"What are we going to do, Lillet?" Amoretta wanted to know. Lillet could hardly blame her for her worry. Inspector Ballatore's grim news had utterly killed both her appetite and the happy mood; even the sunlight bathing the garden seemed to have turned from a warm glow to a harsh glare.
Lillet squeezed her lover's hand reassuringly.
"We're going to do what we always do. We're going to find out who's responsible for this and we're going to stop him, her, or them before they can hurt more people."
Amoretta smiled then, a shy, sweet look full of blinding confidence.
"That's all right, then," she declared. It wasn't from ignorance, Lillet knew; it was simply that Amoretta trusted her with an intensity that was virtually religious. She was almost childlike in that respect, with the kind of faith that a young girl had in her parent. The beautiful homunculus was such a study in contrasts--but then again, Lillet supposed, so were most people.
"I think I'll start by investigating the most recent crime scene, like I told the Inspector. The kind of magic that's involved could really make a difference in what we need to look for. There are still renegades out there who served Archmage Calvaros, and they'd be skilled sorcerers. On the other hand, a lunatic might attract devils with the sheer evil of the acts. Or it might be a devil rather than a magician responsible--we both know how attractive you are to them."
"That's true. Be careful, though. It might be that this is a challenge to you, and I'm only the subject of it."
"I won't let my guard down."
"Do you think that the Inspector really suspects you, Lillet?"
"Well, if the killer is someone magically talented and obsessed with you, then I do fit the description, but I have better ways of living out that obsession."
Amoretta frowned at her.
"You didn't answer my question, Lillet."
"No, I guess I didn't." Lillet tapped a finger against her lower lip. "I honestly don't know if he does or not. He apologized at once, but that might just be because Ms. Riesling started saying too much, not because he thinks I'm innocent. Policemen are supposed to suspect everyone, after all. I wonder why Ms. Riesling dislikes me, though? I always got on well with her father."
"So did I. I don't think we've even met her before today."
"No, we didn't." Lillet shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe it's because I wouldn't leave them alone with you, or because we're both women, or even because I was made Mage Consul while her father, with many more years as a Royal Magician, was passed over. It could be almost anything."
"Do you think it will be a problem?"
"I don't know, little love. If the Watch believes that I might be guilty, we could end up tripping over each other while trying to solve the crime, and let the murderer get away." She didn't want to worry Amoretta, so she didn't mention another point that had occurred to her. If the murderer did keep killing, and Lillet remained under suspicion, how long would it take the whispers to turn ugly? Magicians were still by no means fully trusted by the people, and those who were neutral to her at Court could easily turn against her with enough prodding.
Lillet pushed the breakfast dishes away.
"Come on, Amoretta. Let's go."
"All right. I just need to write a message for the theater, first."
"What does she mean, she isn't going to sing Coralia?" Marcelo Terne, music director of the City Theater Opera Company, exploded, his dark eyes flashing furiously.
"Just what I said," replied Brendan Saint, manager of the company and the theater alike. Unlike the tall, long-limbed Terne, who looked the artist's part with his saturnine good looks and long, curling dark hair that brushed the nape of his neck, Saint was short, stocky, and had neatly clipped sandy hair and a pointed moustache. He waved the note. "Miss Virgine says that she will be unable to perform her scheduled role of Coralia in tonight's opening of Goldenlake."
"But this is impossible!" Terne cried. "You said yourself that we are sold out! We have rehearsed for weeks. How can this be? What are we supposed to do for a cast?"
The answer to that was self-evident and everyone in the room knew it. Maria Bacardi uncurled herself languidly from her reclining position on the office sofa. Only twenty-three, she was a sensual, curvaceous beauty with masses of flowing dark hair and pale blue eyes, weapons she knew well how to employ to her best advantage.
"Have you forgotten so soon that it was I who sang Coralia two years past, the last time we performed Goldenlake?"
Of course they hadn't; that was why Saint had summoned her along with Terne.
"After all," she purred, "is that not the role of an understudy? To step in when needed when the star cannot go on?"
