to reach for the tickets. I’d made certain to leave enough time for us to find truly excellent seats, and once inside the theatre proper I took off like a shot, slipping away from Alcibiades so that I could examine the stage from every viewpoint, in order to decide where it would be best to sit.
Fortunately, whoever had designed the theatre had kept in mind the comfort of all the patrons; there was no one seat, no matter how far removed from the stage proper, that would leave its owner with a poor view of the play. There were also wooden walkways, suspended just above the general seating area, that bisected the audience—and which, I realized, must have allowed for the actors to come out into the audience; to join with them, however momentarily, as one. The theatre itself was not so large that sitting far removed from the stage would ruin our view; the question was merely whether or not we would be able to find two seats together amidst the crowd.
“Quit swooping around like a bat in the belfry and just sit,” Alcibiades said, crossing his arms like he was rethinking the entire night out.
“Eat your dumplings, my dear,” I told him. There was nothing to do when he got into these moods except pay him no mind whatsoever and go on with my business. That was precisely what I intended to do.
It seemed that eating his dumplings was a course of action that Alcibiades and I could both agree upon, since he fell silent after that, munching away like a contented monkey.
Truly, there were so many animals the general resembled that it was very difficult to characterize him.
I came to a rise just left of the center, set so that one could see all of the stage, and just the tiniest bit of the area backstage, where Lord Temur had told me the actors might congregate before they were ready—that is, if they chose to enter through normal means. The theatre in the Ke-Han style, Lord Temur had also told me, was in this particular incarnation enamored of unorthodox entrances: Puffs of smoke were not uncommon, nor was it out of the question to expect an actor to appear from the rafters above us, dropping directly onto the stage as though he had leapt from the heavens.
It was perfect.
“Here!” I called, settling delicately down against the cushions and sitting straight up with excitement. Alcibiades followed me to where I’d settled, looking somewhat mollified by fried food and the prospect of a large cushion to sit on.
“More comfortable, anyway,” he admitted, peering forward to try to catch a glimpse of the goings-on backstage. We both saw a flash of red at the same time, the flutter of silk and a pattern I could just barely make out: three golden diamonds, nesting one inside the other.
“Who do you suppose that was?” I asked, and gripped Alcibiades’ sleeve. “I do so love the theatre.”
“Hm,” Alcibiades replied, in a way that intimated he was just as excited about what came next as I was.
The shows began in the morning, much to my disappointment, and could last as much as the entire day. That was typical of plays in the capital, I’d learned, whereas the more provincial shows in the countryside resembled an evening of Volstovic theatre and took place only at night. Sadly, I knew that it would be quite impossible to trap Alcibiades into a full day of cultural activity, from dawn to well after dusk. His constitution simply wouldn’t allow the affront. And thus I was left to pick my battles very carefully; he would have been immensely impressed if he had known what a clever strategist I was becoming, just for him. The final act was what I was most curious about.
The audience was far more rowdy than the pristine palace would have led anyone to believe the Ke-Han people could be. But there, gathered in the theatre with us, were the merchants and umbrella makers, the artists and the farmers, even peddlers with an extra coin or two to spare for their entertainment. Whoops and calls emanated from the audience in the native, if slurred, Ke-Han tongue. From what I could understand of the situation, they were all calling for the appearance of one man—an actor—no doubt the star of the stage that night.
“They are waiting for it to grow dark outside before they light the lanterns,” I whispered to my companion. Alcibiades grunted, and looked up