The Black Opera (92 page)

“What did he mean?” Conrad asked, out loud. “Luigi of all people doesn't expect to see us in Heaven!”

Tullio snorted. “I don't think we have time to worry about it right now—!”

The big man staggered as one of the panicking crowd of the living barged into him. He shouldered the man off effortlessly, and turned his body to shelter Paolo-Isaura.

The ash-cloud of the retreating dead began to move with something other than eerie unison. Conrad watched the animating principle that had spoken through them ebb, visibly, like the tide of the sea.

Scuffles of pushing and shoving broke out on the tiers. Prince's Men—churchmen—Ferdinand's soldiers—

Conrad shaded his eyes with his arm, looking up the rake of the steps to the silhouetted arches. Dust condensed there, hiding the upper reaches of the amphitheatre from view, and dulling the pearly sky.

“We're losing the arena miracle,” Conrad deduced.

Tullio's elbow dug into his ribs.

Movement caught his eye at the far north-eastern end of the amphitheatre.

The concrete of the arena floor buckled, both sides of the dividing access passage, like a book with a ripped spine.

“Shite!”

Dust stung his eyes. Through blurring vision he saw underground brick walls, and supporting subterranean arches. Chambers that might have been long-hidden gladiator-barracks and beast-pits exposed, at that far end of the amphitheatre—

Not far enough away!

The arena floor near the south-eastern entrance collapsed. A whorl of gases shot up from the corridor below—a gulf two storeys deep.

Light gleamed up. The edges of the broken amphitheatre floor stood out boldly black.

In the depths, something glowed orange and red.

Conrad took a step forward before he could stop himself; his stomach lurching with terror. Once experienced, the distinctive smell is not mistakable for anything else.
Sulphur and molten basalt!

“Scheisse!”
Conrad spun round.

No help to be had
.

He instantly saw that. Luigi, gone—almost
all
of the Returned Dead seemingly gone—

He breathed in, unguarded. A throat-choking smell seared his gullet. He couldn't get out the oaths he wanted for coughing.

“I agree!” Tullio evidently took the tone for the meaning. “Let's go!”

Paolo-Isaura nodded at the centre of the arena. One single figure was not a part of the running, panicking crowds. She paced forward, almost at the lip of the sunken underground passage, and Conrad met her eyes without any sense of shock.

Of course. Leonora
.

“What do we do about her?” Paolo muttered hesitantly.

Tullio snapped,
“Nothing
. We can't reach her. You can see that!”

Conrad ran forward.

True, we can't reach her
. For the same reason we've been safe over here; she can't reach us.

No safe way over that gulf—but when did Nora ever care about safe?

Not knowing if he faced someone who might kill him, or someone he must rescue, he slowed and picked his way between rubble across the arena, completely focused. Men coughed on both sides of the arena as they shouted would-be orders. Two women from the chorus clung to each other and cried. A dozen men he recognised from the Prince's ranks sprinted for the north-eastern rake of stone seating, and were driven back by a whirl of volcanic dust. All of it existed before Conrad's eyes—and meant nothing.

Nora!

Footsteps scraped the stone.

Roberto paced beside him; matching him stride for stride. The bearded man's gaze was fixed on Leonora.

“Be careful of her.” Conrad couldn't find the right words that would not offend the proud man. “She—This must have been a shock to her.”

“…Yes.” Roberto did no more than nod.

Conrad found himself slowing, despite himself. A mound of ancient fluted pillars lay to their right, rolled out of the way after falling from the rim of the amphitheatre, some time in the last two thousand years.

Picking his way between marble rubble, he had a momentary light-headed fantasy of using a pillar to cross the underground gulf like a fallen tree.
It would take a Titan's strength to even shift one!

He looked up as the ground cleared and he could walk.

The impromptu stage-area on the far side was deserted now, except for Nora.

Her gaze was entirely inward.

An open pit broke the surface of the arena, not ten feet to one side of her; where the ancient Romans would have winched up wild beasts to loose on their gladiators. She took no apparent notice of her danger as she walked past it, towards them.

Towards the empty gap that divided them; the unguarded drop into the sunken access passage.

“Get away from there!”

He made fists, aching to shout but only daring to raise his voice slightly in case he panicked her:

“Nora!”

Roberto's voice came almost in unison.
“Leonora!”

Is she desolated that her ‘god' has left her?

Conrad scowled.

Is she
listening?

The earth jerked, laterally.

A fountain of bricks, stone blocks, earth, trailing grass, roots, and concrete flew up from the gap in the arena floor.

The ground grated underfoot. Debris thumped down with unimpressive bumps that could crack a skull, or a spine—

“Nora!”
Conrad bellowed.

Pozzuoli concrete pushed up under his feet. It sent him sprawling down on his back in ash and gravel—
away
from the open access passage.

Conrad choked on sulphur, and dragged himself up on hands and knees. He could get no further.

Through streaming eyes, he saw lava glimmer in the underground Roman passage.

Something
sheered
, deep below; Conrad felt it through his grazed fingers.

Roberto Capiraso threw himself towards Leonora's lone figure, as if he could leap the thirty feet of open space between them.

“Roberto!” Conrad's mind chittered
No! Not possible! No!

Vibration juddered through the ground.

The tumble of fallen pillars broke apart and
rolled
.

Marble cylinders skidded in terrible slow deliberation. Roberto lurched forward, rising earth pushing him into a staggering run. Fluted stone shook up ash from the arena floor, billowing in choking clouds.

