Shadowbridge Read Online Free

of her said, “She’s taken a real shine to you,
lad.
”
    “Soter!” He had his back to her, his feet up. The bald dome of his head rested below the high back of the chair. She wriggled around the table to sit facing him. “Soter, something strange has happened. I need you to explain—”
    Instead of hearing her out, he interrupted, “
I’d
begun to worry ’bout you. It was
my
misgivings that top-heavy tart related, not hers. She has none. She merely wants to make certain you’ll accommodate her after.”
    Soter had been tanned by every wind that had ever blown across Shadowbridge. He was lean and dark and dry as leather. His was neither a happy nor a sad face, but one that had encountered some version of every possible eventuality. At the moment it was flushed from an extended encounter with a wine bottle.
    “What am I going to do?” she asked.
    He puzzled for a moment. “Feign death?”
    “What did my father do?”
    “Well, generally, he was about the most accommodating man there ever was.” With the two fingers of his that were missing their last joints he scratched his stubbled chin, then winced at what he’d said. “That is to say, until your mother performed his reconstruction. I don’t believe he’s the paradigm you’re looking for at the moment. ’Course, he wasn’t pretending to be somethin’ other than what he was.” She glared at him, and he waved his hands in defense. “I didn’t say you had a choice, dear heart. Prejudice is the way of the world. A few more spans up the line here, you’ll have gathered yourself a reputation to bank on, and you can come out of your headgear like a turtle out of her shell—make a big production of it, a spectacle, if that’s what you want to do. Not that I’d advise it. And there’ll still be some stretches—Malprado, for instance—where you might be prohibited…where women have no business doing business ’less it’s illicit. The mask they’d make you wear there would cover your mouth, too. Be very anonymous there. I doubt we’ll go that way. No, somewhere like old Colemaigne’d be better for you. They won’t care at all, except about the performance. Most places’ll be swayed by the wonder of you, the mysterious masked wonder called Jax. Make you an exhibit, a treasure. ’Course, if you want to remove the mask, I can’t stop you.” He poked his finger into his chest. “Not me.”
    Someone in the crowd shouted out, “Jax!” but at the booth, not at her.
    “Yes, but what do I do about
tonight
?”
    Smiling crookedly, Soter sank back. “Perform, m’girl, perform. Get that idiot musician to play decently for more than five minutes at a time and we’ll do all right.” He got up, seeking his balance. The small bronze libation bowl in the center of the table rocked, splashing out liquid dark as blood. It was nearly full. How many drinks did it take to fill a libation bowl when the offering from each drink was but a drop or two?
    That lush,
the god had called him. It was amusing on a puppet: When Meersh drank himself stupid, people all laughed. Leodora’s jaw clenched. She needed advice and he dismissed her with a line he thought amusing: “Perform.”
    “So, anyway,” Soter said, “where in the Great Spiral were you?”
    “Talking to a statue,” she snapped, then marched off, leaving him staring after her in his befuddlement.
     . . . . . 
    At the far end of the hall from the doors stood her booth. Twice her height, it was three panels of black drapery making up three sides of a tall box, open at the top. The ends of the upright poles protruded above the drapery. In the center of the front panel, she lifted a smaller flap of material that acted as a curtain covering a flat, featureless white silk screen. As she pinned the curtain up, some of the patrons began whistling and clapping. Without acknowledging them she circled to the side of the booth, parted the drapes near the rear corner, and stepped into darkness.
    Inside,