Saint wondered momentarily if La Bacardi knew something of the reasons for Amoretta's sudden absence. He'd been curious why a woman who had been prima donna at the City Theater for seventeen months was willing with relatively little protest to play second fiddle to a new star instead of headlining at some other company. The City Theater was the best in the capital, but twenty-five years in the opera business told Saint that ninety-nine out of a hundred aspiring divas would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. Now, maybe he had his answer.
"Obviously La Bacardi can sing the part," he said. "Aste Nestor can then sing Wren in her place."
Terne threw up his hands.
"It is impossible, I tell you! Miss Nestor is second-rate at best. As Miss Bacardi's understudy she doesn't do any damage, but you know that she only holds the--I mean--" He broke off into a stammer, unable to complete the thought.
La Bacardi smiled lazily at Terne's discomfiture.
"We're all adults here, Maestro. She's Count de Marassou's mistress, and he is an influential patron." She gestured airily. "In a company with less scrupulous managers, she would have been given Wren's role from the first and that would have been that."
Terne stamped the ferrule of his silver-capped cane against the floorboards.
"It is not acceptable!" he barked. "It is opening night and our supporting cast is worthy of...of some provincial touring company."
"Blame the Virgin, not us," La Bacardi said, shrugging. The epithet Pops used was also employed derisively by Amoretta's backstage rivals on account of her name and lack of formal training.
"There may be good reason behind her withdrawal," Saint pointed out. He opened the letter and read, "She says, 'I fear that to continue may put lives at risk,' after all."
"Rubbish!" Terne declared. "The artistic temperament, taken from the exacting to the merely absurd."
Saint chuckled softly.
"For you to complain about artistic temperament, Marcelo, is...amusing. And I dare say you would not dismiss the idea out of hand if you had an Inspector of the Watch waking you at half past one."
"The Watch?"
"Quite. Inspector Ballatore had all kinds of interesting questions about our Miss Virgine's recent roles, to say nothing of her home address and that of her manager.:
Both of the others stared at him openly.
"So whatever it is that Miss Virgine fears, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it. The better questions to ask are, what does her performing or not performing have to do with the Watch and saving lives, and what does it mean for this company?"
Neither the music director nor the soprano, it seemed, had any answers to offer.
Even by daylight the alley was a squalid place, caught between gray stone buildings that reared high above the cobbles. This was the old section of the city, once the home of noble families in medieval times but now reduced to shops and tenements of the working poor. It was only three blocks away from the City Theater, Lillet noticed; since many of the capital's artistic institutions had a long history they had remained while mere aristocracy and money had moved on to better things. That had led to many actors, performers, and artists taking rooms in the area, informally called the Theater District.
The marks of violence had been removed, the bodies taken down, the blood scrubbed away from walls and pavement, but an almost tangible air of menace hung in the air. The atmosphere of murder and brutality clung to the place, scarring it despite the clean-up.
"Or maybe it's just me," Lillet said aloud, looking around. "Maybe it's just because I knew something horrible happened here that I think of it as an evil place."
"No," Amoretta told her, shuddering. "It...it's not just you. There's something wrong here."
Amoretta was much more sensitive to such things than Lillet or indeed any human was. The angel inside her was an existence of pure spirit and, even though bound in flesh, retained shadows of its higher senses, particularly where sorcery and the diabolic were concerned.
"Let's see if I can learn precisely what," Lillet said. She set down the black leather satchel she carried and popped the latches. From inside she took a heavy book bound in flaking brown leather with fittings of an odd blue-tinted metal.
"Is that a new grimoire? I don't think I've seen it before."
"It's a Purgatory variant," Lillet said. "I don't use it much but I've had it in the library for about two months."
Amoretta frowned thoughtfully, then nodded.
"Oh, yes; it usually sits on the second shelf in the third case."
"Worried you were losing that perfect memory?" Lillet teased.
"My memory isn't perfect, Lillet. I didn't recognize the book at all out of context."
Lillet giggled.
"I think that proves my point rather than refutes it."
