The Master of Heathcrest Hall (60 page)

The spheres of light cast by the oil lamps seemed to shrink in on themselves, and the darkness of the cell pressed in around Ivy.

“What do you mean?” she said, or rather whispered.

His brown eyes were somber, but bright as well with love and adoration. He opened his mouth to speak something. Only at that moment the far door of the chamber was flung open, and Corporal Lewell strode in.

“New orders have arrived from the Citadel,” he announced sternly. “Only members of the Hall of Magnates are to be allowed to interview the prisoner. You must leave at once, madam.”

No!
Ivy wanted to cry out, only her throat was so constricted she could make no sound.

Mr. Quent leaned forward as far as his bonds would allow him. “Kiss me, dearest,” he murmured.

And such was his tone, and the light in his eyes, that she obeyed him, thinking not of the corporal’s watchful eyes. Undeterred by the coarseness of his beard, she pressed her lips to his. How long they remained so connected, she did not know; she was utterly subsumed within that embrace.

Only then it was broken as he was roughly forced back in his chair by the corporal’s hands upon his shoulders.

“You must leave at once, madam,” he said and came around to take her arm, treating her no more gently than he had Mr. Quent.

Ivy ignored the pain in her arm and gazed at her husband. “Alasdare …”

“Good-bye, Ivoleyn,” he said, his brown eyes calm as he gazed up at her.

Then the soldier hauled her bodily from the room, and the iron door shut with a final clap of thunder.

I
T WAS SEVERAL HOURS into an odd lumenal, during which the sun did not rise into the sky so much as it skimmed just above the horizon, when a soldier arrived at the Theater of the Moon. He knocked loudly upon the door with the hilt of his sword as several of the illusionists rushed downstairs, hoping to stop the racket before it disturbed Master Tallyroth.

It was Riethe who reached the door first and flung it open.

“The play does not begin until after night falls, whenever that might happen to be,” the big illusionist said brashly. Then, upon eyeing the other man up and down, his tone grew more accommodating. “Though if you wished to come in for a private performance …”

The soldier, who cut a smart figure in his blue uniform, took a step back as his face blanched. He held a letter before him as if it were a stout shield rather than a folded piece of paper.

“I have a missive from the Citadel for the owner of the playhouse.”

By now several of the others had gathered behind Riethe, including Eldyn, Merrick, and Mouse. All of them gaped at this news. Riethe started to reach for the letter.

“I’ll take that,” Madame Richelour said as she glided past the young men and plucked the letter from the soldier’s hand.

“Are you the owner of this establishment, ma’am?”

“I am, so you may consider your duty discharged, young man. You may depart now.”

The soldier did so, and eagerly, turning on a heel and marching double-time down the street. Riethe gave a wistful sigh, then shut and bolted the door.

“What do you think it is?” Mouse said. The small man crowded in close to Madame Richelour, trying to get a look at the letter.

“What would you suppose it is?” Merrick said sharply, his face even longer than usual. “What order would arrive from the Citadel, unless it was an edict ordering that the theater be shut down?”

Merrick tended to be overly gloomy, but in this case Eldyn found himself agreeing with the other illusionist’s prediction. Given the ever more restrictive rules that had been imposed upon taverns and coffeehouses, it was only a matter of time before the theaters were addressed as another sort of place where undesirable ideas might be fomented. Silently, they all watched as Madame Richelour broke the waxen seal on the letter and unfolded it. The paper wavered, betraying the shaking of her hands.

“Well,” Mouse exclaimed, impatience driving his voice up a register, “is it an order shutting down the theater?”

Madame Richelour lowered the paper and, despite the vivid makeup she wore, her face seemed wan and faded. “No, not our theater.”

“Then what is it?” Riethe said when she did not continue.

Gently, Merrick removed the letter from her hand and held it up to read it. “It is as Madame Richelour says, our theater is not being closed,” he said, though despite this fact, his voice grew even more morose. “But there is now a general prohibition against the performing of illusion plays in the city.”

Riethe swore. “Well, a lot of good it does for us to keep the theater open if we can’t perform plays.”

“But we will be performing,” Merrick said glumly. “The stirring and patriotic nature of our recent plays has been noted. As a result, along with several other theaters on the street, we have been
commanded to perform six times each quarter month for the benefit of the Altanian army, ‘to provide the soldiers with lively diversions and amusements suitable for defenders of Altania, to help relieve their cares and to inspire them in their service to the nation.’ For our work, the state will compensate the theater in the sum of twenty regals a week.”

“Twenty regals!” Mouse exclaimed, practically hopping into the air. “They might as well turn their rifles on us and rob us. Even on a bad week we make twice that much. There’s no way we should take that deal.”

“It is not a deal we may choose to take or not,” Madame Richelour said, gazing at the shut door. “If the order is not complied with, the government will shut the theater down and seize the premises.”

Merrick gave a grim nod. “That’s what the letter says. We don’t have a choice, not unless we all want to be out on the street. Or worse. I’ve heard the government is sending out gangs of soldiers to pluck up men loitering about and conscript them into the army.”

This thought filled Eldyn with a queasiness, but he could hardly believe it. “They might send the soldiers to see our plays, but surely the Altanian army has no place in it for illusionists.”

“Maybe not when the nation is at peace,” Riethe said, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “But during war … they’ll be plenty happy to give any one of us a gun and send us up to the front lines. Better a Siltheri provide fodder for cannons instead of some red-blooded Altanian man.”

