not lied, for it did take her away from there. She did find escape.”
Meg, watching Leodora’s reaction, remarked, “It’s not a very pleasant tale.”
“That’s true, I suppose,” Pelorie agreed. “This fellow, though, he swore it really happened on an island not three spirals from here. He’d got it off some crippled-up fishmonger who came from that island and had seen it all happen. He claimed he wanted folks to know what fate awaits you when you aren’t satisfied with what you have.”
“More like it’s a tale to keep you from ever hoping for anything,” said Garna. “It’d be like telling me I’m never leaving this place.”
“But you aren’t leaving, are you?” said Chork.
“Not the point of it. If I wished to, I could, anytime, same as you or them. I choose not to, but it’s what I choose. Now, women stoning their own child—that’s just cruel for no good reason. That’s a place where the rules have defeated the common sense of folks.”
“If they ever had any,” said Meg.
“Rules is like tradition,” argued Chork. “You do what your family’s done for every generation since the world began. You don’t have no more choice than that girl. None of us does. What would we do different, anyhow. What would you know how to do?”
A long silence followed his question.
“It was just a story,” Pelorie apologized. “For Leodora, is all.”
She made herself smile, and thanked him for telling it. She didn’t try to explain that his tale was strewn with real elements of her and her mother’s lives, mixed together by a demented fishmonger who couldn’t tell them apart anymore. The story was out on its own now, a version of her released by her uncle or whomever, and whether or not it was an utter lie seemed of less importance than the conclusions being drawn from it, conclusions that said life was defeat, hopeless and pointless. The thing she knew absolutely was that she would never perform it anywhere.
“As Garna chooses,” she said, “so must I, and I have to choose to go back up now. Thank you, Pelorie, for a tale. I’ve a performance to prepare for, and I hope you’ll all attend. Do you know if there’s an entrance to the Terrestre?”
The others glanced at Hamen, and she followed their gaze.
“Not in it, but next to it,” he said. “I’ll take you.” He stood, a little unsteady on his feet.
“Oh, be careful with him, Leodora,” said Meg. “He’s drunk enough I’m not sure where he’ll lead you.”
He waved off the criticism. “I could find my way through the underworld in the dark.”
“Blindfolded,” added Chork.
“We could test him,” Pelorie suggested.
“Test your own selves, spit-frogs,” he answered. “Come on, Leodora. I’ll get you back safely.”
She started to follow him, but then remembered the reason she had come down here in the first place, before the game and players had distracted her. “I’ve a question before I go. Can any of you tell me, is there an entrance from this level to the inverted city?”
“To what?” asked Garna.
“I don’t really know its name, or if it has one. I saw it from Colemaigne’s dragon beam. The houses pointed toward the water, and I think it must have been below this.”
All of them gaped at her. Chork leaned toward her and quietly said, “You actually saw it? You didn’t just hear of it? Have the notion of it planted in your head by somebody?”
“No, I saw it. And—”
“She saw the Pons Asinorum,” Meg said in wonder as she eyed the other players. “When is the last time anyone ever saw it?”
Pelorie replied, “Drunks in the blighted lanes say they see it all the time. Drag themselves to a rail to spew up, and there’ll be someone looking up at ’em as if the water had moved up close and they were seeing themselves, but it’s not themselves nor like themselves, it’s someone dark and shadowy, blue or black with fire for eyes. And who believes what a drunk sees?”
“Then is there anyone whose opinion is trusted?”
Pelorie shook his head. “Been twenty years or more, I think.”
“Longer than the blighting itself even.”
Pelorie reconsidered Leodora. “You saw it, though, you swear.”
“She’s been noticed by the gods. ‘The girl who saved Colemaigne,’ isn’t it?”
“Don’t know as I’d much like to be noticed. Nobody who is ever seems to come to a good end.”
“Capricious, that’s what everyone calls them—the capricious gods.”
“Me, I think we’ve been blessed by your visit,” Hamen told her.