A Novel (20 page)

There was more applause, heartfelt this time, and then the dowager adjusted something around the necklace, reducing its brilliance by two-thirds or more, and permitting closer inspection by her admirers. There was no sign of Vestris or Van Strahden.

“We need to get a closer look at that necklace,” I whispered.

“My area of expertise, I believe,” said Dahria, drawing herself up and slicing through the crowd like a clipper.

I followed, head down, one hand touching the trailing fabric of her dress so I didn't lose her in the throng, but we had gone only a few steps when a bell rang. Dahria hesitated and I almost walked into her, stepping back as the crowd began moving en masse. The performance was about to begin.

Dahria made one last push to reach the dowager, but we were swimming upstream. I got a look at the great lady as she drained her glass, looking flushed and slightly ill at ease in spite of her expansive smile, and then she was steaming into the auditorium.

Dahria scowled after her. “We'll have to catch her between acts,” she said. “I have a feeling she'll want to bask as publicly as possible.”

We took our seats in the center of the dress circle. As I massaged my throbbing feet as best I could through the cramped shoes, Dahria scanned the gilded hall and eventually located the dowager in a side box. She had muted the brilliance of her necklace still further, and I could no longer see it at all. Around us, those wearing luxorite jewelry were doing the same, closing tiny shutters around their pendants, placing earrings in cases or rotating finger rings till the stone could be placed safely in laps. When the gaslights were turned down, there were only a few pools of light that had to be hastily doused, and only one that required the intervention of a deferential but firm usher. When the stage was bathed only in the pearly glow of the gas-fueled footlights and the above-stage chandeliers, an orchestral prelude swelled from the pit. Then the warmer ambience of aging luxorite torches shone through directional lenses flooded the stage, and with the entrance of the actors, the opera began.

Dahria was only partly right. For all the spectacle; the lavish, spangled costumes; and the opulent glow of the performers, the performance was wooden, dull.

But the music!

Where Lani music is all heart and gut, this was head and soul, and it sounded like the voices of angels, barely within the realm of human possibility. It was high and carefully fitted together like the workings of a pocket watch, but it was also air and spirit and water, remote and beautiful so that tears started to my eyes because I knew that like all good and wonderful things, the sound would eventually stop. In that remote and unearthly music, I felt all that made me different from the people who now employed me, and I felt it like sorrow, like loss. Again, my thoughts went to Rahvey's baby, to Berrit, and to Papa, and I had to dig my fingernails into my palms to keep from weeping.

So I was almost relieved when, after twenty minutes, Dahria nudged me with her leg. Up in the curtained box, the dowager had risen from her seat and seemed to be ducking out.

“Too much wine,” Dahria whispered.

I got hurriedly to my aching feet and, ignoring Dahria's hissing protests, excused myself and pushed through a dozen pairs of outraged, well-dressed legs until I was in the aisle and making for the exit, leaving behind a ripple of indignant muttering.

It was strange to be in the lobby now that it was deserted, and with the lights dimmed the looming statues had a new air of menace. I moved to the stairs closest to where the dowager had been seated, pushing past the red velvet rope and climbing a flight of wide, carpeted stairs to the upper gallery. There was no evidence of movement, but there were signs to the
LADIES' FACILITIES
. I followed them.

Another flight of steps, marble this time, and the sound of echoing movement ahead of me.

I moved lightly, trying to decide what I would do or say when I met the dowager. I could hardly play the society lady merely interested in the necklace, dressed as I was. I would need to be direct and trust that she would want to help solve the death of a Lani boy. It didn't feel promising, and I hesitated on the stairs, catching the slightly fusty aroma of perfume in the stale air. Perhaps it would be better, less intrusive, if I didn't corner her in the bathroom itself…?I dithered. Everything about the place and the people in it crowded in on me, made me feel like a rat in an elegant kitchen, or a siltroach frozen in the light of a lamp.

You do not belong here. You cannot do this.

