On This Unworthy Scaffold, Heidi Heilig [best books to read for success .txt] 📗

opening season. So far, they have commitments from many of the troupes returning from Aquitan, including the Ros Sook. But I have no inspiration. When I pick up a piece of leather or a strand of ribbon, my hands feel numb, and my mind is dark as an unlit stage.

Most days, I sit at the polished ebony table by my window, Leo’s violin case open before me. Cheeky and Tia brought it to me weeks ago, and I like to look at the sheet music inside. He had written many other songs, just as his own mother had. I had even heard him play them from time to time, never knowing they were his own. But when I hold the sheet music and close my eyes . . . sometimes I swear I can still hear the sound of his violin.

I am listening to it when a knock at the door shakes the notes out of my head. Is it lunch already? I have half a mind to ignore whoever is there, but the last time I did, Theodora barged in anyway. My friends are determined to keep after me—though in recent weeks, their constant company has eased into more manageable visits at mealtimes, and instead of trying to get me to come out of my room, they mostly just make sure I’m eating.

Still, I am annoyed at the interruption. Tucking the music back in the case, I stomp across the room and swing the door open. The sudden brightness of the hall makes me wince. Maman is there, her hand raised to knock again. Papa is just behind her, with my brother pushing his chair. And when Maman wraps me up in a tight hug, I realize how long it’s been since I’ve seen my family.

After a moment, I lean into her embrace. Then I reach over her shoulder to hold Papa’s hand. But Akra doesn’t so much as look at me—still under orders. “Come in,” I say, suddenly sheepish. Stepping back, I lead them all through the door. “Please.”

“You promised to write,” Maman says pointedly, peering around the room at the rumpled bed, the half-filled cups, the clothes scattered across the floor

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ve been busy.”

“I can tell.” She starts to pick things up, and it makes me feel like a child again. I turn to the bed, straightening my rumpled sheets, but it feels like I’m moving through molasses. Then I feel a gentle hand on my arm. “Let me take care of it,” Maman says, drawing me back to my chair. As I sit, she opens the shutters. Daylight spills in, brighter than a soul. “Sometimes it’s hard to realize how deep the shadows have gotten until someone else points them out.”

“We’re worried about you,” Papa says as Maman returns to her cleaning. Despite the slurred sounds of his speech, I have spent enough time listening to him to know what he is saying. “Have you been taking your elixir?”

“I have,” I say, nodding to the flask on the dresser; by the time the supply from Le Roi had run low, Theodora had found the stockpile Le Trépas had brought to Hell’s Court. “There are some things medicine can’t fix.”

“Moping doesn’t help much, either,” Akra says as he comes to my side. “The show must go on.”

I glare up at him, but the expression on his face quenches the brief spark of my anger. He rests a gentle hand on the violin case, and I remember that his own death had been to save Leo. But after a moment, he pushes the violin gently aside, making room for the bag he’s carrying. When he drops the sack on the table, it moves.

“What’s this?” I say, but before he can answer, a familiar fantouche bounds from the sack, then falls right off the edge of the table. “Miu!”

Rolling to her feet, the dragon fantouche lifts her chin as though daring me to laugh. Then she twitches her tail and leaps into my lap, butting her head up under my hand. “Fine leatherwork on that one,” Papa says softly, nodding at Miu. “But the handling could be better.”

“We’ll need quite a few more fantouches if we’re to rebuild our collection in time,” my brother adds.

“In time for what?” I say, stroking Miu’s leather horns.

“For the performance at the Royal Opera House,” Maman says as she makes the bed. Miu leaps down from my lap to slip underneath the sheet, and I frown.

“Who said anything about performing at the Royal Opera House?”

“Cheeky did,” my brother says. “And if you think your orders are hard to disobey, you’ve never seen the consequences she can mete out.”

“We heard about your solo performance in Aquitan,” Maman says over her shoulder. “Are you too good for your troupe these days?”

“The Shepherd and the Tiger,” Papa adds, a wistful look in his eyes. “I would have loved to see your version.”

“I think the next one will be even better,” Akra says, pulling something else out of the bag. “We still need a tiger, but I made a new shepherd.”

The fantouche he holds is almost as tall as he is, with graceful jointing and finely scraped leather. I can see the care and the time Akra must have put into it—he was always a better artist than me. But it is not the pains he has taken that give me pause, but the appearance of the fantouche itself.

In the story, the shepherd carries a staff, but this one holds a pen, and instead of a sarong, he wears a linen suit. But the face itself is new and familiar all at once—the features unmistakably Leo’s. “It’s . . . beautiful work,” I say at last.

“It was a lot of work,” Akra replies, laying the fantouche down gently over the back of another chair. “But there’s still more work to do.”

He turns to the pile of supplies Cheeky brought me. Leather and silk, paper and paint. . . . Picking up the shears and a roll of leather, my brother sets them before