mirror overturned as the guards poured into the room.
Alcibiades pulled me into the dark alley. We were behind the theatre. We could still hear the shouts from within, as well as those that poured out onto the streets. Lights were flickering on all down the length of the theatre district, lanterns peeking out of every window. People were yelling at one another, answered peremptorily by the abrupt orders of the guards. All of that was undercut by the unsteady rhythm of armor against armor and heavy bootfalls.
“If they catch us, we’re sunk,” Alcibiades told me.
“I suppose we’d better run,” I replied.
“Pity you’re not wearing those shoes with the platforms,” Alcibiades said dryly. “You’re going to get the hem of that thing all muddy.”
“Not if you carry me the rest of the way,” I suggested impishly, before I pushed myself off an alley wall and started off toward a back alley—one of the dark streets I’d been cautioned by Lord Temur himself not to travel.
Luckily, they were almost eerily empty; everyone had either locked up tight to avoid whatever was happening or had rushed off to join the fray. There weren’t even any poor young women plying their single trade; I could imagine them all, pressed against their windows, watching the lights flicker on and off and straining to catch even one word amidst the chaos of voices.
“Why is it,” Alcibiades said, shaking his head; he still hadn’t abandoned the sword I’d stolen for him, and showed no signs of being about to do so, either, “that when I’m with you, shit like this always happens?”
“Oh, my dear,” I replied, stepping out into the main street to find it, too, empty and abandoned, “I was about to ask you the very same question!”
CHAPTER TEN
KOUJE
The actors were preparing for that evening’s show when I drew Mamoru aside, gently, by the elbow.
“Oh,” he said, his face faltering. “I had hoped we might stay for the show. It’s a version of The Thousand Cherry Trees, about the banished prince, you know. I hear he’s very dashing—though he’s nothing in comparison to his loyal retainer who, I believe, is the coveted star role. You should have heard them all arguing over who would get to play him.”
“It’s exactly why we can’t stay,” I replied.
The last thing we needed, in a border town, when tensions were so high—when we’d had such trouble getting across in the first place—was to be caught up in that particular performance.
My lord never knew the trouble there had been one summer, at least ten years back, when all the plays were about dragons and their riders. The theatre district had nearly been shut down because of it. While the capital was another matter entirely from the countryside, it never served a man to tempt fate when she had been so kind to him already.
Just thinking of the crowded streets of the city in comparison to the quiet houses of the countryside, cluttered together for only a brief moment along the road, was enough to make a man homesick. Mamoru himself was unused to unpaved streets and thin mattresses—to what it meant to live in the country.
Honganje prefecture was even smaller than that, a fishing village old as time itself, barely cutting its own survival into the face of the mountains looming over it. The salt and the sand got into everything, as did the stench of fish.
He’d never be able to live there. It would have been better to stay on with the caravan at that rate.
“They’re not going in the right direction, anyway,” Mamoru agreed. “And it would be somewhat vainglorious to watch a play that’s about—”
I hushed him, momentarily, a finger to my lips, as I heard footsteps passing us. It was Goro, looking for his script; or Ryu, looking for his plectrum; or Aiko, searching out a missing piece for someone’s costume, a wig, or a mask. All those details were becoming second nature. If only they had been going in the right direction. But we had no place among them, and I could no more afford to raise my lord’s hopes than I could afford to raise my own. That was most dangerous of all.
“As much as I’ve been looking forward to the show,” Mamoru amended, toying with his sleeve. It was a habit I’d only seen in him when he was a little boy. The court, his father, Iseul, and even I, had long since trained him out of it.
It suited him there. At least we