| SORCEROUS SIGNALS |
| Written by James Lecky / Artwork by Holly Eddy |
| Make a donation to this writer |
| Whisperthief |
Isovella Grandini came to the Shining City of
PameGlorias with murder in her heart and a
silvered dagger in her valise.
When she alighted from the barque at Raven's
Wharf, more than a few heads turned in her
direction. It was not that elegant women were
uncommon in PameGlorias—indeed, the ladies of
the Inner City were regarded as some of the most
striking of those Latter Days—but her bearing and
her clothing marked her as someone out of the
norm.
She was not a young woman, though her face was
smooth and her figure dainty. The gown she wore
was of blue velvet, trimmed with green lace at the
neck. Her hands were concealed by blue leather
gloves and a wolfskin cape covered her shoulders.
Her hair was white, cropped close to the scalp, her
thin lips were painted purple and she wore
pince-nez spectacles with lenses of smoky glass.
But it seemed to those who saw her the glasses
were less a defence against the light of the
Moribund Sun than an artifice to conceal her eyes.
The man who walked behind her was tall and
slender, bald with sunken cheeks and heavy brows.
His clothing—a black achkan coat embroidered with
white lace, black breeches tucked into knee-length
boots—gave him a funeral aspect that contrasted
sharply with the woman’s bright garments.
"Find us lodgings, Orazio," she told him. Her voice was melodic, her accent foreign. "In the morning you
may begin your search."
“Why not today?” His accent mirrored hers.
“Patience, Orazio, patience. A day will make no difference.”
"As you wish, Madame."
Within the hour, he had found them an apartment: not too far from the Wharf but close to where the
city began to sprawl away from the seafront towards the Winter Plains many miles distant. Once,
PameGlorias had been an ordered place—its streets and boulevards radiating from the centre in clean,
straight lines—but as time passed new buildings and towers had risen, bisecting the roads and cutting
them into a series of lanes, alleys and covered walkways. As such, there were places in the city where,
for centuries, the sun had never shone.
Isovella Grandini stood by the high arched window of the drawing room and stared out across the city.
She took the dagger from her valise and played idly with the blade, running its point across her
forearms, drawing a little blood with each pass, forming an intricate bright red web on her skin.
It was a small thing, this dagger—hardly more than a stiletto—with a thin blade and a small glass orb
embedded in its pommel, but she held it as if it were precious and valued.
Two days passed. During that time, Isovella did not leave her room, preferring to spend the slow hours
at the window, staring out over the chaotic lines of the city while Orazio prowled its streets, searching.
As she sat she sang softly to herself, taking special care to ensure the sound did not travel outside the
room. Even those who passed under her window were totally unaware of the exquisite music above them.
And what songs she sang: full of pain and loss—arias that would have brought a tear to a basilisk’s eye,
madrigals and cavatinas that would have made the princes of hell themselves weep. And while she sang
she ran the little blade across her arm, creating more and more obscure patterns that, in their own way,
echoed her songs, feeding the pain of her wounds into the music.
On the third day, Orazio returned to her. He entered the room without announcement—which was not
his usual custom—and at his entrance her song faltered: the notes bent, warped and shattered, as
though they had had been forced out through a sundered larynx.
“Forgive me, Madame, I did not mean to be so tactless.”
“You are forgiven, Orazio.” Only the merest flash of annoyance behind those smoky lenses betrayed her
emotions.
“I have found him,” he said. “I have found Crescenti.”
She rose from her seat and a faint smile—or was it a sneer?—passed over her purple lips.
“Take me to him.”
“As you wish, Madame.”
***
They called PameGlorias the Shining City of Knowledge, but it had been many decades, if not centuries,
since the city had justified its name. Earth was entering the final millenniums of Her long, long life and,
like all those cities of the Latter Days, PameGlorias was content to ruminate on what She had been; to
dream of past grandeur rather than embrace a future that promised nothing but entropic decay.
As they rode through the city in a small rented carriage, neither Isovella nor Orazio spoke. Outside, the
jumble of the Lower City trundled past, gradually morphing from sunlight to dusk to gloom as the
carriage took them further and further into winding streets where the only light came from lamps hung
at irregular intervals along rotting tenements.
This then, was the heart of the Shining City—the greatest construction of mankind’s last gasp—a putrid
melange of sticks and stones overlaid with an abattoir stench not even the perfumed scarf Isovella
pressed against her nose and mouth could completely mask.
And yet, from somewhere in that tangled mass there emerged the heavenly notes of a single voice raised
in song.
The sound reached them long before they came to its source—a small redbrick theatre tucked away in a
narrow side street. The building was without ostentation or decoration, notable only for the crowd
gathered on the pavement, listening with rapt attention to the melodies that drifted from inside. At a
casual glance, it seemed every strata of society was represented here—from high-born dowagers with
white powdered faces and cupid red lips to the gutter-sweepings of the Low City in motley rags.
Isovella and Orazio dismounted from the carriage and the tall man shouldered his way through the
crowd, ignoring the scowls and curses cast at him. Their entry to the theatre was effected with a flash of
silver coins and they stepped inside.
The auditorium was filled to overflowing with people, their attention fixed upon a small low stage lit by
guttering lamps.
And upon the stage stood the man Isovella Grandini had come to PameGlorias to kill: Girolama Crescenti.
He was a tall man, this Crescenti, and as handsome as a fallen angel. His hair was long and blond and he
was dressed in a grey velvet tunic with snug breeches tucked into high-topped boots.
