“Why has the whole place gone—oh!” Finally, she had seen the swarm of figures before the doorway. The five pallid heads turned in unison to regard her.
“Beg—beg pardon,” she said. She eased around them and through the doorway, taking a worried step back into the kitchen.
“Quite all right,” said one of the five. “We were inquiring after an artist who performs here, by the name of ‘Jax.’ ”
“Jax,” repeated Nuberne. “You’re mistaken then. He’s not performing here anymore. He shoved off awhile ago. But what would the Library want—”
“Yet you have notices pasted up. We saw them all along the esplanade.”
Rolend faced him. “Don’t you tell them anything, don’t you help them.”
“Ro, shut up,” Nuberne said, more out of fear than anger.
“They don’t mean him any good,” she argued.
“Ro!” He reached for her even as she stiffened as if poked in the back. She stared at him wide-eyed and managed to utter his name once, faintly, before the color drained from her face and the eyes looking upon Nuberne went blank and flat, the color of her now hardened flesh, the color of the long skeletal hand that was clamped around the back of her neck. The fingers slid away; something glittered in the palm for an instant before it vanished in the black folds behind her. Where the hand brushed her hair, gray grains sprinkled loose. It might have been the hand of any one of them.
Nuberne touched her stone cold wrist and recoiled in horror.
“Quite all right,” the one repeated. “We don’t mean him any good, that is true. It is also none of your concern. You will tell us where he is, this Jax.”
Nuberne’s face twisted up but he could not stop looking at her, his wife, dead. “I don’t know. He moved on,” he said.
“The notices s—”
“I left ’em up. I was trading on his fame is all! He filled the place, every night, the best storyteller since—”
“Bardsham. Yes, yes, we know.”
“Bring her back,” he pleaded.
“Ah, I regret, you credit us with too much power,” hissed the one. “Where is Jax now? Or wish you to follow her?”
“Jax . . . Jax moved on. To another span, him and his troupe.” He was weeping, trembling with shock. His legs could not hold him up and he grabbed for the edge of a table.
“Another span. North or south?”
“I don’t know. North, I think. He’d come from the south.”
“North it is then. Tell us one more thing. He goes about disguised?”
His hands on the tabletop curled into fists of impotent anger and he lowered his head to them, closed his eyes. “Masked.” He choked the word.
“Of course,” said the one.
When he raised his head, Nuberne found the doorway empty and everyone in the hall, even the hapless performer and his terrified ducks, staring now at the ossified figure that had been Rolend. He sank down to the floor then, and his wail filled the hall with agony.
THREE
“The girl touched by the gods,” proclaimed Orinda. “That is what we’ll put on the banner, and surely you’ll fill the theater.”
Across the long table covered now in emptied bowls and cups, Soter sat with his arms crossed and head bowed as if dozing after the meal. Without moving, he said, “You’ll still be wanting to call yourself Jax.” Though he didn’t raise his head, he opened one eye to watch Leodora’s reaction. She straightened as if she’d been jabbed, and her eyes blazed. Before she could respond, he interjected, “I’m not saying you should go masked anymore.”
“Then why should I hide my name?”
His gaze rolled to Orinda, and he dipped his chin as if to say You explain it to her. Glaise and Bois—their places absent of dishes—looked to their mistress, too.
Then to everyone’s surprise Diverus spoke up. “Performance name,” he said.
Soter raised his head. “That’s so,” he agreed, but in a tone conveying his bemusement.
Diverus added, “It’s all I have.”
Bois responded to his dejection by patting him on the shoulder. Orinda asked, “What do you mean, it’s all you have, Diverus?”
He answered, “That’s what—my name is my performance name. Nobody knew my true name. I didn’t know it.”
Leodora interjected, “You told me Eskie gave you your name long before you’d discovered what your gift was.”
“That’s so, but it doesn’t make it my proper name, it’s just what they called me in the paidika when they wanted me to do something, instead of saying Boy all the time.”
“Ah, performance,” Soter replied. “I see what you mean now. Not the same thing