Masks and Shadows

by Stephanie Burgis

  He let out a puff of air, not quite a laugh. “I . . . yes. The letter. But not just that.” He shook his head. “I’ve been a fool.”

  “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “It’s too late.”

  He glanced over her head. Lieutenant von Höllner stood propped against the back wall, watching them with grim intensity. Anna’s stomach twisted.

  “Is—is he involved as well?”

  Herr Pichler’s lips twisted. “You could say that.”

  Monsieur Delacroix had been moving around the groups of singers, whispering orders. Now he stepped up beside Anna, pointedly ignoring Herr Pichler. “Orders from the Prince,” he hissed. “He has a surprise planned for his guests, and he wants the stage cleared immediately after the finale. No second round of bows. Singers and musicians are all to leave the building until summoned. All except for you, Pichler.” His lips curled. “No flowers for you yet, I’m afraid, Fräulein.”

  Anna lifted her chin. “I don’t desire them, monsieur.”

  He snorted and walked away. Anna turned back to Herr Pichler. He’d looked ill before Delacroix’s visit; now, he looked as though he might collapse.

  “Tell me!” she whispered. “What’s going on?”

  Franz licked his lips. They were so dry, they cracked. Everything was cracking around him.

  He couldn’t stop making the calculations in his head. Two people, perhaps, he could have understood. Four people even. But there were four hundred people in the audience tonight. The two-pointed base of the pyramid’s triangular side would be bounded by each end of the stage, and the figure would peak high above the royal box, where the Brotherhood’s leader had stood, gazing down at him, through nearly all of the act so far. The pyramid would angle in from its base, leaving some innocents untouched, but still including . . . what? Two hundred and fifty people? Three hundred? As well as all the occupants of the royal box itself? It was beyond comprehension. Three hundred people to die because Franz had been angry and hurt and stupid, that night in his prison cell, and he had let himself be tricked.

  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 turn
ed 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.

  Anna knew as soon as she saw the guards in front of the royal box that mere arrogance would not serve to carry her past them.

  “No admittance during the performance,” the first guard whispered. “I beg your pardon, madam, but the Empress gave explicit instructions that they not be disturbed.”

  “I am here on a matter of the greatest urgency.” Anna tried to step past them. “They would wish to see me. I have—”

  The second guard stepped in front of her, holding out a bulky arm. “I’m sorry, madam, but that’s simply not possible.”

  The chorus was beginning their final verse. Anna could have screamed with impatience. “I’m here to warn the Empress. There—”

  An unfamiliar voice rapped out from the steps to the gallery above them.

  “Shame on you, Fräulein Dommayer.”

  Anna jerked around. A tall man in a richly embroidered black coat and satin breeches was running down the carpeted stairs toward them. He covered the last two steps in a bound, despite the walking stick he carried. His eyes glittered feverishly.

  “Masquerading as a lady?” he asked. “Surely you couldn’t have expected it to work. The fact that you’re Lieutenant Esterházy’s whore won’t save you from his cousin’s wrath.”

  “I—what?” She stared at him, rendered momentarily speechless.

  The first guard blinked. “Sir?”

  “This is Lieutenant Esterházy’s actress,” the man said. “Publicly cast off by him only a few days ago—and here, no doubt, to make a scene before both his cousin and the Empress.”

  “I am not!” Anna regained her breath. “I wouldn’t—I wasn’t!” She raised her voice. She was a professional singer, at least for this one last evening. Surely she could project her voice through the thin walls of the royal box. “I am here to save their Majesties’ lives!”

  “A sweet attempt.” The man smiled thinly. “But not, I’m afraid, quite good enough.” He nodded at the second guard. “Take her away.”

  Raised voices filtered into Charlotte’s consciousness, through the music and the air thick with tension. Voices, arguing, familiar—

  “I am here to save their Majesties’ lives!”

  “Anna,” Charlotte breathed. “What’s happening?”

  The Empress scowled. “I can barely hear the music. Nikolaus, do take care of it.”

  The Prince gave an irritated jerk of the head, and a footman jumped to open the door. He peered out, whispering to one of the guards; through the narrow opening, Charlotte glimpsed her former maid struggling against the second guard.

  The door closed. The footman bowed.