But if he had the face of a fallen angel he had the voice of an ascendant one.
He was singing a simple lied, but with such passion, such clarity and precision, that each note carried the
power of a symphony in it. As she listened, Isovella’s hand went to the dagger at her side, as if she took
comfort from the shape and feel of it.
When the song finished, Crescenti bowed once and turned away into the wings. The applause that
followed his exit was thunderous in its approval.
As the crowd left, Isovella and Orazio made their way towards the stage. A few more coins to one of the
stagehands granted them access to the squalid green room behind the auditorium and they found
Crescenti waiting for them.
He sat before a cracked mirror, his hand resting upon a dressing table, fingertips a mere inch away from
a small multi-barrelled pistol.
“Is this the fame and adulation you sought, Girolama?” Isovella said. “Is this why you stole from me?”
“It takes time to build a reputation, Madame. You, of all people, should know that. What did you think of
my performance tonight?”
“Superb,” she said. “Quite superb.”
“You really shouldn’t have followed me here,” he said, “although I am not surprised that you did. How
may I be of service?”
“I have come to take back that which you have stolen,” she said.
Crescenti shook his head. “What I stole from you I stole fairly, Madame. You took from me, I took from
you—what could be more equitable than that?”
“The exchange was not a fair one.”
“Dealings between lovers seldom are.” His tone was one of amused detachment. “Best to let the past
remain in the past. Your audiences have already forgotten you, Madame, fickle little creatures that they
are. Be content to remember how they once worshipped you, for they never will again.”
“Please,” she said, and there was something like desperation in her voice. She moved towards him, her
long skirts concealing her feet so she appeared to glide rather than walk. The little dagger was gripped
tightly in her hand.
His tone did not change, even when she pressed the tip of the blade against his Adam’s apple, even
when he spoke the words that took the strength and resolve away from her.
“I love you,” he said.
The dagger fell to the floor, its impact muffled by the thick carpet. She swayed and would have fallen too
but his arm was around her waist, holding her up.
“Take your hands from her, Girolama,” Orazio said. He crossed the room in three swift steps to be
confronted by the black muzzles of Crescenti’s pistol.
“Still the faithful hound, eh, Orazio?”
“You are not fit to touch her,” Orazio snarled.
“And you are, I suppose?” He dismissed them with a curt wave of the crossbow. “Take her away, Orazio—
back to PameValdas—do not come back here again.”
She was weeping as he helped her outside and back into the carriage, but as they returned to the High
City her tears turned from sorrow to rage.
***
He had been a member of her troupe—a handsome young man of little talent but great ambition. She
had taken him to her bed as she had done many times before with other handsome young men of little
talent.
One night, as they lay together in the calm that followed their love-making Girolama said:
“Teach me, Isovella.”
“To do what?”
He raised himself on one elbow and looked down at her. “I watched the audience tonight, I saw how you
moved them—they were yours body and soul. Teach me to do that.”
“You are a beautiful creature, Girolama, but you will never be more than a spear-carrier. You sing well but
lack the passion that would make you great. Be content to be pretty.”
“Do not mock me, Madame. Teach me the magic.”
“There is no magic, Girolama.”
“Yes,” he said. “There is.”
She laughed without either cruelty or compassion. “If I cannot teach you then perhaps you should steal
it from me. Find yourself a cheap sorcerer and have him take my talent away.”
“I do not want your talent, Madame,” he told her. “Only your passion.”
She threw a slim arm around his neck and drew him to her. “And that you already have my sweet one.”
***
And so he found himself a cheap sorcerer—one of the many who dwelled in the granite city of
PameValdas—and for the price of five years from his life, Girolama Crescenti was given a means to steal
away the passion of Isovella Grandini.
He did it that very night, after she had performed at the Citizen’s House—that grand old relic by the
Bay—while the notes of her final aria continued to echo through the rafters.
There was a bitter irony in the words he used, the words that had been suffused with malicious power at
his own request.
He said:
“I love you.”
And the light went out of her eyes.
***
She stood by the window and, once again, sang softly to herself, etching the notes onto her flesh with
the point of the dagger. That, at least, she could still do. The glamour Crescenti had used had been an
unusually cruel one: it had left it with her talent, her sorrow and her rage, those private things which in
themselves are insufficient to move an audience. Alone, she could still reach incomparable heights, but if
others listened they would only hear the bitter cry of a wounded soul.
Orazio knocked upon the door and she ceased singing. He entered the room and bowed to her.
"I beg your pardon, Madame, but there is a gentleman below who wishes to see you."
He handed her a small pasteboard card. The name upon it, Josef Boharnas, was written in a flowing,
tangled script, as if the writer had striven to make his name unique.
She read it without a flicker of interest. "Invite the gentleman up, Orazio."
She pulled down the sleeves of her gown and put the dagger back in the valise, then she sat by the
open window so the evening sun was at her back.
Boharnas was an old man. His hair was grey, unfashionably long, his clothing expensive and well cut, his
expression self-assured. He wore both powder and paint, artfully applied to hide his advancing years.
When he moved towards her, his booted feet made no sound on the thick carpet and Isovella had the
impression the man would have been silent even on a stone floor covered with eggshells, so sure and
certain were his steps.
"Madame Grandini, it is an honour." He took her hand and kissed it, as elegantly as any courtier paying
homage to his queen.
"The pleasure is mine, Master Boharnas,” Isovella replied, but her tone, although polite, indicated
otherwise. “How may I be of service?”
