Portraits of the three other goddesses border the mural. Odetta, goddess of spring and renewal, wearing a silver mask that covers her eyes and cheeks and holding a sparrow’s skeleton in her cupped hands. Karina, goddess of justice and winter, thin and draped in a linen sheath, with her arms wide. Marena, the autumn goddess of war, chin lifted proudly, staring down with her hypnotic purple eyes, bejeweled with human teeth.
Beneath, row upon row of tightly packed red velvet seats stretch back to the imposing black doors at the rear of the theater. They’re made from mageglass, a material designed by the elementals: sand spun, dyed, and hardened so that not even diamond bullets could shatter it. Hundreds of people will fill the house tonight. Dame Ava, the queen’s former principal, told me that sometimes there are so many that folk have to stand along the walls.
My knees shake at the sight. My mouth goes dry.
In the second row, a maid kneels between the seats. She scrubs the floor vigorously with a brown cloth, and the sickly scent of lemon wafts up to the stage.
All these seats. All these people. My unshed tears blur the rows of red seats together, like a smear of blood.
“I can’t,” I whisper.
“You will,” Elene says.
CHAPTER 2
REMI
I WALK DOWN THE theater aisle, still holding the handwritten invitation card they made us present at the door, scanning rows until I find my place. The seat is so small I can barely wedge my hips between the wooden armrests. The queen really packs us together. We’re like fruit in a lower-city merchant’s cart, ready to be jostled and bruised.
Mama says the theater used to be luxurious, until the queen had the interior redesigned so all the nobles of her broken court could fit inside at once. Our comfort isn’t important. The queen won’t even let us sit beside our family members for solace. We might sit in the stalls and boxes, but we aren’t here to be the audience. We’re the puppets in a show for someone else.
A black gentleman in a frayed overcoat squeezes into the seat beside me. With his long legs, he can’t sit straight in the narrow row, and he steps on my foot trying to find space to put his knees.
He grimaces. “Forgive me. Lovely to see they’ve given us more room this year.”
I snort and cover my mouth with my hand.
The gentleman removes his coat and slings it over his lap. Like me, he wears formal but old clothes, his ensemble cobbled together from seasons past. His burgundy waistcoat is missing a button, and his collar is stained yellow. My sky-blue tea dress has puffed sleeves that were the height of fashion two summers ago. My chest spills over the bodice, which barely laces. On any other occasion, Mama would never have allowed me to wear it out of the house.
On his lapel, the gentleman wears the crest of Château Foutain: two doves circling a stone tower. I frown in sympathy. Foutain, like so many noble houses in Bordea, was all but obliterated in the brief war that followed Queen Elene’s ascension. The château had gathered an army to protest the queen’s border laws and the terrifying spells she uses to keep us all contained. And they paid for it. This must be Gregor, Baron of Foutain, the only member of the house still alive. His wife, two sons, daughter, and grandchildren all preceded him to the grave. The queen has spared him only to keep the memory of his house’s destruction fresh.
In another life, in another time, he and Papa were friends.
“First Performing?” the baron asks.
I shake my head. I shouldn’t have to attend the Performing, as I only turned sixteen this year. The law doesn’t require attendance until we turn twenty, but with Mama’s illness, someone has to go in her place. The census records our family with two living adults, so two of us must attend the Performing each year. There are no exceptions. The queen doesn’t care that I am underage, so long as our family pays in noble blood.
“My second,” I say.
The baron frowns. “You don’t look old enough.”
“I’m not.”
I don’t elaborate, and the baron pulls a cloth from his pocket to wipe a trail of sweat from his brow. “What delights will she have in store for us this year, eh?”
I’ve tried my best not to think about what is coming. Before the courier arrived with our invitations, it was easy to pretend that this was the year the queen would finally relent.
Papa says that the Performing gets worse each time, as the queen and Lord Durand seek to surpass themselves. Last year, Dame Ava, the queen’s torturer-soprano, performed a drowning spell. Our lungs filled with fluid, and people tried to claw open their own throats until she released us.
The lights dim, and the stewards close the doors at the rear of the theater. Everyone goes silent. A slim conductor dressed in the queen’s red livery makes his way through the audience to the gilded podium at the base of the stage. He wears a lightning-bolt pin on his breast. I can’t remember if it’s the mark of the elemental or the maker school. Either way, he’s a mage—and probably on the queen’s side.
From my seat near the front, I can see the orchestra pit beneath the stage, where a host of common musicians wait with their instruments resting on their laps. Even though they are not mages, the musicians are expected to play their role in this, too. At the conductor’s cue, they lift their instruments.
A burly justicar, wearing the red heart pin of a corporeal singer, stands in front of the door that leads out of the pit, blocking any hope of escape for the orchestra. A gold opera mask covers most of his face and shadows his eyes. The queen and many close to her wear it to show allegiance to the goddess Odetta.
I used to pray to Odetta, patron of spring, the season of my birth, when I was a little girl. The goddess was popular with the court, as most of us are born in spring, and so the queen has claimed her, just to show she can.
Back then, Odetta’s followers worshipped in a joyful, carefree style. We plaited crowns of lilies and feasted beneath each new moon. But since Queen Elene took the throne, worship of Odetta has changed, sobered. Now we all remember that the harshest winters come before a vibrant spring, that renewal is born out of death.
Papa says that to choose your own goddess and abandon the deity who destined the time of your conception and birth is heresy of the worst kind. Mages are all summer children, blessed with song magic in exchange for their devoted, lifelong service to Adela. The queen is a heretic. She has profaned all the old ways by forsaking the goddess of her birth and claiming Odetta’s patronage instead.
I don’t pray anymore.
Perhaps that makes me a heretic, too.
I reach under my skirt. I’ve secured a little pouch filled with lemon drops to my leg. The sourness of the candy helps with Mama’s headaches, and I hope it will keep me breathing through whatever pain is to come. Concealing lemon drops under my dress isn’t much of a rebellion, but it makes my heart race with daring. If Papa found out, he’d be furious.
I remove two pieces of the candy from the pouch, pop one into my mouth. I nudge the baron with my elbow. When he glances at me, I take his hand and close his fingers around the other piece of candy before anyone else can see.
“Bless you,” he whispers, and slips the lemon drop into his mouth.
The velvet curtain lifts, revealing two figures standing on the stage. One of them is Lord Durand, the queen’s confidant. I recognize him from last year. Papa says Durand is the architect of the Performings. The queen wanted vengeance on us, but it was he who proposed the method and honed it. As a reward, he was given a lordship and an estate, making him the only noble exempt from the horrors of the Opera Hall.