out—it was becoming a routine now—and waved the shamisen he’d been playing; the audience cheered for him, too.
Here was everything they sought and he was making them leave because he was afraid. And the Coral Man had stood right there and told him it would do no good. Run to the next span, he would be found. If you wanted to remain hidden, you could not have great talent. Talent made noise; people would notice you, remember you. Jax—they would be speaking of the master puppeteer from one end of the span to the other tomorrow. A few more days and news of these performances would overtake the stories Grumelpyn had heard, louder now and more certain, the way it had been with Bardsham. “You’ll be found”—he muttered the warning.
Why, he asked the air, why did she have to be brilliant? Why did she have to shine so brightly? Why had she made them leave the damned backwater of that island? He blamed her, knowing full well that she wasn’t to blame. He made his smiles to the crowd. Then he realized she wasn’t wearing the band that restricted her breasts. She’d forgotten to put it on after the performance. Someone would see, someone would fathom the truth. He thought to move, to step between the crowd and the object of their adoration.
Then Leodora did the unthinkable. She pushed back the cowl and drew her braid free.
Watching the crowd for any sign that they’d recognized her womanliness, he only glimpsed the flash of her hair. “No,” he said, more in disbelief than as a warning, but no one heard him over the din of the song they were singing.
He faced her then, crying, “Don’t you dare!”
But she’d already reached a hand in front of her face, and she pulled the black mask up and away. The crowd yelled louder. She tugged loose the cord binding her hair then shook it all free, a shining red fan, a copper waterfall around her. They simply went mad then.
She shouted her name and they gave it back. Cries of “Leodora!” drowned out “Jax!” Coins flew through the air and rained all around her.
Soter wanted to sear her with a look the way the Coral Man had crushed him with its regard, but her stance defied him, denying him the right to hide her any longer. It’s too late, said her pose, you may dictate the dates and the venues and the spans, but you’ll not control my identity any longer. He knew this story; he’d told it to her: How had he thought it would have a different ending this time? “Bardsham,” he despaired.
Something broke inside him. He could not oppose her, he had no will any longer, no strength for the battle any longer. Chaos was coming after him, bearing down upon them all, and it would find him whether he hid her or not. It was what the Coral Man had been saying. He stared at the mark on his wrist.
There could be no going on to the next span now. No simple passage through a tunnel would disguise her identity, her name. That would travel, too, now: the skill of her father and the shape of her mother, the name so close.
She had unleashed herself, and now they had to flee.
THREE
“What do you mean, by boat?” Leodora asked Soter.
“I mean,” he said, leaning upon the undaya case, “we have ourselves taken to another spiral of the span. We abandon this trip north along this arm of the spiral and begin again—”
“—where we’re not known! It means everything I just did on four spans is for nothing. I go back to being Jax, a boy, because they won’t know anything about what happened here tonight. The story of this will carry up the line, maybe even as far as your elf friend’s span.”
“Grumelpyn.”
“I know his wretched name,” she snarled, and for a moment he actually feared she would strike him, pick up a cup or a knife and attack him; but her anger, boiling up beyond her control, brought tears to her eyes, and despite her every effort she began to cry. “Daimons damn you, Soter, I won’t do it!”
Diverus, standing uncomfortably behind her through it all, raised his hands as if to place them on her shoulders to comfort her, but seemed at the last to lose his nerve; he drew them back against himself like a mantis about to fall upon a victim. Soter saw it, registered the significance—that