Chapter 9: Crash Coursing
Tarvi, Mathal, Moris, and Gorvio arrived at the Limehouse in the early hours of the morning to find three nobles in the typical heavy velvet, frothy lace, and glaring shinies already on stage. Nonon clapped her hands and introduced their more well-to-do castmates.
"This is Calseinica Nymmis, she/her, who'll be performing with you in the trenches as Ilsandra, Larazod's love interest."
The petite Chelish woman smiled warmly and curtsied with the grace of a dancer.
"Please, call me Calseinica. I've been told the roles of greatest danger bring the greatest glory, so please take care of me."
Nonon moved on to one of two nobles with Taldan heritage, the first tan, grim-faced, and somewhere in their late thirties.
"This is Umberto Ulvauno, he/him, our great antagonist, the conniving lawyer Montigny Haanderthan."
"I will be addressed as Councilman Haanderthan and nothing less."
He jabbed a white-gloved finger at Tarvi then drew it across his neck like the edge of a white-gloved knife.
Mathal stepped in front of Tarvi, who stared at him aghast.
"Woah, no. Inappropriate."
Chelon glared daggers from her shoulder as she'd failed merging spell.
"My dear, Ulvauno is what we in thespian circles call a method actor," said the second, Taldan-heritage noble, a short and very heavy-set blond who'd caked enough makeup on their face to obscure both their age and any defining features. "So long as their stain upon the acting world produces divisive performances and outright scandal, we will never be rid of their ilk. As for me, I'm Delour Aulamaxa, she/her, an honest talent."
"Indeed, thank you," said Nonon. "Delour will be our chorus and narrator. Now, I trust you've all read your scripts because I'll be working with the established talent today. You will go with Millech and Vesta to be fitted for your costumes. Practice while you're waiting."
They did no such thing. Vesta insisted that they went to the staff only washroom for a bath, and Millech outright refused to measure them until they did. Tarvi, Mathal, and Moris, who hadn't been able to afford a bath for over a month, took their time in their sudsy wooden tubs. Gorvio did as well despite being much cleaner. Moris fell asleep in his, prompting Tarvi to reach other and cast a spell of water breathing on him to prevent any pre-performance fatalities.
It was well into mid-morning by the time that they left the bathing tubs. Vesta and Millech took Tarvi and Moris for fitting first. Mathal and Gorvio waited in the Limehouse's green room, a soft-furnitured lounge painted an almost garish lime green.
Gorvio removed his boots and laid down on one of the heavy, padded sofas and held his red booklet up at arm's length. Mathal set Chelon on the dark, hardwood coffee table and sat on the sofa opposite Gorvio's. She opened her script with her dialog indicated in yellow. After stumbling through her first lines a few times, she took a pen from the centerpiece stationary set and began crossing out words.
By the time that Tarvi and Millech returned three hours later, Mathal's booklet was more red than yellow. Gorvio's laid over his face, the pages rustling with his deep, slumbering breaths.
Vesta shook her head even as half her mouth curved in an amused smile.
"Mathal, follow me, please."
She took Mathal without Chelon to a closet the size of a room lined floor to ceiling with costumes on racks, shoes on shelves, and hats on sculpted but faceless busts. A nose-tickling odor of white powder spread from a large vanity at the back to permeate the entire room. Mathal stepped onto a black X in front of the mirror.
"You can keep your undergarments, but everything else has to go."
Mathal flung her sweat-stained, sweat-stained layers onto the floor for the second time in twenty-four hours. Vesta pulled out a tape measure and started from the top with the circumference of her skull. Her fingers were dry and cool.
"What are you smiling about?" asked Vesta, not unkindly and inches from her face.
"Nothing much. On an unrelated note, you seem really nice. And beautiful."
"I've also chosen a life of celibacy," Vesta chuckled, raising a red metal pentagram at the end of her rosary.
"Same here."
"Really? Are you part of the church here?"
"I've been trying to stay away from religions recently."
"Well, then I'll keep the proselytizing down to a minimum."
The measuring only took half an hour. The true time sink of the fitting was the makeup test. For the next two hours, Vesta applied, removed, and reapplied makeup to make Mathal's features pop while being true to the torturer who had a change of heart. Vesta settled on a gray monochrome.
She crouched down beside Mathal and caught her eye in the vanity mirror.
"How does it look?"
"Finally, everyone can see how tired I am."
"Honestly, I think that's the real reason Drovalid changes sides. A career torturer? Ignoring all that pain has got to be a drain. Maybe he's inspired, maybe. Maybe it's just a long overdue relief."
"Not exactly an inspiring hero."
"Funny, I think quite the opposite. Who isn't tired?"
Everyone was by the time that Vesta and Millech finally released Mathal and Gorvio, faces scrubbed. With less than an hour of daylight remaining, Nonon dismissed them all for the night.
Moris raised a hand.
"Would you mind if I just slept here?"
"In the Limehouse?" Nonon scoffed incredulously. "There's no food! No heat! No beds!"
"It would mean Moris would be here bright and early for practice," said Tarvi. "Before dawn, even."
"Indeed! Well, would anyone else like to suffer for their art like a true artist?"
"It's funny you mention that, seeing as I'm needed at the Courthouse tonight for that very same reason," said Ulvauno.
