In Silvered Glass Ascending
Twentieth Day of the Ninth Month 293 AC
The mummers grumbled. There was no crowd. How were they to know for whom they played and how their work was taken? Flowers or rotten fruit, it was all the same behind the cold glare of enchanted glass. The clothes were too drab. Who would wish to see men in grey cloaks wander hither and yon, picking apart evidence and navigating the twists of new-made law instead of bravos clashing sword to sword or tales of forbidden love? Lysyas was adamant on stamping down on the latter in particular. He still remembered his brief encounter with the Dragon himself, a shiver going down his spine.
"There are deeper tales to be told here than petty trysts conjured by the dozen." His eyes had been smiling then, but there had been a watchfulness about him, like a particularly well-fed cat faced with an entertaining mouse.
Thankfully he was not long until he spotted something to correct to calm his nerves: "You there, Rynyl is it? Where did you get that costume? It fits you like a sack-cloth."
The young mummer mumbled something that may have been: "Just making do."
"We do not 'make do' here at the Silver Dome!" Lysyas snapped. "If you need to fly, we don't have to use ropes we can just ask a sorcerer to lift us up upon the air, if we need light then light unwavering we have." He motioned dramatically to the scores of mage lanterns set about the new-built playhouse. "And to you who ask for duels remember, there shall be no silk scarves, or foul smelling pig's blood to be seen, but
real blood to tell the tales of real folk as they raise the realm."
"Real he says," one of the stagehands snorted. "I've never known a smuggler to monologue about his damn life story to a captured guard instead of stabbing them dead."
"Are you saying old Salladhor never smuggled?" Alysa, the Dome's former ingenue, called out to general amusement.
"Told you so himself last night, did he?" another of the young mummers replied over the din of minstrels tuning their instruments to play the opening.
Where once there might have been a sharp reply there was only more laughter, for where before trysts with patrons may have been in high demand by even the most skillful of mummers, the pay they were getting from the Dragon was enough for most of the main cast to live lives of leisure and comfort year round with no fear that their take might shrink suddenly from a dry spell.
Truth be told, Lysyas worried about what that might mean for the quality of the performances. He always found that an edge of
need gave an actor greater passion, but now they were all guildsmen, entitled to the rights and privileges thereof.
Ah well, I can always replace those who do not keep up with the performances. With glamours the audience would not even know the difference, the company master thought, positively giddy at the potential that magic opened, not only to spread his vision through all the cities of Essos, but to see it realized perfectly, with none of the dozens of small compromises he had not even noticed before.
The lights flared, the mirror flickered into life, and a whole new world came alive.
"Listen here, Jon, I know you are the best damn lawman out here on the frontier, but I don't need a loose launcher on this case. This is big do, you hear? It can make us or break us," the captain said, his voice roughened by years of drink and drill with the Second Sons.
The dark-haired man whose shirt did a poor job of hiding the fading marks of a slave's collar around his neck spat.
"No, listen here, captain, you don't know what it's like out there. These Skinners ain't called that for nothing. They'll deal in anything—weapons, slaves, proscribed magic, fuck they would even trade in souls if they figured out how..."
So the scene played out, tens of thousands of eyes, more than any other performance the world had ever seen. Lysyas was nervous for how it would be taken, but above all he was proud.
OOC: I thought about doing an episode summary, but that just would not work out, so here's some behind-the-scenes info on how magical innovations and institutional shifts are changing acting.
Bladeguard
