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As evening falls, I approach the Frolic Theater in Tangleside, a neighborhood so called because of the confusing twists of its streets. One of my hooded tunics drapes me from the top of my head to mid-thigh, and five knives lie concealed but in easy reach.
The weathered wooden building stands taller and broader than any of the sagging shops around it, its doorless front entrance gaping like a monster’s maw. The sigil for Inganne, godlen of creativity and amusement, beams overhead in orange paint, with weathered illustrations of larks and butterflies fluttering around it.
We’re going to take in a show?Julita asks doubtfully.
“You’ll see,” I mutter, and push myself onward.
As I climb the two creaking steps outside the entrance, raucous laughter reaches my ears from inside. At the other end of the dim lobby, the stands will be at least half full of locals who needed to brighten their day.
The theater’s erratic crew of actors put on comedic pantomimes, puppet shows, and short, silly plays twice a day, charging about the cost of a slice of bread and accepting said slices—or other items—in trade instead of coins if that’s all the patron can give.
They can afford to offer their entertainment cheaply because they get a kickback from the theater’s other use.
Instead of heading on into the auditorium, I veer toward the first door on the right. A shallow carving of Kosmel’s sigil barely shows above it in the dim light.
Any unwitting person stumbling on this doorway would take one look at the darkened, musty stairs on the other side and turn around. I march on downward, wrinkling my nose at the pungent mildewy odor that I’m not sure is totally conjured.
If anyone did venture this far in a fit of daring curiosity, they’d be stymied at the bottom of the stairs. By all appearances, they end at a small, empty, earthen-walled room so dark you can only make out the faint outlines of your fingers when holding your hand in front of your face.
But if you know where you’re going, you slip around the left side of the stairs and make a sharp right that should have you walking straight into their underside. Instead, the moment your head would crash into the boards, you find yourself in a passage so black your hand might as well not exist at all.
Five steps forward, three left, ten right, two left again. I can’t help wondering whether the criminals who built this passageway were inspired by the college or the other way around—or whether magical security can’t help evolving to use the same methods.
With the last step, I walk back out into the earthen room. I lope up the steps and pass through the now-silent lobby. This version of the theater is only a conjured echo of the real thing.
The moment I emerge from the entrance, I’m faced with a mass of activity that’s vividly real.
Crow’s Close—named after Kosmel’s favored bird in recognition of the role the godlen of luck plays in the success of any illicit endeavor—takes its name quite literally. The narrow strip of dirt road with wooden buildings packed on either side is entirely enclosed, stopping at a dead end about a hundred paces in either direction. The only way in and out is through the theater.
Well, the only wayIknow. No doubt the crooks who make this place their permanent residence have other escape routes.
The strip looks like a macabre version of the commercial street near the palace. Conjured illusions gyrate over the shop doors, but with imagery like skulls and weaponry. The lights in the windows glow amber, crimson, and violet in the dusk.
The shoppers are a scruffier lot, with dreary clothing and scars aplenty. Most wear hoods like my own to shade their faces, the more cautious concealing their features with simple masks as well.
But I’ve got no reputation in the outside world that my presence here could threaten.
The place to get the latest underground gossip is the pub right at the northern dead end, Brew & Dagger. I slink through the strip’s other patrons toward it.
The sign over the dark wooden face shows a dagger jabbed into a mug of beer next to the pub’s name. The conjured image hovering in front of it mimics the logo, with the blade rising and dropping back into the mug, making the illusionary glowing liquid slosh over the rim.
The inside of the pub smells like stale alcohol and acrid hazebloom smoke. I hop onto one of the empty stools by the scratched-up counter and ask the new bartender for an amber spritz.
As she mixes it, I let my gaze drift around the room, searching for any familiar faces I know will be happy to wag their tongue.
Before I land on one, I get a volunteer.
“If it isn’t Ivy. I haven’t seen you in a while.”
At the voice behind me, I tense inwardly before I’ve swiveled around to face the speaker. Milo smirks at me, his hooded eyes as dark as his five-o’clock shadow.
Back when I was sixteen and less good at controlling my impulses—and my hormones—Milo seemed like a good option for dealing with those hormones periodically with no strings attached. We’d only had a couple of hookups when I found out that along with perfectly respectable forgery, he has a side-business picking out kids as young as eight for the mines, and my already limited attraction to him snuffed right out.
Four years later, he still hasn’t quite caught on that I’d sooner fuck a donkey than get down and dirty with him again.
I grit my teeth and smile tightly back at him. Milo does like to hear his own voice, so this could make my job here easier. As long as he keeps his hands to himself in the meantime.
