Chapter 11: Audience

The late snow came at dawn on the first day of the performance.

The sound of water dripping from the eaves had been growing faster every day, so I only heard the cloth in the window cracks trembling through the night as if in a dream. But when I opened the blue door in the morning, the back alley was white again.

Even the black earth exposed beneath the wall had been covered. It was as if someone had turned the talk of thawing season into a lie overnight, and I stood on the threshold for a long while, looking down that road.

"It is late snow. They said at the market that it will stop in a day or two."

Danika said this from behind me, holding out my cane. Two rolls were already in the pocket of my coat, and a piece of cloth had been laid on top of them. When I picked it up, I found it was folded to wrap around my neck.

"I will be back."

"Take care."

The back alley lay under snow. I could not see whether the powder that had been scattered there every morning was still beneath it, but the tip of my cane did not slip anywhere, and I did not count my steps.

The theater sounded different from the morning on.

Twice as many footsteps went through the corridors as usual. The practice-room piano was not playing at all; in its place, the sound of the orchestra tuning up by the stage traveled along the walls to the props room. It was the sound of a performance day, one I had not heard in a long time, and my ears recognized it first.

The old man had been carrying boxes backstage since dawn, and I sat in a chair marking off every box that went out. Before the last performance, I had carried those boxes myself around the corridors. Today, merely watching the doors the boxes passed through kept me busy all day.

At lunchtime, the old man laid a sheet of paper across my lap. It was the props inventory document I had been writing since the third day, and he pressed a finger against it once.

"Take it to the theater director before the curtain rises. On performance days, he receives guests in the room by the front entrance."

"Now?"

"Counting comes first now. Deliver it this evening, before the bell rings."

Having said only that, the old man lifted the next box. The theater director's room was by the front entrance.

I had been there once to receive my pay envelope, but after that, I had never walked that corridor alone.

Today was Vodianitsa's first performance standing third from the left in the front row. The person who had stood leaning against the corridor wall, waiting for her turn, would stand onstage that evening without leaning on anything. My part was to watch from the stool beside the stage.

The bell rang around sunset.

It was the first bell. The old man had told me it meant the front entrance was opening and guests would begin entering. I put the document into the inner pocket of my coat beside the rolls and leaned on my cane.

"The corridor by the front entrance has a stone floor. Be careful with your cane."

"Yes."

"Do not hurry. The theater director's room will still be there."

The corridor stretched from the props room, past backstage, all the way to the other side. People moved through the darkness behind the stage with their breaths held, and I felt sorry for making cane noises among them, so I kept close to the wall.

Once I had passed backstage, the floor changed from wood to stone. The corridor widened; several candles burned on the walls instead of lamps, and the air smelled not of face powder but of snow from outside.

This was the guests' side.

The picture frames on the walls shone without a patch of gilding worn away, and each worn place in the stone floor had been polished smooth.

The tip of my cane made a small sound whenever it touched that shine. I had only heard, from beside the stage, that the front and back of the same theater were so different. I had never stepped on it myself.

Inside the front entrance was a broad room.

People were entering between stone pillars. Snow rested on every coat, and where it melted on the floor, the stone was wet. Planting my cane on wet stone was harder than walking over the snow in the back alley.

The guests took off their coats and entrusted them to the people by the door before going inside. A sheet of paper passed between the hand that gave and the hand that received, and the guests who received the paper did not look back. They were people accustomed to that sequence.

The theater director's room was deeper in, on the right side of the room. Several guests stood before the door talking to him, so I waited beside a pillar for them to move.

There was a stove beside the pillar.

A soot-darkened kettle sat atop the little iron stove. Several cups were overturned on a shelf beside it.

It seemed to be where ushers warming their hands went as they moved among the guests, but nobody was there now.

Steam rose from the kettle. I had spent all my time moving through cold places in the theater, so even a steaming kettle felt unfamiliar.

The front entrance stood open.

Snow was visible beyond it. It was already growing dark outside, and amid the slanting snowfall, a line stood before a small window beside the entrance.

The line slowly edged forward, received slips of paper, and went inside.