Roberto vanished in the ash.

Conrad scrambled up. One foot twisted under him.

Leonora stepped up to the crumbling edge of the sunken subterranean passage, close enough that, if she held her hand out in front of her, it would be over the drop.

“Nora—” Intended as a shout, it came out a whisper.

The underground corridor split.

Cracks raced south-east, tearing across the arena floor. Tiers of seating shattered; brick arches exploded. It split north-west—

The arena floor ripped open under Leonora's feet.

She dropped like a stone statue into the depths.

P
ain and grief wrenched at him so hard that he couldn't breathe the iron-tasting air.

Sweating, he tried to push himself to his feet, and failed. His belly twisted. He knelt. Furnace heat blasted up, half-blinding him.

Conrad stripped off his coat, and wrapped it around his arm to shield his face. Holding it tight against his dry, burning eyes, he groped forward on hands and knees. Closer to the cleft splitting the arena floor.

His hands encountered nothing of Leonora, neither herself or—he swallowed, hard—her body.

Why should it? I
saw
her fall
.

The sides of the cleft dropped thirty feet—to a heaving bulge of black lava. Rising gases made his eyes sting and blur.

The unbearable heat pushed him into a backward crawl. Conrad crabbed his way away from the cleft's edge, spasming with coughs.

His face was wet, he dumbly realised; although it dried almost immediately in the heat.

The pain of her absence reduced him to a dumb animal. If he could have bitten off a limb to free himself from its steel fangs, he would have done it instantly.

Stronger tears ran down his face, hot droplets trickling from the point of his chin and spattering in the grey ash.

He felt every muscle and ligament tense, pull taut—the impulse to spring up and run into the gap in the earth thrumming through him.

What would it be? The pain of a fall, moments of agony before molten stone burns me to death? That's
nothing—

The earth buckled and threw him into the air.

He fell flat on rubble, breath knocked out of his chest. As he landed, his foot hit something that gave.

A deep male scream cut off abruptly, in choking coughs.

I recognise that voice—!

“Roberto!”

Fallen stone cylinders became clear through swirling dust—ancient, lichen-covered pillars, all around him, tumbled like children's skittles.

Roberto Capiraso slumped against a section of fluted marble. Ash made his
hair and beard all but white: he looked sixty.

That's not just ash. He saw it too
.

Conrad pushed himself up into a crouch, the shaking ground making him stagger. Broken concrete scraped his arms. He was in his shirt-sleeves, coat discarded at some unnoticed moment, and now irrecoverably gone, he realised.

“Are you hurt?” He was not sure which part of the Conte di Argente he had stumbled over.
His leg?

Conrad groped closer, supporting himself on the fallen pillar. At first glance the other man didn't look physically damaged.

His eyes were dark and stunned.

“She's dead.” Roberto Capiraso stared at the cleft through ash rising now that the opera miracle lapsed. “No one could survive—not even Nora…”

“The Dead don't come back a second time. Not even her.” Conrad tried to keep his voice level. It betrayed him, cracking on the last word.

A bead of light glinted on Roberto's face. Conrad saw water overflow, suddenly, and cut lines in the dirt on the man's cheeks.

The Count reached out and wrapped his square-fingered hand around Conrad's arm. Conrad gripped Roberto's shoulder.

He felt himself entirely understood: met and matched in searing grief.

Conrad coughed, inhaling sulphurous gases. Recovering, he lifted his head, squinting around.
There are the living, as well as the twice dead.

“Tullio! Paolo!”

Two dark figures emerged from the sulphurous steam. Tullio thumped down beside him.
“There
you—”

“He's hurt. Check him. Where's Paolo?”

“Here!”

Hidden behind Tullio's bulk, Conrad realised. The ex-sergeant began gently to feel Roberto's body for injuries—first the skull, then the trunk, then the limbs. Paolo made her own tactile examination of Conrad.

“Nora's dead!” Conrad blurted out. He buttoned his waistcoat with shaking fingers, and couldn't look his sister in the face.

I still have no idea if she thinks I'm a fool
—was
a fool!—for loving Nora
.

Paolo stared over at the shaking crevasse, face whitish-yellow under the coating of dust. “I
saw
someone—That was—Was that her? Oh, Corrado—!”

A cone of ash emerged on the lip of the chasm, growing visibly.

“We have to leave!” Wide-eyed, she caught Conrad by his torn shirt-sleeve. “Or we'll die too!”

Tullio knelt back from efficiently removing one of the Count's army boots, and slitting the uniform trousers to the knee with his pocket folding razor. “We
got a problem.”

A raised bump low down on Roberto's exposed shin did not break the skin, Conrad saw, but it was already swelling.

“Fracture,” Tullio assessed. “Other leg hurts him—”

Roberto Capiraso's head went back at the touch. Conrad saw the muscles at the hinge of his jaw knot.

“—But I don't
think
it's a break. Likely a crack partway through the bone. Corrado, he can't walk on either of 'em.”

Conrad managed to meet Roberto's desolate look.

Neither of us care about this, not at this moment, but—

“Did the pillars fall on you?” Conrad asked. “One cracked against me.”

It would have been a glancing blow, or the man's legs would both be crushed.
Along with the rest of him
. Conrad swore.

“Leave me.”

The tone was uncompromisingly practical. Conrad did not have to look closely to perceive Roberto thought it a providential excuse.