“You rush the ending,” Olun said.
“I sing the ending,” Tessa replied. “Then I take the ruby.”
“Then the clasp shuts on your fingers.”
He tapped the last bar of the museum’s welcome song. Tessa had been singing for hired audiences since she was nineteen. At thirty-eight, she disliked being corrected by a man whose best note came from blowing into a bottle.
She disliked crushed fingers more.
“Show me,” she said.
Olun held up the empty ring they had borrowed for practice. She sang the six short parts of the welcome. When she reached its last, high note, he spread his fingers. When she stopped, he closed them.
“You hold the note while you pass it,” he said. “I leave with the musicians. You stay for the bow.”
“The collector pays me.”
“The collector pays us.”
“Half.”
“And both names. He will call it your theft if mine isn’t there.”
Tessa considered the ring. Olun had found the song, taken the musician’s place and learned the gallery’s order of events while she was still arguing over a singer’s fee.
“Both names,” she agreed.
The museum had hired them under the names they used for performances. Nobody there knew they also worked for a collector who preferred buying jewels from people who did not own them.
At rehearsal, the queen stood on a low stage. She was made of wax, with a wide skirt and a face that had looked gently bored for eighty years. Her two wax guards stood at either side. Tessa’s singer’s mark was beside the queen’s left hand. Olun sat with the musicians behind her right shoulder.
The dinner seats ran around three sides of the room. Nira, the curator, sat facing the stage head-on. She stood and held up a red stone in a scratched metal ring.
“The rehearsal copy,” she said. “Please leave it alone. Last year’s singer used it to fasten her scarf.”
Tessa touched her own scarf. Nira gave her a look that could have pinned it without a jewel.
When the music began, the wax guards moved. They turned their heads, lowered their spears and took a slow step. When the music stopped, they stopped too.
“Could we cut the music early tonight?” Tessa asked.
“No,” Nira said. “The queen’s real clasp only opens at the end of the whole welcome. The stone rises while the last note is held. The queen presents it to the guests. It closes again when the note ends.”
The rehearsal copy sat still as Tessa sang. At the final note, the queen turned toward the seats along the right wall. Her broad wax shoulder hid the scratched ring from Nira’s seat. Both guards turned away from the queen and bowed toward the empty seats. They were welcoming the guests they had been made to protect. Behind the queen, Olun leaned close enough to pass Tessa her dropped scarf.
Tessa looked at him. He lifted one eyebrow.
After the last note, the musicians stood and went through the little stage door at their right. A painted screen rolled in front of the queen for the next part of the show. Colored lights shone on it for one minute. The guards waited outside its edges.
Nira watched from the front row. When the minute ended, the screen opened and the queen spread her arms.
“Singer bows,” Nira said. “Please don’t bow into her. Wax breaks. It does not forgive.”
Vask arrived after all this, carrying a drum he clearly did not know how to play. Tessa recognized him by his pointed beard and by the way he glanced at every red thing in the room.
He was another thief. He smiled at her as though he had discovered a new species of fool.
They rehearsed once more. Nira turned to speak to the man running the lights. As the guards bowed, Vask stepped behind the queen. Tessa saw his hand near the scratched ring. Then he went back to his drum with his coat held shut.
“Pleasure working with you,” he whispered to Tessa afterward. “Try another trade.”
He left by the staff door. The small red stone on the queen’s chest now looked dull and cloudy. He had left a cheap bead in place of the rehearsal copy.
“Do we stop him?” Olun asked.
“Do you want his bead?”
“No.”
“Then practice your exit.”
Before the guests arrived, Nira removed the whole scratched ring. Tessa watched her fit a polished clasp to the queen’s chest. The real ruby went into it. It was darker than the copy, with a bright red line deep inside.
Nira tried to lift it. It did not move.
“Now,” Olun murmured, “we wait for our note.”
The guests came in carrying glasses. They had paid to see the wax court move, and several had dressed more grandly than the wax people. Tessa could hear bracelets knocking against chairs. She liked an audience. It was the least useful part of liking her work tonight.
Olun began the welcome on a small stringed instrument. Tessa sang.
The guards moved. Nira stood at the front of the room, watching Tessa instead of the guests. Tessa kept her hands open. She sang the third part as though it were the most important song of her life.
The fourth was a welcome to travelers. The fifth asked them to bring peace into the queen’s house. Tessa had never found peace very easy to carry.
At the sixth part, she stepped beside the queen for the final note. The queen turned toward the right-hand guests, putting her shoulder between the clasp and Nira, just as she had at rehearsal.
The polished clasp opened. The ruby rose a finger’s width from the wax chest. Both guards turned toward the guests and bowed.
Tessa kept singing. She lifted the stone as lightly as a crumb from a coat. As she stepped behind the queen’s shoulder, she put it in Olun’s waiting hand. His body and the queen’s wide skirt hid that hand from the front row.
He shut his fingers.
Tessa wanted to stop. Her breath was nearly gone. Olun still had his other hand on the instrument. He lifted it, the sign they had practiced for the music’s ending.
She let the note finish.
The clasp closed on nothing. The guards straightened. The musicians stood, Olun among them, and went through the stage door. Tessa remained on her mark as the painted screen rolled across the queen.
Colored lights filled the cloth. The guests watched blue turn to green and green to a glittering gold. Nira checked the lights against her program. Olun had one minute to cross the small yard and leave through the open street gate with the others.
Tessa had one minute in which she could do nothing useful.
When the screen opened, Nira looked at the queen’s empty clasp.
“Close the guest doors,” she said at once.
A man near the hall obeyed. Nira called to the attendant at the stage door to bring the musicians back. The attendant looked through it, then hurried into the yard.
Tessa bowed. No one clapped.
Nira came onto the stage.
“Hands,” she said.
Tessa held them out. Nira examined the sleeves, the scarf and every place a small stone might hide. The wax guards stood still beside them.
“Your instrument carrier,” Nira said.
“A musician.”
“I’ll decide what to call him.”
Nira sent the attendant after Olun. The guests waited while staff searched coats and bags. One grandly dressed woman protested until Nira asked her how she would feel about losing the stone in her own necklace.
Tessa lost her singer’s fee. She also lost three hours of the evening. Nira let her leave only after the search found nothing and the night watch had taken her name. By then Olun was well beyond the museum’s street. The watch would look for both of them; Tessa knew better than to book another performance there.
She found Olun at the collector’s rented room the next afternoon. He had delivered the ruby. It lay on a velvet pad while the collector wrote out the payment.
“Tessa,” the collector began.
“Two names,” Olun said.
The man frowned. Olun put a hand beside the pad. Tessa stood beside him.
“Two,” she said.
The collector wrote the second name. Then he handed over the money.
Outside, Tessa counted her half twice. It would have been pleasant to collect the singer’s fee too.
“My name came second,” Olun said.
“It was nearer the money.”
He considered that as they walked.
“Next time, I sing.”
Tessa stopped. From the street behind them came a bottle’s dull whistle as a boy blew across its neck.
She looked at Olun.
“Next time,” she said, “we steal something that doesn’t need a song.”
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