FIVE

 

Even before she opened her eyes that morning, she heard the strange murmurous call. It woke her nearly every morning now, no louder—if such could be said of something silent—than when she’d first heard it as her grandfather held her at the railing of the span, ten years before; since she had moved into the boathouse it had become more insistent, urgent, although the urgency gave her no guidance, no advice, no real idea of what to do in response. She climbed from her bed and crossed the narrow garret to stand in the window, to stare across the water as if this morning she might spy the source. It—whatever it was—might suddenly top the horizon to reveal its shape, and in appearing explain why it called to her and no one else. What did it want of her? It wasn’t calling her to come to it, but by the same token it was not going to let her forget its existence.

The curtains flapped in the breeze. The light coming off the ocean was gray and vaporous. It smelled of rain, though there was nothing of rain in the sky.

Melancholy joined her then, a late-awaking twin. Leodora leaned out the window like a figurehead on the prow of a ship, and stared along the shore to the north, out across the point and past, where the call was strongest, like a smell on the breeze or a gull’s cry wrapped in the wind; loud in its silence, bright in its subtlety, overwhelming in its absence—the source of her soul’s unease. One day it would surely appear and she would have her answers. She had learned to accept the frustration of not knowing when. The call remained, but she let it recede into the sizzle of the surf, and withdrew from the window.

It took her a few minutes to dress in her ragged and stained clothes for Fishkill Cavern. She climbed down the steps into the boathouse, where her uncle’s small esquif lay on supports, the hole in its side aimed at her like an empty socket. He was never going to repair it—she understood that now. It was linked to her mother and now to her, because she lived here.

She walked barefoot across the planks and picked up a wicker basket as she pushed open the wide double doors. She jumped down the stone launching ramp then padded across the beach toward the water. Streamers of seaweed were scattered all along the shore, and she collected each one, shaking out the sand and debris and little perturbed creatures before placing it in the basket.

The sand was soft and sodden between her toes. She jumped when an irate sandcrab nipped her foot before digging in deeper. Most of the little crabs scattered and scuttled and burrowed before she reached them. Later, when the tide had withdrawn, the shore would teem with gulls, squawking and fighting over the same scurrying snacks. Yet there would be new ones tomorrow, just one more of life’s mysteries.

After walking awhile, she climbed to the top of the ridge and surveyed the village, concentrating on the figures there, forcing the ocean’s call out of her head.

Moving her way were the usual group of women collecting seaweed. She spotted Kusahema and headed down the slope to their beach. Kusahema was married now, and pregnant.

When they were face-to-face, Kusahema smiled and held out her basket, and Leodora took all the strands of seaweed she’d collected and gave them to her.

“I liked your shadows the other night,” said Kusahema. “They were very funny.”

Leodora closed her eyes and bowed her head in thanks. Then she reached out and placed her hand on Kusahema’s protruding belly. “Will it be today, do you think?”

“Only the ocean can know,” came the ritual reply. Both the touch and the interchange were considered propitious. They grinned at each other, but then Kusahema’s smile faltered and she took her basket and moved on.

As recently as two years ago they had been close friends, sometimes swimming together. But as Kusahema became nubile, her family had forced her to withdraw her affection and cease meeting her friend.

Only Tastion remained close now. And that, as she had suspected for some time, was due to motives of a different sort; and even he was betrothed, soon to be married. He still told her that he would run away with her, a plan they’d hatched when they were seven, but she knew it for an empty promise.

Soon her only connection to the village would be the shadowplays that she and Soter performed for them, and which by their very nature connected her with the spans—even though most of the tales they performed for Tenikemac were its own myths and legends.

She stood alone and watched Tastion and his father, the two of them looking like two versions of the same man. They unfurled their net and moved into the water. They even moved the same way. Tastion of course pretended not to see her, which he must, just as she could not stare directly at him for any length of time. She pretended to watch the crowd farther up the beach, and so happened to be staring at Koombrun when he suddenly lurched away from the crowd and grabbed hold of one of the nets. He was trying to help, desperate to take part in the ritual, to accompany the other men. Before he’d taken two steps, he’d put his foot through the weave and tripped himself. He sprawled onto his back and turned to get up. By then his mother had come forward, and she slapped him with a series of blows that had him cowering, ducking, crawling across the sand, his foot still stuck in the net. One of the other fishermen, Lemros, came to his rescue. The crowd was laughing, but Lemros calmly unsnagged the poor brute then, wedging himself between Koombrun and his mother, helped him to his feet.

