“No,” agreed Emilia, “but then, someone who desires to keep you quiet is the surest sign that you’ve something important to say, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you agree, Elizabeth?”
There was something strange about all this, and Skinner suddenly felt like an animal wandering about in a forest full of traps. Pits and snares all around her, disguised beneath the impeccable camouflage of polite conversation. “I…suppose.”
“Of course it is,” said Emilia, quietly. “If you want to say only what everyone would like you to say, then it hardly needs to be said at all. Maybe that’s why we’re drawn to it. The forbidden ideas, I mean.”
Forbidden. Skinner felt a knot in her stomach. Is she talking about the Sciences? Surely…surely not. They don’t expect me to participate in heresy…
“Oh, but Miss Elizabeth knows all about things forbidden,” Emilia said lightly. “Yes?”
“I think that, perhaps, I ought to leave,” Skinner said, as she stood. “I doubt very much you’ll find me amenable to…what I suspect you have in mind.”
“Oh, dear, do sit down. I assure you that you will be amenable to the idea. I know, because I am certain you’ve already been a part of it.”
“I…what?”
“Please. Sit.”
Skinner did, and wracked her brain. What could Emilia mean? Had someone been implicating her in heresy?
“You know, Mr. Sitwell hasn’t been very popular since his first play. His later works seem to lack a certain…something.”
Oh. Skinner realized at once. That. “Yes. Gratitude, perhaps?”
“Gratitude, that’s lovely. Did you know, Nora,” Emilia said to her friend, “that a selection of the Bone-Collector’s Daughter was published in The Observer fully a month before the play opened?”
“Why,” said Nora Feathersmith, with obviously feigned surprise, “I had no idea!”
“It’s true! And in it, he credited a collaborator, who must remain nameless…oh, why was that? I can’t remember the exact words…”
“For propriety’s sake,” Skinner responded. “Which was a load of horse… well, nonsense. Sitwell had been looking to dump his…collaborator… ever since they’d started working together. Probably because he felt she threatened him and his over-blown ego.”
“She?” Nora Feathersmith asked. “That seems a little peculiar. Woman aren’t permitted to write for the stage. Even during the war, they never let us do that.”
“Did I say ‘she’?” Skinner replied. “Must have been a slip of the tongue.”
“Oh, come now,” Emilia put in. “This is a private booth. I assure you, there is no one to overhear us. Nora, did you know, I found out who Mr. Sitwell’s nameless collaborator was?”
“Really!” There was that feigned surprise again, and Skinner realized she was well and truly snared. “Who was it?”
“Why, a woman working for the Royal Coroners by the name of Elizabeth Skinner.”
“My goodness!” Nora said. “Is it true, Elizabeth? Did you help him write The Bone-Collector’s Daughter?”
For most of her life, Skinner had felt herself a woman with a calm disposition, not given to flights of aggravation, or suffering from an excess of pride or choler. If she had seethed inwardly when the Committee on Moral Responsibility had taken her job, she had displayed outwards nothing but good grace. If she was furious at Edelred Gorgon-Ennering-Crabtree for forcing her to abandon Beckett in that slaughterhouse, she had presented a face as cold as a marble statue.
And yet. Perhaps she’d never discussed something so close to her heart. Perhaps her tongue was loosened by the wine. Whatever the case, she found herself unable to restrain the bitterness in her voice. “Help? Help him write it? You seem to have Mr. Sitwell confused with someone with talent. I wrote that play, and Bertram struggled to drag down every word. If I hadn’t needed him to see it produced, I’d have kicked him to the curb after he crossed out a single line. The man can’t string ten words together to order breakfast, and can’t so much as touch a sentence without turning it to gibberish. Word and fuck, half of this play,” she gestured towards the stage, where the inanely innocuous Alas, My Love had recommenced, “is plagiarized from Henri Montcour’s 1787 version. All he’s done is translate it badly from the Sarein and then cram it with his own personal brand of prattling nursery rhymes.”
There was silence for a moment, and the lead actor’s voice reached them in the box. “The king dost keep a revel here tonight, we shallst run first, or else take flight!”
Emilia Vie-Gorgon and Nora Feathersmith at once broke into helpless laughter. Skinner compressed her lips to a thin line, and then felt herself compelled to join them. It took several minutes and an entire carafe of wine before they were able to regain control of themselves. Their hysterics were of such a fortitude that the poor actors, still valiantly trying to maintain the seriousness of the scene, were obliged to stop and start from the top no fewer than three times.
“Ah,” Emilia sighed, “Nora, I do believe we’ve found the person that we’re looking for. What do you think, Elizabeth?”
“I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.”
“Goodness, you’re right,” Emilia said, as she filled Skinner’s wineglass. “I’ve gotten ahead of myself. We’d like you to write a play.”
“Yes?” Skinner said, gulping down some more wine. “Any play, or a particular one?”
Nora laughed again. “We’ve one in mind, actually.”
“Do you know,” Emilia asked, “Theocles?”
“Oh my,” Skinner whispered. “You are a pair of wicked young ladies.” Theocles was a 15thcentury poem about the second Emperor of the continent-Theocles the Tall, who had assassinated Agon Diethes and usurped the throne. He’d presided over a particularly oppressive regime, and had begun a foolish, ill-advised war with Thranc. His martial failures had led to the Second Reconciliation of the Powers, which had broken the Empire into its component parts and seen Theocles deposed and executed.
The parallels were close enough to the reign of the current emperor that Skinner could have found herself arrested for writing it even if she weren’t a woman. The poem itself was on the Empire’s black-list. And these two young ladies, daughters of two of the most rich and respected families in the Empire, wanted…what did they want? To see it onstage? To get themselves arrested?
“No one will do it. There’s not a producer in Trowth that would touch a play like that with a ten foot pole.”
“Oh,” said Emilia, with that enigmatic sound of a smile. “We’ll find someone.”
“They should do it here,” put in Nora, and her grin sounded fearsome. “Right at the Royal.”
“Never,” Skinner replied. “They never will.”
“It’s a wonderful idea, Nora,” Emilia said. “We shall arrange to have it performed right here at the Royal Theater.”
“How do you plan to do that, exactly?” Skinner was still grinning around her wine, not entirely convinced the two girls were serious.
“Didn’t you know, darling?” Emilia Vie-Gorgon asked her. “I own the Royal.”
Eight
It was a common misconception among many of the Trowthi people that the strangling bureaucracy of the Emperor and his assorted Ministries was something that had been inflicted on them. No sooner, for instance, had the Committee for Public Safety been dissolved than the Committee on Moral Responsibility had replaced it. The pressgangs had been dismissed, and almost immediately the gendarmeries monopolized law enforcement. In fact, much to the bitter resentment of the opinion-makers, editors, and columnists of the broadsheets, many of the men in the new committees were the very same ones who had been unemployed when the old committees were extinguished.