PART ONE
Jezebel thought it strange to perform in front of an amphitheater only half-full, and stranger yet to perform in front of those who couldn’t afford the price of admission. The audience was composed of common locals, not the customary purse-plenty tourists: Briar and Biff, oversized twin bakers from the village, sat stage left, chins in their hands like a pair of attentive gargoyles; while down front, Tabitha the seamstress sat suckling her babe, gazing raptly at the players.
Jezebel noted these and more, though when she looked at the crowd, her attention was drawn mostly to the proprietor of the Three Dragons Inn—Shayla Long-Eyes. Shayla was planted in the center-front of the amphitheater, where she sat like the sun, orbited by an inner ring of empty benches. The outer rows were spotted with the lucky invitees, the first theater-goers in history to watch a performance of The Flame without relinquishing the coin to spend a night in the inn.
“It’s fortunate for us that our shit performance is lost on this lot, but you better believe our Lady of the Long Eyes has made note of it,” Meric whispered to Jezebel backstage as they prepared for the play’s climactic scene.
Jezebel nodded but didn’t reply. She was too busy trying to mount a dragon. Meric, Theon and Osten merely had to push the props, but Jezebel had an eight-step ascent in the dark to the bridge of the dragon Teriquay’s emerald-green neck. Add to the fact that she was dressed in a sheer lace slip after spending the previous hour and a half performing in the coarsest roughspun, and her quietude was understandable.
“Hush!” Osten mocked Meric from across the way. “Our butterfly doesn’t differentiate between queen and commoner! Her wings must shine, regardless of who sees!”
Jezebel closed her eyes, ignoring the actors’ prattle. Positioned now, she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Teriquay’s neck, searching with her hands until she found the grips notched in the wood. Behind her, the men readied themselves at the dragons’ wheels, ready to push the trio on stage. She had heard the dragons praised as the greatest stage props in all of Ragar Or—greater even than those used by the Swans, Union’s own acting company. Jezebel believed it. With her eyes closed, Jezebel felt that she was astride Teriquay herself: every night when the curtains opened and King Reuel’s boat appeared before her, Jezebel was filled with the same power the dragonfeeder must have experienced near four decades before, when she descended from the heavens and laid waste to nearly the entire Salk dynasty.
The side curtains opened, revealing two of the legendary beasts to the crowd. The crowd oohed and aahed, though Jezebel well knew that the audience was saving their biggest reaction for Teriquay.
“Look, Father!” Prince Daeguss shouted from the ship once the crowd had settled. “It’s the blue dragon…Comet! And over there, all brown and white…Mooncalf!”
Meric and Osten rolled the dragons out toward the stationary boat in the center of the stage where King Reuel and his wife and children blithely awaited their fate. In reality, all four of the king’s children had been on board, but this being a play, one precocious youngster sufficed for the entire brood. The prince sounded horribly stupid shouting the dragons’ names like they were trained dogs, but Jezebel knew that was only the case in retrospect: there had been no reason at the time for the young princeling to believe the dragons were anything but tame. Comet and Mooncalf had long been known as peaceful creatures that loved to fly above the boats on Lake Wyglass. It was why the king had traveled north to Low Osgood, and why his family was with him. The Salks had come to see the dragons, the ones that, in this glorious age of unification, performed for man.
On stage, the actor playing King Reuel sounded Jezebel’s cue. “They are a pair, which means they are blessed by the Twins, and they are creatures of the air, which delights Stavus. The gods shine on these creatures, just as the gods shine on all of Ragar Or.”
The curtain pulled back, and Jezebel was exposed. The commoners in the crowd shrieked and gasped at the sight of the wooden green dragon, knowing what was coming. Jezebel, whose speaking part for the evening was finished, acted with her eyes; she gazed down from Teriquay’s neck at the doomed king and his family with a burning intensity, underscoring her transition from ill-treated peasant girl to sorceress of the air. She knew that the audience would take in the dragon first, but then their eyes would go to her, and she didn’t intend to disappoint. The blue-painted whorl on Jezebel’s cheek dazzled, a vibrant cosmos. It had been touched up and enlarged backstage. The telling mark, they called it—the sign of the Jeyedoshi. Although Jezebel doubted that the actual dragonfeeder’s whorl had been quite so flamboyant.