Koombrun was a year older than Tastion, which meant he should have been riding dragons long ago. He was large and strong enough, but mentally feeble. He had always been. Even as a child he hadn’t been able to keep up with Leodora and her playmates, and none of them had treated him very kindly, something she regretted as she watched his mother attacking him. His deficiency would have been no more than a tragic burden upon the family, except that his father had drowned three years earlier. In any other family the son would have stepped in to do the father’s work, but Koombrun couldn’t be allowed to fish. She often heard him in the audience during shadowplays, his nasal bleating laughter drowning out other voices. He laughed at the obvious jokes, and sometimes added his voice to everyone else’s, as if he thought it wise to pretend to understand. As if they would accept him if he did.

The village made sure that he and his mother were looked after, of course, but this came with a price for her—always to be humbled, humiliated, dependent upon others. No one else had come forward to marry her. No one would. No one wanted Koombrun in their family, and his mother would never have another child. So she punished him for all the things he couldn’t control or comprehend. For being different. Leodora sympathized with his plight. It wasn’t that much different from her own.

She stood on the beach and watched until Tastion was gone from sight. He would likely be out all day, for he and his father fished farther out than many of the others. Where they went and how they found their way back on the vast and featureless sea was a mystery to her, and even though Tastion had tried to explain it to her, she didn’t understand. All she knew for certain about fishing was that she was forbidden to do it.

 

 

 

Later that afternoon, after dressing in clothes uncontaminated by blood, she emerged from the boathouse to find Soter awaiting her outside.

He observed her sternly, his expression grave, although she couldn’t think of anything she had done to warrant it. Maybe, she thought, he was unhappy that he was sober. Then he turned sharply, commanding her: “Follow.”

She smiled to herself as she obeyed. The imperious stride was all too familiar. Today Soter was acting the sage, the teacher, the wise old man whose pupil was a source of constant disappointment. She knew his roles: They had little to do with her, everything to do with him.

Where most people she knew were recognizably constant, Soter comprised a collection of posturings, guises, a composite of masks, so many that she had no idea if any one of them had ever been the true Soter, or if there had never been anything but masks.

He marched her across the island to his hut. They passed Gousier’s asymmetrical house and outbuildings, where the smell of Dymphana’s white root pie filled the air. Where the path split, they went right, away from the cavern, away from the trail to Ningle.

Soter made a show of sidestepping a large tree root that snaked out of the ground in the middle of the path. His dodging it reminded her of the night he’d fallen over it: less than a year ago, after he’d performed for the villagers without her and gotten roaring drunk as well. She had heard him yelling and careering through the woods with the two undaya cases and stole out to see what he was doing. He had tripped across that root and crashed to the ground, the cases landing atop him. She arrived in time to see two village elders, fairly pickled themselves, drag him to his feet. He was weeping, blubbering incoherently, and not at the two men but as if he were alone. The villagers took him by the arms and carried him and the cases the rest of the way to his hut. His behavior was so peculiar that she had followed along behind them. As the elders returned, she had ducked into the shadows. Passing close by, one of them told the other, “He’s ashamed to be alive.”

She glanced now at the scaly back of his head and wondered if that was true. Why had he fallen to weeping that night? Ashamed to be found so drunk? But he was drunk so often. It wasn’t something she could ask him about.

His hut stood hidden among an overgrown mass of vines and weeds so thick that only the glinting hexagons of the windows hinted at its presence. The roof had been rethatched not so long ago, and thick new windows added, bought from a Ningle glazier; but an ancient smell of charred, smoked fish remained. Even the fermenting vats behind the hut couldn’t obliterate it entirely.

He’d set up the booth against the back wall. Because of the smallness of the hut, it was only half as deep as a real booth. There was no room for an accompanist.

Within the curtains, on top of the undaya cases, Soter had laid out six puppets for her. He pushed into the confines behind her, moving to the side to watch as she considered the figures. Leodora knew every story Soter knew. His tests now probed whether or not she could formulate what specific tale or tales he expected her to perform based solely on which figures he’d selected. He was adamant that she be able to carry every single story and all of its nuances in her head; that she be able to take any elements and weave a performance from them.

