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Then (Year 63)
Hero was so excited. Her dad was putting on a play that wasn’t boring. Finally!
It was a play for kids called Raizhana. It was about the orcs who ran away from Azgra to become pirates, and there was a pirate girl called Raizhana who had a scimitar and made friends with dolphins. Hero sat next to Mom in the front row and ate roasted chestnuts and asked, “Is it starting yet?”
“Not yet, sweetheart,” said Mom. “The lights haven’t gone down yet.”
“Dad!” cried Hero. He was coming over. There was a man walking with him, and he had a mask, like performers wore on stage. The mask had tear tracks like it was crying, but it was also smiling a little. The man’s eyes were very strange. It looked like there was a dark night sky behind the mask, with two blue stars in it, one for each eye. Was he one of the actors? Hero knew they used illusion magic sometimes.
Dad smiled at her. “Hello, Hero.” He kissed Mom on the cheek. “I can’t stay; curtain’s up in five. I just wanted to introduce you to Bolaire Lathalia. He’s a new patron of the theater—and a new friend.”
“I believe I may have seen you before at the Archanade,” said Mom. She stood and offered a hand. “A pleasure. Elodie D’vyen.”
Master Lathalia took Mom’s hand and bowed deeply over it. “The pleasure is all mine, Mistress D’vyen. And who is the young lady?” As he spoke, the mask moved, as if it were the mask talking instead of the face beneath it.
Mom looked at Hero, but Hero felt shy, so she jammed some chestnut in her mouth so she wouldn’t have to talk. Mom gave her a look that meant she was definitely getting a talk about manners later, and said, “This is our daughter, Hero.”
Hero chewed her mouthful of chestnut and waved.
Dad touched Master Lathalia’s shoulder. “One of the reserved seats is for you. Go sit with them. I’ll find you all after the show.”
Hero was a little scared to sit next to a man with a magic mask. But Mom and Dad weren’t bothered by the mask at all, so maybe it was okay? “Is your mask real or is it illusion magic?” Hero asked him.
“Hero!” Mom scolded. “Be polite!”
“Is your mask real, sir, if you don’t mind me asking, sir?” Hero said.
The mask smiled, just like a real face. Master Lathalia knocked his gloved knuckles against the mask, and they made a thunk sound as they hit ceramic. “I don’t mind at all, Miss D’vyen. The mask is quite real.”
“Do you know why the eyes are like that, sir?” Hero said.
“An excellent question, young lady. I believe the mask has a pocket dimension associated with it, much like a bag of holding. However, I can’t be entirely certain, as extensive experimentation with the eyeholes could, as you might imagine, be deleterious to my well-being.”
Now Hero was really curious. “Are the eyeholes still dimension door things when you take it off?”
“I’m afraid I can’t take it off, not without severe consequences,” said Master Lathalia, and Hero clapped her hand over her mouth to cover her gasp. The mask was a curse! Now she felt very rude indeed. This was like the time she asked Azune why he had that strange birthmark, and Dad told her that she should be nice to people about their bodies they didn’t get to choose.
The lights went down, which meant the play was about to start. Hero whispered to Master Lathalia, “I’m sorry!” then hushed up so she could hear the play.
The play was really good. Raizhana the pirate girl had a dream: she wanted to free Rungjani captives on other ships, but she never got the chance, because her pirate ship attacked merchant ships for their riches, not warships full of captives. But then they raided a merchant ship with two captive Rungjani servant boys, and the pirates took them in, and Raizhana became their friend and taught them how to be pirates, including how to sing a sea shanty:
Masters of sail are we!
There is no god of the sea!
We’re boundless and we’re free!
There is no god of the sea!
In their next raid, the merchant ship they attacked had a warship nearby protecting it. The warship captured the pirate captain, and Raizhana and her new friends had to free her. At the end, the three friends become blood brothers and sister, and promised each other they’d have their own pirate ship one day that would be all about freeing all the Rungjani at sea.
But the play wasn’t the only thing Hero noticed in the theater that night. She also saw the way Master Lathalia watched it.
Mom and Dad brought Hero to kids’ shows all the time. They always said that when she was happy, they were happy, and she knew that was true. But she also knew that they liked their boring grown-up plays better than plays for kids. She often caught them watching her more than they watched the play.
But Master Lathalia didn’t come to Raizhana with a kid. Instead, he watched it the same way a kid would.
