Mechanique by Genevieve Valentine, Kiri Moth Page B

she sang the nurses, the witches, the kitchen cook. Her closest claim to greatness that season was as the handmaiden of Queen Tresaulta.
    Annika Sorenson, the Queen, sang the final aria on the wide staircase of the palace set, descending slowly as her emotions built, until it would be time for her handmaiden to rush forward from behind the great pillar and press a knife into her lady’s hands, so that the queen might stab herself and thwart the captors who had sought to use her.
    Their Queen Tresaulta was a powerful production; it had been advertised as the performance of Annika Sorenson’s career, and Boss was beyond disputing it, as much as they all disliked Annika.
    Annika was the sort of visiting soprano who demanded that air conditioning be turned off backstage to preserve her throat, as if she’d never been a chorus member shoving herself into a costume in a muggy basement room. (She never had been; a voice like hers spent no time in the chorus.)
    The conductor, a stout gentleman just beginning to age, took to drinking after rehearsals. A few weeks before the opening, Boss had come across him in the prop room before rehearsal, sneaking drinks out of a bottle. When he saw her, he gave her a half-defiant, half-sheepish smile.
    “My family’s vineyard. Early spring, red. Only two years old.” He sighed. “I should have stayed there. I don’t have the heart for making music no one appreciates until a war breaks out.”
    She took the bottle and drank.
    “It’s not a good year,” he apologized.
    “Tell me about it,” she said, and he laughed.
    That night, Annika Sorenson was spectacular.
    She exceeded even the audition that had gotten her the contract, exceeded the performance tape the opera managers had passed to various governments as part of the invitation to the Summit. That night she sang as if only the notes held her together. By the last aria, the audience was entranced down to the last man, warding off gooseflesh, leaning forward so as not to miss a note.
    Her voice echoed off the chandeliers, rolled through the domed ceiling and out the doors. When she fell quiet (after “for this stone hall I lived,” as wavering Tresaulta recovers the bravery to kill herself and spare her kingdom from disgrace), the entire hall was silent, rapt.
    It was so quiet that the whirring whistle of the bomb was audible for a moment before it reached them.
    There was just enough time for Annika to glance up and fix Boss an annoyed look, as if Boss had timed some fireworks on the roof to ruin Annika’s evening.
    Then it struck.
    There are some things Boss knows.
    Boss knows that great events have a spirit of their own. Government men speak of it when they hold rallies in beautiful places lined with their soldiers, but they do not think it is true. Greatness seldom reveals itself to government men.
    Boss knows the reason some cities fall after the Circus Tresaulti has passed through is because the life of a city flickers and trembles when they are near. Then Tresaulti departs, and the life of the city tries to follow and cannot; even the buildings stumble and fall, become lost. When a city has no greatness, its will is gone; then a city is nothing but a maze of shells that are only stone and steel and—soon enough—dust.
    She does not know why it is that some cities have a greatness that allows them to stand, and others crumble less than a hundred years after the circus has passed there. (She tries to save those cities when she can by putting Tresaulti out of reach, as if the spirit of the city might not be offended if it can’t see them. “Might not be a good crowd,” she says. “We’ll camp farther out.”
    No one suspects another reason; by then, each of them has been driven away from things often enough.)
    Boss woke inside a cylinder.
    She didn’t know what had happened (the bomb—she ached when she remembered) or where she was (trapped inside the pillar). She struck out. The pillar crumbled and peeled under her