Name Taken

Galoring
207 - 209

At first it was pure charity; the theater director, seeing her huddled on the doorstep outside and hearing of her mother’s death, allowed her to sleep in the storage closet where they kept the backdrops. When she automatically picked up a broom the next day and began to sweep the floor in the morning, Porik pursed his lips and let her stay another night. Two nights turned into weeks, then to months.

She lived off the leftover food from the stalls that sold fatty drippings, fried flatbreads and honey-dipped bread to the theater patrons, occasionally scavenging from unattended or dumped fare that a patron found not to their liking. She swept the floors, picked up the garbage, and trapped the rats and insects that occasionally took up shop in the theater.

There were many areas that she couldn’t reach, and she didn’t want to bother anyone to help her clean, so she took an idea from the rigging she slept amongst and erected a scaffolding with some spare rope and a pulley. It had once been used to draw up the actor who played Shoulem on his ascent to the kingdom of the sky folk, but now sat idle (it had not had a good opening, and the Baroness had forbidden the play after its first week). She very nearly fell over on her first use of it, but made some hasty adjustments and was soon happily puttering up and down the stage in all three dimensions, dusting and oiling and killing termites. One of the kinder stage crew noticed her invention and put in a word for her with the stage director, Reis. Taking advantage of her small size and lightness, they eventually had her up on the scaffolding to fasten the trickiest pieces of machinery and to do the touch-up necessary when the stage director demanded a change but it was too much effort to take down a backdrop for one item.

She knew she was being used, but didn’t mind. It was interesting work, she loved the building, and she always had a great seat for all the shows, even if she only ever saw the tops of the players’ heads. Most of the adults in the troupe treated her nicely, though a few swore and kicked at her if she got in their way. She tried to stay out of their way and ignored their existence otherwise. Porik never paid heed to her so long as she didn’t make herself obvious, and Reis made use of all her toys that made things easier to haul and construct, even if the stage director never did tell anyone how he’d come up with them (the man had explained to her that no one would believe Sav had done it, and wouldn’t trust that they would work if they thought she’d made it, so it was better if Reis told them he’d made them. Sav thought that seemed contradictory but didn’t want to be rude and point it out).

There were things that confused her about life there, though. Like why Reis got angry when she pointed out that sometimes things looked more believable if done this way or arranged that way, and how he always told her to shut up when she said anything in front of the others. Or why sometimes the other crew would wait until he was out of sight to talk about the theater director and the stage director and sometimes would even bring up her mother, though they only ever referred to her as the Savoule woman. (She didn’t mind that one so much, since they always referred to her as the Savoule kid, and it made her feel closer to her mother to be linked by the name.)

Sometimes she got in trouble for picking things up that were left behind, too, which also confused and irritated her. Part of her job was still to clean up the theater. She got into the habit of saving things whenever she found something interesting in the detritus of cleaning up—letters, pictures, books, rings, a pair of spectacles, coins that had fallen into cracks, a lovely cambric handkerchief with elaborate embroidery. If someone came by asking about a lost thing, she would take a look in her stash to see if anything matched. Most of the time it didn’t. Once in a while it would, and then it was about even odds whether the person would thank her for finding it or shout at her for stealing it. It seemed to her that if an actor lost an earring by leaving it lying about, that was their own fault.

It was even more confusing when the theater director apparently discovered a lot of the intake cash had disappeared. When her stash was discovered, the absence of the gold from the pile was somehow more evidence for her having taken it.

“I told you it was the Savoule kid!” Reis said, throwing her arm toward the uncovered pile of miscellaneous jewels, coins, books, and clothes. “She’s always been a sneak, and I’m telling you we had the same issues with the mother! I don’t know why you ever allowed either of them in!”

“It wasnae me!” Sav screamed, balling up her fists and sobbing so hard she couldn’t see the theater director. “It ent even there!”

Porik sighed, running a hand through blond locks touched by gray. When he spoke, he sounded more tired than angry, though irritation underlaid his rich tones. “Stop these protestations at once, child. Who else could it have been? You were the only one left overnight all those nights, and Reis saw you leaving the office this last time.”

“Because I was cleaning —”

“Precisely.” Porik’s voice had frozen over. “You were the one with access when the money disappeared, not to mention a pile of undoubtedly stolen goods. Goodness knows you have the most motive. I’ve been patient with you, Sav, out of respect for the memory of your mother and because you’ve proven of some use, but I can’t abide thieves preying on the goodness of my heart. Don’t make even more of a scene and have the good sense to leave before I make you, will you? I know this is a theater, but we don’t need these dramatics off the stage.”

In the end it took two of the actors picking her bodily up and dropping her outside of the door to get her to leave, with the entire troupe and stage crew staring after as she screamed and sobbed.

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