[Closed] Pas de Tartaglia

[Tom Cooke]

The Opera House • Uptown

Evening on the 28th of Dentis, 2719

T
he masks are brightly painted, polish gleaming in the spotlight.

They’re not like imbali masks; the exaggeration is different. The symbols are different. The mother wears an enormous red wig above her mask, piled up a head and a half and strung with jewels. Her skirts are like a house. The mask is shock-white, except for cheeks rouged crimson, painted eyes, the black blot of a stenciled beauty mark underneath her eye.

The daughter, soprano, one of the lovers, is meant to be beautiful. She’s a waif, her mask glowing-white, her dress a nod to what’s fashionable in Sielan; all the ladies in Vienda will be wearing dresses like it, in half a year.

In this scene, her mask is painted with tears. The dark hair is loose around her shoulders. This is the scene where Benedetta begs her mother not to marry her to the governor of Edelagne, rumored to be a cold, cruel man. He doesn’t know how the story ends; he knows it’s meant to be funny.

The gentlemen’s box is a thicket of cigar smoke and sickly-sweet cologne, hair oil and brandy-breath.

The snow whirls down outside, unyielding; it’s warm inside, and he is stifled in his winter suit. At the end of the week, Aeterna is packed. He feels as if he is floating outside himself.

He suspects Mr. Shrikeweed is here to mind him, too; he’s past caring. Shrikeweed has minded him well in the past, and that he can play the Incumbent so well is no small credit to the bureaucrat. But tonight, the mask is different; Shrikeweed taught him to be Vauquelin, but somebody else taught him to be Anatole. He doesn’t need minded at the opera, not anymore.

He’s moved through the night with liquid grace, grace afforded to him more than a little by that cloying shit they’re all drinking. When in Vienda.

Cardinal has popped by their box briefly. He’s getting another job, with the Anaxi ambassador in Florne; it’s always been his dream, and Mr. Shrikeweed the Incumbent was happy enough to write the recommendation. His young wife is a slip of a thing, Anaxi through and through, the lamplight spinning gold from her coppery hair. Among all the women, she looks uncomfortable in her slim silk dress with its high collar, with its asymmetrical ruffles. He has heard she’s from Eastern Anaxas, the daughter of a farmer.

But she’s there and then gone, like Cardinal, like a dozen other functionaries and their wives.

Anatole has smiled with just enough wrinkles around his eyes to look halfway genuine; he has bowed deeply and kissed the soft white gloves of a dozen women, and ignored them, and made sneering little jokes about this or that with their husbands. He takes care with the subjects, the targets; he does not tangle himself up in the factions. He’s become very good at vapid cruelties.

He’s become very tired.

The visitors have stopped coming and going by the second act. The ladies have left the gentlemen in peace, and people’ve gone to be with their sorts, mostly.

Anatole has been with his sorts all night. He’s spent the first half of the second act smoking with the Hessean ambassador and Incumbent de Vries, all old friends of Anatole. All pleased with his performance, even if he catches them glancing down at his hand sometimes as it shakes slightly around the bulb of his snifter. Whoever’s sent Shrikeweed, they have nothing to worry about.

But Anatole is tired, and Ilvala and de Vries’ve been talking to each other and not him for long enough he feels safe drifting away. He finds himself drifting toward the bureaucrat with his embroidered waistcoat. He caprises the familiar quantitative field as he sidles up beside him.

He is grateful, strangely, for a man who knows the I and not the him. Dangerous.

“Her Majesty,” he murmurs, looking down through the velvety dark.

The Queen’s box is on the other side of the amphitheatre, lit with sumptuous gold phosphor. The lamps usually light a swarm of ladies around an empty chair, but tonight, she is there. Her thick white furs are glowing; the ladies’ jewelry flashes like stars.

Her face is thin, and he can see even from here that she rests her head back against the seat. The shadows of her eyes are too deep to see if they are open.

He does not blame her for catching rest where she can, in her condition. He feels a swell of something that isn’t quite sympathy. She is dying; he is dead. He doesn’t pursue the thought further.

The Low Judge’s wife is beside her, dark-haired and heavy-featured; her furs are as dark as the Queen’s are white.

He frowns, and looks back toward the stage. “I’ve heard this play was originally imbali,” Tom says, and offers Shrikeweed a faint smile sidelong. “Bastian adaptations of operas from the Turtle – all the rage. What do you think, Mr. Shrikeweed?” His voice lowers. “I’m not much of a man for opera.”

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - The Opera House
The 28th of Dentis, 2719 - Nineteen minutes past the 25th hour

I

s there corruption at the Royal Opera Mr Shrikeweed?

The Perpetual Permanent Secretary’s words. He has not thought about them for months, and now they rise high in his memory. They had not been serious words, neither hers nor his, tonight they have become serious. Tonight they have become the central axis of his work. And he is here to work, this he tells himself as he pretends to watch the actors upon the stage, pretends to listen to their pretty songs. He is listening to a rather different set of voices.

The Incumbent’s box is crowded with men of substance, influence. Useless men, men who live only half their lives. They dwell in the shelter of their privileges and forget their obligations. They count what they are owed and never consider what is owed. Some pretend at charity, thinking this is the proper form of reciprocity. It is not. There is no virtue in it, no entanglement. They think themselves virtuous. They are above virtue. These are men who live in Vienda, they are not men of Vienda.

Is there corruption at the Royal Opera? Yes. And he sits among it now.

Voices about him now, voices in the box, voices on the stage. Too many voices, a chaos of words and music. Signifying? Great many things. Things that must be recalled. Will he recall them? Some will slip him by. Intolerable. Inevitable. Unrecorded, ephemeral things, spoken, sung, and lost. He cannot bring out a notebook and take it all down. He is naked without his paper, exposed, unarmed. He will marshal what forces he can muster. Threads of conversation, the singing of the masked actors upon the stage, the smell of tobacco, too many men in too small a space. A fug. A miasma. A cloud of unnecessary information. A purge is required. He breathes in, holds it, holds his field along with the breath. Pressure builds in his lungs, his skin prickles, electric-hot and winter-cold. First the smells are pared away. Not forgotten, but enumerated and filed away, a memory, not a present distraction. The chattering of useless men fades into the background. Burned down to mere embers. Is he tranquil? Not quite. But calmer, more reasoned, more focused. There is virtue in these small agonies. A man can have too much virtue.

