The first report came from the night watchman on Mill Street.
The statement stumbled badly. The young woman in Transcription had plainly laboured to shape the old watchman's incoherence into a document: At approximately the hour before dawn, in the small square on Mill Street, witness observed "a gathering of roughly thirty persons." Witness states that those assembled wore nightshirts and sleeping caps, went barefoot or in slippers, and "performed a play" in the centre of the square.
The transcriber had put a question mark beside performed a play. The old watchman insisted that was what they had done. Some delivered speeches, some answered, some "wept where weeping belonged and stopped where stopping belonged."
Their positions were "as particular as anything on the stage of the Golden Iris." Midway through the performance, the first morning bell sounded. All thirty woke as from a dream, looked around in confusion, and dispersed.
Individual follow-up found that not one participant remembered the events of the night. All claimed to have "slept soundly and awakened in fair spirits."
Had that been the only report, it would have been filed under "Observations of Intoxicated Night Watchmen" and pressed beneath everything else at the bottom of a cabinet.
But on the second night there were four reports. Tailor Street, the ferry landing, a back lane in the bell-tower district, and the mortuary wharf of the Stillwater Society. Different places, identical accounts: deep in the night, groups of barefoot people in nightclothes gathered in the fog and performed with extraordinary skill. At the bell they dispersed, waking unaware.
On the third night, eleven reports.
On the fourth, the Vesper Bureau classified the case Underbell and transferred it to Special Operations. Grey wrote the case name on the file cover himself, four words pressed through the paper:
DREAMLESS SLEEP.
The first production advertised for the Dirge Society's next season had opened.
* * *
"One hundred and seventy-six participants identified. The list is still growing."
Viola presided over the case review in the branch meeting room. She squared a stack of interview records on the table. Her voice was as even as ever, but Sharlo noticed that she turned the pages faster than usual. Ever since the night of the wax theatre, she had been using work to press something down.
"The common-factor screen is complete. Age, profession, address, denomination, whether they have kindled a name—no pattern. Only one commonality: every participant was asleep when the incident began."
She paused. "And the subsequent physical signs. Medical notes from the following day record improved well-being in every case. Chronic insomniacs slept deeply. People troubled by nightmares said their dreams felt lighter. One man in the final stage of consumption participated twice; his physician recorded less blood in his cough."
"The more victimized they are, the healthier they get." The Operations commander scratched his head. "That's what's perverse. No one has lost anything, no one has been hurt, no one has reported a loss. Strictly speaking, every report came from a bystander. Not one 'victim' has complained. On what grounds does the Bureau open a case? What direction do we investigate?"
"On the grounds of the programme." Grey spoke from the rear of the room. He sat in a corner today with the notice copied from the House of Repose open before him.
"The Dirge Society announced Dreamless Sleep. Seven days later, citizens began sleepwalking through plays every night. If the case leaves the whole city rosy-cheeked, I still intend to learn who collects the money beneath the stage."
He rose, walked to the blackboard, and wrote three questions:
Who wrote the play?
For whom is it performed?
What is the price of admission?
"Every play has all three." The old inspector put down the chalk. "Find them."
* * *
The investigation began with the "players." That afternoon, Sharlo and Viola split up and revisited eleven participants.
The interviews were harder than expected—not because their subjects would not speak, but because asking felt cruel.
The old cobbler on Mill Street had performed on three nights. He could answer none of Sharlo's questions. He only repeated, "Sir, I don't know anything about this play. I know I've slept well these past two weeks." He lifted his apron and showed Sharlo his hands, the fingers twisted from thirty years of spasms. "They've woken me aching every night for thirty years. These past two weeks, I sleep till morning. Investigate if you must. Only don't investigate it away."
The washerwoman at the ferry had performed twice. Her youngest son had sailed the year before and never returned. Halfway through the interview, she caught Viola's sleeve and lowered her voice, as if confessing something shameful.
"Miss, let me speak from the heart. The night before last I woke with my pillow wet, but in here"—she touched her breast—"it was easier. I keep thinking perhaps I dreamed of my boy. I don't remember. I don't remember anything. But look—it's easier here. For the first time in eight months. If something did come in the night, it came to repay a debt, not collect one."
