Lumière (The Illumination Paradox) (4 page)

“Smrt!”

A voice calls across the courtyard, but Smrt ignores it. I shudder, falling back. “What’s that?” he says. His eyes lock on the notebook pressed to my chest. My hand bolts up to cover the lettering.

“Where did you find that?” He lurches toward me, trying to snatch the book from my hands. The birds move in, squawking. Archie dives at his head.

“Professor Smrt!” The voice calls again.

My heads crank around to see the full-figured silhouette of Professor Rapture trundling down the steps of Brackishbee Hall, her image swiftly cutting through the fog.

“Come quick!” Her hair is as frazzled and prickly as her voice. “It’s a matter of public emergency!” In her hand she holds a paper. It flaps about her head. Smrt jerks back, putting proper distance between the two of us.

Quickly, I stuff the notebook down the side of my boot, rolling it just slightly to achieve the task. The ravens overhead flap and jitter providing me cover, their wings snapping like sheets in the wind.

“Smrt!” Rapture shouts again, racing to join us, her gait checking to a staggered halt when at last I come clearly into view. Peering at me through her pickle-jar lenses, her eyes grow thrice their normal size. “Back away from her, Irving!” she says, clutching her crucifix. “Back away from that girl at once!”

“What?” Smrt’s head swings. “What’s the matter with you, Penelope? Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“No, but you might if you don’t do as I say. Now for the love of God, Irving, back away!” She pulls a handkerchief from her pocket and covers her mouth.

Smrt squirrels up his face. “I demand to know what is going on here?”

“You’re standing in the presence of a living demon, that’s what,” Rapture says. Her eyes cut to me. “By decree of the Council”—she holds out a message in her hand—“her mother has just been declared a Valkyrie! Guilty of the practice of Wickedry in the presence of mankind, through which she’s just ended the Prince’s life!”

“She what?!” Smrt jumps away.

The pulse quickens in my wrists.

“She used her wicked powers to still the babe’s lungs.” Rapture narrows her eyes. “The sole heir to the Commonwealth trusted to her care, is dead.
”

“No.” I shake my head. “That’s not true. I just saw him. Before I left for school. He had a fever. That’s all. My mother was up all night with him, she never left his side—”

“—And now he lies lifeless in her arms.”

“No!” I step back. “It’s a lie! They’re lying! My mother’s done nothing! She’s not a Valkyrie! She’s not a Cantationer! She’s nothing! Just my mother!”

The ravens rise, screeching off through the trees.

Rapture’s eyes grow wide.

I should have known there was something wrong when the ravens came to get me. I should have known when I didn’t see Pan among them.

“She’s to be dipped and hung this morning in Piglingham Square,” Rapture continues. My stomach pulls up into my chest. “Along with her suspected Valkyrie daughter—”

“What?” I shiver. “But I’ve done nothing—”

“Trip the gates,” Rapture sneers through her handkerchief. “Irving!
”
She glares. “I said to trip the gates!”

Smrt stumbles backward up the stairs and lunges at the controls.

I turn and hurl myself down the front step, squeezing through the last sliver of gate before it closes, mechanical ravens squawking overhead.

“Stop her!” Rapture’s words lap at my heels, as I flee. “We’re not to let her get away!”

T
wo

Eyelet

I race up the street toward my home—at the Palace—my feet slamming hard against the cobblestones. My heart roars in my chest like a runaway steamplough thundering off the tracks. Breath steams from my nostrils.

How can this be happening? How can they think Mother would harm that child? She’s always treated that babe as if he were her own. How could they think she could kill him? Kill anything?
Oh Mother, hang on…I’m coming!

I race on, heaving in the breaths, the cold air stinging my lungs. Tears burn my eyes then fall away, torn from my cheeks by the wind. I must reach her before they do. Before they’ve had the chance.
Oh, please Lord let me get there in time.

I arrive at the gates, gasping and breathless, a crowd already forming, angrily strumming and shaking the bars.

The word is out. The Commoners have come to seek revenge for the death of their Ruler’s only heir. They want blood. My mother’s. And mine.

“She’s a Cantationer,” a woman hisses. “Using the powers of Wickedry she’s conjured a plague to still his lungs.“

A plague?
My head whips in her direction.
She can’t be serious—

“She’s a no good filthy Valkyrie, that’s what she is,” snorts another. “Likely contracted some fatal disease while in her alternate form. She must be bled and dipped immediately—both her and her
wretched
offspring—before they cause the death of all of us!”

“Hear! Hear!” The crowd thrusts their fists in the air, shouting.

I gasp, trembling, and fall away. Throwing my hood over my head to conceal my identity, I double back up the street. Boxed in at the end by row of Brigsmen, steamrifles at the ready, I lower my head and dart down the narrow alley at the foot of the Palace road. I run until I reach the Livery, then turn and dash through its centre, my boots echoing off the walls. Startled horses snap back their long broad faces and whinny out of fright. I twist my head around shushing them afraid they’ll give me away.

Sliding to a stop, I thread myself through a pair of warped bars in the massive iron gate at the end of the Livery. Only the children of the palace know the hole exists. I pop out the other side into Piglingham Square—thankful for the escape—planning to cut through the centre of the grounds, and enter the Palace from the back, when…

…I see her—

“Mother?”
My chest heaves. I nearly crumble to my knees.