Relax, man. He tries to heed his own advice. Difficult to accomplish. The men around him, the men who smell of corruption and dissipation still prick his thoughts. And the Incumbent is here. He is here to advise the man. That is his function. What can he advise him on here? He is no expert in opera. He rarely attends. And when he does, it is for older works. Their alien vocals, their themes of bloody vengeance and folly. The music is more layered, more sorrowful, and somehow more soothing. Some ancient Bastian philosopher mused on the cleansing nature of tragedy, on its catharsis. He cannot recall her name. He will have to locate it and raise a glass to her.

Still, he is here to enjoy this comedy. He is here to laugh. And he does know how to laugh. Laughter is expected. The proper form while attending a comic opera. And laughter will disguise his more serious purpose.

On the stage, the actors wear their masks, making of themselves very professional fools. All characters in opera are fools. Even those in the most bleak revenge tragedies. Perhaps all operas are comic. A curious thought. Here, at least, with the absurd mother and her grandly weeping daughter, the comedy arises not from the scene itself, but from the manner it is carried out. High, beautiful, and as difficult as any aria in a more serious piece, the mother’s voice swoops from menacing lows her heights to lofty they threaten to shatter the glass in his hand. He raises that glass to her in silent appreciation. It is an astonishing performance, too beautiful for this scene. But then, comedy is to be found in all ludicrous juxtapositions.

And now one of his own. The Incumbent peels off from the useless men, the men of his own standing, to sit beside Shrikeweed. A strange thing, unexpected. Not unwelcome. The Incumbent is the only man he knows here. The others he knows by name, but names are not men. Men have their own existence. The Incumbent has two. Yet the man tonight seems different, he is wearing a new mask, perhaps a more comfortable one. He is not quite ‘I’ here, but something derived. A new inflection. A third man.

And on this third man’s face, in the dim light of the box, a new expression. Sorrow? Sympathy? It forms suddenly on the man’s face, forms when he sees the queen in her box. The expression has no name he can identify. Perhaps it needs none. For a while he lets it set there, unmolested. He studies it, records its shape and cast, considers the tone of the Incumbent’s voice, the attitude of his form. Very like weariness, yet not so weary as the monarch.

“I am surprised sir, to see her Majesty tonight.” Has he ever seen her before this night? Uncertain. He must have. At festivals and in processionals, at nights like this at the opening of a new opera. He does not go to opening nights. He cannot afford it, not often. And when was the last time he attended a public festival? Years ago it seems. He marks them all the same, makes the ritual observations, gives the usual alms and gifts. If he is feeling pious he might even pray before the icons in the half-neglected shrine at blind end of Cyprus Street. But the great public gatherings overwhelm him. He drowns in noise, founders in sights and smells. Like in this box. This is another ritual, another observation. Another play, with all its necessary players

Yet why is she here? It cannot be good for her in her failing health. She should be at home, in some comfortable room. Perhaps with some soothing string quartet, should she want music. It seems a cruelty to make her parade in her box. A cruelty to the woman, a necessity for the Queen. She could just as well have ordered one of her attendants or ladies of the court to don the royal robes, to be painted up with the queenly visage. Who would notice another mask on this night of masks?

Perhaps she has simply come to enjoy the music.

He puts on a mask of his own, an expression of polite distraction. “As for me? I am enjoying the performance. It is not my usual fare, but I am admiring the virtuosity of the performers, the subtleties of the music. I have to say the plot is lost on me. Romance and mistaken identity, false identities and dissembling, and all for what? In the end all will be revealed, and everyone will be unmasked as their ‘true’ self. I shudder to think what we would be like if at the end of the day we had to strip our own masks.” He makes a quick gesture of the head towards the other men, the useless men. "Certainly I should not like to see their private faces. At least not in this box." A lie, and a truth.

‘I’ am not much of a man for opera, he says. A lie. A truth. They are trading in them tonight. ‘He’ was a great man for opera. Again the discontinuity. He is accustomed to it now. It brings him no comfort.

On the stage, the mother, disgusted with her weeping daughter, storms off in a final burst of coloratura. A burst of applause. Shrikeweed joins in. It is well deserved. The music changes, grows darker, more conspiratorial. Another player enters, his mask impassive, a pale and luminous grey. The governor’s secretary, his man of business bringing flowery letters of courtship and hideously gaudy gifts. As he displays each to the weeping girl, he disparages them, dismisses them with quips and barbs in a lyric light baritone. Somehow, the markings on the girl’s mask change, she is smiling at the jests. She throws in a few of her own, joining in, making light of her misfortunes.

“And are you not a man for opera? Strange, I had heard it was a passion of yours. When I was gathering my preliminary intelligence one thing that kept arising was that ‘he is a great lover of opera’.”

[Tom Cooke]

The Opera House • Uptown

Evening on the 28th of Dentis, 2719

H
e steals a sideways glance. He does not look too long, or too close. So Mr. Shrikeweed’s an impression, a blur of light and shadow – a ghostly play of gold phosphor glow over a too-familiar face. Funny, Tom thinks, how you can’t fix that face in your mind, no matter how much you look at it. He can’t tell you what color the bureaucrat’s eyes are, though he can remember the look of them, the feel of meeting them, better than he can remember the backs of the incumbent’s hands.

He knows the way Shrikeweed looks rolling the word leverage round his mouth. He knows the turn of the cup, right, left, right. He glances down at Shrikeweed’s hands, to see if he has a snifter of brandy himself; he wonders if he’s turned it tonight.

The civil servant has laughed, at least. Tom is sure he’s heard it, somewhere in the muddle of laughter. But there’s not much he can put his finger on in the fog, brandy-glow, floating as he is somewhere in the shadows far above. He doesn’t think he himself has laughed; he’s heard Anatole laugh, many times, but only once or twice has it reeled him back into himself enough to think, That’s me.

So it is. He’s not laughing anymore, and he can’t read the expression on Shrikeweed’s face. He doesn’t think it matters, anyway. Masks. He can feel his own mask still affixed to his face; he doesn’t get to take it off, ever, not even when he sleeps. Sometimes it sheds tears. It’s a curious thing.

