Parts of the wall were never sealed with pure Eleutheraen gold.
A horrid, splintering sound fractures the air, like the ground is splitting in half.
But I know it’s not the ground. The sound came from far, far away. From the Cut, pushing back against the Players and their magic.
The Playhouse stills before shaking violently. And when I dare to open my eyes, we aren’t in the heart of Diazoma anymore.
All I can see is limestone running in both directions, webbed with veins of Eleutheraen gold carved into swirling symbols. The wall.
The mist thins where it presses up against the threshold of the Playhouse, right at the Cut’s border. The golden gates press into the limestone, emitting a violent screech as dark water from the moat seeps over the Playhouse’s sparkling terrace.
I grip the windowsill, banging my knee and cursing when the Playhouse jolts.
The wall outside prevails, sturdy and immovable, as if to say,You will not come through this way.But I see the cracks threading up its face, accompanied by a wretched snapping sound.
Squinting through the mist, I make out the line of Players down below by the glow of their skin, their hands raised. Mattia swears loudly while Titus shouts,“It’s that damned wall; I told you it’s…”I try to listen, unable to make out the rest.
But for a moment, I almost relax. The Playhouse can’t cross after all. I won’tneedmy plan. The North will be safe from—
Jude prowls up to the golden gates and throws them open, where they slam into the limestone wall beyond. The Playhouse feels slippery beneath my hands as I grasp onto the purple curtains to steady myself, but they tear like tissue paper. The candles around me blow out and relight themselves frantically, unsure of themselves.
The Players are holding us in limbo—somewhere between what is real and what is not.
Below, Jude flattens his palm to the wall, upon those ancient engravings filled with Eleutheraen gold.
He shrieks so horribly, I have to avert my eyes—but not before catching something.
I narrow my gaze. Jude’s left foot is inches across the Playhouse’s border, where the gates meet the outside world, water from the trench washing along his shoe.
Pastthe confines of Playhouse grounds.
Mattia calls something to Jude, but I can’t hear what it is over the screams that have begun to tear through the air—not from the Players. Frompeople. Though I’m not sure if they’re on this side of the Cut or on the other. Maybe both. And then I realizewhy.
The Eleutheraen gold veins in the wall are pulsing with light, heating.
Melting.
A labyrinth of cracks dances up from the place Jude’s palm is pressed, like lines on a map. Molten gold bleeds from the crevices, those ancient symbols becoming empty, ugly smears on the limestone. The wall groans loudly.
I shut my eyes, cover them with my hands. I don’t want to see. I don’t want to know.
The sound of limestone crumbling crashes through the air.
And when the world finally,finallyfalls still, I blink my eyes open and dare a single glance through the window. But I already know the Playhouse has slipped out of one place and into another.
Into the North.
It’s over.
Behind the Players, who all look ready to drop from exhaustion, a violent fissure yawns open at the Playhouse stairs like a cracked vase, curling into the foundations of one of the towers. A toll for crossing the Cut.
As the Playhouse settles in unfamiliar territory, and as the black mist begins to clear, I can at last grasp what I saw: Jude’s foot sliding past the threshold.
Jude is able to leave Playhouse grounds.
And the realization hits me all at once, with dread, that hehas.
Act II: Scene XI
