by Tad Williams
“Days, maybe weeks, my lord.” She tried to keep her voice boyishly gruff and her words what she imagined would be peasant-simple. “I do not know for certain.” This at least was true, but she was glad her dirty face would hide the flush of her fear. “And I am not from Connord but Southmarch.” She had hoped to pass herself off as a wandering prentice, but she had expected to encounter some tradesman or merchant, not this shrewd-faced familiar of her own court.
“Do not task him so,” said the tall one named Dowan—a giant of a fellow, so big that Briony did not reach near to his shoulder, and Olin Eddon’s daughter was not a small girl. “The lad is weary and hungry, and cold.”
“And looking to ease those deficits at our expense,” said a woman the others had called Estir. Her dark hair was shot with gray and although her face might be called pretty, she had the soured look of someone who remembered every slight ever done to her.
“We could use another hand on the ropes,” offered a handsome, brown-skinned youth, one of the few who seemed near Briony’s own age. He spoke lazily, as one accustomed to getting his way, and she wondered if he was related to the owner of the troop. Finn Teodoros had introduced the company as Makewell’s Men, which was the usual sort of name for a troop of traveling players—perhaps the young man was Makewell’s son, or even Makewell himself.
“Well, that is at first easy enough to accomplish without loss, Estir,” said Teodoros. “He shall have my share tonight, since my stomach pains me a bit. And he shall sleep with me in the wagon—unless that is not mine to grant?”
The woman named Estir scowled, but waved her hand as though it was of little import to her.
“Come, then, wandering Tim,” said Teodoros, rising heavily from his seat on the wagon’s narrow steps. He was no older than her father and what hair he had showed little gray, but he moved like an aged man. “You can have my meal and we can speak more, and perhaps I shall sniff out what use you might be, since no one travels with us who cannot earn his way.”
“That’s not all you’ll sniff out, I’ll wager,” said one of the drinkers. His words were mumbled in a way that suggested he had started his drinking long before sunset. He was handsome in a thick-jawed way, with a shock of dark hair.
“Thank you, Pedder,” said Teodoros with a hint of irritation. “Estir, perhaps you could see that your brother puts a little food in his stomach to offset the drink. If he is ill again this tennight I fear we will have another disaster with Xarpedon, because Hewney does not know it.”
“I wrote it, curse you!” bellowed Hewney, a bearded, balding man with the look of an aging courtier who still clung to the memory of his handsome youth.
“Writing it and remembering it are two different things, Nevin,” said Teodoros reasonably. “Come along, young Tim—we will talk while you eat.”
Once inside the tiny wagon the scrivener lowered himself onto the small plank bed and gestured at a covered bowl sitting on the folding shelf that seemed, judging by the quills, pens, and ink bottles hanging in a pocketed leather pouch, to double as a writing table. “I did not bring a spoon. There is a basin of water you can use to wash your hands.”
While Briony began to consume the lukewarm stew, Teodoros watched her with a small, pleasant smile on his face. “You might do for some of the girl’s roles, you know. We lost our second boy in Silverside—he fell in love with a local, which is the curse of traveling companies. Feival cannot play all the women, Pilney is too ugly to play any but the nurses and dowagers, and we will not have money to hire another actor until we are installed in our next theater.”
Briony swallowed. “A player—me? No. No, my lord, I cannot. I have no training.”
Teodoros raised an eyebrow. “No training in imposture? That is a strange argument coming from a girl pretending to be a boy, don’t you think? What matter it if we add one more twist to the deception and have you pretend to be a boy pretending to be a girl?”
Briony almost choked. “A girl…”
Teodoros laughed. “Oh, come, child. Surely you did not think to pass yourself off as a true manchild? Not among players—or at least not around me. I have been brushing rouge on principal boys and tightening their corsets since before you were born. But it is up to you—I cannot imagine forcing someone onto the stage against her will. You will sleep in the wagon with me and we will find you other employ.”
