Fontagu was anxious. It was a matter of days until the opening night of the performance. Already the preparations for Florian’s birthday celebrations were in full swing, with a large part of Tarquin’s Hill cordoned off for the erection of marquees and stalls for invited guests. The route from the palace to the hill had been inspected several times, and all homeless people, unseemly types or poor folk had been moved elsewhere. The same had been done along the route that led to the New Paragon, where Fontagu was putting the finishing touches to his play.
It was hard work, being the writer, director and star of the show. It was doubly difficult knowing that a dud performance could end up with him… Well, he didn’t like to even contemplate the possibilities – the very thought made him break out in hives. And a leading man with hives would never do.
The changes that Janus had insisted on had been challenging. At first glance, they appeared to be no more than a line here and a word or two there. But then came the big change – a part specially written for Florian himself.
‘Lord Janus wants him to feel special,’ Kalip Rendana had said weeks before, when he’d dropped in unexpectedly to return the script. ‘So he wants him to have a cameo role. A small speaking part.’
‘How small a speaking part?’ Fontagu asked warily.
‘Something near the end. Here, I’ll show you where he’s made the changes.’ Rendana opened the script to one of the later pages and pointed. ‘There, where he’s marked it.’
Fontagu felt suddenly faint. ‘There are lines and lines here. And who is this Calran person?’
‘He’s an incidental character. Whom the Emperor will be playing.’
Fontagu began to read. ‘“Greetings, I am Calran, a wandering hawker, out to do no good. I have seen your fine animals and your lovely wife, and wish to take them all for myself, o lame and blind carpenter.”
‘Oh, this is terrible!’ Fontagu exclaimed. ‘What I mean is, this is terribly good,’ he quickly added as he saw Rendana’s hand go to his belt where he kept his little knife. ‘I expect that I might have to tidy up some of the dialogue a little, but… but I’m a professional, as you know.’
‘Of course,’ Rendana said, his hand still resting on the pommel of his knife.
Fontagu read on, silently this time. It seemed that after a brief conversation between the hawker and Robar that eventually turned into an argument, a swordfight was to break out, in which Calran was to briefly get the upper hand, but in which ultimately he would suffer a fatal blow.
‘Calran’s got to look good, but he has to die in the end,’ Rendana explained. ‘I mean, it’s a classic story, or so I’m told, so this Robar chap has to win. But not too easily.’
‘I see,’ Fontagu said. ‘So I get to kill Florian… Well, Florian’s character, I mean,’ he added with a nervous laugh.
‘That’s correct,’ Rendana said. ‘Lord Janus was anxious to know whether you have one of those stage swords. You know, the ones that look real, but when you push them against something they fold into themselves?’
‘Of course,’ Fontagu said. ‘I’ve got one right here.’ He reached into his personal chest of props and took out his best stage sword, which he waved and flourished about for a moment. ‘As you see, good sir, even from very close up, it appears to the naked eye as a genuine sword with which one might do great harm on the body of an opponent,’ he said in a loud stage voice. ‘But from up close…’ And he lunged forward, taking Rendana completely by surprise, pushing the sword at his abdomen, right to the hilt.
Rendana looked down, his brow furrowed. Then he began to laugh. ‘Oh, yes, I see. That’s very good, isn’t it? Very realistic.’
‘Indeed,’ Fontagu replied, somewhat proudly. He withdrew the sword, and the blade returned to its original position. ‘See how it appears sharp at the tip, but in fact…’ He ran his thumb over the end. ‘Completely harmless.’
‘May I?’ Rendana took the stage sword from Fontagu and swung it about. Then, with a movement so fast that it had made Fontagu flinch and whimper, he buried it to the hilt in Fontagu’s belly. Then he pulled away and swung it around again, grinning like a schoolboy. ‘Yes, that should do nicely. Very good. Well, my actor friend, if you can follow the instructions Lord Janus has put in that script, I suspect that all will be well.’
That had been some time ago, and now, with opening night a mere matter of days away, Fontagu’s hives were starting to itch.
Were the actors ready? He certainly hoped so. He felt that he himself was ready, and he knew that the play was well written. At least it was well written with the exception of the pointless scene towards the end, where Florian would wander onto the stage, get in a meaningless duel with Robar, and die. Part of Fontagu wished he could use a real sword, but he pushed that thought away. He might have committed some bad deeds over the years, but murder wasn’t one of them.
Now, as he stood at the back of the New Paragon playhouse watching the final touches being put on the stage backdrop, he felt a warm tingle in his chest that had nothing to do with hives. He recognised it as the old familiar excitement that he’d not felt for so long. Nerves, but excitement as well.
