For a Muse of Fire Read online

  Dedication

  To the mad ones

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Cast of Characters

  Prologue

  Act 1

  Chapter One

  Act 1, Scene 2

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Act 1, Scene 5

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Act 1, Scene 9

  Act 1, Scene 9 (Continued)

  Chapter Seven

  Act 1, Scene 11

  Act 2

  Chapter Eight

  Act 2, Scene 13

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Act 2, Scene 19

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Act 3

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Act 3, Scene 29

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Act 3, Scene 31

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Act 3, Scene 32

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Heidi Heilig

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Cast of Characters

  The Ros Nai

  Jetta Chantray. A shadow player.

  Samrin Chantray. Her father, a singer from a long line of shadow players.

  Meliss Chantray. Her mother, a flautist and drummer.

  Akra Chantray. Her brother, once a shadow player, who left to join the armée during the famine known as The Hungry Years.

  The Denizens of Le Perl

  Leo Rath. The mixed-race proprietor of Le Perl, a show hall in Luda.

  Cheeky Toi. A dancer at Le Perl.

  Eve Ning. A dancer at Le Perl.

  Tia LaLarge. A singer at Le Perl.

  Mei Rath. Leo’s mother, a chanteuse and the owner of Le Perl before she died.

  The Aquitans

  General Julian Legarde. The leader of the Aquitan armée in Chakrana and half brother to Le Roi Fou, emperor of Aquitan.

  Capitaine Xavier Legarde. His son, trying to fill his father’s shoes.

  Theodora Legarde. The general’s daughter, called La Fleur d’Aquitan, considered the most beautiful woman in Chakrana and engaged to Raik Alendra, the Boy King.

  Eduard Dumond. The armée questioneur. A torturer.

  Lieutenant Armand Pique. A veteran of the long occupation of Chakrana.

  Antoine “Le Fou.” The emperor of Aquitan, obsessed with shadow plays.

  At the Capital

  Siris Kendi. The proprietor of Le Livre, an inn in Nokhor Khat.

  Raik Alendra. The Boy King and last of his line, whose older brothers were slaughtered during La Victoire.

  Prologue

  Some people say that all the world’s a stage.

  1

  But here, a shaky scaffold in the paddies

  Can hold a universe inside an hour.

  For on this humble platform of bamboo

  A shadow player paints an epic tale.

  5

  She works behind the silk, and at her back

  The flames throw embers at the velvet sky.

  Sweat beads her brow, but triumph lights her eyes

  As darkness dances for the fiery muse.

  Across the pale swath of silken scrim

  10

  Her shadows cast a story like a spell:

  Great dragons battle tooth and nail with wolves,

  A humble peasant takes a prince’s throne,

  The gods themselves, of life, and death, and knowledge

  Walk among the mortals that they serve.

  15

  Beyond the veil of silk there is the crowd

  And in her world, they can forget their own:

  The way the foreign merchants seem to prosper,

  Their fortunes tantalizing, out of reach.

  The rebels stalking all sides in the jungle.

  20

  The armée men, too quick to draw their guns.

  Better to escape inside a story.

  For most, it is the only way they can.

  So for an hour the audience is rapt.

  A hundred people laugh and cry as one.

  25

  Applause comes like the gust of monsoon rain

  That falls upon the thirsty, eager earth.

  They cheer for her—the master of the shadows—

  A girl who’d leave this broken land behind

  Like ash and eggshells from a phoenix, rising,

  30

  Or the tattered body of a soul set free.

  Act 1

  Chapter One

  The most thrilling moments in life are when everything comes together.

  The delicious chords when harmony joins melody. The way a scrap of leather, a shaft of light, and a clever player can make a shadow come alive. Or the roar of an audience after a show—when they become a creature with many heads and one heart.

  Sefondre, the Aquitans call it—to coalesce. I love that word. Madame Audrinne once used it to describe our performance as she toasted us in the parlor of her plantation. I’ve remembered it ever since.

  Will it happen tonight at La Fête des Ombres? The signs are promising. The weather is holding clear—just right for the outdoor stages. Papa’s voice is rich and steady as it floats through our roulotte’s carved scrollwork; he is singing a story song as he drives. Beside him on the bench, Maman keeps perfect time on the thom. Inside, I direct the little shadow play that flickers on the silken scrim that makes up one side of our roulotte. A thick stack of flyers lies next to me, ready to tout tonight’s show. And I’m wearing my best costume—a scarlet wrap with ruffled edges, a red silk shawl draped artfully over the rippled scar on my shoulder, and a striped corset in a nod to Aquitan fashion. My dark hair is swept into a twist, the stray ends patted down with a touch of oil, my eyes smudged with bone black and my lips with lucky red. A compelling picture for the Aquitans in the audience: local color, foreign polish.

  Everything is nearly perfect. All except for the ghost of a kitten that won’t stop pouncing on my fantouches.