“There are only a handful of true stories,” he said so often that she could parrot his exact emphasis. “The rest are simply embellishments, or reconstructions. Variations, my girl. When you walk the spans you’ll hear a thousand versions of the same story. Some are dark, others light. Tales get rewritten to suit people and place. What’s beheld as divine wisdom on one span will be mythic farce on another, with nary a word dividing the two. All depends on what is believed. I’ve seen stories revised from top to bottom, too, after the gods have sent something down to a Dragon Bowl. That one about the girl made of wood who receives a magic visit from an Edgeworld god who sends her off to find a prince and her wedding—well, it was once someone much lower than a god who granted her wishes, some local spirit somewhere. After a while that local spirit wasn’t recollected anymore and got replaced. Stories, you see, are alive, or else not worth the telling.”

As to which tales might be originals, she didn’t know. Perhaps everything was embellishment. Was the simplest the more fundamental? Or just a true tale stripped of true meaning? In the end she had stopped fretting over it. It was no more important than knowing on which span the story had begun. She was expected to know every one of them, regardless of their origin.

She now considered the puppets Soter had laid out for her on the case: the orange figure that was sometimes a beggar but most often a thief, a pair of winged dragons, a maiden, an emperor, an assortment of tiny weapons, two guards, a young man, and an old man. Soter had fitted a straight wand in the old man’s hand. From that she knew he was a wizard. Last of all was the resplendent figure of the handsome suitor.

The key object was missing, however. He had withheld it on purpose to challenge her. She smiled to herself for having recognized this, too. “It’s the tale of the Druid’s Egg,” she announced authoritatively.

Soter rocked on his heels. “You are positive?”

“Yes,” she replied, concealing the doubt his question let in. “But you have the title element.” She boldly held out her hand.

Soter’s gaze fastened on hers. “How did you identify the tale if I have the key?”

“The thief figure is also the beggar figure, so his limbs are detachable. In the Druid’s Egg tale the thief isn’t swift enough to steal the egg without being bitten by one of the twin serpents who hold the egg aloft, and he loses an arm to its venom. The old man is the wizard with the magic wand. He transforms himself into the handsome suitor to capture the heart of the princess, who is the true love of the thief. She’s the reason he stole the egg in the first place—to have her for a wife. The wizard wants her because he wants to rule the kingdom. He wants power. The thief fears she won’t want him with one arm, and so—”

“Enough! Here!” He handed her the prop of the translucent golden egg. “Show. Don’t tell.” Then he collected the figures of the guards and the emperor.

“Wait! I need them. How can I tell it right?”

As if the question were superfluous, he answered, “Improvise.” He pushed apart the drapery and left the booth.

The lantern was already lighted. She had only to rotate it to cast its beam upon the taut white silk screen. Beneath the screen was a narrow shelf. A groove ran the length of it.

She brought the figure of the wizard to the screen. Normally the trappings of a set would have been hooked in place around the puppet. But Soter forced her to rely on storytelling alone to convey situations.

It was theater without a stage.

She picked up her story: “The wizard disguised himself as a physician, and gained admittance to the palace in that form, taking a small room that overlooked the city. There he performed his dark arts. He used his powers to discover every suitor the princess had, worthy or not. He saw the thief’s passion for her. That was why the wizard, in the guise of the good doctor, had sent him on the impossible quest for the Druid’s Egg—for with that prize and his knowledge of how to unlock it, the wizard would gain remarkable powers, and as a reward would give the girl to the thief, after first stealing her love for himself.

“Other, more suitable if simpleminded suitors, he plagued with easy magics so that they would never arrive in the city at all. Some lost their bearings and wandered into other spans. Some fell in love with barmaids, hags, or even their animals.”

By rotating the puppet’s arm she made the wizard’s shadow sweep the wand above his head. At the same time she spun the lantern, and its light flashed and flickered, white and red, as the different lenses splashed the silk.

“Now he was unopposed for her hand. There remained but a final act to secure her. He must hide his true unwholesome nature.”

She caught the lamp. It stopped with its red lens glowing upon the screen.

“With a blast of magic he transformed himself.”

