I was surprised Min Shelsin hadn’t wanted admirers. “What did she talk about? Her fellow singers or the operas they were performing or…?”
“She complained about her fellow singers,” Min Nadin said tartly. “But she really liked to talk about her parts and how difficult they were—they were always difficult—and if there were any good duets and the like.”
“Did she ever sing?”
“No, and I never asked. She was a conceited child—there was no need to encourage her.”
“She must have practiced,” I said. “But not here?”
“Not here,” agreed Min Nadin.
* * *
That afternoon, I went back to the Vermilion Opera. This time, the goblin boy in the ticket office said, “Mer Pel-Thenhior says you’re to go in,” and pointed to the great double doors of the auditorium.
I went through one set of double doors and into the foyer, with staircases up to the balconies and passages leading off on both sides to the boxes on this floor. There was another set of double doors in front of me, and when I pushed open one leaf, I heard a woman singing.
I slipped to one side, letting the door swing silently shut behind me. She was singing, incongruously, about manufactory work, about getting up before dawn and going to bed after dark, about soot and machine grease and how the clothes of a manufactory worker were never clean.
I could see her now, a tall goblin woman, heavy featured and with granite-gray skin, standing alone on the stage. She had been Merrem Elorezho last night, but had had no solos, and that seemed to me to be a terrible pity. Even singing softly, even singing about ugly things, she had the most beautiful voice I had ever heard. Her voice soared, lamenting, turning a discontent that many might call trivial—especially in relation to the likelihood of maiming or death which was also part of a manufactory worker’s daily life—into a plangent symbol of all the things a manufactory worker would never earn enough to have, starting with clean clothes.
For a few minutes, I thought she was alone in the auditorium, singing only to the vacant seats and dim gas globes. But then, as her song came to an end, Pel-Thenhior’s voice, instantly recognizable, shouted from the floor of the auditorium, “Where’s my Chorus of Workers?”
There was a moment’s silence, as if no one was there to answer the question, and then an elven man leaned out of the wings and said, “Sorry, Iäna, we’ve got in a bit of a muddle.”
“A muddle? What is there to get muddled over? Othoro”—which he pronounced Barizheise-fashion, with the emphasis on the first syllable—“sings ‘cruel clock masters’ and the Chorus of Workers enters from both sides of the stage. I’m sure that’s what I wrote.”
“It’s not that,” said the elven man, in a tone suggesting “that” was exactly what it was.
“Then what in—no, never mind, I’ll just come up there.” Pel-Thenhior bounded across a plank laid from the floor of the auditorium to the stage as a makeshift stair, and vanished into the wings.
The goblin woman remained where she was, as tranquil as a statue.
I moved cautiously down the aisle to stand by the row where Pel-Thenhior had been sitting, easy to identify because of the stacks of paper holding one seat down.
The goblin woman saw me and called, “Iäna, there’s someone here to see you.” She squinted at me past the footlights and added, “I think it’s a prelate.”
“A prelate?” Pel-Thenhior erupted from the wings. He saw me and smiled, saying, “Othala Celehar! Welcome to the madhouse! All right, everyone, give me a moment. Vethet, kindly get your muddle sorted out.” He bounded back across the plank and up the aisle. “How would you like to do things, othala? I found out the names of Arveneän’s two friends in the offices.”
“That will be very helpful. I would like to speak to the company of singers first, though.”
“Of course,” said Pel-Thenhior.
“How many are there in your company?”
“We do everything by twos: sopranos, mid-sopranos, altos, tenors, baritones, and basses. Then there’s the chorus, which is another twenty, and the children’s chorus, if you want to count them.”
“Children are as observant as anybody,” I said.
“True enough. So I guess that’s fifty-two all told.”
“Do you use them all in every opera?”
“Not hardly,” said Pel-Thenhior. “Most operas only use half our principals, in different configurations, and only maybe one in five has a children’s choir.”
“And how many are in this opera?”
“Eight principals and both choruses. And my junior principals who don’t have named parts are singing in the chorus, because I wanted to give as much impression of a busy manufactory as I could.”
