Mary nodded, held her tongue. She knew Sybel didn’t like her, and she knew Sybel didn’t like her because I didn’t like her.
“Admittedly, a captive audience,” Duncan said, “with nothing else to do except hunker down in their homes.”
“True,” I said. “I suppose there is a hint of desperation in it.”
Desperation during those days could not be hidden at the opera. In such close quarters, the truth of our diets would begin to manifest as a sour smell of stale bread and vegetable broth and, oddly enough, doorknobs. Some enterprising individual had discovered that many of the doorknobs in the city had been made from sawdust and ox blood. If heated and distilled, a doorknob could be eaten, given an extremity of hunger.
“Martin and Merri are living on the kindness of friends and neighbors, you know,” Sybel said.
“If he’s painting at all,” Duncan said, “it’s with borrowed canvases and stolen paints. He’ll get the odd job here and there, but work must be scarce.”
“Yes it is, my dear Duncan,” I heard Mary whisper, “but you don’t need to worry.”
He didn’t need to worry because Mary’s parents had conspired to acquire an apartment for her out of the way of both the local Hoegbotton and F&L militias, in an area that had not yet been the target of attacks or skirmishes. Mary, meanwhile, had yet to realize that, having taken Duncan in, she might have more worries than the average person where the gray caps were concerned. {She had less to worry about. Trust me. I protected her well.}
My gaze burned through the darkness that protected Mary.
“What are your plans after the war?” I asked Duncan.
Was that the hint of a smile on my brother’s face?
Mary answered for him, making Sybel sit up and pay attention, as if he had a bet riding on the answer: “The same as now. To continue my studies. To write books, like Duncan’s.”
Well, it was true that she continued her studies during the war. In fact, the war often had no impact on her whatsoever, not emotionally. But she didn’t want to write books like Duncan’s. She wanted to write books like Duncan. That became clear soon enough.
A hush fell over the audience. The lights could not dim, but the curtain could rise. It chose that moment to do so. I could either stare into the now silent darkness or turn toward the stage.
The curtain rose. The green light was very much like the green light in this place, as I type this afterword. Here, I am on the stage. There, I was part of the audience. Not that there’s much difference.
The opera began.
Despite Gallendrace’s valiant efforts, it soon became clear that the opera would be a rather muddied affair. What more could one expect under the circumstances, hampered by lack of funds, lack of time, donated costumes and sets, and the shortage of many other supplies? But a certain unnecessary complexity also wreaked havoc with the production—too many parts and not enough actors. Further, men played most of the female parts and women played most of the male parts, which created a dissonant musical effect, tenors and sopranos popping up in the most unexpected places. It became increasingly difficult to keep track of all but the most major characters.
Still, the main storyline had the kind of familiarity that is difficult to lose in translation, especially when you’re in the middle of the conflict in question. As in real life, the opera carefully related the particulars of a deadly war between merchant families.
To put it plainly, what hawkish Sirin had anticipated so accurately was an economic invasion of Ambergris by Frankwrithe & Lewden, the type of invasion that only coincidentally results in bloodshed. For years, the constant pressure exerted by Hoegbotton & Sons on F&L in their home markets around Morrow had hindered Frankwrithe’s attempts to expand into Ambergris—although a tenuous toehold had been gained through influence on Antechamber book bannings and through bookstores large enough to ignore Hoegbotton intimidation. However, mere months before my enlightening trip to Morrow, F&L had managed to take over its governance from a failed monarchy, in the process issuing a decree banning all Hoegbotton agents and imports from the city. Hoegbotton found itself unable to mount an effective counteroffensive. {In part, F&L took advantage of H&S’ temporary shift of attention to trains and railways, a fixation that emanated from Henry Hoegbotton, the hoary but clever patriarch of the Hoegbotton clan. Henry Hoegbotton—of whom not enough has been written; if not for my present circumstances, I would attempt the biography myself—had hoped for an era of economic domination over all of the South, to the very tip of the last atoll of the Southern Isles, and all of the North, including the frozen Skamoo in their spackly ice huts. Many experts speculated that Hoegbotton might then wage “a holy war of commerce” against the closed markets of the Kalif’s empire. However, such a vision required Hoegbotton to overextend itself so much that it became unable to effectively respond to a threat like being banned from Morrow.}
This new vision on the part of F&L explained the large numbers of their operatives that had dominated my view from the window of my {comfortable, furnished} prison{-like} cell. Emboldened by victory at home, F&L sought to bring their trade downriver, staking their chances not only on their diversification into a superior brand of typewriter, the Lewden Model II—a version of which I am typing on now and which I swear and sweat by; if only this fungus would not keep nibbling on the accursed keys—and long distance telephone services. In fact, many infiltrations of Ambergris began as the result of F&L agents installing telephone poles: not only did F&L inject liquid explosives into hollow portions of these poles, but the installers themselves formed a secret army of espionage in the city. F&L also funneled more and more funds into Ambergrisian banks, hoping to create influence in those quarters.
Hoegbotton, naturally, resisted, and matters came to a head over Sophia’s Island, a curling finger of an atoll located north of Ambergris in the middle of the River Moth. The “Sophia” of Sophia’s Island was none other than the wife of Ambergris’ founder, Manzikert I—they had used it as a summer residence many hundreds of years ago. Now, it occupied a strategic position in the northern trade routes: whoever controlled the island could levy all sorts of tariffs, and use the island as a storeroom to boot. An obscure lease on the island had been given to the rulers of Morrow, the Menite Kings, as a thank-you for their aid to Ambergris during the Silence. Despite the fall of the Menite Kings, the lease had never been withdrawn, and Frankwrithe & Lewden used it as pretext to lay claim to the island, with predictable results. The conflict that had begun on the island had spread to Ambergris, and had probably been an excuse to initiate open warfare.