The price of victory- - Thieves World 13 (50 page)

"—damn mess, Cnt, damn awful mess How'd you get into this^"

It was Strat the way he had been Strat before the witch had got him. Strat his partner

And Strat did much the same thing when finally he came to and found him sitting there, with the candle all but a stub on the bedside table

"What the hell," he said "I must've made it all nght, didn't P"

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Jon DeCles

"I am afraid, my dear, that we are going to get into some trouble over this play," said Glisselrand, picking up another ball of brightly colored yam and adding its lurid yellow to the dark fuschia with which she had been working all morning. Her knitting was the one evidence of her past that she had not dropped along the way, the closest thing to a regret that she had ever shown in all the years since she had run away from home to become an actress with the travelling players.

"And why should that be, my sweeting?" asked Feltheryn, going over the lines of the play before him, intermittently sipping at the tisane in his

cup.

"Well, you may have been too busy to listen to gossip, but the thing most discussed in this dreadful town is the possible marriage of Prince Kittycat to the Beysa," Glisselrand replied, her voice just a little more reedy this morning than Feltheryn liked. "Has it not occurred to you that this particular play which Molin Torchholder has commissioned us to perform might be taken as a political statement?"

"How so?" asked Feltheryn, devoting only a part of his mind to the conversation.

"It depicts an unsuccessful marriage of state, for one thing," said Glis
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selrand. "For another, there is that very powerful scene in which the High Priest forces the King to his will. One assumes the words were written originally at a time when the King of some country was overstep ping his bounds, and when the magician who wrote it felt it appropriate to bend the will of the monarch to the wisdom of the temple."

"Well, yes," said Feltheryn, looking up at last from the old parchment

text of the play. His blue eyes focused on Giisselrand and he was struck, as always, by how beautiful she remained, even at - . .—Certainly more summers than was polite for a man to consider. (At least past fifty.) "But what has that to do with thee and me?"

"Feltheryn, my darling," Glisselrand said patiently, "you know how the plays affect people's minds. Has it not occurred to you that Molin might be attempting to use us to get control of the prince?"

"My darling," said Feltheryn, "the plays are magical, there is no doubt about that. But their magic is unpredictable. Surely Molin, as a priest, knows that he cannot depend on a performance of one of our plays to give him any precise results. The changes that occur in people upon seeing our plays are subtle, and like as not they will even go unnoticed. Molin saw the plays in Ranke. He knows they cannot be used, I am sure.
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. . . You must think more kindly of this fine man who has been good enough to arrange a theater for us, hire that charming painter, Lalo, to paint our scenery, and, most important, see that we are all fed until we are established in Sanctuary."

"Perhaps," said Glisselrand after a moment. "But-1 do wonder at you, even after this many years. You are still such an innocefft! I wonder how you maintain it."

This comment left Feltheryn bewildered so he returned to his memo rizing of the text; a very normal reaction, as much of what his beloved leading lady said to him was beyond his understanding. In a moment he was absorbed again in the terrible scene in which the king discovers that his new young wife is in love with his son by a previous marriage. Feltheryn moved his hand to his brow and ran his fingers through his bushy white hair in rehearsal of a gesture of anguish. He did not notice Glisselrand's tender smile as she watched him.

The company had lost many of its treasured articles of production in its final days in Ranke, and as The Power of Kings was a play replete with royalty, it behooved Feltheryn to replace certain crowns, sceptres, and other paraphernalia of rulership. To this end he headed for the bazaar of Sanctuary, accompanied by Snegelringe, who would play his son Karel in the play (Feltheryn always reserved the parts of kings for himself and left the younger, more romantic parts for his junior) and Lempchin, the boy who acted as factotum to the troupe. They were looking for a blacksmith,
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but one who had a certain flair and style about his work; for crowns and sceptres were a far cry, artistically, from horseshoes and barrel hoops.

It was perhaps inevitable that they catch the attention of those who frequented the bazaar by day but who made their homes in either the Downwind or the Maze; for after so many years of being a king upon the stage Feltheryn moved with the authority of one, if not the wisdom.

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Certainly no true king would have been foolish enough to head for the bazaar with only one guard and a clumsy boy for company.

It was luck, and very good luck, that the first to make an attempt upon the old actor's person was not one of Sanctuary's better thieves: other wise the purse which Molin Torchholder had provided might have been lost. As it was; the apprentice pickpockets crashed into Feltheryn, the

"master" of the gang (who had attained at least eighteen years despite his stupidity) rushed in with a knife—and learned quickly that actors must be as good with their swords in reality as upon the stage.

Snegelringe's blade flew from its overly ornamented scabbard, moved in an overly flamboyant arc, and the attacking knife flew from a hand
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that spurted blood.

The apprentices drew back, their eyes round with surprise as their master clutched his hand and staggered away with a yowl-They had clearly not expected Snegelringe, a paunchy man with a receding hair line, to have any speed of arms.

"Death to all who ride against the King!" proclaimed Lempchin, in a voice that was strong enough but not yet deep enough for the stage. Then the boy spoiled his moment by giggling.

Fortunately the apprentice pickpockets were not versed in the finer points of stage delivery, and they took Lempchin's statement seriously. They ran, scattering as thoroughly as the narrow street would allow.

"Well played, my hearty!" said Feltheryn to Snegelringe. "But you, boy, you must learn never to break character until the curtain is down!

