Flight Into Darkness (43 page)

Stage Manager Grebin seemed to delight in finding new tasks for Celestine to carry out, from emptying the ash from the dressing-room stoves to tidying up the dressing rooms. He was never satisfied with what she did, merely grunting when she showed him the clean latrines, or sparkling mirrors. The seamstresses and wigmakers kept a samovar hot in the upstairs workroom so there was a constant supply of hot strong tea for the backstage staff, with apple jam to sweeten it. The women ignored Celestine, chattering among themselves in their native tongue, sometimes looking at her with pitying glances and shaking their heads.

But come Friday, they all had to line up outside Grebin's office to receive their wages.

“Now I can afford to visit the public bathhouse,” Celestine told the Faie. She was so desperate for hot water and soap that she even suppressed her embarrassment at having to go naked into the steaming green waters, alongside stout babushkas and giggling young girls who splashed one another and blushed as they compared the size of their budding breasts. Celestine ignored them, scrubbing the grime from her body, then sinking into the bliss of the warm water to soak away the stiffness in her aching back from the week's hard labor. She floated lazily, gazing up at the glass roof through the rising steam.

Little flecks of white were floating down and settling on the glass.

Snow. How long can I survive sleeping in a gazebo now that winter is setting in?

* * * 

When Celestine arrived early for work the next day, the theater was in chaos; dancers filled the corridors, flexing and stretching their slender limbs in every available space so that she had to weave and dodge to reach the cupboard to fetch her mop and pail.

Grebin had donned a curled grey wig in honor of the occasion and, with it tilted slightly awry, he was issuing orders with the precision of a general on the battlefield.

“They've started rehearsing a new production,” a stagehand told Celestine.
“Rusalka's Kiss,
or some such fancy title. It'll be mayhem back here until the curtain goes up on the first night.”

Celestine could not help stealing a quick look from the wings as a fortepiano began to play and the bare boards of the stage resonated with the rhythmic thud of the dancers’ feet. It was curious, she thought, that they moved so gracefully yet their feet made such a reverberant noise.

As she was on her way to fill her bucket at the pump, Grebin appeared, his wig even more askew, and seized hold of her by the wrist, dragging her toward the costumers’ workroom.

Inside, racks of costumes had appeared and tailor's dummies; the seamstresses were busily pinning braid and ribbons to a long tutu of silvery aquamarine net.

“Put Maela to work in Masha's place.” Grebin propelled Celestine to an empty seat at one of the trestle tables.

“But she's a cleaning girl,” complained the wardrobe mistress, looking critically at Celestine over her pince-nez.

“And Masha is still off sick with the pleurisy, Yelena. With twenty-four costumes still to complete, you need an extra pair of hands,” said Grebin, hastily retreating.

Yelena beckoned Celestine over. “If you're to work in here, you must pin your hair up. Let me see your hands. Hmm. Scrub them in that basin. We can't risk you spoiling our work with dirty finger marks.”

Celestine obeyed. “I can sew,” she said meekly. “I was taught at the convent.”

“I'll be the judge of that.” Yelena picked up a length of pale blue taffeta and passed her a pincushion and a reel of thread. “I'll wager you've done nothing but turn and hem linen sheets, convent girl. Working with these light stuffs takes skill and patience. They fray
easily. And if you make a mistake, it'll come out of your wages. Now show me what you can do with this underskirt.”

Celestine dutifully plied her needle and thread by the frosty light illuminating the workroom.

“It's snowing again outside, and we're making flimsy costumes for water nymphs.” Yelena tutted. “Those dancers will catch their deaths of cold waiting in the wings; the drafts blow through there like a winter wind.”

“They'll bring their shawls,” said one of the other seamstresses.

Celestine was just biting off an end of thread when Yelena swooped and snatched up her work, moving to the window to examine it. She gave a sniff. Celestine waited, silently praying that she would not be sent back to the latrines. “Stitches small and mostly even. No snagged threads or puckering. I suppose it'll do.” She passed the garment on to another seamstress and handed Celestine another length of blue taffeta. “The same again. Only neater.”

