Semele showed him where breakfast was—a bit of bread and dried fruit, left over from supper the night before, and some runny egg yolk to mix with the bread.

The others were already awake. Most of them held masks in their hands. Patch had a half mask with a sinister-looking brow. Essa had two: one of a lady and another that looked heroic. Semele held a mask dyed bluish gray. It had high, sharp cheekbones and long, white hair. She sat on a crate and rubbed egg whites into the hair.

“That’ll make the hair stick out in all directions,” Essa explained. “She’s playing the ghost, and she needs the ghost hair to flow as though moved by wind between worlds, so she shellacs it with egg whites first.”

“I should have been doing this last night, yes,” Semele said. She lifted the mask to regard her handiwork, and then added more transparent goop to the hair. “It will be droopy by the time we are finished with the walking.”

Rownie wondered what “the walking” was, so he asked. “What walking?”

Thomas tapped the floor of the wagon with his cane, and he smiled a sly smile. “Rownie, we will now accomplish a very great mystery of our profession, something ancient and grand. We will mask ourselves and walk through the streets of Zombay, to the site of our performance. We will each walk alone, by several routes, and in this way we will find our audience. Those who take notice of you as you pass, those who follow to see where you will lead—without attempting to, say, arrest you—they are our audience. We will each of us lead them down to the docks and upstream to the very last pier of the Floating Market. Nonny will ride on ahead and meet us there with the stage itself. Do you know the way?”

Rownie nodded, because he did.

“Do you know several ways?” Thomas pressed him. “Will you lose yourself, once separated from the rest of us?”

“No,” Rownie said. “I won’t get lost. I don’t get lost.” He didn’t always know where home was. Home used to be a shack that moved all over Southside, according to Graba’s whim. But he always knew where he was in Zombay.

He wondered if Graba had already picked up the shack and moved it elsewhere. She probably had. It might be very far away, up in the hills of the southernmost part of the city. It might be very close. She might have leaned it up against the litchfield wall, near the gate, just outside. She might have moved it anywhere.

“Good,” said Thomas. “Remember, Rownie—and all the rest of you—that what we do is important. This is a mystery of our craft. Carry yourselves with appropriate poise.”