Boharnas rubbed his hands together. “Perhaps the question should be, how may I be of service to you,
Madame.” He looked around the room. “May I sit?”
“If you wish.”
He eased himself into an ornate wooden chair, sighing audibly as he sat.
“First, may I say I have long been an admirer of your talent, Madame Grandini—in fact I once saw you
perform in PameValdas. It was an experience I have never forgotten.”
Her face remained impassive, the dark lenses of her glasses masking her eyes. The sunset at her back
haloed her with blood red light so Boharnas had to squint to keep her in focus.
“I am the proprietor of a modest house,” he continued, “located in the Old Quarter. My clientele is small
but discreet—and wealthy.”
“I no longer perform,” she told him. “My business here is of a private rather than professional nature. I
did not come to PameGlorias to sing.”
“I understand that, Madame, and I know the reason why.”
“Really?”
“There are few secrets left in the world today, Madame,” Boharnas said. “Perhaps because there is so
little world left to keep them in.”
“Then you know why I cannot grace your house. In fact, it is my intention to return to PameValdas within
the week.”
The elderly man pursed his rouged lips together. “Perhaps if I could do you a service—a very particular
service—Madame might be persuaded to assent to my appeal.”
Orazio, standing silently in the doorway said:
“What nature of service?”
“I have lived in PameGlorias for many, many years, and I believe I know her as well as any man can. I
know all her dark byways and the creatures who inhabit them.”
“What nature of service?” he asked again.
“I can find you a whisperthief,” Boharnas said.
“A what?”
Boharnas settled himself more comfortably into the chair. He took a pinch of snuff from a small
rosewood box and sneezed politely before speaking again:
“Mankind has never been alone,” he said. “And as the shadows of our dying sun lengthen there are
those creatures who have begun to walk in them more assuredly than they ever walked in the light.
“You would mistake them for men if you did not know better, for they have learned to imitate human
shape, even as mankind has learned to manipulate the world around him and tap into those ancient
energies which have always existed.” He paused again for a moment, his head cocked slightly to one side
like a bird. “Or perhaps it is that the world itself has altered irrevocably and rages against its own death,
releasing preternatural forces that warp and change whatever they touch.” The notion seemed to intrigue
him, for he pursed his lips together for a moment in contemplation.
“There are names for them, of course—daimôn, se’irim, ghul—each title tainted with that soul deep
memory of the Primal Lands, when mankind struggled in a world no less harsh than the one we now find
ourselves in. And they have power—real power, not the petty tricks and words of human sorcerers—
enough to restore that which has been taken from you. And some can be bought. For a price.”
“What price?” Isovella asked. She leaned forward, her hair washed with vermilion light
“Gold for some. Blood for others. And for others still...the promise of a song.”
And in the silence that followed his words it was all but possible to hear the heartbeat of the city itself,
slow and diffident, as it measured out the final years of the world.
“Then find me a whisperthief,” Isovella Grandini told him. “Find me a whisperthief and I will sing for you.”
Josef Boharnas smiled once more and in the fading sunset it seemed his face had changed, growing
longer, the years slipping away from him and his eyes sinking back in their sockets.
“At your service, Madame Grandini,” he said.
***
Night was the natural state of PameGlorias; she wore her darkness like a cloak. In the alleyways of the
Lower City shadows squirmed and guttered, agile as living things. Some were mere tricks of the light,
others were cast by men and women anxious to avoid the gaze of their fellows, while others still were
sorcerous beings fashioned from the gloom.
But there were also those who were exactly what they seemed, a fusion of flesh and darkness that
flowed across the cobbles and flags with sinister ease. Creatures that could pass through the fragile
safety of a locked door, enter the room of a sleeping young man, sated with wine and applause, and
steal from him precisely three words.
Three words, no more and no less—for who would miss such a small collection of sounds?
The Whisperthief stole. And having stolen, moved on.
***
“It is done,” Boharnas said. He stood before Isovella Grandini in her drawing room, as meek as any
supplicant. Once again, he had the appearance of a jovial, elderly man, and only the subtle aroma of
brimstone that clung to him suggested otherwise.
“My thanks to you,” Isovella said.
“That—and a song—is all I require,” the whisperthief said. He handed her another of his calling cards.
“Come visit me at my house this evening.”
“An audience,” Orazio said, his voice filled with unaccustomed emotion. “There must be an audience for
Madame’s return performance.”
“Oh, there will be an audience,” Boharnas assured him. “My clientele is most anxious to hear Madame
Grandini sing once more.” He took Isovella’s gloved hand and kissed it. “The choice of song I leave to
you.”
Then he was gone.
“And what now, Madame?” Orazio asked.
Isovella took the little dagger from her valise. The polished metal glittered softly in the darkened room.
“Now I take back what is mine,” she said.
***
If Girolama Crescenti was surprised to see her again he did not show it. He remained aloof and
unconcerned as Isovella and Orazio entered his squalid dressing room.
“Back so soon, Madame?”
“I ask you again, Girolama, will you return that which you have stolen?”
He smiled. “No. And that is the end of the matter. Please leave, Madame.”
She drew her little dagger and advanced towards him. His smile became a grin and his grin became a
mocking laugh.
His laughter grew when she pressed the blade against his throat.
“Tell me you love me,” she said.
His mouth moved but the words did not come. They could not, for they had been taken from him in the
night and he could never speak them again. Nor would he ever speak again. Isovella’s silvered dagger,
the token he had given her to prove his love, pierced his throat and stole his life in a long torrent of
bright blood.
