Like a Wisp of Steam (5 page)

When she saw him, the Virago's feral grimace collapsed into confusion, then scorn. "What are you doing here?" She must have taken voice lessons, as hers had lost that nasal quality.

He took a step closer to her. This close, he could see the almost masculine angularity of her face, which the makeup didn't quite hide. "I see you have your name on the bill now.

Congratulations."

"I don't care to catch up on old times, Ricar." She pulled his assignation card out of her pocket and tore it in half, likely a knowing mockery of how he had taught her the Virago trick of ripping a thick book apart with her bare hands. "If you take this to the box office, your fee will be refunded."

"Please, Corr, I just wanted to talk with you for a moment."

She cocked her head to one side and crossed her magnificent arms across her broad chest. "What about?"

He had no script, no lines, so he just said, "What did I do wrong?"

Corr sighed. "I'm engaged, Ricar. After this season, I'm retiring. Charl and I are going to run an inn on the coast. He doesn't even go to the Commedia."

"Retiring? But ... you're in your prime. You have years of potential, and the Virago will come back in fashion one day."

He could almost see her changing before his eyes, losing her definition, getting pregnant, serving tea and scones to holidaymakers in some ridiculous apron.

"I'm not going to wait for that."

"You were the best I've ever seen, before or since. And you were that good because you loved the role."

"You're right. I did love it. I want to retire while I still do."

He said what he hadn't, two years ago. "I'm sorry it ended the way it did."

She stopped, drummed her fingers on the door frame. "So am I. Goodnight, Ricar."

* * * *

Ricar didn't go home that night. Instead, he slept on one of the mattresses in the prop room in the Razor Lotus's basement, smelling accumulated years of makeup, sweat, and desire.

He awoke at the traditional hour for his profession, shortly before noon. In the men's privy, he shaved himself and put his wrinkled suit in some semblance of order. His valet would give him dirty looks for a week.

Roughly shaved, without pomade, and in a rumpled suit, the man that looked back at him in the mirror uncomfortably resembled his father. He thought of the mining town where he was born, where men and women spent days deep underground, chipping away at hard rock, dust seeping into every pore, in search of those rare, tiny glints of precious metals. His father had died down there, along with six other people, trapped by a tunnel collapse, suffocating on their own exhaled breath. When he saw those bodies being carried out of the mine shaft, he swore he would leave and go to the bright lights of the city that shone on the other side of the mountains, and he'd never looked back.

While Chel and her players prepared for the matinée show, he had a quick meal in the saloon, then went to his office and put pen to paper.

Later that afternoon, Miss Alwyx walked into his office and placed a letter on his desk. "My resignation, sir," she said flatly. She stood there, arms crossed and chin tucked to her chest, waiting for him to say something.

Ricar was not the slightest bit surprised as he read the brief formal letter, but he suddenly felt trapped in his own office, like the air had turned thick and foul, or had been that way all along and he hadn't noticed.

He got up from his desk, feeling like iron straps were wrapped around his chest, shakily walked to the window and struggled to open it in vain. He retrieved an inkwell from his desk and hurled it through the pane.

He stood at the broken window for a moment, listening to the bustle of passersby outside the theatre. The faint breeze and the warm sunlight on his face helped. His eyes closed, he wondered how long it had been since he had felt that.

He turned back to his desk. Miss Alwyx stood just barely in the doorframe, warily watching him.

"Please excuse me," he said. "It was jammed."

She took a cautious step back into the office.

He picked the sealed letter from his desk and offered it to her. "This is for you."

Her hand started to reach for it, but stopped. "What is it?"

"It's a letter of recommendation. It says you are a talented and dedicated player who would be an asset in any company in the world, and that you left because of creative differences."

"I don't need that."

"It's all I can give you." It was what he hadn't given Corr.

She hesitantly took the letter, held it in both hands by the edges. "I don't know if I can do this at all, anymore." There were no tears, but her voice nearly cracked.

What could he tell her? Quit, don't quit? Stay true to yourself, learn to adapt? Follow your dream, be realistic? All he could say was, "Things change, Miss Alwyx."

