Shadowplay (5 page)

“Yes, Maske can harbor us for three months. If things are alright, then we’ll perform with him for a time and then leave Ellada like we planned.”

“Will that upset him – his taking the time to teach us and then us just leaving?”

Drystan stared into the distance. “He’ll understand.”

I hoped he was right.

“What else can you tell me about Maske?” I asked.

“It’s his story to tell,” Drystan said.

“Come on. You can tell me something. You might trust him, but I don’t think I do.”

“That’s probably wise.”

“You’re not helping.”

He half smiled, wiping at his face with the back of his hand. “Alright. Neither side is blameless in this story. Maske and Taliesin used to be best friends and partners – the best magicians in Ellada. And then it all went to Styx. Taliesin turned against Maske and became his enemy, but Maske drove him to do it. There’re two sides to every story.”

“What does that mean?”

“Maske slept with Taliesin’s fiancée.”

“Ah.”

“Course, it’s more complicated than that. Maske regrets it. And he’s very different to how he was back then. They say your personality changes several times over as you age. You at sixteen will not be like you when you’re thirty.”

“I suppose,” I sighed, looking up at the clouds. I wondered what I would be like when I was thirty. It seemed so far away. Almost half my life again.

We lazed on the roof, gazing at Imachara, each lost in our thoughts. The images of the previous night would not leave me alone. Playing over and over. When the clouds covered the sun, I shivered with cold. With guilt. With fear of what would happen.

 

 

5

TWISTING THE ACES

Brochure for Twisting the Aces

 

We didn’t leave the theatre for two weeks.

Even during the day, we kept the curtains drawn; hesitating to walk in front of them at night, for fear people would somehow recognize our silhouettes. An artist’s impression of both of us appeared in another newspaper article, but luckily both sketches weren’t quite right. There were door-to-door searches.

In the previous week they knocked on the door of the Kymri Theatre. Drystan and I waited with bated breath in the hallway, out of sight, as Maske opened the door. When the two policiers asked if he had seen two boys matching our description, he’d said: “Afraid not. I thought those two would have been found by now.” A frown. A hint of disapproval.

The policiers bristled. The one with the higher voice said: “They will be, sure enough.” There was a long pause, in which I imagined them trying to peer into the gloom of the entryway. I clutched Drystan, certain they’d demand to search the place, but in the end, they left, and we breathed a tentative sigh of relief, short-lived. All the neighbors knew Maske lived alone. What would they think when they saw us? I could only hope enough time had passed so they didn’t make the connection.

The day before, Maske showed us how we could pass as Temnian. He passed us both Vestige pendants on thin chains, called Glamours, to wear beneath our clothing. The pendants were like little mirrors, shimmering with rainbows like soap bubbles. A flick of a hidden switch and, to the eye, our skin appeared to be burnished gold, our eyes and hair black, our features subtly transformed. We’d pass as Temnian. My eyebrows rose as I’d noted the changes in Drystan and seen myself in the mirror. I didn’t know how I felt about wearing a face that was not my own, from a country that wasn’t mine either.

And it was yet another illegal Vestige in Maske’s possession.

I pulled a strand of my hair away. In the mirror, it looked dark, but when I saw it, it was its customary auburn.

“How…?”

“The illusion doesn’t work on yourself,” Drystan said as I’d switched it off, relieved to see my own face in the mirror again.

It was true we were not the only people to take on such disguises. Maske showed us several other magicians in one of his history books, and the ringmaster Ragona gave himself a foreign lilt, along with many members of the circus and carnival. I never learned where Bil had pretended to be from.

Now I’d never know.

We turned on the Glamours again, dressing in the costumes Maske purchased for us. I widened my eyes and stuck out my tongue at the stranger in the mirror.

We went down to the kitchen. “Hello, my Temnian visitors,” Maske said, sweeping a bow, when we entered. “I am honored that you have come calling from your faraway land.”

I gave him a small, stiff bow as the Temnians did, feeling uncomfortable, holding a palm resting on the tip of my nose to bisect my face, symbolizing the sun and the moon, the Lord and the Lady, and the light and the dark within us all.

Drystan spoiled the illusion by sticking his tongue out, and I laughed. We turned off the Glamours. This was the Drystan I knew and missed. Over the past two weeks, he had grown quieter than I remembered him being in the circus. When he thought I wasn’t looking, he stared at nothing. I knew that thoughts of what he and I had done were never far from his mind.

I felt guilty for laughing. I had no right, with Aenea dead and the circus in ruins.

“I’m planning on going into town today,” Maske said that morning as we prepared a breakfast of toast and eggs. “To the Aces.”

We both looked up. Twisting the Aces was the best magic supply store in Ellada.

He smiled. “That got your attention. Time to test your disguises.”

“Is it safe to leave?” I asked, my voice quavering.

“You’ve been in here for weeks,” Maske said. “I won’t say it’s riskless, but you can’t hide in here forever. The disguises will fool the casual eye.”

