Suddenly the impending storm broke; the orchestra was off at full speed and volume, Arla’s cello nearly drowned in a tumult of sound. Ereza watched, wondering why it didn’t sound pretty anymore. Surely you could make something stormy that was also good to listen to. Besides, she wanted to hear Arla, not all these other people. Arla was leaning into her bowing; Ereza knew what that would mean at home. But the cello couldn’t dominate this group, not by sheer volume. The chaos grew and grew, very much like a summer storm, and exploded in a series of crashes; the man with the drums was banging away on them.
The music changed again, leaving chaos behind. Arla, she noted, had a moment to rest, and wiped her sweaty face. She had a softer expression now and gazed at the other string players, across from her. Ereza wondered what she thought at times like this. Was she thinking ahead to her own next move? Listening to the music itself? What?
Brasses blared, a wall of sound that seemed to sweep the lighter strings off the stage. Ereza liked horns as a rule, but these seemed pushy and arrogant, not merely jubilant. She saw Arla’s arm move, and the cello answered the horns like a reproving voice. The brasses stuttered and fell silent while the cello sang on. Now Arla’s face matched the music, serenity and grace. Other sections returned, but the cello this time rose over them, collecting them into a seamless web of harmony.
When the conductor cut off the final chord, Ereza realized she’d been holding her breath and let it out with a whoof. She would be able to tell Arla how much it meant to listen to her and mean it. She was no musical expert, and knew it, but she could see why her sister was considered an important cultural resource. Not for the first time, she breathed a silent prayer of thanks that it had been her own less-talented right arm she’d lost to trauma. When her new prosthesis came in, she’d be able to retrain for combat; even without it, there were many things she could do in the military. But the thought of Arla without an arm was obscene.
The rehearsal continued to a length that bored Ereza and numbed her ears. She could hear no difference between the first and fifth repetition of something, even though the conductor, furious with first the woodwinds and then the violas, threw a tantrum about it and explained in detail what he wanted. Arla caused no more trouble—in fact, the conductor threw her a joke once, at which half the cello section burst out laughing. Ereza didn’t catch it. At the end, he dismissed the orchestra and told Arla to stay. She nodded, and carried her cello over to its case; the conductor made notes on his papers and shuffled through them. While the others straggled offstage, she wiped the cello with a cloth and put the bow neatly into its slot, then closed the case and latched it.
Ereza wondered if she should leave now, but she had no idea where Arla would go next, and she wanted to talk to her. She waited, watching the conductor’s back, the other musicians, Arla’s care with her instrument. Finally all the others had gone, and the conductor turned to Arla.
“Miss Fennaris, I know this is a difficult time for you—” In just such a tone had Ereza’s first flight officer reamed her out for failing to check one of the electronic subsystems in her ship. Her own difficult time had been a messy love affair; she wondered why Arla wasn’t past that. Arla wisely said nothing. “You are the soloist, and that’s quite a responsibility under the circumstances—” Arla nodded while Ereza wondered again what circumstances. “We have to know you will be able to perform; this is not a trivial performance.”
“I will,” Arla said. She had been looking at the floor, but now she raised her eyes to the conductor’s face—and past them, to Ereza, standing in the shadows. She turned white, as if she’d lost all her blood, and staggered.
“What—?” The conductor swung around then and saw that single figure in the gloom at the back of the hall. “Who’s there? Come down here, damn you!”
Ereza shrugged to herself as she came toward the lighted stage. She did not quite limp, though the knee still argued about downward slopes. She watched her footing, with glances to Arla who now stood panting like someone who had run a race. What ailed the child—did she think her sister was a ghost? Surely they’d told her things were coming along. The conductor, glaring and huffing, she ignored. She’d had permission, from the mousy little person at the front door, and she had not made one sound during rehearsal.
“Who told you you could barge in here—!” the conductor began. Ereza gave him her best smile, as she saw recognition hit. She and Arla weren’t identical, but the family resemblance was strong enough.
“I’m Ereza Fennaris, Arla’s sister. I asked out front, and they said she was in rehearsal, but if I didn’t interrupt—”
“You just did.” He was still angry but adjusting to what he already knew. Wounded veteran, another daughter of a powerful family, his soloist’s twin sister… there were limits to what he could do. To her, at least; she hoped he wouldn’t use this as an excuse to bully Arla.
She smiled up at her sister. “Hello again, Arlashi! You didn’t come to see me, so I came to see you.”
“Is she why—did you see her back there when you—?” The conductor had turned away from Ereza to her sister.
“No.” Arla drew a long breath. “I did not see her until she came nearer. I haven’t seen her since—”
“Sacred Name of God! Artists!” The conductor threw his baton to the floor and glared from one to the other. “A concert tomorrow night, and you had to come now!” That for Ereza. “Your own sister wounded, and you haven’t seen her?” That for Arla. He picked up his baton and pointed it at her. “You thought it would go away, maybe? You thought you could put it directly into the music, poof, without seeing her?”
“I thought—if I could get through the concert—”
“Well, you can’t. You showed us that, by God.” He whirled and pointed his finger at Ereza. “You—get up here! I can’t be talking in two directions.”
Ereza stifled an impulse to giggle. He acted as if he had real authority; she could just see him trying that tone on a platoon commander and finding out that he didn’t. She picked her way to a set of small steps up from the floor of the hall and made her way across the stage, past the empty chairs. Arla stared at her, still breathing too fast. She would faint if she kept that up, silly twit.
“What a mess!” the conductor was saying. “And what an ugly thing that is—is that the best our technology can do for you?” He was staring at her temporary prosthesis, with its metal rods and clips.
“Tactful, aren’t you?” She wasn’t exactly angry, not yet, but she was moving into a mood where anger would be easy. He would have to realize that while he could bully Arlashi, he couldn’t bully her. If being blown apart, buried for days, and reassembled with bits missing hadn’t crushed her, no mere musician could.
“This is not about tact,” the conductor said. “Not that I’d expect you to be aware of that…. Arriving on the eve of this concert to upset my soloist, for instance, is hardly an expression of great tact.”
Ereza resisted an urge to argue. “This is a temporary prosthesis,” she said, holding it up. “Right now, as you can imagine, they’re short-staffed; it’s going to take longer than it would have once to get the permanent one. However, it gives me some practice in using one.”