I should have listened to Leo.
But isn’t it human nature to watch?
Or if not human nature, it is my nature. And though Leo hustles me inside the building, the door hangs loose on the hinges, so I turn and press my eye to the crack.
The soldiers line the rebels up, kneeling in the alley. Three in a row—one already wounded: small and skinny, and filthy with soot and soil. Country boys. Chakran boys. Like my brother was once—like he always will be, now.
No. Nothing like my brother. These boys are the reason my brother is gone.
So why do I shudder as Legarde raises his gun? The Shepherd, they call him, but his banner is a wolf. And don’t shepherds slaughter as they tend?
I can’t hear his question, only the soft murmur of his voice, but I see the defiant look the wounded boy gives him. Does he know what happens next? My hand goes to my mouth as Legarde pulls the trigger, and my muffled scream is lost in the crack of his gun. The body falls—the soul flees, bright gold. Wet blood pools on the street. Then a different wetness spreads beneath the rebel on the left as Legarde adjusts his aim and asks again.
“Come away.” The whisper makes me jump—Leo is standing just behind me in the hall. He’s cleaned the blood off his nose, but something about his face still puts me on edge. Or maybe it’s everything else. Either way, this time I listen.
Numbly, I let him lead me through a dim corridor lined with doors and lit only by drifting spirits. Leo cannot see them—can he? But he walks with such certainty in the dark. I am more trepidatious. The air here is close and cloying, tacky with perfume and smoke and sweat. The boards creak and sag underfoot; the souls of dead vermin skitter across the floor. My mind goes back to the sign outside. “What is this place?”
“My theater,” he replies.
“Your theater?”
His back stiffens; he turns to study my eyes. “What about that surprises you?”
“Your age,” I tell him truthfully. “You don’t look much older than me.”
“Ah.” His shoulders fall, but so does his face. “It was an inheritance.”
The explanation is simple, the meaning profound. Losing Akra was hard enough—I cannot imagine losing both my parents. I suck air through my teeth, ready to offer some inane politesse. But then I hear another shot outside, and a boy starts screaming.
The sound cuts through me, through the shell-shocked shroud that had fallen when the stages exploded. Only as it melts away do I realize it was ever there. To my surprise, a sob escapes my lips, and another, and I can’t stop them. They crawl up my throat and force their way into the air, they take me by the shoulders and shake me with a shocking violence. I reach out to steady myself, tears hot on my face, and suddenly his arms are around me. For a moment, I grasp at the comfort he offers—this stranger. “It’s all right,” he lies. “It’s all right.”
I push him away, horrified. “It’s not!”
His hands are up, his expression cautious, his back against the patched plaster of the wall. “Fair enough.” Another scream rattles the air between us. “Though it could be much worse,” he adds through his teeth.
I swallow bile, wiping my face with the back of my hand. Then I take a deep, tremulous breath. “Is my family safe here?”
“I won’t hurt you.”
“But what about them?” I gesture wildly toward the flimsy door. “Will they come for us next?”
“You tell me!”
“What do you mean?”
“You were running,” he says with a look. “What did you do?”
“There was an explosion!” I shudder again at the memory. “We were on the way to La Fête when the stages blew apart. Lani panicked. She wouldn’t stop until . . .” I half turn then, looking back down the hall. “She’s still out there.”
“She’ll be fine,” Leo says. “Though the soldiers may search your wagon, considering you drove in with rebels aboard.”
My heart stutters then—what would the armée find, if they really looked? They’d have to crawl to see the broken axle. But might they unbind my many fantouches, suffused with the souls of the dead? Or reach beneath Maman’s pillow to find the little enamel box and all the money we’ve saved? But the rebel boy is still screaming, and I can’t go back out there, I can’t.
“I’ll go out and guard your things,” Leo says quietly. “As soon as . . . as soon as that’s over.”
I don’t have to ask what he means. I wet my lips; my mouth is so dry. “Won’t they . . . might they hurt you too?”