It was the ticket window. I knew that the tickets Vodianitsa had said were too expensive for her to buy came from that window, but I had never stood before it even once.

One person stood outside the line.

Rather than in the line, they stood beside it. They wore a gray coat, a brown scarf wrapped up to their chin, and a thick fur hat pulled down below their ears. Snow had piled atop the hat and shoulders, so I could tell they had been standing there for quite some time.

They held an old umbrella. It was not open; its tip rested on the ground, making it look more like a cane than an umbrella. Though snow clung to the gloves on their hands, those gloves were white as new.

The gloves were not the only new things. The ends of the coat sleeves showed no wear, and the boots had no mud on them despite belonging to someone who had walked through snowy streets.

Even the scarf's creases were as crisp as if it had just been taken from a shop.

The person took a step toward the line.

They seemed to be trying to stand at its end. But when the person at the back moved away, that spot became directly in front of the window.

When the person inside the window said something, they stepped back again. From where they had retreated to, they looked at the window, the line, and the hands of those entering.

They were watching the hands.

The hands exchanging paper and passing Mora. After watching, they looked down at their own hands, then at the window again. I knew that sequence.

It was what I had done in a market alley during my first month in this country.

I had not known there were four steps to buying a roll: asking its price, counting the coins, handing them over, and receiving it. So I watched those hands from behind Vodianitsa.

Then, I had not known the denominations of Mora, the prices of goods, or even which door was for customers and which one was for us.

That person did not know the order of this world either.

The moment I thought that, my feet moved first. It was less that I meant to help someone who could not buy a ticket, and more that I felt as if I had seen a familiar face. I did not recall whose face it was until I stepped outside the entrance and felt the snow against me.

I had never gone out through the front entrance. Ever since I had been told on my first day at the theater that it was the guests' door, it had always been on the other side of the building. But as I crossed its threshold with my cane today, I learned of one more way out of this theater.

The tip of my cane slipped once on the wet stone. I caught myself on a pillar, and at the sound, the person turned around.

I could barely see their face. The fur hat came down to their eyebrows and the scarf covered their chin, leaving only two pale blue eyes looking at me in between. Snow had settled atop their eyelashes without melting.

"Excuse me, are you looking for something?"

My tone grew stiff by itself. It always did in front of strangers, and it had been that way before the theater director too, so I did not think to change it.

The person did not answer right away. They looked at me, at my cane, then at me again. Their eyes rested on me as Odette's did, yet they were not measuring eyes.

They were closer to eyes that looked without knowing what they were seeing.

"Does one buy a ticket from that window?"

My ears caught for a moment on the unfamiliar person's casual manner of speaking, but it did not offend me.

It sounded as though it had been taken from an old book, less like casual speech than words used somewhere else. And it sounded even more so because the person speaking had hands that had retreated from the ticket window.

"Yes, you buy one at that window. You need to stand in line."

"A line?"

"Yes. Starting at the very back over there."

The person looked at the end of the line. They were about to move when a bell rang inside.

It was the second bell.

The person inside the window lowered the shutter.

The people remaining in line went inside, and the space before the window emptied, but the person stood in that empty space in the same posture they had taken to walk forward. The tip of the umbrella sank a little deeper into the snow.

"It has closed."

"...It closes when the bell rings twice. Because the curtain is about to rise."

I had only learned from the old man earlier how many bell rings meant the window would close. This person seemed not to know that either, and I felt sorry for acting as if I knew better in front of someone who did not, so my voice trailed off.

"I did not know how to buy one."

The person said it. It was neither an excuse nor an embarrassed voice.

It was simply a voice stating what they had seen. Yet it was too calm for someone who had stood alone before the window until snow piled that high atop their hat, trying to figure out the process, and I could not find an answer.

It had been a long time since I had seen someone say they did not know something without placing any weight on it.

At the company, saying you did not know always meant preparing the next words. Even after coming here, I always prepared the next words after saying I had come from far away. But this person said they did not know, and that was the end of it.

Instead, my gaze went to their shoulders. The snow piled there was not melting.