She gave the lantern a gentle twist. The red light slowly slid to the right, replaced by darkness—the blank side of the lamp. Then the dark, too, was pushed aside by the light of the clear lens. But in the instant that darkness covered the screen, she deftly swapped the old wizard’s figure for the young suitor, carefully fiddling the rods to keep the suitor’s arms in the same position as the wizard’s.

“He became the handsomest man in the world.”

She heard Soter’s grunt of approval. It was her embellishment of the text to make him not merely handsome, but the handsomest.

“Transformed, he paused to consider himself in a mirror.” The suitor touched his face, ran his hands down his sides, then held them up to look at them. “He was pleased with his handiwork. His power remained undiminished. No one could refuse him!”

The next scene she could not fully perform without the puppets Soter had withheld.

“He went before the emperor as if just arrived from another span. He bowed with a deep respect that he felt not at all, and then asked to be considered as a son-in-law.”

The suitor knelt on one knee, bowed low, and finally lay prostrate, with his hands outstretched as if to plead with someone beyond the screen.

“His clever disguise protected him from an emperor who would have killed him for all the evil he had created in that kingdom and others.

“The emperor sent the new suitor to his daughter. She knew already that he was in the palace—word of him had reached her through her servants. Now, with her chaperone behind the nearest curtain, she met the suitor. His face did take her breath away. He was smooth in every nuance. Calculated in every implied invitation.”

The princess, dressed in a purple gown, extended a hand; he kissed her, bowing. His gestures were graceful, and each one ended with the slightest pull, drawing the girl slowly across the screen, nearer with each flourish until she almost touched him. Then he reached out behind her, and his hand wove magic knots in the air.

“Soon the princess was caught in his spell. With a flick of the wrist, he put the chaperone to sleep behind her drapery. Then he was alone with his prize.”

The suitor stepped back. He touched the princess’s shoulder and swept her clothing away. The diaphanous purple gown caught on the puppet’s sharp fingertip, lifting off the tiny pin that had held it in place on her figure. It dropped from the screen onto the small shelf below.

Leodora thought she heard Soter stifle a gasp, even though he knew that Bardsham’s princess was designed for this shocking moment. The stripping and the presentation of the rape of the princess were Bardsham’s embellishments. No one else had ever performed it this way. No one else had ever constructed a puppet whose clothing could be torn away.

She stood revealed in all her translucent nakedness. The sharp nipples of her breasts, even the dark thatch in the meeting of her thighs, were plainly visible. In a full rendition of the story, the audience had heard her speak by now and had come to know her with affection, and often a cry of alarm accompanied the moment, protests of outrage ringing out as though a real girl had been stripped bare by the fiend.

The suitor glided up against her and pushed her roughly down. She vanished below the screen. The suitor lay on top of her. The top of him became the bottom line of the screen. Slowly his body began to move back and forth, telling the story in agonizing silence. The figures sank from sight while the red of the lantern passed harsh judgment upon the scene.

“What has happened to the poor thief meanwhile? Sent out by the wizard, he has lost his left arm and very nearly his life to the dragon’s venom. More than this, he has lost his hope. What princess will have a poor man consigned now to a life of begging?—for no other fate can await him. The egg is just an egg. He can find no power there. The thief’s quest is ended. He has no power to win the affections of so beautiful a creature as the princess; the kindly doctor who sent him will dismiss the trophy, claim that he took it from some huge bird, a roc perhaps, but not from the deadly serpents. He sees now that his dream has been pure folly. He would only want her if she wanted him; and what ever made him believe she would?

“He will, he decides, complete his task and afterward climb all the way to the top of the highest minaret and throw himself to his death.

“Outside the palace, he stood for a long time beneath the window of his beloved. He set his resolve to see her one last time, that her image might be with him when he died.”

The thief began his climb. But the same vines that had carried him before were not so navigable with only one arm. He lumbered clumsily up to the balcony of his beloved, but saw nothing from the ledge. She was not there. The puppet hung his head.

“Fate was cruel today, he thought.”

He continued with less enthusiasm on toward the higher apartment of the doctor, to bid him farewell. Whatever else, he was honorable, and he would leave the egg there as he’d promised.