When Raizhana taught her new friends and the audience to sing the sea shanty, he sang There is no god of the sea! just like Hero. When the nasty Tansul-worshipping warship captain clapped the pirate captain in irons, Master Lathalia booed just as loudly as the kids in the audience. In the very last scene, when Raizhana and the boys cut their palms and swore to be blood siblings forever, the lights in Master Lathalia’s eyes went huge, and he covered most of his face with his hands to cover his gasp of delight.
Master Lathalia was a grown-up, obviously. He was friends with Dad and he gave money to the theater. But Hero thought that he might kind of be a kid too.
After the actors took their bows, and Mom and Hero and Master Lathalia gave them a standing ovation, Hero turned to him and said, “You watched that like—” She almost said, like a kid, but then realized that might be rude, and she’d already been rude to him before. “You’re good at being an audience, Master Lathalia.”
The stars behind the mask brightened, and the ceramic lips smiled. “Thank you, Miss D’vyen. It’s a skill I take pride in. The audience is very important, you know. The show couldn’t happen without us.”
Then (Year 64)
Hero loved playing dress-up with her sister. Shadia didn’t have much time for games anymore, with all the time she spent in dance and acrobatics class, but today she was up with Hero in Dad’s attic, dressing up as a villain and her minion.
“But that top is ripped!” Hero protested. “Don’t you want to mend it first?”
“I’m a big tough bruiser minion,” said Shadia, flexing. “I’m your enforcer. It’s ripped because of all the fights I get into!” She twirled a trick dagger menacingly, and Hero giggled.
“And my costume isn’t ripped because you do all my dirty work for me!” Hero said. “Oh, that’s cool. Let’s go show Dad and Bolaire!”
Hero rushed down the stairs, taking care not to trip on her long black gown. Bolaire and Dad were in his office, standing over the desk, looking at Dad’s new script that was driving him crazy. “Look, Dad! I’m the Dark Queen of the Eternal Night! And Shadia’s my undead minion!”
Shadia had stuck on some gruesome stage wounds on her neck and face. She leapt and slashed her trick dagger in the air. “I won’t rest until I’ve killed enough warriors to fill my Queen’s undead army!”
Dad looked up from his script and smiled. He said, “Great character design, Hero,” but she didn’t think he was impressed enough by her evil aura, so she pointed dramatically at him.
“I demand this man for my undead army! Get him, Shadia!”
Shadia made a deep undead rattling sound and came at Dad underhand with the trick dagger. When it hit his ribcage, Dad screamed and flailed, and Bolaire smacked a hand to his heart and cried, “Oh no! Not the noble Prince Halandil!” Dad staggered backward into an armchair and collapsed.
“Yeah! Go, Shadia!” Hero cheered. She was really good at fight scenes.
“Bravo, bravo!” Bolaire clapped as loud as he could with gloves on. “That was marvelous, girls. You didn’t just put on your costumes, you inhabit them. I envy you, truly.”
“You can put on costumes, too, Master Lathalia,” said Hero. “Shadia and I could help you choose!”
“I’m already wearing a costume,” said Bolaire, gesturing to his laced black vest and puffy red blouse.
“That’s not a costume, silly, that’s your regular clothes. Come on, Master Lathalia! Don’t you want to be my dark knight? Or my bat monster! There’s bat wings upstairs.”
Bolaire looked first at Dad, who just smiled and gestured toward the attic stairs. Then he looked back and forth at Hero and Shadia, blue lights moving through the dark. “Are you sure? I wouldn’t dream of interrupting your sister time. You’re having so much fun together.”
“This is an official invitation to sister time,” said Shadia. “I really want to see you in a costume.”
Bolaire’s eyes brightened the way they did after one of Dad’s shows, when he was really happy. “I suppose I might as well try out a different character. But no bat monsters, please. I spend far too much time playing the villain.”
“What do you mean, Master Lathalia? Who thinks you’re a villain?” Hero said, already running for the stairs.
“Hero!” Shadia hissed, in the voice that meant Hero had said something stupid.
“Not everyone is understanding about Bolaire’s condition,” Dad said gently, and Hero remembered that just a year ago, she’d been scared by Bolaire’s mask too.
“It’s okay, Master Lathalia,” said Hero. “You can be a noble knight who’s come to defeat us!”
“I’ve always wanted to be a kind and clever knight,” Bolaire said with a smile, and came up to the attic with them.
Times like these, Bolaire reminded Hero strangely of Azune. He always thought that normal things were strange, or too nice for him to have, like a huge diamond necklace in a shop window in Mirzash. Playing dress-up with your family was normal. So why did Bolaire look like they were inviting him to a cave full of magic treasure?