In the corner of his eye, he can see Shrikeweed studying it, just as he’s studied Shrikeweed. Good luck, he wants to say. Is it? He can’t know how much creeps through; he knows that’s folly. Anatole will do what he likes with his face; the old man’s ghost is still in the lines.

But it frightens him, how much Shrikeweed might be seeing, just out of reach. Frightens and comforts him. He’s not standing over with the Hessean and the other incumbent for a reason.

“Mmm.” He grunts his agreement, taking another long draught of brandy. “Perhaps she’s a passion for this opera in particular,” he says lightly, swirling the dregs round.

His lip twists down as Shrikeweed goes on, a polite burble of criticism. Mother storms off in a swirl of skirts, and there’s a burst of applause. Beside him, the bureaucrat is clapping; Tom claps with his wrist, trying not to unsettle his brandy.

The virtuosities of the performance, the subtleties of the music. Tom watches as another man sweeps out in grey; the secretary, he remembers. The governer’s yaching Benedetta, he reckons, and out come the gifts and the poetry. At one point, a great buffet’s rolled out on a cart, all wreathed in flowers. A laugh goes up in the boxes, but Tom doesn’t hear Anatole’s voice.

Covertly, he looks back at Incumbent de Vries. Wondering. The man plucks comfortably at his mustache, laughing. No chance of that mask coming off, not even if you gave those whiskers a fair hard tug. Tom would like to, all the same.

He’s not sure about the Hessean, but he knows de Vries. Kitten harmless. Pendulum, oes; affiliated with Trevisani, oes. Ava’s told him that much. But they all have dirty laundry, these men, and de Vries is no string-puller. He’s more a puppet. “Could they strip their masks, Mr. Shrikeweed?” he muses. “I’m not sure some of them know they’re wearing them.”

He casts another sideways glance, a sharp quirk of his brow, at gathering my preliminary intelligence.

He knows, he knows, they both know. Shrikeweed’s reminding him; that’s a joke he can smile at. “Well,” he says brightly, finishing off his brandy. “I suspect he was, though I’m no great expert on his passions.”

Benedetta’s soprano swirls into the spaces the secretary leaves. Soprano, baritone. Tom hates that he knows these words. He hates the man who knew them. He hates the whole caoja. He wonders if he’d hate it less, if it weren’t Anatole’s; he wonders what a man like Shrikeweed sees in it. The skill, maybe. He’s glad he’s not alone in being vexed by the story.

“The music’s well enough, but I find it damned unsettling. The masks, the whole show.” His voice is still light, joking; there’s still a smile on his face. “I can’t imagine where it’s going. Our villain – I’m assuming that’s what he is – is doing a good job of wooing the lass away from the wicked old governor. She seems a little too level-headed to fall for this, but perhaps that’s because we’ve got the music to tell us how to feel about him.”

A pause. There’s another face in the box, at the other corner. Gold phosphor glint off of a high forehead, receding dark red hair. A familiar sharp profile, even if he can’t see the clocked-up eye from this side.

“It’s the sort of man who knows he’s wearing a mask that worries me,” says Tom. “Do you agree, Mr. Shrikeweed?”

A soprano ripples and soars upward. Benedetta is pining alone; she seems to think she’s falling in love. More fool her.

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - The Opera House
The 28th of Dentis, 2719 - Twenty-three minutes past the 25th hour

T

They have reached an agreement. When it formed he cannot say, it had formed in pieces. A word here, a gesture there, building up by slow degrees until it seems as though it has always been there. ‘He’ and ‘I’ are two men now, it is easier this way, natural. It helps make sense of matters, makes sense of the Incumbent. The Incumbent is not sound. No, he is not; but the man called ‘I’ is something nearer. A man who might become sound. It is a strange thing in Incumbents.

“I can see how ‘He’ might have had a passion for this, either the place or the performance.” He leaves hanging what performance he means. He does not know himself. Perhaps it is both. “It is the seemly thing, the done thing. ‘He’ was a man of some convention. Some still carries over. Perhaps for the better.” A half smile, lightly conspiratorial, even companionable, “That is, if you don’t mind me saying, a most conventional suit.” His own garments are rather less so. The knot on his neckcloth is more elaborate than most, his waistcoat filigreed in patterns of ivy. All the rest of his life is unadorned, pragmatic, dull, interchangeable. He is allowed one small flourish, one departure.

His eyes scan the box, taking in the useless men, taking in the other Incumbent. de Vries is more a man of his station, a kind of ‘him’. A man to watch that one. A man to cultivate. A man who may yet prove useful. The drink swirls in his hand, glinting in the phosphor lights. The lights. Too bright, too harsh. They obscure his vision, prevent the proper watching of the performance. This box is not made for men to enjoy the opera. It is made for men to be seen at the opera. Another stage. Another performance. A dull performance.

There is a subplot here, and one he cannot recognize, not yet. That will take more of his attention than he likes. There is no synopsis to read in the quiet of his home, no dramatis personae. Though he thinks tonight, that the part of the ‘hubristic fool’ will be played by one Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed. It is certain he is upon the stage now, trying to wear as anonymous a mask as he can. A mask like the grey man on stage. A mask that shows nothing. Dangerous. There are few things more expressive than the lack of expression.

The wine in his glass is blood-warm, its flavor destroyed. The wine had been a folly. One of many follies. He should not be here, in this box. This is not his place. His place, if he has any here, is below in the anonymous dark of the balcony. He does not need to be seen, does not want it. Yet he is here, being seen. And seeing.

On the stage, the grey secretary is bringing gift after absurd gift. A vast buffet of fine foods appears, the cart groaning under the weight of sweetmeats and cakes that share more in common with chandeliers than baked goods. And the Incumbent laughs. Others laugh as well, he hears them each, some distinct, other merely as part of the roar of sound. Even the Queen, frail and nearly still in her box is laughing. He does not consider the sound of her voice, cannot make it out. No, he considers the Incumbent’s laugh. A new laugh, harsher, more forceful. More comfortable? He has heard that pitch and timbre before. On that first day in Stainthorpe Hall. Odd that he had considered the stage when he first heard that fragment of a voice, odd hearing it again in the box at the opera. A laugh all out of place. A laugh to be recorded.

