Intermission

[Sahreni]

Summer 61st, 512 The music ended, and the actors and dancers all filed off the stage. After the waves of applause began to die down, Sahreni and his young half-brother rose from their seats and left their booth, joining the slow, coagulated flow of wealthier audience members leaving the auditorium. Amid the roar of amalgamated conversations, little communication could be passed between Sahreni and his brother until they eventually emerged in a brightly lit, richly colored room smelling of fresh perfumes and refreshments. "There are far too many people here," Nascht sighed his complaint, leading Sahreni past the crowds and toward a table lined with appetizers, drinks, and creative floral arrangements. The clinking of metal against clay could be heard as some of the guests prepared their personal cups and straws for beer. While Nascht helped himself to the fruits and pastries, Sahreni lingered nearby, studying the amber in nearby cups and glasses. He was certain it was a West Winds draft, and he wondered if he could discern which one by the hue of it. "Are you enjoying yourself, Nascht?" "The acting is not spectacular," the boy mused, his mouth filled with bread and jam. Sahreni glanced at him sidelong. It was rude to speak with one's mouth full, but he suspected his brother was doing it on purpose. A challenge. Unlike Nascht's mother, Sahreni would not be quick to chide him on his manners. "And the dancers?" Nascht turned aside to finish chewing, hiding his face from view. The dancers—one in particular—were why he and Sahreni had come to the perfomance at all. A certain North Winds girl had personally invited Nascht to see her at the theatre, this night in particular apparently being of some importance to her. The young noble had at first made an excuse about being busy, and then later asked his mother to join him. When Iseret declined, she instructed Sahreni to accompany his brother. It was probably better for Nascht to have male company on an outing like this, and Sahreni suspected that Iseret knew this. She was clever; he had to grant her that. "They are adequate," Nascht replied finally, batting one hand in dismissal while two others tipped up a mug of sweet-smelling hyacinth juice. Mild applause began suddenly as the performers from the stage entered the room, joining their guests during the intermission. Sahreni turned his head to study them as he clapped politely, which embarrassingly required all of his hands. He met eyes with a young girl, no older than Nascht, still in full costume and wearing brilliant face paints. She smiled. It was a request. Sahreni nodded and turned to Nascht. "Someone is looking for you." He indicated the girl with the cant of his head. "Go tell her how adequate you think she is." Of course, Nascht initially, and spiritedly, refused. There was a brief duel of whispers between them, until finally it was ended in an ultimatum, with the elder brother threatening to tell her himself. Uttering a sigh of exasperation, Nascht set down his refreshments, straightened his collar, and braved out into the crowd. Sahreni was left to watch from a distance, picking up Nascht's mug and sipping from it.

[Ifran]

In the ensuing argument of whispers, the girl turned and found her master, her cousin, and came to his side. Though the fawning Ifran was receiving made her want to roll her eyes and wrinkle her nose, she remained calm and collected, quiet as an apprentice ought to be. "...but it really has not been the same without you," gushed the woman, her pinks and greens clashing in a way he found gauche, but endured all the same. He was like a conquering hero returned, and he was accepting some of it with good grace, and some of it with good humor, at least. "I am certain the Art has not languished in my absence," he said, the words themselves modest, with an undermode of vehement denial. Though his face seemed cast in slightly embarrassed amusement, there was a sizzle of something to his words that only Manipadme seemed to understand. The higher dialect of their language was so subtle that few understood it completely, and they were generally the genius poets of the generation. There was a tension in his wordplay that made her think perhaps he was irritated. She gave no clue that she thought anything at all. "If you will excuse us," he said, a gesture consoling as well as apologetic, "my apprentice has arrived and I must needs give her the notes her choreographer has been too kind to give." When the groupie had gone, he gave his young cousin a smile. "Well done, of course. You have an admirer." The last was added with a faint tick of his eyes over her shoulder, but the neither of them reacted beyond that. By the time Nacht approached, he was giving her a detailed list of mistakes she had made using precise language that was unknowable to one who was not a dancer. The vocabulary was strange, many words derived from more ancient dialects of the tongue, but she knew what he was saying and her head bent in submission.