Now (Year 71)
After she got rid of the ashes that had once been a chalkboard full of top-secret plans, Hero found her Uncle Bolaire in his office, writing a few letters. When Hero came in, he signed one of the letters with a flourish, rolled it up, and tied it with a ribbon. “Ah, Hero! Just the woman I wanted to see. Could you leave this letter at Hal’s on your way over to Rozigar? It’s for the Lord Wicander.”
Hero took the letter. “Yes, of course. Do you want me to take those other letters, too?”
Bolaire shook his head. “No. Let’s leave them here. They’re for… they’re in case our plans for tomorrow go awry. If I’m missing the day after tomorrow, come and fetch them then.”
Hero was getting suspicious. Bolaire could be so avoidant sometimes. “Why don’t you take this to Dad’s yourself? Why don’t you give those other letters to Dad too? He’s your best friend!”
Bolaire sighed and rubbed his temples. “You’ve gotten so observant, my dear, and it may save your life very soon, but right now it is inconvenient. Hero, you know what we’re all doing tomorrow is dangerous.”
Hero’s heart clenched. She’d heard their plans. She knew they were dangerous. If something bad happened at the Hallowed Round, Hero herself might not survive to get these letters. “Yeah,” she whispered. She looked at straight at Bolaire, trying to burn the sight of him into her brain in case she never saw him again. “I know.”
“I don’t know if this will make any sense to you,” said Bolaire, “but if I see your father right now… I don’t know if I’ll be able to do what I need to do tomorrow morning.”
Hero didn’t quite know what he meant. She knew it had to do with his friendship with her dad, which was so important to both of them, but she didn’t know exactly what. She took a guess. “You’re going to miss the play.”
Bolaire folded his arms in his lap, and the lights in his eyes went dark for a few moments. “I’m going to miss the play,” he said, sounding genuinely heartbroken. “But I believe the young lord Wicander needs me.”
“But then why should I be the one to get your letters if you…” Hero made herself say it. “If you die? Shouldn’t it be Dad, then?”
Somehow, Bolaire looked even sadder than when he said he was going to miss the play: a tragedy mask come to life. “You must believe me when I say that your father has his reasons, which I entirely understand, but… he doesn’t trust me any longer. And the instructions in those letters must be followed to keep my archive safe, by someone who trusts me enough to follow them.”
Hero’s eyes stung, and to her horror, she started to cry. “Dad doesn’t trust you? You? How?” But then she thought about how Shadia had come to Mom’s house and said that Dad wanted her to stay there instead of his house for a while. She thought about how Dad had been involved in all these secret plans to protect Dol-Makjar, and the only reason she’d been allowed in had been because Bolaire and Professor Mag’nesson had let her. Not Dad.
Did her dad trust anyone anymore?
“He has his reasons,” Bolaire repeated, staring into the middle distance, as if talking to himself instead of Hero. “Your father’s been terribly hurt.”
Hero’s eyes burned. “Thank you, Uncle Bolaire. For letting me be part of this…”
“In my head,” said Bolaire, “I’ve been calling it the Magpie Rebellion. And you were always part of it. I just… didn’t want to pretend you weren’t. That’s what your Uncle Thjazi tried to do, and look how that turned out.” He dragged his hands down his masked face. “I’m sorry, Hero. I shouldn’t have said that. You only just buried him.”
Hero sniffed. “He doesn’t feel all that buried. It’s like he’s still here.” She wiped her eyes. “You’re right. I’m going to be in the audience tomorrow. That means I’m part of it. You’re the one who taught me that.”
“Hal isn’t angry that you were at the meeting, is he? I know he wants you safe.” Bolaire looked worried.
“He’s not mad,” said Hero. “He called me the hero of the hour.”
“And well-deserved, too,” Bolaire said warmly. He stood up from his desk. “If I don’t come back, I trust you to carry on the fight without me. If it all goes horribly wrong, come here, read the letters, follow the instructions, then get out of the city with your mother and sister. I love you, darling.”
Hero clasped him in a quick, fierce hug. “And if I don’t come back from the play, then I’ll walk the Old Path, and maybe you’ll walk it too, and we’ll be Dol-Makjar magpies together and fight over shiny things.”
“You’d make a wonderful magpie, my dear,” Bolaire said, omitting himself, even though she thought he’d make a better one. “But let’s hope you don’t become one quite yet.”