Most of the women in the audience and not a few of the men used opera glasses to snatch better glimpses of the royal couple. Girls with fishnet pantyhose and feathered tails and bras distributed fanciful drinks in impossibly tall glasses or whisked empty ones away.
Below the royal box, in aisle three, a soused nobleman groped his friend’s wife and fell over a row of chairs, creating a small fracas. He promptly disappeared in the arms of three burly ushers and the tittering waves of conversation resumed as though nothing had happened.
“I liked the Minstrel’s Stage better,” whispered Caliph.
Sena smirked indulgently. The preceding weeks had been hard on both of them.
At first, Caliph had chuckled when he read the note drawn out of the hawk’s tiny canister. Then he had reread it. Then he had reread it again, disbelieving. Finally he had begun to shake and whisper and pace the floor and scowl. What could it mean? he thought.
By fast horse and private zeppelin, the adventuresome had already gone out and returned with firsthand accounts of the devastation. There was no keeping it a secret.
The fickle papers had minted every kind of lie and theory they could dream up. Laws passed under the old Council ensuring freedom of the press remained unchallenged though barbs enough to fill a dozen quivers had been hurled at Caliph by several fearless periodicals offering special biweekly editions (or seditions as those loyal to the High King liked to call them).
Caliph had juggled all kinds of meetings with military personnel and worried burgomasters and journalists who constantly overstepped their bounds.
He wanted to go out and see the thing for himself but his advisors forbade it. Round trip, it was nearly seventy-five miles out of the way, and those were precious hours to and from Tentinil better spent in Isca directing operations from a central seat of power.
Caliph had departed on the fifteenth for Queen Guerrian’s funeral (the prince’s mother had died in her sleep) and returned late the same night by zeppelin. He leapt off the
Then came the second blow, more devastating on a personal level to Caliph’s reign and even more confusing to his supporters than the news that Fallow Down had disappeared. It brought the castle down to a deathly hushed still as the staff read the
Some woman had come forward with details. She claimed to have known Sena for many years and felt it her duty to inform the Iscan people of the truth behind the High King’s new mistress.
Sena could still remember the headline and the opening paragraph of a two-page story.
High King Court’s Witch
As if the Iscan people needed more bizarre news another report rocked the foundations of King Howl’s fledgling reign when a woman identifying herself as Miriam Yeats came forward with an accusation that the new High King’s mistress is a Shr
dnae operative. This, just scant days after the tragedy at Fallow Down, an event critics are calling a holomorphic holocaust, once again casts the specter of suspicion over the Iscan Crown . . .
The fact that Caliph had blown it off entirely only made Sena’s sense of guilt more profound. He wouldn’t even consider arresting the journalist for slander—who had gone into hiding after the story created a sensation. There were rioting protesters near Octul Box: something that had never happened before.
But Caliph dismissed the suggestion of his advisors to retaliate by naming names. They had dug up the college degrees of every politician in Isca, ready to publicly announce those who had gotten a grade in holomorphy from any university in the north.
Instead, Caliph held a press conference and told the journalists the truth.
“Yes,” he said. “She’s a holomorph. She studied holomorphy at Desdae—just like I did.” He refused to answer any question directly as to whether holomorph also meant
“No . . . no I won’t change the laws pertaining to witchcraft. As far as I know, the women sentenced over the past several years weren’t even tried on the grounds of witchcraft but as spies for treason.”
It had been a long conference. Caliph had been raked over the coals afterward by the same newspapers that had backed him two months ago when his father died. The same newspapers he allowed to exist.
All he had to do was give the word and the city watch would raid. He could fill West Gate overnight with editors and journalists and have their bodies swinging from chains over the castle just as fast.
But instead of engendering gratitude, the fact that Caliph didn’t crush his critics under a mailed fist made them all the more brazen.
The more sensational rags published all kinds of outrageous speculation. He was going to set up a Council of witches to enslave the population. He had been charmed by Sena and was now her puppet. He wasn’t even human. He was some creature who went around in disguise, advancing a ridiculous list of ghoulish designs.
“They’re entitled,” Caliph said blithely. “It’s actually quite amusing. They’re incessantly creative. And don’t worry,” he whispered one morning while they were still in bed, “you’re quite safe here in the castle.”
He was right. His actions, while they didn’t win him any favors from the tabloids, had cemented his staff to him. His graciousness to the maids and his refusal to be waited on hand and foot along with a charming tongue-in- cheek way of coping with the “world out there” (as he called it) had so enamored the inhabitants of Isca Castle that after the initial shock of the headline they scoffed and promptly burnt the
By Gadriel’s command, Caliph’s daily edition was the only edition allowed on the castle grounds.
The burgomasters were nervous. But they bit their tongues. Caliph’s charm had a way of reassuring them in ways they found difficult to explain. Clayton Redfield had told him to his face, “We don’t know how . . . but we know you’ll eventually make things right.”
Caliph didn’t know how either but his notoriety seemed indistinguishable from popularity. The large boisterous opposition ensured his every public appearance was scrutinized by the masses. But those occasions only reinforced his image as an absolute gentleman and a very good-looking one at that. If he was sinister at all, the women of Isca found it irresistible.
Thus, there probably wouldn’t have been any catcalls at the opera even without the small army of bodyguards capable of smashing any fearless critic into paste.
Tonight, Caliph and Sena had promised each other not to talk about headlines or critics or war. Next week began a new month, the month of Streale with a new set of pressures and goals (cleaning out Ghoul Court among them). Tonight was separate. Tonight was only for them.
Caliph handed the program to Sena and rolled his shoulders back, trying to relax. The lights had dimmed and chronic talkers squeezed in a few last words before climbing over the laps and knees of the tactfully irritated toward their seats. Stage lights flared. Brilliant luminous cones flooded the deep crimson folds of curtains that loomed beyond the orchestra.
The show was about to begin.
Icy tendrils of white vapor crawled out from beneath the curtains. A deep vibration of drums had begun resonating from the pit. Suddenly all the lights went down and the curtains swept back, tearing up vortices of mist as they collapsed into the wings.
A man in a pillar of light stood center stage, hand extended overhead, fog pouring in around his feet. Stylized props of leaning cemetery markers, dripping vines and ruinous mausoleums crowded the gloom. His clear tenor rose in a solitary wail of grief as he slowly swept his arm down toward a headstone at his feet.
What followed was a captivating descent into the man’s tragic loss and unconsummated love for a fiancee that appeared on stage only in the form of a ghost who drove him laconically toward avenging her murder.
By the end of act two, when the curtains came rushing back together for intermission, the audience also had the vague unsettling notion that she was also driving him to suicide.
Caliph rubbed his eyes. They were dry and tired from staring.
“Better than
Caliph yawned. “Surprisingly so. Do you want anything to drink?” Ten minutes before the break, the warm rich smells of the concession stands had begun percolating through the stuffy theater air.
