Glokta glanced across at Sult. A surprise, from the Arch Lector? Bad news for somebody.
The heavy red curtains of the stage rolled slowly back. They revealed an old man lying on the boards, his white garment daubed with colourful blood. A broad canvas behind depicted a forest scene beneath a starry sky. It reminded Glokta rather unpleasantly of the mural in the round room. The room beneath Severard’s crumbling pile by the docks.
A second old man swept on from the wings: a tall, slender man with remarkably fine, sharp features. His head was shaved bald and he had grown a short white beard, but Glokta recognised him immediately. Iosiv Lestek, one of the city’s most respected actors. He gave a mannered start as he noticed the bloody corpse.
“Oooooooh!” he wailed, spreading his arms wide in an actor’s approximation of shock and despair. It was a truly enormous voice, loud enough to make the rafters shake. Confident that he had the undivided attention of the chamber, Lestek began to intone his lines, hands sweeping through the air, towering passions sweeping across his face.
The old actor threw back his head, and Glokta saw tears sparkling in his eyes. A neat trick, to cry on demand like that. A lonely drop trickled slowly down his cheek, and the audience sat spellbound. He turned once again to the body.
He threw himself down on his knees and beat upon his ageing breast.
Lestek looked slowly up towards the audience, slowly clambered to his feet, his expression shifting from deepest sorrow to grimmest determination.
The actor’s eyes flashed fire as he flicked out his robe and strode from the stage to rapturous applause. It was a condensed version of a familiar piece, often performed. Although rarely so well. Glokta was surprised to find himself clapping. Quite the performance so far. Nobility, passion, command. A great deal more convincing than another fake Bayaz I could mention. He sat back in his chair, easing his left leg out under the table, and prepared to enjoy the show.
Logen watched with his face screwed up in confusion. He guessed that this was one of the spectacles that Bayaz had spoken of, but his grip on the language wasn’t good enough to catch the details.
They swept up and down the stage with much sighing and waving of their hands, dressed in bright costumes and speaking in some kind of chant. Two of them were supposed to be dark-skinned, he thought, but were clearly pale men with black paint on their faces. In another scene, the one playing Bayaz whispered to a woman through a door, seeming to plead with her to open it, only the door was a piece of painted wood stood up on its own in the middle of the stage, and the woman was a boy in a dress. It would have been easier, Logen thought, to step around the piece of wood and speak to him or her directly.
Logen was sure of one thing, though—the real Bayaz was seriously displeased. He could feel his annoyance mounting with each scene. It reached a teeth-grinding peak when the villain of the piece, a big man with a glove and an eye-patch, pushed the boy in the dress over some wooden battlements. It was plain that he or she was meant to have fallen a great distance, even though Logen could hear him hit something soft just behind the stage.
“How fucking dare they?” the real Bayaz growled under his breath. Logen would have got all the way out of the room if he could’ve, but he had to be content with shuffling his chair towards West, as far from the Magus’ fury as possible.
On the stage, the other Bayaz was battling the old man with the glove and the eye-patch, although they fought by walking round in circles and talking a lot. Finally the villain followed the boy off the back of the stage, but not before his adversary took an enormous golden key from him.
“There’s more detail here than in the original,” muttered the real Bayaz, as his counterpart held up the key and spouted some more verse. Logen was little further on when the performance came to a close, but he caught the last two lines, just before the old actor bowed low:
“My fucking old arse it wasn’t,” hissed Bayaz through gritted teeth, while fixing a grin and clapping enthusiastically.
Glokta watched Lestek take a few last bows as the curtains closed on him, the golden key still shining in his hand. Arch Lector Sult rose from his chair as the applause died.
“I am so glad you enjoyed our little diversion,” he said, smiling smoothly round at the appreciative gathering. “I do not doubt that many of you have seen this piece before, but it has a special significance this evening. Captain Luthar is not the only celebrated figure in our midst, there is a second guest of honour here tonight. None other than the subject of our play—Bayaz himself, the First of the Magi!” Sult smiled and held out his arm towards the old fake on the other side of the room. There was a gentle rustling as every guest turned from the Arch Lector to look at him.
Bayaz smiled back. “Good evening,” he said. A few of the worthies laughed, suspecting some further little game perhaps, but Sult did not laugh with them and their merriment was short lived. An uneasy silence descended on the hall. A deadly silence, perhaps.
“The First of the Magi. He has been with us in the Agriont now for several weeks. He and a few… companions.” Sult glanced down his nose at the scarred Northman, and then back to the self-styled Magus. “Bayaz.” He rolled the word around his mouth, allowing it to sink into his listeners’ ears. “The first letter in the alphabet of the old tongue. First apprentice of Juvens, first letter of the alphabet, is that not so, Master Bayaz?”
“Why, Arch Lector,” asked the old man, still smirking, “have you been checking up on me?” Impressive. Even now, when he must sense the game will soon be over, he sticks to his role.
Sult was unmoved however. “It is my duty thoroughly to investigate anyone who might pose a threat to my King or country,” he intoned stiffly.
“How fearsomely patriotic of you. Your investigations no doubt revealed that I am still a member of the Closed Council, even if my chair stands empty for the time being. I believe Lord Bayaz would be the proper term of address.”
Sult’s cold smile did not slip even a hair’s breath. “And when exactly was your last visit, Lord Bayaz? It would seem that someone so deeply involved in our history would have taken more of an interest over the years. Why, if I may ask, in the centuries since the birth of the Union, since the time of Harod the Great, have you not been back to visit us?” A good question. I wish it had occurred to me.
“Oh, but I have been. During the reign of King Morlic the Mad, and in the civil war which followed, I was tutor to a young man called Arnault. Later, when Morlic was murdered and Arnault was raised to the throne by the Open Council, I served as his Lord Chamberlain. I called myself Bialoveld in those days. I visited again in King Casamir’s reign. He called me Zoller, and I had your job, Arch Lector.”