He tries to laugh himself. It is the done thing. The expected thing. And he cannot laugh. Not at the groaning buffet, not at Benedetta’s skillful aria where she claims to dismiss the gifts while sampling the foods and trying on various pieces of jewelry. Her voice is high, and sweet, and clear. It is a bell made in crystal. Not as forceful as the mother’s, but more agile, with more humor. With a laugh of her own, a laugh like a bird in flight, Benedetta bids a farewell to her suitor’s emissary. He goes, melting into the shadows of the set.

And now the maid appears, a small slip of a thing. Her mask is painted in an expression of perpetual wide-eyed astonishment, as though she is shocked and awed at everything. A girl’s face, but a girl’s face on the body of a woman whose movements are sly and quick. A girl’s face to frame a voice full of winking conspiracy and too-worldly judgment. The duet between them is full of what might pass for witty banter. That is clearly the intent. They laugh and conspire together not like mistress and maid, but like old friends, like sisters. They draw closer now, their voices in a stage whisper, the words full of hushed import and shared deviousness. He knows what is about to happen, he read it before, in the dim light of the evening, just as the lamplighters and phoshormen were going abroad. To read what is about to occur is one thing. To see it is quite another matter.

“There is utility in masks, sir, both off the stage, and on.” His own timing is, for reasons he cannot explain or credit, perfect. Down on the stage, in the brighter glow of the footlights, the maid and Benedetta have drawn so close that their masks are nearly touching. Then, a gesture, fluid and graceful. And now the masks are reversed, Benedetta is the maid, the maid in Benedetta. “As you see.” He smiles again, as close to genuine as he can make it. He is not in the right place for genuine. He does not quite know what genuine is. Still, it is a smile, a simple one, without daggers. “Now, they have become each other. No doubt hilarious misunderstandings will result from this. People will think they are talking to one woman when it is the other.” He shakes his head. “It is so much easier to become someone else when all you have to do is change a mask.”

On stage, the scene continues, the music full of laughter and genteel conspiracy. In the box, the scene has changed. There has been an entrance, from where he cannot say. The Incumbent knows it too, he has sensed it even before Shrikeweed. Then again, in this place, among these useless men, the Incumbent, ‘He’, is at an advantage. The advantage does the man no good. Some darker expression crosses his face. Worry? Apprehension? Unknown. It is not an expression in his catalog.

“And the man who just entered, with the unpleasant eye and too-practiced, too-artificial nonchalance? What mask does he wear? What face does he thing is his?” Has he seen the man before? That face is too distinct to be forgotten. It too has no entry, no familiarity. Yet there is something about the man. Curious. “A friend of yours?” He looks again at the Incumbent’s face, the stiffness of that expression, dismissed the idea. He forms another. “A friend of ‘His’?”

[Tom Cooke]

The Opera House • Uptown

Evening on the 28th of Dentis, 2719

H
e brings the snifter to his lips for a long drink, but there’s nothing in it. With a sour twist, he lowers his glass; he fidgets, then settles himself, frowning askance. Julian Megiro is still in the corner of his eye.

But he snorts, and shrugs. It’s bizarre, this conspiratorial comfort, but not unwelcome.

Dangerous, maybe, but he can’t see where it will lead. To guess at the truth would be stranger than any fiction Shrikeweed might come up with; there are no minutes for what has happened to Anatole Vauquelin, save in the ancient library at Kzecka, and not even the Rho Tzvat’kyett knows of raen. Shrikeweed already knows him to be a mad old man – there was no avoiding it, not in Intas, and Tom would be swamped without him – so he can’t see the harm in this camaraderie, just brushing its fingertips over honesty.

He casts the bureaucrat a sidelong glance. “I’ll credit him with that,” he offers, shrugging his shoulders in their expensive – dull – threads. “I wear what he wore. I don’t know I like it much, but it would be folly to change now.”

He pauses, with a smile just as conspiratorial. “I’m no hand at fashion; I wouldn’t know what to do. You’ve a flair for it, Mr. Shrikeweed. Perhaps you can advise me on more than politics and kofi.”

When kensers fly, he thinks, and stays himself from trying to take another drink of the empty. Being honest, he’s long been fond of the man’s embroidered waistcoats; for a man who spends so much of his time in dull brick, in streets blended to muddy grey by rain, there’s something botanical about his dress. It reminds Tom strangely of a flower growing up out of cold stone.

On stage, Benedetta and her maid’ve grown close; their voices have darted round one another, twittering like birds. Then –

Tom is unsettled. He still has the programme, in the hand that’s not holding his snifter. He sets the glass aside and opens it up; the gold phosphor is bright enough to read by, but he needs his glasses, and he doesn’t want to take them out.

He doesn’t like that he needs them, still. The thought of putting them on unsettles him worse than the pantomime onstage. They’re not his. If Anatole is a mask, why does he need them? He is conscious of the breath moving in and out of his lungs, of the beat of his heart – a little too fast.

Hilarious misunderstandings, Shrikeweed is saying. His jaw tightens. He’s gripping the programme tightly enough to thumb a little crease into it. He loosens his grip, raises his head back to the stage.

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about this one,” he says blandly, with a shrug he wants to pretend is nonchalant. “I don’t know how it ends.”

The governor’s secretary is back, this time without the excuse of gifts. His voice is joined by the maid’s. There’s a huskiness to it; she gets closer to the secretary, and the secretary moves back. Tom knows enough of opera to know that the stumbling, confused lilt of his baritone is a show of skill – the stammer is a dance – his voice goes very high without breaking, hops elegantly up to the roof of his vocal cords, and there’s a brief pause for applause.

The secretary leaves the scene, confused and unsettled. It’s only a fucking mask, Tom wants to protest. They’re all fools, all of them. She sounds nothing like Benedetta; they look nothing alike.

Shrikeweed is speaking; he tries to focus. “What face does he think is his,” repeats Tom.

He hasn’t thought about it that way. Every man’s three, then: him, and the mask he puts on, and the him other folk are seeing. You don’t know that third man; he’s as much a stranger to you as your soul. As with Benedetta, he supposes, you put on a mask without knowing the consequences.

