So I had, for the duration of the conflict, suspended my judgment of many things, including Mary. I had even become reconciled to the idea that Duncan and Mary might make a life together. Indeed, you might say that the war, for a time, created another kind of excitement for Duncan and Mary, an urgency to replace what they had lost now that they could no longer sneak around Blythe Academy. (Yet you were still so tense, your smile so forced, your politeness so impolite.) I did not speak to her, but we both laughed at Duncan’s jokes, and made comments to each other indirectly, through Duncan or Lacond. Sybel, for his amusement, tried to create situations in which Mary would have to talk to me, or vice versa, but was never successful.

Through the sweat-stained, boot-scuffed antechamber we walked, all of us crowded together as we climbed the stairs to the balcony, having to ignore our own sour smell.

Then, a rush of stale air in our faces, followed by another, even staler, blast, as we walked onto the balcony and beheld the opera house!

We stared down at row upon row of worn gilt seats, rapidly being filled by the people sitting in them, saw the orchestra pit filled with the febrile scratchings of musicians tuning their instruments, and beyond that, the plain wooden stage, half hidden by burgundy curtains that had great, gaping holes in them, revealing the scurrying singers behind the veil, the grunt and nudge of set pieces moving into place.

The more we looked, the more small details came into focus, the grandeur fading upon closer inspection. Plaster cherubim placed at the corners of the balcony, framing our view, had grown old, fissures of wrinkles aging them to appear wiser, and more malevolent than innocent. Every seat had a sweat stain from years of use. Every filigree and swirl of decorative paint on the walls or ceiling had a crack, a dent, a fault line. It had always been that way, and the familiarity of it comforted me.

Then Duncan gasped.

“Look,” he said, pointing toward the ceiling. Only Lacond did not make a sound when he saw it. Even Sybel swore, under his breath.

It seems odd now that we had not seen it before all else, as if we wanted at first to deny its existence.

Looking up, as we walked forward to the edge of the balcony seats, we slowly came to recognize the source of the clear, clean, but undeniably green light that served as our illumination. (The rational mind can absorb only so much of the strange without damage.)

“What is it?” Mary whispered.

“The remains of a fungal bomb,” Lacond replied.

“Half exploded,” Duncan said. “Fused to the ceiling.”