Some by virtue fall, p.4
Some by Virtue Fall, page 4
“He’s with the king,” the clerk said.
Saba paused, considered carefully.
The clerk sneered. “Are you as important as the king?”
A long, long silence while Saba continued considering. “No?”
“I’ll remind him about your message when he gets out of his meeting. With,” the clerk said crisply, once more, “the king.”
Saba rubbed her hands over her face. “This matter is time sensitive. How long is the meeting likely to take?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t say. But I’m thankful we have officials who take such care and consideration in the running of the country, don’t you?”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“I’ll let his lordship know you stopped by, madam, but if you don’t escort yourself out, then I’ll see you thrown out.”
Well, there was nothing for it. Saba arranged for the other Lights to cover her part in that afternoon’s performance and hied herself back to the Red Theater, where she lurked across the street and waited for the city watch to arrive by order of the Lord Chancellor and shut it all down.
By half past one, the forecourt was crammed full of theater-goers, and the girls at the door were taking pennies as fast as the flowing mass of humanity could hand them over.
Surely the watch would arrive, Saba thought. Probably any minute now. They were just waiting for a suitably dramatic moment—and oh, wasn’t it worth a few pennies to get a better seat to see that performance?
She jostled through the crowd to the theater door. A penny to enter, then a split just inside: the sawdust-floored yard was for the groundlings, who’d pack in as tight as salted kippers; anyone wishing for a seat paid another penny for a spot on the benches of the first-floor gallery. Just as in Saba’s own Theater of Lights, stairs led upwards to the higher galleries, each guarded by another attendant with another rattling box of coins.
Saba settled towards the back of the twopenny seats.
The authorities hadn’t yet arrived by the time the play began.
Saba’s manic tension wound tight through the brief invocation to Talesyn, Lord of Players—he who was named the Songspeaker, Clevertongue, Silverthroat, god of fire and music and the light of poetic inspiration, god of all that was known; he who was Saba’s favorite above all other deities, who would surely, surely come through for her today of all days…
Her tension wound tighter as the play began, and tighter still through the first half of the first act, fading from the joy of revenge and vindication to impatience, then frustration, then the windchime-trembling of profoundly shaken expectations—what had happened to the message? Where was the watch to arrest these thieves and cheats?
Saba’s world didn’t end until Cosima’s entrance.
Cosima, Alvana’s latest and greatest heroine: a magnificent beauty famed throughout the land, but jinxed by fortune and unlucky in love. Artagne would’ve played her beautifully, bringing all the wistful regret, indefatigable hope, and delicate poignancy the role demanded until, at last, she died piteously and heart-rendingly in the third act.
But this Cosima. The Red’s Cosima.
She was bronze-skinned where Artagne was fair. Her hair was glossy black, her wrists were delicate, and…
Saba knew her. The woman she’d met in front of the Theater of Lights. The beauty who had turned her head.
Nazeya mes Akhal. The one who had spoken to Saba in the street, who had greeted her by name and flirted, practically.
She was a Red.
No wonder she hadn’t volunteered her troupe name.
Had Saba let something slip? Oh, Idunet curse her for a fool! She’d been so agog that she might’ve told Nazeya anything. She probably would have, if it had gotten her farther with that gorgeous creature.
And Yermekov knew that. She’d likely sent Nazeya deliberately. Saba would wager the takings from a week of performances on it.
So it was Saba’s fault. She must have said something—about the play, about the lawyer.
Idunet, why? she mentally wailed. What did I ever do to you? I was going to play you as having a huge dick! Lord of Temptation, why fuck with me like this?
Even now, Saba couldn’t take her eyes off Nazeya.
She owned the audience. She filled the theater from the sawdust in the yard to the rafters of the heavens, from the backs of the galleries to the pillars of the stage. No delicate wistfulness here: Her Cosima raged against the winds of fortune, raged against the Lord of Temptation, raged and railed and beat her hands against the unfairness of the world, twisted the lines that would’ve been hopeful in Artagne’s mouth into sarcasm and cutting irony.