Suddenly the stew seemed to become something like paste in her mouth, sticky and tasteless. She had never spent much time around writers, but she had heard stories of their vicious habits. “Sleep with you…?”
Teodoros reached out and patted her knee. She flinched and almost dropped the bowl into her lap. “Foolish child,” he said. “If you were a real boy, handsome as you are, you might have some cause to fear me. But I want nothing from you, and if Pedder Makewell thinks you are mine, then he will leave you alone, too. He likes a charming lad, but dares not offend me because even with his name on the company, it is my contacts in Tessis that will keep us alive and plying our craft.”
“Tessis? You’re going all the way to Syan?” Briony swayed a little on her tiny stool, dizzy with relief. Bless you, Lisiya—and you, dear, kind Zoria.
“Eventually we shall wind our way thither, yes. Perhaps a few testings of our new material in the outlying towns—The Ravishment of Zoria has never seen a true audience and I would like to let it breathe a few free breaths before it is stifled by the jades in Tessis.”
“The Ravishment…I don’t understand.”
“The Ravishment of Zoria. It is a play of mine, newish, concerning the abduction of Zoria by Khors and his imprisonment of her, and the fateful beginning of the war between the gods. With real thunderstorms, lightning, magical sleights, and the fearful rumble of the gods on their immortal steeds, all for two coppers!” He smiled again. “I am rather proud of it, truth to tell. Whether it is my best work, though, only time and the hoi polloi of Syan will say.”
“But you…you’re all from the March Kingdoms, aren’t you? Why are you going to Syan? Why can’t you do your plays in Southmarch?”
“Spoken as someone who understands little of the doings of artists and nobles,” said Teodoros, his smile gone now. “We were Earl Rorick’s Players, inherited by the earl from his father of the same name. We were also the best and most respected of the Southmarch players—whatever you have heard about the Lord Castellan’s Men is rubbish. The Firmament itself was ours until it burned (that is a theater, child) and then afterward the Odeion Playhouse inside the castle walls and the great Treasury Theater in the mainland city both fought for our works. But young Rorick is dead, you see.”
“Dead? Rorick Longarren?” She only realized after she said it that perhaps it would seem strange she should know his full name.
Teodoros nodded. “Killed by fairies, they say. In any case, he did not come back from the battle at Kolkan’s Field and he has no heir, so we are left without a patron. The country’s guardian, kindly Lord Tolly, does not like players, or at least he does not like players with connections to the monarchy that was. He has given his own support to a group of players—players, hah! They are bandits, so criminal is their writing and their declaiming—under the patronage of a young idiot baron named Crowel. And so there is nothing for us to do but starve or travel.” He gave a rueful chuckle. “We decided travel would be more graceful and less painful.”
After Teodoros went back out to join his fellow players by the fire, Briony curled up on the floor of the wagon—choosing not to put Finn Teodoros’ professed disinterest in women to too harsh a test—and pulled the playwright’s traveling cloak over her. The news that her cousin Rorick was dead had disturbed her, even though she had never liked him. He had been in the same battle as Barrick and had not survived it. She did her best to let the sounds of talking and singing from outside the wagon soothe her. She was among people, even if they were only rough sorts, and not alone anymore. Briony fell asleep quickly. If she dreamed, she did not remember it in the morning.
The physician had made himself fairly comfortable. Besides a bed and a chair, the Guild-masters had given Chaven a table and what looked like every book in the guildhall library. It pained Chert’s head to think of reading so many of the things. Except for consultation here in the hall over a few particular and difficult problems over the years, he had not opened a book himself since soon after he had been introduced to the Mysteries. Chert of the Blue Quartz had a deep respect for learning, but he was not much of a reader.
“I should have come down here years ago,” said Chaven, hardly even looking up at Chert’s entrance. “How could I have been such a fool! If I had even guessed at the treasures down here…”
“Treasures?”
