“I thought perhaps the gods had snatched away your past, Soter, as happened to so many others.”
He twitched when she said his name and responded in kind. “No, not the gods, Orinda. No gods came for me.”
A brief smile crossed her lips at the mention of her name. Diverus eyed them both warily, attempting to fathom the meaning interlacing the words. “He died, you know, right after.”
Soter rubbed his hand along his jaw. “I recall he was ill. He kept it from us but even so, I knew. Bardsham saw it first, the way he winced when he stood. He was a grand actor but sometimes in the pain, he would forget, his expression failed him, or else it was too excruciating to mask.”
She nodded solemnly. “It spared him having to endure the ruin of the theater for so long. That would have destroyed him just as certainly, but it would have worn him to nothing first.” She slid her arm along the railing and covered Soter’s hand with her own. “How did you lose the tips of these fingers?”
“Storyfish bit ’em off,” he quickly replied; it was the same response he’d given Diverus when he’d asked.
“Of course,” answered Orinda, and Diverus could tell she didn’t believe him. “That child, then—she’s Bardsham’s daughter.” When he didn’t reply, she said, “How fitting that she should repair our span.”
“She is her mother in spirit.”
“And will she bring destruction upon us, too? That was a gift you left Colemaigne.”
Although Soter didn’t move, it was as if his body twisted tight before Diverus’s eyes. He said finally, “They don’t know about her.”
“If they learn of her here, history will rerun its course.”
Squirming even more, Soter shifted the subject. “I must tell you, I’ve hardly a real recollection of you, Orinda. No solid memory beyond . . .”
“You would have dealt with him,” she answered, taking no offense. “I was busy with our troupe. What would the play have been, I wonder. It was the end of—Cardenio, yes, they were rehearsing Cardenio. Never performed it. It’s lost to the ages, along with its author.”
“I’m sorry for both. But surely now you can revive the troupe?”
“Revive. What an appropriate word. I would have to. Revive them, that is.”
“What, they’ve all died?”
She leaned farther over the glistering balcony. “You don’t know, do you? You’ve no idea what happened here.”
Soter looked fearful. “Apparently not,” he answered.
Orinda glanced back at Diverus, who could only express his own puzzlement. As if to him, she replied, “What they did to punish us for harboring Bardsham. The horror they wrought. Not just the buildings suffered. You understand?”
Diverus, without knowing details, comprehended the enormity she implied. He’d seen enough pain dispensed in his short life. He nodded, and the woman brushed his cheek tenderly.
She continued to focus upon Diverus as she asked, “Did they ever catch you, Soter?”
Beyond her fall of hair, Diverus could see Soter’s awful face, the eyes looking inward, at what horrible memory he couldn’t imagine. Softly, Soter replied, “They found us.”
She rubbed the tips of his foreshortened fingers. “I thought as much. No one ever heard of Bardsham again, anywhere.”
Soter tilted back his head and sighed. “But you, your husband—Colemaigne never harbored us. We’d no idea that trouble came here. We thought you’d been spared. We’d moved on, after all, far away. A different spiral. That’s what a traveling troupe does.”
“It was what we maintained, as well, but that wasn’t what they wanted to hear. What they wished to believe. When your captors have an answer in mind, it doesn’t always matter that you tell them the truth.”
“I . . . no, I suppose not.”
“Innocence was not one of our choices.”
“So it would be better if we left, then.”
“Left?” she asked incredulously. She dropped her hand from his and turned. “If that girl has a mote of the talent her father had, she must perform for us. Here. This theater—this span—needs its stories back.”
“She’s better than him,” said Diverus. Soter glared at him. “Well, you told her she was.”
The woman regarded them both in apparent disbelief, until Soter with strange reluctance said, “It’s true.”
Diverus found himself watching the figure on the stage. Suddenly he put the performance together with what she had said. “Was Glaise a member of your troupe?” he asked. When both Soter and the woman regarded him in surprise, he added nervously, “I mean, he’s not human, is he? Neither of them. They’re—”
“Pinottos. Both of them, yes.” The admission appeared to pain her.