And as the blood poured out of him—splashing onto her dress, her face, her gloved hands—Isovella
Grandini began to sing.
Tentatively at first, afraid the glamour had not been broken, but gaining confidence and volume with
every breath. A joyful aria that came directly from her soul; her power and passion restored by one brief
act of retribution.
She turned to Orazio and her smile was dazzling in the midst of the crimson that covered her face.
“Madame Grandini,” he said, and bowed to her.
“Master Boharnas will be waiting for us,” she told him. “And it is never good to keep an audience waiting.”
She stepped away from the still twitching corpse of Girolama Crescenti and left the room without a
backwards glance.
***
The House of Josef Boharnas was a relic from another time, before the rays of the Moribund Sun had
begun to bleach all joy from the bones of the planet.
The House stood in splendid isolation in the centre of a cracked and pitted plaza. Its white façade was an
intricate thing of columns and spires with a dozen huge windows of black glass staring out at the city. A
flight of ebony steps led to its central doors.
As Isovella and Orazio approached, the doors were flung open and Boharnas stood there, waiting.
His form had changed once again, but the changes were subtle, almost impossible to pin-point. Perhaps
it was that he stood a little more erect, or his hair was thicker, darker, or his eyes flashed with a devilish
intensity.
“Welcome, Madame Grandini!” His voice was louder, more assured than it had been before. “Welcome to
my poor house.”
“It is hardly that,” Isovella told him with elegant courtesy. She wore a simple gown of black taffeta and
her lips were painted red—a reminder and mockery, perhaps, of Girolama Crescenti.
“A full house tonight,” Boharnas said and ushered her forward with an extravagant sweep of his hand.
"For the first time in...many years."
“Madame deserves no less,” Orazio said.
They made their way through a maze of twisting corridors and spiral steps. As they drew closer to the
auditorium a murmur rose to meet them, the sound of many, many voices. It was formless, almost feral,
mingled with the first strains of a halting overture, violins, oboes and the deep bass boom of a
kettledrum.
“And has Madame made her choice?” Boharnas asked.
Isovella nodded. “An aria, I think. Vissi d'arte, vissi d’amore.”
“’I lived for art, I lived for love.’ Wonderful, Madame, wonderful.”
“Your orchestra will know it?” Orazio asked.
“They are well versed. Yes, they will know it.”
At the stage door Boharnas stopped, he took Isovella’s gloved hand and kissed it.
“You honour me, Madame Grandini.”
“The honour is mine, Master Boharnas,” she told him. “I am in your debt.”
“Even so.”
She took her leave of him and stepped onto the stage. The proscenium arch was huge, draped in red
velvet and the front of the stage was lined with gas lamps. The intense welcoming glare of lime lights
bathed her in their harsh brilliance.
At her entrance a hush fell over the crowd. She could not see them—for even her smoky lenses were no
guard against the glare—but she could feel them, feel their anticipation and eagerness. Above all, she
could feel their passion and their love, their deep, burning need for her.
At a single gesture the orchestra began to play.
And Isovella Grandini began to sing.
Her voice filled the auditorium with ease. Her talent, her passion reached into every part of the massive
room. The words she sang, a song of heartbreak and disillusionment, came straight from her soul and
there was magic in her voice. A dark enchantment, to be sure, but magic nonetheless. Even the
orchestra was captured by her, they ceased to play half way through the performance, content in the
knowledge that their music—no matter how brilliantly they might play—would only corrupt the moment.
When the final note of the aria hung in the air there was no applause, no cheering, none of the base
sentiment that might have been expected. Instead, a profound and reverential silence fell over the room.
Then, the sound of a single handclap. Then another. And another. And another, until it was taken up by
the entire audience, an expression of their delight, their joy, their worship of her.
Boharnas was by her side. The music had stripped the vestiges of humanity from him and she saw him
as he truly was, both more and less than human. His teeth were long and sharp, the gums black, his
eyes red and slitted, his skin mottled grey.
“I thank you, Madame.” Boharnas said, his cultured tones obscene. ”We all thank you.”
As the stage lights faded she saw the audience for the first time. Like Josef Boharnas they were
creatures of the Primal Lands. The masks they wore—the thin veneers of humanity they showed to the
world—had begun to peel away as they showed themselves in homage to her.
She felt a scream rise in her throat, curtailed when Boharnas spoke.
“Madame Grandini,” he said. “You were exquisite.”
She looked to the wings and saw Orazio there, his expression rapturous—he, too, was lost in the beauty
and power of her voice.
“Again,” Boharnas said. “Sing again, I implore you.”
When she hesitated he said:
“We are not monsters, Madame Grandini, we are children of the earth just as you are. Is our adoration
any less because we are not human?”
“No,” she said. “It is not.”
“Then sing, sing again and again. Let us worship you as you deserve. Stay with us and sing until the
stars themselves are a distant memory.”
A ripple passed through the auditorium, a subtle distortion of the air spoke of cataclysmic changes. She
knew without being told they had stopped time, here in this place, held in check by the will of the
daimôn, se’irim and ghul, acting to alter the world for her benefit.
“What would you have me sing?”
“Whatever you desire.”
“The Queen of the Night. Have them play The Queen of the Night.”
Boharnas chuckled. “Another fine choice, Madame.”
She began to sing. Dark, fiery words in an ancient language that threatened to crack the air through
which they passed, words that would echo and ring until the sun itself flickered and died. And then on
through countless eons.
