Masks and Shadows (41 page)

The stench last night, as the lieutenant's body had burned . . .

Oh, God
. He was going to be sick.

Fräulein Dommayer was speaking to him. “Look at me!” she said. “You're too ill to go back on. Just sit down! I'll tell Monsieur Delacroix you can't continue, and—”

“No!” He blinked through the gray haze. “I have to go back on. If I don't . . .” He looked over her head at Lieutenant von Höllner, who stood watching him evenly. Just as the letter had promised. “I'll be killed if I try to run,” he whispered.

Von Höllner had held his closest friend's hands behind his back while the man was stabbed, for the Brotherhood's sake. No chance he would feel any more compunction for the death of a singer he didn't know.

“Killed?” Fräulein Dommayer stared at him. “Why would they care so much that you sing tonight?”

“It's not the singing,” he said. “It's after. It's . . .”

Aristos
, he told himself. Only stupid, arrogant aristocrats sat in the audience and filled up the royal box . . . aristocrats, their hired soldiers, and the invited local gentry who fawned all over them. Why should he even care? They wouldn't give so much as a shrug for news of his death. Prince Nikolaus had ordered his beating. He was no more than a trained monkey, in their eyes. Why should he care what became of any of them?

Fräulein Dommayer stepped closer, until she was breathing in his ear. “What have you been ordered to do?”

“Kill every one of them,” Franz whispered. “In the flames of Hell.”
And listen to their screams forever
.

She fell back. “What—?”

“It's an attack on the Empress and Emperor,” he said numbly. “
They
knew the Emperor and the Empress herself were coming, somehow—but they're going to kill everyone else with them. Not just the royal box, almost all the audience—it's going to—”

“The Baroness,” she whispered. “Oh, sweet heaven!”

The chorus finished. Drums sounded. Nearly time, now, for the finale to begin.

“When?” Fräulein Dommayer whispered. “How?”

“Just after the end of this act's finale,” he whispered. “But there's nothing we can do. I can't leave—they're watching me—I can't!”

She stared at him, her face working, for a long moment. Then she said, “But I can.”

She picked up her wide skirts, whirled around, and ran out through the door before he could stop her.

Chapter Thirty-One

Anna raced down the long corridor, heart pounding. Her high-heeled shoes pinched her toes and sent agony shooting up her calves; her arms ached with the effort of holding up her heavy skirts as she ran.

Through the doors, she heard the music of the finale begin.

“Where the devil is she?” Delacroix's whisper neared hysteria. “How could she have left? At a time like this?!”

“She took a sudden whim, I suppose.” Franz shrugged, fighting panic. “I couldn't stop her.”

“She probably took offence at something you said.” Madame Zelinowsky sighed. “Really, Herr Pichler, why do you bother with her? You know these servant girls. So temperamental.”

The cue for Fräulein Dommayer and Frau Kettner sounded for a third time in the orchestra pit. Franz heard rustlings in the audience as the music repeated itself yet again. Herr Haydn would be frantic by now at the delay.

“We'll have to stop the performance,” Franz said. “Someone should go out there and announce—”

“Don't be ridiculous!” Frau Kettner hissed. “We don't need a bloody maidservant to perform before the Emperor. We'll be fine.”

Franz raised his eyebrows. “The plot won't make much sense without her character.”

Frau Kettner snorted. “It's not as if she ever really acted, anyway.”

“She never will again, after tonight,” Delacroix muttered. The cue sounded a fourth time, even louder, and he vented an explosive sigh. “Kettner—go! Just sing your part. Let the kapellmeister and his musicians decide how to handle the missing lines. Everyone else . . .” He scowled at Franz as Frau Kettner lunged at the stage door. “This performance is proceeding as planned. Understood?”

Franz nodded jerkily. He didn't trust himself to speak.

They're all going to die
, he thought.

As he turned back to the stage door, he saw Lieutenant von Höllner's hand drop away from the hilt of his sword. Franz released a sigh.

They would die, but he would live . . . at least for another hour or two.

Anna turned the final corner and skidded to a halt. Guards surrounded the foot of the grand staircase that led up to the balcony and the royal box. They faced away from her, chatting. She fell back behind the corner before they could see her.

Without an explicit summons, they would never let a mere singer up into the royal box, not even at the break between acts. And she didn't have time to argue with them. Frau Kettner's voice soared through the closed doors. Anna gritted her teeth, listening to the gaps in the music that her voice should have filled.

She would not give up now. Not when she'd already sacrificed her future for this.

Her wrists ached. She let her heavy skirts fall to touch the ground—and realization struck. She was dressed as a grand lady. Her hair was powdered and piled on top of her head. The character she'd played was the daughter of a count. Would three of the Empress's bodyguards from Vienna be able to tell the difference?

She raised her chin.
Be a grand lady
, she told herself.

How many ladies had she watched in her years as a maid? She closed her eyes, summoning up the elegant, gliding carriage, the tilt of the head—the air of absolute confidence, which no mere soldier would dare to gainsay.

Inside the theater, the chorus joined Frau Kettner. Her voice and Herr Pichler's twined together in harmony. Only five more minutes until the end of the act.

Anna turned the corner again and walked straight toward the guards.

The music was
wrong
. It was filled with empty spaces and harmonies left gapingly hollow. Charlotte couldn't fathom it. Where was Anna? How could the finale of the act not include one of the major characters?

Signor Morelli touched her elbow. When she turned to him, he nodded slightly, tipping his head toward the corner of the stage. On the floor just beneath the stage, a dark figure stood, nearly hidden by the shadows.

Count Radamowsky
.

Alarm squeezed Charlotte's breath tight in her chest. Signor Morelli's face set in lines of rigid anger; his eyes widened. She followed his gaze to the front row of the royal box and saw Prince Nikolaus nodding across the theater at the Count, his own expression smug.

What madness is approaching?
Charlotte thought.

But it was too late to escape.

Anna forced herself to look past the guards with cool hauteur as she reached the grand staircase. She had one foot already on the first marbled step when one of them spoke.

“My lady.” He bowed curtly. “They're in midperformance. I don't think—”

She stared him down. “They are expecting me.” She walked past him up the stairs, head held high.

Her hands were quivering so badly she nearly dropped her skirts. But no one had stopped her.

She opened the door at the head of the stairs and emerged onto a carpeted dais in the center of the balcony, between two sets of stairs, one leading up to the top of the balcony and one down to the auditorium below. Before her was the closed inner door to the royal box itself. Two more guards stood between her and the inner door as the final chorus began.

Hurry
, Franz thought.
Hurry, damn it!

He was singing as slowly as he could, forcing the other singers and orchestra to adapt to his pace against all musical sense and dramatic logic. Franz forced himself to ignore the kapellmeister's anguished glare from the harpsichord. Instead, he peered up into the balcony. The leader of the Brotherhood smiled down at him from his post behind and above the royal box. Still, no sign of Fräulein Dommayer.

Ten more lines of music—less than three minutes—

Herr Haydn took advantage of Franz's abstraction to push the music faster. The others joined in loudly, forcing the tempo forward; helplessly, Franz followed.

It was madness to have even hoped. Foolish, naïve—

The outer door to the royal box opened. A lady emerged and spoke to the two soldiers stationed at the inner door. Franz's pulse leapt. It must be—it was—

The leader of the Brotherhood moved as quickly as a pouncing snake.