Soter dragged the back of his hand across his eyes. He looked first at the starlit sky above to confirm that it was still in place; but when he glanced down again the audience had transformed into puppets—giant, articulated puppets, their profiles translucent, features sharply drawn. He yipped and craned away in his chair, only to find that he was leaning into more puppets. The closest one swiveled its leathery head and gave him a nettled glare. He stared at the booth then, straight at the screen where Leodora performed. He clung to the identifiable shadows, denied the room. The performance continued, the story unfolded. In her fiction lay his truth. Without daring to glance away, he reached to the small table behind him and patted about for his wine cup.
A moist hand closed over his wrist and held it.
He stiffened. He sat paralyzed.
Close behind him a voice said, “So here we are at last.” It was Gousier’s voice and it was all Soter could do not to leap away screaming. Instead, denying the hive of panic whirling through his belly, he made himself slowly turn around, outwardly calm, his mouth fixed in a ghastly smile. Even that little resolve deserted him the moment he saw the speaker.
Behind and above him stood the Coral Man. It glowered down at him—he knew it though there were no eyes in its head, no distinct features at all. The grip on his wrist was some sort of clammy tentacle extending from beneath the table, as gray as the figure but alive and slick.
“Soter,” it said, the voice no longer Gousier’s, but distantly familiar—a voice from a void deep inside him that he wanted to deny. “Soter, you’ll be found. Make no mistake. Found wanting.”
He could not bear the force of the scrutiny, which seemed to split him open. It was as if all the wriggling creatures that had once lived in the pores of that chalky coral were burrowing into the wound and feasting their way through him. Soon he would be nothing but bones, enveloped completely, a husk. He had to break away, face the performance, the red screen—he trembled with the effort of dismissing the apparition—turning in time to see the fitting end of Nikki Danjo, haunting it was, yes, and Remember the story, he urged himself, it was a puppet ghost, but somehow he was in the story now, seated among puppets with a ghost of his own looming in their midst. He stared so hard at the red light and the shadow figures that his eyes burned with tears from not blinking. He squeezed them shut, then jolted upright in his seat again. His arm, twisted behind him, ached horribly and he moved it, clutching his cup. His hand slid freely upon the table. Only then did he blink and glance around, wiping again at his eyes, this time with the meat of his palm. He opened one eye while he covered the other, warily peeking at his neighbor who, sensing his movement, grinned at him and said, “Very good, yes?” A normal face—bad teeth, certainly, but a normal face, not one of her puppets. Soter knew before he’d twisted around on the stool that no Coral Man would be hovering at his back. Everyone wedged into the courtyard looked normal, joyous with recognition of the masterful storytelling they’d just witnessed. They raised their hands and applauded—a burst of noise that made him jump.
“I slept, that’s all it was. I dreamed. Bardsham—” He rolled his wrist and saw it then, the one perfect circle, the sucker mark, purple where it had bruised him. Everyone else was clapping and cheering.
The screen had gone dark, the lantern extinguished. Instinct took over and Soter leapt to his feet, walked forward, clapping his own hands and calling, “Jax, my friends, the artistry of Jax!” while the crowd shouted and pounded their cups on the tables, and someone broke out a flute and began to play a frenetic melody above the din. The cheering flowed to follow and then accompany the flute, becoming a song.
After a minute Leodora stepped through the side of the booth, her head cowled, her face masked, and the song dissolved into a roar. She had played their stories and won their hearts. This was how it had been with Bardsham. The impeccable skill of a genius had overwhelmed the crowds. The energy of their pleasure flowed right through him to the artist. It was wonderful. Behind her, Diverus came