In the end, Saba would’ve willingly thrown herself at Nazeya’s feet, spy or no.
The watch never showed up. The play ended to wild, screaming applause.
Only two streets away from Talesyn’s henge and its surrounding parkland was the Theater of Truth—a cavernous establishment in what had indeed once been an actual theater, the biggest of several in the neighborhood before the previous owners’ troupe had gone bankrupt. The roof of the heavens had since been extended to cover the whole yard, which was raised to the level of the stage and floored,, and the seats of the galleries had been torn out to make room for tables and chairs.
Along the wall that had once separated stage and backstage ran the bar, perpetually sticky, backed by a vast array of kegs and bottles stacked to twice the height of a grown man. The second and third story galleries still opened into the hollow space of the center, lit by golden-burning lanterns hung at varying heights from the vaulted roof.
Enryn ordered the first round. Saba took the beer when it was brought to her and poured it down her throat. “Harder stuff,” she grunted at the barkeep.
Aliss brought a bottle of menovka the size of Enryn’s fist, a clear liquor from far north up the coast, rough enough to strip paint. Saba poured two fingers into her empty cup, drank it, and poured again while she waited for the wildfire burn to die out of her mouth.
“Saba,” Enryn said. “You’re scaring me.”
She drank.
He put his hand on her wrist and moved the menovka bottle aside. “You’ve said four words.”
“What’s there to say?”
“Anything. You’re Sabajan Hollant: You were born running your mouth.”
She shrugged.
“Saba.”
“We’re done. It’s over. The Reds won.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Saba slammed her cup on the table. “That play would have been Alvana’s masterpiece. Our masterpiece. Pardon me if I’m being ridiculous about it.”
A flicker in the corner of her eye—already a little foggy from the menovka, she peered through the smoky haze, trying to spot what had snagged her attention.
Nazeya.
Saba was on her feet before she realized it, surging through the crowd. She seized Nazeya’s arm and spun her around.
Nazeya caught herself on the bar, wide eyed. “Oh!” she said, then smiled. Smiled! As if she were genuinely pleased to see Saba. The little snake. “Mistress Hollant. What an unexpected pleasure.”
“Unexpected,” Saba said. “Is it really?”
“I’m sorry?”
“How dare you? Not a rhetorical question. Tell me true: How dare you?” Saba put her hands on the bar on either side of Nazeya and leaned in. Probably Nazeya smelled nice, but the menovka had temporarily burned out Saba’s sinuses.
“How dare I…? What?”
“You know what you did.”
“Did I offend you the other day?”
“How dare you,” she said in a low snarl, “walk in here. And say ‘Oh, Mistress Hollant!’, and smile as if you and your friends haven’t completely ruined me. How dare you?”
Nazeya’s face cleared. “You were at today’s performance? I realized after I walked off the other day that I didn’t tell you which troupe I was in, but—well, of course you’d be able to find me—you liked the play? Er. Well. You know what I mean.” She tried to nudge Saba back to get herself a little space, but Saba was immovable. “It is a very sad story, I agree. I cried four or five times in rehearsals.”
“Excuse me?”
“Isn’t that what you meant? The play ruined your life? Because it was so sad?”
“My life is ruined because the play was ours.”
“Sorry?”
“Yes!” Saba snapped. “You ought to be! You ought to be far more than sorry!”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“You stole our play!”
“I didn’t steal anything!” Nazeya drew herself up, straight and queenly, taller than Saba by seven or eight inches. “I think you’ve probably had too much to drink, Mistress Hollant.”
Saba laughed. “Oh, you’re good! I see why Yermekov sent you to spy on me.”
Nazeya turned back to the bar.
Saba wedged herself in beside her and set both elbows on the counter. “Good tactic,” she said. “‘Dismissive’ is easier than ‘shocked’. More effective at disarming me, too, making me doubt myself. Smart choice.”
“Mistress Hollant. I consider you one of the greatest players in the city. I’d thought that in person you must be as noble and gracious as the parts you play on stage. Silly of me, I suppose. Please leave me in peace with my grief at finding out that you’re just as human as the rest of us.”
