Page 9 of Play of Shadows

‘“Thou hast defeated the enemy’s champions with thine own hand!”’

‘Bravasa! Fantisima!’ Beretto cheered. ‘Am I in the presence of a true Veristor? It’s as if you’ve transported me to the battlefield itself! Now, the last line. Light up the stage, my friend.’

Despite my earlier foul humour, I couldn’t help but get caught up in Beretto’s preposterous enthusiasm, and I trumpeted proudly, ‘“Henceforth shall I travel these lands and to its peoples sing thine victories—!”’

Beretto’s expression fell.

‘What?’ I asked, reaching for the script. ‘Oh, shit– I did it again, didn’t I?’

‘Triumphs, man. The line is “Henceforth shall I travel these lands and to its peoples sing thinetriumphs.”’

‘I still don’t know why it matters so much,’ I muttered, handing the pages back.

‘Because anyone can eke out a victory, but atriumph: that’s proof of a god’s blessing. Besides, it’s the last line of the entire play. Shoville’s going to hang you from your toenails if you screw it up again.’

Saint Anlas-who-remembers-the-world, why can’t Ieverget that damned line right?

‘You’re a good actor, Damelas,’ Beretto said, though it sounded more like admonishment than encouragement. ‘Better than that overstuffed arsehole next door getting his prick polished, certainly. Your time will come.’

I stared into the mirror, saw my youth transformed by the web of cracks into a lifetime of scars. The Belleza had begun as a sanctuary to escape a foolishly accepted duel, but it had quickly become a place I cherished: a place I would have liked to call home.

But an actor’s prospects are bounded by his talents, and mine had all too quickly reached their zenith. ‘I’ll never play kings or princes, will I?’ No doubt that same tired lament had been uttered by just about every actor in the company at one point or another, yet it stung all the same. ‘Never the hero, nor even the villain. I’ll always be the cup-bearer, herald or crone.’

‘Don’t dismiss the herald,’ Beretto said, pulling his tunic over his head before dressing himself in his creaking stage armour. ‘The audience always pays close attention when he steps onto the stage.’ His bearded reflection in the mirror took on a darkly ominous expression. ‘After all, when the herald arrives, it almost always means someone’s about to die.’

Chapter 4

The Wings

On a good night, with a full house, the soles of your feet vibrate as you stand in the curtained wings at each side of the stage waiting for your cue. At the Operato Belleza, the carpeted floor to which the rows of seats are bolted is braced with long planks of sturdy billy oak, the same wood used in dance halls to lend the steps of revellers extra bounce. An audience captivated by the play and its players will bob their feet up and down in rhythmic anticipation of the next unexpected revelation, daring sword thrust or passionate kiss; those tremors carry along the billy planks, all the way down the aisles and up the boards underneath the stage to the booted heels of the actors.

The air buzzes on those special nights: the gasps of especially sensitive souls at unexpected frights, the whispers of, ‘No, no, please, no—’ whenever a favourite character meets their end, or the, ‘Yes, yes, now! Tell her!’ when the hero and heroine, long separated by calamity or calumny, are at last ready to confess their love.

Upon such glorious winds even the humblest player could fly.

‘Barely half a house,’ Teo grumbled, shoving past me as he exited the stage after delivering his only line of the night. ‘Shoville will lose the licence to the Belleza if this keeps up.’

‘Then best we impress those we can,’ said silver-haired Ornella, retying the laces of her bodice.

Ornella, the oldest member of the cast by a full decade, had seen her roles wither from daring princesses to conniving duchesses and now to humble serving women, and still she approached every role with the even-keeled step of a soldier marching to battle.

‘Don’t know why Shoville keeps the old woman around,’ Teo muttered in a tone that badly wanted for a good slap across the face.

Like me, he served principally as a supernumerary, playing an unnamed soldier here, a servant there, or sometimes just a dead body needed to fill space during a battle scene. Teo’s every groan and grimace before a show conveyed a sense of foiled destiny, that he was meant for grander things. But while the two of us were in perpetual competition for our meagre parts, there was one subject on which we were united.

‘Fucking Abastrini,’ Teo said, peering past the curtain. ‘Bloated bastard’s put them half asleep with all his droning. A graveyard’s got more life than this crowd.’

Abastrini’s reputation as a Veristor may have increased ticket prices and shielded him from otherwise much-deserved criticism of his performances, but it didn’t serve his fellow actors on the stage, nor the play itself. Lately the pompous blowhard had even taken to wearing his Veristor’s mark on his collar during the show. The beautifully designed silver brooch in the shape of an actor’s mask with narrowed eyes and a mouth in the shape of a key was entirely out of place on Prince Pierzi’s golden cloak. No doubt Abastrini wanted to prevent the audience confusing his boorish performance with ineptitude rather than some kind of mystical trance.

‘Marvellous, isn’t he?’ Shoville asked dreamily, eyes shut as he listened to Abastrini’s fifth monologue of the night. There wereonly three in the script. ‘Simply marvellous.’

‘Staggering,’ I said, flinching when I realised I’d failed to sufficiently hide the sarcasm in my voice.

Shoville turned, but the reproach I’d rightfully earned gave way to unexpected concern. ‘I say, Damelas, are you quite well? You look pale as a ghost.’

‘Been feeling a bit off tonight, if I’m honest.’

In fact, I’d been dizzy and disoriented before every performance since we’d launched this new run ofValour at Mount Cruxiasix weeks ago. Maybe I was suffering from some sort of fever. Maybe it was just the lousy script.

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