Casket of Souls

as his eyes.
    Half-blood
ya’shels
like Alec aged a bit more quickly at first, but he still looked younger than his soon-to-be twenty-one. He had something of the fine ’faie features of his mother’s people, and was likewise beardless, but had his human father’s coloring.
    Seregil played the role of a dissolute young exile that was only half true; he wasn’t particularly dissolute, though he played the part well. He and Alec were well known for carousing with the young blades of the nobility and a good many not-so-young, like Kylith and Malthus. But they managed to stay just on the boundary of respectability, and when they happened to stray outside it, Seregil’s distant relation to the royal family made up the difference. Handsome, foppish,and exotic, the grey-eyed ’faie was known to be somewhat well connected but of little importance.
    Their true vocation would have raised more eyebrows than their dissolute ways, if it ever came to light.
    “I don’t suppose you’ve heard the latest news from the front?” asked Malthus.
    Queen Phoria was still at war with the Plenimarans; the army had left winter quarters two months ago and marched north again to the battlefields of Mycena.
    Malthus leaned closer to Seregil and lowered his voice. “The heralds will be announcing it tomorrow, so I suppose there’s no harm in my telling you. The Overlord sued for a parlay. Phoria refused. She’s sworn to drive the enemy all the way back to Benshâl and crush them on their own ground.”
    Seregil shook his head. “She means to end the endless conflict. Do you think she can do what her mother couldn’t?”
    “Prince Korathan seems cautiously optimistic.”
    The door opened again, and Lord Nyanis and his much rowdier party spilled in and noisily ascended to the far box. He and his companions had brought several pretty courtesans from the Street of Lights as their companions, and it was evident they’d all had a lot of wine. Among them was brown-haired Myrhichia from Eirual’s brothel, with whom Alec had once spent a night. Seregil was not the jealous type, particularly since he’d taken Alec there for that very purpose. She waved to them when her partner for the evening wasn’t looking, and Seregil blew her a kiss. Alec shyly waved back.
    Nyanis spotted them and shouted over, “We’re going gambling after this. You must come with us!”
    Seregil gave him a noncommittal wave.
    “I haven’t been to the theater in weeks. I hope these players are all you claim, my lady,” Alec was saying to Kylith.
    “And that we don’t go home with fleas,” Seregil muttered, scratching at a persistent itch in the crook of his left arm.
    “Count yourselves lucky to be under a roof, my dears,” Kylith replied. “Until recently, this company was performing in the streets of the Lower City. They’re refugees from Mycena. They barely escaped with their lives when the Plenimaran army overran Nanta this spring.”
    Mycena had always been the battleground when Plenimar and Skala went to war. Those who could fled north up the Folcwine, or south to Skala. There were Mycenian enclaves up and down the northeastern shore, and quite an alarming number had found their way to Rhíminee, thinking to make their fortune here. Most were quickly disillusioned. The tenements around the Sea Market and Temple Square were crowded with families eking out a living any way they could, with the unluckiest driven into the abject poverty and degradation of the south Ring—that no-man’s-land between the inner and outer city walls.
    This troupe of players seemed to be among the lucky few to advance their fortunes, having attracted the attention of people like Kylith, who’d heard of them from her seamstress. Like Seregil, she never allowed rank to get in the way of anything that might prove amusing.
    “What’s the play called?” asked Malthus.
    “The Bear King,”
Kylith told him. “Have you heard of it, Seregil? I never have.”
    “No, but I’m no expert on Mycenian theater. I have heard it can be a bit dull.”
    “Not this play, apparently.”
    Just then the sound of a drum began backstage, slow and deep as a heartbeat. An imposing, red-haired man with a long, solemn face stepped onto the stage, dressed in what appeared to be a poor approximation of ancient noble garb cobbled together from some ragman’s cart. His eyes, outlined in black, seemed to look to some far-off vista as he raised a hand for silence.
    “Long ago, in the time of