Amoretta responded with a shy little smile, letting Lillet know that she'd been trying to lighten the Mage Consul's spirits. Lillet smiled back, then began to flip through the grimoire. She'd marked the page for easy reference, so it was the work of a moment to find the spell and refresh her memory. She cast the basic Purgatory Rune, then enhanced it with more mana, further empowering it so that it gleamed with ghostly blue flame.
So far, so good. The problem was that the Rune was only part of the spell, not a complete replacement for it--a stepping-stone from which an old-style ritual spun off. She took a vial of powdered quartz and a thin, sharp dagger from her bag. With the crushed gems, she outlined a spiraling pattern around the Rune, then pricked her left index finger with the dagger, drawing blood. She let two droplets fall into the center of the Rune, then brushed a tear from her eye and let that fall as well. Symbolized by life and pain, Lillet called the dead.
A cold, bitter wind seemed to flow through the alley. The Rune's fire surged, then flowed up to take on a humanoid shape. The wraith glared balefully at her, but Lillet was too experienced a necromancer to be scared of her own familiars.
"Show me," she ordered it. "Show me what magic was done here."
I obey, echoed coldly in her mind. In the next instant, her vision rippled and Lillet saw not the cobblestones and high walls, but the pulse and flow of magical energies. Riesling had probably used a very basic spell to learn what she had, but Lillet's summoned wraith was a powerful spirit and as a creature of pure will more attuned to the flow of magical energies than a human magician could be, more capable of unwinding the flow of the distortion left behind. The knowledge it offered was incomplete, but more than enough for Lillet to understand what had been done. With a shudder she dismissed the wraith, then the Rune. Amoretta touched her arm gently.
"Did it work?"
Lillet nodded.
"I know what was happening here...well, sort of. Whomever did this turned murder into ritual--basically, human sacrifice."
Amoretta let out a little gasp.
"But how can that be? Inspector Ballatore said that the murder was done to imitate the end of the opera."
"I know, and I can't deny that, but...there are definitely traces of a ritual spell lingering here."
Of the four kinds of magic, each had its own dangers. Glamour dealt with the spirits of nature, a pure elemental power that had its own agenda, its own will, and which inherently belonged to the world and so could not be bound fully but only bargained with. Alchemy dealt with the manipulation of the laws of creation and a mistake could produce a disaster by setting those forces loose, out of control. Necromancy touched upon the eternal mysteries of death and the soul and the careless magician could end up blurring the lines between the two worlds to devastating effect.
Sorcery, though, was the riskiest of all. On the one hand, it presented the greatest power--at least a certain kind of power. Devils recognized no limitations other than the extent of their own strength; they were eager to flout God's authority on a moral or a tangible basis. Responsible sorcery, the kind Lillet used, worked by binding lesser imps and demons, forcing them into obedience. But there were devils who could not be bound, only summoned. They would bargain for lives and souls, tempting their summoners into sin. It was this kind of magic, devil-worship and the Black Mass and the like, that had given rise to the kind of witch-burning bigotry that decent magicians and complete innocents alike had faced for centuries.
That was the kind of magic that someone had invoked in the alley, magic that did not command devils but which served them.
"I'm not exactly an expert at this kind of thing, but it's almost like...like the symbolism of the killings were tied to the symbolism of the spell, like the one was standing in for the other. But that doesn't make sense. The point of this kind of ritual is to summon or to empower a devil, but the murders aren't about a devil. Devils are evil, but they're not insane. There's something going on here that I don't understand."
"Lillet..."
"There's something else, too. Part of the sorcery here wasn't just the ritual. There were familiars as well. That confirms what the Inspector was worried about, how one person could carry out a murder like this. Whomever it was really did have extra hands to help out."
Which meant that somewhere out there was at least one practicing sorcerer with unknown powers who had chosen to focus his madness on Amoretta.
As they walked back to their carriage, Lillet felt as if hidden eyes were watching them, lurking in every shadow.
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NOTE: Aste Nestor's first name is taken from Aste Spumante; her lover Marassou is also a brand of wine.
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