There comes a point where a man’s influence stops earning red carpet entrances and starts earning fearful silence instead. When the Sectional Champion emerges from our vehicle at the steps of the largest operahouse in the city, even the rain halts its course and goes elsewhere.
A small entourage of kowtowing managers and wide-eyed aides welcome my master like a dark angel freshly forged in the fires of the underworld, bowing profusely as they personally lead him to the most prestigious booth in the theatre. I follow in his wake, one of two in his company. Gami has never been one to care for menageries or harems or games of social politics. He’s as iron in personality as he is on the field of battle. Why he bothers to regularly attend a social melting pot like the Keiza Operahouse at all is a mystery few in the capital truly understand.
I am one of them. So I know exactly how dangerous his invitation to accompany him this evening, fresh off the heels of Tay’s cataclysm beneath the Electric Town. But some invitations are more dangerous to decline than to accept.
I’ve rarely been on thinner ice than now. Valance’s banter is static in my ears, a flirtatious distraction for my internal tension. We both wear black for the occasion. Gold accents the angles of my athletic frame, the same molten shade as the cracks in my eyes. Pink is her flair of choice. Lips glossed in seductive color, her dress a scandal in the making, one that she knowingly plays into. But it’s her eyes that are the real draw. Colored like rose quartz, catlike, glimmering with subdued psionic potential. The trademark of an Iros of Dynasty. And those Iros eyes tell so many things to the media that us after Gami has already swept inside.
Look at me, they say. The champion owns even his enemies’ most treasured possessions. Nothing is beyond his reach.
We flirt, smile, and jest as we head inside the vastness of the operahouse. Major and minor league fighters, heads of prominent families, and politicians all frequent this theatre on the regular, and I see many I recognize. Each bows or nods to Gami in accordance with the difference in their ranks as we pass them in the halls. Their apprentices favor me with deferent inclinations. The Champion never responds to the greetings, and I do the same. Attention is earned, not given. One of his earliest lessons to me.
The further we ascend in the theater, the more exclusive the booths around us become. Our master has already headed on, so Valance and I follow a meandering path through the back halls of the operahouse’s most exclusive levels, giving those eager-to-please managers something to sate their servitude. These halls are normally reserved for household names like Jolie or visiting Champions from foreign Sections. Lamps glow dimly around us, hiding wide shadows for the muttered conversations happening between lacquered-wood pillars. Servants and bodyguards of those dignitaries linger in doorways amidst the servants. Eyes on the corridors and those who pass, not the events on the stage below. Open passages to the booths ringing the operahouse give brief glances of their powerful occupants. Warriors with laugh lines and perfected forms, businessmen fat from commerce, both sunk in muttered conversations. Few in the upper levels can claim to have any interest in the night’s events. For most, the theatre is merely an alternative place to host meetings; one far less monotonous than highrise offices.
We arrive at the Champion’s booth a respectful amount of time after Gami does. He broods atop a simple throne in the center of the booth, flanked by tiny chairs that look like they were made for toddlers compared to his colossal stature.
A flicker of danger sense warns me just before I enter. A lithe woman already sits with our master. Dark dress that leaves her entire back exposed, draping high-tail hairstyle a flourishing gradient of cacao colors, milky skin. Heavy, sensual eyelids completed by masterful makeup. Pert features, prim nose, and a dangerous smile as she trails a nail off Gami’s platinum shoulder and rises to leave.
Aster, my sister’s Assassin mentor, has drifted in Gami’s circles since the battle for Olympus nearly two decades ago; though she’s only a rare visitor to this city. She looks nothing of her fifty-odd years of life. She’s almost as youthful as Valance, having spent no small amount of her fortune on kinetic rejuvenation and the work of master Biohancers to circumvent the natural aging process. Not simply to look young, but to be young, with all the lethal advantages that entails. A workaround of life’s time limit that’s lined Biohancer pockets for centuries.
Aster favors me with those heavy eyes as she approaches. Running her gaze up me first, then a finger, grazing up my tie.
“The little Kyriaku, all grown up. Mars always had a talent for raising the handsome ones. I should’ve known you’d turn out twice the man Carra did.” She leans close to my ear as she brushes past, voice sinking to a mocking whisper. “Your father sends his best.”
Hair bristles dangerously across my neck. I narrowly restrain the urge to growl out a response as Aster leaves with another mocking chuckle, heading for a different booth. Valance watches me strangely as we find our seats.
An early evening crowd filters into the amphitheater far below while the first actors begin their warmup scenes on stage. Soft conversations drift upwards through the air, gradually growing more silent as the last seats continue to fill. My master’s attention is devoted entirely to the stage. He cares nothing for the other important names who whisper in nearby boots. I care for neither, only releasing my strangehold on Aster’s parting words when Valance finally quirks an eyebrow at me.
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“I’ve never seen you react like that,” she says in a quiet voice. “Who knew that was the combination to your vault of a temper. You never do talk much about your father.”
