Death At The Opera - 3
Milo emerged from the stairwell and stealthed down the corridor. He knew the front section of the opera house was for the guests and general staff so it made sense to him that talents like Madeline Keen would have a private room to prepare somewhere here in the back area. He just hoped it wouldn’t be heavily guarded.
The floors were blanketed in a beautiful red carpet and the walls elegantly draped in delicately woven blue and gold tapestries, the imperial colors. It was a beautiful building but right now the color scheme just made him feel like the eyes of the kaiser himself were gazing down upon him.
He froze when he suddenly heard a door open.
“Yeah, got it.” He heard a young man say somewhere up ahead.
Milo snuck forward and peeked past a corner. There he saw a young human man closing a large set of double wooden doors. He then turned to walk the other direction, away from Milo, with an empty try tucked under his arm. Milo instantly noticed that he wasn’t dressed like the staff, he was in costume. This had to mean the dressing rooms were behind those double doors. There was every possibility that on the other side he’d find a whole cavalcade of actors and performers, but he was running out of time. He had to risk it.
“Authorized Personnel Only” said a large sign that hung over the double doors.
Milo took a deep breath and placed his long ear up against the wood. He heard some faint voices but they seemed distant. It was good enough for him.
He gripped the door handle and pulled one of the doors outward. Behind it he found a long brick walled hallway with numerous doors lining each side. On the far end of the hallway he saw an open doorway where he briefly saw a halfling woman disappear out of view. It looked as if she was hastily putting on a dress.
“Here goes nothing.” He said to himself as he entered.
The first set of doors he passed by had small notice boards with names written on them. He quickly surmised that these must be the actors using the rooms to get dressed and prepare. Now that he was in there he could hear more voices emerging from within the various rooms. People talking, gossiping, arguing. It was clear that this troupe of actors was a lively one. But one room had a distinctly prominent and beautiful voice singing within it, and as Milo approached he saw that it only had one name on its board. “Madeline Keen.”
Milo could see so many ways for this to go wrong, but he had gotten this far. Only a few more steps and he and River would be all set to start a new life away from Lexingrad.
He gingerly pulled on the handle, the door opened and he snuck inside.
Within he found one wall almost completely obscured by flowers that had been sent to miss Keen from her admirers. One wall had a large closet next to a desk that was adorned with a beautiful mirror that had been built into it. The desk was filled with all sorts of powders and paints that he was not too familiar with. Madeline Keen was not here. However, in an adjacent room, whose doorway was covered with a large maroon tapestry, he heard her voice.
Outside of the room the voice had been partially muffled but within he could hear it in all its splendor. She truly was a talented singer, but he had no time to admire the arts.
Across the way, resting on the desk, he saw a wooden bust that resembled the shoulders, neck and head of a person. And wrapped around the bust’s neck Milo saw the most beautiful jeweled necklace. Diamonds and sapphires all wrapped in elegant aedir silver. And one giant sapphire nestled in its center.
This was it. There was no time to waste.
Milo quietly stepped across the room and quickly began working the necklace’s fastening when he suddenly heard a door close loudly from out in the hallway. Much to his horror he suddenly realized that the actor he had seen leave previously was probably returning now. He had most likely been sent to fetch Miss Keen some refreshments, which meant Milo was rapidly running out of time.
It took a moment but Milo quickly undid the latch and removed the necklace off of the bust. But as he did it jostled and gave a faint jingling sound. And the singing stopped.
“Hello?” he heard miss Keen call out from the other side of the tapestry.
Sandwiched between two possible threats there weren’t a whole lot of options for the small goblin burglar. Except…the closet! He wasn’t sure how long he could stay hidden in there but it would have to do for now. If they opened it and found him there he’d have to make a run for it.
In one swift motion Milo opened the closet door, stepped inside and silently closed it just as someone emerged from behind the drapes.
As it turned out the closet refused to close all the way, providing Milo with a tiny slit to peer through.
There he saw a beautiful woman who had had her hair done for the performance but was only wearing a light gown. Her skin was fair and her eyes a beautiful shade of hazel. Her face was graced with a cluster of dark freckles and Milo could immediately tell that when she smiled she’d have a little dimple on her left cheek. Her ears were partially rounded but had a slight point to them, indicating traces of her elven lineage. But what surprised Milo was how regular she looked. He was certain that once her make-up had been done and her costume donned she’d look indistinguishable from the nobility, but right now she look just like the common folk.
“Hello?” she asked again just before the door opened.
Milo prepared to have the situation get diffused with the introduction of a refreshment carrying actor but instead in came…Rykard?!
Milo’s mind was sent reeling by the sight of his human conspirator opening the door and stepping in, knowing that miss Keen was about to see him. And when she did her eyes widened with shock and then…and then there was familiarity in those eyes.
“Rykard?” she asked surprised.
“Bet you didn’t think you’d see me, did you.”