“Father,” the princeling said as Jezebel and Teriquay approached, “look. It’s the green dragon. The wild one.”
Theon, crouched low to minimize his exposure, rolled the wooden dragon forward with an ominous slowness. Jezebel was close friends with a Low Osgood old-timer who had been lakeside that day. He said Teriquay had floated down from a nearby mountain like a bird of prey sizing up an injured meal. There had been no rush, no hurry, only the elegantly menacing beating of the dragon’s wings.
“Teriquay,” King Reuel declared. “She’s wild, yes, but as harmless as the other two.” The actor put an arm around his son. He wore an uneasy smile. “She must have sensed that we were here. She’s come to pay homage.”
Brionne, Reuel’s queen, was given the honor of the last words. “Reuel,” she said, grabbing at her husband’s arm. “Look! Teriquay has a rider. Why does she have a rider?”
The play came to a deliberate standstill. The wooden dragons stopped moving, while on the boat the royal family stood motionless, holding on to one another. For two full seconds no one moved. Then, in a rush, Theon pushed Teriquay forward, to within inches of the boat. The Salk family shrieked and shielded their faces from an imaginary flame.
Out in the audience, a traumatized quiet took hold. The actors held themselves still as statues as stagehands covered in black tunics and black breeches filed in from both sides of the stage, carrying torches. They formed a wall of flame that cordoned off the players, who slowly and quietly exited the stage. Jezebel didn’t move: once shielded by the flame wall, Meric, Osten, and Theon moved to the front of the wooden dragons and rolled them back behind the curtain. Jezebel stayed stock still-throughout, remaining in character until she disappeared entirely from the audience’s view.
*
Backstage there were bottles of blush wine and plates of exotic cheeses and chilled saucers loaded with crudo fresh from the Blackstar Isles. All in all, the standard post-production fare. The players had the morrow off, which normally would have been the occasion for a bit of excess, but the enormity of what beckoned two days hence was putting a hamper on the revelry. Osten kept trying to lighten the mood by crisscrossing the dressing room without wearing pants, while Angiel, the actress who played Queen Brionne, entertained with off-the-cuff impressions of the evening’s audience. But the shallow spirit of their frivolity was made apparent the moment Shayla Long-Eyes appeared: Osten unceremoniously put away his cock and balls, and Angiel, caught in the middle of a rather bawdy and mean-spirited impersonation, turned prim as a Winged Woman, pursing her lips and crossing her legs and waiting, like everyone else, to hear what Shayla had to say.
“That was not a stellar performance,” Shayla declared simply when all eyes were on her. There was no cut to her words, no anger, only the truth. She let her eyes roam the room, until they rested on Jezebel. “Jezebel being the exception.”
Jezebel gave a slight curtsy. She willed herself not to look at Shayla’s entourage, who had trailed into the room behind her. Donnell Tyne—Jezebel’s onetime lover—numbered among them. Five years later, and it still stung to look at him. Donnell had been Jezebel’s beau back when she first won the part of the dragonfeeder, but then Shayla—who was near twenty-six years Jezebel’s senior—swooped in and stole Donnell from her with a brutal efficiency that still stunned after all this time. One day Jezebel was with Donnell, smiling at him beneath the sheets, and the next day Donnell was on Shayla’s arm, with naught but curt, mean-spirited words for Jezebel when she begged for an explanation. “She gives all the new girls a taste of her power,” one of the other actresses explained to Jezebel a few days later. “Learn your lesson, and let it go.” Jezebel hadn’t believed the actress back then, but she did now. She had seen too many similar examples since.
Osten offered Shayla an excuse. “The adoration of the common crowd was too easily won. We as a company are conditioned to expect a certain level of pretension from the audience. Without it…why, we have nothing to strive for onstage!”