They had either stood outside that long, or their body was cold enough that snow would not melt on it. Either way, the kettle atop the stove inside the entrance was steaming.

"You must be cold. There is a stove inside. Even if you could not buy a ticket, please warm yourself before you go."

Only after saying it did I realize what I had said. It was not what someone from the theater ought to say to a person who could not buy a ticket, and I had only set foot inside the front entrance for the first time today, hardly enough to call myself a theater person. But the words had already come out.

The person looked at me.

"Is that allowed?"

"It is. There is no one there."

I did not know whether nobody being there was a reason it was all right to bring them along. The person nodded once and lifted the umbrella.

I turned and planted my cane inside the front entrance, and their steps came half a pace behind mine.

I knew someone who walked half a step behind me. But this person's steps were not soundless like Alyosha's; they made a steady sound, and their stride was the same over stone floors and snow alike.

I stopped before the stove.

I took a cup from the shelf, wiped its inside once with my sleeve, and tipped the kettle. Steam from the dark brown tea rose to my face.

I cupped the mug in both hands and held it out to the person.

"Please have some. It is theater tea, so I do not know if it tastes good."

The person accepted the cup. They took it while still wearing their gloves and did not drink immediately, only looked into the cup.

It looked a little like someone putting candy beneath a pillow, and I glanced elsewhere for a moment.

"Thank you."

"It is nothing."

The person took a sip. Then they lowered the cup a little and looked into it again.

"This is theater tea?"

"Yes. I think it is what the ushers drink."

"Is that so."

After saying that, the person took another sip. I could not tell from between the hat and scarf whether they drank because it tasted good or because they did not know what it tasted like, but I could see the gloves around the cup gradually becoming wet.

"What is being performed today?"

"Singing and dancing. The chorus stands in back, and the ballet dances in front. I have never watched it from beginning to end myself."

"A theater employee has not?"

"I work in the props room. All I do is breathe and watch from beside the stage."

The person tilted their head very slightly at that. Their face said it was strange for someone at a theater never to have watched a performance all the way through. Looking at that face, I counted what I had seen in this theater: through door cracks, from beside the stage, and beyond walls.

"You may take off your hat. It will melt and get wet."

"This is fine."

The person did not touch their hat. I had seen someone who did not take off a hat even before a stove. Vodianitsa's had been cloth, while this was a fur hat, but I doubted the reasons were the same.

Remembering the unmelted snow on their shoulders, I thought they must be someone who felt the cold badly.

"Did you come to watch the performance?"

"I did."

"Alone?"

"Alone."

"Did you come from far away, with the snow falling like this?"

"Not far."

The answers were brief, and each ended cleanly. Vodianitsa's words were a river, and Odette's came one stone at a time.

This person's words were stones too, but the spaces between them were not narrow. You could tell where the next stone would come from.

"The snow is late."

"Yes. Everyone said the thawing season had arrived."

"It comes, even if late."

As they said that, the person looked beyond the front entrance. It seemed they spoke not to me but to the snow outside, though in that voice, even words like that did not sound strange.

The person looked at me again. This time, their gaze lingered a little longer on my cane.

"You said you worked in the props room?"

"Yes. I count and clean the things that go onto the stage."

"What happened to your leg?"

"I was working. A stage set fell on it."

The person's cup stopped.

The cup, which had been on its way to their lips, remained still there. Their eyes went to the cloth on my cane's handle and rose again, and those raised eyes were different from before.

I could not say what was different. It felt as though eyes that had been looking had become eyes that knew, though I had no reason to feel that way.

"Is that so."

"Yes."

"That must have been difficult."

I did not know what to say to that. Vodianitsa had asked why it happened, and Odette had told me to stop talking about it.

Alyosha had asked whether I was fortunate. But this stranger said it must have been difficult. It was unlike any of the three, and because it was different, there was nowhere for me to put it.

"I am fine now. My work is done sitting down."

"Truly?"

"Yes. Truly."

The third bell rang.

The orchestra beyond the wall swelled all at once and then settled. The people who had remained in the room inside the entrance hurried in. The curtain appeared to have risen.