Hardest of all was the old man dying of consumption. He had participated twice and now lay on a plank bed in the charity hospice, coughing less blood indeed. Once he understood why they had come, his wasted hand searched over the quilt until it found Sharlo's wrist.
"Young man." His voice was mostly breath, but his eyes were clear. "I've a month or two left. The physician doesn't say it; I know. I hauled coal for forty years and never entered a theatre. Tickets cost too much, and I couldn't spare it. These last two weeks, I've 'acted' every night. I wake remembering nothing, but these old bones of mine feel as if they visited somewhere good in the dark."
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He coughed, recovered, and tightened his grip on Sharlo's wrist. "Sir, show an old man mercy. When you find the master of that company, ask him something for me. Before the curtain falls, may I remember it once? Just once. I want to take one play with me."
Neither spoke for a long time in the carriage back.
"The Chief's three questions," Viola said at last, looking out the window. "Who wrote it, for whom is it performed, and what is the price of admission. After a day of asking, I have confirmed only one thing."
"Yes?"
"The price isn't taken from them," she said. "It is put into them. Sharlo, in six years of investigations, this is the first 'aggressor' I have seen filling a 'victim's' pockets. It balances no account of any profane rite. The Dirge Society does not trade at a loss. The Wick Trading Company took love; the Magpie Pawnshop took attachments. Both extracted principal and interest. But this play is giving something away."
"Then either it isn't the Dirge Society," Sharlo said slowly, "or it is a play printed on the Society's programme but not being performed to the programme's script. They printed the notice, but the player onstage is singing from a book of their own."
He remembered the unprecedented slowness in the theatre's voice when it announced Dreamless Sleep at the midnight stopping of his watch. Like a Stage Announcer encountering a play even it had never scheduled.
* * *
That night, Sharlo and Viola took the first "audience-watch" shift.
They chose the ferry landing. The first four nights suggested the venue could not be predicted, but the landing had hosted two performances, making it the only site used twice. Wrapped in blankets on the second floor of a warehouse, they had hot tea, recording boards, and the best dry-plate camera in the Bureau.
"Division of labour as agreed." Sharlo inspected the camera. "You watch the play. I watch you."
"That division is unsound," Viola said. "You should watch the play. Your eyes are more useful than a camera."
"My eyes cannot see this play. That is precisely what we're testing tonight." Sharlo poured her tea.
"Think about the fourth-night incident in the bell-tower district. A Duskwarden on patrol saw figures gathered in the fog. When he approached, they dispersed—not because the performance ended, but because he came near. Yet the old watchman on Mill Street saw the whole thing. What's the difference?"
Viola considered. "The watchman habitually dozes. The patrolling Duskwarden was alert on duty."
"More exactly," Sharlo said, "I think the play chooses its audience. It permits only the half-awake to watch: a dozing watchman, an insomniac old lady by her window, a boatman pleasantly drunk. I reviewed every witness in the city. Not one was well rested, wide-eyed, and wholly awake."
He tipped his chin toward her.
"And you, Inspector Raven, are the only person in Kandelburg who is always awake and always standing at the edge of sleep. Six years without sleep. You are neither in the audience nor backstage. You stand in the crack beneath the theatre door. I wager this play cannot bar you. So you watch it, and I watch you. If the production has special plans for 'the woman in the doorway,' I pull you back."
Viola looked at him for two seconds and did not object. She lifted her tea and turned toward the window.
After midnight, fog rose from the canal and swallowed the mooring posts an inch at a time. Sharlo's pocket watch stopped for one minute, then resumed. Tonight there had been no announcement in the theatre. The silence felt wrong.
At a quarter to two, Viola suddenly set down her cup.
"They're here."
They heard footsteps first.
Not one person's. Dozens of bare feet and slippers crossed the wet stones, converging from every side of the landing. They came without haste, their rhythm so exact that one thread might have drawn them all.
Figures formed in the fog: a woman in a nightdress, an old man wrapped in a worn blanket, a child carrying a pillow. The child walked with both arms around it, reached the centre of the fog, and set it carefully atop a mooring post as though placing a prop.