“Me?” Leo barks a laugh. “Non. Not if they know what’s good for them. Half the armée is in love with my girls,” he adds then, and his look makes me take a step back. “And half are afraid of them.”
“I see.” Carefully, I school my expression, though the implication of ownership makes me queasy. Or is that only the sounds from outside? “Thank you. And thank you for . . . for stopping the wagon. That was brave.”
“What can I say?” A wry smile flickers across Leo’s face, and he pitches his voice to carry. “I’m good with animals.”
“I heard that!” Another voice floats through the gloom, soft and feminine. Out of the shadows, a Chakran girl appears, wearing little more than rouge and rhinestones.
“Oh! Cheeky.” Leo smothers his smile as he turns to her. “Didn’t hear you coming.”
“Never will, with an attitude like that.” The girl arches a perfect eyebrow. Then her face freezes as she turns to me, taking in my torn shawl, my bloody shoulder. “You don’t look so good.”
I blink at her—the dark, tousled pin curls, the wide eyes winged with bone black, the soft expanse of bare golden skin. I’m not naive—I saw the sign out front. I know that shadow plays aren’t the only sorts of shows there are. And Maman has told me the truth of it—that work is work, no matter what you have to work with. Still, knowing is different than seeing, and the girl comes as a bit of a shock. Or is it only the wide gulf between death and beauty that has my head spinning? And how can they joke at a time like this?
But she reaches out to me, her hand hovering a few inches away from my skin. “May I?” At my nod, she slips her arm through mine, and her touch is warm and gentle. “Come with me. We’ll get you cleaned up.”
“Where are my parents?” I ask as she leads me onward.
“Samrin and Meliss? Just down the hall. Leo!” She calls his name over her shoulder. “Wash some more glasses, will you? She’ll need a drink too. Welcome to La Perl,” she adds with a grand gesture and a mocking smile as she sweeps aside a curtain.
I blink in the sudden light. “La Perl?”
“Well, doesn’t it look like a dive to you?”
We’ve entered a wide room, lit by dozens of candles on at least as many café tables, each surrounded by chairs that don’t match. There’s a narrow stage at one end, with gas footlights—there are even red curtains and a real piano, though the velvet is balding and the piano has been painted several times, like an aging star. On the far side is a bar near the main entryway, though the rhum is stored in old kerosene jars, and half the bottles have been smashed across the floor in what looks like an altercation. Whatever audience there was must have left in a hurry—some of the furniture is knocked over, and there are half-full glasses scattered about. But Maman and Papa are there, as promised, and I pull free of Cheeky’s grasp when I see them.
“Jetta.” Papa stands, reaching out; I run to him, falling against his chest. He wraps his arms around me, but I hiss when he touches my shoulder—new wounds, old scars. “What happened to you?”
“I fell off the step when Lani bolted,” I say. Does he know what’s going on outside? I can still hear the screaming, distant now—or is it only in my head? “I caught up when you stopped.”
“And then?” Maman stands too, her voice low, urgent. “I felt the axle crack like a bone.”
It sounds like a statement, but I know it is an accusation. I glance down at my bloody palms, clenching them into fists, trying to hold on to my temper, but it slips through my grasp. “What would you rather I had done?”
“I’d rather you kept your promise,” she says through her teeth. “Never show, never tell.”
“I saved our lives!” I whisper fiercely—in frustration or pride? But she slams her own palms down on the table.
“At what cost?” All around us, the sudden silence seems to echo, and I can feel it then—the eyes of an audience. Cheeky is watching us from near the bar, joined by another girl, this one blond and vaguely familiar.
Maman notices them too—she presses her lips together and sits back down in her chair. But I can’t help myself. “I don’t know, Maman,” I say under my breath, only loud enough for my parents to hear. “Is it worse than death?”
