The Testimony of the Theatre of Delights

Our corporation has spread its delights across Kitiven for many decades. Our earliest productions were staged in the year 430, by a modest troupe of actors and friends—headed by the legendary Kalvar Bustrad—who captured a passionate arete in Joygiving. We have grown and we no longer travel, but are headquartered in Amsherrat, in a beautiful coliseum of nacre and gold gifted graciously to us by the Abbot Jittutyi. Five thousand souls may attend in its pews, discounting even the luxurious high-vantage boxes that we by Caritas give to the lowly. But do not think the commonplace pews are not also luxurious! We have built a theatre of many delights; sable cushions, carved reliefs, and rich refreshments to feast on for all!

Our clientele includes everyone from the lepers to the glorious Pontifex. There is no discrimination in the Joy brought by theatre, or that we, in Czjeir’s creative spirit of Authorship and Play, share to the world. We are so bold to say, that we did not even blink when our guest list came to include the so-dreaded name of the Tax Collector.

He slunk to our ticket booth, panting beneath his hood. Our ticketer that day—the young Itana—she at first didn’t know who it was, when a wiry giant slapped his palm on her counter, as though it were the sole column supporting his whole weight upright.

The young girl froze before the beast, speechless at its fearsome fangs and messy tail.

The creature beckoned her with a hand glowing blue with enchanting magic. Poor Itana’s eyes clouded.

“W-welcome, sir, to the Theatre of Delights. You’ve arrived just in time for our most blessed, final showing of The Legerdemain of Uri the Mouse. Our headlining actor, playing Uri, is the virtuous Josczyan Pherecz—”

He snapped his glowing hand shut and growled. Itana, with her wits restored, shivered in the rank smog of his breath, which stank like ‘corpses fighting in a soup of blood’, as the girl described. Her skin prickled to be caught in it, huff after huff.

The guest whipped his head up like a wolf about to howl and shoved himself toward the entryway.

“S-sir,” Itana interrupted. “You must pay for your ticket...”

“Ghhhr—hiir,” the Tax Collector snarled. He plastered his palm on her countertop and lifted it to reveal a mound of gold coins.

She counted them quickly. “That’s 350 tichyan. P-please enjoy the show.”

“Hhrnph,” he grunted and departed the foyer for the theatre.

Now poor Itana thought she had just admitted a witch. She hurried to tell us at administration what she’d done and frenzied us into quite a fright. A vile enough witch in a theatre could curse thousands of people at once. And more, it’d be under our supervision. Calls went to find Bishops free and anointed enough to defuse an angry witch without casualties, and we hunted through the coliseum for the beast to distract it before it summoned a meteorite to crush the building, or began slaughtering our guests and puppeteering their corpses like dolls. We speak flippantly about those scenarios because we know in retrospect, they’d never happen. At the time it was a serious fear.

We found our guest standing in the wings of the stage. He breathed out long even throbs, rhythmic like a pulse, all while he stared at our lead actor Josczyan. So captivated he was, more than anyone else in attendance. We recognized him then, by his distinctive cloak and pale face, as the Tax Collector.

Though a relief to know our audience’s safety, questions arose of what he was doing here.

“Is he watching the show?” stagehands whispered to each other.

“No, he’s hunting. He wants Josczyan,” was their conclusion.

“Why Josczyan?”

We knew the stories of the Tax Collector – you can’t stop him or turn him, and you shouldn’t try. When he finds a quarry, that is pronouncement of Czjeir’s second worst judgement: anathema. Josczyan was a bright man devoted to acting, who often brought rich dainties to work, always smiled, always joked, very popular, not the type I ever would have pegged for damnation. The audiences and theatre loved him. But I’m not Czjeir and I’m not the Tax Collector.

“Excuse me, Tax Collector,” a stagehand whispered and tugged on his cloak.

The Tax Collector hissed and glared.

“Why Josczyan?” our stagehand whispered.

The glowering Tax Collector raised his finger for silence, then mouthed, ‘afterwards.’ He refocused upon the stage strenuously, as though wrestling against a hound, he snarled and bit, and slobbered drool that he caught in his hands. Eventually he resettled into staring at Joshczyan, sedately transfixed.

Our men huddled and chattered backstage.

“What do we do? Do we let him take Josczyan?”

“Not even a Bishop would stop him.”

“But it’s outrageous! Josczyan? And in the middle of the play!”

“He hasn’t attacked yet... the play is still going.”

