FEBRUARY 25TH AT THE CRYSTAL CAVE
Saturday was their busiest night, reliably. Not everyone who came to the Crystal Cave had to be up and about at a particular time in the morning. It was even less true on a Saturday. Magical folk were also less likely than the average Londoner to need to turn up at church. Now, she was peering out through the curtain from the back stairs, getting a feel of the crowd. Three sets, and Madam Helena had held Vega’s place in the rotation until a little later in the evening.
Vega honestly preferred other nights much more. Saturdays, people were often more interested in being seen than in enjoying the music. Their dancing had a frenetic quality that didn’t give any gifts. And it was definitely a night that more of the questionable potions and little packets of powders came out.
Not that Vega was a prude about that sort of thing. She didn’t indulge herself, at least not anything made for general use. It wouldn’t agree with her. She also couldn’t deny that people sometimes needed an escape or a few hours with a lot less pain. But they did not need to do that at a table, taking up space other people might have enjoyed. Or, what seemed like half the time, making a scene that made things complicated.
Potions and powders might also have been a contributing factor in at least two-thirds of the times she’d had someone awkwardly declaiming his love, or occasionally her love. The variation was in where; outside the dressing room, the stage door, or flinging themselves on the ground by her feet. There wasn’t a great deal of actual risk from any of that sort. But at best, it was uncomfortable for everyone. At worst, it meant it took her forever to get home. Not her idea of a good time.
As Saturday evenings went, this one seemed on the better side, at least to start out. She spotted several people in the crowd she’d not seen for a bit. She nodded at— what was his name? He was one of Celaeno’s kin, name began with an R. He had his wife next to him, and he was someone she never thought would settle down. He knew who and what she was, just like she knew that about him. But he also made a point of tipping generously and being decent to the staff.
They had a table for two tucked against the wall. Vega had gathered from the front of the house that his wife— Beatrice, that was the name— didn’t like a crowd. But what was his name? Robin. Of course it was. He’d go around chatting with half a dozen tables between performances and come back to his wife. Vega found it charming, in a sea of men who’d glance away at someone new as soon as take a breath.
There’d been some fuss about him a few years ago, but she’d been entirely busy with her own life. And besides, the Celaeno line, that happened more often than they’d admit to when they were older. Flighty, the lot of them, in a way that would be much easier to be around if they’d admit it.
That, though, got her considering the rest of the room. Most of the people there, she didn’t know, but she’d seen them before. It was a good range of ages, mostly twenties up to fifties, a sprinkling older. More than a few being generous about it, bottles for the table, or a round of cocktails. That’d be excellentall round. Money spent on food and drink kept the whole place going.
As she parted the curtains and strolled out, she felt the flow of the room around her. Each of the charms was like a bead, its own unique weight and heft against skin and cloth. There were the lights, there were the acoustic charms, there were the enchantments that made the band sound even better than they did normally. The illusions, of course, for the second and third set tonight.
Vega had settled on jazz standards to lead off. She’d save the more complicated stories for a little later in the evening. Second set, rather than the third, probably, but as always, she’d play that by ear a bit. The joy of doing this here and now was that she and the band knew each other, and they were prepared for whichever order she called the music in. Being trusted to read the room, that was something she’d not been sure she’d manage when she started singing. And of course, if Vega could keep it up consistently, it would make her a singer in high demand.
Talent was one thing. Trained skill was another. Being easy to work with, and good at everything that came with being a singer? That was a great deal more rare a commodity. It was also the part she had the hardest time explaining to her family, who did not entirely understand that process.
Alcyone’s line understood the dance, the procession of stars and planets through the sky and the seasons. They understood that no one person could be everything in the world. Each had skills and talents and an individual gift. But they were not made, on the whole, for the more intimate interplay of a performer shaping magic with her voice or her sheer force of presence.
The first set, everything clicked. The band was in grand form. Her voice was smooth, just the right amount of smoky purr for the club. People listened, or danced slowly, rather than chattering. When she was done with the set, she wriggledher fingers. “Back in a bit, darlings. Do give the band every attention. Weren’t they fabulous?” Vega heard the conversation— and the drink orders— pick up as she strolled back through between the tables, letting the dance mistresses pull men out onto the floor. Including that Robin, apparently.
The second set began much the same, though this time she was changing up the music. A quick conference with Ernest, the bandleader, they’d agreed to spend a little time in some ballads and lore. Someone who’d learned some of the border ballads from an old Scottish granny might have blinked, but she found they made grand songs for a nightclub.
They began with “King Orfeo”. There were varieties of this, going back centuries, seven hundred years or more. The one she sang was very much about a love lost and found again. It had the shiver of the Fatae magic, seeing as it was all about a king losing his wife to the king of Faerie, and waiting for her. Then he had to be brave and skilled enough to claim her back.