I remembered the document in my inner pocket.

"Please stay here for a moment. I have something to deliver to the theater director. I will return shortly."

"Here?"

"Yes. Please have more tea."

"I will wait."

Having said that, the person stepped half a pace closer to the stove. There was nowhere to sit, so they remained standing, holding the cup in both hands. Somehow, it was the posture of someone accustomed to standing for a long time.

The guests in front of the theater director's room had all gone inside. I knocked.

"Come in."

The theater director sat before his desk. The pile of papers was the same as before, as were his glasses, but today one sheet that seemed to contain the performance order lay separately atop the pile.

"Kim Sang-hyeon, did your grandfather send you?"

"Yes. The prop count."

I held out the document. The theater director accepted it and scanned it once from top to bottom. His gaze paused on several numbers written in my hand when he reached the end, then he laid it atop the pile.

"The numbers are correct, I assume?"

"I counted them three times."

"Then that is enough. Go on. The curtain must have risen."

The theater director said that and looked at me once. It was not the face from the infirmary, unable to set a document straight, nor the face that had pushed forward my pay envelope. He looked at me from somewhere between those two expressions, adjusted his glasses, and lowered his eyes to the papers again.

The person still stood before the stove.

They held the empty cup in both hands, and the snow on their hat had melted, dampening the fur a little. No one remained in the room inside the front entrance now, but song came from beyond the wall.

The song was blurred because it came from beyond the wall. But even in that muffled sound, my ears picked one voice out. I could not distinguish through the wall whether it was coming from the front or the back.

"You returned."

"Yes. Did you wait long?"

"I did not wait. I listened."

The person was looking at the wall. It was the face of someone listening to sounds beyond it, and I had left someone looking at the wall with that face alone in this room while I went to deliver a single sheet of paper.

A person who could not buy a ticket was listening to song through the wall, and on this side stood one person from the theater.

I knew the rule. Beside the stage was for theater people, while guests sat in the audience.

The theater's doors separated the two. I still remembered Vodianitsa saying the front door was for guests.

But this person was not a guest. They had no ticket, so they were not a guest, and they were certainly not one of the troupe either.

That meant there was nowhere in this theater for them, yet they stood there listening to song from beyond the wall.

I had once received a place from people who made room for someone who had none. It had been a stool and a chair.

I did not know what those people had thought at the time, and what I thought now was not really anything that could be called a thought.

"Would you like to watch it?"

"Watch what?"

"The performance. You have missed the beginning, but the rest remains. It is not a good seat."

The person turned to look at me.

"But I have no ticket."

"It is not a place you enter with a ticket. But you must not make a sound. I only breathe when I am there too."

As I spoke, I thought of the face the old man would make if he heard me say this. Even thinking it, I did not take back the words.

I was breaking a rule, yet strangely, the side that broke it felt lighter than the side that obeyed it.

"Then I will watch."

The person overturned the empty cup on the shelf, putting it back exactly where I had taken it from. Then they picked up the umbrella and came half a pace behind me.

The corridor was darker than before.

After the curtain rose, half the candles in the corridor had gone out. The closer we came to backstage, the louder the sound grew: beneath the song was the orchestra, and beneath that came feet striking the floor.

I felt sorry to add the sound of my cane to it, so I placed its tip on the floor gently.

The steps behind me did not soften. Yet they were not distracting, and those undistracting footsteps followed steadily through the darkness.

There was a stool in the darkness beside the stage.

It was the spot where the old man sent me every day, and when one sat there, the entire stage was visible at an angle. I turned the stool toward the person and dragged over an empty box beside it to sit on.

"Please sit here."

"Where will you sit?"

"Here is fine for me."

The person sat on the stool. As they sat, they laid the umbrella across their lap.

Their back was straight even on a stool without a backrest, and stage light streamed in beyond that straight back.

The stage was bright.

Eleven candelabras stood at the chalk marks, with twenty cups arranged between them. The chorus stood in two lines before the back wall, while the ballet dancers were scattered in front.