"You mean I'll change or the Commedia will change?"

"Either. Both, maybe."

"Thank you," she said, almost a whisper, and turned away.

At the door, she stopped and looked over her broad shoulder.

"What about you?"

He smiled the brave, pained, hoping-against-hope smile of the Innocent. "The show must go on."

* * * *

Ricar took his seat in the third row of the tiny theatre just as the curtain rose, showing a cozy front room in a bourgeois home. He didn't care much for the theatre, finding it dull compared to the energy and glamour of the Commedia, but this play he had to see.

Miss Alwyx entered. As the wife, Naro, she bustled about her home, decorating the Midwinter tree, wrapping gifts for her children, and childishly snacking on treats.

He had seen her name on the handbill promoting the play, considered attending, then decided against it. But before long, everybody from Davis to the stagehands were talking about the scandalous new play. Eventually Chel told him, "It's been a year. Go see her."

As the other characters entered and the plot unfolded, Ricar found the story was so familiar—the cozy household, the threat of blackmail, the missing documents—that he wondered what the fuss was about.

In the second act, Naro's husband gave her a present: an Innocent's blue and white dress, for her to wear to a party.

Later, Naro offered to play any role her husband wanted—the Innocent, the Pet, the Harlot, even the Fatale—if he would let her blackmailer keep his job at her husband's bank. Yet the man dismissed her pleadings as childish whims.

In the third act, the husband and wife returned home from the party, dressed as the Prince and the Innocent. The incriminating letter finally came to light, and Vartold turned on Naro, calling her a liar and a thief, even though she had forged his signature to save his life. Ricar had seen, and played, the Prince menacing the Innocent hundreds of times before, but to see a man berating his wife like a common criminal had an impact he didn't expect at all.

At the last moment, the threat of blackmail was removed, leaving Vartold's position secure. Ricar relaxed. Vartold would forgive Naro, and their marriage would only be strengthened.

Instead—and this is when the grumblings from the audience began in earnest—Naro turned away from him. She left the room, then entered again, in her traveling clothes, and left the Innocent's dress hung over the back of a chair.

She seemed to tower over her husband, even without her height, as she told him that their marriage was founded on lies, that she could not be a good wife and mother, and that she would leave and search to find herself.

The last moment was the door slamming as Naro left her house and her husband. As the curtain fell, Ricar felt frozen to his chair, one hand clasped over his mouth. It was astonishing, yet made perfect sense.

The applause was scattered and mixed with grumblings and loud hissing. Ricar clapped the loudest and longest.

As the audience got up, Ricar hurried through the lobby—

passing a man haranguing a group of listeners, "...Not only nonsense but
obscene
nonsense. I'd rather my own daughters were lying dead in a ditch than they should see that!"—and made his way around the theatre to the stage door.

He waited there until the door creaked open, and Miss Alwyx peered out cautiously. He politely doffed his top hat to her and bowed. "Your admirer, Miss Alwyx."

She blinked in surprise, then emerged from the door.

"Mister Donal, I didn't expect you here. We've had some problems with harassment after shows."

They exchanged a few pleasantries, and she told him, "The leading lady resigned when the director wouldn't change the ending, and she took all the other actors with her. I worked in Black Veil company for a while, Servant and Harlot mostly, but started going to theatre auditions as well. I was lucky enough to be at the right one. The pay is a pittance, but as you can see, the playhouse is packed. We're good for a full season, if the city watch doesn't shut us down."

He started to say something professional about the production, but instead he changed his mind. "Miss Alwyx, you were extraordinary up there. I believed every word."

"Thank you, Mister Donal." Her smile was different, no longer a child's.

Emboldened by the new possibilities that smile opened, he quickly said, "The Oyster Club isn't far from here. Would you care to join me for a late supper?"

Her umbrella tapped against his walking stick. "That wouldn't take a miracle."

An Extempore Romance

Jason Rubis

Quite out of nowhere, Mary Ann said, "He's in love with you."

Amelia Lessington, down to her girdle and bloomers but still struggling with her boots, looked up and frowned. "What?

Who's in love with me? What on Earth are you on about?"