Milo noticed how the woman put on a smile, sporting her dimple and all, but her body seemed to tense up. What was he doing here?
Madeline, clearly an expert in diffusing uncomfortable situations with ease, stepped closer to embrace the man.
“You shouldn’t be here, the watchers make rounds here, if they see you they’ll hurt you, or worse.”
“Oh I’m not too worried about them.”
Rykard took another step into the room as he cast an inquisitive glance at the interior of the room. He must have been searching for the necklace, the necklace which currently resided in Milo’s bag.
“Well, it’s been nice to see you but you’re gonna have to leave. I have a performance in twenty minutes.” She said with a smile, a worried smile.
They knew each other, there was an uncomfortable familiarity between them.
“You’ve come far from that tavern performer in Blackstone, you know.” Said Rykard in a surprisingly soft voice, which seemed to put Madeline at some measure of ease.
“Heh, yeah. It’s hard to truly fathom.” She said, motioning at the rest of the room. “It feels like ages since those old days, and yet it barely feels more than a day ago.”
Rykard wrenched his eyes from his search and redirected them towards her. “Do you ever miss it?”
A sad smile graced her face. “Sometimes. I miss the old faces. The hustle of scraping together enough wages to make it past the end of the month. But I’m grateful for where I am, now.”
Rykard stepped closer and his voice grew more serious. “You have a funny way of showing your gratitude.”
“What?”
“You know you wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me, right?”
The worry in Madeline’s eyes seemed to vanish at that and a fierce sense of defiance took its place.
“I got here despite you, Rykard. I got here because I worked hard every day of my life while you were content with petty thievery and mooching off of my paychecks.”
“Hah.” He barked. “I missed that old spark of yours.”
He then leaned in and kissed her. Madeline however reeled back and swung her hand at his face. Milo heard something break and shatter and it was only then that he realized that she had picked up one of the vases that held her flowers and broken it across Rykard’s head.
The brutish man lurched back only for a moment before he swung his meaty hand and slammed it straight into her face, sending her flying back into the wall.
“You deceitful little bitch!” he screamed as he pulled out a blade from his pocket.
A surge of fear flashed through every synapse in Milo’s mind and before he knew it he had stepped out of the closet.
“No stop!” he called out but it was too late.
The blade sunk deep into Madeline’s chest and her white gown soon grew red with her blood. Her large, hazel eyes locked on to Milo for a moment before turning to her killer. The pain and fear seemed to drain away from her expression in that moment and all Milo saw in her eyes from that point forward was hatred.
“You’ll never be anything, Rykard.” She said as she spat in his face.
Rykard chuckled before pulling the knife from her chest and plunging it back in. Madeline gasped and soon her eyes went vacant. Her limp body fell lifelessly to the floor. Rykard spat back at her and then stood up, cleaning his knife with her drapes without a care in the world. It wasn’t until then he turned around and noticed Milo.
“There you are.”
Milo’s shocked expression twitched as his mind seemed to catch up with what had just happened.
“Why did you do that?”
Rykard looked at the dead woman on the floor and then back at the goblin.
“Payback. Madeline grew up in Blackstone like me. We were sweet on one another, back in the day. And then she betrayed me and left me to live in squaller while she climbed the ladder to imperial nobility, the whore.”
“That’s why you wanted this job…that’s why you wanted to go and check her room earlier…”
Milo found it hard to speak.
“Did you find it?”
“Huh?”
Rykard leaned closer to Milo, still holding the blood stained knife in his hands.
“Did I stutter? Did you find it? The necklace?”
“Yeah.”
Rykard stood upright again. “Good. Then lets fuck off before anyone…”
And as he spoke the door opened and in walked a young human man, dressed in costume with a tray of iced tea.
For one painful moment the three of them looked at one another until the man noticed the cadaver on the floor. His eyes widened and before they could react he opened his mouth and screamed.
“Help! They killed…”
It was all a blur. One moment he had been screaming and then all of a sudden blood was gushing from his throat. The tray fell to the floor, glass shattered and the man collapsed clutching his neck in an attempt to stop the bleeding.
“Let’s go!” Rykard screamed, pulling Milo with him out of the room.
They ran down the hallway as multiple doors opened up and many curious eyes peered out to see what had happened. They all saw them.
The two of them rushed out of the dressing room hallway and sprinted back to the exit. There was no time to wait for the other two, they simply had to…
“Where were you?!” they suddenly heard Brian’s voice call out.
Ahead of them they could see Brian and Sofia in their staff disguises, leaning up against the wall on either side of the exit door.
“You were supposed to…” Brian continued until he saw Rykard’s bloodied knife. “What the fuck did you…?!”
And then they heard the screams and the cries for help. No more explanations were needed. The four of them dashed out the exit and ran down various alleyways, disappearing into the night, away from their sins…or so they thought.
As the four hoodlums emerged from the alleyways and blended back into the evening crowd of civilians, a set of eyes followed them, marking them as their pray.
