I got unsteadily to my feet. My attacker had raced coolly across the catwalk and now stood above the wings. He seemed to be staring over the stage to the far side, and I followed his gaze up to where a ladder led to an access hatch in the roof. There was no way across but the pipes and ropes from which the lights and scenic flats were suspended, but I knew what he planned to do.
I shook off my daze and watched, amazed, as he ventured out onto one of the long girders. It could be no more than two inches wide, and he spread his arms like a high-wire artist as he took a step out over the void.
He was mad.
But even as I thought it, I found my feet were following him, along the gantry by the theater wall, then up to the same impossibly narrow beam that led out and across the stage so far below. On either side were ropes and cables, some weighted with what looked like sandbags, moored to cleats set into the roofing struts, but they were all impossibly far away. The only way after him was the way he had gone.
I glanced down and saw them now, the upturned, horrified faces of the actors, dreamlike in their makeup. The masked man was already halfway across, perfectly poised, head level. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew they were set on some fixed point in front of him. That’s what you do when you are up high. You pick a spot and focus on it as if you’ve anchored cable there.…
I put my right foot onto the girder, wishing to all the gods that I were wearing my own work boots and not those wretched heels. Then my left. I extended my arms as he had done and took my first step out into space.
I heard a groan from below, and movement, as if other people were coming onstage now to see what was going on above them, but I could not look down. He was in front of me, blocking the fixed point I would have focused on, and for a second, I felt the unfamiliar swell of vertigo, a dizzying sickness in my head and stomach. I wobbled, instinctively taking another step, and another.
The movement restored my equilibrium, but he had reached the end of the girder now, and as he leapt clear, he paused to look back. He raised his hand, two fingers raised this time.
A second chance?
I focused on them, wondering what he meant, but then his other hand came up and I saw the dull gleam of a pistol. He lowered one finger so that only the index was raised, and wagged it back and forth.
No second chance. You should have known.
I flinched as the shot was fired, catching the flash of the thing before the plume of smoke, even before the bang. It missed me, but the shock had distracted me, and now I was falling. Slowly at first, just tipping to the side, but the movement was unstoppable.
One of the ropes hung just above my head. With what little momentum I could manage, I leapt straight up, grabbing wildly for the rope, reaching back as I failed to compensate for my lean.
The rope’s knotted end brushed my forearm and swung agonizingly away. I started to drop just as it swung back. I grabbed it. The jolt threatened to tear my shoulder from its socket, but I hung there. Just for a second. Then rusted staples were popping from the beam above and the rope tore free.
Someone below screamed, and I plummeted toward the stage.
CHAPTER
19
BUT I DIDN’T JUST fall. Halfway down, all the slack went out of the rope. The abrupt halt in my momentum almost tore it from my hands. I felt my palms burn, but I clung on, eyes watering, body shrieking its defiance. And then I was dropping to earth once more, my weight insufficient to match the sandbag counterbalance that shot up the far wall toward the pulley in the roof.
I hit the stage hard, but landed feet first, knees bent and rolling out of the impact. The shock was immense, a juddering crash that ran through every joint and left me breathless, but I thanked the gods I had landed on the sprung timber of the stage and not on concrete or cobbles.
For a long moment, I just lay there, not unconscious, but processing the pain in my legs and shoulder, unwilling even to try to move till I was sure nothing was broken.
Around me, it was chaos: screaming and shouting coming from all over the theater. The ring immediately around me was all actors in their finery and surreal, painted faces. I stayed where I was, cautiously testing each muscle and bone with fractional flexes, managing to focus so precisely that I was oblivious to what those peering at me were saying.
Then a man in uniform pushed his way through the crowd. Firm hands seized my arms and dragged me roughly up from the stage. I tried to protest, but his voice silenced me.
“I’m arresting you for the theft of a necklace, property of the Dowager Lady Hamilton.”
*
I WAS SITTING ON the wooden bench on which I had spent the night, my ankles chained together, my feet bare. The brick cell was painted in off-white gloss and smelled of sawdust, urine, and vomit. There was a single narrow window high in the wall, barred. The blue door was reinforced with steel bands and plates. At head height was a hatch, about six inches long. It opened and someone looked in.
“Remain seated as we enter,” said a man’s voice, “or you will be subdued.”