tell you. Then you can return to your Colemaigne equipped to face whatever it is.”
They walked down what seemed a dusty corridor identical to the one in the prison where she’d stolen the key to free Yemoja, but the door at the far end of it opened once again upon the many-pillared palace with the deep blue pool and she knew that, no matter the outward shape of this place, this was its core, the center of a maze she was learning how to thread.
Many hours later, alone in the dark of that same dirt corridor and dressed in a freshly laundered tunic, she poured a goblet of Oceanus’s best wine upon a metal platter and a drop from the phial into the wine. She held in her mind the image of her booth in the Terrestre, and this time stepped through without any misdirection. Her destination, however, was transformed beyond anything she might have anticipated.
She stepped down onto the stage of the theater . . . and nearly fell through it into the trap room. Half of the floor, including the part where the puppet booth had stood, was gone, burned away, and the edges around the gaping hole were charred and blistered. The back wall and two of the balconies had been destroyed, leaving one of the doors to the wings standing inside a frame without a wall around it. Gone, too, was one of the uprights supporting the roof, and most of the thatch overhead, which now leaned precariously to the side. Given the damage she could see, it was a wonder the whole place hadn’t burned down. The stink of smoke still tainted the air although the fires were long cold. The remaining floor of the stage had buckled. Boards had popped up or split, probably from a combination of intense heat fought with buckets of water. Standing puddles remained under the last two rear balconies, causing her to think somewhat incongruously that the stage must not be level.
She looked down into the trap room below, full of unidentifiable debris. She saw no bodies, no sign anyone had been on hand when the fire began. The blaze had done its worst damage where the booth had stood and she couldn’t escape the conclusion that it had begun in the booth—the lantern, perhaps, falling off its hook, spilling oil and flames all in a moment. Had it already happened before Diverus came back? It must have, else the embers would still be glowing. After all, it had been only a day since they’d parted company. Surely he was near.
After circling the hole, she walked to the rear and around the surviving door into the back wing. The various screens there had been raised high to avoid the fire, a move that had probably saved them. She walked through the crossover hall to the side of the theater left intact. The floor creaked underfoot. The heat had warped the boards.
The opposite wings, redolent with smoke, looked to have been saved. She turned to climb the stairs at the back, and there stood Orinda at the top. They saw each other in the same moment.
“Oh, thank Edgeworld for hearing my prayers!” cried Orinda. She flew down the stairs as on wings and clutched Leodora to her, saying, “You’re alive after all,” by which time she had burst into tears. “We thought you would never find your way back. Diverus didn’t know how to go after you.”
“He couldn’t. He gave me the phial. But what happened? How did the fire—”
“There’s much you need to hear, and none of it good, I’m afraid. The fire is the least of it. Come with me, he needs to see you.”
“Who?”
“Soter. He hoped you would return in time. I think his conscience would never be clear if anything had happened to you.”
“A lot has happened to me, but his conscience wasn’t involved. It wasn’t his doing. Why do you say—what do you mean in time?”
They came to one of the rear rooms in the hallway, one she hadn’t seen before. It was, by comparison with the small chamber she had occupied, opulent. There were racks of costumes, a shelf lined with wigs, with shoes and boots, with makeup and mirrors. Bois and Glaise stood at the back of it, looking worried until they set eyes on her. Then both of them beamed with rapture and jumped to her. She hugged them, but even as she did she was turning to see what lay around