Ifran meditated upon Fabel's words and his displays of Ionu's gift, considering how best to respond. He was arrogant, even for an Eypharian, but had earned the right to be through long years of training. That his training was not exactly in line with that of the players here was clear, but there were points where they overlapped or he would not have been able to stay, much as Fabel kept saying. The man was baiting him, but he was not some bull-hearted gladiator to go into a rage and lose all. The art of politicking was an actor's game as well, and he had been born and bred to that, suckled intrigue from his nurse's teat, the simple serving woman plotting on his behalf, for the farther his star rose, the better she would be rewarded in her old age.
The illusions were a trick, and he wanted them for his own. On the one hand, he could see a hack performer boosting their abilities with Ionu's blessing, but a trained performer could transcend themselves with such favor. Ifran wanted to disappear into his roles, whether on wooden stages or in the halls of the Pressorah's palace. And so what set him apart from a choir boy?
From the stillness, untouched by the slings and arrows of Fabel's threats and taunts, he began to sing. It was an old aria from the Eypharian opera, a slaver song in the baritone register to begin with, the High Arumenic most likely untranslatable for Fabel, but if the clever construction of the words were lost, then the pathos was not, a melodic encapsulation of a man whose own life had begun as a slave, recounting the circular motion of his life until he was the one in control even as he was blind to the things he gave up, the things he lost.
Muscles trained with weighted khopeshes and other calisthenics whipped around in stylized forms. Had he one of his khopeshes in hand, it would have looked like he meant to decapitate one of his invisible captors, but he imagined each of his six hands held the handle of a whip braided from supple leather. And each hand whirled an imagined whip and cracked it in time with the music of his voice, laying open the skin of an imagined back.
There was bitterness and violence within him, and these he poured into his voice and actions. Fabel had his illusions, but Ifran could sink himself into his imagination and make it all as real, at least for himself. With an orchestra and the full force of a theater to support him, the audience generally did as well. Were Fabel himself to walk up onto that stage and identify himself as a slave, Ifran would deal with him as such.
Reality was in the eye of the observer.
This was what he was trained to do, and he was good at it. His voice soared in ways no normal human's did, his six arms articulated with a cohesion dizzying to those with only two hands with which to work. He could move each arm individually of the others, his mind accustomed to so many extensions of its will.
For now, Ifran was a slaver. But whether Fabel believed he was a slaver or not, he didn't know. In fact, he didn't question, because there was no Fabel on the reality of the stage. |
