Shadowplay (34 page)

 

The vision shifted. I was in a cold Venglass cell. Outside, the world burned. The sky roiled orange, red, purple and gray. Smoke broiled toward the bruised sky. Distant screams were cut silent. The ground was ablaze with angry flames, licking and devouring all in their path. Relean stood next to me, our arms touching. Dev slept in the cot in the corner. They had taken Ahti
.

I came out of the vision and back into myself. I shuddered, rubbing my hands against my arms. For a second, I had felt myself die in Anisa’s body, felt my heart stop, my limbs burn away. My throat felt raw from smoke and screams.

“What happened after that?” I asked.

“My memories end there.”

“How was Ahti involved?”

Her face creased in remembered pain at the mention of his name. She touched my forehead again, drawing me into a vision, but this one was like the first she had shared with me – more of a waking dream than a memory.

 

“Every second of every day. But I live in hope. It’s often all that has sustained me through the centuries. There’s a chance that Relean and Dev’s Alephs survived. I want you to help me find them, if you can. I want my family back. And then we also have to make sure that this”
–
she swept her hands out over the wreckage –”does not happen again. For it might. And this time, it could end the world for good.”

 

Cyan shook me awake. I was lying on the rooftop of the Kymri Theatre. I felt so cold. I could tell I had been up on the roof for long enough that a normal person would have suffered from frostbite.

She ushered me back into my room. Drystan did not move. Cyan’s gaze lingered on our beds pushed together.

Thanks for finding me
, I thought.
You should go back to bed.

Why won’t you tell me what happened?
I felt her quest in my mind, asking me to share the memories so I did not have to explain. Gently, I pushed her back.

Alright
, she said. She strode to the door, the hem of her robe whispering along the floorboards. She paused, turning back to me. Wisps of her dark hair escaped the long braid down her back.

The door closed behind her, leaving me in the dark, next to Drystan, wondering what Anisa had spoken to Cyan about, and how I was going to help save the world.

 

27

SCIENCE, MAGIC, AND STORY

 

The unpublished memoirs of Jasper Maske: the Maske of Magic

 

Time slipped past, drawing us ever closer to the night of the duel.

We shut ourselves off from the world, practicing from dawn to long past dusk. As the snow melted outside the windows, snippets of news found their way to us, through newspapers or visits from Lily when she dropped off supplies from Twisting the Aces. She usually stayed for a cup of tea, telling us of the latest antics of the Foresters.

Lily brought flowers and berated us for staying indoors so much, lamenting the dust that again collected in the corners of the theatre. I did not know how often Lily spent the night.

Finally and yet all too soon, it was the week before the Grand Specter-Maske Duel of Magic. The city was plastered with lithographic posters and tickets at the Royal Hippodrome had already sold out. The monarchy had even offered to lend several Vestige projectors so that people gathered in parks and public places would be able to see the duel as well, even if they could not afford the tickets. The gesture would have been sweeter if it had not so obviously been a token one to try to placate the rising ire of the Foresters.

Two days before the duel, we invited Lily to be our test audience. Cyan’s beau Oli was there as well, returned from abroad. We had trained him to be our extra stagehand so he was backstage with me. My nerves fluttered. This would be the first time anyone would see our full repertoire. Lily was so excited she could hardly sit still. She wore a dress of watered green silk and cream lace.

Next to me, Oli took a deep breath. He wore a clean but homespun shirt and braces. His face was tanned from months abroad the ship that sailed to Kymri, where winter never held power.

The lights dimmed and the show began.

I watched Lily’s rapt face through the peephole beneath the stage, pushing levers and pulleys when needed.

At the finale, I shifted my attention back to the stage. Drystan sat on the stage in a chair, his head in his hands. Behind him rose a tall gauze curtain that looked a little like an artist’s canvas. Drystan stood and twirled, waving his arms and muttering incantations. The gauze fluttered and then pulled away. An automaton in a flowing dress with wide sleeves stood on a podium. Her face was of smooth brass, her false glass eyes fixed on a far-off destination. This was only the second time I had seen Maske’s creation, and the first time in action. A shiver passed through me as her head moved mechanically to survey the audience. She looked like a crude and primitive echo of the clockwork woman’s head.

The automaton took a shaking step downstage. Drystan reached his arms out to her.

“My creation is more beautiful than I could ever have imagined. But if only she could be transformed from metal to flesh and bone.” He paused, his eyes lingering on the props of magic books stacked to one side of the stage. “I wonder…”

He circled the automaton. Her head moved jerkily, following him. Again, I fought down a shudder. This automaton was nothing but metal and cogs and oil. The clockwork woman at the Mechanical Museum had been terrible to behold, like a live woman trapped in a crystal cage, but the blank, dead face of the automaton unnerved me more.

I tried to focus on the illusion, which would be perfect for the audience, for they would love the fusion of science, magic, and story.

Drystan arranged more props around the stage – beakers and a magic wand. He shrugged out of his lab coat and into a magician’s tails, waving the wand. The beakers of liquid bubbled, sending swathes of purple and blue fog onto the stage. The automaton raised her hands above her head to cover her face, but midway through we heard a screech and she stopped. Her head slumped forward.

Drystan paused in his motions, mystified. Cyan, who was beneath the stage, waiting to go through the star trap once the automaton dropped through, looked at me and Oli anxiously.

I closed the peephole and opened the trap door to clamber onto the stage and held my arm down to help Cyan up.

Maske fiddled with the gears on the automaton’s back.

“I don’t understand…” he muttered. “She still has full power. She worked this morning.”

Maske could not even unbend the automaton’s arms. We all stood on stage frozen as if in a tableau vivant. Then Maske lowered his head, resting it on the shoulder of his creation. And he sobbed.

It was disconcerting to see him cry so brokenly. But I understood. The duel was the day after tomorrow. If his final act was broken, then our chances of winning were infinitesimal. This finale could be incredible. But only if the automaton worked.

Cyan moved toward Maske to comfort him, but he turned away from her. Gently, he gathered his stiff automaton in his hands and carried her away to his workshop.

The rest of us stood in silence. Lily rustled her skirts, rising and clearing her throat self-consciously.

“Oh my, will he be alright?” she asked. “Maybe I should go speak to him. Oh, and it was so wonderful as well before it went wrong. Poor Jasper…” She trailed off.

“You’re probably the only one who could comfort him,” Drystan said. Lily lifted her skirts and bustled away. Oli came over and wrapped an arm around Cyan. She leaned her head against him. I wanted to do the same with Drystan, but I did not know how Oli would react, and so my arms stayed heavy at my sides.

I could only hope that Maske was alright, and that the finale could be saved.

I heard low, regretful laughter in my head. I frowned at Cyan. Her wide eyes met mine and she shook her head minutely. It wasn’t her.

It was Anisa.

“Excuse me, I don’t feel so well,” I muttered, leaving the room. I could feel their stares on my back. I took the stairs two or three at a time, trotting across the loft and grabbing the Aleph, as Anisa had called it. I pressed the button and waited for her to appear.