There was a raised platform, maybe a few feet high so even I could see from the back. The stage was not an established structure. Clearly, it had been assembled for the performance. A set of caravans peeked out behind the propped-up backdrop.
But while I couldn’t help but mentally disassemble and assemble the construct, that wasn’t what we were here to see.
“Tell me, O Goddess, what I must do?” an actor wailed from the stage. He held a wooden sword in his hand, more crudely cut than any of the practice weapons I’d been trained on. His hair was foppish, his clothing shoddy, but there was something like real anguish in his eyes as he sank to his knees in front of the audience.
“Not this again,” Demos grumbled, the complaint uncharacteristic for the stoic general.
“If anyone has a right to complain, it would be me,” Raphael countered.
I would have asked what he meant, but the next character had begun speaking. She’d slipped from the curtain and stood directly behind the other actor, who held his hands up beseechingly. Her costume was gilded, like shimmering copper. Swirls of black and white were painted all over her skin, from feet to scalp.
“I have heard your plea,” she whispered.
Magic carried her voice over, coating it in an eerie tone. A trick of pneumamancy, adjusting the sounds through the air. They hadn’t bothered with the others, who simply projected.
“Look not upon me, mortal. Your eyes are not meant to see such divinity,” she said when the actor twisted. Her hands moved from his wrists to his eyes, covering them, while she looked out at the audience.
A goddess. I wasn’t sure yet who she was playing—I lacked the ecclesiastic awareness the Monastery cultivated in its disciples. Myths were usually short parables rather than plays, anyway. Most of the plays were focused on telling the brave deeds of warriors like the king.
The actress didn’t look like any god I’d ever seen depicted… which made me wonder if I might know exactly who it was.
The actor murmured more pleas, promising his life and loyalty and anything else.
“What say you all?” the goddess called to us in that same voice. “Should I grant this mortal a boon?”
The answer came quickly, vocal cries ofYes, do it, save him—but some contrarians said no. I was silent. Unsurprisingly, so were Raphael and Demos.
Once satisfied by the audience participation, the play reached its climax.
The human ducked his head and, with what must have been the barest spot of disguise magic, he was transformed. His shaggy chestnut hair turned white, and even before he lifted his head, I knew his eyes would be red.
He rose, and the actors shifted so he could swear fealty to the goddess, who had blessed him with the power to serve forever.
Anagenni, surely. I wondered if the true goddess would take kindly to this imitation.
I wondered, then, if she would take kindly to me wandering the market with the vampire king. But in this play, the vampires were her subjects. Her creations, even. So why did the necromancer even exist as a contradiction?
Were vampires a mistake she had made me to deal with? Or if she made both of us, did we have equal reason for existing?
“Anagenni” returned back behind the curtain, reminding him to keep his vows and draw blood in the goddess’s honor. A surge of actors came from both wings—no doubt context was missing from earlier in the play—and the newly made “vampire” lifted his wooden sword, knocking them down with each approximation of a blow. The climax came when, all foes vanquished, some lady love appeared. He kissed her, and with someone nearby activating another card, she turned into a “vampire” as well.
The actors bowed as the audience roared with approval. Any cost of the magic for the disguise and pneumamancy was worth it by the shower of silver coins that rained down on the stage.The actors—men, women, children—blew kisses to the audience and scooped coins up with every dip of their bows.
“Trained liars, the lot of them,” Raphael said. “Perfect.”
While the crowd dispersed, Raphael moved us against the current. He slid us past the stage, around the corner, and then to one of the caravans. They came in different sizes. The ones I’d seen peeking out were little more than carts with a slight covering, enough to transport a few people, a bale of hay perhaps. But the one we stopped in front of had a proper door, wooden walls, and a ceiling. A painted swirl, the same black and white as had been on the actress’s skin, marked the door.
“What are we doing here?” I asked as Raphael lifted his hand to the door.
“She plays the patron goddess of vampires. She can serve one of her creatures.” He knocked.
“Come in!” a high-pitched voice called through the door. “Unless you’ve got something nasty to say. Then take it up with the playwright.”
We went inside. The actress who had played Anagenni had wiped the painted whorls off her head, her arms turned gray from the cosmetics she’d only partly removed. She’d switched from her costume to a dressing gown, cinched by a worn leather belt. A deck holder at the hip, as so many wore, was present now that she was off the stage.
My own deck holder was useless since I couldn’t call on magic in cards. I hadn’t worn it since turning, hadn’t been able to stomach trying to call the magic and failing. But it was buried in the bottom of my trunks, all the same.
“What can I offer you gentlemen?” she asked, though her gaze was on me when she asked. She half twisted in her seat.