I lift my chin, triumphant—our savior in the fray—ready for the praise I deserve. It doesn’t come. Instead, her face goes sallow, sickly. “It could be,” she whispers. “Depending on who finds out.”
Her expression shakes my conviction. Was I right to risk it—or was I only arrogant? My malheur makes it hard to know for sure. But even if Legarde had somehow noticed something odd about the wagon, was arrest worse than being shot in a fallow field?
I cannot ask, not here, not where others can hear me: never show, never tell. Not that Maman would answer, anyway. The blond girl is approaching now, carrying a wide wooden bowl of water. A fresh green smell drifts up with the steam, and the vana of a minnow makes the water glimmer. “Sit.” The blond nods to an empty chair, and her voice is low and soothing. “Before you fall.”
I sink down, my knees suddenly weak, and reach across the table to take Papa’s hand. It’s bandaged with a strip of pale silk. “Are you hurt?”
“Some splinters and scrapes. But we’ve had good care. This is Tia.” Papa bows his head in respect as she sets the bowl at my feet. I frown—though the girl is familiar, the name is not. Then Papa gestures as another girl approaches in a long silk wrap, carrying a handful of clean rags. “And this is Eve. They’re performers here.”
Eve smiles sweetly from behind a thick curtain of dark hair, but I can’t stop staring at the live snake draped around her neck. “That’s just Garter,” she says, swirling a rag in the water and dabbing at my muddy, bloody feet. “Get it? Don’t worry, she doesn’t bite. Not unless you’re a rat. Where are your shoes?” She bites her lip then, suddenly uncertain. “Do you have shoes?”
“They’re in our wagon outside.” I do not mention that my only pair is one I wear on the stage. Embroidered silk is too fine to risk in the street—and too expensive to waste. But I’m too ashamed to say so in front of these lovely girls, lush and well-fed, draped in glitter and rhinestones. Then I wince—she’s gentle, but everything hurts. “I was getting ready for the show when the stage exploded.”
“We heard the bombs.” Cheeky plops down into a chair on my other side, sliding a glass of cloudy liquid across the table. I reach for it, but Maman gives me a sharp look.
“What is that?” she asks, and Cheeky gives her a look right back.
“Same thing you gulped down two minutes ago.”
I can’t help the laugh that bursts past my lips—she is so bold. But Maman’s eyes narrow, and I turn it into a cough as the girl grabs a frilly scrap of lacy silk from Eve’s lap and dips it into the glass.
“Don’t worry,” she adds with a wink. “They’re clean.”
I have half a second to digest this claim before she puts the silk to my shoulder and I yelp. “That burns!”
“Drink, then!”
Ignoring Maman’s disapproval, I take a sip of the liquid. Then I cough again, for real this time. “That burns too,” I choke, my voice suddenly hoarse.
Unconcerned, Cheeky keeps dabbing at my skin. “Next time, arrange to be rescued by a docteur. What happened here?” she adds then, tracing the edge of the scar with one cool finger. I turn away, embarrassed, and she pulls her hand back. “Sorry. It just seems that as far as burning goes, you’ve dealt with worse.”
“Haven’t we all?” Tia says to Cheeky, and the two of them laugh like bells, chiming.
“It was the first time I’d had to rig the scrim alone,” I say, avoiding my parents’ eyes and trying not to blush. The first touring season after my brother joined the armée, though it doesn’t feel right to mention him, not in this irreverent place. “The knots were loose and the wind took the silk into the fire bowl. I must have been . . . distracted.”
“So you’re shadow players?” Eve says hopefully. “I love shadow plays. I try to go to La Fête every year. Not this year, obviously. We were working tonight.” Her smile falters for a moment—so quick I almost missed it. “But almost every year.”
“I saw a shadow play in Nokhor Khat once,” Tia says, tossing back her blond curls. “Just a few months ago, on my world-famous tour.”
“World-famous?” Cheeky drops the rag to the floor and takes another. “In what world?”