For as long as they worshipped her.
PameGlorias with murder in her heart and a
silvered dagger in her valise.
When she alighted from the barque at Raven's
Wharf, more than a few heads turned in her
direction. It was not that elegant women were
uncommon in PameGlorias—indeed, the ladies of
the Inner City were regarded as some of the most
striking of those Latter Days—but her bearing and
her clothing marked her as someone out of the
norm.
She was not a young woman, though her face was
smooth and her figure dainty. The gown she wore
was of blue velvet, trimmed with green lace at the
neck. Her hands were concealed by blue leather
gloves and a wolfskin cape covered her shoulders.
Her hair was white, cropped close to the scalp, her
thin lips were painted purple and she wore
pince-nez spectacles with lenses of smoky glass.
But it seemed to those who saw her the glasses
were less a defence against the light of the
Moribund Sun than an artifice to conceal her eyes.
The man who walked behind her was tall and
slender, bald with sunken cheeks and heavy brows.
His clothing—a black achkan coat embroidered with
white lace, black breeches tucked into knee-length
boots—gave him a funeral aspect that contrasted
sharply with the woman’s bright garments.
"Find us lodgings, Orazio," she told him. Her voice was melodic, her accent foreign. "In the morning you
may begin your search."
“Why not today?” His accent mirrored hers.
“Patience, Orazio, patience. A day will make no difference.”
"As you wish, Madame."
Within the hour, he had found them an apartment: not too far from the Wharf but close to where the
city began to sprawl away from the seafront towards the Winter Plains many miles distant. Once,
PameGlorias had been an ordered place—its streets and boulevards radiating from the centre in clean,
straight lines—but as time passed new buildings and towers had risen, bisecting the roads and cutting
them into a series of lanes, alleys and covered walkways. As such, there were places in the city where,
for centuries, the sun had never shone.
Isovella Grandini stood by the high arched window of the drawing room and stared out across the city.
She took the dagger from her valise and played idly with the blade, running its point across her
forearms, drawing a little blood with each pass, forming an intricate bright red web on her skin.
It was a small thing, this dagger—hardly more than a stiletto—with a thin blade and a small glass orb
embedded in its pommel, but she held it as if it were precious and valued.
Two days passed. During that time, Isovella did not leave her room, preferring to spend the slow hours
at the window, staring out over the chaotic lines of the city while Orazio prowled its streets, searching.
As she sat she sang softly to herself, taking special care to ensure the sound did not travel outside the
room. Even those who passed under her window were totally unaware of the exquisite music above them.
And what songs she sang: full of pain and loss—arias that would have brought a tear to a basilisk’s eye,
madrigals and cavatinas that would have made the princes of hell themselves weep. And while she sang
she ran the little blade across her arm, creating more and more obscure patterns that, in their own way,
echoed her songs, feeding the pain of her wounds into the music.
On the third day, Orazio returned to her. He entered the room without announcement—which was not
his usual custom—and at his entrance her song faltered: the notes bent, warped and shattered, as
though they had had been forced out through a sundered larynx.
“Forgive me, Madame, I did not mean to be so tactless.”
“You are forgiven, Orazio.” Only the merest flash of annoyance behind those smoky lenses betrayed her
emotions.
“I have found him,” he said. “I have found Crescenti.”
She rose from her seat and a faint smile—or was it a sneer?—passed over her purple lips.
“Take me to him.”
“As you wish, Madame.”
***
They called PameGlorias the Shining City of Knowledge, but it had been many decades, if not centuries,
since the city had justified its name. Earth was entering the final millenniums of Her long, long life and,
like all those cities of the Latter Days, PameGlorias was content to ruminate on what She had been; to
dream of past grandeur rather than embrace a future that promised nothing but entropic decay.
As they rode through the city in a small rented carriage, neither Isovella nor Orazio spoke. Outside, the
jumble of the Lower City trundled past, gradually morphing from sunlight to dusk to gloom as the
carriage took them further and further into winding streets where the only light came from lamps hung
at irregular intervals along rotting tenements.
This then, was the heart of the Shining City—the greatest construction of mankind’s last gasp—a putrid
melange of sticks and stones overlaid with an abattoir stench not even the perfumed scarf Isovella
pressed against her nose and mouth could completely mask.
And yet, from somewhere in that tangled mass there emerged the heavenly notes of a single voice raised
in song.
The sound reached them long before they came to its source—a small redbrick theatre tucked away in a
narrow side street. The building was without ostentation or decoration, notable only for the crowd
gathered on the pavement, listening with rapt attention to the melodies that drifted from inside. At a
casual glance, it seemed every strata of society was represented here—from high-born dowagers with
white powdered faces and cupid red lips to the gutter-sweepings of the Low City in motley rags.
Isovella and Orazio dismounted from the carriage and the tall man shouldered his way through the
crowd, ignoring the scowls and curses cast at him. Their entry to the theatre was effected with a flash of
silver coins and they stepped inside.
The auditorium was filled to overflowing with people, their attention fixed upon a small low stage lit by
guttering lamps.
And upon the stage stood the man Isovella Grandini had come to PameGlorias to kill: Girolama Crescenti.
He was a tall man, this Crescenti, and as handsome as a fallen angel. His hair was long and blond and he
was dressed in a grey velvet tunic with snug breeches tucked into high-topped boots.
But if he had the face of a fallen angel he had the voice of an ascendant one.