There was no castle. The place where two ropes should have hung from the ceiling was simply a dark ceiling, and no one onstage or in the audience looked up at that spot.

I looked up, then lowered my gaze.

I looked at the third person from the left in the front row.

The person who covered her ears stood there. Her mouth was open as she sang, and her hands hung at her sides.

Today, without her coat, those hands had no inner pocket to go to.

It was not the voice from the end of the back row. It was a front-row voice, and a front-row voice was meant to be projected, not muted. That person was projecting it now.

In place of the words, "Mute it," which I had heard through the crack in the door during my first week at the theater, that voice rose once above the voices of nine people before returning to its place.

Rising and settling was right. The front row had to remain within the whole, and she was within it. But it was different from the end of the back row because even when her voice rose and fell within that whole, no one clicked their tongue.

I heard no tongue-clicking. The sound that had come from the backstage darkness on the first performance day did not come today, and I held my breath as I listened to its absence.

I had first heard that voice in a field of snow, then through the window of a house in the woods, and through door cracks. But this was the first time I heard it from the front row. Though it came from the same throat, it sounded different, and I could not count what was different about it.

I could see the old man standing in the darkness on the other side of the stage. That was where boxes went out and came in, so he was looking only that way and did not seem to notice that another stool was occupied in this darkness.

"There."

It was my voice. It was loud for someone who had said he would only breathe, and startled by myself, I cut the volume in half.

"Third from the left in the front row. Today is her first day standing in the front row."

The person turned their head very slightly. Their eyes went to where my finger pointed.

"Her first?"

"Yes. Until recently, she was at the end of the back row. The very end of the ends."

The words did not stop there. I tried to stop, but they continued.

"The end of the back row rehearses last, so she waits leaning against the corridor wall. Then she moved up one row, and today is her first day in that row. Did you hear that voice rise and settle? Before, they told her to mute it."

As I spoke, I realized my voice was more excited than usual. I knew it, but could not lower it, and the reason I could not was because I was in front of someone I did not know.

Before people I knew, I knew where words like these went. Before someone I did not know, the words simply went toward the stage.

I would never see this person again, so those words would pile up nowhere. Words that did not pile up were light.

The person did not answer. Without answering, they watched the third person from the left in the front row for a long time. I could not tell what those eyes saw, and without knowing, I looked at the same place.

The person exhaled.

Their breath came out white. It was white and long.

In the darkness beside the stage, that breath caught the stage light, hovered for a while, then dispersed. My breath was not that long. It was cold beside the stage on a night of late snowfall, and it seemed the body of someone who had stood outside for so long had not yet warmed through.

The ballet moved forward.

One person spun at the center. She had a small body and pale beige shoes.

While turning, she did not step on the chalk marks on the floor even once. Her foot passed exactly one foot away from the spot half a foot inside the second mark from the right.

"There, the person turning in the center."

This time, I lowered my voice from the start.

"She was the one who told me about the chalk marks on the floor. She told me to place the candelabras half a foot inward where the skirts would catch. They have not caught even once since then."

"Those feet?"

"Yes. Those feet."

The person's eyes followed those feet. Following spinning feet with one's eyes was not easy, but their gaze did not lose them once. I could not tell what those unwavering eyes were measuring.

I did not speak of what the two people had done for me.

I did not say that the third person from the left in the front row had carried me up through the snow, or that the feet spinning in the center had wrapped cloth around my cane's handle.

It was neither the place nor the time to say it. Above all, this was their moment, not mine.

I only wanted to boast. The moment I thought that, my face grew a little warm.

For the first time, someone who had done nothing but count since coming to this country was pointing instead of counting, and everywhere my pointing finger went, there was someone I knew.

Where song and dance rose together, the front-row voice rose once more. This time it lingered a little longer before settling. In that interval, the feet at the center stopped and spun again, and the orchestra supported them both.

The person watched without moving at all. It seemed as if they took in the entire stage in that posture, yet their eyes traveled only between two places—the two places I had pointed out.

The curtain fell.

Applause came from beyond the wall. The person did not clap.