I balled my fists and tried to think, and in that instant, I heard something from the restroom below, a kind of strangled gasp that was almost a cry.

My body took over. In three vaulting strides, I had reached the foot of the stairs and was bursting into the well-appointed sitting area, which gave on to the bathroom itself. There was no sign of anybody here, and I kept moving, slamming through the swinging door into a bright, white-tiled room of sinks and toilet stalls. One of the doors was wobbling on its hinges. On the floor beside it, purple-faced and wheezing, was the dowager, sprawled on her belly like a stricken rhino, panting, her eyes wide with shock and terror.

I grabbed hold of her and tried to roll her onto her back, but she was too heavy. I took her right arm and pulled till she shook off some of her paralysis and pushed herself over and up on one elbow. The pendant was gone, and the spot where it had hung at her throat was pink and inflamed.

“Came from above,” she managed, her eyes flashing back to the toilet stall with something like horror.

I looked, but there was no one there.

She shook her head violently and gasped, one hand at the wattle of her throat. “That way!”

At the far end of the row of stalls a panel was missing from the ceiling: a ventilation shaft. I bounded over and looked up. There was a broad corrugated duct that turned in on itself. I couldn't see round the bend, but it was certainly wide enough for a man to climb through, and now that I was directly beneath it, I could hear the unmistakable sounds of effort.

He was still in there.

As the dowager coughed and sobbed, I stepped onto the toilet seat, cursing my voluminous skirts and the absurd bonnet, and tried boosting myself into the ceiling opening, but it was impossible. I tore off the bonnet and shrugged my way roughly out of the dress, leaving it where it fell. The action had cost me valuable seconds, but it felt good to feel the air on my arms. Clad only in my chemise, drawers, stockings, and those infernal high-heeled shoes, I hoisted myself into the vent.

It smelled faintly of rust, and as I pulled myself inside, it shook, scattering black-and-orange flakes of old metal and dried insect parts. I spat, clawed my way around the corner, and crawled till the tube opened into a dark shaft, which went straight up. There were ladder rungs set into the wall, so I began to climb. I don't believe I had had an actual thought since I heard the dowager's strangled cry from the stairwell.

I could see him above me. A man in close-fitting dark gray clothes with a bag slung across his chest. I could not see his face, and my sense that it was a man came solely from the speed and strength of his ascent.

Though my heart was pounding, this was the first moment since arriving at the opera house that I did not feel alien and inadequate. The shaft was brick, not sooty like chimneys, but scarred, dusty, and irregular: my environment, even if these weren't my clothes. I didn't know what I would do if I caught up with him, but I felt no fear, no uncertainty as I snatched rung after rung, pulling myself up.

When you are used to ladders, they provide a kind of rhythm, your body becoming a machine swinging from side to side like a swimmer. I felt rather than saw my quarry pause for a fraction of a second, looking down at me, and I could almost smell his surprise. I was gaining on him.

The shaft went far higher than I had expected, and it occurred to me as I powered on that we must be moving up through the concert hall's external walls. The higher I climbed, the more I became aware of music, distant at first, but swelling strangely as I neared the top. Another twenty or thirty feet and I was out, standing on a narrow metal gantry, the music from the opera stage below, all around me. I peered into the gloom, my hair falling in my face. There was no sign of the thief, but there were lots of places he could have hid. Ropes and pulleys and great wood-framed canvas flats were suspended in front of me. I was in the rigging for the scenery. Below the gantry I could see nothing but the front lip of the stage and the first rows of orchestra seating, fifty feet below. I took a steadying breath and grabbed hold of a cool brass pipe.

The action saved my life because I didn't see the kick arcing out of the darkness till it made contact with my jaw.

My legs gave, and I sagged, head spinning, but somehow my right hand remembered to hold on as I began to fall. For a moment, the world swam, the darkness above the stage switching places with the brightness and color below. My attacker moved toward me, but all I could do, hanging by one hand, was watch with horror as he turned and looked down into my face.