He felt a warmth on his foot, and looked down. ‘Fargus,’ he said, bending down and picking up the little dog. ‘Are you going to behave on opening night?’
Fargus licked his chin.
‘You need to stay backstage and guard all the props,’ he said. ‘That’s going to be your job, my little friend.’ He scratched the dog’s belly. ‘I’m glad you’ve been around to keep me company. You’ve been the only other intelligent being in this entire catastrophe. Even without training you could have played the role of the dog better than that knucklehead I’ve got in the dog suit. Seriously, Fargus, what do they teach in acting school these days?’
Tab sighed, closed her book and laid it beside her bed. Then she wriggled about, making herself as comfortable as anyone could on a sack stuffed with straw. Opening night of the play was only one sleep away, and she’d finished reading the story just in time.
Oh, the ending! She hadn’t seen that coming at all. The lame carpenter, standing in the woods, hearing his dog going crazy and, knowing that the Gimlet Eye is close, reaching into his beltpouch and taking out his own gimlet. Holding it up as he hears the approaching footsteps of the beast, soft and delicate like a beautiful woman would walk. Seeing the tip of the gimlet sparkling in the moonlight, knowing that to turn around and see the creature would be to doom himself. Turning the point of his gimlet towards himself, directly at his face, and at his one good eye…
Tab shuddered. It was so horrible, and yet so brave, Robar and Fargus fighting the Gimlet Eye, with the blind carpenter following the sounds of his dog as it hung off the leg of the beast. Then she smiled at the memory of the monster falling, and Robar bringing a lock of its lush, wavy hair back to the village.
And finally, the satisfaction as he presented the lock of hair to his horrified wife, telling her that he’d blinded himself completely because he knew that she’d had eyes only for the hunter, but that he, the carpenter, only had eyes for her. That if he couldn’t look into her eyes and see love there, he would rather not see at all.
She sighed again. She really hoped that Fontagu would do the story justice. She felt confident that he would.
Tab awoke suddenly, breathing hard. Had it been a dream? She couldn’t remember dreaming. She’d been awake, thinking about the folk story, and the play, and Fontagu, then she’d been asleep, then… awake, breathless.
Perhaps there had been something more than the nothing of deep sleep. As she dug down into her mind she remembered something. A scream. It had been a scream so wild and full of terror that even the memory of its existence was enough to make her pull her blanket closer around her shoulders.
She played the tiny fragments of the scream over in her mind, again and again, despite how it made her feel. Was it just a scream? Was it simply a sound forced from a throat in a moment of panic or horror? No, as she replayed it she began to hear a name. Her name. ›››Tab! Ta-ab!
She suddenly sat up, straight as the masts that creaked above the city. Her eyes stared into the darkness. ‘Stelka!’
In the next stall, Freya made a sleepy moan of protest at the sudden sound of Tab’s voice.
‘Sorry, Freya,’ Tab whispered, her mind racing. How had Stelka called her? Had she found some way to reach back through the mind of the accommodating rat into Tab’s head? She had been the Chief Navigator – surely with time and effort a magician as good as she could unravel the strange magic of mind-melding and find her way into Tab’s consciousness.
Closing her eyes, she went reaching for the mind of Rat. Just as it usually did, the mind-chatter of others crowded around like voices in an adjoining room, but Rat’s was absent. She opened her eyes, shook her head to clear the whispering chatter, and tried again. Nothing. Rat was gone.
It had been such a dreadful scream, and now, as it bounced around in her memory like a blind man in a small room, it continued to horrify her.
She tried once more to access the mind of Rat, squeezing her eyes tightly closed and pushing past the murmurings and distractions. Then it was there. Except this time there was resistance as she squeezed into its mind, as if Rat was unfamiliar with the sensation of an intruding presence.
›››It’s just me
The mind clamped down around her. It was panicking.
›››It’s just me››I’m looking for my friend
The mind of the rat went suddenly limp, as if the experience was far too much for it to deal with. It was as if it had fainted from the effort of keeping her out. Then the view through the eyes of the rat appeared, like a candle flame catching onto the wick and beginning to burn properly.
Gently, as if this had never happened before, Tab coaxed Rat forward towards the half-moon of light.›››I won’t hurt you
The rat reached the end of the tunnel and poked its nose out into the light. For a moment Tab was disoriented. The rat in which her mind rode wasn’t inside Stelka’s cell, but outside, in the corridor, which took her by surprise. Through the bars she could see the crooked table, the low bench that they called a bed, the bucket in the corner, the tipped-over chair. But no Stelka.
