City of Lost Dreams by Magnus Flyte Read Free Book Online Page B

simply part of Vienna’s perfectly preserved past. There was something, Sarah decided, a little smug about all this magnificence. Well, historically, Vienna had had the reputation of being a decadent, indolent city. Beethoven had once sneered in a letter that “so long as an Austrian can get his brown ale and his little sausages, he is not likely to revolt.”
    Moving along, they passed the Volksgarten, the enormous Greek Revival–style Parliament building, and then turned into the approach to the Rathaus, Vienna’s imposing city hall, dressed to the nines in Gothic splendor, and boasting a statue of a knight in armor atop its lofty spire.
    “Cheese and rice,” muttered Sarah (a favorite expression of her father’s) as they sailed into the majestic
Festsaal
. The ceremonial hall stretched the entire length of the building. She took in the barrel-vaulted ceiling, the parquet floors, the three-sided gallery, the statues and arcades, and the ornate flights of stairs. She counted sixteen chandeliers. Already there was a huge crush of people, all costumed, all wearing expressions of delight and anticipation in the frivolity to come. Members of an orchestra were settling themselves in one of the niches.
    “I’m not going to have to waltz, am I?” Sarah asked, stumbling slightly in the overlarge shoes. “I don’t exactly have the moves like Ginger.”
    “I will lead,” Alessandro said with a mildly sadistic smile. “Marie!” An exceptionally tall woman surrounded by a group of young ballgoers turned and then strode toward them, smiling, her wide shoulders and the stiff flounces of her many petticoats cutting a swath through the crowd. “Sarah, this is my friend Frau Professor Marie-Franz Morgendal. Marie-Franz teaches history of science at the university. She is also big Beethoven lover.”
    “Frau Doktor Weston,” said Marie-Franz in careful, accented English. Her voice was deep and warm. “I read your book on Beethoven and enjoyed it very much. It was wonderfully insightful!” Sarah’s university had published her doctoral thesis on the correspondence between Beethoven and the 7th Prince Lobkowicz. Sarah had not mentioned in her book that some of her insights had come while she was on the drug Westonia, which had allowed her to actually
see
Beethoven and hear him play. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could tuck into a footnote.
    “Please call me Sarah.” She had heard that Austrians were very big on titles, but “Dr. Weston” still sounded very strange to her.
    “Yes? Then you must call me Marie-Franz. Sarah, I see that you have also tied your apron strings to signify you are an unmarried lady?” Sarah looked down at her apron, bemused. She hadn’t known she was sending a signal about her marital status.
    “What is the tying that signals ‘troublemaker’?” asked Alessandro. “Sarah should have this.”
    Marie let out a booming laugh as they were joined by a tiny, beautiful girl, whose pink hair and tattoos gave the whole dirndl thing a punk twist. Alessandro introduced the girl as Nina Fischer and explained that she was one of Bettina Müller’s grad students. Nina seemed fully aware of Alessandro’s plan and offered Sarah some advice.
    “Play it cool, yes?” she said to Sarah. “Frau Doktor Müller is brilliant, but she can be a little . . . I don’t know if you have this word in English.” Nina switched to German, in which Sarah was fluent, and Sarah learned that Doktor Müller was “tricky.” Nina then introduced her escort, who must have been at least twenty years older than Nina and had the half-avaricious, half-desperate look of someone who knew his dates with young women were numbered, and he needed to make the most of them. “This is Heinrich von Hohenlohe,” said Nina, managing to look both proud and a little embarrassed as she pronounced the aristocratic “von.” But the name caught Sarah’s attention for a different reason. She remembered that Nico had said the von