expression, telling her everything she needed to know of his condition. He stared at nothing, but then sensed her and shifted. When he saw her he closed his eyes, licked his lips, and pushed himself upright, swaying slightly.
“The vagabonds return,” he muttered.
“We were collecting stories,” she said sharply. “The way I do on every span. You know that.”
“The sun set long ago. You were even warned about it.”
“Our performance wasn’t set to begin before this, and it looks as if it will have to go on without you.”
“Nonsense.” He bowed his head as if tired of the argument. “What happened to you? You could have been consumed by the monsters that walk these streets at night, the parade—”
“We joined the parade,” she interjected.
“What? What happened?”
“They ate us.” She had the satisfaction of seeing him dumbfounded. “The good thing that came of it is, I have a story to perform belonging to this span, that we’ve never heard before, and perhaps more to come. Wasn’t that worth it?”
“My girl, my headstrong mad girl. You are your mother’s child, and like her you rattle the dark.”
She gaped at those words. He had no way of knowing that Shumyzin had said the very same, and for an instant she stood in two places, atop the tower on Vijnagar and here, as if two moments had merged, folding over the events in between, as if to say that she had followed the correct path and reached the next clue, although toward what end she had no idea.
“You rattle it long enough,” he went on, “and it’ll rattle you back.”
“So I shouldn’t look for new tales?”
“I’m not saying that. I’m saying, be careful you don’t become a tale.” He poured his cup, but then pushed it at her. “Here, drink for stamina before we go on.” She picked it up. “And don’t worry about my condition. I could do my part roaring drunk, and you know it.”
She sipped the wine and put the cup down. “I know you’ve tested the notion enough times.”
He snorted, smiled. “I have, and even before yours. Now go get ready, and where’s Div—ah, there you are, boy. Get in the booth. I’ll go call us up an audience. You apply your skills, the both of you, to this story you risked your lives to get, and tomorrow night they’ll be murdering each other to get in. We’ll save Nikki Danjo’s ghost till then.” He drew himself to his feet.
Leodora pushed into the booth with Diverus behind her.
He picked up his lute. “We risked our lives?” he asked.
She shrugged at him. “Maybe a little.”
TWO
Their performance of “The Emperor’s Tale” that night proved so afflated that it was to the audience as if two demigods had manifested inside the booth to render the story. Diverus plucked a delicate tune underneath Jax’s prologue, then switched to a small flute to represent the fox-empress, inventing a bittersweet theme for her on the spot. Even Leodora, in the midst of depicting the story, found her throat constricting with emotion. Every note was the perfect complement to the shadow figures on the screen. During an interlude, when she could glance back at him, she saw that his eyes were closed and his head was swaying as he played, as if while his body sat with her his spirit ventured into some other realm to bring back a music that no one had ever heard, yet all knew the instant it was played that it already lived in their bones, threaded through generations. Wherever he channeled it from, he was playing music that had formed the moment the story was first told—the music of the story’s origin. She knew, even before she took her bow afterward, that they would be weeping as they applauded. She made Diverus come out, too, with his flute, and presented him to them. The ovation doubled. “Kitsune Jax!” someone yelled, and coins rained upon them. If Soter had an opinion of the musician at that moment, he didn’t express it, but gestured, redundantly, to them both as if the audience needed instruction in where to direct their acclaim.
The next morning, with a mist hanging over the span, she and Diverus went back to the park, but the kitsune and his brethren weren’t there. The benches on which the players had sat the day before were empty. No one played go¯ today. The strangely cut and shaped flora seemed different, too, but Leodora couldn’t be sure if it was her imagination or if