When I did, he leaned over and said very softly, “I’m glad you’re here, although you may not be.”
“They haven’t decided what they think yet,” he said, then went back to his notes, leaving me to puzzle out his meaning. It didn’t take long.
Unlike my first time here, the audience was stonily silent; everyone was focused on the stage in a way that was either flattering to Pel-Thenhior or alarming. I was afraid it was the latter. A few minutes later, while Zhelsu and Tebora were singing about their dream of escaping the manufactory, Pel-Thenhior leaned over again and said, “I owe Othoro my firstborn child. She’s holding the whole thing together.”
Of course, I thought. The singers would be able to read the audience as well as Pel-Thenhior and I could. They would have discerned this ominous silence, so much worse than the half attention most of the audience had paid to The Siege of Tekharee.
And Pel-Thenhior was right. Min Vakrezharad was singing superbly, almost daring her fellows to fail her. Thus far, apparently, no one had.
It was nerve-racking to sit and watch the opera with that silent, judging audience. During the shocking duet between Zhelsu and her mother, in which her mother tells her she should sleep with the overseer and use his favor to her advantage, I realized my palms were clammy. Pel-Thenhior seemed not to notice at all, except that every so often he would look out over the audience, and his ears would lower another fraction of an inch.
When the end of Zhelsu came, it came quickly. The overseer gets her alone and starts pressing his case again. It becomes clear that he will rape her if she doesn’t yield willingly. She backs away and away—and I remembered watching them rehearse this, how matter-of-fact and straightforward it had all seemed, nothing like the panic on Zhelsu’s face now, the increasing terror in her words—until he has her pinned against the catwalk, and then instead of submitting, she turns and jumps. There is a scream from off stage as the overseer stares in blank astonishment at the place where Zhelsu had been. And the curtain comes down. The silence held for a long moment while I found my hands clenching. Then someone in the auditorium started clapping, and as other people joined in—I heard one shout of “Genius!”—I thought maybe we had skirted the storm.
Then a voice yelled, “This is an outrage!” and the entire theater erupted in pandemonium.
Pel-Thenhior said something obscene and heartfelt in Barizhin, then grabbed my wrist and shouted over the rising din, “Come with me! Right now!” I perforce followed his iron grip on my wrist as he dragged me through the backstage door, turning to bolt it behind us as he yelled at the stagehands, “Don’t open the curtain!”
The singers were clustered on stage. The still-increasing chaos in the auditorium was audible, though muffled by the curtain. Min Vakrezharad, a little disheveled from her leap onto the stack of mattresses, called to Pel-Thenhior, “What should we do?”
“Go change,” said Pel-Thenhior. “But I think you’re safer backstage than trying to leave. I could be wrong.”
“How comforting,” Mer Olora said dryly. Pel-Thenhior shrugged, although his ears were still too flat for it to come off as casual. “It’s a riot, Tura. I can’t predict what it’s going to do.”
At that, several of the chorus made protesting cries, and Min Rasabin said, “Are they really rioting?”
“Oh yes,” said Pel-Thenhior. “I am going to have a very unpleasant discussion with the Marquess about the cost of repairs. Assuming, of course, that I live ’til morning.”
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