Thirty-nine people took their positions on the open ground.
Sharlo strained his sight to its limit. He saw the little amber words above every head—【She will sleepwalk】【He will sleepwalk】—and nothing else. No scarlet ritual script.
No trace of an ash candle. None of the greasy harvest-feel of the Dirge Society. Thirty-nine sleeping people stood quietly in the fog, like a garden blooming at night.
Then Viola's breathing changed.
Sharlo turned at once. She sat perfectly straight, eyes wide. Lamplight spread slightly through her pupils.
She was not asleep. She was conscious, but her point of focus moved slowly across the fog, following something he could not see.
"It has begun," she whispered.
"What do you see?"
"A set." Viola hesitated in a way rare for her, as though describing something beyond her vocabulary. "The landing isn't a landing. It's... a street. An old street. The gas lamps have the twin-headed design from thirty years ago. There is an apothecary and a hat shop. Snow. It's snowing."
She paused. "Sharlo, I can see it fall. It lands in the child's hair and does not melt."
Sharlo stared into the fog. He saw only thirty-nine people in nightclothes standing on wet flagstones, a faint wind moving around them. No snow, no street, no lamps.
The play began.
The woman in the nightdress stepped forward and spoke. Sharlo could hear her voice—this was no hallucination; her vocal cords truly moved—but the words reached him as though through water, blurred and warped beyond his grasp. Viola understood. She watched while whispering a simultaneous account, faster and faster until she nearly forgot she was on duty.
"... The apothecary is closed. The heroine is knocking. Her child is ill, and she has no money. The proprietor comes down from the second floor—the child with the pillow plays him. He is playing an old man, and he is..."
Viola swallowed. "He is very good. The old man says she may have the medicine on credit, but she must repay him with something. The dream she had last night. Tell me the dream, he says. When the telling is done, take the medicine."
The hairs rose one by one along Sharlo's neck.
"The heroine is telling her dream." Viola's voice softened. "She dreamed of summer. She dreamed her child was learning to swim in the river, that the water was warm and the child laughed... Sharlo, I cannot explain it. These lines don't sound written. They sound... true. Truer than truth. The snow across the whole street has stopped to listen."
Thirty-nine sleepwalkers acted a play in the fog about exchanging a dream for medicine. On the warehouse's second floor, a spectator forever barred from sleep whispered her way through the first dream she had ever watched.
Sharlo pressed the shutter.
The magnesium flash went poof.
The thirty-nine figures in the fog did not move. The play continued—but in the instant of the flash, Viola sucked in a sharp breath.
"What happened?"
"Onstage." She spoke one word at a time. "When the flash went off, every player in the street—all of them—looked this way."
"At the camera?"
"No." Viola slowly turned her head. Eyes six years without sleep were enormous in the dark. "At me. Sharlo, the flash did not startle them. They were afraid it would disturb me. That look meant"—her voice dropped, carrying a certainty she scarcely believed herself—"'Please allow the lady to watch in peace.'"
The warehouse was silent as death.
The performance continued in the fog, smooth and soundless. One moment before the morning bell, the invisible snow street folded into the mist. The thirty-nine people ebbed away to their homes, deep sleep peaceful on their faces.
Only the pillow remained atop the mooring post. Beside it lay a sheet of paper.
Sharlo ran downstairs to retrieve it. An old-fashioned stiff-paper theatre ticket, thirty years out of date, its gilt edges worn dim but the printing as fresh as if the ink had just dried:
THE SUNDIAL THEATRE · BY SPECIAL INVITATION
DREAMLESS STREET · STARRING: THE ENTIRE CITY
COMPLIMENTARY TO OUR SOLE LADY IN THE AUDIENCE
RESERVED SEAT · VALID IN PERPETUITY
Sharlo held the ticket in the morning fog and slowly raised his eyes to the warehouse window above.
Behind it, Viola Raven's face was white as paper in the first weak light.
This play was not being performed for the whole city. The city was the cast.
From beginning to end, there was only one member of the audience.