Chaven lifted the book in his hands reverently. “Bistrodos on the husbandry of crystals! My colleagues all over Eion believe this book lost when Hierosol first fell. And if I can find someone to help me translate from the Funderling, I tremble to think what knowledge your own ancestors have preserved here in these other volumes.”
“Chaven, I…”
“I know you do not feel up to such a challenge yourself, Chert, but perhaps one of the Metamorphic Brothers? I am sure they have scholars among their number who could help me…”
The idea of the conservative Metamorphic Brothers agreeing to allow ancient Funderling wisdom to be translated into one of the big-folk tongues was preposterous enough; Chert didn’t even want to imagine asking them to help with the project. In any case, he had more important matters at hand. “Chaven, I…”
“I know, I’m supposed to be solving my own problems—those I have brought with me which have become your people’s problems now, too. I know.” He shook his head. “But it is so hard to ignore all this…”
“Chaven, will you listen to me?”
The physician looked up, surprised. “What is it, friend?”
“I have been trying to speak to you, but you will go on and on about these books. Something has happened, something…disturbing.”
“What? Nothing wrong with the boy Flint, I hope?”
“No,” said Chert. There at least was one thing in the world to be grateful for: Flint still had not recovered his memories, but he seemed more ordinary after his session with Chaven’s mirrors. He paid attention now, and though he still spoke little, he at least took part in the life of the household. Opal was the happiest she had been in a month. “No, nothing like that. We’ve had a message from the castle.”
“So?”
“From Brother Okros. He asks the Funderlings’ help.”
Chaven’s eyes narrowed. “That traitor! What does he want?”
Chert handed the letter to the physician, who fumbled for his spectacles and found them at last in his pockets. He had to set down his copy of Bistrodos so he could put them on and read the letter.
“To the esteemed Elders of the Guild of Stone-Cutters, greetings!
From his honor Okros Dioketian, royal physician to Olin Alessandros, Prince Regent of Southmarch and the March Kingdoms, and to his mother Queen Anissa.”
Chaven almost dropped the letter in his fury. “The villain! And look, he puts his own name before the royal child and mother. Does he know nothing of humility?” It took him a moment until he was calm enough to read again.
“I request the help of your august Guild with a small matter of scholarship, but one which will nevertheless carry with it my gratitude and that of the Queen, guardian of the Prince Regent. Send to me in the castle any among you who is particularly learned in the craft of Mirrors, their making, their mending, and the study of their substance and properties.
“I thank you in advance for this aid. Please do not speak of it outside your Guild, for it is the Queen’s express wish it be kept secret, so as not to excite rumor among the ignorant, who have many superstitions about Mirrors and suchlike.”
“And here he’s signed it—oh, and a seal, too!” Chaven’s voice was icy with disgust. “He’s come high in the world.”
“But what do you think about it? What should we do?”
“Do? What we must, of course—send him someone. And it must be you, Chert.”
“But I know nothing about mirrors…!”
“You will know more when you read Bistrodos.” Chaven picked the book up again, then let it fall back on the tabletop—the heavy volume made a noise like a badly-shored corridor collapsing. “And I will help you learn to speak like a master of captromancy.”
This was so preposterous he did not even argue. “But why?”
“Because Okros Dioketian is trying to learn the secrets of my mirror—and you must find out what he plans.” Chaven had become unnaturally pale and intent. “You must do it, Chert. You alone I trust. In the hands of someone like Okros there is no telling what mischief that mirror could perform!”
Chert shook his head in dismay, although he did not doubt the task would indeed fall to him. He was already imagining Opal’s opinion of this latest outrage.
Despite Lisiya’s healing hands, Briony was still sore in many places, but she was much happier than she had been on her own. It was better by far to walk in company, and the miles of empty grassland, broken only by the occasional settlement, village, or even more infrequent market town, went much more easily than they would have otherwise. She spoke little, not wanting to risk her disguise, although on the second night Estir Makewell had sidled up to her at the campfire and quietly said, “I don’t blame you for traveling as a boy in these dire territories. But if you make any trouble for me or the troop, girl, I will snatch the hair out of your head—and I’ll beat you stupid, too.”
