he acoustics in this place,” breathes Mrs. Jaquemoud, looking up at the high paneled ceilings of the long gallery. “Always enchanting. You’ve so seldom thrown parties this year, Diana; it’s so terribly sad, to think of this place empty.”
“We thank the Circle for the opportunity,” Diana puts in, quickly. He can feel her arm looped round his, her fingers patting his sleeve lightly. Her wedding ring glitters. “It’s been a rather difficult few seasons…”
Mr. Jaquemoud clears his throat. “Understandably so,” he snips. “I heard – that business with the Mugrobi ambassador, was it? In Achtus, or so.”
“A misunderstanding, but a time-consuming one.” He takes a long drink of brandy, and a long deep breath. He smiles thinly at Mr. and Mrs. Jaquemoud.
“I should say there will be more,” chimes in Etienne, with his sharp Bastian accent.
The matter of his health has not come up once tonight. It has, all in all, been a glittering, beaming end to the last year of the Anaxi Symvouli cycle. They had lost him, at the start; now they have found him, and they are happy, indeed, to have him back.
The long gallery is on the second floor of the Vauquelin house, a broad long corridor spanning one side to the other, vaulted up to what of the third floor isn’t taken up by the study. It’s the pride, he understands, of the house: its rich, lovely wood paneling, smooth to the touch, hung with paintings in hearth-warm colors; its glossy, Hessean-patterned floors, which yesterday still filled the room with the smell of polish. The room now smells most strongly of perfume and cologne and champagne.
A row of tall, narrow windows gives out on the street. Usually, the curtains are drawn; now, they are drawn back. The view they give on Vienda is as glittering as the ball. Above distant rooftops, shadows against the cloudy night sky, little clusters of fireworks – celebrations here, there, everywhere – pop and scatter through the velvet dark. Even the house opposite, sleepy Judge Laflèche’s, is lit with festive colors.
Diana Vauquelin has been nothing but a wide white smile; she’s splendorous in black and white, ensconced in lace and white satin, a trail of embroidered roses spiraling from one shoulder and down to her asymmetric-cut skirt. The long gallery is full of white dresses for Clock’s Eve, black and white swirls, delicate lace and silk and taffeta.
He has noticed them all; he has noticed the cut, the fabric. Every lady he has bowed to, every lady he waltzed with earlier, when there was still a brush of color in the sky.
“Later,” Diana is saying. He pulls himself back to the present; he’s been skimming the faces on the floor since they started spilling in, but he hasn’t found the one he’s waiting for yet. No matter. He turns: Diana is looking at him with the same wide smile, happy little lines round her wide gold eyes. “I shall see you later, my dear,” she says, touching his shoulder. Mrs. Jaquemoud’s arm is looped through hers.
“Of course,” he says lightly, pretending there will be no fight, later, when she discovers that the lights have not brought her husband back.
They whirl away.
Laughter. He’s tired of the brandy, but he takes another drink anyway; it will get him through. He turns to look for the source of the laughter – Etienne is laughing, pulling at his little mustache; a red-haired woman, the red in her cheeks more than just her blush, is laughing, too. Amabilia Demachy, he thinks. Has he spoken to her tonight? He thinks so.
“Well, Anatole?” says Etienne brightly, but with a sharp edge in his eyes.
“Come again?” he says. It’s easy enough; smiling more widely, he takes Mrs. Demachy by the shoulder with a fatherly hand. “Forgive me,” he says, “perhaps I shall need the waters myself, soon.”
He laughs; Mrs. Demachy laughs. Newly-married, he remembers; she’s young, twenty-four, twenty-five or so. Barely older than – others he knows. He thinks she must’ve known Anatole for some time. “No, no,” she says, with an embarrassed look toward Etienne.
He exchanges a look with the Bastian. “Go on, my dear?”
“It’s only, we haven’t heard you sing, Mr. Vauquelin, in such a long time.”
His head swims. “Ah,” he says, his hand flickering away from her shoulder. Etienne is looking at him keenly. He recovers himself, smiling thinly again. “Perhaps you’ve a request, Miss Jauff– ah, Mrs. Demachy?”
It wins another giggle from her, but it doesn’t get him off the hook. “Why, I’m not sure.”
“It’s the new year,” Etienne says lightly. “It’s been the Lady of Sielan lately, hasn’t it?”
“Ah, yes – Marsilius to his daughter, on the night before the new year?” Yes, he thinks, because you’ve had me practicing it in my sleep.
Mrs. Demachy giggles again, though she looks no less embarrassed.
There is no way out, only through. With a keen smile at Mrs. Demachy, then a knowing smile at Etienne, he takes another drink to wet the whistle.
It’s not easy, but the lungs are there, and so are the vocal chords. His back is straight; he breathes through his diaphragm. He used to sing to his lass, he remembers, off-tune but loving, during those nights she’d never admit to. You are good at hitting a note, Etienne said in Roalis, the first day of practice.
“When I was young, I did praise Her beauty;
My heart I did follow, wherever it led me,
In every port from Tiv to Mestigia, Tessalon
To frigid Qrieth! O, the pale ladies of Gior…”
A cascade of laughter. He holds the note, then the pause; he gestures with one hand, languid. Mrs. Demachy’s giggling tumbles out into it, and he can hear her even when he picks up the thread, even when he drags Marsilius’ attention back, rippling stern and dour. Staccato, like some AAF march.
“A happy woman’s soul is one
Where heart and duty do agree –
Indeed, indeed! If eyes do wander,
Heart shall follow; if heart does wander
Duty flounders – then, my daughter, where are we?
No, no, I cannot bless this match;
Put your heart back in its place,
Or I shall fix it for you…”
His duty and his heart both wander. The chandeliers glitter above like stars, like fire, like broken glass.
Etienne Merenniano is beaming. Another gentleman has wandered over, Mr. Nibley – of Nibley and Hazelton packers, he remembers suddenly, though it is an absent, watery remembrance, paint on the side of a rendering house in another life. Mr. Hazelton – or is it Nibley? – Hazelton and Nibley twitches his whiskers, swirling his brandy, and mouths something like, I say.
He breathes in deep for the last of it. He looks over Etienne’s shoulder, then, toward the great windows. They are dark, now; he sees a blur in the dark mirror, a coppery shimmer of hair, a pale face half-hid as a ballgown drifts by.
His heart wanders; he doesn’t know about his duty, but his heart wanders, and aches.