  I don’t know where she came from, or where her body is. The little arvana must have crept into our roulotte when we stopped for a quick meal on the edge of town—tempted by our food, no doubt. Then again, does it matter why or where? There is no shortage of spirits in Chakrana. The more pressing question is, how can I get her to leave?

  Being easily distracted is one of the tamest parts of my malheur, and I can’t afford any distractions tonight. Not at La Fête des Ombres.

  “Shoo,” I whisper for the third time, fluttering the stack of flyers at her, but she only scampers behind one of my pillows. Spirits usually aren’t so persistent—unless they smell an offering. But I have put away the rice and the incense too—nor am I about to offer her any blood.

  At least she isn’t interfering with the play itself. Her little paws, formed of flickering orange flame, pass right through the silk and leather of my fantouches, my shadow puppets. The souls I’ve tucked inside them ignore her better than I do. They dance in the air, between the scrim and the palm-oil lantern, going through their choreogr
aphy with minimal direction from me.

  They know the play by rote. It’s the one we perform every time our roulotte crosses into a village—a traditional folktale about long-lost lovers meeting under the moonlight. A little taste of our skill, a way to drum up an audience as we travel through town. The two lovers are played by jointed leather dolls no larger than my hand and ensouled with the spirits of hummingbirds; the moon is a disk of gold silk stretched over a circle of green bamboo, buoyed up by the spirit of a carpenter bee. But I can’t take my eyes off the kitten’s ghost as she bounds back and forth across the floor of the roulotte.

  Thankfully, I’m the only one who can see her; she casts neither light nor shadow to the small audience we’ve already gathered. I catch glimpses of them through the scrollwork: a rambunctious pack of Chakran children, barefoot on the road, a pair of older men walking slowly side by side. A modest group, but there is delight on their faces as they watch the graceful dance of light and dark: the lovers meet and part and meet again, moving in time to the music, and all without stick or string. Just as it says on the flyers. That is what sets us apart from all the other troupes in Chakrana, why some people say the Ros Nai is the best shadow troupe in the country—maybe even the empire.

  I grimace as the kitten starts to climb the scrim: the praise might not be so effusive if the audience knew how I controlled my fantouches. Souls and spirits are the realms of monks and their magic, and all the old ways are forbidden ever since La Victoire, when the armée pulled Le Trépas from his bloody altar and imprisoned him in his own dark temple. If they knew what I was doing, I could be thrown in the cell beside him. Though it chafes, Maman’s refrain is the most important line I’ve ever learned: never show, never tell.

  We keep our secrets close. There is a latch on both sides of the door to the roulotte, and when we perform on stage, my parents guard the wings. Despite the danger, I can’t afford to stop. When my brother joined the armée, my parents and I had to find a way to keep performing without him—especially after his letters suddenly ceased, along with the money he was sending home each quarter. No one would pay to watch a show with only one puppeteer—not if we were using the traditional methods.

  But even if we could, I don’t want to go back to the way things were. There is a thrill in fame. Besides, who would look at me and guess what I could do? I am no tattooed monk, no nécromancien, no power-hungry monster who thinks herself a god. I am just a shadow player. Le Trépas and I are nothing alike.

  The three-strike rhythm of Maman’s thom brings me back to the play—this is the part where the lovers lose each other.

  “Cross left,” I whisper to one fantouche—or rather, to the soul inside her—and she obeys. She must—I’m the one who gave her life. But the kitten follows, clawing at the trailing silk of her dress. “Go away! Not you,” I add quickly to the soul of the bee; slowly, the moon drifts back to the center of the scrim.

  This has gone on long enough. I can’t let the kitten’s antics throw me off. I have to concentrate—not only on this little shadow play, but on tonight’s performance: The Shepherd and the Tiger, on the main stage at La Fête des Ombres. The most important performance of my life, though I’m trying desperately to pretend it’s just another show. There are whole minutes where I have myself convinced. I am a very good actor.

  But it comes back—it creeps in, just like my malheur: the knowledge that our performance has to be magnificent. We need sefondre tonight. We must do well—no, better than well. We must be the best.

  For just like our sugar and sapphires, shadow plays are prized in the empire. Usually, the rare troupe that can tour must gather quite a sum to make the passage across the Hundred Days Sea. But this year, in honor of the Boy King’s eighteenth birthday, he will be taking a grand tour to Aquitan, and General Legarde will be choosing the best shadow player to send with him. There, in a land of light and luxury, Legarde’s half brother—Le Roi Fou, the Mad Emperor—is enamored of fantouches d’ombres. They say he pays a lead player their weight in gold for a single performance, and that once he smashed his throne for kindling when his favorite troupe ran low on fuel for light.

  They also say he bathes in a magic spring, and the water is the only thing that keeps his illness at bay. While gold is tempting, we have that here in Chakrana. What we do not have is a cure for my own malheur—that thing only an emperor might dare name madness. Of all the things that stand in my way, the ghost of a kitten cannot be what stops me.

