Shadowbridge

by Gregory Frost

  He said, “I haven’t heard my beautiful Kyai mentioned in a very long time.”

  “It’s better with puppets,” she responded, and when he growled she thought she’d angered him, but realized after a moment that the gravelly rumble was laughter.

  He said, “Ah, Leodora. You tell the world of your genius but you doubt it to yourself.”

  “You know my name.”

  “I’m a god, girl. I have to do something to warrant it besides killing a few mouth-breathing Jatos. Add that to your tale when you speak of those demons: Jatos is what they were, straight out of a sewer.”

  She took note of the name but was more curious about something else. “You haven’t heard your wife’s name in a long time? Isn’t she with you?” Even as she spoke she sought among the eikons for the figure of Kyai. The goddess was not represented in the statues nearby.

  Shumyzin replied, “Death doesn’t work like that. You tell the stories—I know you know about Death, Jax.” When she looked surprised, he added, “Just as I know the identity you travel under.” He made to shake his head, and a look of alarm strained his features. He glanced down at his torso. The shadow of night had reached his collarbone. “Quick now, Leodora, come here. I must tell you something.”

  She got to her feet and took a reluctant step toward the frightening god.

  “Closer!” he snapped.

  She edged nearer.

  “Listen,” said Shumyzin. “I know the one you travel with. We’re old acquaintances, he and I.”

  “Soter?” she asked.

  “Pah! Not the lush. The other one. The deathless one. The one who visits you in your sleep.”

  She stared at him in awe.

  The tiny black pupils fixed her. “I know the riddle of your coral friend.” The shadows touched his throat, and his voice shrank to a whisper. “And a warning. Jax rattles the darkness where he travels. A piece of it is sure to come calling.” His neck was now in shadow. His intense goggle-eyes regarded her in a way that imparted both his regard and his great concern for her. She had to look away from such intensity. He wheezed, “One more thing, and the most important.” He fell silent abruptly, and that drew her gaze to him again. Shumyzin’s head had turned back into stone. He faced the gorgon, a statue, as she had found him. She realized that a purple cloud masked the sun.

  “The most important thing,” she muttered.

  . . . . .

  For an eternity she stared at the streaks of water on the polished cheeks—the only evidence to convince her that she hadn’t dreamed the conversation with him. She waited, hesitant, hopeful, but when the cloud passed and the dying sunlight touched him again, he did not return to life.

  The overhead sky, a crepuscular blue, now twinkled with stars as if it were an inverted sea reflecting the lights of Vijnagar. Before the dusk disappeared altogether she must make the climb back to the ground. She hastily rebraided her hair, curled the braid around her fist, and then tied it up and stuffed it inside the collar of her tunic. She pulled the hood up on the back of her head. Across the horizon only a magenta swath remained, as if the sun had bled out upon the sky.

  She turned and knelt, placing her fingers in the handholds. With her left foot she felt for the first of the rungs carved in the side of the bridge, then pushed herself over the edge. At the last moment she gave a final glance up, but Shumyzin remained gray and still.

  The way down she took much more slowly and carefully than she had the climb up.

  By the time she reached the pier, night owned the sky. All illumination now came from torches and lamps and the crescent of bold Saphon shining over the massive tower. Gyjio still hid behind it.

  She easily replaced her mask as she circled the pier and then set off along the street paralleling the tower wall.

  People paid her no mind. No one could tell that she among them all had just conversed with a god.

  TWO

  She was going to be late, but she didn’t care. She picked an outdoor café and sat down, her legs gone weak. The aftershock had caught up with her—the stupefaction of what had happened on the spire. She tried to dismiss its effect upon her, telling herself that because she hadn’t eaten since morning, this was just hunger making her feeble.

  She had ample money to pay for a feast but asked only for a single dish of strongly spiced scallops and vegetables stewed over kelp, with some fermented rice wine to steady her nerves. She sat quietly awhile, watching people pass by, sipping her wine. It tingled in her belly, its sizzle reaching to her fingers. Her awe receded, the way the impact of a dream steadily recedes once one awakens.