“I almost believe you. Almost.”
“Believe me or not. I’m not even a shareholder in the Reds. I play whatever they give me. I was lucky to get any part at all, you know. I’ve been auditioning for two years.”
Saba scoffed. “You didn’t think it was strange that Yermekov produced from thin air a play a hundred times more brilliant than anything she’d ever written before?”
Nazeya gave an elegant shrug. “I thought it was in keeping with her standard.”
“Oh please. She’s nothing compared to Alvana Stillgrail and you know it. You might as well admit why you were skulking around our theater the other day.”
“I wasn’t skulking.”
“Oh? Pray tell what were you doing there, then, just when you’d conveniently happen to run into me.”
“My sister lives a few streets over. I was visiting her.”
Saba laughed outright. “Admit it, mes Akhal! You were there to pump me for information!”
“If you care to recall,” Nazeya snapped. “I didn’t press you for anything. Nor did you offer anything! We barely exchanged more than pleasantries, but apparently that’s cause enough to suspect me of being a spy?”
“It is if you’re a Red.”
“If you think your play was stolen, then I’m sorry. If you think my troupe did it, I’m doubly sorry. It’s terrible that we’ve all been reduced to petty squabbling. Everyone says it wasn’t like this before.”
Before the fashion, she meant. Before having a pet artist became the most elegant accessory for the nobility—and if one artist was good, why not a whole troupe of them? It had been different before.
Nazeya was still talking. “I wish I could offer to help, in the spirit of making peace, but there’s nothing I can do. I’m not a shareholder. I don’t get a say in anything. If I want to be paid, I take the parts Zitka Yermekov hands me.”
“Even though she’s a thief?”
“No one else has given me a chance.” She looked despairingly at Saba. “Could I buy you a drink?”
“What,” said Saba.
“I would genuinely do anything in my power to make this right, and that’s the only thing there is. Stupid gesture, probably. Still. Could I?”
“Yes,” said Saba’s mouth—it was instinctive, accepting a drink from a pretty girl. Even if she was a Red.
Back in the good old days, the rivalry wouldn’t have mattered so much. She and Nazeya could have had a spicy little fling—like the one Alvana had had with Yermekov, years ago. Eons, it seemed now. They’d even moved in together. Hadn’t lasted long past that, but… Well, those days were long past.
Nazeya did seem sincere, though, and if she wasn’t a shareholder, then there really wasn’t anything she could do, not if she wanted to keep her job. Theater troupes were not so plentiful that one could be snobbish about who one wanted to work for. One could be moral or one could be employed.
“Listen,” she said, when Nazeya had ordered the drinks. “I’m… sorry. I’m a bit drunk right now.”
“It’s all right.” It didn’t sound like it was all right.
“I’m not usually like this.”
“Of course. It is an extraordinary circumstance.”
She was being so polite, despite her obvious disillusionment. Fuck. Saba could’ve kicked herself. Nazeya had admired her work, allegedly (genuinely, Saba’s vanity insisted, and perhaps her drink-muddled reason was coming to agree). Saba had ruined that for her forever.
They sat in silence until the drinks arrived—Nazeya had a cup of beer; Saba, another thimble of menovka. She slammed it back in one go. It burned all the way down. She would have wheezed for breath if she hadn’t been standing next to a pretty girl. Posturing for the pretty girl, as if—well.
“You were good,” Saba said thickly. “In the play. You didn’t act it like I would’ve, but—Yermekov’s a shitty director. The things wrong with it were her fault. You did it all by yourself, didn’t you?”
Nazeya shrugged. “Yes, mostly. She tells us where to stand, that’s about it. She gives us free rein on our own performances.”
“You should make more eye contact with the others. More connection. Like you’re reaching out to them, but with your voice. And—sorry, do you want me to tell you this?” A beat, and then Saba snorted. “But why would you? I’m just some angry drunk lady.”
“We don’t have much else to talk about.” Nazeya swirled her beer in her cup slowly, looking down into it as she said softly, “A few days ago I would’ve tripped at the chance to hear Sabajan Hollant tell me what she thought of my performance.”
