Shadowbridge (37 page)

“Three nights?”

“Longer,” she said.

“Five then.”

“I don’t know.”

He sighed. “Once again, Lea, it is my part, my
role,
to ascertain the best venue, and how long we can rely upon the people to attend, and who will pay us the most. This is a job I do well. I’m certainly no puppeteer, but without me, you would have no way to prove that you
are.
”

She leaned forward then and said, “All right. Five nights on this span.”

He nodded, and said, “Done!”

She got up heavily, as if the argument had worn her out. “I’ve two hours before the performance. I’m going to rest.” The courtyard seemed to tremble at her passing.

Left behind, Diverus fidgeted, stealing glances at Soter as he commented, “I’m new to human interactions, but I wonder that anybody understands anybody.” He, too, took his leave of the garden.

Alone, Soter toasted himself and, after downing the small cup of liquor, said, “Five, then. I can live with that. For now.”

 . . . . . 

The next three days, Leodora collected stories. Each day she checked the park before looking elsewhere. On the first day she did find a group playing
go
there, but it wasn’t the fox and his friends, who never did reappear. “Maybe it takes a long time to go to the end of everything and come back,” said Diverus.

“But they invited us to come back the next
day.
” Even as she argued, she guessed the explanation, and before Diverus could say it she countered herself: “Days and nights aren’t the same to the demons in that parade.”

“That’s what I think, too,” Diverus replied. “What I meant.”

She roamed the entire span, eventually crossing onto the split on the far side of the valley of stilt houses, seeking groups, clusters of people at leisure whom she could chat up and ask for a story. She even came across the same palanquin bearers she had used in explaining story collecting to Diverus, and as she’d told him they did indeed serve up a plethora of salacious stories about their mistress. None of these could be performed, but they contained images and ideas and moments she might borrow, retool, and fold into some unrelated telling to make it unique.

She received stories such as the tale of the priest who was so lonely that he created an artificial friend, but got the spell horribly wrong so that his friend wanted most of all to eat him—a story she performed the same night, provoking both laughter and gasps.

The courtyard filled earlier each night. People declined to take dinner until afterward in order to get close to the booth.

The final performance in Hyakiyako, she concluded with a repeat rendition of “The Ghost of Nikki Danjo.” While the puppet of Masaoka pressed against the side of the screen and bit into her arm to keep from screaming, her son died in agony of poisoning. She dared not cry out, as the audience knew, else give away that she had discovered the identity of the real villain of the piece—Nikki Danjo himself.

 . . . . . 

Soter sat off to the side of the booth, both to watch Leodora’s skillful performance and to mingle with the crowd. Once again the courtyard was full to overflowing. Mutsu would be deliriously happy, almost as happy as he had been furious when Soter told him that they could not stay beyond five nights.

The crowd booed when the evil regent Nikki Danjo slid onto the screen again. The body language of the puppet implicated him as he crept across the room to advise his lord, and the puppet of Masaoka, behind him, equally betrayed her fear. Soter, though he was used to Leodora’s craft, found himself swept up in the tale. The puppets became real people. He could see the room that surrounded them rather than the shadow of doorways, screens, and lanterns. He heard not Leodora’s voice, but the voices of the overlord and the woman and the evil Danjo. He shook his head as if he’d begun to fall asleep, and blamed the many cups of rice wine he’d consumed. It was powerful stuff, and he wasn’t used to it. Plus, he conceded—if only to himself—Diverus’s music made her voice seem to change, adding weight and depth to the male voices. Soter drifted into it, his head nodding.

He straightened up on his stool, then rubbed his eyes while glancing around himself at the crowd, all so riveted by the performance that not one met his gaze. He found himself similarly drawn back to the pale screen, glowing lightly red now as the story neared an explosive climax. She had learned to increase the colors subtly, slowly, so that the audience hardly noticed that it had gone from white to crimson by the end of the play. Gods, he was proud of her! She had no idea how proud. Why didn’t he tell her? He ought to tell her.

Then, as he stared at the screen, it seemed to draw him in, growing darker the closer he came.

When he looked up, the courtyard had turned the color of blood, as if the light from her lantern had become liquid and smeared every surface. Soter dragged the back of his hand across his eyes. He looked first at the starlit sky above to confirm that it was still in place; but when he glanced down again the audience had transformed into puppets—giant, articulated puppets, their profiles translucent, features sharply drawn. He yipped and craned away in his chair, only to find that he was leaning into more puppets. The closest one swiveled its leathery head and gave him a nettled glare. He stared at the booth then, straight at the screen where Leodora performed. He clung to the identifiable shadows, denied the room. The performance continued, the story unfolded. In her fiction lay his truth. Without daring to glance away, he reached to the small table behind him and patted about for his wine cup.

A moist hand closed over his wrist and held it.

He stiffened. He sat paralyzed.

Close behind him a voice said, “So here we are at last.” It was Gousier’s voice and it was all Soter could do not to leap away screaming. Instead, denying the hive of panic whirling through his belly, he made himself slowly turn around, outwardly calm, his mouth fixed in a ghastly smile. Even that little resolve deserted him the moment he saw the speaker.