As Celestine sewed, faint strains of music penetrated the workroom. She looked up, listening intently. A woman was practicing, using vocal exercises to warm her voice. Minutes later, a fortepiano began to play and the unseen soprano began to sing to its accompaniment.

“No slacking!” Yelena was frowning at her from the opposite side of the table.

“Who is that singing?”

“One of the soloists, who knows? Get on with your work.”

“Rusalka's Kiss
is an
opera?”

Yelena raised her eyes in a look of weary forbearance. “This
is
an opera house.”

“Who is the composer?” Celestine could not help wanting to know more. The fragments of melody seeping in were unfamiliar yet utterly enchanting.

“Kalenik. The Grand Duchess Sofiya is his patron.”

A Muscobite composer. That would explain why I've never heard his music before.

“No time for gossiping, ladies!” Grebin appeared, followed by half a dozen dancers. “Here are your first clients.”

Yelena let out a sign of annoyance and, draping her tape measure around her neck, began to issue orders.

Celestine watched, fascinated, as the dancers stripped, shivering
and giggling, allowing the costumers to fit the flimsy costumes, stoically enduring the pinning and marking with tailor's chalk, turning round and round again as Yelena surveyed the results with a critical eye. The lengths of taffeta Celestine had been hemming began to be transformed with a shimmer of green and silver sequins and ribbons artfully cut and draped to look like waterweeds. The first dancers left and more arrived. The daylight began to fade as more snow fell and Grebin brought oil lamps.

“Dress rehearsals start tomorrow at nine. You'll just have to work through the night to be finished in time,” he announced.

Celestine heard the other seamstresses groan in protest and looked down at her work to conceal the smile of relief. Tonight she would be warm in the workroom. The thought of sleeping another night in the snowy Water Gardens was too much to endure. And even though Grebin's brow was more furrowed and his wig more awry each time he appeared, the stage manager had food delivered to the workroom: hot cabbage soup with caraway dumplings.

“Peasant food,” said Yelena with a sniff.

Celestine said nothing but spooned down the soup eagerly. It reminded her of the food she used to help prepare at Saint Azilia's: robust, tasty, and filling. The last weeks of privation had taught her that there was much to be said for enjoying such simple pleasures.

The sky craft hovered above the city as the winter sun set, painting the snowy horizon with a lick of scarlet fire. Far below, the tiled roofs were thickly rimed with snow; even the painted tiles on the onion domes of the Cathedral of Saint Simeon were coated in white.

“So this is where you've been hiding, Lady Azilis.” The Magus leaned over the side of the craft, closing his eyes as he searched for that faint but telltale aethyric current of energy he had detected. “Mirom.”

Linnaius landed his craft in a deserted park. He disguised himself in the long robes and fur-rimmed hat of a merchant and took to the streets of the city, prowling from square to square, in search of that elusive presence he had sensed earlier. He had been sure that he would see concert bills advertising the arrival of the celebrated Francian singer Celestine de Joyeuse, but there was no mention of her anywhere.

Did I stay too long in Tielen? I had to honor the promise I made

to Eugene. I had to make sure that everything was in order at Swanholm.

Even if his successor were a mere doctor of science without a drop of mage blood in his veins, Linnaius had to be certain that he was entrusting his alchymical knowledge to a worthy successor, one who would serve Eugene loyally.

He entered a wide and gracious square dominated by a grand building boasting an ostentatious portico. Horse-drawn sleighs crossed and crisscrossed in front of its broad steps, the air noisy with the horses’ hooves and the jingle of the bells on their harnesses.

Again he felt a sudden stab of aethyric energy, faint as a pinprick, yet infused with an intense, radiant power. “The Imperial Theater,” he murmured aloud and set out, threading his way through the troikas.

“Where are the silver sequins?” Yelena's voice, shrill and vexed, pierced the seamstresses’ gossiping. “Well? Don't tell me we've run out!”

One by one, the women looked up from their work and shook their heads.

“Oh, that's wonderful. And only seven more costumes to complete!” Yelena opened her purse. “Maela, go round to the draper's on Khazan Prospect and buy more sequins.” She tossed her a coin. “That should cover it.”

Celestine deftly caught the coin.

“Wrap up warmly; it'll be dark soon. And don't dawdle!”