“Was Min Shelsin the only troublemaker?”
“Tura—Tura Olora, the senior bass—is never satisfied with anything, but I wouldn’t call him a troublemaker. And Nanavo’s a gossip, but she doesn’t mean any harm by it. Not like Arveneän. So, yes, Arveneän was our only deliberate troublemaker. And there’s another horrible epitaph.”
“Min Shelsin made her own choices.”
“Meaning that if she wanted me to speak well of her, she should have behaved better? Perhaps. Or perhaps I have a malicious tongue.” He raised his voice to a ringing shout: “Everyone out on stage!”
They came in ones and twos, then in a rush, and then stragglers. The children came in a long line, holding hands. Almost all of the singers had elven coloring except for the goblin woman—Othoro Vakrezharad, I remembered from last night’s program—one man in the chorus, and three of the children.
“All right,” said Pel-Thenhior. “First, I think you all already know that Arveneän Shelsin is dead.”
A murmur ran through the group, but no one said anything loud enough that I could hear it, and there were no immediate signs that the news was painful to any of them.
“Second,” said Pel-Thenhior, “this is Othala Celehar. He wishes to talk to you.”
They all stared at me.
I said, “I am a Witness for the Dead. Right now, I am witnessing for Min Shelsin, who was murdered—”
“Murdered?” said someone, sounding both shocked and disbelieving.
“Someone threw her in the Mich’maika,” I said. “Her skull was fractured before she could drown, but it was clear murder either way.”
In my memory, a number of my superiors bemoaned my inability to be tactful.
The singers of the Vermilion Opera all looked rather stunned. Then Min Vakrezharad said, “You’re the Witness vel ama. I have read about you in the papers.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m here to try to find out more about Min Shelsin—anything at all that you can tell me.”
“She was friends with some of the office clerks,” said Min Vakrezharad. “That’s all I know, for she disliked me intensely.”
“She was envious,” said another woman. “Envious of your voice, and then the best mid-soprano role to come along for thirty years and she didn’t get it. I tell you, Othoro, if you’d turned up murdered, we’d all know who did it.”
Someone as tactless as me. I made a note of her face.
“She didn’t talk to us,” said the woman standing next to the tactless one.
“The clerk she was friends with is named Meletho,” said a man.
“Meletho Balvedin and Toreän Nochenin,” said a woman.
I glanced at Pel-Thenhior, who nodded. Those were the names he had found, too.
They were all looking at me, hoping, as people always did hope in my investigations, that if they gave me someone else’s name, I would go away.
I said, “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to hurt her?”
Silence. Even the tactless woman said nothing.
“These aren’t all of your singers, are they?” I asked Pel-Thenhior.
“No, just the ones for this scene and the children’s chorus for the entr’acte. And Toïno, who is very kindly helping us with the chorus th
is afternoon, is Arveneän’s understudy.”
A tall elven woman blushed scarlet and nodded.
“Is there anything else you can tell me?” I asked the singers. “Anything at all?”
They looked blankly at each other, shaking their heads. Then one of the children said, “You should ask Matron. Matron knows everything.”
I gave Pel-Thenhior a questioning look, and he said, “We have a woman who minds the children’s chorus.” He raised his voice to a shout: “Davelo! I need you on stage!”
She was a stout middle-aged goblin lady with a kind face. She listened to the news calmly and said, “What a terrible shame.”
Pel-Thenhior said, “I have to continue this rehearsal. Davelo, will you talk to Othala Celehar? Tell him everything you know.”
“And the children?” said Davelo.
“Can stay on stage if they sit quietly.”
The children giggled, obviously knowing better than to be afraid of Pel-Thenhior’s ringing voice, but at once sat down, each child the same distance from the child before and after, as if they had rehearsed it.
The goblin woman crossed the plank with less élan than Pel-Thenhior, but her steps were steady and her balance assured. She said, “Good day, othala.”
I bowed back.
