PART FIVE
The play began later than usual.
The players performed in front of a packed amphitheater nearly every night, but the ceremony involved in seating Queen Portia’s court delayed the start by nearly thirty minutes. Word spread backstage of the wonder of the benches: the Salk banner flew from twelve staffs staked into the ground around the seating area, smaller-scale complements to the large Salk standard now flying from atop the Three Dragons Inn. The flag on top of the inn was so large that it obscured the sculpture of the three dragons.
“Crows, crows, and more crows,” Osten detailed to the others after sneaking a peek at the flags moments before the opening curtain. “I wouldn’t be surprised if midway through the opening act the benches take flight and we’re made to perform the remainder of the play flying above Wyglass. Personally, it would be a nice change of pace. Fond as I am of Comet, his use of wheels rather than wings leaves me perpetually disappointed.”
Only a few laughed. The tensions were too high. Some of the players were so stressed that they diverged from their pre-performance routines. Theus, known for nipping a potent black rum before taking the stage, gulped from the flask. Angiel, who liked to sing bawdy songs, hummed a Stavusian hymn. Meric, a talker, meditated. Roger, the boy who played Prince Daeguss, eschewed his normal gallivanting and sat quietly in a corner.
It took Jezebel to dispel the tension. When the curtain parted, she took to the stage and delivered an opening monologue of spellbinding intensity, juxtaposing the daily trials of the dragonfeeder’s orphaned existence with a passionate, disquieting desire to scale the heights of nearby Mount Tribune and master the dragon Teriquay. The queen and the queen’s court sat entranced. The dragonfeeder was no easy heroine, no easy villain. She was a wounded, courageous, and angry girl, a girl who had an inkling of her jeyedoshi nature and had resolved to harness it to full effect, damn the consequences.
The other players rallied after Jezebel’s opening speech. When the play segued into court life, the actors and actresses playing Salk royalty infused their performances with a transcendental energy. The play soon took on a life of its own, as both the crowd and the actors were swept along on an alternate tide of time. Hours, days, and months passed onstage, in neat rhythm to the timeless performance devouring the here and now.
Jezebel gave herself over to the performance most of all. The events of the previous few days were not forgotten so much as fed like kindling into the fire of her art. She had long learned how to forget herself whenever she performed, but tonight the dragonfeeder’s essence seemed to burn in her very skin. She thought perhaps there would be no need of the torch awaiting her at the play’s end; the flame was already in her throat.
She walked offstage after the dragonfeeder’s penultimate scene in the same headspace. She slipped into the diaphanous lace slip, feeling like she was the dragonfeeder incarnate. She said naught as the makeup artist transformed the whorl on her cheek from faint sky to a vibrant blue. She strode to the wooden emerald-green dragon like it was her birthright, and she climbed the steps like she was mounting Teriquay’s own back.
It wasn’t until the stagehand appeared with the torch that Jezebel startled from the role. Ewe—the stagehand who had vouched for her in front of the queen’s knights the day before—emerged from the shadows holding the flame. “My lady,” he said with a strained grace. He looked at the floor with a subservient gaze, and handed over the torch.
Jezebel accepted the torch from Ewe with her right hand. She held a leather pouch filled with lamp oil in her left hand. It had been waiting on Teriquay’s top step, just as Shayla Long-Eyes had said it would. Jezebel swept the flame back and forth, taking in the other backstage actors, who looked at her with confused expressions. She waited for the inevitable question, the witty remark, the humorous quip. Instead, everyone held their tongues. After a moment, Jezebel felt compelled to explain.
“A surprise,” she said. “For the finale.”
Meric, Theon and Osten gave uneasy nods, but none spoke. Ewe piped up instead. “I must leave, my lady. We torchbearers have a part to play as well.”
He sprinted away.
The muffled voices of King Reuel and his doomed family conversed on the opposite side of the curtain. It was time for Jezebel to lean forward and wrap her hands around the dragon’s neck, but, with the torch and lamp oil in hand, she found it impossible. Should I pocket the lamp oil in my cheeks now? Her thoughts, a rushing stream all night, became a slurry.
She thumbed open the leather pouch and tipped the lamp oil into her mouth.
The side curtains opened. The sight of Comet and Mooncalf provoked the usual response from the crowd, a chorus of oohs and aahs. Flustered and running short of time, Jezebel futilely tried to thumb the leather pouch back closed. Failing, she gave up and dropped the pouch on Teriquay’s top step, where the oil slicked around her feet. I cannot reach the grips, she thought. Theon read her mind. “We’ll go slowly, my lady. Focus on staying upright.”
