Uneasy alliances - Thieves World 11 (14 page)

the King's great desk, and the curtain went up.

Feltheryn came alive.

There was an audience and he could feel it, feel every living being as a presence, their eyes upon him, their breathing slowed, their minds involved—their emotions guided as they submitted themselves, for the duration, to the magic of the show. He began the monologue in which the King voiced his doubts, then Glisselrand entered and he began the part of the play that was his personal favorite, for it said, better than any words of his own could ever hope to say, what he felt about her:

"How shall I call you then?

Like some great bird, that though she be my slave can yet take wing?

Like some famed horse, that though I hold the reins can race the wind?

I call you love, and hold you in my arms, and yet you overpower me. I call you wife, and you must call me lord; and yet I worship at your shrine!"

He ceased to exist as a separate person and became the tragic king, a man doomed by circumstance to destroy all that he loved in life, rescued from the ultimate humiliation only by the intervention of supernatural forces at the end: forces beyond his comprehension.

The scene changed again and the pain hit him, then he launched back into his performance and it was gone. Only when the first act was complete did he really understand that he was seriously wounded. Instead of going out to the little secret passage behind the lobby (Molin had included it without question) to listen to the public reaction to the play,

Feltheryn stayed in his dressing room, resting for the forceful and terrible

interview with the High Priest, preparing for the cold and terrible act of

burning his enemies at the stake, the auto-da-fe that was the play's most

stunning spectacle.

By the end, however, as the story ground to its inevitable conclusion with the ghostly figure of the King's dead father dragging his grandson Karel into the tomb, the pain was pushing past all Feltheryn's defenses. And there was something else, something that had tugged at him increasingly throughout. As the curtain fell and he dropped the character from him like a discarded robe, he placed it.

There was no applause.

No more applause than there had been in the alley earlier. Instead there was a curious buzz, something between anger and amusement, partaking of both; as if the audience didn't know what to do. He had felt it, had known with the back of his mind that something was wrong, but he had been too much at odds with the pain to pay attention. Now his mind focused on it with a clarity like sunlight on springwater.

He started to go through the curtains for a bow, .if not to receive applause then to gauge the danger, but Glisselrand took his arm and stopped him.

"I think not," she said, and he saw that there were lines in her face that age had not put there.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I don't quite know," she replied, "but I think we shall find out. The Prince and the Beysa have sent word that they are coming backstage. Let's get to the green room."

They had taken the precaution of providing their own greens for the opening, so by the time Prince Kadakithis and the Beysa Shupansea swept in, Feltheryn and Glisselrand were seated behind a desk amidst baskets of flowers and fruit with potted palms to either side. It had not

been easy to find potted palms in Sanctuary, but they had grown used to them in Ranke and they felt it would identify them positively with the capital in its days of glory.

The effort was apparently wasted.

"How dare you'" accused the prince, and Feltheryn instantly knew what it was that he had dared, though just how and why he did not know.

Prince Kadakithis was clearly the young nobleman on whom Snegelringe had modeled his walk and manner! It must have appeared that the whole play was directly aimed at him, a warning or an insult or ...

"Oh look!" said Snegelringe, entering on the arm of a beautiful young 288 UNEASY ALLIANCES

woman and accompanied by several more. "Here's the young man you pointed out to me! Kind Sir, you cannot know how grateful—" Snegelringe stopped.

The whole world seemed to stop for a moment as one of the ladies in the pudgy actor's retinue stepped forward.

"Daphne!" Prince Kadakithis exclaimed.

"My husband!" said Princess Daphne, and the look she gave him could have frozen the oceans all the way to the Beysa's homeland. "I heard that

you had made a gracious contribution to the evening, so how could I do less?"

She stepped past him and drew out a small velvet bag which she dropped on the table in front of Glisselrand with just enough force to indicate that it contained metal; from the sound of it, gold. Then she looked back at the prince.

