She was half a block from the square when she heard footsteps behind her — fast, light, specific. The kind that were aimed at someone.
“Mrs. Lannis! Please — Mrs. Lannis!”
It took her a moment to realize they meant her. She’d been May for long enough that the new name still arrived a half-beat late. She turned.
The girl was seventeen, perhaps eighteen, running in a way that said she’d committed to this before fully deciding to. Hair tied up in two round loops on either side of her head, cheeks reddened by the cold, wearing cotton-padded clothes and leather boots that were clearly new — good quality, well-fitted. Two years ago May would have read that as a merchant family’s daughter. Now she simply noted it; Neverwinter had enough people who could afford new clothes that appearance no longer mapped reliably to status.
The girl arrived, slightly breathless, and extended one of the two salted fish she’d been carrying under her arm.
“Mrs. Lannis — this is for you. A small token. Please accept it.”
May looked at the fish. Looked at the girl. “A token of what?”
“I’ve wanted to meet you for so long. If my father had seen your show—” She stopped, regrouped. “He would have been so proud.”
“I don’t know you,” May said, gently enough. “Or your father. Could you explain?”
It took the better part of half an hour to understand it properly.
The girl’s name was Jasmine. Her father had served in the First Army and been killed during the campaign against the Church. He’d left her and her mother, and City Hall’s compensation — the lump sum and the recruitment priority for surviving family members — had kept them from destitution, but not from the grief. She’d carried the grief for a long time, she said. Until The Hero’s Life.
In the play, every soldier who died protecting their family and their kingdom was given the title. His Majesty’s words, spoken through the character’s mouth, made it official. Permanent.
“My mother said he was only ever a hunter before,” Jasmine said. “She never imagined he’d receive something like that. She told me: if you ever meet the people who made that play, thank them.” She bowed, a full and earnest bow. “People call me the daughter of a hero now. It makes me feel that he’s still somewhere. That he didn’t just disappear.” She straightened. “If the First Army took women, I’d have signed up with a flintlock already.”
“You might be killed,” May said. She said it softly, but she said it.
Jasmine nodded. Then shook her head. “In the old winters, every family from our area moved to Longsong Stronghold. Every year. People died on the road — you’d hear something fall into the Redwater and know what it was. At the slums, after the heavy snow, the streets had frozen bodies in them. I was terrified every winter. Every time I closed my eyes I thought: I could be next.”
A pause. Then, with the precision of someone who has thought it through enough times that it has become simple:
“Someone has to stand up and fight for something different. I don’t want to live like that again.”
May recognized the line. It was from the play.
What she felt, hearing it come from this girl’s mouth in the snow outside the market, was something she didn’t have a technical term for. Not quite surprise. Closer to the particular sensation of having said something and then, months later, understanding for the first time what it meant.
“I’ll accept your gift,” May said.
Jasmine smiled with her whole face, turned, and ran off down a side street, waving once before she disappeared.
May stood holding the salted fish and thought about Kajen Fels.
She’d studied under him for two years at the King’s City Grand Theater — the best training she’d ever received, delivered by a man who was unfailingly unpleasant in the giving of it. She’d asked him once: what was the best performance?
Make them forget they’re watching a performance. Make them believe that what they’re watching is real — that it’s a life, not a role. If you can achieve that, you’ve done everything there is to do.
She’d spent the years after that chasing perfect execution. Absolute command of the craft — the timing, the gesture, the precise calibration of emotion against expression. When she was twenty-five she’d become a name in King’s City. Western Region girl, Grand Theater lead, someone whose name was spoken alongside the people who’d built careers in the capital.
She’d been sure she understood what Kajen Fels meant.
The Hero’s Life had not been a perfect production. The script had arrived faster than any they’d ever staged; they’d rehearsed for two weeks and been performing while still fixing blocking errors. She’d forgotten lines. She’d used the wrong facial expression at a crucial moment in the second act. She’d performed a grief she’d had to imagine rather than remember, which any experienced theater person would have been able to see in the seams of it.
And when the lead actor delivered the line — because it is worth fighting for — the square had responded with a sound she had never heard from a King’s City audience. Not applause. Something rawer. Collective and instinctive, the sound of a crowd recognizing something that was also true about themselves.