“I never talk much about anything in my past,” I counter, already done with the line of inquiry. “Aster simply knows what to say better than most do. She’s familiar with Carra. And she’s the one who trained Cal. In some matters, at least.”
“Ah. I thought I recognized that cavalier attitude.” Valance turns her attention to the stage, two dainty fingers sliding over my shoulders. “Where is your sister, by the by? I joked about her absence before, but I’d be remiss if she’s simply choosing to ignore me. There’s work to be done with the Shadows…”
“Not just you. It seems she’s taken to ignoring me as well.” I join her in watching the actors. “I fear I will have to do something about it soon.”
I don’t have the time or the resources to track Cal down without causing suspicion, and Aurix is as helpful in the Vents as a sloop in the desert. Cal’s words before our last parting left no uncertainty in our standing. She believes I’ve lost my way. But her naïve alternative to my plan to unseat Gami is just that: emotional and shortsighted. I may love my sister, but I cannot let her stand in my way. She’ll return to me by choice or force. Just as Tay will, seeing that my gambit worked and her power has reawoken. But the window I left for her to make that choice has entirely eroded. We’re on borrowed time. And judging by my master’s continuing silence beside me, even that time has reached its end.
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The night’s offerings come in three acts. Gami dismisses Valance at the beginning of the second to negotiate with one of the more prominent major league fighters in a lower booth. She hides how insulted she is by the dismissal, but she hasn’t proven herself capable of contesting the Champion’s orders as I have. Her departure leaves me alone at my master’s side during the opening stanzas of the Scroll Gambit, one of the most famous plays from the villages. I’ve studied the man enough to know that it’s his only reason at all for coming tonight. He comes to watch the performance at least once a month, like clockwork. The Shakespearean dramas preceding the play are a mere garnish to the exotic actors who advance upon the stage in their wake. Garishly overdressed men in robes that drag like wedding trains behind their feet, absurd colors, and faced painted in cruel arcs of traditional white and red.
I can almost recite the opening monologues word-for-word. One of the most prominent characters, a powerful and loyal retainer, defers to his young lord’s planning in the center of the stage. The care between the two men is palpable, even from a distance. Yet dramatic irony will see the retainer beating his lord senseless by the end of the night, all in the name of a heart-wrenching, desperate ploy.
Gami rumbles to me as the heroes confer amongst themselves, deciding on a course of action in the face of an unforeseen military checkpoint.
“Surely you are familiar with this script, Thane.”
“Of course, master.”
“It was brought to this city from your coastal villages. I imagine you would have had many occasions to see it in your youth.”
I bow my head, mimicking deference. “Some, yes. Theatre was never more than a passing interest for me. My sister, on the other hand…”
Gami’s silent amusement shakes the booth around us, respectful to the actors even in privacy. “Do you know the history of the kabuki masters, the men who first brought this stagecraft to the capital?”
“Disciples of Gen’ichiro, according to my school.” I feign disinterest. “I’m ever surprised at your interests, master. Studying the stagecraft of a land you don’t even call home.”
Gami seems to ignore my reply, watching with tidal interest as the drama shifts below. Art and theatre are but one of the many curiosities most people never see of our champion. They usually only see his shadow. The titan who casts it has a voracity for the arts that borders on an obsession. Like the play proceeding before us, he studies the art of his enemies with relentless repetition until he has dissected every useful drop of knowledge from its corpse.
The particular enemy that inspired his devotion to kabuki is long since dead. The man himself wasn’t even a native of the villages, nor anything close to one. He knew nothing of the language, barely remembered the bare minimum of traditions. Yet he was smitten enough by the esoteric culture of the villages to raise a daughter in the shadow of the rice fields. And now? My master watches this same play for the hundredth time with an ever-inscrutable expression on his featureless platinum face. Searching for any remains of his predecessor, any challenge left unconquered. Or perhaps merely trying to dredge up memories of a time when those challenges still existed.
The events on stage slowly capture my attention as the young lord’s chief retainer withdraws a garishly oversized scroll from his bag, holding it so the hostile guards before them cannot see it is completely empty. An extremely risky bluff. The retainer’s next monologue, where he improvises the contents of the scroll on the spot, is still moving- even in the capital’s warped translation of the tale. Cal once told me the mark of the best young actors is found in those who invent their own script for the gambit itself, surprising the audience with innovation.
“The history of this Section is the oldest among the gladiocracies, traceable directly to the times before the Creators. It is perhaps the only relic of the old era worth studying.” Gami leans forward to watch the monologue with a closer eye. “A people’s heart is found in their artistry.”
In the play, the captain of the guard listens to the famous monologue until its end, knowing all the while that the scroll is empty. The captain is a man of an older time. A man of honor. Like the crowd, he will soon be moved by the lengths the young lord and his retainers go to in a bid to prove their ruse. In the end, he will take that honor to his grave in a ritual no capital native would fully understand the implications of.
“And how do you find ours?” I ask.
Gami’s iron gaze falls to me and me alone. Beneath our booth, the retainer begins savagely whipping his lord within an inch of his life, much to the dismay of the crowd.
“Ironic.”