"I'll stay with you," said Calseinica, taking his hand. "I've always wanted to try a lock-in-it'll be like we're very unfortunate robbers."
"Pass," said Mathal, Gorvio, and Delour.
Tarvi followed them out of the theater with a little wave behind her back.
-/-
The heavy velvet curtains of darkest lime rose and parted to reveal Ulvauno in a white, powdered wig and black court regalia looming above the kneeling forms of Tarvi, Moris, and Gorvio, all of whom were in their daily wear.
Calseinica, draped in yesterday's silk, beads, and bangles stood at stage right. Delour stood beside her dressed in an entirely different set of finery than yesterday's, the only similarity being that her face remained obscured.
At stage left, a hulking devil summoned at Vesta's call from Hell itself grasped a spiked truncheon in his red, leathery hands. A spotlight opened over him angled by Millech in the rafters, the ash-tipped tentacles of the beard below his lipless, human-toothed maw writhed.
"Order in the Tribunal!" he hissed in lilting Infernal that echoed through the theater. "Order in the Tribunal. The Court of His Honor Paraduke Montigny Haanderthan, Black Tongue of Asmodeus, Magistrate Maleficarum, now holds session. All rise."
"Cut! Cut!" Nonon shouted through a magicked loudspeaker. "Where the devil is Mathal?"
She leaned out past the devil bailiff's elbow, script booklet in hand.
"No! No! No! When I say right, that's stage right!"
She jogged over to Calseinica and Delour's side to find a white square on the floor empty except for a white X. That made a lot more sense.
"Imps. I'm working with imps. Places everyone. Millech, the curtains, if you please."
After the bailiff's call to order, a second spotlight opened over Ulvauno, the beam so thin and precise that it left him as much in shadow as it did light.
"Be seated, members of the Court," he boomed in grand, authoritative Common. "Today this court seeks truth, or at least shadows thereof, from one Larazod Rilsane, member of a once gloried house, of recent fallen in Asmodeus's regard. The accused stands on several counts of failed conspiracy, evidenced thereof by the industrious interrogations of the court's own Seeker, Drovalid Vorclune."
A third light beamed over Mathal, now in place to receive it.
"Service to Asmodeus's ever-darkening glory...is never without risk of menace, betrayal, and threat of doom."
The light and shadow turned Ulvauno's smirk to the ghastly, jawless grin of a skull that remained only for a moment. The whole stage bloomed into light, fading his look from monstrous to human.
"You hereby stand accused, Larazod, along with your ill-seeming compatriots, of conspiracy to undertake grievous harm to the institution of this tribunal, namely myself, Paraduke Montigny Haanderthan. How answer thee these charges, Larazod of House Rilsane? Speak! And know that lies are my closest friends. They'll betray you before I. Speak the truth or do worse than die!"
After several seconds of silence, Tarvi elbowed Gorvio beside her. Nonon clapped her hand and loudspeaker over her face.
"Sorry, long night," said Gorvio. "Larazod, m'boy, don't say anything until a real lawyer gets here."
"CUT! Gorvio, what the [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] are you doing?"
"Ad-lib. It's all the rage at the taverns-"
"You have a script! Read the [redacted] script!"
Nonon roared to the ceiling-ed heavens and stalked down the front row aisle. She stopped halfway and hustled back to her seat.
"Fine, let's just move on. Tybain, line."
"He wants precious golden-yoked truth? Give him more than he can choke down," said Moris. "Let him that judges false be judged by wraiths—smote by his own brand shall he fall."
Nonon pumped her fist and nodded the players onward. Soon enough, Calseinica and Delour were giving Mathal nods of their own. She allowed herself a single shudder to release her nerves, but her gut remained nodded as she walked to the white X downstage.
"Good Keeper of Pain, Tormentor of Liars and Demonsuckling Miscreants, we are honored by your presence," said Ulvauno with a bow and a flourish. "Show these supplicants the favor of your stinging lash, and with rack and fire, purge lies from their lips."
"Magistrate Maleficarum, I come before you a simple...a simple..."
She checked her booklet, but she'd marked out all the words save for the very last line.
"I shall begin our first trial."
"CUT! Did you forget how to read?"
She almost wished that she had or at least shredded the pages for Chelon's litter.
"It was too much to remember, so I marked out some of the lines."
"Oh for the love of-give me your script."
Nonon's face darkened to red then a deep purple over the pages. Three acts in, she slammed the booklet shut, roaring. She ripped it word from word and cast the shreds into the air. They fell slowly, white and red, as she huffed from exertion.
"Is. This. What you think of our art?"
"No! I just-it's too much for me to remember in four days."
"Three days-there's a full dress rehearsal before the performance, with a paying audience, mind you, so you had better start [redacted] applying yourself! I'd rather shutdown the whole thing than have one of my players be seen reading on stage!"
"Can we go back a sec," said Tarvi. "If someone dies during the dress rehearsal-"
"No, no, no. The tortures are far too dangerous even to practice during these dry reads. You'll only see them on the day of the actual performance. Now, can we continue or shall I expire here in my seat?"
Tarvi shuffled over on her knees and passed her blue booklet to Mathal.
"Thanks."
Chelon gave her curdled guts an encouraging radiance.
"Magister Maleficarum-"
