Chapter Seventeen A Song, a Ball, and a Catastrophe
Grandfather is at a business dinner, so we might as well get ready for the masquerade,” Daphne announced from the doorway of Zada’s room.
Zada startled at her triple cello, almost dropping the bow.
She’d been putting the finishing touches on her new piece, the achingly romantic one, and it was very possible she had lost track of time.
“How long were you waiting there?” Zada asked as she carefully slid both bow and triple cello back into their case.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Daphne, grinning. “Here, they’re dry now.”
That morning, Zada and Daphne had repainted a pair of wooden Venetian masks excavated from the attic, on the off chance that someone might recognize the original colors or patterns as belonging to the Fallow family.
It felt a little scandalous covering up the antique hand-etched designs.
Daphne, she could tell, felt no such qualms. It had been reassuring to watch Daphne delicately guide her paintbrush over the surface of the mask, biting her lip just a little in concentration as she worked.
Vein by vein, she outlined a delicate series of green and golden leaves gracefully overlapping each other.
“Where did you learn how to do that?” asked Zada, who had decided by necessity to opt for minimalism in her own design.
Daphne paused to clean her brushes. “Well, I had a little more time my final year,” she said without looking up, “once I wasn’t spending so many of my waking hours trying to make a certain triple cellist laugh.”
They had been awkward with each other since the kisses at the concert.
There was no getting around it. Stilted, overly formal.
But something about the way Daphne spoke just then, the uncertain warmth in her voice brought the memory back in stunning clarity, and Zada had felt dizzy with nerves and joy.
“Please tell me you didn’t stop your japes and jests because of me,” Zada had responded.
“It would be like slashing a switchblade through a . . .” And here she’d had to pause, because she had never internalized enough about the great painters to be able to name one, and she certainly couldn’t recall one with Daphne’s eyes so intent on her.
“A canvas with a very, very good piece of art on it. Like a painting of a war or a garden or something.”
“A war or a garden?” Daphne had laughed, but kindly, the sort of warm, low giggle that let Zada in on the joke. “No, don’t worry. Most of my nonsense at school was just me being me. I’d say at most ten percent of it was me being me around you.”
Me being me around you. The phrase had stuck with Zada ever since, and now, as they climbed the stairs to Daphne’s room, she thought I like being me around you.
I hope you like it, too. It was a foolish sentiment, almost comical in its simplicity, but that did nothing to stop it, or to stop Zada from wondering why she’d never written anything with lyrics before.
The masks had turned out remarkably well, and their costumes were easy enough to locate and don.
“I thought that would take longer,” Daphne admitted, “but I can’t think of anything to add.
” Zada nodded, studying their reflections together in the mirror.
The bootlegger and the pirate. It was nice not having to bother with a corset for a special occasion.
It was nice being able to twist at the waist without making a whole production of it.
Zada bounced on the balls of her feet, willing her nerves away.
They were so close to their goal. She wanted to dedicate herself to action, to channel the adrenaline spiking through her veins into some pursuit that could bring them Mozelle’s data and prove that Zada had a different soulmate altogether.
She knew who she hoped it was, of course, but until they could peek in those files, she had no proof, and proof was everything.
Instead, her frantic thoughts spun like a merry-go-round.
“Should we go over the plan again?” said Zada.
“Simple,” said Daphne. “We sneak in. You find Mozelle. I create a distraction, and you use it to slip in and get close enough that you can copy the Gem. Rendezvous in the library, go through our new copy of said Gem, and quickly and efficiently learn Buford’s not your soulmate. Then we get the hell out of there.”
“Right,” Zada said. “Simple. When’s the hyper-carriage coming?”
“Not for another hour,” said Daphne.
“What shall we do in the meantime?” Zada asked. She meant it as an honest question with no trace of suggestion, but her eyes caught Daphne’s in the mirror as she said it, and Daphne shivered ever so slightly.
“How about we try jamming together?” said Daphne, about half an octave higher than usual.
“Jamming,” Zada repeated blankly.
“Playing music together in an improvisational sort of bent?” Daphne strode over to a chest of drawers, bending to open the lowest drawer and reveal a fold-out mandolin.
