The applause washes over me like the rush of the season’s first rain—a few drops at first, building quickly to a storm. A comedy was the right choice after the drama of the explosions last night. The crowd is effusive, excited, loud. For a moment, I imagine they can hear the cheering in Aquitan. They will . . . they will.
Papa has blown out the candles, but I can still feel the heat of the flame, warm on my back, in my hair, under my skin. Everything is more intense, more real. Joy purrs in the pit of my stomach, and my blood fizzes like ginger beer. The air rings like a struck bell; I drink it in like honey. The dark itself is like velvet on the bare flesh of my arm.
Eventually the applause begins to fade—a natural ebb, like a waning moon; I steel myself against the emptiness it will leave when it is gone. But then, into the hollow, Leo’s voice comes from just beyond the scrim. “Mesdames, messieurs, et mes autres!” It’s a stage voice—it cuts easily through the ovation. “Thank you, thank you! Un plaisir, to have the Ros Nai here tonight! But settle down in your seats, the show is only beginning.”
I frown, glancing at Maman, but she looks as puzzled as I am. No one mentioned more performances. Into our confused silence, a note falls—exquisite! The sound of a violin.
Then I see him: Leo, or rather his silhouette. The footlights are fading up on the other side of the screen; he’s standing on the stage, leaning into his instrument, bending like a palm in the storm of his song.
It’s beautiful, and familiar: a Chakran folk reel that reminds me of Lak Na. I’ve never heard it performed on a foreign instrument before.
The notes fall like water, they soar like swallows, they shimmer more vibrant than the stars. Leo is playing the audience back into silence. Chairs scrape, feet shuffle, people murmur—how dare they? But the music rises over it all, and his shadow dances with it. I take a step toward the scrim, and another, reaching out with tentative fingers to the outline of his form—the dark space he’s cut from the light. Are any of my shadows half so graceful?
“Jetta?” I whirl, snatching my hand back at Cheeky’s soft voice. But where is she? The call comes again from a crack—a trapdoor in the center of the stage: she’s peeking through, her eyes rising just above the floor. “Jetta!”
I approach on quiet feet, hunkering down to whisper. “What is it?”
“Capitaine Legarde is looking for you,” she says. My brow furrows, then my heart stutters. The soldier in the road—the one who gave us back the coin. He must be the general’s son. What could he want now? “You have to go.”
My eyebrows go up. “Now?”
“Easier now than later!” she hisses. “Leo will meet you at the roulotte when Tia takes the stage. We’ll keep the capitaine distracted as long as we can. But you have to hurry.”
I chew my lip. Is it wise to run from the armée? What if he only wants something innocuous—something small, an innocent question?
How did you do it?
Hidden strings . . .
But when I straighten up, Maman and Papa are standing close—by their faces, I can tell they’ve heard what Cheeky said, and they know there is nothing innocent about the capitaine’s request. Without a word, Maman nods to the trapdoor. My fantouches are scattered across the stage, near the scrim. I move to gather them, but she puts her hand on my arm and shakes her head.
Inside me, something shrivels. Leave my fantouches?
Each one represents hours, days, weeks of work—not only mine. Our version of the spirit maiden was the last fantouche Akra made.
And what of the souls sewn into these skins? Will they behave without me near, or will they grow bored and start to wander without my permission? Would they be trapped forever in their bodies as they slowly waste away, longing for reprieve, unable to be reborn?
There’s little time for the dead when the living are in danger. So when the next round of applause comes, I slip down through the stage and walk empty-handed into the dark. With a bitter twist of my lips, I see Papa holding his bird flute, and Maman with the little painted thom she loves so well—but they are small things, easy to carry, and close to hand. The delicate lute that belonged to my grandmother is still in the dark backstage—not to mention our silk scrim, hiding us from the audience. Still, these are not the first things we’ve had to leave behind. They will not be the last.
The creak of the stairs underfoot is covered by the cheers of the audience. Cheeky lowers the trapdoor behind us; the thick wood muffles the first few notes of the piano. Tia’s voice comes in from above: “J’errais avec les fous, je me retrouve chez les âmes perdues. Nul ne sait où il est parti, mais je me suis languis de toi, de toi . . .”
The song fades as we pick our way through the warren of the basement. The ceiling is so low we have to duck, and the air here is cool and damp and smells of mildew and river water. Old munitions crates hold dusty props; touring trunks are stacked with empty barrels marked RHUM, all of them gently moldering. Little souls glimmer in the dim. We pass a peeling vanity, finely carved in Aquitan style—expensive once. I sound out the red writing on the cracked mirror: AU REVOIR.
Cheeky leads us to another stair, this one leading up to a pair of slanted cellar doors at street level. “I have to go back and get dressed,” she says. Then she grins brightly in the dark. “Then undressed again. Break a leg. Preferably someone else’s.”
“Do me a favor,” I say quickly, and she rolls her eyes.
“Another one? Usually I charge.”
“Burn the fantouches.”
Her eyes go wide in the dark. “Why?”
I bite my lip—there’s no time to explain, but even if there was, I couldn’t say. Never show, never tell. “Just do it. Please.”
She looks at me, uncertain, but then she nods, and I trust her to do what I’ve asked. Fear hits me as she disappears into the dark—when the capitaine discovers we’ve fled, will he take it out on the girls? But she must know how to take care of herself. Or am I only telling myself that? Either way, I can’t make myself call her back.
Instead we slip up the stairs. Reaching the top, I press my shoulder against the heavy door and heave. Grit trickles down the back of my neck as the panel lifts. Then someone outside takes the weight of the door, lifting it all the way open.
