Pierrot's Song

Chapter 6 - Echoes Underground-2

Back in the kitchen, the standoff hadn’t changed. Matteo was speaking again. The other guards had disappeared.

‘Jal, I don’t want to hurt anyone here. Bad things are happening at the palace. They’re making us collect artisans from the city. None of them go home again.’

‘I know,’ Jal growled.

Amora stood beside him and took his hand.

‘I know exactly what they’re doing,’ Jal continued. ‘And you need to get out of my house right now, Matteo. If you think you can come here and threaten the people in my home, you are no friend of mine.’

Matteo looked from Jal to Sofia, then to Amora. ‘Okay. We’ll leave. Because of our friendship. But they’ll just send someone else.’

He gave a shallow bow and exited to the hallway, calling for his companions. The two men appeared from the door to Peter’s workshop.

‘We’re leaving,’ Matteo told them. One gave a brief nod and they strode down the hallway and out the door.

Amora turned to Jal. ‘One of them had a bag over his shoulder.’

‘Yes, so?’

‘It was empty when they arrived. It doesn’t look empty now.’

Jal swore and raced out the front door. Amora and Sofia looked at each other and hurried to the workroom. Though the room was in complete disarray, Amora saw at once the cabinet with the secret safe had been pushed over. Bottles lay smashed across the floor. The long door at the back of the cabinet hung open. She reached in, then met Sofia’s eyes and shook her head. It was empty.

Jal entered the room, surveying the mess. ‘Are the masks gone?’

Amora nodded.

‘I couldn’t catch them,’ he said. ‘They took off down the street.’

Sofia kneeled and carefully began moving aside shards of broken glass. Amid the mess lay the book that had been hidden away. It had fallen open to its very centre and a bottle lay on its side across one page. The storyteller removed the bottle and brushed glass off the pages, which were completely blank. One hand lingered on the page, stroking it tentatively.

‘It’s wet. They spilled something on it.’ She brought her fingers to her nose. ‘Smells of pisse. How could they desecrate something so precious?’

‘What is it?’ Amora asked.

It was Jal who responded. Sofia appeared too shocked to speak again.

‘The Tale of Tarya. Left behind by one of the original princesses. You know, the seven who were meant to have died in the plague? The rest of the book tells the true story of what happened to them, but these centre pages have been left empty, though I can’t work out why.’

Amora reached her own hand to the book, then changed her mind and picked up the bottle lying beside it. ‘They didn’t desecrate it,’ she said, and held the unstoppered bottle up. ‘Not deliberately anyway. It’s your father’s pisse, Jal.’

‘To clean the marble. Of course. There wouldn’t have been much in here.’

Sofia’s expression shifted from shock to disgust. ‘There was enough,’ she muttered, glancing at the book. Her eyes widened. ‘What … what’s that?’

Leaning over her shoulder, Amora watched as words began to appear on the page. They were pink and faint, but readable.

‘What does it say?’ she asked the storyteller.

‘The blessing of Tarya.’ Sofia looked up at Jal. ‘It’s a ritual.’

~

Time had lost all meaning in this dank dungeon. Mina had been left alone for a long time. She could not tell whether it was a new day or still the same dark, interminable one. Once she had given up the location of the gold mask, Ellechino had left her alone, untouched physically but broken inside, her thoughts whirling with dark torment. Since then no one had entered the cell, not to bring food nor for any other reason. When she could bear it no longer, she had used one corner as a toilet, then gathered as much straw as she could to cover the shameful act. Still, the smell had overtaken the putrid reek of damp.

If only Jal hadn’t told them, back in Andon, how his father’s friend had died, torn to pieces by the Red Assassin, Mina might have held onto the bravery of delusion. But she knew without doubt what Ellechino was capable of. And better than anyone she knew the darkest transformations in Tarya were not illusion, but dangerous reality. That knowledge had robbed her of her strength. Now all she could hope was that by telling him where the mask was being kept, she hadn’t condemned her friends to some terrible fate.

She wondered if her previous confrontation with violence, when she was almost choked to death after the Festival of Lights performance, had somehow cracked what was brave within her so that now, facing Ellechino, it had broken in pieces. The threat from him was beyond any other danger she had known. It turned out the righteous anger that gave her strength only lasted as long as there wasn’t a real possibility of death. Even the desire to keep her friends safe had not stopped her telling Ellechino that Jal had the mask at his house. She didn’t want to die. Especially not torn apart bite by bite by some creature from a nightmare.

It was not giving into fear that made her condemn herself though, but the betrayal of her friends.

A torch had been burning when she was first brought here, but had sputtered out at some point. Mina hugged her legs, her eyes closed against the darkness. At first she had fought off the dark thoughts circling in her mind, but with the light gone, the darkness in her mind joined with the darkness surrounding her, until both seemed to go on forever.