Well muffled in her thick cloak, Celestine hurried out into the twilight. The quickest way to Khazan Prospect was to take a shortcut through a winding alley around the back of the theater. The sun was setting and the alley was unlit. She hesitated. But what had she to fear? The Faie would protect her if anyone tried to rob her.

There it was again—but stronger this time.
Linnaius retreated into a doorway and watched. In the purple dusk he saw a cloaked woman emerge from the stage door and, after a quick, nervous glance around, scuttle away into the night.

He followed. She was moving much more swiftly than he and in the twists and turns of the foul-smelling alley, he almost lost her. He emerged, wheezing for breath in the sharp cold of the night air, on
one of the main thoroughfares of the city, in time to see her going into a little shop.

He would just have to wait and detain her when she came out…

It was dark when Celestine left the draper's, the silver sequins wrapped in a twist of paper. The troika horses’ hooves struck sparks off the icy cobbles as the sleighs swished past. She shivered.

What was that unsettling sensation? She glanced around, suddenly wary. Another frost haze was settling over Mirom as the temperature plummeted. It must just be the intense night cold, she told herself as she entered the unlit alleyway. She would soon warm up again by the stove in the snug workroom.

Silver eyes glimmered in the darkness.

She stopped, backing away.

“Wh—who's there?” she called, her voice trembling. She was too far along the alley to run back to the busy street. And if she called for help, who would hear her cries?

“I've been looking for you, Celestine.”

Another shiver ran through her body, so intense that she feared she would not be able to stop shaking.
Those eyes of silver ice, so chill, so inhuman.
Now she knew who was blocking her way. And he had trapped her.

“Kaspar Linnaius!” she cried, as she felt her fear turning to anger.
“Show yourself!”

“I mean you no harm, Celestine,” came the hateful voice from the shadows. “I only want to talk with you.”

“He's lying.”

The Faie had awoken to the danger.

The Magus came toward her, one hand extended. The hand that could summon storm winds with the slightest flick of finger and thumb.

Celestine continued to retreat until she felt her back graze against the blank tenement wall. There was nowhere else to go.

“What is there to talk about?” She kept her voice low in the hope that she would not betray how terrified she felt. If he had intended to kill her, he would have struck before she even knew he was there. So what did he want from her?

“I merely wish to communicate with your guardian spirit, that's all.”

“No!”
The Faie hissed her refusal before Celestine could react. “
I tell you, Magus, that we have nothing to discuss.”

“Even though it's a matter of the greatest importance?”

“Leave now—while you can.”

Still he came on and Celestine raised her right hand in a vain gesture to keep him at bay.

“Leave me alone.” She felt the Faie's power rushing through her, from her mind to her outstretched hand, concentrating in her fingertips. Every vein in her body burned with luminous energy. “Stay back!”

In the frosty gloom of the filthy alley, Linnaius saw Celestine's eyes begin to glimmer.

Pure white sparks of aethyrial energy shot from her outstretched hand. He snatched the ghost of a breeze from the night, twisting it around himself to repel the attack. But he was too slow to deflect the full force and the bolts sizzled through his defense, knocking him off his feet and onto the ground. Fighting for breath, dizzy, he tried to force himself to get up, slipping on the slime of ice and mud, only to drop back again.

Azilis blazed a vicious warning.

“Leave—us—alone.
”

Celestine saw the Magus stagger and fall. This was her chance to escape.

“He'll only come after us again.
” The Faie's fury still burned in her brain and she felt a second burst of fire welling up within her.
“Finish it now, once and for all.
”

As the power coursed through her body, Celestine saw Linnaius push himself up on one hand, turning to her with a look so confused, so imploring, that it almost made her stay her hand.

“This is no time for weakness!”
The Faie's rage possessed her and she flung another glittering bolt at him. Linnaius fell back. After one convulsive shudder, he did not stir again.

Is it all over at last? Have we destroyed him?
Her fire-dazzled mind could only think of escape. She gathered up her skirts and began to run, expecting at any time to feel a flesh-shredding blast of wind catch her. “Must get away from here,” she kept repeating to herself. “Must get the sequins back to Yelena. She'll be cross if I'm late.”