In King’s City, audiences watched performances. They saw the actor; they watched the character; they appreciated the skill. The space between the theater and the audience’s own life was the necessary distance that made art possible.
Here, that distance had closed. The audience saw themselves — their dead fathers, their frozen streets, their fear, their hope for something different. They weren’t watching a story. They were watching the story.
Maybe that was the best performance. Not the most technically precise. The most true.
Irene was on her feet before May had set the basket down.
“You’re back — perfect timing! Carter is going to reserve seats for us at the cannon exercise. Come with us—”
“Go where?” May put the fish in the kitchen, out of the way of the mushrooms.
“The exercise! The open cannon drill! There’s already a queue at City Hall, Carter says by tomorrow—”
“Not interested.” May didn’t look up. “I’d rather read my script.”
“Just come with me—” Irene appeared in the kitchen doorway with the expression of someone who has decided to deploy sustained warmth rather than argument. “Just once. Just this one time. Won’t you?”
May put the mushrooms in water and turned around.
Irene’s affection was genuine, which was the problem with refusing her. You couldn’t decline it the way you declined a formal social obligation. It was real, offered openly, and rejecting it felt like something different than declining an invitation.
She thought of Jasmine. Of the sound the square had made.
Fighting and killing aren’t always terrible and unbearable. Maybe understanding how the soldiers actually felt — what the artillery sounded like, what it looked like from the outside — would give her something the next role didn’t have yet. A texture she couldn’t imagine from a script alone.
She did not admit any of this.
“Fine.” She sighed, in the manner of someone making a significant concession. “If you insist, I suppose I have no choice.”
“Yes! Wonderful!” Irene seized her arm. “Carter will be so pleased—”
“I’m doing this for the work.” May extracted her arm and straightened her coat with dignity. “Pure research. A sacrifice in the service of a better performance.”
Irene beamed at her.
May looked away before she could smile back.
Translator: TransN Editor: TransN
Not long after May left the square, she heard a sound of soft footsteps coming from behind her.
“Mrs Lannis, please wait, Mrs Lannis!”
It took her quite a while to realize that it was referring to herself. When she turned back, she saw a girl, aged 17 or 18, running toward her.
The girl’s hair was tied up like ram’s horns, and her cheeks had gone red in the freezing wind, but her cotton-padded clothes and leather boots were brand new with good quality. If it were two years ago, May would have imagined the girl as someone’s daughter from a rich family. But now more and more civilians could afford new clothes, it was not such a safe bet to judge a person’s status from one’s appearance anymore.
The girl ran to May’s side and handed May one of her two salted fishes while gasping the cold air.
“Mrs Lannis, this is a little token of my gratitude. Please do accept it.”
May was stunned and then asked, “A token of gratitude?”
“I’ve always wanted to meet you. If my father had watched your show, he would have been very gratified!”
“But I don’t know you or your father… Can you tell me exactly what this is about?”
It took the Star of the Western Region half an hour to roughly understand the whole story.
The girl’s name was Jasmine. She was on her way back from the Convenience Market when she happened to recognize May from behind. Giving May fish was only a hasty decision to express her gratitude.
Jasmine’s father was a former soldier of the First Army who was accidentally killed during the battle against the church and left Jasmine and her mother behind. The generous compensation from City Hall and the recruitment priority policy relieved them from worrying about their livelihood. Jasmine grieved for her father’s death for quite a long time. It was not until the staging of the new play “The Hero’s Life” did Jasmine pull herself together.
In the play, all those soldiers who bravely sacrificed their lives for protecting their families and the kingdom were bestowed with the title of Hero by His Majesty.
“Mother said that father used to be a common hunter. She never expected him to gain such an honor after death. She told me to thank you if I ever got the chance to meet you.” Jasmine deeply bowed to May. “Now people call me the daughter of a hero, which makes me feel that father actually didn’t leave me. If not for the rule that the First Army doesn’t take in females, I’d have carried a flintlock and fought against those hostile enemies.”
“…” May remained silent for a while, then asked lightly, “But you might be killed on a battlefield. Aren’t you afraid of death?”