“Don’t be jealous, darling, green’s not your color.” Tia speaks without malice, reaching over to chuck Cheeky under the chin. Cheeky blows her a kiss. But now I’m drawn in.
“You’ve been to the capital?” I say, a bit breathless. “What’s it like?”
“Oh, darling.” Tia smiles at me like a benediction. “It shines twice as bright as the stars in your eyes. Fine people and finer dress. Champagne and sugar and electric lights around the Ruby Palace.”
“I used to dream of performing at the royal opera,” I admit, but Maman frowns.
“Better to perform for an emperor than a king.” On the surface, it’s true, but she doesn’t fool me. Even though troupes in the capital make far more money than those in the villages, Maman has always hated the idea of performing there. She’s never told me why, but I’m certain it has nothing to do with the king’s status. More likely it’s her fear of Le Trépas; so many Chakrans who lived through his reign are certain that the stone walls of his prison are not half as thick as they should be.
I am not so fainthearted. But on the way to Aquitan, I doubt Maman will give me the chance to stop for a show.
“Nice work if you can get it,” Tia is saying. “But the Boy King does love his entertainment.”
Cheeky winks. “The Playboy King, you mean?”
They laugh, but Papa shifts at the disrespect. For a moment, I tense; I can still hear the echoes of his voice—a whisper from the past. “He’s the rightful heir,” he used to say, “why don’t they let him rule?” But only to his brother, and never loud enough the words might pass beyond the walls of our shack. Papa was too cautious for that—not like Uncle was. Maybe that’s why Papa is still around.
It’s not that Papa doesn’t appreciate the Aquitans, and what they did at La Victoire. We all do. But we also remember the Hungry Year, when the rains never came and the stores were depleted and we realized just how many fields had gone over from rice to sugar. We have performed in the parlors of plantations owned by foreigners—seen their fine things, smelled their rich foods—and gone back outside afterward to eat rice from our cookpot and sleep in the roulotte. And we remember—Papa and Maman and I, we cannot forget—how Akra put on the uniform d’armée and that was the last time we saw him.
But Papa is still cautious, even here. Especially here. “I’ve never heard that term,” is all he says.
Cheeky only flutters the scrap of lace in his direction. “It’s been nearly sixteen years since La Victoire. He’s not a child anymore, and it’s not like they let him govern. What would you do with your time if you were young and rich?”
“Shadow plays,” Papa says with a wry smile, and Cheeky grins at him.
“Lucky you.”
“All that will change after the coronation,” Eve says, but Cheeky tosses her pin curls.
“It’ll change right back after the wedding,” she says. “Men are weak for beautiful women. Trust me on this.”
“I could always take her place,” Tia says, framing her face with an open palm while the other girls giggle. “No one would ever know the difference.”
“The king might figure it out on the wedding night,” Cheeky snickers, and Tia winks.
“I don’t think he’d complain.”
Watching Tia, I realize why she looks familiar. “You’re an impersonator,” I say, but she flaps a hand at me.
“I prefer the term ‘long-lost twin.’ Tragically separated at birth from my sister, Theodora Legarde.”
I cock my head. In the last few months, the posters of General Legarde had been joined by posters of his daughter—La Fleur d’Aquitan, they call her. The only woman beautiful enough to tame Raik Alendra, the Boy King, the last of his line and heir to the Chakran throne. An historic marriage—between a Chakran and an Aquitaine, and a symbolic one too. But on the posters, Theodora is pale as porcelain, with eyes like sapphires, and luxuriously fat. Tia’s eyes are black, and under the powder, her cheeks are golden brown and faintly stubbled; this close, I can see the shape of extra padding under her dress. But Tia is beautiful too, with all the hauteur of royalty; she makes her rickety chair a throne just by sitting in it. Besides, at the heart of theater is the suspension of disbelief.
“I thought it was her, when I first saw you,” I say, though even as the words come, they sound too eager, too obsequious. “The spit and image.”
