Page 20 of Play of Shadows

‘Which saint’s toe did I step on to get myself in this mess?’ I mumbled aloud.

Low, rumbling laughter broke the silence and I spun around in my chair to discover Abastrini, clad in white fencing gear, leaning casually against the doorframe at the entrance to the archive. Even with the jacket struggling to contain his girth, he looked formidable.

‘So,Lord Director, you still propose to hold this sputtering candle flame up to the sky and demand the rest of us pretend we are witnessing the birth of a star?’

Shoville buried his hands in his pockets. The Directore Principalemight run the company, but it was Abastrini’s wrath the cast and crew alike feared most. ‘Now, Ellias,’ he began timidly.

‘When exactly was it you cast aside the last shreds of your integrity, Hujo?’

An angry flush came to the director’s cheeks. ‘What exactly are you implying?’

Abastrini swaggered into the room, his unsteady gait suggesting he was already deep in his cups. ‘You think we don’t know you’ve been taking bribes?’

‘Bribes? I’d never—’ He huffed and puffed through a series of barely coherent denials.

I wondered why he bothered denying it. Everyone knew old Duke Meillard used to grease the palms of theatre directors to encourage the staging of those especially patriotic historias which happened to advance his own political interests. It was the price of doing business in the duchy’s capital city.

‘I do what I must to keep this company together,’ Shoville admitted at last. ‘How else do you think we afford the luxuries you demand,Master Veristor?’

Abastrini grabbed the lapels of Shoville’s rumpled frock coat. ‘Iplay the actor’s game,Lord Director, not the politician’s. Not thesycophant’s.’

‘Let me go, Ellias,’ Shoville warned.

But Abastrini ignored him. ‘Now we’ve a new duke on the throne– a jumped-up foreigner who demands we put on this farce to serve his own personal intrigues– and who does he turn to? Hujo Shoville and the eminently corruptible Knights of the Curtain, of course.’ Abastrini spat on the dusty floor between the two of them. ‘So I ask again, Hujo, when did you decide to put the dignity of our company up for sale?’

Shoville was a small man, hardly intimidating, save for his ability to shout stage directions like a general on the battlefield, but he shoved Abastrini back with both hands, forcing the portly actor to let go of him.

‘Oh, how I do love to be scolded by drunken bullies whose sense of honour is entirely dependent on lines stolen from plays they barely remember.’ Shoville’s indignation lent fire to his words. ‘You wonder aboutmyintegrity, Ellias? I traded it away for arses on seats the day my partner in this venture stopped reaching for the truth of the Veristor’s art and instead began grasping after its rewards!’

Abastrini’s meaty fists clenched and I began to worry I’d soon have to intervene– or try to, at least. From the feral look in Abastrini’s eyes, the real problem would be getting him to stop once he’d struck the first blow.

‘So that’s what this is all about?’ Abastrini jabbed a thumb at me. ‘You resent my success so much that you stab me in the back and allow this. . . this incompetent charlatan to play at being a Veristor?’

I rose from my chair, cringing at the squeal of the wobbly legs against the floor. This small act of defiance brought me dangerously close to Abastrini’s daunting bulk. The stench of sour wine and the salty musk of barely contained barbarity filledmy nostrils.

Slowly, carefully, I reached across the desk to a heavy brass paperweight of an actor on a pedestal delivering his lines to the heavens. If I hit Abastrini fast and hard, I might be able to knock him unconscious. On the other hand, if I struck too hard, I risked cracking the man’s skull open. Then again, if the blow were too weak, it would be my own blood spilled upon the pages of this damned stupid script.

That left me with only one other option. Fortunately, cowering was something of a specialty of mine.

‘I wouldneverclaim to be a Veristor like you, Master Abastrini,’ I said, praying to Saint Birgid-who-weeps-rivers to help me soothe the man’s pride before it was too late. ‘I swear to you, this is all a mis—’

‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, boy,’ he said, cutting me off. ‘It was abrilliantploy.’ He abruptly released Shoville and turned to pace along the narrow chamber rows of musty bookshelves.

Flooded with relief, I set the paperweight back down on the table. If Abastrini was about to launch into yet another monologue, surely his ire was dissipating. . .

‘One must admire the miscreant’s cheek, if not his cunning,’ the Veristor began, as if a full house were hanging on his every word rather than Shoville and I, glancing at each other in sympathetic unease. ‘Using the insignificant role of the herald to concoct those bizarre lines on stage, knowing they would cause a stir among the nobles in attendance’– Abastrini paused for effect– ‘not especially clever, admittedly, butdaring? Yes, we must confess it so. Now, persuading your confederate in the Ducal Palace. . .’ He stopped, tapping his lip as if in deep thought. ‘That woman, the copper-skinned foreigner who turned up at the tavern with the duke’s decree– how did you meet her? She’s rather arresting, so I can see why she was able to so quickly seduce the duke to your cause.’

For no reason I could fathom, I began angrily defending the reputation of a woman I barely knew. ‘While I’d never met the Black Amaranth before that night, I can tell you that Lady Shariza deserves a damn sight more respect, you ignorant, bloat—’

Shut up!the saner part of me screamed silently,shut UP! This is how you put the Vixen on your scent in the first place!

I tried to start over in a more genial tone. ‘I swear to you, to the uncaring gods above, that Ineverconcocted any such scheme. This isn’t some ploy to take over the show. I’m just—’

The veteran actor waved away my denials. ‘Please, let us have no lies between us. We’re to be brethren of the stage, after all.’ His thumb and forefinger played with the mask-and-key brooch pinned to his collar. ‘Fellow Veristors, eh? However this all came to be, we must now form a bond, you and I.’

A thought occurred to me then: a simple, elegant way to win my nemesis to my cause. I fumbled through the pile of books to find one of the biographies of Corbier.

‘Would you consent to guide my performance, Master Abastrini?’ I asked, holding up the battered tome. ‘Under your expert tutelage, I might have some small chance of not entirely embarrassing the company.’

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