The chimera, motionless by the dressing-room door, regarded Amelia with unblinking yellow eyes. She stood with her hands behind her back, like a child prepared to give a recitation. There were some unusual features concealed under her skin—she'd hardly be worth calling a chimera otherwise—

but on the surface, except for her strange feline gaze, she looked like a pretty, petite girl of eighteen or so.

"That daguerrographer. He's been making sheep's eyes at you all day, from the moment you shook his hand. I shouldn't wonder he's written you a sonnet by now. That's what men in love do, you know."

"Ah. Well, I'm glad to have the benefit of your extensive experience in matters of the heart. After all, you've been out of the vat, what, a whole month now?" Amelia extended a long leg. "Make yourself useful and help me get this bloody boot off."

"English ladies don't use words like 'bloody,'" Mary Ann pointed out. But she readily went on her knees, deftly undoing the buttons on her mistress's boot.

"No, and they don't show bare feet and bare legs to the loving English menfolk, either."

"Why are you doing it, then?"

"Times change," Amelia grunted, bracing herself on the chair's arms as the boot came off her foot. "Besides, it was Edward's idea. It'll be charming for these pictures he's insisted on having for the new books. It's a bid for my lost girlhood, all in keeping with my professional reputation as spinner of childhood dreams; barefoot innocent days of youth, that sort of thing. Of course, when I was a girl my feet weren't so crabbed and ugly."

"Your foot is still pretty,
I
think," Mary Ann observed, turning it in her hands. She poised a fingernail over the damp sole and turned an innocent face to Amelia's stony glare. "Is it ticklish?"

Amelia allowed herself a tight smile. "Try it and I'll have boiled chimera for tea. My last three Mary Anns weren't half so cheeky, you know. I should have had a Wellington instead."

Mary Ann kissed her foot, running her tongue-tip along the underside of her toes. Amelia shuddered, not unpleasurably.

"Stop that. We've got business to attend to."

"Later?"

"Perhaps, yes. If you behave during the shoot." Inside, however, she was thinking,
Definitely yes
. It had been a long time since her last go-round and the unaccustomed feeling of skin exposed to cool air excited her. It's nothing to be ashamed of, she told herself. Lots of people use chimerae for intimate purposes. It wasn't, after all, as though they were human beings. Still, she hadn't planned on using this Mary Ann for that purpose. And, more to the point, it was cock she craved, not tickles and kisses, however artfully administered.

Perhaps she would give herself a treat at Cullen's after this ordeal was over.

"Get that other boot off now, and let's go." She smiled mischievously. "We mustn't keep my admirer waiting, must we?"

* * * *

In the chaos of the main studio, the daguerrographer stood oblivious to everyone and everything, utterly absorbed by his preparations for the afternoon's session. The daguerrograph imaging-engine was a strange and sinister-looking device that reminded Amelia of a vast black insect, all its limbs partially folded up on themselves. Periodically it released a hissing shaft of steam from a hidden valve and shifted itself slightly, as though restlessly seeking a more comfortable position.

There were many such devices now, all derived from the same strange science that had allowed the creation of chimerae; machines unrelated in function but all sharing a strange resemblance to living things. Great bulbous airships like vast skyborne fish carried mail and cargo to every corner of the Empire. Cabriolets maneuvered the streets at breakneck speed, drawn by metallic extensions like skeletal horses, or guided by internal mechanisms that functioned as artificial brains. The church disapproved strenuously of these effigies of the Creator's work, but they made the world faster and more profitable; commerce would not be denied its toys.

Mr. Darwin, Amelia supposed, was having a jolly good laugh at the whole affair.

The daguerrographer's attention remained firmly fixed on his machine. Amelia felt a bit piqued by this, for no reason she could determine. Perhaps it was Mary Ann's silly speculation on the man's supposed infatuation with her.

Edward Roxby, her business agent, was seated nearby. He rose when he saw Amelia, his plump red face beaming. "My dear," he exclaimed, offering her his hand. He gestured at the dark, simple dress Amelia had changed into. "You look utterly ravishing. What a lovely country lass you make!"