Osten won himself a few chuckles. But most waited on Shayla’s response before deciding if Osten’s quips were indeed funny.
Shayla moved deeper into the room, claiming the space. Jezebel watched, wondering, as she often did, whether she looked as much like Shayla as the other players claimed. They shared the same dark blonde hair, the same oval face, and the same shapely cut; but when Jezebel looked at Shayla Long-Eyes, she didn’t see an older version of herself. What she saw was a terrifying vastness. The older woman was in every way…more. Shayla Long-Eyes inhabited the world as if the gods had granted her a deed in their will.
“Osten, I’ll allow that most of the villagers left the play happily unawares. But I was in the audience too. Did you fail to see me?” Shayla asked the question while looking at Osten, but at the end her gaze drifted, taking in the room.
No one answered. A few heads bobbed.
Shayla smiled. She wore a gown of green samite with intricate gold threadwork. The hem whispered against the stone as she made her way toward Osten. When she reached him, she took his chin in her hands. “The next time you perform, the queen of Ragar Or will be in attendance. Will she inspire you as I could not?”
Osten, usually so skilled with his tongue, struggled to string together a coherent run of words. “Shayla, no queen could…you are, above all…though of course I will, we will…”
Shayla closed her eyes. Dropped Osten’s chin. Then she lifted her head and swept the room with her piercing, all-seeing gaze. The players waited with drawn breath, fearful of the woman’s power. She acts the queen, Jezebel thought. She wants to remind us of who she is, before the real queen enters the city.
Shayla spoke, her voice cool and detached. “The night after next will be the most important night of your lives. You will perform in front of Queen Portia Salk, a woman who might, with a wave of her hand, end your life. There are even rumors that that’s why she’s come. Some say she’s traveled to Low Osgood to have her revenge against a play that dares portray the Salk family without her leave. Once her curiosity is sated, she will execute all the performers and burn the Three Dragons Inn to the ground.”
Jezebel shuddered. It’s only village talk, she told herself. More prevalent was talk of the queen’s excitement at seeing the play in person, word of The Flame’s popularity having spread far and wide.
Shayla donned a wicked grin. “Or not. Instead, we might be on the cusp of eternal fame, eternal wealth, eternal glory. The strength of our respective performances might alter the course of our lives. Perhaps even alter the course of a queen’s life. But if we are to rise to the occasion, we must find within us that divine spark which compels us to greatness. When onstage, we must bring to life the death of the queen’s dear departed family with a vividness that will shake Queen Portia to her very core. Only then will we truly honor her. Only then will we truly be worthy of whatever fate the rightful ruler of Ragar Or has in store for us.”
The Long-Eyes sought out Jezebel once more. She stared at Jezebel with a brazen unselfconsciousness, as if the two of them were the only people in the room. Jezebel let her eyes go soft, but she met Shayla’s stare all the same. She was long practiced in the art. The trick, she had learned, was to pretend that Shayla had your best interests at heart.
From across the room, Shayla smiled at Jezebel. Only at Jezebel. “In order to achieve this greatness, some of us must risk more than others. Some of us must blur the very line between performance and reality.”
There is no line between performance and reality, Jezebel thought. It was a lesson she had learned long ago, long before she was ever introduced to Shayla Long-Eyes. It was a truth she held deep in her heart. For Jezebel, acting and living were of one piece. But, as always, Jezebel kept her thoughts to herself, and gave Shayla only soft eyes, signaling agreement.
Abruptly, it was over. Shayla Long-Eyes, confident that she had taken the measure of Jezebel’s soul, broke off her gaze. “In two days then,” she said to all. She left the room, her entourage trailing in her wake.
The other players waited until she was out of earshot before exhaling. As usual, it was Osten who broke the silence. “In two days,” he declared soberly, holding a wine-filled cup aloft. “Let the good Queen Portia think of our play what she will. But let our lady of the Long-Eyes know beyond the shadow of a doubt that we left our lifeblood on the stage.”
Everyone in the room raised their cups.
Jezebel included.