Inside, I cringe—why do I want their approval so badly? But Tia puts her hand over her heart, as though touched by the compliment. Then Cheeky leans close to whisper loudly. “Mostly spit.”
Pulling the blond wig off her own head, Tia pretends to swat the other girl with it. Their laughter puts me at ease—even Papa is smiling. Once the giggling subsides, Tia fits the wig over one hand, gently rearranging the curls.
“I saw her in real life once, you know. While I was in the capital.” She gestures to her hair—short and black under the wig—and grimaces. “I went incognito, of course. You know their laws. But one night I went to a shadow play and there she was, sitting in the front row with her father and every other foreigner in the city. They’re all wild for fantouches d’ombre.”
Eve nods. “Last year at La Fête, someone told me that Le Roi Fou converted his ballroom to a shadow theater.”
I tense at the word fou—mad—but they aren’t looking at me. And a slow grin is spreading across Cheeky’s face. “So then,” she says deliberately, “how does he hold his balls?”
The girls burst out laughing again, but the numb feeling is returning. “We were on our way to La Fête,” I say softly. “We were trying to get to Aquitan.”
Across the table, Maman’s face cracks like a bowl, and the bleak despair in her eyes is somehow the worst thing I’ve seen tonight. It eats at me too: we’ve come all this way, and our destination has never been further out of reach. Seeking comfort, giving comfort, I take her hand in mine. “Don’t worry, Maman,” I say, though the words are hollow. “There’s bound to be another way.”
“Another way?” Maman grips my fingers—her whole body tenses, as though she’s trying to hold herself together. “And what will that be?”
My fingers hurt, but I only squeeze her back until our knuckles both turn white. A hundred answers flit through my head—to build a boat with a turtle’s soul, and ride it across the Hundred Days Sea. To step from behind the scrim—no longer a wonder but a marvel, and wait for the world to shower us with coin. To march to Nokhor Khat and demand an audience with the Boy King himself. He would be amazed by what I can do. Or would he be afraid? Either way, I’m sure I could convince him to help.
Papa puts his hand over our twisted fists, his voice low—trying to soothe, or to silence? “We’ll find a way,” he says. “In the morning, we’ll ask around. They may rebuild the stages. Le Fête may still go on. The Boy King is still getting married, after all. The royal couple is still going to Aquitan. And Le Roi Fou will still want his shadow plays.”
Ever the optimist—ever the storyteller. But under Maman’s strict eye, what other option do we have?
The girls are shifting uncomfortably, pretending not to listen. The snake slithers across Eve’s bare shoulders. “I was trying to save enough to leave,” she says finally, into the prickly silence. “But the river gods raise the prices after each attack.”
Papa cocks his head. “River gods?”
“The men who sell passage on the boats.” Carefully, Eve wraps a bandage around my heel. “They stand between this life and the next, judging your worth. Somehow they find me wanting,” she adds with a winsome smile, but I can see the fear underneath.
I glance around the room then: Cheeky with her jokes, Tia with her pride, Eve with her sweet smile. But ultimately, just some girls in a dirty dive along the northern jungle, with smudged makeup and holes in their stockings. I understand their laughter now—it is just another act. How many people want to flee but have no route to safety? We were lucky we had a chance—have a chance, if the money in our roulotte is still there by morning.
“How much is passage?” I ask. Across the table, Maman’s eyes snap to mine, and hope creeps back across her face.
Eve only shrugs. “You’ll have to go ask at the dock. I stopped checking a while back. Or Leo might know.”
Tia frowns, looking up from her wig. “Where is Leo, anyway?”
“Never ask where a man goes,” Cheeky says loftily. “He might get the impression you want him to come back.” Then she puts a gentle hand on my shoulder as I start to rise. “The dock will still be there in the morning. Even I wouldn’t go out there alone tonight.”
“Will the armée keep us safe in here?” I ask, and she grins.
“Sure,” she says. “As long as they stay out there.”