of tiny chambers like this,” the woman was saying.
“It’s where the players change,” Soter stated.
“Where they used to, yes. Your friend may sleep for days, you know. Or never wake up at all.”
“Never wake?” asked Diverus, as he stood. The possibility hadn’t occurred to him. It was a matter of when, not if.
“In stories, on occasion,” she reassured him. “She was touched by gods, and that hasn’t happened here in so long that no one’s going to recall what is supposed to happen.”
“He should,” Soter said as he stepped out of the room. He pointed at Diverus. “He’s been touched, himself.”
“That is gratifyingly improbable,” she answered. “You will both surely be hungry. Let me have something prepared for you. Bois!”
When nothing happened, Soter said, “You sent them off to explore, madam.”
“Well, that was ill planned, then.”
Footsteps sounded at the far end of the hallway, and a servant entered from one of the side doors there. He came up beside Diverus and stopped, awaiting her orders. While she directed him what to prepare, Diverus got his first close look at her manservant.
He had a hard, chiseled face, and eyes that seemed almost painted on. Bois, sensing the scrutiny, turned his head and Diverus shyly lowered his gaze . . . and saw Bois’s hand. The fingers were articulated, each joint hinged, very much like Leodora’s shadow puppets.
Soter seemed utterly unaware of the strangeness of Bois. He was too intent upon ensuring that there would be wine to drink with their meal.
Bois shambled past them and clumped down the stairs they’d come up. Staring after him, Diverus missed the next thing the woman said, coming alert only to Soter’s reply of “By all means.” The two—Soter and the hostess—started off along the corridor. Diverus glanced in again at the sleeping Leodora, attempting to convince himself that she was safe and that the oddness of this place, much less of the whole span itself, was not a threat, or at least no more of one than the parade of monsters had been on Hyakiyako. They’d come through that just fine, hadn’t they?
He made up his mind that he could leave her, and turned just as Soter and the woman exited through one of the doorways up the hall. Hurrying after them then, he found that the doorway led to a short descending ramp ending in a curtain, which wasn’t quite closed. Light spilled through the center seam. He hastened down the ramp and stepped through the curtain into daylight again.
He stood in an open balcony. Drapery hung on each side, ornately decorated with flowers and vines. Cushions had been strewn about the floor, but Soter and the hostess remained standing at the rail, overlooking the circular theater. Diverus moved quietly up beside them.
It was magnificent. Below, a broad, bare stage projected out and wide to either side of the balcony. The remaining servant walked about on it, pausing, opening his arms as if declaiming, but never making a sound; then setting off again, he suddenly struck a regal pose, sprang from it, capered, stopped and stood humbly, demure and shy, trying on one character after another before a nonexistent audience.
The theater was empty. The main floor—deep enough that the stage stood at waist height above it—contained huge semicircular benches layered in amphitheater fashion away from the stage. The curved rear walls comprised a series of niches, of draped private boxes similar to this balcony. Overhead, thatched roofing extended to perhaps the first row of seats.
“It’s a wonder,” said Soter.
“Indeed, it is,” their hostess replied. “A miracle. Only yesterday this and the two balconies to our right were misshapen holes in the wall, the floorboards below were rotted, the drapery in tatters. The interior walls across there with the boxes for patrons—those had all fallen in, a heap of crumbled stucco and stone. No glassine upon any of it at all. The thatch of that roof was black and rotten, a home for vermin, and had been thus for more than a decade.”
“This is because of Leodora, all this change?” asked Diverus. “But you can’t even see the Dragon Bowl from here.”
“Nevertheless, look about you and marvel,” she replied.
“And what is he doing?” Soter asked her, with a nod to the stage.
“Glaise is remembering. Reenacting. Once, we had a company, and they played to a thousand people in a night. Do you remember?” she asked carefully, looking sidewise at Soter, and he tensed, his face pinched as at some unpleasant recollection.