“Lemons,” said Meg, as if answering a question, and Leodora nodded vigorously. She passed the bottle to Chork, who leaned forward to take it.
“You came here to perform,” he said, “only to find out they’s banned all such here for years and years now. That’s a shame.”
“No. I’m performing. Tonight.”
“Naw! Where? Not on this span!”
“At the theater?” she offered.
“What theater would dare?”
She didn’t recall that anyone had named it in her presence. All she could say was, “Mr. Burbage’s?”
“The Terrestre. That old ruin? You can play there all you like, but all you’re going to have for an audience is a lot of rubble and some rats. And even so they’ll arrest you for it, see if they don’t.”
“He’s right,” Garna agreed. “The ban’s a very serious thing.”
“Not anymore, apparently,” called Hamen. He walked up with his lantern and handed a sheet of yellow parchment to Meg. “Proprietress at Lignor give me this just now. Someone’s passing ’em out up there.”
Leodora knew what it was without reading it.
“THE GIRL WHO SAVED COLEMAIGNE?” Meg recited. The group looked from her to Leodora, who tried to smile at the same time as she would happily have climbed inside the wicker container on which she sat.
“Oy, but this calls her Jax. THE REDOUBTABLE JAX. Not Leodora.”
She started to explain but Hamen replied first. “Stage name, like.” She met his amused gaze and bobbed her head.
“That’s fine and all, but how’d she save Colemaigne? Did it need saving? We didn’t hear anything about it.”
“We wouldn’t, now, would we?” Pelorie answered. “Anybody been up there so far today? I bet Hamen’s come the closest with that paper.”
“What day is it?”
“Who knows?”
“Celebration day, by the looks. So how did you save us, exactly?”
Leodora wrapped her arms about herself. “I don’t really know, exactly. All I did was walk out on the dragon beam.”
“What? That thing hasn’t fallen off yet?”
“Garna, hush,” Hamen said. “Go on.”
“That’s all—all I know. I seem to have gone to Edgeworld, but I’ve no memory of it. When I woke up, the span had been put right. The theater—”
“Terrestre.”
“—the Terrestre’s whole again, like it’s brand new. The blighted buildings, they’re fixed up. Repaired. I saw them on my way here. Children were licking them.”
“I used to do that,” said Chork, “when I was tiny.”
“Well, tie me to the gods’ gofe,” Pelorie said in wonder. Then he glanced over his shoulder. “Hang on, though. How come they didn’t change?”
The players eyed the statues suspiciously.
“Why didn’t you change them back?” Garna asked her.
“I didn’t—I don’t know what that means,” she said, and then all at once she did. “Those were people?”
“Once,” Pelorie replied.
Chork focused one eye on her. “When the blight swept through, they were standing in its path. Down here.”
“That one’s me dad,” Meg said, pointing to the one on which Hamen had hung his lantern.
“I’m sorry.”
“Long time ago, that. I’m used to him this way now.”
Garna asked again, “Why didn’t they change back? The buildings but not the people—what’s the point of that?”
“I don’t know.” She fingered the pendant nervously. “What is the point?”
The pendant opened its eyes. Meg gasped and Pelorie fell off his seat.
“The point,” said the pendant, “is that a building can go forward in an inert state but life cannot. Once stopped it stays stopped.”
“Time is that which ends,” Leodora recited.
The pendant said, “Ah-ha,” then closed its eyes and was silent again.
“What the mummichog was that?” Pelorie climbed back onto his seat.
“Orinda calls it a Brazen Head.”
“Who? The Orinda that lives in the Terrestre?”
Meg and Hamen exchanged glances. “I’m thinking we might want to go up on the surface tonight,” she said.
“Take in a play maybe, like?” Hamen looked at Leodora. “What do you think of that?”
“You live down here all the time?” she asked.
He shrugged. “It’s akin to being a miner. We have our shifts, live mostly in the dark. We go home, some of us do.”
Distantly someone called, “Coo-ee, Arbady Lane!”
Meg got up. “Hold my place,” she said, as though someone new might sweep in and take it. She walked off into the darkness.
“Does that happen all the time?” asked Leodora.
Pelorie replied, “Nah. Most like in the morning. Sometimes we’ll go a whole shift without a call. Not often, mind you, but it’s happened.” He took another drink from the circulating bottle, then asked, “So what are you doing down here, ‘redoubtable’? You only said that you weren’t lost.”