As she moved the puppet’s limbs with one hand, Leodora steadily lowered the vertical cutout of the vines beside him to create the illusion that he was climbing ever higher. The cutout folded in places so that it stacked neatly on the shelf as she drew it down.

“He hadn’t climbed far when his hand slipped for a moment and he twisted and grabbed a branch to save himself; but the violent movement caused the magic egg to fall from his pouch. Certain it would shatter, he dove to catch it before it struck the tiles on the princess’s balcony below. If he’d had both hands, he might have reached it, but with only the one he couldn’t. His fingers just brushed their target, and the egg hit the floor. The thief tucked his head and rolled as best he could to protect himself. It was not a long fall, but without his other arm to absorb the blow he struck the floor hard, bounced, and then lay there dazed.

“He sat up, horrified to be on this of all balconies. But it seemed that no one had heard him fall. The curtains remained drawn.

“He turned to snatch the egg and found it beside him, split in two. A fiery glow emerged from within each half.”

Leodora nimbly separated the two rods controlling the prop egg she had.

“The glow poured over him and through him. He felt as though he were the sun, burning.”

She took hold of the lanyard that secured the lantern and lowered it until its red lens was aimed straight through the translucent puppet. The skeletal structure etched lightly into the taut skins caught the light, gaining emphasis. His body seemed to have become glass. She pulled on the lanyard, raising the lantern again. The thief stood up. And now—for all eyes would follow the light as it moved—he had two arms again. The new one she had hooked into place as she pulled the rope past the screen and secured it below. The thief stood and marveled at his two hands, then danced a little jig of joy.

“He looked to the skies and thanked the gods for his good fortune. No one had seen him yet, so he fitted the two halves of the egg back together and prepared to leave. But at that moment he heard a noise, a terrible moan, emerge from beyond the curtains that closed off the balcony. His curiosity and his desire held him there. He crept across and ever so carefully parted the curtains.

“He beheld a horrible sight. His princess, the jewel of his life, lay naked and ravished. A handsome figure climbing off her turned to close its robes, faced him, and started as their eyes met. That moment seemed to last an eternity.”

The handsome suitor edged back from the princess. Her figure lay just visible, propped in place at the bottom of the screen by its rods, secured in the groove of the shelf below. The suitor suddenly sprang off screen.

“‘Guards! Guards!’ the magician cried. ‘Come quickly—a thief has broken in and attacked the princess!’ Never for a second did he imagine that the thief had succeeded in carrying out his mission. No one had ever met the twin dragons and lived. The wizard assumed that the thief had never really gone at all or had given up, as anyone else would have done. As he would have done. The plan fixed itself even as he cried out. The unconscious chaperone behind the curtain—the thief had struck her and hidden himself there. As for the girl, the wizard would magnanimously offer to marry her, thus securing her father’s eternal debt. The rape would remain a secret between them. The thief would be executed before day’s end, the shamed girl reduced to his docile slave. It was all too perfect, even better than his original plan.”

Leodora had no guards to bring onto the scene. But she did have their pikes among the weapons Soter had given her. The suitor’s figure she locked in place for a moment by setting its control rods in the grooved shelf. Then she picked up two pikes and leaned them in from the side, one above the other.

“The guards entered. The suitor thrust a finger at the thief. ‘There he is. Look at what he’s done!’”

She drew the suitor’s figure back slightly from the screen so that his shadow swelled in size while the thief leapt into motion.

“‘No!’ cried the young thief. ‘I didn’t do this—he did. I was climbing up the vines outside to fulfill my pact with the good physician who dwells higher up, but I fell onto the balcony trying to catch this!’”

He lifted into view the golden Druid’s Egg. Leodora swung down the lantern again and spun it red at the same moment that, with her pinkie, she coaxed apart the rods of the egg, splitting it open.

“‘Aiiieeee, I’m undone!’ cried the suitor. He tried to grab the egg, but the thief hopped back. The wizard stood trapped between the thief and the guards he had called. He quailed at the power of the egg. Its power would defeat any enemy—and most certainly he was the enemy of this thief. Even if the thief didn’t realize it, the egg knew.”

She gave the lantern a spin so that light became stars became red became darkness; and in that precise instant of darkness, she switched the suitor with the sharp-featured wizard.

