Our most effective costumes are the assumptions and preconceptions the audience has about us.

—RHEINVAR THE MAGNIFICENT

Two days later, after the grand final performance, the Chusuk audience dwindled away from the theater into the night. Rheinvar did not take time to socialize with prominent baliset craftsmen or members of the various harmonywood leagues. Immediately after the performance was over, the troupe leader became a stern taskmaster. “Time to go—not a minute to waste. We’ve got new venues to play, new planets to visit, but we can’t get there until we leave here.”

Still wearing his glittering white jacket and top hat, Rheinvar directed Paul and Bronso to help tear down the props and holoprojectors, secure the animals, pack up the costumes, and load suspensor pallets for delivery to the spaceport. He had paid a substantial bribe to hold the last cargo shuttle of the evening, so they could make the Heighliner in orbit before it departed in a few hours.

Stepping out of the way as six large men slid a heavy cage onto a wide flatbed, Paul asked Bronso, “Have you seen Sielto? Or any of the Face Dancers since the performance?”

“How can you tell, one way or the other? They could be any of these people.”

Paul didn’t think so. “By now I recognize the other workers, for the most part. I haven’t seen the dancers since they took their bows and ran back into the tent.”

“Maybe Rheinvar gave them another job to do.”

The troupe leader shouted at the two boys. “Hurry up! Chat all you want aboard the Heighliner, but if we don’t make that cargo shuttle by departure time, the pilot charges me a hundred solaris for every extra minute. I’ll take it out of your wages!”

“You’re not even paying us wages,” Bronso countered.

“Then I’ll find some other way to take it out of you!”

The boys hustled to their tasks, though they kept an eye out for the Face Dancers. When the last groundcars and wheeled platforms were loaded, boxes and packs piled high, Paul and Bronso scrambled to the top of one carrier stack and rode there as a wheeled engine pulled them out to the Sonance spaceport. A dirty old cargo ship waited for them there, bathed in white launching lights. Small figures scurried about, stowing the last of the troupe’s belongings.

But Paul still hadn’t seen any sign of Sielto, and they were about to depart. He followed Rheinvar up the boarding ramp behind the last of the suspensor platforms. “Excuse me, sir. The Face Dancers . . .”

Bronso added, “If they don’t get here in time, we won’t have much of a performance troupe left.”

Rheinvar didn’t seem the least bit troubled as he ducked inside the ship. “They have their own schedules. Don’t worry—they’re professionals.”

Taking one last glance at the edge of the illuminated spaceport, Paul spotted a group of identical men running toward the ship at a distance-eating pace. They burst into the light of the landing field and raced across the armorpave surface.

The shuttle’s engines began to hum and throb as the pilot completed his systems check, and a hiss of exhaust gases spat from outflow pipes. Paul paused at the hatch, motioning for the group to hurry, and all the Face Dancers ran up the ramp, unruffled. Bronso looked at them as they passed. “I can’t tell which one’s Sielto, but he must be among them.”

“I am the one you call Sielto.” The speaker stopped while the other shape-shifters passed without pause, disappearing into the cargo vessel’s gloomy interior. Two of them smelled of thick smoke.

A sheen of sweat glistened on Sielto’s pale skin; Paul noticed that his hands were covered with blood, and spatters of scarlet ran up his sleeves. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“It is not my blood.”

When the cargo ramp retracted, the hatch door automatically closed, forcing them to retreat into the ship. The rest of the Face Dancers had already vanished into the corridors without bothering to speak to the boys; only Sielto lingered. “We had another performance, you see—an obligation to fulfill.”

Seeing the blood, smelling the smoke, putting the pieces together, Bronso blurted the conclusion that Paul had hesitated to voice: “You murdered someone, didn’t you?”

Sielto’s expression remained bland. “By the professional definition under which we operate, a necessary assassination is not murder. It is merely a political tool.”

The deck began to rumble, and Paul caught the bulkhead for support. Unlike passenger transports, where everyone had to find safe and comfortable seats and buckle themselves into restraints, the cargo ship didn’t bother with such niceties. As the vessel lurched off the ground, Paul focused on what Sielto had said. “Political tool? What’s a ‘necessary’ assassination? You . . . you’re a Tleilaxu Face Dancer—I thought you had no political interests.”

“Correct, we have no political interests of our own. We are actors playing roles. We perform services.”

“They’re hired assassins,” Bronso said with a wry smile. “Mercenaries.”

“Performers,” Sielto corrected. “You might say that we are playing our roles as assassins—real-life roles. There is always a need to eliminate troublesome people, and we simply fill that need.”

“But whom did you kill? Who hired you, and why?” Paul asked.

“Ah, I cannot reveal any names or details. The reasons for the assignment are irrelevant, and we don’t take sides.”

Sielto showed neither conscience nor regret for having killed, and his revelations deeply disturbed Paul. His own grandfather, Duke Paulus, had been assassinated in the bull ring on Caladan. Paul also remembered the traumatic attacks by Viscount Hundro Moritani during his father’s wedding ceremony, and the subsequent War of Assassins that caused so much bloodshed for Ecaz, Caladan, and Grumman. “Assassination isn’t just a political tool—it’s a bludgeon, not a precise instrument. There’s too much collateral damage.”

“Nevertheless, it is part of the Landsraad system. The practice has been condoned, at least implicitly, for countless generations.” Sielto flexed his sticky fingers and regarded the mess as he walked down the shuttle’s narrow corridor toward the crew quarters. “If you wish to do away with assassinations, young man, you’ll have to change the face of the Imperium.”

Paul raised his chin. “Perhaps one day I will.”