did. “‘Here you have come to complete your training. Even the spirits of the wind and trees respect your plight, and weep for it.’”
“This,” Alcibiades said, “is downright insane. How do they get away with it? What in blazes does their esteemed Emperor think?”
“They’ve given them different names, you see,” I replied mildly. “I think that makes it all less obvious.”
“Huh,” Alcibiades snorted, then, “bastion.”
The prince had appeared.
It was not with fanfare and fireworks, as had his lord Benkei. It was not even with a shower of tinsel or through a trapdoor. He had merely come onto the stage as though he owned the stage, gliding across it like a spirit of the wind and trees himself. He, too, was dressed in blue, though it was scattered across with gold and silver, like light upon a deep lake. He was beautiful—though not, I noticed with some interest, as otherworldly as the true prince had been, the prince upon whom this entire madman’s charade was based.
I thought of Emperor Iseul’s eyes as he bore down upon Alcibiades, as though he meant to kill him. Indeed, he was not a man who would allow something so simple as substituted names to stop him from killing the playwright behind this insult and the actors who perpetrated it. Perhaps not even the members of the audience were safe, on account of their tacit participation.
It was much like being in the lion’s den while the lion was out. At any moment, the great beast might return to reclaim his territory, but for the moment, it was ours.
“The prince!” someone called from the audience. The cheers began in earnest over the dialogue I could barely translate properly when it was all I could hear.
“I’ve heard he’s got an army of spirits up north,” a nearby patron told his companion. Then, his voice hushed, he added, “Prince Mamoru.” The tone he used to speak the name was almost reverent.
“They’ve made him into a deity,” I told Alcibiades, my eyes wide with wonder.
“No,” Alcibiades replied. “They’ve made him into a god.”
I was about to correct him—to tell him the two were one and the same—only then I didn’t. He was right. A deity was too small for what the second prince had become onstage, moving past his retainer with the grace of a moonbeam. Alcibiades was right. He had become a god.
I couldn’t help wondering if he knew it, the poor dear creature. At least he had someone with him. Someone as loyal and as unfaltering as time itself, as the narrator might have said. I felt a thrill run up my spine at the prospect; and, at the same time, I wondered where they were hiding themselves. If they truly were still alive.
It was as though Alcibiades and I had become caught up in a story, a tale of heroes and villains. There was something about the city that night, the smoke and the stage, that made reality seem very close to the stories. It was almost difficult to tell the difference between the two.
The smoke rose once again over the stage, and I thought I saw the flicker of screens being changed, the apparition of another face in the gloom.
“What now?” Alcibiades murmured, craning his neck to see.
There was a figure emerging onstage. He was taller than the prince, but more slender than his retainer. He stood rock-still at the center of a platform as it rose from somewhere below the stage, his eyes cast down, his arms stretched out to either side of him. His palms were upturned, as though awaiting adulation, and through the smoke I thought I saw a flash of the same crimson red we’d seen backstage. Indeed, even his face it seemed was painted in harsh, thick lines of the same color, and his robes were the color of blood. It was Alcibiades’ Volstovic red: the very same hue.
There was a sudden rush of movement from all around us, as everyone in the audience suddenly began to stir, whispering to their companions or stretching to get a better view. I sat up straight as I could, wishing not for the first time that I might borrow just a little of Alcibiades’ height.
The narrator was wailing again.
“‘My search is nearly over,’” I translated hastily, while using Alcibiades’ shoulder to lever myself up to see. “‘Soon I will have—’”
“Murderer!” someone nearer to the stage yelled. His words were slurred, as though he’d been drinking.
I saw our row-companion’s eyes go wide with shock, though