the spell, as you did for me. You have that power, don’t you?” When the king said nothing, he reluctantly lifted the shawm again.
“Wait!” cried the king.
Diverus waited.
“You have only to depart and it will pass, she’ll come to herself again. We mean no harm, we only worship her skill. She is as a goddess to us.”
“And to me,” Diverus said. He kept the shawm but reached out and took her hand. “Come with me,” he said.
The king called, “Tell me, please, who you are.”
Diverus glanced over his shoulder. “My mother named me Orfeo,” he replied.
The king’s molten eyes enlarged with recognition. “We know this name and the skill bound to it,” he said.
“Then perhaps one day you’ll tell me of it,” replied Diverus. “But that will not be today.”
The king bowed his head and stepped aside.
Leodora witnessed all of this as if watching a play in some strange language, understanding and yet unmoved, untouched by the events and portrayals. She let him lead her from the feast, into the grove of columns to the heart of them where it was always dark. He let go of her hand and took the goblet from her other. He poured its contents on the stones and smashed the goblet. “Here,” he said, and handed her the shawm.
From around his neck he removed a cord and on the end of it a small phial. She tilted her head. The green-and-black phial seemed familiar. Reflexively, she touched the chain of her pendant.
He tipped it and a drop fell from it into the wine covering the floor. After capping it again, he reached toward her with it. “I’m sorry, I took this while you slept.”
She lowered her head as he slipped the cord over it, although uncertain why he was apologizing to her. At her feet, the wine rippled and seemed to reflect a different place.
“Come on,” he said, and held out his hand to her as he stepped into the liquid. She reached out but handed him the shawm. When he tugged, she let go and he fell into the wine as if into a hole.
“Diverus?” she called, and leaned over the dark pool. “Diverus.” It was dark below. As dark as a prison cell. She remembered Brodamante saying that from Palipon this world would look different. As she stepped into the pool of darkness, she wondered how.
Stumbling, she came up immediately against a wall of rough stone.
When she turned around, a creature with huge dark eyes, a long snout, and a woman’s body clothed in rags was crouched in the corner opposite, watching her. A wig made of skinny black beads hung off her head, around her prominent ears.
The creature rose. She tried to speak, showing small sharp incisors and larger teeth at the sides of her mouth, top and bottom. Her words were strange, raspy, a language full of clicks and odd breaths. Leodora understood none of it. But when the creature stepped forward, her ankle rattled, and Leodora realized that she was wearing metal cuffs and a chain.
Behind her, a small barred window revealed a row of flat-roofed buildings with trellised windows some distance away and bluish with twilight. This wasn’t where she’d intended to come at all. The woman said something urgent.
Leodora turned to leave, but no passage remained behind her. Instead she faced another stone wall, a dirt floor, and a small, thick door banded with metal. She was locked in a cell in a place she’d never been before, and Diverus wasn’t there.
III
LORD TOPHET’S BANE
Diverus stood beside the broad wooden table on which they ate their meals at the Terrestre. The empty room lay dark save for one dim candle amid the debris of dirty cutlery, plates, and cups strewn across the table. It looked as if no one had cleaned up in days. He couldn’t recall it having looked nearly so squalid the day before. No light came through the windows, which told him that it was night here. He said, “Leodora,” and turned around, expecting to find her there. She should have been right behind him, but he was alone.
He realized there was a background din as of a large shouting crowd, and within it he made out cries of “Jax!” She must have manifested on the stage instead of here with him. Hastily he threaded his way through the wings, past ropes, past bags full of sand, dangling screens, and props of all sorts. The crowd’s impatience was palpable—they weren’t cheering her, they were demanding