A Line in the Sand

by K. A. Stewart

  She heard the first low draw of a bow across a cello, and quickened her pace. She would miss the opening if she did not hurry. The orchestra was already warming up.

  The strings and woodwinds were humming at a higher pitch just behind her jaw joints as she emerged from the sewer tunnel, shifting a large prop barrel to cover the opening as she did every time. The storeroom into which she entered was covered in the cobwebs of long disuse, but she still took care to lift her skirts, leaving only the faintest of tracks through the thick dust. Her oil can, kept near the door to lubricate its hinges into silence, was still there and untouched just as she expected. She inspected the hinges before deciding that more was unnecessary. Just as well, she didn’t have time anyway.

  The backstage area was largely clear, the hands already scattered through the riggings above the stage, either to watch or to adjust the scenery as needed. The performers were in the wings, waiting for their cues, knowing just how much time they had before curtain by what place the orchestra was in their warm-ups. The dancers had been corralled, slippers rosined and laced, and last minute adjustments to the costumes had been given up as lost causes. The show was about to begin.

  She slipped through the darkness behind the stage with the ease of long practice, finding the servants’ stair that would take her to the box level. Her box would be waiting, as always, the one nearest the stairway, allowing her to slip in and out unseen.

  The muted roar of many voices was almost silent by the time she found her seat in the farthest back corner of box number seven, a corner that even the stage lights could not penetrate. She would be safe there, shrouded in her cloak, motionless. No one would ever glance at the dark box. No one ever had.

  The timepiece pinned to her bodice whirred softly, marking the change of the hour, and on cue, the heavy burgundy velvet curtains parted, golden cords drawing them to the sides of the stage. Like the sunrise, she always thought, the world suddenly revealed in a sweep of all-encompassing light. Nothing else existed outside of that brilliance.

  The music swelled from the orchestra pit below, and she allowed herself to be lost in it, swept away on the tide of melody and harmony, each instrument strumming a different chord inside her head. It was flawless. Well, nearly so. The third bassoon was flat, though his compatriots largely drowned out his sad efforts, and the fourth viola was missing a string, which she nimbly fingered around in a display of inspired improvisation.

  No one else in the audience would ever notice. In fact, only the maestro himself would be aware of the errors, and so long as the orchestra kept on beat, he’d be unlikely to say a word. He’d become complacent, in his advancing years. He’d been there nearly as long as she, and she knew that his joints pained him in the colder weather. The oncoming winter would swell his knuckles, stiffen his knees. It wasn’t as if he could simply replace a bearing or oil a gear. Humans did not repair themselves well. He had earned a small measure of respite.

  The chorus took the stage, setting the scene for the night’s performance. She closed her eyes, noting which voices were new, which cracked with strain, picking out one or two that were sharp on the harmony. She would have to send a note. That would have to be corrected.

  The lead soprano, a young woman named Caroline, treated the audience to the pure notes of her first aria, and the silent watcher was forced to move her jaw slightly to relieve the pressure. The high notes, while technically perfect, caused an odd vibration somewhere behind her left ear, one reason that she had never enjoyed the sopranos so much. Perfect, yes, but piercing.

  The next voice, though… Oh, that was the one she always came to hear. The lead tenor’s melody rose above the rest, the chorus falling silent as all eyes went to the handsome, strapping young man at center stage.

  Well, once he had been, at any rate. Simon LeClerc was advancing rapidly toward his mid-forties, and if he had to use a girdle to hold in his slight paunch, or use bootblack to conceal the gray in his dark hair, the audience was willing to suspend disbelief. However, while stage makeup could cover a myriad of physical ills, she could hear the hint of strain in his formerly vibrant voice. He was flat. Soundly, decidedly flat. It wasn’t much, just a hairsbreadth off from his former perfection, but she could tell.

  The audience was rapt, of course. Hanging on every note that tumbled from his lips. The human ear was not designed as finely as hers, would not be able to discern the tiny flaw that she detected so keenly, but it was only a matter of time.

  She was sad, she realized. For decades, she had come to watch Simon, his beautiful tenor voice soothing in a way the higher pitches could never be. For years, she had chosen operas particularly suited for him, and she had basked in every bit of applause he had so rightly received. But now…

  She’d noticed the faltering voice last summer, and had hoped that it was merely weariness. By the autumn production, his voice was once again all that it could be, all it had always been. But the Christmas choral was nearly a disaster by her standards, Simon deliberately hiding his own melodic line beneath that of the weaker tenors in the chorus, hoping that no one would notice he could no longer carry the lead. The spring fete had been much the same, and though the summer season had been cancelled for extensive remodeling to the opera house, the lengthy rest had alleviated none of his problem.

  She was forced, finally, to admit that Simon was aging past his prime. Soon, he would have to depart, make way for someone younger, someone who could hold their pitch. Unfortunately, there was no one in the chorus who could easily take his place. Enthusiastic, yes, but none of them had the power or purity of Simon at his greatest. He would have to be allowed to finish this run, complete the fall season. Perhaps by Christmas, she would be able to locate a replacement.