  “One of the singers, sir, trying to intrude and make a scene.”

  “Anna wouldn’t do that!” Charlotte said. “She isn’t like that.”

  The footman coughed. “The lieutenant says she is . . . ah . . . was acquainted with Lieutenant Esterházy. Until he, ah, dismissed her a few days ago.”

  “Ah.” The Prince grimaced. “Tell them to get rid of her and let us enjoy the rest of the performance in peace.”

  The Empress nodded firmly.

  Charlotte spoke in a fierce whisper. “She said she was trying to save their Majesties’ lives. Won’t you even listen to what she has to say?”

  The Prince snorted. “She was trying to frighten the guards into letting her in.”

  “With respect, Your Highness, the Baroness may have a point,” Signor Morelli murmured. “Fräulein Dommayer doesn’t seem to be—”

  “May we please stop discussing this and listen to the rest of the act?” the Empress said. “For heaven’s sake, Nikolaus, have the guards question her somewhere else, if you must, but let us—oh. It’s over!”

  The theater hung in silence. The audience and the singers onstage all peered up at the balcony, waiting for the Prince to signal the beginning of the applause. Only the sound of Anna arguing with the guards filtered in through the walls of the box. Charlotte watched the Prince glance covertly down to where Count Radamowsky waited in the shadows beside the stage.

  “Please,” Charlotte said urgently. “I truly believe—”

  The Prince cut one hand through the air. “Enough.” He nodded at the footman. “Tell them to take her somewhere quiet. I’ll question her myself, tomorrow.”

  “Nikolaus,” the Princess began, mildly.

  “No!” Charlotte said, at the same moment. “Your Highness, I beg you—”

  The footman opened the door, interrupting the argument outside.

  “Your Highness, please!” Anna lunged at the opening—

  —And Herr von Born stepped into view, his walking stick flying up in his hand. He hit her hard on the head with the knob of the stick. Anna crumpled to the ground. Charlotte cried out, jumping to her feet.

  “How dare you?”

  Herr von Born bowed at the royals through the open door. “She won’t intrude upon Your Majesties now.”

  The Prince nodded back, breathing heavily. “Our thanks, von Born.”

  Charlotte gripped her hands together, shaking. “Your Highness, I must protest! This is an intolerable abuse of—”

  “You may protest later, Baroness, but not now.”

  The Princess’s gaze flicked to von Born and back. “Nikolaus, perhaps we really ought—”

  “Enough, madam.” He dropped his voice, but Charlotte still heard his piercing whisper: �
��I have heard more than enough of your fretting already tonight.”

  With his jaw set hard, the Prince signaled to the stage, and the four hundred audience members burst into loud applause. The guards closed the door to the royal box, shutting out the view of Anna’s crumpled form. The singers onstage leapt into action, sweeping deep bows and curtseys, and then clearing off the stage with unusual haste. Anger and fear simmered through Charlotte’s chest as she slowly sank back down into her seat. There was nothing more she could do now, with the Prince in this mood. All she could do was wait and hope that, in his pleasure at the end of the operatic performance, he would be more open to her persuasion.

  But helpless rage nearly strangled her. If Anna had been seriously hurt . . .

  The Prince’s smile looked strained as he turned to his guests, rubbing his hands together.

  “I have a surprise planned for Your Majesties,” he said, “to erase even the memory of all such unpleasantness. A surprise . . . and a gift.”

  The Emperor and Empress turned together to their host.

  “What sort of gift?” the Empress asked.

  The Prince took a visible breath. “One more powerful than any cannon. One before which even Turkish or Prussian soldiers would have no strength, nor courage to stand and fight.”

  What? Charlotte thought. And then, as perception pierced through rage: Oh. She sucked in a gasp. He wouldn’t. Would he? Not after what had happened to the poor Englishman. Not . . .

  The Emperor leaned forward, his face hardening. “Explain.”

  Prince Nikolaus’s smile relaxed. “You’ll see for yourself, Your Majesty, in only a minute’s time.”

  At the Prince’s nod, Count Radamowsky stepped up onto the stage.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Ladies and gentlemen. Your Majesties. Your Highnesses.” Radamowsky strode to the center of the stage and bowed deeply.