He was singing a simple lied, but with such passion, such clarity and precision, that each note carried the
power of a symphony in it. As she listened, Isovella’s hand went to the dagger at her side, as if she took
comfort from the shape and feel of it.
When the song finished, Crescenti bowed once and turned away into the wings. The applause that
followed his exit was thunderous in its approval.
As the crowd left, Isovella and Orazio made their way towards the stage. A few more coins to one of the
stagehands granted them access to the squalid green room behind the auditorium and they found
Crescenti waiting for them.
He sat before a cracked mirror, his hand resting upon a dressing table, fingertips a mere inch away from
a small multi-barrelled pistol.
“Is this the fame and adulation you sought, Girolama?” Isovella said. “Is this why you stole from me?”
“It takes time to build a reputation, Madame. You, of all people, should know that. What did you think of
my performance tonight?”
“Superb,” she said. “Quite superb.”
“You really shouldn’t have followed me here,” he said, “although I am not surprised that you did. How
may I be of service?”
“I have come to take back that which you have stolen,” she said.
Crescenti shook his head. “What I stole from you I stole fairly, Madame. You took from me, I took from
you—what could be more equitable than that?”
“The exchange was not a fair one.”
“Dealings between lovers seldom are.” His tone was one of amused detachment. “Best to let the past
remain in the past. Your audiences have already forgotten you, Madame, fickle little creatures that they
are. Be content to remember how they once worshipped you, for they never will again.”
“Please,” she said, and there was something like desperation in her voice. She moved towards him, her
long skirts concealing her feet so she appeared to glide rather than walk. The little dagger was gripped
tightly in her hand.
His tone did not change, even when she pressed the tip of the blade against his Adam’s apple, even
when he spoke the words that took the strength and resolve away from her.
“I love you,” he said.
The dagger fell to the floor, its impact muffled by the thick carpet. She swayed and would have fallen too
but his arm was around her waist, holding her up.
“Take your hands from her, Girolama,” Orazio said. He crossed the room in three swift steps to be
confronted by the black muzzles of Crescenti’s pistol.
“Still the faithful hound, eh, Orazio?”
“You are not fit to touch her,” Orazio snarled.
“And you are, I suppose?” He dismissed them with a curt wave of the crossbow. “Take her away, Orazio—
back to PameValdas—do not come back here again.”
She was weeping as he helped her outside and back into the carriage, but as they returned to the High
City her tears turned from sorrow to rage.
***
He had been a member of her troupe—a handsome young man of little talent but great ambition. She
had taken him to her bed as she had done many times before with other handsome young men of little
talent.
One night, as they lay together in the calm that followed their love-making Girolama said:
“Teach me, Isovella.”
“To do what?”
He raised himself on one elbow and looked down at her. “I watched the audience tonight, I saw how you
moved them—they were yours body and soul. Teach me to do that.”
“You are a beautiful creature, Girolama, but you will never be more than a spear-carrier. You sing well but
lack the passion that would make you great. Be content to be pretty.”
“Do not mock me, Madame. Teach me the magic.”
“There is no magic, Girolama.”
“Yes,” he said. “There is.”
She laughed without either cruelty or compassion. “If I cannot teach you then perhaps you should steal
it from me. Find yourself a cheap sorcerer and have him take my talent away.”
“I do not want your talent, Madame,” he told her. “Only your passion.”
She threw a slim arm around his neck and drew him to her. “And that you already have my sweet one.”
***
And so he found himself a cheap sorcerer—one of the many who dwelled in the granite city of
PameValdas—and for the price of five years from his life, Girolama Crescenti was given a means to steal
away the passion of Isovella Grandini.
He did it that very night, after she had performed at the Citizen’s House—that grand old relic by the
Bay—while the notes of her final aria continued to echo through the rafters.
There was a bitter irony in the words he used, the words that had been suffused with malicious power at
his own request.
He said:
“I love you.”
And the light went out of her eyes.
***
She stood by the window and, once again, sang softly to herself, etching the notes onto her flesh with
the point of the dagger. That, at least, she could still do. The glamour Crescenti had used had been an
unusually cruel one: it had left it with her talent, her sorrow and her rage, those private things which in
themselves are insufficient to move an audience. Alone, she could still reach incomparable heights, but if
others listened they would only hear the bitter cry of a wounded soul.
Orazio knocked upon the door and she ceased singing. He entered the room and bowed to her.
"I beg your pardon, Madame, but there is a gentleman below who wishes to see you."
He handed her a small pasteboard card. The name upon it, Josef Boharnas, was written in a flowing,
tangled script, as if the writer had striven to make his name unique.
She read it without a flicker of interest. "Invite the gentleman up, Orazio."
She pulled down the sleeves of her gown and put the dagger back in the valise, then she sat by the
open window so the evening sun was at her back.
Boharnas was an old man. His hair was grey, unfashionably long, his clothing expensive and well cut, his
expression self-assured. He wore both powder and paint, artfully applied to hide his advancing years.
When he moved towards her, his booted feet made no sound on the thick carpet and Isovella had the
impression the man would have been silent even on a stone floor covered with eggshells, so sure and
certain were his steps.
"Madame Grandini, it is an honour." He took her hand and kissed it, as elegantly as any courtier paying
homage to his queen.
"The pleasure is mine, Master Boharnas,” Isovella replied, but her tone, although polite, indicated
otherwise. “How may I be of service?”