"I hope that you enjoyed the evening as much as I did. For now you must excuse me. I have an appointment with Master Rounsnouf, the estimable actor. Then Masters Snegelringe and Rounsnouf and I will be going to the Vulgar Unicorn. It is amazing how much of Sanctuary I never used to see!"

She swept from the room, followed by the other women who had come in with her.

Snegelringe, perceiving that he had been duped, stood motionless while the full import of his actions crashed down on him. "I . . ." he started,

but then he stopped, clearly unable to formulate an appropriate apology. The Beysa laughed.

"Master Snegelringe," she said, "your imitation of the prince was most enlightening. Only less so than the reason for it which we have just had revealed. But perhaps you might choose another model for the performance you will give tomorrow night."

"Unless," said Feltheryn, the plot of the play before him coming clear,

"Your Highness would consent to see it in another light!" The Prince and the Beysa turned to him and Glisselrand clutched his hand.

"While it is true," he continued, "that the role of Karel is tragic, it is

also noble. Karel, like His Highness, spends much of his time in a backward land; so much so that he comes to love its people, even to the point

of standing up for them against his father, the King." A different tension now came into the room, for the relationship between Prince Kadakithis and his half-brother the late emperor, was well known.

"If it were spoken in the palace that the Prince was pleased with our seeing him in such an heroic light, tonight's performance could not be

taken as an insult by anyone, no matter how it was instigated. In fact, I

doubt anyone would believe that it was anything but the best compliment we poor players could offer. More, it is known that Your Highness has supported our efforts, so it might seem that it was with Your Highness'

compliance that we performed the play thus."

He did not dare say further. The seeds of the idea were planted, it would be up to them to keep them watered. The magic in the plays was subtle, but it might be sufficient to transform the image of the Prince from that of a "kittycat" into that of a tiger. The Prince and the Beysa looked at one another. The Beysa's snake slid out of hiding in her sleeve.

Molin Torchholder stalked into the room, his face full of the lightning of the god he worshipped, but before he could speak the Beysa turned to Glisselrand.

"Turn out the pouch the Princess Daphne gave you," she instructed.

"Daphne?" echoed Molin, clearly outraged.

Glisselrand did as she was bid and dumped the sizable pile of gold coins onto the table.

The Beysa eyed the coins, then reached down to her dress and plucked off several large jewels. Smiling, she placed them on the table next to the

gold.

"I believe your next play should be The Queen of Tarts, "she said with consummate modesty, considering that the play was accounted too lascivious to play in many towns. "In case you do not remember, it is the one about the noblewoman who sells herself in the marketplace. I have never seen it, but here, far away from home, I believe I can risk it. These

jewels should serve in earnest of the costs."

"Oh, Your Highness," said Glisselrand, looking at the jewels. "We could not possibly accept such a gracious donation . . ."

—Now what was she saying? Feltheryn wondered; for at that moment the pain between his ribs began to blot out his thoughts and he was sure that he must immediately slip from consciousness. The Prince and the Beysa might be nobility, but opening night was over and he needed a physician—

"Not unless," Glisselrand continued, "Your Highness would accept a small token of our thanks."

Feltheryn understood and plunged back to consciousness, but he was not quick enough. Before he could intervene Glisselrand had pulled out the object she had been knitting, a multicolored tea cozy that would have

put the S'danzo to shame for its garishness, and she was proffering it proudly to the Beysa.

RED LIGHT, LOVE LIGHT

Chris Morris

Sunset gilded Sanctuary's domes and spires as Shawme, the new girl at Myrtis's Aphrodisia House, sat upright in her backroom bed. Fists clenched, she took deep breaths, shaking off her bad dream. Her blue eyes wide, she stared hungrily out the window, at the sunset to which she woke, at the window frame itself, at the whitewashed walls of her little room. The room was plain by Aphrodisia House standards, but not by Shawme's. The room had a real window with glass panes; it had a feather bed and clean sheets; it had a writing desk cum dressing table on which were such luxuries as pots of body paint and makeup, kohl and powdered cowrie shell, even a hair brush made from boar bristles, and a bone comb; it had a closet with clothes in it—clean clothes, free from holes, dresses of fine sheer silk and even a coat to keep out the

spring chill.

