Stealers' Sky

That afternoon two men in Strick blue delivered to the palace the jingly contents of Amoli's and MarkmorIMarype's chest, to be used in the continuing reconstruction of the city. "To make it Sanctuary's work for Sanctuary," the message signed by Strick and by Hanse read, "independent of Ranke."

Hanse was meanwhile presenting the father of Mignureal and Jileel with a bag containing fine and far too valuable pearls which he had not stolen. He strongly suggested that Teretaff cause the pearls to be made into ear-drops for his several daughters, and "bury the rest under the floor or someplace."

He left without TeretafTs knowing of the sack of gold pieces Hanse had secreted in his shop-home, for safekeeping.

A few hours later in the Vulgar Unicorn, Hanse slipped a lot of golden imperials to the serving girl Silky, and bought drinks for the house until the Vulg grew so boisterously noisy he couldn't stand it, after which he ambled around to Sly's Place. There he bought drinks for the house, but left when the place grew so noisy he couldn't stand it. He went home with a large bucket of beer and enjoyed watching Notable get thoroughly drunk. Watching a cat stagger was more fun than Hanse could remember.

A week later he traded with Cholly the gluemaker for a dagger he recognized: a handsome affair. True, its hilt was marred, but who could resist that nice silver-inlaid blade?

THE INCOMPETENT AUDIENCE by Jon DeCles

ACT ONE

"I don't care if he is the new Emperor's cousin!" cried Feltheryn the Thespian, brandishing a paper broadside that he had just ripped off a wall before its glue could dry. "If Emperor Theron liked him he wouldn't be in Sanctuary!"

"My darling," said Glisselrand, her fingers flying amidst many-colored yams, "there is a difference between not liking one's relatives and wishing them harm. Remember that Emperor Abakithis sent our darling Kitty-Kat here to Sanctuary, presumably because he thought him a threat. Nobody has any doubt that Abakithis wanted Kitty-Kat out of the way, but neither does anybody doubt that he would have dealt severely with anyone who spilled the royal blood."

"I wasn't suggesting that we murder Vomistritus," said Feltheryn, frustrated by his lady's calmness.

Glisselrand laughed.

"If not, my pet, then he is the first critic ever to escape that suggestion after giving you that kind of review!"

(Yes, it was true! The very vilest villain of all had slunk into Sanctuary, a creature so reprehensible as to make all previous contenders-with the possible exception of Roxane-pale. It had been written-long before the fall of Ranke, long before the fall of Ilsig, long before the first settlers had put down roots at the confluence of the Red Foal and the White Foal rivers-that the appearance of criticism portended the first sign of maturity in an art form. But for his part, Feltheryn rather thought that the appearance of critics was the first signal of total social decay, a sign that people had lost control of their own minds and tastes and had therefore to resort to the opinions of others.)

"And rightly so!" Feltheryn growled. He then waxed pedantic: "A critic is one who espouses the idea that one must divorce one's self from emotional involvement in a work of art in order to apply unchanging standards to all such works and thus render a judgment on the individual work based on a reasoned measurement made against those standards. Yet a work of art, by definition, is a thing which directly engages the emotions, carrying feeling through what is only, really, a cold construct: a cha

Glisselrand looked up at him from her knitting, today a series of small orange, purple, and red squares which would later be assembled into a folksy quilt that would even later give someone a headache. She raised one elegant eyebrow in question, prompting him to continue-

(There had been a point, perhaps thirty years earlier in their romance, when he wondered if, at such times, she really understood what he was saying, really cared; or if she was just humoring him. It no longer mattered to him, for the essence of the situation was that she wanted him to continue, and he wanted to continue, and, after all, it wasn't going to change anything.)

He took a deep breath and delivered his conclusion: "That of course means that a critic is someone who is congenitaHy incapable of appreciating art!"

Glisselrand stopped knitting for a moment and considered his thesis. Then she smiled and her fingers once again flew, gnarled but fast.

"Now that you mention it," she said, "it did seem that way in Ranke. They spoke a great deal about form and structure and style, but I am not sure I ever met a single critic who I felt really understood what he was talking about. Flash without fire, as the poet says. But looking back at our years in Ranke, I do believe we can be grateful that Sanctuary has only one critic, even if he is an especially bad one, and even if he is the Emperor's cousin."

Feitheryn growled again and Glisselrand wondered if perhaps he was thinking of producing The Cowslip Flower, a play in which he was magically transformed into a camel.

"With all the faults this town has," Feltheryn continued, "with all the horrors it has endured, yet the old adage about Sanctuary has proved untrue. It was not. after all, the one place you could find the worst of anything. Stinking Sanctuary could still hold high its head on that one point, and I think it could have got along just fine without ever having acquired a damned critic of its own!"

"Well, my dear," said Glisselrand, "I quite agree with that. I just wonder that the people of Sanctuary have fallen for it."

"It's the economics of the thing, of course!" Feltheryn continued to rave. "It's not cheap to come to the theater, because producing theater costs so much, even with the generous patronage we've got here. That's all the opening a vulture like Vomistritus needs' A little clever writing, a wicked turn of phrase, he hires a couple of scribes who can copy neatly if not well, pastes these broadsides all over town to gain an audience, and then the people will spend a copper to read what he has to say before they spend their soldats to come see the play. And the most insidious thing about it is the smug satisfaction of those who have never been to see one of our performances, yet who feel competent to discuss them!"

"How long have the broadsides been up?" Glisselrand asked, stopping her work once again and fixing Feltheryn with a look not unlike the one she gave the crooked bailiff in the great trial scene of The Merchant's Price.

"Well, the paste was still wet when I pulled this one down," said Feltheryn. "It ca

"Very good!" said Glisselrand. "Then we shall set Lempchin to ru

Lempchin was called, Glisselrand cozened the chubby boy neatly into disguising himself in the interests of the theater troupe's welfare, and Feltheryn was shortly back to preparing the script for The Chambermaid's Wedding, the next play the company was to produce.

Their current production, The Falling Star, was doing well enough, but Feltheryn was not fond of playing the villain and Glisselrand was waking each morning after the performance with aches and pains brought on by the finale, that desperate scene in which the actress who was the "star" of the title hurled herself from the castle walls rather than face the charge of murder against her from Act Two.