It’s Leo. His jacket is unbuttoned and a violin case is slung over his back; he beckons us up into the moonlight. We have exited the theater just a few steps from the alley door. Everything is so quiet—odd, for a city the size of Luda. A deep, layered silence, the kind that comes from fear. Even the spirits seem furtive, gleaming from deep corners and shining between cracks in buildings. The feeling of being watched is back; I turn my head quickly. Was that a flicker of blue, beneath the roulotte? No matter—not now. Soon enough we will be far away from here.
On quiet feet, we steal to the wagon. To my surprise, Leo ushers us toward the door. “Get in the back.”
Maman shakes her head. “I’ll drive.”
“He’s looking for you, not me,” Leo murmurs. “Besides, you don’t know the route.”
Maman eyes him skeptically. “Out of the city?”
“Out of the city without driving past the entire encampment.”
But Papa is wasting no time; he swings open the door and starts in. Maman follows, and I have my foot on the stair when I hear a little metal click. A chill, cold as cruelty, drips down my spine. I lift my chin. There is a man lying atop the roulotte. A soldier. Moonlight shines on the steel barrel of his gun.
“Sava, Leo?” the man says, and beside me, Leo sighs through his teeth.
“Sava, Eduard. I see you’ve still got my pistol.”
“You really ought to stop misplacing guns. But right now all I need is the girl. Your brother has a few questions for her. You likely know that already.”
At first I don’t understand, but the look on Leo’s face says it all. “The capitaine is your brother?”
“Quiet, girl.” The soldier gestures with the gun, and I swallow the lump in my throat. “And close the door of the wagon.”
In the deep shadows in the roulotte, the whites of Maman’s wide eyes gleam. “What’s going on, Jetta?”
The soldier raps on the roof with his fist. “Ferme ta gueule and close the door! Is there a way to lock it?”
My hands are shaking, but better that my parents are safe inside—that they cannot chase after me, that they cannot be shot for fighting back. Maman scrambles toward the doorway as I swing it closed; I lower the latch as she pounds on the door, cursing the armée. The soldier pays her no mind. He only jerks his chin at the theater. “Now step back against the wall.”
My heart is a wild bird in the cage of my ribs; I am watching the gun, waiting for the bullet. What will happen when the capitaine comes out? Can Leo intercede? Or will they drag Maman and Papa from the wagon? Will they line us up, three in a row, kneeling in the dirty alley? Was the death of the rebel boy only a premonition of my own?
Just behind me, out of my field of vision, it burns—the blue flame. What color will my soul be when it springs from my body?
“Did you hear me? Step back!”
At the soldier’s shout, I jump, but I do not obey. Instead, I whisper to the soul I put in the wagon—the old dog, eager to please. “Throw him down,” I murmur. “Throw him down.”
The spirit obeys. The roulotte tilts, two wheels lifting with a groan, then slamming back to the earth. The soldier tumbles to the ground with a shout. The gun skitters across the stones and Leo leaps after it. But as his hands close around the pistol, the soldier is on him. They struggle, but Eduard is bigger; he smashes Leo’s knuckles bloody against the cobbles and the gun tumbles free again. I race toward it, but the soldier wraps his hand around my ankle and pulls me off my feet; I fall, hard, on my stomach, and the jolt knocks the wind out of me. Leo is scrambling after the gun on his hands and knees, but Eduard hauls me up, pressing my back to his chest, one thick arm cinched around my waist, another across my shoulders. And up under my chin, a painful point—the tip of a knife. I cannot see it, but oh, I can feel it as I breathe, as I swallow, as my pulse pounds against the coldness of the steel.
My free hand flies to my throat. Eduard tightens his grip and I hiss. Blood is already slipping down, slick on my fingers. Spirits are gathering in the still air, and the blue fire is just over my shoulder, as though to whisper in my ear.
Leo is on his feet again, holding the gun, but he lowers it when he sees me in Eduard’s arms. Against my shoulders, the soldier’s heart is pounding. “Put it on the ground,” he growls.
“The capitaine can’t question a dead girl,” Leo says, but the point of the knife digs deeper; I stop breathing.
“There’s a long road between life and death,” Eduard says. “And I can get answers out of almost anyone along the way. Put the gun on the ground.”
Visions of the bodies displayed on the roadside float behind my eyes like shadows on a screen. Am I in the hands of the torturer? Is the knife he used to flay their skin pressed against my throat? Is the soul of the rebel here now, waiting for revenge on the man who put his head on a pike?
Would his vengeance doom the soldier—and save us?
Carefully, slowly, Leo obeys; ever so slightly, the soldier relaxes his grip. And gently, softly, I lower my arm to my side, to where the questioneur’s fingers dig into my ribs. With my bloody hand, I trace the sign of life on the back of his hand.
There is a flash of blue. Eduard screams as he stumbles back, convulsing. The sound splits the night—it pierces my skull—it rings in my ears. It goes on and on, an alarm, an accusation. His eyes roll, his body writhes, his head lolls like a mad thing. Then it ends, and the soldier drops in a heap.
Is he still breathing? I am cold all over. What have I done? The sudden silence is a void, filling now with other sounds—Maman’s muffled cries, a dog barking . . . and the wet hiss of air through the soldier’s clenched teeth.
Leo turns to me, his eyes wide in the dark; he’s still holding the gun, and it’s not exactly pointed at the ground. “What happened to him?”
I open my mouth but no explanation comes. “Why are you asking me?”
“Because you don’t look all that surprised.”
I grit my teeth—too late to don a mask of shock. “We should go,” I say instead, and he only nods. I follow Leo onto the bench of the roulotte. Lani is snorting, stamping, afraid and impatient; she practically bolts down the alley when Leo snaps the reins. The wagon lurches forward. As we turn onto the main street, the theater door opens and the capitaine’s voice calls, “Arret!” Like the general. We don’t stop.