“I don’t know,” replies Tom. The smile’s all gone. He looks again sideways at Megiro’s profile. He’s chatting with some kov or other, some other Anaxi redhead. “A friend of his.”

His voice lowers. “Too-practiced is a good way to put it. I don’t think he cares for masks; usually, he doesn’t need one.” He looks at Shrikeweed again, sidelong. “Julian Megiro. I don’t know why he’s here tonight. The sort of important man that’s not a household name, and doesn’t care to be.”

If you catch my meaning, he doesn’t say.

On stage, the maid is alone, still in Benedetta’s mask; the lights have taken a different tone. The song is sad.

“It’s only a mask.” He’s drunk, he knows; his voice is low and cold. He doesn’t know what compels him to speak. “She’s alone. Why doesn’t she take it off?”

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - The Opera House
The 28th of Dentis, 2719 - Twenty-nine minutes past the 25th hour

"A

fine neckcloth and a slight patterned waistcoat is about the extent of my sartorial splendor.” It has been that way for as long as he can recall. A habit now, a part of the public mask he has come to wear, and a hint at the mask he wears in his other lives. What is his face when he’s at home? Just another mask, though more comfortable, the mask he pretends is his own face. Another construct, defined by the space, by expectation, by immemorial custom. Masks on masks, masks all the way down.

How many faces does he have? Can they be cataloged? Labeled and stored in the archives of his mind? Can they be named? To name a thing is to bring it about, the act is creation. The act of naming is limiting. Can they be understood without names, as mere agglomerations of features, phenomena rather than names? Perhaps. But the Archivist is just another mask. There are only masks. No man is ever himself alone. He arises from his context, is defined by his relations. A man is a consequence, an effect, not a cause. Even a man alone can never remove that last mask.

And now the Incumbent, in his own public mask, is toying with his snifter. He is toying with his programme. The movements are unpracticed, genuine. The man’s eyes squint as he looks at the programme, trying to make out the words. His eyes are not good enough in this light. They are not good enough in any light. Shrikeweed understands this, sympathizes. His own eyes have been fading under the strain of too many words regarded for too long in dim rooms. He does not ask, barely acknowledges the Incumbent’s pained expression. Instead, he reaches into an inner pocket of his embroidered waistcoat and draws out his own reading glasses. Wordless he passes them to the Incumbent. They will serve. They will do. But the Incumbent’s eyes have risen now from the programme. They have fixed upon the stage.

Another expression. Another he has not seen before. The Incumbent is startled, or perhaps unsettled by the actions upon the stage. And why not? The man wears uncomfortable masks of his own. And what is your mask when you are at home? Are you ‘I’ or ‘Him’ or someone quite different? And who are you when you think no one is looking? Who do you think you are? A common enough question, and usually asked with all the wrong intonation, with all the wrong sense. Do you even know, Incumbent, or are you still unsure? Unsettling. “I believe,” he says, glaring with abstracted irritation at his own spoiled glass of wine, “ it will end in the usual manner, with much celebration and everyone going back to their most comfortable mask. It is the usual thing in these comedies.” Comfort is too little regarded. Better a comfortable lie to hold to, than some harsher lie that masquerades as ‘truth’. What is the point in truth? Too loaded a term. Far better to deal in facts, in what can be observed, proven. There is a comfort in that too if one can find it.

And a man who cannot even settle into a mask of comfort, a mask like old and beloved house slippers? What facts can he take comfort in? This is man who lies awake trying to sort out his being. Can he accept that he arises from his thoughts? That his affliction really has made him a new man, a new array of masks? Yes, and no. He is still pretending to be ‘Him’, the man of the past. Useless, unprofitable. Far more comfortable to accept the mask for what it is, just a part he must play from time to time, the mask of a man who seems to have vanished. Far more sensible to accept that his relationship to the old masks have changed.

The scheming little maid upon the stage has done better. Her mannerisms, her whole presentation, now looks more like Benedetta than when that body wore the old mask. Yet she still carries on the old voice. Voice. He eyes flit again to the Incumbent. And where does this new voice come from? What mask is slipping into view? From whom did you acquire it? It cannot be the mask of a man of standing and of means. Yet it seems a more comfortable mask. And how much do you really know about the man Anatole Vauquelin? His history, his origins? Is that it? Do you recall some earlier time when you were not as lofty as you seem? A line of reasoning worth following. It would account for much of the Incumbent’s curious behavior. Though not all.

Facts, Shrikeweed, stick to facts.

And it is a fact that this Julian Megiro unsettles the Incumbent. “You sound as if you know the man, and are not fond of him. Certainly his swagger and bearing are unpleasant in the extreme. It seems he is comfortable in that swagger.” A man who thinks himself important. A man safe in his anonymity. Admirable. And yet he parades here before the useless men, begging to be seen. “Seems, at least to me, a curious means of remaining a man away from the spotlight.” And are you so different, Shrikeweed? Do you not desire to be the man known only to a select few as the remover of obstacles, as the great magician of the bureaucracy? And are you not here, being seen? Is such arrogance the price of this public mask? The price of being useful? Perhaps. A vice. But then, a man needs his vices just as surely as his virtues.

“What is this Megiro’s line?” He does not know, had not considered it before this evening. He has seen the name, of that he is certain. He has seen it in minutes, in the list of attendees of meetings. When was the man in Stainthorpe hall? Intas to be sure. And at other times? Perhaps. Tomorrow he will study the matter more closely. Now is not the time to try and recall, to make too much use of the archives of his mind. This Megiro might sense the activities of a field wholly unsuited to the matter of enjoying an opera. “I recall the name but not the man’s function. I recall his name appearing on your schedule.” Another remark he lets hang in the air. A worm for the Incumbent to perhaps bite.

And now the music changes, a slow and sad aria from the maid-who-is-Benedetta. She has a lovely mezzo, well suited to the melancholy of the song. The poor young lady has developed an affection for the secretary. She does not understand it. She is trying to work it out, to understand herself. “Only a mask?” he says, sipping the ghastly wine, “here it is her face, at least for now. The conventions of the style require masks.” He sets down the unpleasant wine, turns to the Incumbent. “Though, I suppose she does not remove it, because she is becoming Benedetta. Perhaps it is comfortable for her.” And that will be the maid’s folly. Or at least that is how it will be portrayed. He cannot quite agree with that. Certainly the maid is a much better Benedetta than the flighty girl with the beautiful voice.