Zada would not have been more surprised if Daphne had produced a jar of literal jam.
“When did you learn to—? Senior year?” Zada guessed. “During your, ah, newfound free time?”
Daphne nodded as she unfolded the mandolin’s neck and body.
“And a bit the summer before. I had this wild notion that I would get good enough to just jump in on one of your pieces while you were playing,” she said. “No warning, just ‘here I am!’”
“I would have loved that,” Zada admitted. “You know I learned how to fold that paper beetle because it made me think of you.”
“Oh?” Daphne grinned. She glanced down at the mandolin as if surprised to still be holding it.
She gave it a quick strum, made a face at the discordance, and began to tune it, her motions so deft and familiar that it was clear she had done this before.
“Well, my daydream can still happen, if you’ll permit me to follow as you play? ”
“Why not?” said Zada. They had an hour to go before their plan was set in motion. The pit of her stomach was a writhing mass of anxiety. She had never been more aware of how much she had to lose. She had to will her voice level. “Please, show me what you’ve got.”
Daphne had learned quite a bit, as it turned out. Zada picked a relatively simple, easy piece—not one she’d written, and certainly not the gooey sentimental thing she was working on now. Once Zada told her the key and gave her a few bars to get the feel, Daphne picked it up with surprising ease.
Zada, who almost never improvised, found herself trying new progressions, new layers and subtleties.
Daphne kept up and then some, grinning when Zada incorporated a few seconds of “Keep Calm and Panopticon” into the melody.
When Daphne managed to work in “All’s a Go, Proceed,” Zada laughed out loud from the joy of it, and then they were trading off, taking turns following each other to surprising places before trying something else new and daring.
Zada forgot they were in Chancellor Fallow’s grand and intimidating manor.
She forgot how scared she was, how high the stakes were.
What mattered was existing in this moment, every sixteenth note of it.
The sensation was not unlike kissing, and she became just as absorbed in it as when she’d pressed her lips to Daphne’s. When Daphne’s SmartGem chimed with the arrival of their hyper-carriage, they both jumped.
“We’ll have to do that again,” said Zada breathlessly as they stowed their instruments and dashed down the stairs together.
“Without a doubt,” said Daphne, and then they were running across the Fallow estate’s lush gardens, and then they were climbing into the hyper-carriage, and then they were on their way to the masquerade.
Had Zada not spent the past six weeks with Daphne on the Fallow estate, she would have gone slack-jawed in amazement as they strolled through the front garden’s security arch (which scanned them for biometrics, weapons, and contraband), beneath the “dry waterfall” (which scoured their immune systems for transmissible diseases), and past the elaborately costumed guards (who were almost certainly there just for show) into Mozelle Drogace’s glittering mansion.
As it was, Zada still had to remind herself to press her lips genteelly together and not gape at the foyer from behind her mask.
Entire trees grew from concealed earthen tiles on the ground, species that could never have withstood the scorching sun outdoors. Dazzling gen-mod parrots winged overhead in hues specially curated to match the evening’s official color scheme.
Something about the whole scene, luxurious as it was, grated at Zada with a sense of wrongness, a chord untuned.
Beside her, Daphne took her elbow. “Something is off here,” Daphne murmured.
“It’s the parrots,” said Zada, suddenly realizing. “They’re not talking or squawking or anything. They’re singing like nightingales. And I don’t think they’re just mimicking.”
Daphne continued to guide her through the immense glass hall.
Parrots circled over their heads, making decidedly unparrot-like sounds.
“Gen-modders must’ve swapped out the vocal muscles,” she said.
She made a face, barely visible behind the mask, but Zada could hear it in her tone.
“Ugh. The charm of a parrot is that it’s a beautiful, weird loudmouth. ”
“And it’s how they communicate with each other,” Zada added. “Do you suppose whoever put these parrots together thought to tweak their minds enough that they can still make sense to other parrots?”
“I sincerely doubt it.” Daphne sighed. “These poor wretches have all the signs of disposable event birds. I’m sure none of them can understand a note of what they’re saying.”