“I am Davelo Matano,” she said. “I will be happy to help you in any way that I can, othala, but let us go out to the lobby, where we will be able to hear ourselves.”
At that moment, Pel-Thenhior shouted, “All right, back to the beginning of Zhelsu’s aria. Chorus of Workers off stage, Chorus of Ghosts stay put.”
I said, “Your suggestion is a good one.” I followed Merrem Matano up the aisle and back out into the cavernous lobby. As the door swung shut behind us, she said, “I don’t know, really, that I can be of any help to you, othala. I was not an intimate of Min Shelsin.”
“I understand,” I said. “But I am hoping you will tell me more about…” I groped for the words to explain. “About how she fit here.” It was the opposite of stathan, but there wasn’t a word for it, for the connections a person created during their lifetime. By studying the connections, you learned a great deal about the person, and the more I learned about Arveneän Shelsin, the more connections I traced, the more likely it was that I would be able to find her connection to the person who had killed her.
Merrem Matano seemed to understand something of what I meant, for she said at once, “Min Shelsin was a troublemaker. For her, nothing was ever done right. Her part was never big enough, the other principals were never good enough, her costumes were never flattering enough…” She shook her head. “If she had not had such a beautiful voice, she would have been dismissed from the company a dozen times over. Toïno, who has her parts now, is hardworking and uncomplaining, but she does not have Min Shelsin’s voice. Only Othoro Vakrezharad matched her, and Min Vakrezharad was never going to get the best parts. Not until Mer Pel-Thenhior wrote Zhelsu.”
“How so?”
“Mer Pel-Thenhior wrote an elven opera with a goblin lead,” said Merrem Matano. “That’s never been done before. He wrote it for Min Vakrezharad, although he denies it.”
“And Min Shelsin was unhappy?”
She corrected me calmly: “Min Shelsin was livid. Tamo was right that if Othoro had been murdered, it would be no great feat to find her murderer. Min Shelsin became even more of a fault-finder than usual, and she kept trying to get Mer Pel-Thenhior to increase her part. They had terrible, yelling arguments in the auditorium, in front of everyone, which I think is very bad for the children.”
“Yes,” I said. I wondered, though not out loud, if I had just found a motive for Arveneän Shelsin’s murder.
“She was driving the wardrobe ladies to tears. She hated the costumes—which, I admit, they are all workers’ clothes.”
“Dull colors, much mended, and frequently ill-fitting?”
“Yes—and even then the costumes are much better than the clothes I had as a child.”
“My first prelacy was in Lohaiso,” I said, and she nodded understanding.
“But Min Shelsin could never be satisfied. She had started threatening to go to the Marquess Parzhadel—our sponsor—and tell him that Mer Pel-Thenhior was destroying the Vermilion Opera and shouldn’t be allowed to stage Zhelsu and all such poison, anything she could think of. Mer Pel-Thenhior laughed at her, but she swore she was going to do it.”
“Did she?”
“I don’t know. Mer Pel-Thenhior said it didn’t matter because the marquess already knew all about Zhelsu. He wasn’t stupid enough to put on such an opera without our sponsor’s approval. But Min Shelsin would make trouble if she could. It was her way.”
“Did she have friends outside the Opera?”
“She had no time. None of the singers does. They are rehearsing four operas, you know.”
I hadn’t known. “Four?”
“General Olethazh, The Siege of Tekharee, and Seleno are in performance—the Opera, of course, only performs every third night, but that is still a rigorous schedule—and when Seleno closes, Zhelsu opens. Then when General Olethazh is done, they start performing The Dream of the Empress Corivero and when The Siege of Tekharee is done, they start The Hotel Hanaveise. All year round, it is like this, and the singers only work harder. They have an eitheiavan.” She used an upcountry word for a religious calling, which was a startling echo of last night’s conversation with Pel-Thenhior. “Some of them have their patrons as well, but by and large they live for the Opera.”
I nodded my understanding. “Did Min Shelsin have many patrons?”
“I believe so,” Merrem Matano said cautiously, “but I do not know for sure.”