Boharnas rubbed his hands together. “Perhaps the question should be, how may I be of service to you,
Madame.” He looked around the room. “May I sit?”
“If you wish.”
He eased himself into an ornate wooden chair, sighing audibly as he sat.
“First, may I say I have long been an admirer of your talent, Madame Grandini—in fact I once saw you
perform in PameValdas. It was an experience I have never forgotten.”
Her face remained impassive, the dark lenses of her glasses masking her eyes. The sunset at her back
haloed her with blood red light so Boharnas had to squint to keep her in focus.
“I am the proprietor of a modest house,” he continued, “located in the Old Quarter. My clientele is small
but discreet—and wealthy.”
“I no longer perform,” she told him. “My business here is of a private rather than professional nature. I
did not come to PameGlorias to sing.”
“I understand that, Madame, and I know the reason why.”
“Really?”
“There are few secrets left in the world today, Madame,” Boharnas said. “Perhaps because there is so
little world left to keep them in.”
“Then you know why I cannot grace your house. In fact, it is my intention to return to PameValdas within
the week.”
The elderly man pursed his rouged lips together. “Perhaps if I could do you a service—a very particular
service—Madame might be persuaded to assent to my appeal.”
Orazio, standing silently in the doorway said:
“What nature of service?”
“I have lived in PameGlorias for many, many years, and I believe I know her as well as any man can. I
know all her dark byways and the creatures who inhabit them.”
“What nature of service?” he asked again.
“I can find you a whisperthief,” Boharnas said.
“A what?”
Boharnas settled himself more comfortably into the chair. He took a pinch of snuff from a small
rosewood box and sneezed politely before speaking again:
“Mankind has never been alone,” he said. “And as the shadows of our dying sun lengthen there are
those creatures who have begun to walk in them more assuredly than they ever walked in the light.
“You would mistake them for men if you did not know better, for they have learned to imitate human
shape, even as mankind has learned to manipulate the world around him and tap into those ancient
energies which have always existed.” He paused again for a moment, his head cocked slightly to one side
like a bird. “Or perhaps it is that the world itself has altered irrevocably and rages against its own death,
releasing preternatural forces that warp and change whatever they touch.” The notion seemed to intrigue
him, for he pursed his lips together for a moment in contemplation.
“There are names for them, of course—daimôn, se’irim, ghul—each title tainted with that soul deep
memory of the Primal Lands, when mankind struggled in a world no less harsh than the one we now find
ourselves in. And they have power—real power, not the petty tricks and words of human sorcerers—
enough to restore that which has been taken from you. And some can be bought. For a price.”
“What price?” Isovella asked. She leaned forward, her hair washed with vermilion light
“Gold for some. Blood for others. And for others still...the promise of a song.”
And in the silence that followed his words it was all but possible to hear the heartbeat of the city itself,
slow and diffident, as it measured out the final years of the world.
“Then find me a whisperthief,” Isovella Grandini told him. “Find me a whisperthief and I will sing for you.”
Josef Boharnas smiled once more and in the fading sunset it seemed his face had changed, growing
longer, the years slipping away from him and his eyes sinking back in their sockets.
“At your service, Madame Grandini,” he said.
***
Night was the natural state of PameGlorias; she wore her darkness like a cloak. In the alleyways of the
Lower City shadows squirmed and guttered, agile as living things. Some were mere tricks of the light,
others were cast by men and women anxious to avoid the gaze of their fellows, while others still were
sorcerous beings fashioned from the gloom.
But there were also those who were exactly what they seemed, a fusion of flesh and darkness that
flowed across the cobbles and flags with sinister ease. Creatures that could pass through the fragile
safety of a locked door, enter the room of a sleeping young man, sated with wine and applause, and
steal from him precisely three words.
Three words, no more and no less—for who would miss such a small collection of sounds?
The Whisperthief stole. And having stolen, moved on.
***
“It is done,” Boharnas said. He stood before Isovella Grandini in her drawing room, as meek as any
supplicant. Once again, he had the appearance of a jovial, elderly man, and only the subtle aroma of
brimstone that clung to him suggested otherwise.
“My thanks to you,” Isovella said.
“That—and a song—is all I require,” the whisperthief said. He handed her another of his calling cards.
“Come visit me at my house this evening.”
“An audience,” Orazio said, his voice filled with unaccustomed emotion. “There must be an audience for
Madame’s return performance.”
“Oh, there will be an audience,” Boharnas assured him. “My clientele is most anxious to hear Madame
Grandini sing once more.” He took Isovella’s gloved hand and kissed it. “The choice of song I leave to
you.”
Then he was gone.
“And what now, Madame?” Orazio asked.
Isovella took the little dagger from her valise. The polished metal glittered softly in the darkened room.
“Now I take back what is mine,” she said.
***
If Girolama Crescenti was surprised to see her again he did not show it. He remained aloof and
unconcerned as Isovella and Orazio entered his squalid dressing room.
“Back so soon, Madame?”
“I ask you again, Girolama, will you return that which you have stolen?”
He smiled. “No. And that is the end of the matter. Please leave, Madame.”
She drew her little dagger and advanced towards him. His smile became a grin and his grin became a
mocking laugh.
His laughter grew when she pressed the blade against his throat.
“Tell me you love me,” she said.
His mouth moved but the words did not come. They could not, for they had been taken from him in the
night and he could never speak them again. Nor would he ever speak again. Isovella’s silvered dagger,
the token he had given her to prove his love, pierced his throat and stole his life in a long torrent of
bright blood.
