Bone Palace, The - Amanda Downum Page 0,100
the Kharybdea.”
“Of course you do. It’s one of the reasons I’m so fond of you.” He crossed the room to stand behind her, dropping a light kiss just below her ear. “Is that a new perfume?”
The Orpheum Tharymis rose above the rooftops of Lyre, its marble columns and domes gilded by hundreds of lanterns. Musicians and dancers chased each other through elaborate friezes, and owl-winged gargoyles brooded dramatically over the doorways; golden light glazed the rain-damp street below. Vendors thronged the pavement beneath the broad steps, offering flowers and refreshments and forged programs for cheaper than one could find inside. Ribbons of scent twisted with the breeze—wine and cider, garlic and sugar and bruising blossoms.
The Tharymis was the oldest and grandest orpheum in the city, though many would argue that the Magdalen—or the Garden’s Rhodon—had the better productions. Had it been an opening night, even Isyllt’s diamond wouldn’t have been enough to secure tickets. As it was, most of the other attendees looked through her and Ciaran without the aid of an obfuscation charm.
Witchlights blazed in crystal chandeliers overhead, gleaming on brass and marble and polished wood, burnished the blue velvet seats and curtains. The tiny bowls that lined the aisles were witchlit as well. Beeswax candles burned in wall sconces—easier to light and douse, and less likely to catch someone’s cloak or skirts alight.
Isyllt had managed mediocre seats on the ground floor—good enough if one truly wanted to watch the performance, but beneath the notice of the balconies and private boxes. She sent Ciaran for refreshments and tried to watch the Severos box without getting a crick in her neck. Eventually a page rapped at the door with drinks for two, but of the occupants she saw nothing but a pale hand emerging to take the tray. If Varis was there, perhaps his mysterious companion was as well.
Ciaran returned with wine as the witchlights began to pulse and dim. The cacophony of a hundred conversations faded to a gentle susurrus, and finally died as the first notes drifted from the orchestra pit.
The midnight-blue curtains opened, revealing the stage dressed as a city street and the chorus gowned in old-fashioned demimonde finery. They introduced the heroine Astrophel, a poor lacemaker who loved beyond her reach, and the object of her affection, the witch Satis, who lived in her dusty tower with only ghosts and one jealous servant, nursing her magic and grief for a long-lost love. Astrophel was played as always by the season’s up-and-coming soprano, a girl the program identified as Anika Sirota. A Rosian name, and she had the milk-and-roses complexion and shining golden hair to match. Satis was a role for aging contraltos, when they weren’t cast as mad queens or vengeful mothers. Isyllt had seen Zahara Noïs in a dozen roles over the years—a tall, rawboned woman whose white-streaked auburn mane was visible from the highest seats. The audience shivered whenever she sang one of Satis’s mad arias.
Isyllt finished her wine long before Astrophel charmed her way past Satis’s doorstep for the first time. Her fingers tightened around her empty cup when they sang their first duet. Sirota’s voice rang with passion, with pain and longing beyond an ingénue’s years. When the two women sank into an embrace behind a scrim and the curtain fell for intermission, applause shook the orpheum to its bones.
Isyllt kept an eye on the Severos box during the break, and saw Varis come and go. She didn’t follow, but drank more wine and let the din of the crowd wash over her. Sirota was the darling of the season, she quickly learned—the daughter of refugees, lifted from the slums by her talent. Isyllt heard a few snide remarks about her origins, but most of the audience seemed smitten with the girl, and thought her story operatic in itself.
Isyllt didn’t appreciate Thiercelis’s opera as much as Kharybdea’s spoken theater, but Astrophel and Satis was powerful in any version, especially with singers as talented as these. Someone in the audience was weeping or cursing at any given moment during the second half of the show, as Satis’s ghosts tried to woo her back from her mortal lover, and her jealous assistant and Astrophel’s suitor Marius—the same tenor Nikos had commented on in The Rain Queen—tried to keep the girl away.
Since it was a tragedy, Astrophel’s steadfast devotion might defeat mortal jealousy, but couldn’t overcome the hungry dead. The servant locked her in Satis’s tower overnight while the sorceress was away, and the ghosts