“It is growing hot in here, sir. I may slip out for a moment. Can I get you another drink?” The Incumbent is, after all, here to enjoy himself.

[Tom Cooke]

The Opera House • Uptown

Evening on the 28th of Dentis, 2719

Recitativo Secco

Ben. You mock me?
My poor heart,
after you have struck it through
with your love?

Cai. My lady,
I am merely the messenger:
they are my master’s,
these gifts, these words,
even this love.

Ben. Yours, Caito,
is the face I look upon.

Cai. You misunderstand!
(How is Benedetta Sforza
so changed? Who is this woman?)

Ben. (What is the matter
with my heart?
Its beat is foreign to me;
the mona do not know me.)

T
heir most comfortable mask,” he murmurs. All he can see is the spotlight shivering down through the dark, spinning the maid’s corn-blond hair into gold. Benedetta’s is a different shade, darker; it complements the wide dark eyes of her mask, her dark-painted lips, the rosy blush of her cheeks. Benedetta’s mask looks strange to Tom on this other woman, unfitting. But he’s never seen the actress’ face. Funny, that.

The brandy is cloying. It sticks his tongue to the top of his mouth, makes his teeth ache. He wants more; the edges are still too sharp, and he wants them softened. He can feel his mask fitted to his face. He sweats underneath it, itches.

Your schedule, Mr. Shrikeweed says, and his head jerks to look at the bureaucrat.

His lips press thin – white-thin. His knuckles flicker white on the snifter, his jaw tightening. His gaze skitters away again. He can no longer see Megiro in the corner of his eye, and thank the Circle for it. But he can hear the man’s voice, now and then. It rises up above Incumbent de Vries’, now.

“It’s abominable,” Megiro is saying. “Simply abominable. We’re still working overtime.”

“I cannot imagine being in your position,” comes de Vries’ voice, with a husky cigar-cough.

“Yes, well – these are difficult times, Incumbent, for any galdor. I daresay everyone in Vienda has lost something, or someone.”

“Indeed, indeed, Constable Inspector. I have some holdings in the Wraithwine area –”

The buzzing in his head is too loud to hear more. When he swallows, it’s like swallowing a pin. “I suspect he’s waiting for a time, Mr. Shrikeweed, when he won’t have to keep away from the spotlight. Soon,” he says. There’s an edge to his voice, a rasp. “We’ve spoken before of names a man doesn’t want to know. His is one. His line is sticking to the ones that are moving up.”

Still poking the hornet’s nest. Godsdamn him! He’d thought Shrikeweed was done with his Gioran Matter rubbish. He’d thought the kov was smart enough to take his advice. It hasn’t come up, not for a long time. But it’s been there, he thinks, feeling faintly sick.

And how much has Shrikeweed learned? Not enough. Not enough to know this isn’t his flooding qalqa.

He glances down, at the programme in Anatole’s hands. There’s something else in Anatole’s hands, too. He can’t remember where he got them. A pair of reading glasses; they aren’t his.

He looks askance at Shrikeweed, and he frowns. He’s not quite sure what he feels. He unfolds the glasses and settles them on his face. The governor, he thinks, wearing the secretary’s mask. It’s meant to be wry, but his soul is too frazzled to find it humorous.

“It is her face,” he repeats absently, thumbing through the programme with Anatole’s hands. He skims lines of ink, names. Torninasca, the governor, played by Faraldo Nicastro; he recognizes the name. Rising star from Tiv. Benedetta, the lovely Francoise Beaulieu.

Perhaps it is more comfortable.

Duetto. Benedetta and the maid (who is who?) on the stage. It’s meant to be funny, Tom thinks, or at least, there’s laughter all around. The two women can’t take off their masks; they pantomime trying to take off each others’. There’s rising panic. The orchestra swells.

The music bleeds into nothing; there is nothing in his head.

Anatole’s hands are shaking. “What?” he fumbles, looking at Shrikeweed again. The man’s eyes-of-no-color are strange in this gold light; they are not meant to be illuminated so.

Is he someone else, underneath that mask?

“Yes,” he starts, still blank-faced, glassy-eyed; he glances from the stage to Shrikeweed, and slowly hands back the other man’s reading-glasses. “Another drink would be –”

Recitativo Accompagnato

Meg. Anatole!

(Julian Megiro has appeared, as if from nowhere; there is a glass of wine in one hand. He is wearing a Seventen dress uniform, pressed and clean. His jaw is clean-shaven, his red hair combed, but his bloodshot eye is there, ever-present.)

Vau. Julian,
what an unexpected pleasure.

Meg.  I haven’t seen you
at the opera in some time.
You seem much recovered.

Vau. Indeed, indeed.
Forgive me, do; permit me this,
to introduce Basil Shrikeweed,
my new chief of staff. An invaluable man.

Meg. (The incumbent’s pale;
I wonder if he’s ill.
By all accounts, the man oft
picks the opera for his fainting.)

Vau. (I feel thin as a
dragonfly’s wing; oes, a flooding mess
am I. Can you blame me?
It’s hard to breathe
through all this plaster.)

Meg. Mr. Shrikeweed, a pleasure.
I believe I’ve seen you at the Pendulum?

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - The Opera House
The 28th of Dentis, 2719 - Thirty-three minutes past the 25th hour

Recitativo Secco Cont . . .


CAI. (Oh but her face!
How in it I delight!
Oh but her voice!
How in it am I lost?)
Oh Benedetta!
This love is mine to send
Not mine to give
No love have I!
Only words that are not mine own!
Take it as it is offered
Take it and no more

BEN. How can I take
From him what you offer?
What is he to me or I to him?
He and thee!
Oh if these words be his
Then they are sweet
But in your voice they are sweeter still!
Yours is the name I know
The name I can come to adore!




A

nd now he has another name. The name of a man he instantly dislikes. A man too much and yet not at all like himself. A useful man, a man to watch. That should be a comfort. It fails even in that. It cannot be helped. The mask of the Ambitious Man is always the same. And he is an Ambitious Man. And the Incumbent, in his words, he has made a new mask, divided the Ambitious Man into two. The Vain Man and the Indispensable Man. He hopes to all the gods that he is the latter. It seems a better fit. He wants it to be a better fit. A relief, but then delusions are relief as well. He owes the Incumbent his thanks. “Only a fool, if you will forgive me sir, begins his life in shadow and seeks to turn the light upon himself. Better to stick to the shadows. They are safer. And a man is more useful, more at ease, when he remains largely unnoticed.”