It was a room of unimaginable luxury, high above the street, not like the room in the dream from which Shawme had awakened to flee. In the dream, she'd been back in her old Ratfall burrow, shared with five other orphans, fighting over the raw and bony thigh of a dead cat they'd found in the street. In that dream, the other kids had teased her that all of this

was a dream. They'd been sure there was no room for her in the Aphrodisia House, no job among the perfumed women of the evening, no marvelous future unrolling day by day.

In the dream, Shawme had been back in Ratfall where no one had a future and no one had a past, not a chance or a hope. Except Zip. And Zip didn't pay any mind to the youngsters. You couldn't matter to Zip RED LIGHT, LOVE LIGHT 291

until you weren't a kid anymore . . . until the PFLS found a use for you.

Shawme unballed her clenched fists and rubbed her eyes with her hands. As the dream's terror fled, joy filled her and crested into exultation. She was really here! She'd made it out of Ratfall!

So all of this was true and real—the down coverlet she pulled up against her naked shoulders, the lavender-scented oil lamp ready to light

by her bed as night came on, the beautiful sunset—because even in Sanctuary, the night could be beautiful when you were safe inside the walls of

a fine house instead of lurking cold and vulnerable on the streets. And it was all real because of Zip. Zip had noticed her, all right, when she'd come to him with the treasures she'd found on the Downwind beach. Zip had looked at her with focused eyes for the first time and Shawme's heart skipped a beat. You couldn't do any better than Zip. Zip was the fantasy lover of all the young girls in Ratfall and half of Downwind. Zip's power could shield you, Zip's connections could get you anything, even out.

In front of Zip, Shawme had bitten her lip and pretended she wasn't about to swoon. She had to be grown up and impress the PFLS leader for her plan to work. The PFLS—Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary—was working with uptowners now. Zip's connections were legend in the shanty towns. She'd smiled bravely and said, "I found something

—things you'd want. I'll give them, for a price." And he'd let her show him, let her tell him, what she'd found—a bronze rod that turned noble metal to dross, an amulet of uncertain value, a rusted knife whose edge could be coaxed to life. There'd been one

other thing she hadn't shown him, but that was her secret, still. And the PFLS leader had seemed to be impressed, and said, "What's your name, girl, and what do you want for these?" She'd replied, as cool as if she dealt with handsome rebel leaders every day, "I want out of Ratfall. I want a room in the Aphrodisia House. I want to be one of Lady Myrtis's girls and meet a noble lord and marry well." Her chin was high, to show she knew the ways of the world and the implications of what she was saying. As she spoke, she ran spread hands down her bodice and over her hips as she'd seen a whore do once, when she was uptown in the Maze where men could afford to buy a woman's favors and women sold themselves for money rather than having to give themselves for survival. Zip's eyes had narrowed, his mouth had twitched. He'd stroked his stubbled chin and gazed ruminatively at the treasures she'd found. Then finally he looked up from under his black sweatband and said, "That's what you want, I'll see what I can do. But leave these with me, or

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somebody might take them from you and you'll have nothing to trade but what you started with."

She'd been suddenly uncomfortable under his stare, a different look than he'd had on him before-It seemed to go right through her clothes and she thought, terrified for an instant so that she'd begun to shake, he

was going to ask her to demonstrate her expertise, such charms as could qualify a girl for Myrtis's, the finest house in all of Sanctuary's red-light

district.

If he had asked, all chance of Shawme's escape to luxury and bright tomorrows would have been dashed on the spot, for Shawme had no idea what a man like Zip would want from a woman, let alone a professional woman.

In point of fact, Shawme had no idea what to do with a man, except run from them and throw whatever you could at them if they got too close. If you didn't do that and they grabbed you, the next thing you knew you were battered, bleeding and pregnant.