Suppose they had not run? Suppose they had taken our defense as a

joke?"

"Why then," said Lempchin, "Master Snegelringe would have skewered them all!"

"A pretty move, no doubt," said Feltheryn, and he lowered his deep voice an octave to where it sounded like the dead oracle from Nodrade.
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"But then should we have found ourselves with enemies, and be the target of every friend those fiends ever had. And one dark night when you must walk alone, the sharp blade would cut across your throat!"

The boy gulped.

"And we should have to find another boy to take your place emptying the chamber pots!" added Snegelringe.

Lempchin's discomfort faded and he blushed. He did not really like Snegelringe, Feltheryn knew, but he respected the actor: in fact, he wanted to take his place some day, if he could just leam the lines and arrange an accident.

"Come," said Feltheryn, rumpling the chubby boy's hair. "I see the place Lalo recommended, across the square ahead. While I talk to the

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blacksmith perhaps you can persuade his wife to read your palm. They say these S'danzo women read the future well, and she may see you upon the boards yet!"

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The interview with Dubro, the blacksmith, went well enough, though he apologized for his lack of expertise in fashioning crowns. The huge man was not pleased with the way Snegelringe lavished attention on his wife Illyra, but neither did he move to stop it. Feltheryn supposed the fellow would have felt foolish exhibiting jealousy over a pudgy actor with a receding hairline; and he did not feel it appropriate to disabuse the man of his illusions at just this point. Snegelringe's reputation as a ladies* man would spread through Sanctuary soon enough, causing the company problems aplenty. Let that happen later, after people were accustomed to coming to the plays. Then the troupe would be able to weather the criti cism of their morals that even a town as corrupt as Sanctuary felt quali fied to heap upon mere actors.

As for the wife, Hlyra: Feltheryn wondered why it was she dressed as she did, making up her face in such a way that she appeared, to the untrained eye, like a crone. Was it because of the respect accorded to old age? (He knew well that such respect was more often an illusion of the young than a reality-His own years had earned him rather a grudging tolerance than respect. People did not defer to him, they waited for him to die so that they could take his place!) Or did she have some secret distress? She was not responding to Snegelringe's attentions as a woman might usually. The professional mask of a seeress was set well in place, but to Feltheryn's equally professional assessment she seemed mildly puzzled by it all; as if she could not understand why Snegelringe was flirting with her. Was it possible she did not know that actors used makeup as skillfully as S'danzo, and for much the same purpose? Was it
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possible she did not realize that Snegelringe could see beneath her mask to the lovely young woman?

Feltheryn let the puzzle go, another observation of the human condi tion for his catalogue of character, and finished his business with Dubro.

Lempchin had not found the seeress m a soft enough mood to give him a reading of the cards for free, so the boy begged for a pastry instead, and that led to Snegelringe boxing his ears as they left the bazaar to return to the theater.

The theater itself was still under construction in the shell of a building that had burned during the plague riots. It was located between West Side Street and Processional, near enough to the palace that the prince could come at his convenience yet far enough away for the Rankan lords to retain their feelings of respectability. Molin had at first proposed hous ing the actors at some distance from the actual playhouse, perhaps in

272 UNEASY ALLIANCES

Westside where there was new construction: but Glisselrand had made clear, with her wannest affectations, that a woman would feel unsafe going such a great distance alone, and that providing her with a depend able escort would cost Molin much more than was reasonable. She had phrased it in such a way that there was no room, short of acute rudeness,
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for the priest to suggest she provide her own escort, or do without. Thus the theater included an attached residence which, though small, was better than anything they might find among the workmen's quarters at Shambles Cross.

The Architect of Vashanka had even taken a personal interest in the construction, as if the finishing of the walls on which he had so long labored was somehow not enough to occupy his creativity. He offered plans for a very lavish performing space and was not in the least offended when Feltheryn pointed out to him, with grave discretion, the need for a stage house at the top and dressing rooms below and behind the actual stage; not to mention space in the wings for the storage of properties to be brought on.

The rebuilding had gone on apace and now the structure was begin ning to look much the way Ranke's theaters looked. There was a prosce nium, a thing never seen outside the capital, boxes for important people who wanted to be seen as much as they wanted to see, and a royal box for those nights when the prince wished to attend a performance. The the ater was, after all, a political tool of some import for those, like the late Emperor, who knew how to use it.

It was therefore not as great a surprise as it might have been when Feltheryn entered and found the Beysa Shupansea having tisane with Glisselrand in the foyer, surrounded by several ladies-in-waiting whose raiment was so splendid that it paled only before the Beysa herself.
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For a moment Feltheryn was awestruck. The cloth in the Beysa's dress alone could have footed the bill for the whole of the theater. She wore such riches as Ranke never saw, and she wore them well, her breasts thrust out voluptuously and yet with dignity, her head held with a pride that was neither unnatural nor condescending. The gorgeous snake coil ing about her throat like a necklace was a priceless piece of theater!

The only woman he had ever seen so queenly was Glisselrand herself, perhaps in the role of Adriana in Templesmoke: but of course he would not declare that to the Beysa.

"Does not the day confound the night?" he quoted from The Archmage by way of greeting, for he had not yet learned her proper title of address.

"Are not the stars but fragments of the light?"

The Beysa smiled and the membranes on her eyes nictitated. She knew

flattery, instantly understood why he chose to use it at this moment, and decided to accept it graciously.