Yet tonight he has been spotted. This has been a mistake, an ill-conceived notion, the actions of a public man. On stage the music rises, the duet becomes more intertwined. The words are of yearning and of distancing, the staging both but in opposite degrees. Delusion on the stage. Delusion in the box. He has been a fool, a man rising above himself. A man without another mask to hide behind. And with no sense and less foresight. Now the music swells, his thoughts race with it. A third part to the duet. Sung in silence by a man who cannot sing.

The tempo rises.

Presto

CAI. (Dare I speak of who I am?
Dare I let her in on the joke?
What joke is this? I see no one laughing!)
Oh Benedetta! How glad I am
to hear this new voice of yours!
So much more filled with humor
And with mirth.


There is no mirth in Shrikeweed. His thoughts move faster, faster. Names pile upon names. Megiro, Vauquelin, The Gioran Matter. de Vries? It is possible that it is a third name. It is possible the man is as much a nothing as he seems. The other men in the box, names he half caught. All the names, the connections. A meaningless tangle, ever growing. No. It must stop. He bites the inside of his lower lip. No flow of salt, nor tang of iron to signal the drawing of blood. He does not need that, no here and not tonight. It would only cause more spectacle for him to leave living blood to mix with the blood-warm wine.

For a moment there is no sound, no thought, only the sensation of the exquisite pain in his mouth. At each beat of his heart a line of thought is pared away. The music slows. His thoughts slow, then are suspended. Now is no time for thought, for bias and for speculation. There are men, useless and useful, speaking around him. Now is the time for no mind at all. Now is the time to listen.

And so he listens, trying to think not a single thought. Trying to hear the words for what they are, not for what they might be. Still, there are words to be plucked, like bright flowers, from amid the others. Phrases and words the speakers dwell too much upon. The words are important. Important to the other men.

Working overtime

Lost something, or someone

Wraithwine

That sequence can only mean one thing. Impossible for it to be anything else. Lost someone. The ghost of Levesque rises in his thoughts, setting them back on course. Yes, everyone in Vienda has lost someone at Dorehaven. Even anonymous civil servants have their losses. Levesque’s death should not haunt him now. He has performed the required rituals, spoken the necessary words. The rituals are over, the praxis complete. It has done little. The rage still sits tight in his throat. Another bite, and he tries to dismiss it.

He cannot, not with the Incumbent’s next words. A shape begins to form, and a dark one though still nearly formless. Dorehaven. Megiro. Vauquelin - ‘Him’. It was not a line he had quite drawn. The Incumbent has drawn it for him, in bright red ink. The meaning? Unclear. There will be little enough he can do about it here. The Gioran matter. It is not about Gior. That much he knows. And now? Dorehaven? The string of events, like pearls, like prayer beads, he passes through his hands.

The sequence is wrong. The Gioran Matter predates Dorehaven by months. Time flows in by one direction. Effect follows cause. A truth, but not a whole truth. The effect arises from its causes. If the causes are known then the effect can be predicted. The process is difficult, taxing, often hazy. He knows the trick of it, counterfactuals and predictions fill his mind at all hours. They are not the future, only the emanations of the past. It can be close enough at times. It can be wide of the mark in others.

The Incumbent is pained, afraid, perhaps angry. It is understandable. It is his prerogative. Yet it is he who drew the line, who made the connection. Still, a man may be angry at his own actions. He is no stranger to that.

The heat in the box is oppressive now. The Incumbent wants another drink. Godsdamnit but he wants one too. Something cold and sharp and strong. A sharp bitter ale would be just the thing. Little hope of that. Far too common for the opera. Not a drink of gentlemen in their finery. Tonight he is such a man. A sparkling wine perhaps? It will serve. It will do.

And so he rises. And so he fails to leave the box. He cannot help but be stalled. The man of the hour, the useful man in all his gaudy Seventen finery has appeared. He is all smiles and gentlemanly good humor. The uniform is an affectation, a borrowing, a loan of the trappings of power. Another mask to hide behind. The mask of Official Duty. A very effective mask.


Recitativo Staccato


MEG. Mr. Shrikeweed, a pleasure.
I believe I’ve seen you at the Pendulum?

SHRIKE. (a nod of recognition. More pieces falling into place.
Signifying too many things)
Yes, I am a habitue of old,
though I find myself there less often.
Pressing matters. I am sure you understand.

MEG. (A nod, perhaps even a smile)

SHRIKE. Still, it behooves a man to remember
To keep the company of his fellows. Of like-minded men.
Perhaps a game of billiards, next time we meet?
A very congenial game, I find.
(and most telling about a man)
If you will excuse us. Comedy is a thirsty business.


He makes for the door of the box. It is still too hot in here. He has never though well in the heat. “Come, sir,” he says to the Incumbent. “It seems we could both use a drink and breath of fresh air.”

And on the stage they are still only playing with masks, with names and words, light and airy. Words like candy floss. Nothing of consequence.

[Tom Cooke]

The Opera House • Uptown

Evening on the 28th of Dentis, 2719

Shr. Yes, I am a habitue of old,
though I find myself there less often.
Pressing matters. I am sure you understand.

A habitue of Pendulum?

Shrikeweed?

(Order?)

The orchestra swells, as if building to something – duetto, aria, death – something that will never come. The tension a cord pulled taut, about to snap.

Megiro’s caprise is more curious than polite. He feels the static mona at the edges of his field, resists the urge to draw the clairvoyant mona back into himself. He might curl in on himself like a pill bug, here. He hears the two men talking, seemingly as distant as the players on the stage.

It seems to him Megiro’s changed his mask; it’s one of conspiracy, now. But for whom? He catches the looks in two gold eyes – one clear, one muddled – the play of something not quite a smile about his lips, the play of a shared secret. A shared joke.

Tom. (What joke is this? I see no one laughing!
Is Shrikeweed the object,
or one of the subjects? The hilt
or the edge of the knife?
Or the point?)