Jasmine nodded, then shook her head. “In former winters, every family in my area would migrate toward Longsong Stronghold. Many people died on the way there and had their bodies were cast into the Redwater River. Every sound of something dropping in the water meant a person had died. When we reached the slum, death became more frequent. After heavy snow, the streets were always filled with frozen bodies. At that time, I often shivered out of fear. I feared when I closed my eyes, I could be the next victim.”
“Since I don’t want to live like that again, there needs to be people to stand out and fight for a new life,” she said word by word.
That was a line in the play.
Suddenly, May felt that something soft, deep in her heart was touched.
She reached out her hands to touch the girl’s hair. “Even if you’ll lose everything?”
When this line of narration sounded in the theater, May vaguely remembered the whole square was in silence, the audience were holding their breath and waiting for the impersonator of the hero to answer.
At this moment, Jasmine’s answer was as powerful as the “Hero” in the play, “Because it is worth fighting for.”
“I accept your gift.”
“Mrs Lannis, please take care!” The girl waved her hand happily, turned around and then ran toward another street.
May stared at the heavy salted fish in her hand and recalled the time when she consulted the drama master Kajen Fels when she played in the grand theater in the former king’s city.
“What’s the best performance?”
“To firmly attract the audience’s attention on you and make them think that you’re the character you play. What they’re watching isn’t a drama, but your whole life… If you can achieve that, it’ll be the best performance.”
To that end, May practiced hard at acting, thought over the character’s mood and manner, put herself into the story in the script whole-heartedly and tried to present every detail flawlessly. When she was 25 years old, her hard work paid off, she became an actress known to all. As a person from the western region, she gained a firm foothold in the king’s city. During her prime time, even the famous actors in King’s City’s Grand Theater could not overshine her.
However, her opinions changed.
When “The Hero’s Life” was shown, was her performance perfect? Not at all. His Majesty’s script came out so fast that the actors and actresses only
had two to three weeks to rehearse before putting the show on stage, during which, remembering the lines took her one week. Very often the crew had to improve themselves during the performing process. For example, when she played the Hero’s wife, she sometimes forgot her lines or used the wrong facial expressions. And it was not a love story in which she excelled in acting, so she had to conjecture many things, making the show far from perfect.
But was the response to the play not good?
Judging from the audience’s applause, “The Hero’s Life” was nearly as popular as “The Memoir of a Prince’s Search for Love”. When the leading actor said the line “because it is worth fighting for”, the audience’s shout of agreement almost shook off the snow covering the mountain tops.
“Maybe that was the best performance…” May thought, “In King’s City’s Grand Theater, such a scene would never appear. Nobles might drop tears for the characters in a play, or clap out of joy, but their focus was on her, an outsider’s life. But here, the audience saw themselves through the characters, through the play… People see the future they want.”
…
When May returned to her residence, she coincidentally met Irene and Morning Light.
“Ah… May, you’re back right on time.” Irene instantly stood up from the chair and grabbed at May’s shoulder. “I was just asking Lord Carter to preoccupy some good seats for us. Let’s go and watch together.”
“Go to where?”
“What’s the problem? Why everybody is talking perplexingly?” May rolled her eyes, pushed away Irene’s hand and put the Bird Beak Mushrooms and salted fish in the kitchen.
“The cannon exercise, of course,” Irene followed her and said impatiently. “I heard this exercise will be the largest scale exercise since the establishment
of the First Army. There is already a long line in front of the City Hall. Aren’t you interested?”
“Not at all.” May shrugged. “If I had that time, I’d rather read my script a few more times.”
“How about just accompanying me… will you?”
This little girl was really sticky, but May could not bring herself to scold Irene, because she knew, different from others, Irene showed her affection to others out of genuine emotion. May had learnt that when they were in the Longsong Theater.
May intended to refuse the invitation, but she swallowed the words she was about to utter. Indeed, she did not like things related to fighting and killing, but fighting and killing were not always terrible and unbearable. Maybe taking a look at it would help her to experience how the soldiers truly felt and she could better put herself into the next play?
Of course, she definitely did not agree with Irene for her begging.
“Okay.” After a moment’s hesitation, May sighed. “If you insist.”
“Haha, really? Wonderful!”
Looking at Irene full of spirit, May shook her head helplessly. “Alright. I’ll just take it as a sacrifice for a better performance.”