above the floor, moving in unison like the segmented body of a snake. They slid down the steps and only as they neared the footlights did he make out that the ovals were faces—the faces he’d seen in the theater box. Cold, implacable, as unfeeling as stone, the pale heads streamed forward. It wasn’t until they were rising up to the stage that he could see the bodies beneath the heads, bodies swathed in black, and he knew without a doubt that they were what Soter feared, they were the cause of his sending Orinda away, and of sending him, too. Even this far away and hidden, Diverus felt the terror of them. They threw it off like hoarfrost.
They moved across the stage and easily into the booth, one after the other, as if they could see where the slit in the material was, which he never could. The blackness of the booth absorbed them, but then he could see the tops of their heads as they collected in the middle of it. He realized that Soter could not be inside the booth at the same moment that it erupted in flames. The four sides went up as one, trapping the quartet inside. They whirled within the flames. They stretched their hands into the air as if imploring the gods to save them, and then one of them plunged back out, his body ablaze. He ran straight off the edge of the stage and into the pit. No one else emerged, and after a few moments the stage itself caught fire. Sparks rose in the updraft, and Diverus feared that the thatched roof was going to ignite, too. He dropped the curtain and ran back into the hall.
Soter had to be somewhere nearby. Somewhere in the theater with those puppet cases. He would never have let them burn.
Diverus bounded down the stairs to the first floor. Even as he reached it, Soter was climbing up the steps from the trap room beneath the stage. He’d made at least one trip already, leaving one of the cases by the door. Seeing Diverus, he gestured with his head to the large hemp bag beside the table. “Our clothes, and your instruments, Diverus,” he said. “Can’t do without our musician.”
Diverus ran across the room and grabbed the nearest undaya case. He slung its strap over his shoulder and grabbed the bag, and then stepped aside to let Soter lead the way. “I doubt Orinda will be able to forgive us,” Soter said grimly as he reached for the door. “The gods won’t resurrect it for her this time.” He flung back the door and stopped, filling the doorway. Diverus peered past his shoulder.
Outside, a pale bald head seemed to float in the darkness. It said, “No gods will resurrect you, either.” Then it flowed nearer, driving Soter back.
The black-clad figure closed the door without turning. A short cape covered his shoulders, over a longer black cloak that swept the floor. His dead, unblinking eyes dismissed Diverus with a single glance before fixing on his target again. “Well, well,” he said, a sly voice, “if it isn’t the man who sells his friends. I never thought to see you again. How is the elf—what’s his name?”
“Grumelpyn.”
“That’s right. Can he walk? He couldn’t when we left him.” The Agent moved farther into the room, and a vertical band of light from the fire on stage ran up him. One black eye gleamed in its deep socket like a star in the night sky. “So, tell me.” He raised his hand, and Diverus glimpsed what looked like a blue-violet jewel against his palm. “Where is the storyteller called Jax?” The bright eye looked at Diverus again. “We had doubts, you know, as to the identity of this Jax. Surely, we said, the comparison to Bardsham was made up from ignorance—for who has seen Bardsham perform enough to say? I had convinced myself that was so. After all, I’m the authority on Bardsham’s health. But now I’ve discovered you . . . and if you are here, then so must he be, too.”
“No, he’s not. You lot killed him.”
“Oh, you know that for a fact, do you? I don’t recall you were there.” Then a slow smile of memory spread on his face. “But as it happens, so we did. However, it seems that Lord Tophet has come to the opinion there was a child, and again, here you are.”
“What—” Soter cleared his throat. “What difference would