play. I crouched at the feet of the Sufferer, looking up into his face. White paint cracked and flaked at the corners of Unil’s mouth and along his jaw. In another variation, some of us would have been circulating unobtrusively, ready to refresh makeup and adjust the folds of robes. In this variation, we were on our own.
Not that the audience was paying attention to us, or to anything. This was the final tableau. Usually I would be hearing excited muttering, exclamations of surprise or delight, people talking to each other about what they saw or thought they saw. Tonight, the audience was silent. They gathered around us, shuffling their feet. A little striped animal climbed partway up the Sufferer’s robe, made a dreadful chittering sound, and tumbled back to the ground. Unil flinched slightly. Even he could not avoid occasionally breaking pose.
A sour smell stained the night air, worse when one of the guests was close to me. They exhaled it on their breath, a smell of sweet rot. It overwhelmed the usual human smells I often noticed when the audience was close. I missed those smells.
I shifted, muscles relaxing. The final scene must be played through. The Slow Game’s climax, the final tableau, was a scene that moved slowly through several different configurations. I would end this scene with my hands on the Sufferer’s shoulders, looking into his eyes.
I would rise, over the next quarter of an hour, as all around me the tableau shifted and changed. It would unfurl, blossom into meaning, the final pieces fitting themselves into place. In a normal night, those who had already figured it out would feel a pleasant sensation of accomplishment. Those who had not yet divined the meaning would feel a shock of recognition as the parts they had seen now fit themselves into the whole. It made all the pain worthwhile, to have the audience give that back; pure joy feeding itself into us.
Tonight, that joy was entirely missing. The perfume of night-blooming plants mixed with the sick scent that was emanating from the guests. I heard one near me rustle, moan under his breath, and then thump to the ground. More followed. The poison we had spread across the grass with the hems of our robes first caused intoxication, then lethargy. Now, as the nobles stared at our final tableau in dull incomprehension, it was bringing them a painless death.
Though the breeze from the mountain had died, the hedges around the central area were rustling, restless. If I had allowed myself a moment of fear, I would have broken pose and run.
Ila’s silk fluttered and her sweet quick feet were nearly soundless on the turf. I felt sickness churning in my gut as I listened, held pose, remembered coming upon her washing herself in front of the fire late one night. Remembered Ila’s fingers intertwining with Unil’s as they sat together at a meal, perfectly comfortable in their skins together. I loved that comfort between them far more than I desired to touch the perfect curve of Ila’s back.
Something, maybe one of the silky quadrupeds, staggered against my leg. Its body was firm under the fur and warm where it settled down against my ankle and calf. Then it shivered, and ceased to breathe.
I stared up into Unil’s face. He was looking out over the audience, and there were tears starting to trickle from his eyes, dissolving the white paint on his face, streaking his skin golden.
The Sufferer wept, holding perfectly still.
* * *
We unfastened our robes and let them fall, stepping gingerly away from them. I grabbed the long stick that Kutum held out to me. “Good work tonight,” he said, and grinned. His paint cracked, spreading grotesquerie over his features.
The Impia was in Ila and Unil’s wagon, having come in person to grant us our reward. All of us were burning our robes. I saw the white shape of Liio, who had tonight played the Orphan, dance briefly with her bloodstained robe and then throw it on the flames.
“If you can call the Isthmus Variation good,” I said to Kutum. I picked up my robe with the stick and cast it onto the bonfire we’d built in the center of the clearing. I took my low boots off and chucked them after my robes and then stepped into a pair of sandals. I reached for the fresh pair of thin gloves that I’d set next to my sandals. “Ugh, that poison. And those vines. Nobody told me about the vines. My skin is going to be crawling forever.”
Kutum’s breath faltered. He turned away a bit, and the flickering light played over his features. I saw his mouth work silently, the paint on his face crazing. When he spoke again, his voice was low. “Try not to think about them too much. It’s not healthy to wonder about the vines, or what the Impia sees through his flowers.”
Around us, our fellow players moved through the firelight and darkness, speaking to each other and doing the work that must be done before we could leave tonight. I retreated to the wagon I shared with Kutum and Liio, trying not to think of Ila and Unil facing the Impia in their wagon, forced to speak to him with bare and empty hands. Even destroyed men and women have their pride, and they had theirs in bucketfuls. The final tableau of the Slow Game was done, but the Isthmus Variation had one last scene in store before it ended.
The Impia eventually emerged from the wagon where he had been conferring with our leaders. He was a tall man, clean-shaven, his mouth nearly womanish in its softness in cont
rast to the rest of him. Magister tattoos wound around his fingers and tangled on the backs of his hands, disappearing under his sleeves. Alone of all of the nobles we had seen tonight, he was wearing shoes. Had I not known who he was, I might have mistaken him for a river driver or cooper, some profession that required great physical strength and quick wits.
I did know, so I sank with the rest of the troupe to my knees. “A great service has been rendered tonight,” the Impia said. In those words, it was impossible to mistake him for anyone but the Impia. The words were nearly visible, so laden were they with shivering inflections. “You have the gratitude of my office.” He extended a hand to Ila, who placed her bare hand in the tyrant’s, visibly trembling. He closed his fingers around it and lifted it to his lips. He kissed her hand gently, and then released her.
He turned and left. None of us dared get to our feet until he was long gone.
“Finish burning the costumes,” Ila said when we had begun to recover. “We have a long way to go tonight.” Her face was closed, her lips held in a tight line. Unil put an arm around her shoulders. She was still shaking, and her eyes wandered from side to side in her head, as if she were drunk. She cradled to her chest the hand that the Impia had kissed.
We buried Ila in an unmarked grave the day after we performed the Isthmus Variation.
* * *
She is still a bleeding hole at the heart of us, our Ila, our Shadow, our leader. Unil coughs constantly now. He will not survive to see us play again. When he dies, I will abandon the role of the Tempter and take on the Accused. One day, if I live long enough, I will become the Shadow.
The Impia is dead as well, killed by the poison Ila bore on her bare hand, the trust he had forced upon her betrayed. He died on the road back to his summer estate, before he had a chance to call his soldiers or his magics to ensure our silence.
Assassination, the broadsides called it. The enemies of the Impia reaching into the heart of his realm to eliminate him and all of the nobles who had attended his night banquet. None of the broadsides mentioned that there was a Slow Game performed in the garden that night.
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