Vega most loved the verses about Orfeo. He was a talented singer and musician, a bard in the truest sense. And he sang, first a song of joy, then a song of healing, and then he’s asked what boon he’ll take. His wife, of course, whether the song names her Isabel or Heurodis, or some other form. It gave Vega such a broad canvas to use. Her voice rolling through the ornamentation, leaning into the magic and charm of it. Oh, she sang entirely within the bounds of both Albion’s law and the Pact. But she could give everyone a frisson of older times, when the Fatae walked and danced and whispered through the land.
From there, she slid into “Thomas the Rhymer”, which had more scope to it in some ways, a variety of speaking parts to distinguish from each other. The band helped there, instruments sliding in and out depending on who was speaking. The illusions began here, too, gesturing at a tree beside her, or the roads spreading out. High, low, and the narrow onebetween. It wasn’t until she was most of the way through that she looked out into the crowd and her eyes landed, as if drawn there, on that American. Thomas Vandermeer.
His attention was focused on her, uncomfortably so, for all she was up in the front of the room wanting that, asking for that. It took her a second to realise that she’d felt this before. The previous week, the way she’d felt someone had been looking at her. This had the same echo to it, faint elfin horns she could hear only as a whisper against the other music. Same person, same magic. Different from the first meeting, somehow, but the same as that sense of being stalked by a curious hunter.
Vega was far too much of a professional to slip, but it was a nearer thing than she wanted. She kept going, then as she drew the song to the end, she said, “Slight change of plan, do you mind? You’d all like to hear me do Tam Lin, wouldn’t you?” She turned, mouthing to the band that after that. “Lady Isabel and Twa Corbies to finish the set.” The trumpet player slipped off the dais to go tell Pasco about the change of plans. They didn’t need him until later in the song. It would take a few minutes to get to the part with the faerie queen’s trumpets announcing her procession.
Ernest raised an eyebrow, gesturing in the house code for ‘problem’. Vega shrugged slightly, hoping he’d understand. He nodded once, and then the bass picked up a travelling line of notes, steady and stable. Vega came in perfectly. “I forbid you maidens all…” She let her voice curl through the early part of the piece before they got to the complexities. A rose plucked, a consequence. Vega had always rather liked Janet. The woman had the courage of her choices. There was a lot that was good in that.
It was a song that ended in love and in making a choice. Or, perhaps, the other way round. She leaned into that, though she could feel the shivers of fear as the illusions began tobuild. There were bare trees, reaching out across the space, along the walls, looming— Pasco was extending himself— then the glimpse at horses through them. And then, of course, the transformation sequence. The last of it brought Vega down to the ground, hands pressed flat, using every trick she’d ever learned of charm and voice to project. Finally, the triumphant conclusion brought her standing again.
The applause was overwhelming for a minute or two; the band stomping. She gestured at them, bowing, unable to get her voice to work for a moment. Then she nodded, and it was on to something more pointed. “Lady Isabel” was a curious song. Also, one that made Cousins nervous, since it involved a maiden killing an elf-knight. To be fair, he’d been trying to kill her, the same way he’d killed six others. Ballads were a terrifying business. This was far easier to sing, if also less of a showpiece.
The last song, well, that was an elegy. Ravens, watching the corpse of a fallen knight, abandoned by all he’d loved and valued. It was not a merry song, not in any sense, but it was a poignant one. And in this world, where people were not yet as far from the memory of the War as they wanted, she’d found it brought strong men to tears. But they were tears in a way that did something that mattered.
When the music faded out, the last line of it, there was silence for a good count of ten. Then someone began slow applause, then more, the swelling wave of it. Vega curtsied this time, Ernest coming up beside her to take her hand, kiss it, and then escort her back to the dressing rooms.
She’d not been there for three minutes where there was one of the waiters. “Beg pardon, Miss Vega. A drink? Madam Helena’s pleased. And there’s a gentleman, sent a note.”
“Something fizzy, please, and would someone ask Madam Helena what she wants for the last set?” Then she glanced at the note, and her eyes widened.
Thomas Vandermeer had been brief, but there was a sharp blade there. In plain block capitals, he wrote, “A private club indeed! I’m delighted to have had a chance to hear you sing. Do permit me to call. I believe we have interests in common.” Just his initials, as if he were entirely confident she’d know who he was. She did. That was the problem. And it was a problem she did not know how to handle. There were far too many unknowns. It was like diving into a piece of music from so far back that measures and time signatures were gestures rather than anything predictable.
She didn’t know quite why it made her so wary, save that she was convinced he had been there the previous Saturday, lying in wait. He’d been brash, certainly, but it was a known form of brashness. Vega was a singer in nightclubs. People wanting to presume and get a bit of her time and attention were common enough. Few of them worried her like this did. And there were, in truth, only four magical clubs with a focus on the performance of music, beyond the band for dancing. It made sense that someone inclined to a night out would come to the Crystal Cave sooner than later.
When the waiter came back— Roger, that was his name— he knocked. “Drink, Miss Vega. Madam Helena says, if you don’t mind, leave it there for the night. And she asked if you want a hand getting out without whoever it was with the note spotting you.”