  So I draw out the pin that holds my shawl over my shoulder and prick the pad of my thumb. Blood wells like vermilion ink, and all around me, stacked on their shelves and bound in their burlap bags, my fantouches rustle. Even the lovers shudder—the moon trembles—though they do not stray from their positions by the scrim. They have had their taste of my blood—it’s what binds them to their new skins, what makes them obey. But that doesn’t mean they don’t hunger for more.

  The kitten spirit hungers too. At last she turns from her pursuit of the golden moon.

  Lowering my hand gently to the stack of flyers, I draw the symbol of life on the top page—a line and a dot, like the sun on the horizon. A path to a new body for a hungry soul. Already others are drifting in through the scrollwork, glowing like embers, drawn by the scarlet liquor of my blood: vana, the littlest spirits—flies or mosquitoes, once. But the kitten is faster. She pounces, and with a flash of light, her arvana disappears into the page.

  At last. Later, after the show, I’ll burn the paper to set her free. Then she can fade after three days and find rebirth like any normal soul. For now, I can fold her up and tuck her under a pillow. But the page slips from my fingers.

  Usually souls take a moment to adjust to new bodies, but the kitten is not wasting time. The flyer leaps into the air as though caught by a breeze, bounding once more at my fantouches. And this time, in her new, unwieldy paper skin, she blots out half of the show. Frantic, I grab for her, my own shadow falling over the lovers—an arm, impossibly long—before I can snatch the flyer out of the light of the little oil lantern. Then a knock on the front panel of the wagon makes me jump.

  “Jetta?” Maman’s voice. Only now do I realize my parents have played the last notes. The show is over. Quickly I crush the flyer in my fist, snuffing the lantern as Maman slides the panel open. She peers into the gloom, but with my fist tightly shut, there is nothing for her to see—not now. Still, her eyes are suspicious. Does she know? “We’re almost there.”

  “Yes, Maman,” I say, but she doesn’t close the panel. The paper tickles my palm. “Do you need something?”

  She scrutinizes my dress, my face, my hair. Then she casts her eyes to the pile of puppets on the floor beside me, the fantouches set aside for tonight’s performance. They are still bound tight in burlap and silk—the shepherd, the tiger, the herd of sheep. I breathe easier now; those spirits, she knows about. “I need the performance to go well,” she says at last. As if I didn’t know.

  “It will, Maman,” is all I say.

  She looks about to say more, but then Papa’s voice floats in, gently chiding. “Meliss, stop distracting her.”

  Maman bits her lip, but she nods, the lines around her eyes deepening as she gives me one last look. “It’s almost time for the flyers. Get ready.”

  At last she shuts the panel, but inside I curse. Where had the hour gone? I push the crumpled flyer under a pillow to deal with later. Then I gather the lovers and the moon, tucking them into their little burlap sacks. Had they even performed the ending? Quickly I press my eye against the scrollwork and curse again, this time aloud. No wonder Maman was worried. We have lost what little audience we’d gathered.

  No matter. They aren’t the ones we need. At least that’s what I tell myself, though any performer knows that the bigger the audience, the better the show.

  Pushing the thought from my head, I pull the lever that closes the wooden shutters over the scrim. At least now there is nothing left to distract me. Taking one last look in the mirror,
I pin my scarf back over my scarred shoulder as I run through tonight’s play in my head. I can’t afford to get it wrong. It is another old tale—the swineherd and the tiger—but I’ve rewritten it just for the festival. New words flowing over familiar notes.

  In my version, the swineherd has become a shepherd to honor General Legarde—the Shepherd of Chakrana, they call him since La Victoire, though we do not have sheep in our country. I hope my sheep fantouches look convincing. Still, the leader of the rebellion is the Tiger, so the story hasn’t changed much. But a slip of the tongue would humiliate us—lucky it is Papa who sings the story songs. He never slips. I’m told they mock swineherds in Aquitan, calling them simpletons. I don’t know why. Pigs are very clever. Back in Lak Na—our home during the rainy season, when the fields were green and the roads too rutted to travel—not a week went by but some brassy old sow escaped her pen to wallow in the cool mud of the paddies and gorge on black crabs.

  The memory brings a smile to my lips—my brother and I, splashing and shouting through the pale green rice to chase pigs away from our own dinner. But my humor fades quickly. Akra is gone. And I’ll never see Lak Na again either—at least, not if tonight goes well.

  “Jetta!” A knock on the front panel, and Papa’s voice. “It’s time!”

  Turning from the mirror, I gather up the flyers. We don’t usually use them—so few Chakrans can read, at least in the villages. But this is Luda. This is La Fête.

  This is the most important show of my life.

  I pin my lips into my best smile and open the back door of the roulotte. The ruddy light of sunset floods in, warm on my skin. We have passed right through town. Fallow fields unroll before me on either side of the road. Half the year, they hold rice; I can still see the earthen walls that regulate the river water. But now it looks as though someone planted bullets in the dusty earth, and up sprang an encampment d’armée.