“You know there isn’t. I won’t marry Koombrun, but I have to marry Koombrun. What choice does my uncle leave? If I stay, he and the village control my life forever. I will never be allowed to come here and train, to work the puppets, to learn. So I’m taking the puppets with me. All of them. They’re mine—you said so—and I’m taking them. But I have to know now: Am…I…any…good?”
She watched the fear drain out of him as he assessed what she’d said. She had broken the wishful bubble in which he lived—the lie he perpetuated to keep things as they were, which he’d admitted to her mother’s specter. He was no different from Tastion. Or Gousier, for that matter. The three men dwelled in fantasies of their own devising, with never a thought for her as anything other than an object within the frame. One after the other, she was showing them that she neither shared nor accepted their worlds.
When Soter answered her, it was in the quiet, attentive voice of a man focused upon a single, critical issue; one who had reasoned out his course of action before this night.
“Where do you intend to go? Ningle?”
“Of course.”
“How will you hide from your uncle? He knows many people up there. How will you know whom you can trust?”
“I—I don’t know. I won’t trust anyone.”
“And you’ll carry both cases by yourself? You couldn’t carry them both from here to Tenikemac, much less up that stairway. Do you know how long a span is?”
“No.” Worry warped the syllable.
“Will you head north or south? Which is better?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s good, then, that you’ve thought this through, worked out the details.” He spoke without a trace of sarcasm. He didn’t need any to make his point. “Lea, dear, you can’t be a performer by yourself up there, either. Proper shadowplay needs three or four. I’ve told you this, I wasn’t making it up. Who’s going to play your music for you? We’ll have to find someone. Can’t be a girl puppeteer up there—the way they treated you in the long house just now will be nothing to how you’d be derided on most of the spans near here. How you go about by day’s no issue. But on stage…” He reached up and pushed his fingers into her long hair. “You’ll have to give this up. We have to disguise you. Do as your father did, starting out.”
“We have to do it? We?”
“You and me.”
“Soter, I don’t want anybody—”
“It doesn’t much matter if you do. Haven’t you been listening, or must I ask you the questions all over again? I’m coming along.”
“But why? Why do you want to?”
He pulled at his nose. “Well, first, because as I said you can’t do this on your own, no matter what you think. Second, because Gousier will make me pay in your absence once he’s done beating your aunt, and I don’t care to take your punishment when the whip comes down, thank you very much. Third, there’s no one better’n me at arranging these things. I’ve told you that.”
“Yes, but—”
“I’m not finished,” he said testily. “Fourth, I’m coming along because, Leodora, you have in you the skill to be the greatest shadowteller that the whole endless spiral of Shadowbridge has ever seen. With my guidance you might achieve such recognition as no one has ever had. As for if you’re good”—he smiled slyly—“let us just see how you perform when the audience isn’t an inbred village of sea urchins.”
She wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. She forgave him his need to dramatize the answer. She wanted to run and embrace him, thank him, but she did not let herself. She grinned but kept her passion in check. She had, after all, known she was great all along.
He drummed his fingers on the seat of the stool and said, “Now, when are we leaving?”
It was not a simple question, but a test. He wanted her to think about all she had to do. “Tomorrow night?” she ventured.
“He will come after us, same as he did your mother before you. You’ll have humiliated him in front of the village. He’ll be worse off than he was before he dreamed up this scheme. We must be careful how we go initially.” He relaxed, as if something had been decided. “Now you ought to get your sleep. He expects you to be at work in the