It is the most beautiful, evocative piece that Claudia has ever experienced in her life, and it has only just begun. She’s already so entranced that she doesn’t notice just how hard she’s holding Cassius’s hand. She doesn’t even remember reaching for it.
Once the song’s echo ceases, Agamemnon takes the stage. He’s wearing silver armor, made matte by white stage powder so as not to catch the glares of the lights. A quiver filled with arrows is strapped to his back, and a gold bow sits heavy in his hand.
Claudia recognizes him as Simon, a red-haired Musices student whom Marcherie has been berating and complaining about for days during their Alistair-mandated teatime in the Treaty.
“Too often, he’s sharp, and when we’re working with such tight harmonies, even the slightest curve of sharpness can destroy the sound. Perhaps I should break his nose to alter the placement of his falsetto. I think it would help,” she’d said a few days ago. Claudia could tell she meant it.
The first note explodes from his mouth, attended perfectly by a flute whistling one-third beneath him. Either Simon corrected his sharpness, or beneath his heavy stage makeup, there are black-and-purple bruises blooming across his nose.
A King cannot fear blood,
For fear will take his crown.
He earns his keep and keeps his kills
Of all that he strikes down.
Already, Claudia feels high on sound. It’s not like when she smokes with Alistair—this is a high for the heart. She feels all that Agamemnon feels. Kingly, fearless, powerful. Her pulse pounds like a war drum.
I have many daughters,
And thus have much to prove.
Chrysothemis, Electra, Iphigenia,
A weak and brittle brood.
Ballet dancers twirl out from the wings wearing tawny leotards and bone-white horns. They dance around Agamemnon as if they do not notice him. He eyes them with hunger, weaving in between them and taking his fill of their graceful bodies. His eye snags on one stag in particular—a blond girl whose leotard catches more light than the others. Approaching her, Agamemnon offers his hand. The stag, wary, leans in, and Agamemnon leaps at the chance to touch her. He holds his bow far from his form as his other hand roams down the dancer’s lithe frame.
Claudia wants to be touched like that. Her fingers tremble.
The dancer jumps in a series of jetés away from the cold hand of the king. He pulls a silver arrow from his back and readies it in his bow, crouching low and stalking his prey.
To mark the coming war,
I carry me’own flag
Alone to the forest of Artemis
And slay a sacred stag.
He fires the arrow at the glittering stag, and she catches it a hair away from her neck. There, a red sash pours from the sharp, gleaming tip, and she falls to the ground. The other dancers frantically flee the stage as Agamemnon carries his kill in an intricate lift; arms locked, he holds her above his head, and her weightless limbs fall like ribbons around his body. When her head falls back from her loose neck, her horns adorn Agamemnon as if the two are sharing a crown of bones. The king looks to the audience.
A King will helm the warship
To claim the victory as his.
A King cannot fear blood,
For blood is all he is.
He carries her off, leaving the bright red sash lying on the stage, and the world goes black. Claudia can hardly breathe. Her limbs are tingling with the urge to run.
“How do you feel?” Cassius asks through the silence.
She nods toward the stage. “I want that.” Her voice is a whispered growl.
“You want what? Say it.” His breathing is heavy and bestial through his nose.