Onstage, King Reuel gave his 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 center curtain parted. The audience vocalized their wonder at the sight of Teriquay, their fright. For the first time all night, Jezebel broke from her role long enough to actually look at the crowd. The queen was sitting front center. Jezebel caught the queen’s eyes, and for a second they beheld each other in the raw power of the moment.
She forced herself to look away from Queen Portia as the stagehands rolled her slowly toward the boat. It’s darker than usual, Jezebel thought. The play was timed to end near sunset, but, because of the late start, twilight had fallen. Jezebel’s eyes continued to roam. Through the gauze of torch smoke, Jezebel cast her gaze at the heavens, and caught a glimpse of the sentinel stars. To the north, the moonbear’s eyes preceded its face, while high above and slightly behind Jezebel, the Jailer looked down from his vigilant perch.
Giving up the skies, Jezebel’s attention was drawn to the corners of the amphitheater, where, to her surprise, the black-clothed torchbearers had congregated. She watched with surprise as the boy who had delivered her torch now took a different flame and walked with the others down the aisles on the outside of the benches. Soon every row was lined by black-clothed torchbearers. The audience was enclosed: the Three Dragons Inn hemmed in the queen’s court from behind, the torchbearers guarded the aisles, and the stage and Simstone blocked the front.
Why are they there? They’re not supposed to—
“Father, look.” Roger, the boy who played Prince Daeguss, was fighting through the many distractions to deliver his lines. His voice was laced with unease; he couldn’t take his eyes off Jezebel’s torch. “It’s the green dragon. The wild one.”
Jezebel noted that a handful of the audience had taken note of the torchbearers, but, for the most part, the queen and her court kept their attentions fixed on the stage. They’ve no reason to think that what’s happening isn’t a normal part of the play. In her distraction, Jezebel nearly forgot to keep her throat closed. Lamp oil slid toward her esophagus, but Jezebel kept from swallowing.
There was movement at the back of the amphitheater. A man with a tied-off beard slipped inside the Three Dragons Inn.
King Reuel hesitated with his lines. He looked as if he desperately wanted to ask Jezebel a question. “Teriquay,” he said at last. His voice, always affected with disquiet, was even more so. “She’s wild, yes, but as harmless as the other two.” The king offered the prince a protective, paternal arm. “She must have sensed that we were here. She’s come to pay homage.”
The prayer. I’m supposed to say the prayer for vengeance. The same as the dragonfeeder did when she descended from the sky. The words came quickly to mind, but, with her mouth full of lamp oil, Jezebel could only recite the prayer as a thought. Unlike when she said the prayer this morning, the words felt false, as if they belonged to someone else.
Whose vengeance is this?
“Reuel. Look! Teriquay has a rider. Why does she have a rider?”
The play’s great hush descended. Jezebel prepared for the brisk push, bracing her feet as best as she could against the slick of the lamp oil. But Theon, sensing Jezebel’s unsteadiness, chose to push the dragon forward slowly. The actors in the boat, thrown by the change in Teriquay’s pace, neither shrieked nor shielded their faces.
Jezebel froze. She had forgotten who she was. Her eyes flitted to the inn. She thought she saw a flame licking at one of the windows. It’s only a trick of the torches, she told herself. She looked back at the audience, desperately trying to find the courage to breathe fire into the air. Every eye was upon her, including those of the torchbearers, who appeared to be waiting for a cue. I am the dragonfeeder, she told herself. I am Jezebel. I am the dragonfeeder and I am Jezebel. There is no line between performance and reality. But still, she did nothing.
Then Jezebel saw her. Shayla Long-Eyes. She had been sitting at the back of the benches, but now she was standing, staring straight at the stage. Staring straight at Jezebel. She smiled in that confident way of hers, as if the future was already written.
Maybe it is, Jezebel thought. Maybe it’s been predestined all along.
Shayla kept staring at Jezebel, refusing to look away. Jezebel acquiesced to the Long-Eyes’s power. She knew without a doubt who Shayla was, and she knew what Shayla wanted from her.
Shayla raised an imaginary torch into the air and breathed an invisible fire.
Jezebel forgot her fears and collapsed back into the moment. She raised the torch into the air and gave life to the flame, causing the fiery petals to blossom once, twice, three times. They expanded with each iteration, until, on the last, the fire transformed into something more, something larger, a being that, once unleashed, could not be controlled. How? Jezebel wondered, but she laughed even as she wondered, a painful screaming laugh soon to be echoed by hundreds of others. The world turned to orange and white. Jezebel, flailing, searched for the black, the night sky where it was said the Twins answered prayers. But all her desperate eyes could find was a great dragon descending, beating its blazing wings, heeding her call.
THE END