“Helpless, the wizard watched himself transform, and in terror he ran to escape the deadly influence of the egg, ran blindly for the door—his only thought to get away from that hellish glow. But the guards reacted as guards should and lowered their pikes. They impaled the evil man.”

The pikes slid behind the wizard’s torso. She brought her middle finger to her thumb, and the figure doubled over. The pikes lifted him into the air.

“The thief knelt beside his beloved. The Druid’s Egg shone upon her. She stirred, awakened, to find herself clothed in light. A total stranger was at her side, and her wicked seducer was dead upon the pikes of her guards.”

The princess got to her feet, her body trembling. The young thief rose also.

“‘Who are you?’ she asked.”

The thief lowered his head.

“‘I’m no one. Just a common thief.’

“‘How can you say that when you have saved me?’ she replied.

“‘I saved one for whom I would willingly perish.’

“‘Don’t say such things. How could you feel that way for me when we have never met?’

“‘I could. I do. I can’t help it. But I must go now before your father finds me here. I don’t belong here.’

“‘Then take me with you.’

“‘How can I?’

“‘If you go, then I no longer belong here, either.’

“‘Oh,’ said he. ‘In that case, how can I not?’”

The princess reached to him, and he took her hand. The two shadow figures embraced in a long, lingering kiss. The egg slipped from the thief’s other hand and cracked open at his feet. The screen turned red with its light, and then, as Leodora unlooped and let slide the lanyard, the red light sank like an evening sun, taking all shadows with it. When it was below the silk screen, she blew out the light.

Outside the booth the room might have been empty, it was so quiet. She set down the figures, stood and stretched, then stepped through the curtain.

Soter seemed to gape at her, as if she were something he had never seen before. She swelled with triumph before he regained himself: His look clouded, became critical, and he said, “That’s not the way the tale ends. The emperor arrives, discovers what has happened, and gives the boy everything—the keys to his kingdom, his daughter, wealth.”

Leodora smarted at the criticism. She would not be robbed of her glory. “Improvise, someone said to me. Tales get rewritten—who told me that not an hour past? Who stole the figure of the king?”

Soter waved his hand, dismissing each point, but finding no way to contradict her. He gave a nervous laugh and tried to shift the discussion away from her objections. “Now, no matter, you did a truly fine job. A most worthy attempt in fact—”

“Attempt! Confess it, I took your breath away!”

“No, no, I’m sorry, never happened. You’re certainly getting there, but you are still a little clumsy with one thing or another—not very much, you understand, but there is always room for improvement. Those vines, not smooth enough. You are…coming along quite nicely, Leodora.”

“I’m ready,” she said with iron.

“Well, my girl, of course you want to be ready. You entertain me well enough, and the native islanders. But who are they? A far distant and less discerning cousin to the audiences on the spans. You cannot trust their simple approbation. No, no. Not reliable.”

She glared at him.

“Oh, I think, another year, perhaps. Possibly two?” He smiled like an uncle full of deep concern for her well-being—it was exactly the smile her own uncle had been giving her the past few days. It was not a look she trusted. It masked something else, something that did not have her well-being at heart.

Enraged by his false kindness, she kicked aside a stool and stormed across the hut.

“Now, Leodora,” Soter called. The voice of appeasement, another mask. She would have exited without a word if he hadn’t spoken.

She whirled about. “You pull off the role of the forgetful fool much better when you’re in your cups, old man. In fact, if you’re so stupid as to say, Oh, just two more years, my girl, you’d best be drunk. At least you’ll have an excuse for lying. Go ahead, pretend you can’t see! But I know. Understand? I know. I’m better than you say. I’m better than you can do yourself. I’m better than Bardsham!”

She flung his door out of her way.

 

 

 

Soter sagged in the chair where he had watched her performance. He sighed once, long and deep, as if he might expel all the air in his lungs. He hunched forward and picked up the puppet king. After staring it in the face for a long still moment, he began to roll the main rod loosely between his thumb and fingers. The puppet gyred to and fro, unable to settle on a direction. Its clattering arms swung loosely, embracing nothing.

“Back then she was only a child,” he said, as if responding to someone else in the empty room. “Of course I didn’t worry where it would lead. Why should I? Who knew what skills she had—or that she would even care.” He glanced up with a sickly grin, eyes focused on a point in front of him. “That’s right. Berate me for it now. You didn’t step in then, did you? You could have manifested, objected. Don’t set her on this path, Soter, you could have said. Did you? No.”

