‘Lord Janus wants him to feel special,’ Kalip Rendana had said weeks before, when he’d dropped in unexpectedly to return the script. ‘So he wants him to have a cameo role. A small speaking part.’

‘How small a speaking part?’ Fontagu asked warily.

‘Something near the end. Here, I’ll show you where he’s made the changes.’ Rendana opened the script to one of the later pages and pointed. ‘There, where he’s marked it.’

Fontagu felt suddenly faint. ‘There are lines and lines here. And who is this Calran person?’

‘He’s an incidental character. Whom the Emperor will be playing.’

Fontagu began to read. ‘“Greetings, I am Calran, a wandering hawker, out to do no good. I have seen your fine animals and your lovely wife, and wish to take them all for myself, o lame and blind carpenter.”

‘Oh, this is terrible!’ Fontagu exclaimed. ‘What I mean is, this is terribly good,’ he quickly added as he saw Rendana’s hand go to his belt where he kept his little knife. ‘I expect that I might have to tidy up some of the dialogue a little, but… but I’m a professional, as you know.’

‘Of course,’ Rendana said, his hand still resting on the pommel of his knife.

Fontagu read on, silently this time. It seemed that after a brief conversation between the hawker and Robar that eventually turned into an argument, a swordfight was to break out, in which Calran was to briefly get the upper hand, but in which ultimately he would suffer a fatal blow.

‘Calran’s got to look good, but he has to die in the end,’ Rendana explained. ‘I mean, it’s a classic story, or so I’m told, so this Robar chap has to win. But not too easily.’

‘I see,’ Fontagu said. ‘So I get to kill Florian… Well, Florian’s character, I mean,’ he added with a nervous laugh.

‘That’s correct,’ Rendana said. ‘Lord Janus was anxious to know whether you have one of those stage swords. You know, the ones that look real, but when you push them against something they fold into themselves?’

‘Of course,’ Fontagu said. ‘I’ve got one right here.’ He reached into his personal chest of props and took out his best stage sword, which he waved and flourished about for a moment. ‘As you see, good sir, even from very close up, it appears to the naked eye as a genuine sword with which one might do great harm on the body of an opponent,’ he said in a loud stage voice. ‘But from up close…’ And he lunged forward, taking Rendana completely by surprise, pushing the sword at his abdomen, right to the hilt.

Rendana looked down, his brow furrowed. Then he began to laugh. ‘Oh, yes, I see. That’s very good, isn’t it? Very realistic.’

‘Indeed,’ Fontagu replied, somewhat proudly. He withdrew the sword, and the blade returned to its original position. ‘See how it appears sharp at the tip, but in fact…’ He ran his thumb over the end. ‘Completely harmless.’

‘May I?’ Rendana took the stage sword from Fontagu and swung it about. Then, with a movement so fast that it had made Fontagu flinch and whimper, he buried it to the hilt in Fontagu’s belly. Then he pulled away and swung it around again, grinning like a schoolboy. ‘Yes, that should do nicely. Very good. Well, my actor friend, if you can follow the instructions Lord Janus has put in that script, I suspect that all will be well.’

That had been some time ago, and now, with opening night a mere matter of days away, Fontagu’s hives were starting to itch.

Were the actors ready? He certainly hoped so. He felt that he himself was ready, and he knew that the play was well written. At least it was well written with the exception of the pointless scene towards the end, where Florian would wander onto the stage, get in a meaningless duel with Robar, and die. Part of Fontagu wished he could use a real sword, but he pushed that thought away. He might have committed some bad deeds over the years, but murder wasn’t one of them.

Now, as he stood at the back of the New Paragon playhouse watching the final touches being put on the stage backdrop, he felt a warm tingle in his chest that had nothing to do with hives. He recognised it as the old familiar excitement that he’d not felt for so long. Nerves, but excitement as well.

He felt a warmth on his foot, and looked down. ‘Fargus,’ he said, bending down and picking up the little dog. ‘Are you going to behave on opening night?’

Fargus licked his chin.

‘You need to stay backstage and guard all the props,’ he said. ‘That’s going to be your job, my little friend.’ He scratched the dog’s belly. ‘I’m glad you’ve been around to keep me company. You’ve been the only other intelligent being in this entire catastrophe. Even without training you could have played the role of the dog better than that knucklehead I’ve got in the dog suit. Seriously, Fargus, what do they teach in acting school these days?’

Tab sighed, closed her book and laid it beside her bed. Then she wriggled about, making herself as comfortable as anyone could on a sack stuffed with straw. Opening night of the play was only one sleep away, and she’d finished reading the story just in time.

Oh, the ending! She hadn’t seen that coming at all. The lame carpenter, standing in the woods, hearing his dog going crazy and, knowing that the Gimlet Eye is close, reaching into his beltpouch and taking out his own gimlet. Holding it up as he hears the approaching footsteps of the beast, soft and delicate like a beautiful woman would walk. Seeing the tip of the gimlet sparkling in the moonlight, knowing that to turn around and see the creature would be to doom himself. Turning the point of his gimlet towards himself, directly at his face, and at his one good eye…

Tab shuddered. It was so horrible, and yet so brave, Robar and Fargus fighting the Gimlet Eye, with the blind carpenter following the sounds of his dog as it hung off the leg of the beast. Then she smiled at the memory of the monster falling, and Robar bringing a lock of its lush, wavy hair back to the village.

And finally, the satisfaction as he presented the lock of hair to his horrified wife, telling her that he’d blinded himself completely because he knew that she’d had eyes only for the hunter, but that he, the carpenter, only had eyes for her. That if he couldn’t look into her eyes and see love there, he would rather not see at all.

She sighed again. She really hoped that Fontagu would do the story justice. She felt confident that he would.

Tab awoke suddenly, breathing hard. Had it been a dream? She couldn’t remember dreaming. She’d been awake, thinking about the folk story, and the play, and Fontagu, then she’d been asleep, then… awake, breathless.

Perhaps there had been something more than the nothing of deep sleep. As she dug down into her mind she remembered something. A scream. It had been a scream so wild and full of terror that even the memory of its existence was enough to make her pull her blanket closer around her shoulders.

She played the tiny fragments of the scream over in her mind, again and again, despite how it made her feel. Was it just a scream? Was it simply a sound forced from a throat in a moment of panic or horror? No, as she replayed it she began to hear a name. Her name. ›››Tab! Ta-ab!

She suddenly sat up, straight as the masts that creaked above the city. Her eyes stared into the darkness. ‘Stelka!’

In the next stall, Freya made a sleepy moan of protest at the sudden sound of Tab’s voice.

‘Sorry, Freya,’ Tab whispered, her mind racing. How had Stelka called her? Had she found some way to reach back through the mind of the accommodating rat into Tab’s head? She had been the Chief Navigator – surely with time and effort a magician as good as she could unravel the strange magic of mind-melding and find her way into Tab’s consciousness.