›››Where’s Stelka?
›››I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you››You’re not usually this skittish
Eventually, and with much encouragement, she managed to turn Rat around. Back at the opening of the little tunnel, she gently prodded it forward onto the floor and over to the bars of the cell to have a proper look around.
The instant she screamed, she knew that this rat would never allow her back into its mind. For this rat wasn’t her rat. It wasn’t the rat. It wasn’t Rat. The body of her rat was on the floor near its little triangular tunnel, in a small pool of shiny darkness, with its head lying a good pace or more away. She’d seen it, registered what it meant, and reacted with a scream. And a fraction of a moment later the rat in which her mind was riding had squeezed and panicked and arched, and her mind had been ejected like a drunk from a chapel.
For the second time that night Tab sat on her bed, her eyes wide and her heart pounding. It was only a rat, that was true, but it was a rat which had, with its last thought, provided the passage for Stelka’s agonised plea for help as she was dragged off… where? And it was that which made her pull her cloak around herself, slip on her boots, and begin climbing the wall at the end of the stable. She didn’t know how yet, but she was going to find Stelka.
As she hurried through the deserted streets, Tab considered her options. Verris would have been her first choice, but even thinking about him made her feel terribly, terribly sad, so she quickly pushed the thought away. No point dwelling on things that could never be.
Should she go to Fontagu? No, he was too preoccupied with his precious play. He’d only be dismissive and selfish.
Philmon? Maybe, but most of the time he simply tagged along and did what was needed, but rarely came up with any good ideas of his own. Unless heights were involved, or knots, it wasn’t the right time to ask him for help. Besides, he hated being woken up in the middle of the night. He’d stay grumpy about it for hours, maybe even days.
Amelia. It had to be Amelia. She was once a magician as well. Two former magicians teamed up – even very young ones – had to be better than one former magician teamed up with a sky-sailor, a missing former pirate, or a self-obsessed actor.
The other advantage of choosing Amelia was that she was easy to get to. Her room was on the first floor of the Flegis Arms where she now worked, but there was a woodshed and a kind of lean-to at the back of the building that offered fairly easy access to her window ledge. Yes, it was something of a climb, but for someone as agile as Tab, it was about as difficult as climbing a flight of stairs.
She rounded the corner of a building and stopped, stepping lightly into the shadows of an eave. Something felt wrong. She had the distinctly uncomfortable feeling that someone was following her. It felt like something prickling at the base of her neck.
She looked behind her. The street was empty, except for a few barrels and crates stacked outside the door of the building on the opposite side of the narrow street. The windows of the houses and shops around her were all dark – not so much as a glimmer of light from a lamp or a candle. Somewhere far off in the distance a dog barked, and one or two lonely creaks wafted down from the network of rigging overhead. But other than that, nothing.
Tab considered closing her eyes so she could feel around for a mind with which to meld, but to close her eyes and concentrate on searching for a mind would be to lower her guard, and she didn’t want to risk it at that moment. Not here, when it was already so dark.
She cleared her throat, and the noise momentarily startled her, it sounded so loud in the silence of the laneway. With another glance over her shoulder, she stepped back onto the pavement, taking care to stay close to the walls.
A moment later she stopped again. She’d heard nothing, and yet she felt so strongly that there was someone very close behind her.
‘Hello?’ she called, her voice low and timid.
There was no answer, so she continued on. But then, a few seconds later, she felt the urge to stop yet again. ‘Hello?’ she repeated. ‘Is someone there?’
She jumped as a cat snarled nearby. Perhaps that was all it had been – a cat out in the night, off on a mission of its own.
‘Come on, Tab,’ she muttered, squaring her shoulders and heading up the hill again. It must have been raining while she was asleep, because here and there were small puddles. Some she stepped over, but the larger ones she had to walk around, which took her out into the brighter, more moonlit part of the street. Just as soon as she could, she returned to the shadows.
Again came the awareness that she was being followed, and she stopped once more. But this time the awareness was so strong, almost as strong as a certainty. Crouching down behind a handcart that had been parked near the darkness of a narrow alley, Tab swallowed down the hard-edged lump in her throat and tried to calm her thudding heart. ‘There’s no one to be afraid of,’ she murmured below her breath. ‘It’s just a cat.’
She wondered if it was time to go searching for a nearby mind again. Perhaps if she began feeling about, she’d find herself in the mind of a cat, she’d see herself crouching in the shadow of the handcart, and then she’d feel better.
Yes, that’s what I’ll do, she thought. It won’t take more than a moment.
She’d just squeezed her eyes shut when she heard a sudden shuffling noise behind her, a little like a…