He dropped the puppet and picked up a clay jug from the floor beside the overturned stool. He took a long anxious drink, but even before he’d finished, his worried eyes opened, focused again upon something before him, and began tracking it. Whatever he followed, it was invisible to Leodora from her position outside his window. She’d come back with the intention of apologizing, provided that she could make him confess the truth about her abilities. She’d only meant to watch for the most propitious moment to make an entrance, and instead here he was engaged in a conversation.

Except no one else was there.

Soter’s hands trembled as he put down the jug. “Look,” he said, wiping his palm across his mouth, “I saved the child, didn’t I? Brought her back here. That ought to have been enough for you. After all, you owned my life, didn’t you? Had me in thrall, didn’t you? Used me any way that suited the moment. You think just because I was in the thick of it that I didn’t know the situation? Think I would have left her to the mercies of the spans if I’d known? You don’t understand devotion and never did—and you all moon-eyed and weepy with it yourself. For all that you could bedazzle your innumerable lovers, you never expected that hollow heart of yours might fill up, did you?”

He paused, head tilted, as if listening, then abruptly shook his head. “Ridden by your own demons? Oh, and so many of them, too, love. You could wrap anyone around your nimble fingers. And still you don’t ken how you can be enslaved and not be able to do anything but submit. Can’t imagine being on that end of it, even now and it’s over and you’re dead. But you were. You were. Don’t try to deny it to me. I was there!”

He flashed his teeth, shook his head, then seemed to perceive something else.

“Oh, I meant nothing. I was convenient. Just part of the troupe, easy to replace. Get rid of Soter, he’s becoming a nuisance, I don’t like the way he looks at me. Think I didn’t overhear that speech? Oh, the calumny I bore. Don’t you come floating in here this late with your demands, either. You’ve no claims on me. I protected your daughter from the darkness, you poxy…” He swung up the jug, swiped at the air. The jug, encountering nothing, spun him about. “Away! Away all dead plagues. You unrepentant ghosts—go back to the dark spans and the seabeds where you belong! I banish you! Begone!” As though sensing someone now at his back, he swung around, wielding the jug like a club. “I rescued her!” It was a broken cry, terrifying to hear.

He turned again, shoulders hunched, his head twisting with a canny look. Instinctively Leodora drew back into the shadows. When she peered at him again he had righted the overturned stool and sat down. The jug dangled from his hand. “No,” he said, “you’re wrong. That’s all I’m doing, it is. I’m keeping her from that danger. She’s safe down here on Bouyan. We’re all safe down here. No one comes looking nor ever will. A little lie keeps her safe, and when did the truth ever help us, heh? We were liars for a living. No. Better to be safe…down here on Bouyan.”

His head sank on his chest. He wasn’t asleep, nor could he be this easily drunk. It was more the position of someone dreading to see anything other than the floor before him. The boasting, besotted Soter had withered before her eyes into a spindly, tremulous thing. Rickety with age. An old man.

Leodora squatted awhile longer beside the window, her brain full of portentous imaginings. Had he been railing at her mother? He had been in love with her mother, and her mother, jealous of his influence over Bardsham, had tried to get rid of him—that was how it sounded. She couldn’t accept that there were real ghosts here. If her mother’s spirit truly roamed abroad on this isle, she would know it, wouldn’t she? She would have encountered it herself in all the places she shared with her mother’s past. Her mother could not come back without appearing to her. But then, could guilt and shame become so manifest as this—that Soter would punish himself with terrible visions and memories? Could guilt take such form?

He had rescued her, he said, but from what? Why were they—all of them, he’d said—in hiding?

She thought that he was spent, and she started to slide carefully away through the tangle of branches, when suddenly he spoke one last time, in a tone of abject defeat: “All right, all right. If the time comes, I swear. I promise. Yes. But not now. Please, not yet. Ask me later, can’t you? Let me get used to the idea awhile.”

She waited, crouching, holding her breath, straining as if she might hear the phantom answer. There was nothing but a final sobbing breath from Soter.

He sat on the floor, head bowed, his arms wrapped around the jug protectively. When he said nothing further, she withdrew.