“Despite what the children said, I do not expect you to know everything,” I said, and got a flicker of a smile in return. “Do you know of any reason someone would want to hurt Min Shelsin?”
“I think we all wanted to slap her at one point or another, but nothing worse than that. I know of no reason someone would want to kill her.”
“Thank you,” I said.
She hesitated.
“Anything,” I said. “Even something very small.”
“Duets,” said Merrem Matano. “She always preferred her duets with men, and she would be much more likely to confide in a man than in a woman. She was that sort of person.”
“Who were her male duet partners?”
“Mer Veralis Telonar, the junior tenor, in Zhelsu, and Mer Cebris Pershar, the senior tenor, in The Siege of Tekharee. She wasn’t in General Olethazh, which has no mid-soprano roles, and in Seleno she had no duets with a man.” She considered a moment, then added, “You will probably have more luck with Mer Telonar. Mer Pershar detested her.”
“Thank you. Where might I find the two clerks she was friends with?”
“That’s easy,” she said. “They’ll be upstairs. I’ll show you.”
* * *
The room to which Merrem Matano led me, by a series of what seemed very much like secret passages, was long and lofty, but very narrow. At each of its arched windows was a desk; at each desk was a woman, most of them elven, but there were a few Barizheisoi. They all had their heads bent over their work. After a minute, a woman at the far end of the room got up and walked briskly to where I stood. “Good afternoon. How may I help you, othala?”
I said, “My name is Thara Celehar. I am a Witness for the Dead. I am here because Arveneän Shelsin has been murdered.”
She made the ritual warding gesture. “That is distressing news,” she said, “but I do not quite understand why it brings you here.”
“I have been told that Min Shelsin was friends with two of the clerks here, and I am hoping that they may be able to help me understand Min Shelsin better, so that I may better understand how she came to her death.”
Her face had become very still. “What are their names?”
“Meletho Balvedin and Toreän Nochenin. It is no reflection on them, merely that I hope for their help.”
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br /> She nodded, then turned and called, “Meletho! Toreän! Attend, please!”
Two elven women stood up, nervousness plain on their faces, and joined us by the door. They were both blandly pretty, wearing dark, plain dresses, and without jewelry, save that the taller had a pair of cloisonné bead earrings.
The first woman said, “Minnoi, I am very sorry to tell you that Min Shelsin has been murdered.”
“I was praying it wasn’t true,” said one. “Murdered,” the other whispered, as if the word were a weight against which she could not breathe.
“This is Othala Celehar. He is a Witness for the Dead, and he has some questions he wishes to ask you.”
Their eyes widened in obvious alarm.
I said, “I do not suspect you of involvement, minnoi. I merely seek a better understanding of Min Shelsin.”
“You may leave the room for your discussion,” said the first woman, “but I will expect you back promptly when you are done.”
“Yes, merrem,” they said in soft, ragged unison, and they preceded me out the door.
In the corridor, they looked at me anxiously; one of them was fighting not to cry.
I said, “Which of you is Min Balvedin?”
“That is I,” said the slightly taller of the two. By her accent, she came from Zhaö.
“Then you are Min Nochenin,” I said to the other, who nodded and swallowed against tears.
“Thank you for talking to me,” I said. “Will you tell me about Min Shelsin?”
They complied willingly, and it was quickly apparent that the Arveneän Shelsin they had known had been a completely different person from the one Merrem Matano had described. Their Arveneän was kind and generous. They were awed that she even spoke to them, she being a principal singer and they merely office clerks.
It was hard not to be cynical about the friendship Min Balvedin and Min Nochenin described, for they had clearly worshiped Arveneän Shelsin, and she did not seem to have been the sort of person who would dislike that. They were uncritical and loyal and perhaps it had been a genuine comfort to her to know that she had people who would always be on her side. Perhaps she had merely enjoyed playing the grand lady in front of these two overawed girls. It did seem that she had treated them well, either out of actual fondness or because she knew better than to drive them away.
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