  Shumyzin had been ready to tell her something important. Maybe she could come back tomorrow…although somehow she suspected he would not manifest again, whether the sun fell upon him or not. The rules of things known and unknown were in play, and though she was incognizant of them, she sensed that what he had been about to say fell into the category of things that could not be known until their time.

  Her food arrived, and after two mouthfuls she was sniffling merrily from the bite of the spices and washing the fire down with her wine. Though her face flushed with heat from the seasonings, she kept her hood up and her mask on.

  On Vijnagar it was not uncommon for people to go about masked. The wealthy in particular did so, sometimes in order to conduct liaisons with lovers who, for one reason or another, might have been inappropriate. As a result, masks had attained fashionability. Many were intricate, sequined, edged in gold, scales, or feathers. A wide variety of them passed by as she ate; jewels and sequins gleamed in the torchlight. Her mask was far simpler—a tight, shiny black cloth with a diamond pattern in the weave; it covered her from the top of her head to the tip of her nose. The idea was not to draw attention to herself. She might easily have been a rich young man disguised to go slumming, and no doubt it was this impression that attracted the tattered procurer who slid onto the bench across from her, crooked his pinkie to his nose, and asked, “Paidika, young master?”

  Leodora looked up coldly. He still held his pinkie to his nostril. She set down her spoon, then bit the tip of her thumb and flicked it at him.

  The grubby man affected a look of indignation. He bowed a hasty apology and moved off to find a willing client. She watched him glide from table to table, eventually to an elaborately masked couple being led by a hired torchbearer. They discussed his smiling proposition and, to her surprise and disgust, went off with him, dismissing the torchbearer with a coin. It was risky business—the procurer might have been laying a trap to rob and murder them. She noted that both the man and woman wore khanjarli daggers across their bellies. They weren’t fools, whatever else. However, his skimming the area made it likely that the grubby pimp did in truth represent a paidika—a harem of boys. She shuddered at the thought of what such a place, run by so scabrous a creature, must be like.

  . . . . .

  With the meal finished, she stood on stronger legs. The wine and food in her belly gave her a compact, integrated feeling—a feeling that she could do anything. After all, she was a favorite of the gods. She was a great storyteller. And she was now most definitely late. Soter would be wringing his hands in worry that something horrible had befallen her. He always expected disaster. He courted it.

  She hailed a girl with a torch, who could not have been more than twelve, and said huskily, “Lotus Hall.” The girl led her down Caritas Avenue. They passed a cluster of other unhired torchbearers, all of them the girl’s seniors, and all of them male. They glowered sullenly. Leodora chuckled.

  The girl led her to the open doors, there bowing with proper respect. Leodora smiled and handed her three silver coins, where one was sufficient pay. The child’s eyes grew wide. Leodora leaned down and said, in her own voice, “There, and don’t share any of it with those ruffians we passed.” The girl’s amazement doubled as she realized she’d been leading a woman, who now slipped into the dark interior of Lotus Hall.

  Some nights statues spoke and women dressed as m
en.

  . . . . .

  Inside the hall, torches in wall sconces to each side of the doors had been lit, as had the main chandelier. The oil burned brightly, smoking, above a noisy crowd. She didn’t see Nuberne, the owner, but his wife, Rolend, stood beside the serving bar. Moonlight trickled through the lancet windows, splashing milky radiance upon the tables. Between tables and wall lay deeper pockets of shadow. Leodora skirted the main crowd, trying to keep in the shadows, trying to avoid Rolend’s attention. But it was Rolend’s nature to notice everyone who came into her hall, no matter how crowded it was. Before Leodora was halfway down its length the mistress of the hall had swept out from behind the bar, snaked among tables and revelers, and blocked her path.

  “Jax,” Rolend said, taking her hand, “I’d begun to worry that you weren’t going to perform tonight.” She thrust forward her ample bosom as though stabbed from behind, then gave a look of coy embarrassment as both breasts settled on Leodora’s arm.