He wore slim-fitting gloves and was—I was chilled to see—masked. His head was wrapped with dark fabric, but the centerpiece was rigid, shaped out of what looked like gray leather and molded so closely to the face that I could see nothing of its features. The eyes looked hard and dark, but I could not be sure of their color, and my head was full of what he might do as he reached me.

I hung there, dimly aware that the music below had sputtered to a halt and there were cries of consternation from the actors, the only people who could see me clearly. I did not look down. I had seconds of strength left. The masked figure above me paused, staring into my desperate face, and raised a single index finger.

One chance.

Then he was gone, moving along the gantry and farther upstage.

I snatched a breath, flung my other hand up, and caught desperately at the pipe. For a moment, I just hung there, taking the weight off my exhausted right arm, and then I hauled myself up, panting like the dowager I had left on the bathroom floor.

I got unsteadily to my feet. My attacker had raced coolly across the catwalk and now stood above the wings. He seemed to be staring over the stage to the far side, and I followed his gaze up to where a ladder led to an access hatch in the roof. There was no way across but the pipes and ropes from which the lights and scenic flats were suspended, but I knew what he planned to do.

I shook off my daze and watched, amazed, as he ventured out onto one of the long girders. It could be no more than two inches wide, and he spread his arms like a high-wire artist as he took a step out over the void.

He was mad.

But even as I thought it, I found my feet were following him, along the gantry by the theater wall, then up to the same impossibly narrow beam that led out and across the stage so far below. On either side were ropes and cables, some weighted with what looked like sandbags, moored to cleats set into the roofing struts, but they were all impossibly far away. The only way after him was the way he had gone.

I glanced down and saw them now, the upturned, horrified faces of the actors, dreamlike in their makeup. The masked man was already halfway across, perfectly poised, head level. I couldn't see his eyes, but I knew they were set on some fixed point in front of him. That's what you do when you are up high. You pick a spot and focus on it as if you've anchored cable there.…

I put my right foot onto the girder, wishing to all the gods that I were wearing my own work boots and not those wretched heels. Then my left. I extended my arms as he had done and took my first step out into space.

I heard a groan from below, and movement, as if other people were coming onstage now to see what was going on above them, but I could not look down. He was in front of me, blocking the fixed point I would have focused on, and for a second, I felt the unfamiliar swell of vertigo, a dizzying sickness in my head and stomach. I wobbled, instinctively taking another step, and another.

The movement restored my equilibrium, but he had reached the end of the girder now, and as he leapt clear, he paused to look back. He raised his hand, two fingers raised this time.

A second chance?

I focused on them, wondering what he meant, but then his other hand came up and I saw the dull gleam of a pistol. He lowered one finger so that only the index was raised, and wagged it back and forth.

No second chance. You should have known
.

I flinched as the shot was fired, catching the flash of the thing before the plume of smoke, even before the bang. It missed me, but the shock had distracted me, and now I was falling. Slowly at first, just tipping to the side, but the movement was unstoppable.

One of the ropes hung just above my head. With what little momentum I could manage, I leapt straight up, grabbing wildly for the rope, reaching back as I failed to compensate for my lean.

The rope's knotted end brushed my forearm and swung agonizingly away. I started to drop just as it swung back. I grabbed it. The jolt threatened to tear my shoulder from its socket, but I hung there. Just for a second. Then rusted staples were popping from the beam above and the rope tore free.

Someone below screamed, and I plummeted toward the stage.

 

CHAPTER

19

BUT I DIDN'T JUST
fall. Halfway down, all the slack went out of the rope. The abrupt halt in my momentum almost tore it from my hands. I felt my palms burn, but I clung on, eyes watering, body shrieking its defiance. And then I was dropping to earth once more, my weight insufficient to match the sandbag counterbalance that shot up the far wall toward the pulley in the roof.

I hit the stage hard, but landed feet first, knees bent and rolling out of the impact. The shock was immense, a juddering crash that ran through every joint and left me breathless, but I thanked the gods I had landed on the sprung timber of the stage and not on concrete or cobbles.