Their hands remained on the umbrella, and only their eyes were on the stage. I felt I knew where those eyes were without looking. The people onstage came forward and bowed, and the third person from the left in the front row bowed too.

The cloth atop her bowed head turned white once in the stage light, then rose again.

Vodianitsa did not look toward the darkness beside the stage. Her face, lifted from its bow, looked toward the audience, as it should.

Alone in the darkness, I nodded.

The people left the stage. The ballet went off on the other side, and as the chorus entered this darkness, I looked at the stool.

The person had already risen. Holding the umbrella, they had stepped away from the stool and stood in the shadow of a pillar, so all the people coming down from the stage would see was shadow.

It was the place of someone who knew where to stand in order not to be seen.

"I should go."

"I will see you to the front entrance. It is the way the guests leave."

"All right."

The room inside the front entrance was full of people.

People fastening their coats and heading out into the snow pressed toward the entrance. It was not easy to make my way through them with my cane, but the person stepped in front of me.

A path opened.

They neither shoved nor told anyone to move, yet wherever they walked, people retreated half a step.

The people who stepped back looked as if they did not know why they had done so, and the person passed through the middle without changing their stride. I followed behind.

The person who had walked half a step behind me was now ahead, and I, who had walked ahead, was behind. But the path was much easier that way. It was the first time I had seen someone whose way opened by itself in a crowd.

Outside the front entrance, there was still snow.

The snow had thinned since before, and there was no wind. People were dispersing below the stone steps.

The ticket window's shutter remained down.

The person stopped atop the stairs.

"This is far enough."

"Yes. Be careful on the snowy road."

"I enjoyed the tea."

"It was theater tea. It was not even mine."

"Still, someone poured it."

While I searched for an answer to that, the person descended the steps. They never opened the umbrella, and snow began settling on their hat again.

Their stride was the same over snow as it had been over the stone floor.

A path opened even among the people at the bottom of the stairs. The gray coat moved farther away down that open path, and snow filled in behind it.

It was only after that back vanished into the snow that I thought of how I did not know their name. There had been no reason to ask.

If I accepted the name of someone I would never see again, it would only leave me with one name I had nowhere to write down.

A person who could not buy a ticket had sat in the theater's innermost place, then left through the front entrance among the guests. I thought about that shape for a moment atop the stairs, then turned as snow slipped inside my scarf.

When I went back in, the room inside the front entrance had emptied in no time. The kettle on the stove still steamed, and one cup lay overturned on the shelf, identical to the other cups. Now even I could no longer tell which cup it had been.

In the corridor back to the props room, I untied the cloth Danika had folded around my neck and put it into my inner pocket. The two rolls were still there.

Only then did I realize I had not eaten lunch.

The old man was receiving boxes in the props room.

Props returning from the stage came in by the boxful, and as he set one of those boxes before the shelves, he looked at me.

"Where have you been?"

"To the theater director. Then I was beside the stage."

"Did you watch it?"

"I did."

The old man said no more. I sat in my chair and counted the returned candelabras. There were eleven, with fresh wax clotted on them. I saw the old man put a hand to his waist once while I counted, but said nothing.

The back alley was pitch-dark, and the snow had grown thin.

It was deep into the night by the time I reached the blue door. A light was on in the window.

The blue door opened from within. Danika took my cane, propped it up, and brushed the snow from my coat. She did not say I was late or ask how it had been, and heating cloths were warming beside the stove.

"The front row did well."

"I understand."

Once again, "I understand" was not a reply that belonged there, but Danika received it that way. As she received those words, she set warmed soup before me.

As I ate, I counted on my fingers what I had done today. I had delivered the document to the theater director, watched the third person from the left in the front row to the end, and counted eleven returned candelabras.

My fingers stopped there, and I finished my soup.

======

In the deepest room of the Ice Palace, the unfinished board remained as it was.

The white and black pieces stood where they had been threatening one another, and two captured pieces lay beside the board. The Tsaritsa passed that table and stood at the window.