“I bet that cursed goat is going to jump in on that scene—”

“—then we should cancel—”

“We can’t cancel a play.”

“—after the second intermission. We cancel and apologize, we can’t have a live death on the stage.”

“Look, we can do refunds, but we can’t rob people of Joy. This is our last performance of Uri—regardless of what happens with Josczyan...”

“Let’s ask the Tax Collector to wait. He’s not without reason.”

Our bravest stagehand crept to the Tax Collector, to ask him to stay his slaughter until the evening after the show. When he approached, the Tax Collector cringed at the ceiling with crossed arms, and spines like those of a porcupine sprang from his body. Frustration and the message of ‘stay away!’ were writ clear. We heeded and retreated to whisper more plans.

The curtain fell for the second intermission. We swarmed to Josczyan.

“Josczyan, there, it’s the Tax Collector. It looks like he’s come here for you,” one of us pointed to our visitor, who knelt on the floor with his claws driven into his face. He was huffing and shivering to restrain himself from leaping on Josczyan.

“That’s what that smell was?” Josczyan laughed, swishing off the coat of his Uri costume. “I thought a skunk had died in a landfill backstage. But it was merely a visitor who has never known soap.”

“Be serious, Josczyan, why on earth would the Tax Collector want you? What did you do?”

“Nothing so vicious as to summon a devil on my back—surely, he just likes the play?”

“—Josczyan, you can only escape the Tax Collector by being without sin. If you confess it, and swear by Czjeir to flee to the penitentiary now, you might get away. We can’t stop him; we have to stop you.”

“Fine, fine, so I moved some money about. It’s truly nothing serious. It’s truly not.” Josczyan scowled a scowl none of us had seen before. He marched across the stage toward the huddled Tax Collector, as bold as the heroic Uri. “I am not a child-kisser, not a witch, not a rapist. How dare you? Say I’m in confederacy with villains like that, and for what, you monster, for what?”

Josczyan stomped on the Tax Collector’s head, battered his side with punches, and spat. The Tax Collector whimpered, shuddered, and took the abuse.

“Some clever economics? Some smart investments? If a confession will satisfy you, there you are, I confess. Those Ordishmen I dealt with are fair merchants as much as anyone else. You’re one desperate beast today, Tax Collector, if I am the best you can get. Find another. Even, if my associates are so wrong, find them.” He raised his foot to stomp again.

“Josczyan, stop!” Several actors grabbed him and dragged him away. The Tax Collector laid unmoving in an odd serenity, as if dreaming.

“Forgive me, forgive me friends,” Josczyan grinned. “It does spark a temper, to be called a vile thing, even implicitly, when I know I am not that at all. I am quite glad to dazzle our guest with a joyful performance, if he would like to stay for that.”

“He did pay for a ticket...”

“So he did!” barked Josczyan. “Very well, let him stay.”

“I don’t like this, Josczyan, you play too boldly with your soul. You are not truly Uri; we have not writ this tale. If we follow the typical script of the Tax Collector, this will end badly for you.”

“The typical script, yet I’m exceptional. And I am not fit to be called his prey.” He flapped on his coat for act three. “Cast him out or let him watch; on the stage, he will see who I am.”

“We apologize, Tax Collector.” A stagehand went to lift our guest, but a sudden barrier of conjured force repelled her and the Tax Collector raised himself slowly. The snapping and growling he had shown all the day quelled into a pacified haze, wherein he simply watched the stage absent-mindedly while standing very still. Even when the curtain raised for act three, and Josczyan laughed, and flourished, and danced to and fro as Uri, the Tax Collector remained muzzled and tranquil.

“After that harsh beating, perhaps he will spare Josczyan,” we whispered.

Uri the Mouse is a spectacular fellow, who flits and who leaps with a deft derring-do. He cracks his blade across the face of any rascally rogue until their cheeks blush bright red, then boots their posterior too. Grandmothers love him; children frolic around; when Uri’s in town, no evil can stand! Call out your feasts and your carnival cheer, to do-se-do all beneath bright beaming banners of blue. And yet his feet crush not a daisy!

Applause hailed from the audience with the ending of the show. Actors linked hands to bow, while us backstage murmured whether Josczyan’s fate would be freedom or death. The curtain fell and the scuffle of departing watchers quieted.

“So how about that, Tax Collector!” said Josczyan, sweating from exertion. “That is the most marvellous production of Uri I have ever given, and ever will give, regardless of whatever you do. Was that not the greatest gift of Joy you’ve received? Were you not entertained?”