Eldyn had to concede there was a ring of truth to Riethe’s words. Yet it was not the illusionists at the theater whom Eldyn was most worried about. They were young, and they could use their talents to escape notice and survive. But where would Madame Richelour go if she lost the theater? And what would become of Master Tallyroth?

Madame Richelour started for the stairs, her red velvet dress sighing.

“What are we to do, madam?” Riethe called after her.

“I must go see to Tallyroth,” she replied over her shoulder. “I suggest you all ready yourselves for tonight’s performance for the soldiers.”

Then she started up the stairs and was gone.

Eldyn exchanged looks with the other young men. “Come on,” he said, sighing himself. “We’d better go over the staging and make sure everything is suitably ‘stirring and patriotic.’ ”

Mouse looked ready to make some smart reply, but Riethe gave him a preemptive crack on the crown of his head, and together they went to round up the others for a rehearsal.

I
T WAS FIVE HOURS into the umbral when Eldyn slipped out the back door of the theater, fashioned a cloak of shadows around himself, and made his way along the alley.

He had been afraid it might be difficult to get away from the theater without the others noticing, but circumstances had served to aid him. The soldiers had been so unruly as they filed into the theater that the start of the play had been delayed. Only when a captain shouted orders and threatened to put anyone who wasn’t in his seat in the stocks instead did the men become orderly enough for the play to commence.

Even so, there were still plenty of whistles, jeers, and crude heckling as the performance began. Yet it was a credit to the players that none of them were so rattled as to miss a cue or flub a phantasm; and it was a credit to their staging that the jeers and shouts that were at first intended for the players soon became directed at the characters and events in the play. By the end, the soldiers cheered as the heroic warriors conquered the shadow army with the aid of the golden maidens on their winged mounts—and then conquered the maidens in turn.

By the time the players made it to the Red Jester, there was barely half an hour left to quaff a cup of punch before the tavern was forced to close under the new rules. Not that it mattered.
None of the players felt very cheerful after the performance, despite its success, for the next umbral would only bring a new batch of soldiers. They returned to the theater and retired to their rooms, except for Mouse, who went to sit with Tallyroth.

As a result, Eldyn was able to slip downstairs without being seen. Which was well, as he had no time to explain himself to any who might ask where he was going. He had to hurry if he was going to get to the dormitory by the appointed time, for he was to carry a message that night.

It struck Eldyn as somewhat absurd that, only a few hours after using illusions to entertain soldiers, he was now likely to use them again to work treason under their noses. Though hopefully he would not make a mistake in his counting tonight and have such a need.

By the time he reached the top of Butcher’s Slip, the moon was rising over the city. The red planet had risen as well, and its light stained the sickle moon like blood upon a blade. Eldyn descended the steps, nodded to the two men outside the door, then went into the dormitory to find Jaimsley.

He did find him, and in a state of much agitation.

“You won’t be carrying any messages tonight, Garritt,” Jaimsley said, pacing about the little room, an uncharacteristically grim expression upon his homely face. “And likely not the next night, or the night after that.”

“What’s happened?” Eldyn said, still breathing hard from his rapid pace.

“One of our lads made it back into the Old City just before nightfall. The guards at the Lowgate stopped him, of course, but he didn’t have anything on him, so they had no choice but to let him go. He got here just a little while ago, and I’m glad he did, for he brought some ill news.”

Eldyn listened with growing dismay as Jaimsley described what had happened. One of their messages, smuggled out of the city through the drain at the foot of Wickery Street, had been intercepted. The man carrying it had been waylaid unexpectedly by
a band of soldiers marching on the road in the dark. Suspicious, the soldiers had stopped him, and then discovered the leather message tube upon his person.

Reading the paper contained within, they knew him at once for a traitor. They tried to bind him to bring him to the city, but he fought to get away. In the struggle, a butt of a rifle was brought down against his head. The blow was meant to subdue him, but dashed in his skull instead, killing him. All of these happenings were known from a clerk working at the Citadel who was one of their own, and who had read the report.

“But why didn’t the courier break the vial of ink inside the message tube?” Eldyn asked, horrified by this account. He wondered if the man was one he himself had handed a message through the grate.

“He did,” Jaimsley said. “But it didn’t work, or at least not well enough. From what our man in the Citadel learned, the ink didn’t have time to spread over the whole of the message. Enough of it was still readable to incriminate the courier, and to alert the government that messages bound for Huntley Morden’s troops are being passed out of Invarel. Not that this can entirely be a surprise to them. Yet you can wager they’ll be more vigilant than ever now about searching any man they catch heading away from the city.”

Eldyn swallowed, feeling ill. “Then what are we to do?”

“I haven’t hit upon that yet,” Jaimsley said, creases marking the high slope of his forehead. “But until we can find some way to make sure our messages can’t be read if they’re intercepted, we’ll have to stop smuggling them out of the city.”

“But then how will we inform Somebody about the state of affairs in the city? Surely it’s even more vital the farther east he marches.”

“Yes, it is. But having our messages caught is worse than not sending them at all. We just can’t risk it, not until we find a better way. You might as well go back home and get some rest. You look tired anyway.”

Eldyn had to admit he was tired after the performance, but all the same he had no wish to go to his bed, for he knew he would not be able to sleep. Instead, a jittery sort of energy filled him. He had come there that night to work for the rebellion, and he was not willing to simply give up. There had to be some better way to get messages to Huntley Morden’s forces.

Then he looked down at his hands, and he knew what it was.

“What is it, Garritt?”

Eldyn raised his head. Jaimsley was looking at him.

“I have an idea,” Eldyn said, and even as he realized what he was going to do, a cloud of butterflies fluttered up into his chest.