The fur hat was still on her head. It was the hat she had been unable to remove even before the stove, the hat that would reveal who she was if removed. The Tsaritsa raised a hand and took it off.

Silver hair braided up emerged flattened beneath it, the fur damp from melted snow.

Outside the window were the rooftops of Snezhnaya's capital. Late snow was still falling upon them.

She had returned to the palace alone. She had dismissed her escort before leaving. It would have been easier to change her appearance with power than with a mere fur hat, but the power of a god such as the Tsaritsa left traces wherever it was used, and at least two sets of eyes in this city could recognize those traces.

Her stride in the snow had been the same as it was over the theater's stone floor, yet as she walked, the Tsaritsa had considered nothing. Considering came after entering the room.

The Tsaritsa retraced what she had done that evening from the beginning.

She had gone to confirm the link. Once she had pushed her thinking as far as the fact that the link moving a single shade was one man, she needed to see with her own eyes what manner of man he was. The best place to do that was among the audience at the theater where he worked.

To sit in the audience, she needed a ticket. She did not know how to buy one.

The Tsaritsa did not hide from herself that she, who had remained within the palace gates for so long, had stood before a theater window watching hands exchange paper and Mora. There was no one in this room to hide it from.

She had heard what the person inside the window said. It was an instruction to go to the back of the line. The Tsaritsa understood the words, but did not know where the back of the line began.

How did people know where a line began? Everywhere the Tsaritsa went, people stepped aside, so a thing called a line had never formed before her.

The man was not visible from the audience. A props-room worker did not stand onstage, and a person who did not stand onstage could not be seen from any seat.

The Tsaritsa only realized that fact while standing before the theater window with snow falling on her.

But then the man came walking out on his own.

The moment she saw the cane, she knew. He was the man who had injured his leg while working in the theater's props room.

The man whom Gold had spoken of as though merely noting what would be written in a document beyond the chessboard stood at the snowing front entrance with a cane and asked what she was looking for.

Kim Sang-hyeon. The Tsaritsa had spoken that name once before the chessboard.

The man did not know who the Tsaritsa was, while the Tsaritsa had known who he was from the start. The one who knew accepted tea from the one who did not.

The man did not probe for a reason. He had asked a few questions, but even when her replies were brief, he did not press further. There was something in his face like he had seen someone familiar.

What he had recognized, even the Tsaritsa could not guess.

Every item of clothing had been new. The Tsaritsa saw the man's eyes rest once on the ends of her sleeves and once on her gloves before the stove, but he said nothing.

If the man had guessed what it meant for someone wearing new clothes to be unable to buy a theater ticket, his guess would have been wrong. It suited the Tsaritsa better to leave that wrong guess as it was.

His leg was as Gold had said. The court physicians had said it was beyond anything they could mend, yet with that leg, the man slipped once on wet stone, caught himself on a pillar, and walked half a step ahead.

Gold's words—that he did not want the leg restored—settled beside that stride.

She had gone to confirm the link. Yet when she returned and examined it, all that remained in her hand was a cup of tea.

By habit, she counted its price.

Everything received had a price, and its price was measured by what the other party wanted. Everything brought before the court was so.

Those who offered loyalty desired position. Those who bowed in fear desired life. The Tsaritsa had spent long years reading those desires and paying their price.

What did the man desire?

He did not ask her name or status, nor did he say they should meet again. He stood someone who could not buy a ticket before the stove and poured her tea.

He seated her in a place only troupe members entered and showed her the performance, then told her atop the stairs to be careful on the snowy road.

No price emerged.

She could not give a place to someone whose name she did not know, and could not put at stake the life of someone whose status she did not know. For someone who did not ask to meet again, there was no price to pay next time.

If there was no desire, there was no price. The Tsaritsa had never received something without a price. Because she had never received such a thing, there was nowhere to put it, and what she could not put down remained in her hand like a cup that would not cool.

There had been a night when she found Gold's demand strangely chilling. The scales trading words upon which the nation's fate rested for one man's hospital bills had not tipped, and that had seemed strange. But on the scales the man had held out this evening, there had been nothing placed at all.