Behind and above him stood the Coral Man. It glowered down at him—he knew it though there were no eyes in its head, no distinct features at all. The grip on his wrist was some sort of clammy tentacle extending from beneath the table, as gray as the figure but alive and slick.

“Soter,” it said, the voice no longer Gousier’s, but distantly familiar—a voice from a void deep inside him that he wanted to deny. “Soter, you’ll be found. Make no mistake. Found wanting.”

He could not bear the force of the scrutiny, which seemed to split him open. It was as if all the wriggling creatures that had once lived in the pores of that chalky coral were burrowing into the wound and feasting their way through him. Soon he would be nothing but bones, enveloped completely, a husk. He had to break away, face the performance, the red screen—he trembled with the effort of dismissing the apparition—turning in time to see the fitting end of Nikki Danjo, haunting it was, yes, and
Remember the story,
he urged himself, it was a puppet ghost, but somehow he was in the story now, seated among puppets with a ghost of his own looming in their midst. He stared so hard at the red light and the shadow figures that his eyes burned with tears from not blinking. He squeezed them shut, then jolted upright in his seat again. His arm, twisted behind him, ached horribly and he moved it, clutching his cup. His hand slid freely upon the table. Only then did he blink and glance around, wiping again at his eyes, this time with the meat of his palm. He opened one eye while he covered the other, warily peeking at his neighbor who, sensing his movement, grinned at him and said, “Very good, yes?” A normal face—bad teeth, certainly, but a normal face, not one of her puppets. Soter knew before he’d twisted around on the stool that no Coral Man would be hovering at his back. Everyone wedged into the courtyard looked normal, joyous with recognition of the masterful storytelling they’d just witnessed. They raised their hands and applauded—a burst of noise that made him jump.

“I slept, that’s all it was. I dreamed. Bardsham—” He rolled his wrist and saw it then, the one perfect circle, the sucker mark, purple where it had bruised him. Everyone else was clapping and cheering.

The screen had gone dark, the lantern extinguished. Instinct took over and Soter leapt to his feet, walked forward, clapping his own hands and calling, “Jax, my friends, the artistry of Jax!” while the crowd shouted and pounded their cups on the tables, and someone broke out a flute and began to play a frenetic melody above the din. The cheering flowed to follow and then accompany the flute, becoming a song.

After a minute Leodora stepped through the side of the booth, her head cowled, her face masked, and the song dissolved into a roar. She had played their stories and won their hearts. This was how it had been with Bardsham. The impeccable skill of a genius had overwhelmed the crowds. The energy of their pleasure flowed right through him to the artist. It was wonderful. Behind her, Diverus came out—it was becoming a routine now—and waved the shamisen he’d been playing; the audience cheered for him, too.

Here was everything they sought and he was making them leave because he was afraid. And the Coral Man had stood right there and told him it would do no good. Run to the next span, he would be found. If you wanted to remain hidden, you could not have great talent. Talent made noise; people would notice you, remember you. Jax—they would be speaking of the master puppeteer from one end of the span to the other tomorrow. A few more days and news of these performances would overtake the stories Grumelpyn had heard, louder now and more certain, the way it had been with Bardsham. “You’ll be found”—he muttered the warning.

Why, he asked the air, why did she have to be brilliant? Why did she have to shine so brightly? Why had she made them leave the damned backwater of that island? He blamed her, knowing full well that she wasn’t to blame. He made his smiles to the crowd. Then he realized she wasn’t wearing the band that restricted her breasts. She’d forgotten to put it on after the performance. Someone would see, someone would fathom the truth. He thought to move, to step between the crowd and the object of their adoration.

Then Leodora did the unthinkable. She pushed back the cowl and drew her braid free.

Watching the crowd for any sign that they’d recognized her womanliness, he only glimpsed the flash of her hair. “No,” he said, more in disbelief than as a warning, but no one heard him over the din of the song they were singing.

He faced her then, crying, “Don’t you dare!”

But she’d already reached a hand in front of her face, and she pulled the black mask up and away. The crowd yelled louder. She tugged loose the cord binding her hair then shook it all free, a shining red fan, a copper waterfall around her. They simply went mad then.

She shouted her name and they gave it back. Cries of “Leodora!” drowned out “Jax!” Coins flew through the air and rained all around her.

Soter wanted to sear her with a look the way the Coral Man had crushed him with its regard, but her stance defied him, denying him the right to hide her any longer.
It’s too late,
said her pose,
you may dictate the dates and the venues and the spans, but you’ll not control my identity any longer.
He knew this story; he’d told it to her: How had he thought it would have a different ending this time? “Bardsham,” he despaired.

Something broke inside him. He could not oppose her, he had no will any longer, no strength for the battle any longer. Chaos was coming after him, bearing down upon them all, and it would find him whether he hid her or not. It was what the Coral Man had been saying. He stared at the mark on his wrist.

There could be no going on to the next span now. No simple passage through a tunnel would disguise her identity, her name. That would travel, too, now: the skill of her father and the shape of her mother, the name so close.

She had unleashed herself, and now they had to flee.

THREE