  Leodora drew back but bumped up against a chair. She forced a smile while she tried to maneuver around the mistress without making contact again. She replied with Jax’s deeper voice, “I always perform.”

  Rolend’s smile grew sly. “I’ll bet you do, my Jax.”

  Leodora’s smile never faltered, but in trying to step around the chair her foot caught behind one of its legs, and it clattered along with her. She couldn’t seem to untangle herself. Rolend gripped her fingers tight with one hand and smoothed the other across her palm. “You have such hard hands, my dear Jax. So rough for someone of such delicate skill—”

  “Ro!” From the kitchen Nuberne’s voice cut through the din. “Where’s the damned yarrow, damn you?”

  Rolend’s eyes hardened for an instant. She released her hold and smiled as if she hadn’t heard. She said quickly, “After the show I’ll bring you some dinner and we can dally a bit. He’s already in his cups.” Then she called out, “Yarrow’s on the bottom pantry shelf…dearest!” so shrilly that Leodora’s eyes teared.

  As the mistress of the house turned away, Leodora sighed, and a voice from the table in front of her said, “She’s taken a real shine to you, lad.”

  “Soter!” He had his back to her, his feet up. The bald dome of his head rested below the high back of the chair. She wriggled around the table to sit facing him. “Soter, something strange has happened. I need you to explain—”

  Instead of hearing her out, he interrupted, “I’d begun to worry ’bout you. It was my misgivings that top-heavy tart related, not hers. She has none. She merely wants to make certain you’ll accommodate her after.”

  Soter had been tanned by every wind that had ever blown across Shadowbridge. He was lean and dark and dry as leather. His was neither a happy nor a sad face, but one that had encountered some version of every possible eventuality. At the moment it was flushed from an extended encounter with a wine bottle.

  “What am I going to do?” she asked.

  He puzzled for a moment. “Feign death?”

  “What did my father do?”

  “Well, generally, he was about the most accommodating man there ever was.” With the two fingers of his that were missing their last joints he scratched his stubbled chin, then winced at what he’d said. “That is to say, until your mother performed his reconstruction. I don’t believe he’s the paradigm you’re looking for at the moment. ’Course, he wasn’t pretending to be somethin’ other than what he was.” She glared at him, and he waved his hands in defense. “I didn’t say you had a choice, dear heart. Prejudice is the way of the world. A few more spans up the line here, you’ll have gathered yourself a reputation to bank on, and you can come out of your headgear like a turtle out of her shell—make a big production of it, a spectacle, if that’s what you want to do. Not that I’d advise it. And there’ll still be some stretches—Malprado, for instance—where you might be prohibited…where women have no business doing business ’less it’s illicit. The mask they’d make you wear there would cover your mouth, too. Be very anonymous there. I doubt we’ll go that way. No, somewhere like old Colemaigne’d be better for you. They won’t care at all, except about the performance. Most places’ll be swayed by the wonder of you, the mysterious masked wonder called Jax. Make you an exhibit, a treasure. ’Course, if you want to remove the mask, I can’t stop you.” He poked his finger into his chest. “Not me.”

  Someone in the crowd shouted out, “Jax!” but at the booth, not at her.

  “Yes, but what do I do about tonight?”

  Smiling crookedly, Soter sank back. “Perform, m’girl, perform. Get that idiot musician to play decently for more than five minutes at a time and we’ll do all right.” He got up, seeking his balance. The small bronze libation bowl in the center of the table rocked, splashing out liquid dark as blood. It was nearly full. How many drinks did it take to fill a libation bowl when the offering from each drink was but a drop or two?

  That lush, the god had called him. It was amusing on a puppet: When Meersh drank himself stupid, people all laughed. Leodora’s jaw clenched. She needed advice and he dismissed her with a line he thought amusing: “Perform.”

  “So, anyway,” Soter said, “where in the Great Spiral were you?”

  “Talking to a statue,” she snapped, then marched off, leaving him staring after her in his befuddlement.

  . . . . .