After a pause, the Tax Collector nodded numbly.

“Well—then more than through an eye’s trick of witchery, you have seen to my heart and my soul. It is the theatre I live for, and this virtue I refine as my arete. I am fortunate to know where mine is.”

The Tax Collector spoke. “I never said—you weren’t—a good actor,” every word warbled out of his throat like rocks, rubbing together to spark fire. He grinned darkly. “You are—a very—good actor.”

The grin deepened into a tarry black joke shared only between him and Josczyan.

Josczyan’s sweat changed its scent into something bitter. The Tax Collector laughed and licked his teeth, as Josczyan ran behind the stage, and the Tax Collector chased him with the ferocity and speed of a fire. A backroom door slammed shut. Cackling and howls sounded from inside.

We don’t know—we are grateful not to know—how brutally Josczyan was attacked before he was eaten. We heard the noises: the slapping flesh, the snapping bones, the squelch of meat and ripping of muscle, that no body part was left unmolested, but whatever form the Tax Collector took as he fought was given to imagination. I expected that not one creature could inflict all the pains he inflicted on Josczyan. That is why he is a shapeshifter, to mete all pain that each sin deserves.

The Tax Collector returned from the room spotless and grim. He looked at the floor, then smiled at us.

“Were you, still curious, why it was him?” he asked.

A crowd of us were gathered; some wept, some mourned, some raged, but the judgement was done. There was not any evidence left in that room that Josczyan ever existed. Protests, for the ones who protested, would be presented before Abbots and Bishops; we ushered the unruly away. The rest of us nodded for answers.

The Tax Collector fingered a coin on his cloak. “How m-much do you know about economics?”

We shook our heads. With our treasurer absent, in a room of artists, very little.

“Then you won’t understand it.” He began to depart the hall, on his cloven feet, then tilted his head and sighed at the ceiling. “He was selling in-roads—the, in Ordanz, there’s a certain credit industry—this is, very oversimplified—that, you go into debt for a guarantor, to cover you, and purchase a particular asset. The guarantor covers the liquid fidelity, of the loan, a-and claims the purchased asset, then keeps it, or sells it, and gives the debtor a small commission. This is how the Ordish—one way that the Ordish—launder certain profits. Involving Kitiven, makes it, v-very hard to prosecute. Was—was that clear enough?”

One raised his hand. “I know of usury, but this does not sound it; how is it anathema?”

The Tax Collector turned before the exit to address us. His hand flirted on the door handle. “You need, significant sponsors, to execute a scheme such as that. The families he was involved with—Amrachts, Timberwoods, Veilstones, uh, collectively speaking, they’ve bought up a fifth of the city.”

“By illegal purchases?” The sin had not clicked.

“Um, yeah, of course illegally. The books get so bent and nobody pays taxes. I’m, I’m, auditing sometimes in the literal sense too,” he chuffed. “So, maybe he should’ve been more considerate, about, about my hobbies, when he started to enjoy selling Czjeir’s land to traffickers. You, don’t need two braincells, to know that’s what they were, Josczyan,” he ejected the name like a curse, and ranted to the air. “Too bad for you! I hate Ordish justice too, but it works, when they don’t have ‘contacts’ abroad. Threading them out of their own laws—now you’re wishing you were in those shackles! Hahah! S-so does that answer your questions, sorry?”

As we quibbled among ourselves for a consensus of ‘yes’, the Tax Collector exited the building and disappeared into the day. He became like a man in the last moments we saw him, one whose recognizable white face was hidden beneath a hood, and whose precedence of wealth otherwise lifted him into anonymity. When he watched our performance, he had been more like a beast, or rather a beast-man.

It occurred to me, and to us, when I noted it, that the Tax Collector had been unusually stressed. I was not sure, but thought he may have been especially famished that day. Usually the Tax Collector is able to speak somewhat fluently. He did not to Itana; he only growled like an animal, and perhaps he is more like an animal the more that he is starved.

The thought came intuitively and artistically, a poetry I would write in a play. And yet it felt very true—for Czjeir himself is a poet. ‘The miserable Tax Collector was dementedly hungry that day until he took Josczyan.’ But why had he left it so long? Not for a dearth of sinners, I’d find, as there were many troublemakers within Amsherrat, whom he ate quickly in the weeks following, each one I knew by the logs of the lorekeepers.

“He was waiting for the last production of Uri,” I realised that night at supper, nearly tipping over my tea. “My God; he’s kind.”