How unforgiving she had been of Dario’s betrayal of her, when he told Uberto of her plans, a lifetime ago. Yet that betrayal seemed such a minor thing now compared to possibly condemning her own friends to be torn apart. And her own inability to face death meant Ellechino would take the gold mask before she even discovered what part it was supposed to play in matters she still didn’t understand. She had been so hopeful of stopping the players and restoring all those they had harmed, but her failure now might make those things impossible.

With a heavy scrape, the door to the dungeon opened. Two men came in, dragging a body between them. They tossed it on the ground, while a third replaced the burnt-out torch and dropped a water flask on the ground. Before Mina could speak, they were gone again. She watched the crumpled figure warily for a minute, suspecting some sort of trick, but when he rolled onto his back and groaned, she hurried over to him.

‘Vincenzo!’

Even in the sputtering torchlight she could make out the flamboyant player who had joined Uberto’s troupe at the same time as Luka. His enormous personality was nowhere to be seen as he shuffled into a hunched, half-sitting position, wincing with each movement. He took Mina’s hands in his and managed a smile that was only a distant echo of his usual hearty laugh.

‘What brings you here, young Mina?’ His voice was a ragged croak. He reached one hand up to her cheek then let it drop again as pain flickered in his eyes. ‘At least it doesn’t look like they’ve hurt you. Or have they?’

Mina reached unconsciously for a bruise that was forming on his cheek, pulling her hand back before making contact. ‘I’m okay. What have they … no. I can see what they’ve done. Why is what matters. Why have they done this to you?’

Vincenzo shrugged. Mina brought the flask to him and he drank from it thirstily. When he spoke again, his voice held some of the warm resonance he used in the playing.

‘They’re trying to round up all the Gazini players. Ciro disappeared a week ago. I think they got him.’

Fear flared in Mina’s chest. ‘Uberto?’

He shook his head. ‘He and Tina disappeared. I think they got word from their daughter before the guards came. I wasn’t so lucky.’

Vincenzo took another swig from the flask and offered it to Mina, who suddenly became aware of her parched mouth. She drank some water then placed it between them.

‘Why are the Council doing all this?’ she asked. ‘And why does the king allow it? I don’t understand what’s going on at all, or who can do anything to make it right. What the players have been doing, stealing dreams and breaking gold threads, seems like an accidental side effect of what they need for the playing, but what the Council of Muses are doing is deliberate.’

‘I’m not sure what the players do is as accidental as you think. Give me a hand? I don’t think I can sit up properly without support.’

He waved weakly at the wall. Mina offered her support and he tried to lean on her to stand, but his leg gave way beneath him and he tumbled to the ground, crying out. After several painful tries they worked out a method to let him shuffle his way to the wall. With a sigh, he leaned against it, more upright than he had been but still hunched. Mina offered him another swig of water, which he took. Then he continued.

‘Do you remember when we arrived in Aurea the first time?’

Mina smiled at the memory. They had ridden together into the city in the early morning. Vincenzo had shown her why the Festival of Lights had got its name, when they stopped at the city gates that stretched like a great bronze spiderweb, watching the first rays of dawn catch the crystals dotting the web like giant droplets of water. As the light hit the crystals, everything had been washed with rainbow lights. It had been one of the most magical times of her life.

‘The gates …’

Vincenzo smiled. ‘You were utterly captivated. But before that, do you remember asking me why I left the Archiari players?’

Mina nodded. ‘And I said maybe one day I’d tell you. I’ve kept it to myself a long time, because what I know is dangerous, but things can’t get much worse for me now, eh darling?’

Despite their dank surroundings, she saw a flash of the old twinkle. Then his smile slipped.

‘Tito Archiari wanted to retire. He had no son, and he told me in confidence his nephew Julio was not up to the task of running the troupe. Having watched them, I suspect it was because Julio was a mediocre player at best, barely able to transform half the time. Tito said he had been watching me, and that I had what it took to be Harlequin. Me!’ He gestured to his long body. ‘Do I look like a Harlequin to you?’

Vincenzo was a tall man, and broad. He wasn’t burdened by a round shape, but he was not lithe muscle like the Harlequins Mina knew.

‘I wouldn’t have thought so.’

‘But it turns out body type is not what it takes. I have a particular gift for Transformation. It doesn’t matter which character, I can convince the audience I am them. I disappear, and the character becomes real.’

Mina nodded, remembering watching Vincenzo onstage. She had been surprised to see how his enormous personality and build could vanish so utterly into a weak, bumbling fool.

‘It was this which made me so attractive, Tito told me.’

Mina c****d her head at the odd word choice. ‘Attractive?’

‘To Mourini.’

Mina’s mouth dropped and she stared at Vincenzo in horror. He leaned forward, his voice as low as possible. Mina leaned in close to hear.

‘Tito Archiari told me I could become a Harlequin and share Mourini’s power. What he knew, I’d know, and what I could do, Mourini would be able to do.’

Mina sat back, still staring.