Strung from the gallows, next to the two petrified wax souls I passed this morning on my way to school, hangs my mother. A weave of rope forms a figure eight around her shoulders and neck. Her head hangs slumped to the left.

Pan circles above her head, screeching endlessly.

“MOTHER!” I break into a run, stumbling forward unable to feel my feet strike the ground beneath me. My heart thrashes in my ears. I am cold and numb and I cannot swallow. Tears burst from my eyes.

I’m too late. I’ve arrived too late.
I suck in a hollow breath. No, I shake the desperate thought from my head and will myself forward, knowing it’s only a matter of time before the crowd shifts. Soon they’ll be upon us, clattering at the ten-foot gates that surround the Square insisting the Brigsmen—willing and ready with keys to burst the locks—let them in to witness my mother’s death.

I must get her out of here before they arrive. I’ve got to somehow save my mother!

I lunge forward, throwing myself at the base of her stake when I finally reach it, my hands grasping at her ropes. “Mother!” I shudder, as she falls into my arms, her neck slit and gushing blood. She’s been cut and left to bleed. A practice performed only on those thought to be Cantationers, out of the fear they may use their magic to escape their eventual wax-dipping fate.

“Oh, Mother!
” I cry, driven into the ground under the force of her weight, my knees buckling. Instinctively, I press a hand to her throat to try and stop the flow. Velvet blood laps through my fingers and soaks my palm.

It’s no use. I can’t stop it.

“You must go.” Her voice reaches for me, raspy and weak. “You must leave me. And
run.”

“I can’t!” I shake my head, my tears falling and mingling with her blood.

“You must,” she gasps.

“No! I refuse to leave without you.”

“Listen to me, child.” She reaches up, stroking the tears from my cheeks. “This is my end and your beginning—”

“No—”

“It is the universes’ will.”

“Pan!” I shout at the sky. “Pan, please, help me!”

“No!” Mother rasps and the bird retreats.

Voices arrive at the gates. I look up, panicked.

“You, there!” A Brigsman shouts, fumbling for his keys in his pocket. “Get away from her!”

“Hurry,” Mother swallows, blood purging from her lips. “Take this.” She fumbles in the folds of her blouse and pulls out a pendant. An hourglass vial containing a jumping bolt of what appears to be emerald-colored lightning, swims in a pool of glowing plasma, sheathed within a filigreed brass case. Emerald, ebony, and diamond jewels adorn its pewter chain.

“Keep this with you always.” She drops the vial in my hand. “Never lose it. Never give it up to anyone, for any reason. Do you understand?”

“But—”

“Your father asked me to keep for him. Do you remember?”
My mind shoots back to the morning of the carnival. Father whispers in the kitchen.
“You must keep it safe now.”

“What is it?”

“The key to your future,” she rasps. “To everyone’s future.”

Her eyes roll to the back of her head, the life from them swiftly draining.

“Mother?” I roll her up in my arms.

“Get away from that prisoner!” the Brigsman shouts.

My chin snaps up from my chest.

Casting the lock aside, he loosens the chains. They slither like metal snakes clattering through the rails as they drop to the ground. My shoulders bounce with the fall of every link. The air inside the square blooms with the sound of voices spewing hateful chants, as the gate swings open, propelled by the force of the oncoming crowd. Brigsman in front, his rifle ready. The snout of it pointed at my head.

“Go,” Mother rasps. “Quickly!”

I stare at her, unwilling to leave. How am I to abandon my mother to this fate?

She stares into my eyes, her eyes pleading. “How much do you trust me?” she whispers.

Not since the morning of the carnival have I heard those words spoken. The last words my father ever said. “Now, go,” she begs, her eyes waxing with death. “Run. Hide.
Live.
”

Clutching the pendant, I lean forward and press a kiss to my mother’s forehead, then scramble to my feet. The sweet scent of lavender perfume and sour blood twists through my veins as I bolt back across the square, slipping between the warped bars of Livery, ahead of the Brigsman, leaving him to cuss from the other side.

“Please, Lord.” I beg the sky as I burst off through the streets of Brethren. “Please take her now. Don’t wait.”

I lunge forward, my mother’s blood cooling on my skin, cocooned in breath and heartbeats, unsure if my feet still carry me, or if my ankles have somehow sprouted wings. I head for the outskirts of Brethren, knowing not what else to do, worried every step may bring on an episode, as other times when I’ve overexerted myself.
Please,
I beg the sky. Don’t let it happen to me. Don’t let the darkness take me over.

“After her!” I hear Professor Smrt shout. “Do not let her get away!” I glance over my shoulder to see him charging through the gates, Brigsmen flanking his either side.

I race on, winding through backstreets, the blood in my body running cold, my head twisting left to right, considering direction. I’ve no idea really which way to go. With no one left to protect me, no one left to help me keep my secret, what will become of me now? Wherever I go, suspicion will surely follow. Madness or Wickedry, take your pick. I could easily be convicted of either now.

I suck in a breath, trying to quiet the panic in my chest, and push on toward the limits of Gears—the working-class city beyond my own, where life is hard, money is scarce, and women are considered the property of men. Without a chaperone to protect my virtue, any man will be able to pluck me from the streets and claim me as his own. But it’s either chance the uncivilized wiles of working-class, or face the wrath of the Council, here. I loop the chain of the pendant over my head as I run, terror rising in my cheeks.