  At the far end of the hall from the doors stood her booth. Twice her height, it was three panels of black drapery making up three sides of a tall box, open at the top. The ends of the upright poles protruded above the drapery. In the center of the front panel, she lifted a smaller flap of material that acted as a curtain covering a flat, featureless white silk screen. As she pinned the curtain up, some of the patrons began whistling and clapping. Without acknowledging them she circled to the side of the booth, parted the drapes near the rear corner, and stepped into darkness.

  Inside, the booth’s framework of stout wooden poles, tenoned and pinned into each other, was more obvious, and all the secrets of her skill were revealed.

  Behind and above the silk screen—covered on this side by a small curtain of fabric identical to the one she’d pinned up—stood a stanchion on which her lantern hung. Unlike most other lanterns, one side of it was solid brass, dull with age, another had been cut with tiny holes and two crescent moons, and a third had been fitted with a plate of blue glass. Only one side—the one facing the screen—contained anything like a lens, as a normal lantern might.

  In the back right-hand corner were stacked two coffin-sized trunks in which the entire show was transported—the bottom one for the poles and drapes, the top for her puppets—and on top of the trunks, on his back and making a noise somewhere between a snore and a gargle, lay the accompanist. He was a small dark-haired man, unshaven and in clothes that were better suited to mop buckets. The unwashed smell of him wouldn’t have posed a problem on the boulevard, but in the small booth it could bring tears to her eyes.

  Nevertheless, she had to wake him now; she held her breath as she tapped him on the shoulder. His head rolled. Then he jerked awake. His eyes shifted, found her, and he sat up, drawing back on the case, knees up, almost fearful in his pose.

  She had no time to be concerned about his confusion or fears. He wasn’t a particularly good musician to begin with, but he was all that they’d been able to find. Soter complained that they needed a good accompanist, that they weren’t a troupe without one, but thus far they’d had no luck acquiring anyone else whose playing warranted keeping him on. Authoritatively Leodora said, “Come now, you, we have to begin. Go help Soter, set up your things beside the screen. They’re already getting sour out there.”

  The musician jumped down, then slouched out of the booth. She quickly secured the ribbons that tied it closed so he couldn’t get back in.

  She unfolded and set up two low trestles, one on each side of the silk screen, then lifted the top from the upper trunk and placed it squarely over the right-hand trestle, forming a table
.

  Then she set to work. She knew what stories she needed to tell tonight. The necessary pieces for Shumyzin’s tale were scattered in different compartments inside the trunk. She would have to root around for those during an intermission. Soter ought to know where most of them lay. Right now she was late, and the audience was hooting.

  With the first box prepared she took off her tunic and mask, and stood wearing only trousers and the wide elastic band that pressed her breasts nearly flat against her ribs. She would have been happier if her chest had been smaller and easier to conceal. The band was giving her a rash. She peeled it off, then quickly took a towel and patted the perspiration from beneath both breasts. For the show she could be free of the harness, her sex hidden entirely from outside view. The beautiful thing about being a puppeteer was that she remained anonymous. She disappeared into her stories.

  Dry, she wrapped herself in the loose, comfortable black shirt that she always wore to perform. She took a deep, calming breath, stood for a moment longer, then undid the ribbons on the booth flap.

  From a punt she lit the lantern, rotating it so that the blue-glass side faced front. Then she knelt on the padded stool beside her box of puppets and lifted the inner curtain covering the screen. As the curtain came away, the stretched silk glowed a deep, submarine blue. Outside, the musician’s flute sounded and the crowd cheered. There were cries of “Shut up!” and “Sit down!” and “Quick, bring me another nabidh!”

  From the box she took the first piece: the image of a single stick-legged house. She deftly hooked it upon the silk. Then she lifted by its rods the first puppet, a magnificent construction. She waited.

  The audience muttered, settling in. The flute played an introductory trill, slipped a note, but finished, held fairly steady, then faded.

  The room fell silent.

  Soter’s voice filled the quiet. “We bid you welcome all. Tonight, if you’ve never witnessed it, you will see a rare thing. If you’ve been here before, then you’ve come back because you now know that I did not lie when I promised you this the first time.