  She would have to send a note.

  Departing from the opera house after a performance was never as easy as arriving. There were celebrations to wait out, patrons coming back stage for tours, or to bestow gifts upon their favorites. The stage crew had to reset for the next night’s show, the costumers had to gather the garments dropped negligently by the dancers. The maids had to make their way through the entire building, gathering up programs, crumpled and forgotten. They swept the carpets, and the boxes, all save for box seven, because of course when no one used it, cleaning was not necessary.

  And so she sat in utter stillness, waiting until the booming echo of the last closing door had faded away. Waiting until she was well and truly alone. Only then did she make her way down the servants’ staircase, through the backstage area, into her forgotten storeroom and out through the sewer. The grate slid back into place easily, and she was once again in the open street.

  She drew her hood up higher around her face, and kept to the shadows. This area of the city was empty at this time of night, all the merchants closed, all the opera-goers moved on to other diversions. She would be noticed, here, and so she passed through quickly, silently. Only once did she hear the clop of a horse’s hooves, the creak of carriage springs, and then she froze into her unnatural motionless state, only her eyes moving as the conveyance trotted by and off into the darkness without marking her presence.

  The coalworks, now those offered a different kind of threat. The coalworks never slept, men and automatons ceaselessly shoveling the black rocks into the furnaces, generating the steam that powered most of the city. Always brightly lit, always heavily travelled, passing through the streets of the coalworks promised almost certain discovery at every turn. A woman in the coalworks at this time of night was no lady, that was a given, and could not be expected to be treated as such. She always had to be careful, returning home by that path.

  The sounds were the worst part. The constant grind and rattle of the machines, the clang of metal on metal. Voices, both human and automaton, raised to be heard over the volume, dissolving into a harsh cacophony, discordant, unintelligible. It made it impossible to hear anything with any precision, impossible to detect something coming up behind.

  The street lights
cast prying, orange orbs about themselves, a revealing gleam that she avoided through long practice. Not even the hem of her long skirts brushed their circles of light. With one hand, she kept her hood pulled down, shadowing her face even more, her head ducked to avoid making eye contact with any stray gazes. As such, with her eyes on the cobblestones beneath her boots, she did not see the man lurching out of the alley until it was too late. He barreled into her and bounced off so hard, he may as well have walked into a wall.

  “Oof!” He staggered back against the wall, blinking bleary eyes in confusion for a few moments. “Hey there… Watch yourself, girly.” Coal dust covered his face, leaving his eyes like two bright points in a mask of black. His clothing was rough spun, and oft patched, his boots were more hole than leather. A coal worker, then, and probably out of the building to sneak a belt of liquor in the back alley across the way.

  “My apologies, sir.” Two steps back, the shadows were deeper. She withdrew cautiously, keeping her hood tugged low.

  “Here now, wait, that ain’t no way to offer a proper apology.” The man pursued her, and she caught the scent of bourbon strong on his breath as she’d expected. “Pretty thing like you, there oughta be something you could do to make up for almost runnin’ a fella over.” With a leer and a speed a man that drunk should not possess, he darted forward, grabbing at her wrist.

  She could tell the moment he realized that there was no soft, yielding human flesh underneath the brushed silk of her sleeve. The confusion darted across his face, dulled with alcohol and idiocy. “What…?” He leaned forward, craning his neck at an angle almost enough to throw himself completely off balance, peering up into the recesses of her hood. His eyes went wide, shock chasing away some of the effects of the booze. “What the hell…?” His chest expanded as he gasped in a breath, surely to exclaim loudly, or to call for aid, or… Whatever his purpose, she could not allow it.

  Her free hand shot out, grasped him around the throat, and his voice came out in a choked gurgle. His eyes bulged out, and his hand scrabbled at hers, grimy fingers tearing the lace trim from her glove. Lifted a few inches off the ground, his feet drummed against her legs, doing her no harm and offering him no aid. His face slowly turned purple, and the vessels in his eyes burst, staining the white red. After a few moments, he stopped struggling, hanging limply in her grip. She held on a few moments longer, then simply let go, the man falling into a heap at her feet.

  She glanced around, but there was no one in sight. No one sounded alarm, there was no thunder of running boots and tweeting of police whistles. She remained unseen.

  Carefully lifting her skirts, she stepped over the body on the cobblestones, and continued on her way.

  Also From K.A. Stewart

  The Jesse James Dawson Series

  A Devil in the Details

  A Shot in the Dark

  A Wolf at the Door

  A Snake in the Grass

  The Arcane West Trilogy

  Peacemaker

  Second Olympus

  About the Author

  K.A. Stewart has a BA in English with an emphasis in Literature from William Jewell College. She lives in Missouri with her husband, daughter, two cats, and one small furry demon that thinks it’s a cat.

  Find K.A. Stewart on:

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/tasmin21

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JJDSeries

  Her Blog: http://literaryintent.blogspot.com