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A Waltz of Sinister Import

Even late at night, the great square outside Vienna’s state opera house swarmed with activity. Torches illuminated the eager vendors who circled the flood of dispersing opera-goers, while horse-drawn fiacres clattered past them, offering easy conveyance to even more delights. Brightly lit restaurants and cafés beckoned from nearby streets with the sounds of laughter and lilting violin music.

As Margaret, Lady Riven, descended into the midst of it all from the small black fiacre that had carried her and her husband on this last stage of their journey, she found herself surrounded by more people and vibrant city life than she’d encountered in the entirety of the past seven weeks...

And Lord Riven responded to her low, instinctive moan of horror with a reassuring squeeze of her shoulder as he stepped down behind her. “Remember, my love,” he murmured, “this is but a visit, not another long stay. As soon as we discover what caused His Majesty to summon you so urgently, we can set to resolving the matter and be on our way back to the Black Forest, where there will be no more gay crowds, dances, or theater for you to endure.”

“The sooner the better.” Margaret took a deep, sustaining breath—and then plunged into the suffocating crowd, pushing firmly against the tide.

Any ordinary, respectable monarch might have summoned them to his private office within the Hofburg Palace where he was currently staying as an invited guest. A particularly sociable one might have condescended to meet them at one of Vienna’s famous coffee houses.

King Thomas III of Britain, though, was infamous across Europe as the despair of his late mother. Queen Anne II had modernized and reorganized their nation with relentless vigor and impeccable morality across her long and productive life...only to pass it on to a son who cared for nothing, according to the press, apart from free-flowing champagne and an equally steady flow of actresses, dancers, and singers of all types.

So, perhaps it should not have come as a surprise that after being peremptorily summoned from her honeymoon on an unexplained matter of supernatural import, Margaret finally found her royal host in a heavily perfumed backstage dressing room deep within the opera house. His broad, red-nosed face and slickly oiled goatee familiar from endless newspaper caricatures, King Thomas sat in a shabby armchair draped in an absinthe-green dressing gown, holding a half-full wine glass in one hand, supporting a magnificently curvaceous lady on his lap with the other...and gazing into the depths of that generously exposed bosom as intently as if the great mystery that had brought Margaret racing across the continent resided within those curves.

It was, at least, not the most awkward scene into which she had ever stepped. As one of the first female students ever admitted to Morningford College, Margaret had grown wearily inured to a certain style of male behavior.

Still, she would have given a good deal to turn around and find herself once more in the beautifully isolated and cobwebbed inn in the Black Forest that had sheltered her for the last month and a half, full of shadows, fanged and clawed supernatural creatures, and lovely, absorbing work...work that remained only partly done, with an urgent deadline nagging at her heels and far too many days already lost to this royal summons.

“Lord and Lady Riven, Your Majesty.” The British officer who’d escorted Margaret and her husband through the opera house bowed and immediately withdrew.

Lord Riven bowed with his usual fluid grace; resigning herself, Margaret lowered herself into a formal curtsey. It was made more difficult than usual by the cramped nature of the room, a small space packed to the brim with costume changes and side tables so cluttered that they raised grave doubts about the safety of the gas lamp.

“Ah, Riven. Good man.” With no sign of self-consciousness, their king smiled and nodded jovially, beckoning them both to rise. “And this must be your clever little wife.”

Ugh. Margaret had never been as successful at social graces as in her academic studies, but she gritted her teeth behind her forced smile and nodded instead of snarling at the description. “Your Majesty. We came as soon as your summons arrived.”

...Even if she now rather wished they hadn’t.

Still, there was some cause for hope; Thomas had never been known to take any interest in learning. If his reputation proved true, his burning ‘supernatural mystery”—upon which, according to his summons, the entire ‘fate of Europe’ was at stake—would transpire to be a simple question she could answer immediately based on her years of research. If she was truly fortunate, she might even be able to leave Vienna tomorrow night, as soon as her husband woke from his daytime slumber. Then she’d be back to the Black Forest—and back at work on her new article—within a single week.

“I should go now, yes?” The dark-haired lady’s voice was so beautifully melodic that the air of the room seemed to shiver with its resonance. Giving the king’s velvet-jacketed shoulder a reassuring stroke with her pale fingers, she began to wriggle upwards. “I leave you to speak in private, but you may find me later, if you wish.”

“Nonsense.” He tugged her back down with one big arm, his voice turning peevish. “I’ve been waiting all day to spend time with you, after wasting hours and hours with jawing diplomats who can’t even hold their drinks! This will only be a quick meeting—and who knows? You may even be able to help.”

Oh, really? Margaret’s full attention landed upon the opera singer for the first time, noting everything from the overwhelming intensity of the scent she wore to the startling impact of that voice...and the tell-tale flecks of shimmering green in her chestnut-brown eyes.

Lord Riven cleared his throat. “Your Majesty, my wife is a lady of quality and has been traveling for many nights. Perhaps a more suitable venue might be⁠—”

“Oh no, you needn’t worry about propriety.” All of Margaret’s discomfort fell away as the pieces of the puzzle came together with a satisfying click. “I should very much like to converse more with this lady,” she said firmly. “I have so many questions for her!”

“You...do?” The king’s companion closed her eyes in a slow blink. “Your ladyship surprises me.”

“So many,” Margaret confirmed enthusiastically. “To begin with, how in the world are you successfully maintaining so much distance from your river of origin? Of course, it only makes sense, with your voice, that you would be attracted to opera, but we must be nearly five kilometers from the Danube in this building—and it’s been hours, now, since tonight’s performance began. As a lorelei, how are you not in agony right now?”

“We are quite a bit closer to the Danube canal.” The lorelei’s remarkable voice was steady; still, Margaret belatedly took in the wariness in those river-flecked eyes as the other woman asked, “But how could you tell? No one else has ever guessed.”

“Oh dear. I beg your pardon! I didn’t mean to be rude.” Guiltily, Margaret glanced from the lady to the lounging monarch and finally to her own straight-backed husband, who looked ruefully resigned to the situation. It was hardly the first time she had found herself carried away by scholarly excitement in public and forgotten her manners. “Was His Majesty not already aware? I should have thought to wait until we could speak in private.”

“No doubt you hoped to protect him from my powers,” the lorelei said quietly, “but I truly was not attempting to trick or endanger him. I swear it upon my deathplace. Despite what you may expect⁠—”

“No, no, we’re all good friends here, aren’t we?” King Thomas’s voice was forceful as he lifted his glass of wine for another long sip. Red droplets fell onto his oil-slicked brown goatee as he continued, “There’s no need for accusations or apologies. Amalie here told me the truth of it all when we first met. She thought I might be frightened by the horror stories and wish to keep my distance for fear of being”—he rolled his eyes theatrically—“sung to my death beneath the waves. Pah!”

Shaking his head, he boomed a laugh that echoed off the walls of the small room. “As I told her, my country’s been half-ruled by monsters from the beginning! If I was going to run afraid of every unnatural creature who could kill me, I’d have to avoid half the parties in London...and I’d miss a lot of damned fine food!”

There was so much appalling historical over-generalization in that statement that Margaret couldn’t even begin to tackle it, but the word ‘monster’ was more than enough to make her eyes narrow. She opened her mouth ready to do battle on her husband’s behalf...

And Lord Riven said smoothly, “We appreciate that, Your Majesty. Of course, any human can also be a killer when equipped with the right weapons. Unnatural or not, the vampires and werewolves of Britain have always been loyal subjects to you and your ancestors.”