She wasn’t tripping now, Saba noted, and kicked herself again. “Cosima should be sadder. Sad and quiet to wrench at the heart.” Nazeya said nothing. Saba forged onwards. “You play her as angry. You ought to play her as lonely. Desperately lonely and trying to hide it, trying to give enough of herself away that maybe other people will give something back and she won’t be so empty.”
Nazeya said softly, “I hadn’t thought of her like that.”
“She’s a good liar, Cosima is. Play her with a little secret sadness, a little desperation, and you’ll have the yard flooded an inch deep in tears. I swear it.”
“I may well try that. Thank you.” She sipped her drink. “Who would you have played, if—if.”
“The Lord of Temptation,” Saba said, feeling a smile curl at the corner of her mouth.
“You would have been… something. Really something.”
“That part was made for me,” Saba said, and was pleased to see Nazeya nod immediately. She felt most kinship with Talesyn, of course, but Idunet was a close second. “Yermekov’s doing it all wrong. She doesn’t move like she’s got any cock at all, and the Lord of Temptation—he ought to swagger. She plays him…” Saba frowned, thinking. “She plays him like how she seduces. She’s an ice queen. She wants to sit on her throne and have people fall at her feet in supplication without lifting a finger.”
“Not inaccurate,” Nazeya murmured into her cup.
“Right? So the Lord of Temptation should be—” Saba gestured grandly. “A man walking out of a brothel with both his purses lighter. Or a queen striding into the throne room of a country she’s just conquered. The Lord of Temptation is active, not passive. He’s the seductor of the world! He should seduce, not wait for his victims to fall at his feet in awe. Like—here, Yermekov does this, watch.” Saba drew herself up into an approximation of Yermekov’s posture: stiff and regal, chin raised, expression cold and smug. “I, who whisper into kings’ ears,” she intoned, “until their fingers twitch with greed and strain to raise their weapons or their wits to conquer what those twitching fingers seize.”
Nazeya bit her lip to suppress a smile. “Very like her.”
Saba’s vanity purred. Idunet, that rat bastard, kept her damn mouth kept talking: “See, but here’s how I’d do it.” She leaned in close to Nazeya, letting her eyes go hooded and hot, and licked her lips. “I, who turns a maiden’s eye and plucks her purse until both weep,” she breathed, her voice full of promise.
“No, lord,” Nazeya said. She sounded a little breathless. “I have an altogether different quest. In supplication do I call to you.”
“Ahhhh.” Saba smiled long and slow. She traced one finger along the inside of Nazeya’s wrist and was pleased to see goosebumps bloom in her wake. “A supplication. Now I see. The whelp aspires to a libertine? How many battles hast thou fought, young whelp? I do not waste my gifts on untried swords. And tell me true, how many maiden’s purses hast thou clutched?” Teasing, then, beckoning, a suggestion of laughter: “A supplication must demand some coin.”
“I’ve fought no battles, Lord, in love or war,” Nazeya said. The light had come back to her eyes, Saba was pleased to see. She made no move to pull her wrist away from Saba’s touch. “Nor touched a purse that was not freely offered me.”
“A little monk thou art, then, not a libertine at all. Dost take thy ecstasy in virtue, then?”
“Oh Lord, I beg you, hear my words. Temptation’s Lord you are, the lord of sin and pleasure both—I beg for pleasure, Lord, in truth, a pleasure such the world has rarely seen.”
“Beg for pleasure, dost thou, lad?” Saba purred. She traced her touch up Nazeya’s arm to her shoulder, her neck. Maybe Lord Talesyn and his baby brother were quarreling and that’s why Dream-plucker was fucking with her—it was the only explanation, because she was absolutely nailing this. “Now speakst my mother tongue, young whelp. Pray tell, what rare and wondrous pleasure dost thou seek?”
“True love.”
“True love!” Saba barked a laugh and dropped her hand. She took Nazeya’s cup instead and sipped from it, smiling over the rim. “In faith, a pleasure far too rare for even I, a humble merchant of the fleshly joys, to make my trade.”