That night, the Tsaritsa had considered the man's hospital bills too cheap as the price of a thread leading to Gold. This evening, for the first time, she measured that price again. It was not a question of cheap or expensive; she first had to ask whether it was something that could be priced at all.

The man had said it was a place only troupe members entered. His face knew it was breaking a rule, yet broke it anyway, and the Tsaritsa had never seen such a face at court.

Those who broke rules at court did so because they desired something, but she could see no desire in the man.

The man had told her not to make a sound. He had said he only breathed there himself, and the Tsaritsa had done as he said and only breathed, but one breath came out long.

The man seemed to attribute that breath, spreading white in the darkness beside the stage, to the late snow. The Tsaritsa added nothing to the way he had attributed it.

Holding that thought, the Tsaritsa looked at the window.

Frost had formed on the glass.

It took the shape of snowflakes. One flower bloomed in the lower corner of the window, with another beside it. As the Tsaritsa watched, a third sprouted at the edge.

The Tsaritsa knew frost. It settled on windows when what was inside her leaked out, and until now, the number of those flowers had never passed a few. A few flowers were all there had been through the long years.

A fourth flower sprouted.

The Tsaritsa took her gaze from the frost and considered something else. There was much to consider, and it was her habit to consider the useful things first.

They were the two places she had seen in the darkness beside the stage.

The throat of the third person from the left in the front row did not belong two rows back. The Tsaritsa understood at once the voice that rose above nine others and settled again, and understood what the troupe had been looking at to leave such a voice at the very end of the back row until recently.

The feet turning at the center were feet that measured the floor. The Tsaritsa had only seen a few feet in all her long years that could turn over and over, exactly one foot away from a chalk mark, without making a mistake.

Neither woman had seen the stool in the darkness. It was fortunate to the Tsaritsa that they had not; had they seen it, this evening would have been different.

The Tsaritsa put those two places somewhere in her mind. She could use them if a use arose, or leave them as they were if none did.

She did not decide what she would do. Yet the voice that had pointed to those two places kept returning.

Today is her first day standing in the front row.

Before, they told her to mute it.

Those feet.

It had been too loud for the voice of someone who said he would only breathe, a voice that realized it had grown louder and cut itself in half. Nothing the Tsaritsa knew was mixed into that voice.

It was a voice that simply went toward the stage, without desire or fear. Yet from the voice alone, she could tell what the two people it pointed to were to the man.

It was pride. The Tsaritsa had never heard pride offered without wanting anything, and because it was a sound she had never heard, it kept replaying.

Once more, the Tsaritsa rolled the words, "I went to confirm the link," around in her mouth.

They were correct. The thread to Gold had not yet broken, and neither was it wrong that the man stood at that thread's end.

It remained true that the Harbinger of Death was somewhere in this city. Keeping the man close meant keeping Gold close; that calculation had been the same before this evening and after.

Yet that calculation kept being pushed back.

What pushed it aside was not another calculation. The cup held out in two hands before the stove, the voice lowered by half in the darkness beside the stage, and the words atop the stairs telling her to be careful on the snowy road pushed it aside.

The Tsaritsa had never experienced things without a price pushing aside a price, so she could not give it a name.

The frost had become five flowers.

The Tsaritsa stopped counting. It was not a number that could be resolved by counting.

Instead, she looked down at the hat in her hand. The fur was damp from melted snow. She had been unable to take it off even before the stove, but the man had told her once to remove it and did not say more.

He must have thought she was someone who felt the cold badly, and it was easier for the Tsaritsa to be seen that way.

Only then did she think what she would be called when she next stood before him.

The man had never tried to learn the Tsaritsa's name. The Tsaritsa had known his name since before the chessboard. A name only one side knew could not be used when they stood facing each other next time, and the name Anastasia could certainly not be used.

She needed a name.

What was the price of that tea?

No answer came, and the frost became six flowers. Turning from the window, the Tsaritsa chose an ordinary name.

It was a name one could hear in any alley of this city, one no one would turn to look at twice, a name that came from the word for love.

Lyuba.

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