Shr. … Of like-minded men.

Tom.  (Of whose mind are you belike?)

(Megiro laughs – or something like laughter. Ha, ha, ha. Rehearsed. A flash of white teeth sans one eye tooth, which glints silvery in the phosphor light. He shakes just enough to ripple the brandy in his snifter.)

Tom. (Flood the Circle in sap,
How I’d like to yank the glass out of his hand!
Flood us all in sap;
we’re already flooded.)

Meg. Comedy indeed.
I hope to see you again soon,
Mr. Shrikeweed; an indispensable man
never hurts one to know.
Perhaps I’ll see the both of you
at Pendulum. By the way, Anatole –

(The two zanni pause, on their way out.)

Meg. I have not seen you at Pendulum
since Mrs. Trevisani’s – soirée.

Vau. I shall endeavor better to attend;
As Mr. Shrikeweed says,
It behooves a man to keep like-minded company.

Meg.  Indeed. Perhaps I’ll see the both of you
at the party in early Ophus?
A small affair, to celebrate the cessation
of construction on the east wing.

Vau. (Without missing a beat –)
I look forward to it.

(Megiro is looking at Shrikeweed with a question in his eyes.)

Meg. (A self-made man, this
shrike; perhaps more like-minded than he knows.
Perhaps the Judge has use for him.)
But I won’t keep the two of you.
Good evening, Anatole, Mr. Shrikeweed.

The scene cuts to a shaded hall outside. The phosphor lights here are lower. The sounds are muffled; the voices in the boxes mingle with the voices on the stage. A woman is singing through the vine-patterned wall, one last desperate aria.

He wonders if she’s taken her mask off yet.

He hasn’t looked at Shrikeweed; he is afraid to, as they move quickly down the long dark carpet.

He knew the man was Pendulum, but not all pendulums swing. He doesn’t know what to make of Megiro’s look. Of Shrikeweed’s “like-minded”. Of Shrikeweed’s “I find myself there less often”.

He knows one thing: he’s been a fool. He’s taken a Torninasca for a Caito, perhaps; Shrikeweed has seen through his own mask more than he’s thought. Or has he? He tries to make sense of the prying questions, the interest in the Gioran Matter. Does Shrikeweed know? Is Shrikeweed one of the conspirators, merely pressing the Incumbent to find out how much he knows?

He is flushed and faint. The hallway tilts. To collapse at the opera twice! Comedy.

“I need something stronger than whatever they’re serving here,” he mutters, “and fresher air than this.”

[Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed]

Vienda - The Opera House
The 28th of Dentis, 2719 - Forty-two minutes past the 25th hour

T

he corridor now and the lamps low. Yellow-white light shining off stone and polished wood. The heat still clings to him like, an unwelcome cloak, a miasma. In the empty corridor it begins to dissipate, the heat, not the miasma. That still wraps around him, soaking into his clothes, his skin. ‘Is there corruption at the Royal Opera’? The answer is the inevitable yes, it remains only to understand the shape of it, the severity of the rot.

The rot is deep. It’s shape still eludes him. There are too many shapes, too many edges. The mycelium of conspiracy, he has thought of that before, those very words. Words he thought in the Pendulum. Words he thought the day of his meeting with Trevisani. That name again, and from another mouth, another member of the club. Spoken with such glibness, such ease. As though it were a nothing. No, not quite. As though he might have been on some private joke. Nod. Nod and laugh. He will have time to learn later, to tease it apart.

There are other, more pressing matters.

The Incumbent looks pained, startled. At the mention of the Pendulum he grows even pailer, more faint. Reasons? Unclear. The man himself is a member. Then again, so are many others. Men whose society he enjoys, me whose society is useful, men whose society he despises. A microcosm of the city. Though with more billiard rooms per capita.

The Incumbent is unsure on his feet, sways like a man upon the deck of a ship in heavy seas. It would not do for the man to expire again, and in this place. He reaches out a supporting arm, tries to steady the man. Success? Unknown. Perhaps it would be better to let the man stumble and fall. A repeat of the old accident. A fall to jog his memories. His fingers loosen for a moment, the equilibrium is off, the Incumbent is on the downward swing. The balance it between them. No. It will not do to let the man fall. His grip tightens, the swing of the man is, for now, arrested. The plumb is stalled in the arc of its swing

The arc. The swing. The Pendulum. Another piece of the puzzle? Another aspect of the Giroan Matter? Possible. Probable? It will do no good to reason without data. He has all the data he needs, here in the shape of a pale and unsteady man. A man who refuses to answer. An answer is a gift. There are are ways to pry gifts from even the most reluctant men. Do ut des ‘I give, so that you may give’.

“I cannot like that man.” He keeps his voice low, abstracted. A man talking to himself. “I am sorry, sir, if he is a friend of yours, or was, but it is such men that find me at the Pendulum less and less.” A truth, unvarnished. He will play his cards, and he will show some of his hand. He owes the Incumbent that much. The Incumbent needs to see what is owing. “Though your opinion seems rather closer to mine, at least of late.”

Something is troubling the man, and now, at least, Shrikeweed has some idea of it. Vague, ill formed, likely incorrect. Very likely. He is seeing connections in the dark, lines of reasoning where none may exist. He needs time, comfort. The Incumbent needs the same. A smile, a quirk of the lip, and another gift becomes inevitable.

The Elephant.

A risk, to be sure. To bring the Incumbent into that sanctum, it is no small thing. Still, it is necessary, and the necessary waits on no man. “Night air, a walk, and then, yes, something far stronger than mere brandy.” There is little enough time to gather hats and gloves and coats. Still, The Elephant is not far, and night is not so bitter. “I know just the place.” He looks into the Incumbent’s still waxen face. “No, not the Pendulum. It seems we need to swing is quite another direction, you and I.”

Along the corridor and toward the main stair. He is not dragging the Incumbent along, not quite. It is near enough to be undignified. This is a night for indignities. A night for man in his madness.

The sound from the stage is muffled, indistinct. Still, the broad outlines of the opera can be heard, even here. The music swells, there are twitters of birdlike voices, then, a great held breath, a silence that threatens for a moment of overtake the world, finally deafening applause.

The comedy is finished.