The five Camorri gathered in a circle at the back door, hands and heads together.

“Crooked Warden,” whispered Locke, “our, uh, our protector … our father … sent us here with a task. Don’t let us shame ourselves. Don’t let us shame him, now that we’re so close to pulling it all off. Don’t let us fail these people trusting us to keep them out of the noose. Thieves prosper.”

“Thieves prosper,” the others whispered.

Chantal came to summon them for Moncraine’s final instructions. There was no more time for prayer or planning.

5

THE GREEN flag of Espara came halfway down the pole, then went back up. Locke, watching through a scrollwork grille, signaled to Jasmer, who squared his shoulders and walked out into the noise and the midafternoon blaze of light.

The penny pit was full, and newcomers were still shoving their way in from the gate. Attendance at plays was an inexact affair, and Nerissa Malloria and her boys would be taking coins until nearly the end of the show.

The elevated galleries were surprisingly full of swells and gentlefolk, along with their small armies of body servants, fan-wavers, dressers, and bodyguards. Countess Antonia’s banner-draped box was empty, but Baroness Ezrintaim and her entourage filled the box to its left. Baron Boulidazi’s promised friends and associates filled a lengthy arc of the luxury balconies, and had apparently brought more friends and associates of their own.

Jasmer walked to the center of the stage and was joined by a man and a woman who came up from the crowd. The woman wore the robes of the order of Morgante, and carried an iron ceremonial staff. The man wore the robes of Callo Androno and bore a blessed writing quill. The gods responsible for public order and lore; these were the divinities publicly invoked before a play in any Therin city. The crowd quickly grew silent under their gaze.

“We thank the gods for their gift of this beautiful afternoon,” thundered Jasmer. “The Moncraine-Boulidazi Company dedicates this spectacle to Antonia, Countess Espara. Long may she live and reign!”

Silence held while the priests made their gestures, then returned to the crowd. Moncraine turned and began walking back to the attiring chambers, and the crowd burst once more into babble and shouting.

Calo and Galdo went smoothly onto the stage, sweeping past Moncraine on either side of him. Locke shook with anxiety. Gods above, there were no more second chances.

“Look at these scrawny gilded peacocks!” yelled a groundling, a man whose voice carried almost as well as Jasmer’s had. The penny pit roared with laughter, and Locke banged his head against the grille.

“Hey, look who it is!” shouted Galdo. “Don’t you recognize him, Brother?”

“Faith, how could I not? We were up half the night teaching new tricks to his wife!”

“Ah! Peacocks!” roared the heckler over the laughter of the folk around him. He seized the arm of a tall, bearded man beside him and raised it high. “Ask anyone here, it’s no wifeI keep at home!”

“Now this explains much,” cried Galdo. “The fellow is so meekly endowed we mistookhim for a woman!”

Locke tensed. In Camorr men were coy about laying with other men, and also likely to throw punches for less. It seemed Esparans were more sanguine in both respects, though, for the heckler and his lover laughed as loud as anyone.

“I heard the strangest rumor,” yelled Calo, “that a play was to be performed this afternoon!”

“What? Where?” said Galdo.

“Right where we’re standing! A play that features lush young women and beautiful young men! I don’t know, Brother … do you suppose these people have any interest in seeing such a thing?”

The groundlings roared and applauded.

“It’s got love and blood and history!” shouted Galdo. “It’s got comely actors with fine voices! Oh, it’s got Jasmer Moncraine, too.”

Laughter rippled across the crowd. Sylvanus, peering out his own grille nearby, chortled.

“Come with us now,” shouted the twins in unison. Then they threaded their words together, pausing and resuming by unfathomable signals, trading passages and sentences so that there were two speakers and one speaker at the same time:

“Move eight hundred years in a single breath! Give us your hearts and fancies to mold like clay, and we shall make you witnesses to murder! We shall make you attestants to true love! We shall make you privy to the secrets of emperors!

“You see us wrong, who see with your eyes, and hear nothing true, though straining your ears! What thieves of wonder are these poor senses …”

While they declaimed, bit players in red cloaks marched silently onto the stage, wooden spears held at cross-guard. Two carried out the low bench that would serve as Sylvanus’ throne.

“Defy the limitations of our poor pretending,” said the twins at last, “and with us jointly devise and receive the tale of Aurin, son and inheritor of old Salerius! And if it be true that sorrow is wisdom’s seed, learn now why never a wiser man was emperor made!”

Calo and Galdo bowed to the crowd, and withdrew with grins on their faces, chased by loud applause.

Eight hundred people watching, give or take.

Now they expected to see a prince.

Locke fought down the cold shudder that had taken root somewhere between his spine and his lungs, and wrapped himself in his red cloak. He was seized by that sharp awareness that only came when he was walking into immediate peril, and imagined that he could feel every creak of the boards beneath his boots, every drop of sweat as it rolled down his skin.

Jenora placed Locke’s crown of bent wire and paste gems over his red head-cloth. Sylvanus, Jasmer, and Alondo were already in position, watching him. Locke took his place beside Alondo, and together they walked out into the white glare of day and the maw of the crowd.

6

IT WAS almost like fighting practice, brief explosions of sweat and adrenaline followed by moments of recovery and reflection before darting into the fray again.

At first Locke felt the regard of the crowd as a hot prickling in every nerve, something at war with every self-preservation instinct he’d ever developed skulking about Camorr. Gradually he realized that at any given instant half the audience was as likely to be looking at another actor, or at some detail of the stage, or at their friends or their beer, as they were to be staring at him. This knowledge wasn’t quite the same as a comforting shadow to hide in, but it was enough to let him claw his way back to a state of self-control.

“You’re doing well enough,” said Alondo, slapping him on the back as they gulped lightly-wined water between scenes.

“I started weak,” said Locke. “I feel I’ve got the thread now.”

“Well, that’s the secret. Finish strong and they’ll forgive anything that came before as the mysteries of acting. Mark how Sylvanus seems more deft with every bottle he pours into himself? Let confidence be our wine.”

“ Youdon’t need bracing.”

“Now there you have me wrong, Lucaza. Pretend to ease long enough and it looks the same as ease. Feels nothing like it, though, let me assure you. My digestion will be tied in knots before I’m five and twenty.”

“At least you’re convinced you’ll live to five and twenty!”

“Ah, now, what did I just tell you about feigning outward ease? Come, that’s Valedon being hauled off to his death. We’re on again.”

So the plot unwound, implacable as clockwork. Aurin and Ferrin were dispatched on their clandestine errand to infiltrate the thieves of Therim Pel, Aurin was struck dumb by his first glimpse of Amadine, and Ferrin confided his premonitions of trouble to the audience, some of whom laughed and shouted drunken advice at him.

A bit player in white robe and mask drifted into the shadows of the stage pillars, representing Valedon, first in the chorus of phantasma. Aurin and Ferrin set out to win the confidence of the thieves by brazenly robbing Bertrand the Crowd, who all but vanished into the role of an elderly noble. Alondo demanded Bert’s purse in the over-considerate language of the court, and while the audience tittered, Bert barked, “Who speaks these words like polished stones? Who lays his threats on silk like fragile things? You are drunks, you are gadabout boys, playing at banditry! Turn sharp and find your mothers, boys, or I’ll have you over my knee to make bright cherries of your arses!”