It was a strange sort of welcome from the only other female, but Briony hadn’t planned on the two of them being friends in any case.
So if she could stay with them until Syan, what then? She was grateful for their fellowship, but she couldn’t imagine any of the players could help her in Tessis. Besides Teodoros, the soft-spoken but sharp-eyed eminence of the group, the troop was named for Pedder Makewell, Estir’s brother, the actor who liked his wine (and, according to Teodoros, also handsome young men). Makewell’s Men had chosen him as their figurehead because he had a reputation for playing the great parts and playing them loudly and well. The groundlings loved Makewell, Teodoros had told her, for his bombast but also for his tragic deaths. “His Xarpedon gasps out his life with an arrow in his heart,” Teodoros had said approvingly, “and although this mighty autarch has put half of Xand to the sword, the people weep to hear him whisper his last words.”
The playwright Nevin Hewney was at least as well known as Makewell, although not for his acting—Teodoros said Hewney was a middling player at best, indifferent to that craft except as a way of attracting the fairer sex. He was, however, infamous for his plays, especially those like The Terrible Conflagration that some called blasphemous. But no one called him an indifferent poet: even Briony had heard something of Hewney’s The Death of Karal, which the royal physician Chaven had often claimed almost redeemed playwrighting from its sordid and sensational crimes against language.
“When he found his poetic voice, Hewney burst upon the world like fireworks,” Finn Teodoros told her as they walked one morning while the man in question limped along ahead of them, cursing the effects of the previous night’s drinking. “I remember when first I saw The Eidolon of Devonis and realized that words spoken on a stage could open up a world never seen before. But he was young then. Strong spirits and his own foul temper have blunted his genius, and I must do most of the writing.” Teodoros shook his head. “A shame against the gods themselves, who seldom give such gifts, to see those gifts squandered.”
Makewell’s sister Estir was the group’s only female member, and although she did not play upon the stage she performed many other useful services as seamstress and costumer, and also collected the money at performances and serviced the accounting books. The giant Dowan Birch had the beetling brow and frown of some forest wild man, but was surprisingly kind and intelligent in his speec
h—Teodoros called him “a quaffing of gentlemanry decanted into a barrel rather than a bottle.” But for his size and looks, he seemed distinctly unfit to play the demons and monsters that were his lot. The other leading actor was the handsome young man Feival, who although he had ended his dalliances with Teodoros and Makewell years earlier was still youthful and pretty enough to treat them both like lovesick old men. He seemed not to take advantage of this except in small ways, and Briony decided she rather liked him: his edge of carelessness and his occasional snappishness reminded her a little of Barrick.
“Your other name is Ulian,” she said to him as they walked beside the horses one day. “Does that mean you are from Ulos?”
“Only for as long as it took me to realize what a midden heap it was,” he said, laughing. “I notice you did not spend long sniffing the air of Southmarch, either.”
Briony was almost shocked. “I love Southmarch. I did not leave because I disliked it.”
“Why, then?”
She realized she was already wandering into territory she wished to avoid. “I was treated badly by someone. But you, how old were you? When you left Ulos, I mean.”
“Not more than ten, I suppose.” He frowned, thinking. “I have numbers, but not well. I think I have eighteen or nineteen years now, so that seems about right.”
“And you came to Southmarch and became an actor?”
“Nothing so straightforward.” He grinned. “If you have heard players and playhouses are the dregs of civilization, then know that anyone who says so has not seen the true cesspits of a place like Southmarch—let alone Tessis, which has Southmarch beat hollow for vice and depravity!” Feival chuckled. “I am rather looking forward to seeing it again.”
“There was a…physician in Southmarch,” Briony said, wondering if she might be going too far. “I think he lived in the castle. Chaven, his name was. Some said he was from Ulos. Do you know anything of him?”
