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fingers. The footlights popped on all across the stage, the dullest of the white set, barely casting any illumination.
        Pertos laughed, though he was not at all happy.
        Let there be life! he thought.
        The curtains opened, and the puppets frolicked forward. The last show of the night had begun, playing to a capacity house. In the front row, in one of the most expensive seats, the devil sat biding his time, disguised as a merchant named Alvon Rudi…
        
        Pertos Godelhausser sat in a comfortable form-fitting chair that hugged the contours of his body, holding the Holistian Pearl in his right hand, staring at nothing, his mouth somewhat slack and his face far too pale. The jewel was a brilliant white that almost seemed to radiate heat, and as he rolled it back and forth in his fingers it seemed to cling to his flesh with a will, like a magnet seeking out his bones through the insulating cushion of his flesh. Sebastian sat on the floor, lacquering a newly painted prop to keep the colors rich and vibrant as Pertos wanted them. He could never have been trusted to apply the many colors themselves, but he could work the self-feeding lacquer brush without much problem. It was something he usually looked forward to, for it made him feel more a part of the show. He was always plagued with fear deep inside that he would one day be useless and that Pertos would reject him for someone else. But tonight being useful was not bringing him the sense of contentment and worth that it usually did. He thought of Bitty Belina.
        Pertos had said that she was putting on a special show for the merchant Alvon Rudi. It was a new show, a new story, privately enacted. And he and Pertos were to wait here, perhaps sleep here, in Pertos' case, if the play should take an hour or all night. They were at the far end of the corridor from Pertos' room where Rudi enjoyed the new play.
        He wished he could watch.
        Not being permitted to watch made him feel excluded. It was as if they all knew what the play was about, except him. And that made him miserable. He felt childish and unneeded.
        Pertos slept. The Pearl glowed. And no one was watching the idiot at the moment.
        Sebastian knew from experience that the puppet master would be tranced for a long while yet. It had only been moments since the strange sleep had taken him, and he never severed himself from a Pearl-vision in less than an hour. Sometimes he stayed under for most of a day, not eating or drinking, frightening Sebastian who thought he might be dead, though he never was.
        Sebastian put the lacquer brush down, and after the bristles had registered inactivity for twenty seconds, the tool ceased to secrete its transparent, odoriferous shellac. On the paper laid down to protect the floor, a wet circle seeped outwards from the bristles.
        It had come to him that tonight was the last night that Bitty Belina would be alive, at least for a while, until they moved on to another town and her story could be enacted before fresh audiences. Two days of any single story at a time was the limit. Then the puppets in that show would be returned to the Furnace to call forth another batch. They died.
        He felt an indescribable panic seize him as he realized the full impact of what he had just been thinking. He wanted to leap up and run and kick things and shout, work off this feeling of bursting apart. But he knew that all of that would not keep the blond-haired puppet alive another minute. Did the rain stop if you asked it to?
        Bitty Belina would die.
        Yet tonight she performed a new play, in private, and one longer than any in the puppet master's catalogue. That hardly seemed fair when he was a part of the show. He should get to see the new story.
        She was in a new story. For the first time he understood the import of that concept. What had happened to Bitty Belina's prince? Was he in the new life she