And as the blood poured out of him—splashing onto her dress, her face, her gloved hands—Isovella
Grandini began to sing.
Tentatively at first, afraid the glamour had not been broken, but gaining confidence and volume with
every breath. A joyful aria that came directly from her soul; her power and passion restored by one brief
act of retribution.
She turned to Orazio and her smile was dazzling in the midst of the crimson that covered her face.
“Madame Grandini,” he said, and bowed to her.
“Master Boharnas will be waiting for us,” she told him. “And it is never good to keep an audience waiting.”
She stepped away from the still twitching corpse of Girolama Crescenti and left the room without a
backwards glance.
***
The House of Josef Boharnas was a relic from another time, before the rays of the Moribund Sun had
begun to bleach all joy from the bones of the planet.
The House stood in splendid isolation in the centre of a cracked and pitted plaza. Its white façade was an
intricate thing of columns and spires with a dozen huge windows of black glass staring out at the city. A
flight of ebony steps led to its central doors.
As Isovella and Orazio approached, the doors were flung open and Boharnas stood there, waiting.
His form had changed once again, but the changes were subtle, almost impossible to pin-point. Perhaps
it was that he stood a little more erect, or his hair was thicker, darker, or his eyes flashed with a devilish
intensity.
“Welcome, Madame Grandini!” His voice was louder, more assured than it had been before. “Welcome to
my poor house.”
“It is hardly that,” Isovella told him with elegant courtesy. She wore a simple gown of black taffeta and
her lips were painted red—a reminder and mockery, perhaps, of Girolama Crescenti.
“A full house tonight,” Boharnas said and ushered her forward with an extravagant sweep of his hand.
"For the first time in...many years."
“Madame deserves no less,” Orazio said.
They made their way through a maze of twisting corridors and spiral steps. As they drew closer to the
auditorium a murmur rose to meet them, the sound of many, many voices. It was formless, almost feral,
mingled with the first strains of a halting overture, violins, oboes and the deep bass boom of a
kettledrum.
“And has Madame made her choice?” Boharnas asked.
Isovella nodded. “An aria, I think. Vissi d'arte, vissi d’amore.”
“’I lived for art, I lived for love.’ Wonderful, Madame, wonderful.”
“Your orchestra will know it?” Orazio asked.
“They are well versed. Yes, they will know it.”
At the stage door Boharnas stopped, he took Isovella’s gloved hand and kissed it.
“You honour me, Madame Grandini.”
“The honour is mine, Master Boharnas,” she told him. “I am in your debt.”
“Even so.”
She took her leave of him and stepped onto the stage. The proscenium arch was huge, draped in red
velvet and the front of the stage was lined with gas lamps. The intense welcoming glare of lime lights
bathed her in their harsh brilliance.
At her entrance a hush fell over the crowd. She could not see them—for even her smoky lenses were no
guard against the glare—but she could feel them, feel their anticipation and eagerness. Above all, she
could feel their passion and their love, their deep, burning need for her.
At a single gesture the orchestra began to play.
And Isovella Grandini began to sing.
Her voice filled the auditorium with ease. Her talent, her passion reached into every part of the massive
room. The words she sang, a song of heartbreak and disillusionment, came straight from her soul and
there was magic in her voice. A dark enchantment, to be sure, but magic nonetheless. Even the
orchestra was captured by her, they ceased to play half way through the performance, content in the
knowledge that their music—no matter how brilliantly they might play—would only corrupt the moment.
When the final note of the aria hung in the air there was no applause, no cheering, none of the base
sentiment that might have been expected. Instead, a profound and reverential silence fell over the room.
Then, the sound of a single handclap. Then another. And another. And another, until it was taken up by
the entire audience, an expression of their delight, their joy, their worship of her.
Boharnas was by her side. The music had stripped the vestiges of humanity from him and she saw him
as he truly was, both more and less than human. His teeth were long and sharp, the gums black, his
eyes red and slitted, his skin mottled grey.
“I thank you, Madame.” Boharnas said, his cultured tones obscene. ”We all thank you.”
As the stage lights faded she saw the audience for the first time. Like Josef Boharnas they were
creatures of the Primal Lands. The masks they wore—the thin veneers of humanity they showed to the
world—had begun to peel away as they showed themselves in homage to her.
She felt a scream rise in her throat, curtailed when Boharnas spoke.
“Madame Grandini,” he said. “You were exquisite.”
She looked to the wings and saw Orazio there, his expression rapturous—he, too, was lost in the beauty
and power of her voice.
“Again,” Boharnas said. “Sing again, I implore you.”
When she hesitated he said:
“We are not monsters, Madame Grandini, we are children of the earth just as you are. Is our adoration
any less because we are not human?”
“No,” she said. “It is not.”
“Then sing, sing again and again. Let us worship you as you deserve. Stay with us and sing until the
stars themselves are a distant memory.”
A ripple passed through the auditorium, a subtle distortion of the air spoke of cataclysmic changes. She
knew without being told they had stopped time, here in this place, held in check by the will of the
daimôn, se’irim and ghul, acting to alter the world for her benefit.
“What would you have me sing?”
“Whatever you desire.”
“The Queen of the Night. Have them play The Queen of the Night.”
Boharnas chuckled. “Another fine choice, Madame.”
She began to sing. Dark, fiery words in an ancient language that threatened to crack the air through
which they passed, words that would echo and ring until the sun itself flickered and died. And then on
through countless eons.
For as long as they worshipped her.
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