she present herself or start the show. From the shadows behind the curtains he peered past the rear of the puppet booth at a theater half filled with noisy, drunken miscreants. The various broken vegetables lying on the stage testified to their unruliness. By contrast, in one of the private boxes above the rabble, four faces watched the mêlée, unflustered by the clamor of the crowd, looking as if they could have waited forever for the show to begin. It was like watching four corpses propped up in chairs.
In the shadows of the wings opposite, movement caught Diverus’s eye. Someone was working his way behind the backdrop and around the back of the stage, and a moment later Glaise appeared with his arms outstretched. He crushed Diverus to him.
“Yes, Glaise, I’m glad to see you, too,” Diverus said. “Have you seen Leodora? Where’s Soter?”
Glaise pointed enthusiastically at the booth, and Diverus plunged forward, but fumbled with the drapery at the rear corner until he found a slit and stepped through. “Lea,” he cried, but she wasn’t there, either. He thought he was alone, but then saw that Soter crouched on the floor beside the trestles supporting the undaya cases.
“Diverus!” Soter shouted. As fast as he could, the old man scrambled to his feet and embraced him. “Oh, lad, where have you been? The two of you had us convinced you were dead for sure. We looked everywhere, even turned out Hamen and all those people from the underspan, but nobody could find you.” His expression tightened. “Where is she? We can’t let her perform tonight. We’ve got to get her away from here immediately. You don’t know what you’ve both blundered into, coming back now.”
Overwhelmed, Diverus answered, “I thought she was in here. I mean, I hoped. The calls for Jax—I thought . . .” Agitatedly casting about the tiny chamber, he said, “I don’t know where she is.”
“Well, we have to stop her from coming on stage, you understand?”
“No, I don’t. Find her and hide her?”
Soter put his hands over his face. “Oh, gods, this was inevitable, wasn’t it? The moment we climbed those steps from Bouyan and set foot on Ningle I knew, I knew it must come to this.” He turned to the front of the booth and cautiously parted the screen to peer out. Audience members called again for Jax, and something soft thumped on the stage beside the booth.
Behind Diverus two wooden hands pulled open the cloth of the booth, and Orinda stepped in past them. Glaise ducked in after her.
“Diverus, oh, my dear,” she said, and hugged him. “Where have you been? Where’s Leodora?”
“Oh, gods,” Soter murmured at whatever he saw.
“Why is everyone so giddy?” asked Diverus. “I’m sorry about missing the performance, but we found a way to reach the Pons Asinorum and once there Leodora wanted to hear all the stories she could, and they enchanted her, and me, but we got away. At least I thought we did. We didn’t mean to miss the performance, but they were going to keep us there forever.” They stared at him dumbly and finally he said, “What is it? You all act as if you thought you’d never see me again.”
Glaise stood with a hand raised to his mouth. Orinda answered finally, “You’ve been gone for weeks, both of you.”
He blinked. “It was only the one night. A night and part of a day.”
She shook her head. “Not here, it wasn’t.” Placing a hand on his shoulder, she added, “We sought you for weeks, Diverus, even onto adjoining spans. Bois is still gone looking, and Hamen and his people.”
Without turning, Soter said, “He doesn’t understand that they’ve found us, Orinda. If she comes back now . . .”
“Where is she, Diverus?”
“I don’t know. She was right behind me,” he said.
“She’s not here?” asked Soter.
“I fear she isn’t. Maybe I can find the stilt walker again, get another phial to open the dark waters—”
“No, that’s good, don’t you see?” Soter said. “She’s in the world of the Pons Asinorum. They can’t track her there. They’d never find her.”
“I should go after her.”
“That’s for later, later you’ll get her, once we’re away,” Soter proclaimed. He was scheming then, his eyes sharp but looking askance, as if calculating the details. “At the moment we have a final performance to give.”
“But, Soter—” Orinda objected.
“The situation’s changed, Orinda. With him here we can have a performance. He has the power to quiet them all. Don’t you? You can put