It was the other eyes that I feared. But in the end, Drystan and I shrugged into our patched coats. Maske had not started teaching us magic, and doing nothing all day in a dusty theatre where most of the doors were locked had grown rather dull. And dangerous. My mind often strayed to the locked door of Maske’s workshop, wondering what lay within. The days were long and we both craved structure.

I missed so many people from the circus – Aenea, of course, with constant pain within my heart. But also those who, at the time, I did not think I had grown so close to. Bethany, the Bearded Woman and Madame Limond, the Four-Legged Woman. Juliet, the Leopard Lady of Linde. The strongman, Karg, and the small man, Tin. Sal and Tila, the dancers, with their ribald jokes that made me blush. Even Tauro, the Bull-Man, who could not speak but liked to ruffle my hair. I hoped they all found other work. Even if all of them must hate us for what we did.

We set off into town, though I was still terrified that someone might recognize us. I turned up the collar of my shirt, hoping I looked like a convincing Temnian boy. I drank in the sight of unfamiliar faces. Men on a break from factory work in their dirty coveralls, their faces smeared with coal, soot, or grease. Children running underfoot, selling flowers or newspapers in the street, crying their wares. Harried women with bags of clothes for washing or mending. Here and there, well-dressed men and women in furs, picking their way carefully over the muck in the gutter.

It was a long walk to Twisting the Aces. Despite the oversized coat, I shivered in the chill wind. Granite buildings loomed to either side of us. Rubbish overflowed from bins. So many people crammed together, living and working but most never speaking to each other.

Twisting the Aces looked like the oldest shop in Imachara. Its cracked wooden sign hung over the teal door and needed a fresh coat of paint. The dusty front window display showcased playing cards dangling from strings, crystal balls, and magic wands lying on paisley Byssian shawls.

A bell chimed as we entered. A bored-looking boy, with a mop of messy brown hair and a mole near his mouth, glanced up at us from the book he was reading. The shop smelled of wood, beeswax polish, dust, animals, and the sharp tang of metal. Shelves were filled to bursting with all manner of magical tricks.

I gravitated to large canisters of coins filled with double-headed and double-tailed marks of bronze, false silver, and false gold. Haphazard stacks of card decks, both traditional and tarot, filled another shelf. I itched to run my hands along the rows upon rows of magic books made from crumbling and new leather. Nesting boxes and dolls of wood, rubber bands and balls, false gems, stuffed doves and rabbits as well as cages of live doves and rabbits, chalices, silk scarves, handcuffs and keys, coiled chain links, and all manner of wares whose purposes I did not know lined the rest. Small handwritten price tags peeked from the bottom of the shelves, ranging from the modest to the incredible.

A glass display case behind the bored teenager showed valuable antique wares. Crystal balls with Vestige metal, some possibly made out of Penglass, which would make them unimaginably expensive. A large tree made of gold, with the leaves from the Twelve Trees of Nobility carved of jade. A necklace on a mannequin that the sign proclaimed belonged to the first Byssian queen and was haunted by her spirit. On these there were no price tags.

To the left of the shop were large props – a carved Kymri sarcophagus, mysterious trunks and large crates stacked on top of each other, full-length mirrors, cabinets, and cages.

The teenager kept reading his book.

Maske rapped the boy on the head. He yelped and rubbed his head, glaring.

“I knew you was there, Mister Maske,” he grumbled.

“Then you should have been more attentive, young Tam.”

“Yeah, yeah, so you say. What’ll it be this time?”

“Insolent ragamuffin,” Maske said, but there was affection beneath his words. Maske must still come here regularly, despite his lack of performances. This boy was probably the son of the current owners and Maske had watched him grow up.

Maske rattled off a list of what he required, and it sounded like gibberish to me. The boy nodded, scurrying about the shop and picking objects from shelves, muttering under his breath. “Hey, miss?” Tam called to the back room. “Leave the stock checking and mind the till.”

A woman of about forty years came to the front. Wisps of dark blonde hair fell about her face, and the rest strained against the pins confining it. She wore too much kohl about her eyes and had painted her lips a dark pink. Her dress was a matching hue of muslin trimmed with black ribbon.

“Hello,” she said brightly.

“I haven’t seen you before, my lady,” Maske said. She giggled. “I’ve just been hired. Are you magicians?” she asked.

“Enthusiasts,” Maske demurred.

She clapped her hands together. “Me as well! It’s why I decided to try my hand working here.”

“Have you worked in magic stores before?” Maske asked.

“No, sir. I don’t need to work, you see. I’m a widow, the Couple bless my husband’s soul. He left me with a tidy income, and we never had no children, so I grow so terrible bored sometimes. I saw the “help wanted” sign and fancied trying my hand at shop keeping! I’ve only been here a week, but I’ve met ever such interesting people.” She chattered as she wrapped the goods Tam brought to her, speaking so quickly I could barely keep up. She had a girlish way about her, a faint bloom of excitement in her cheeks. “I’m Lily Verre,” she said, holding out her hand.

“Jasper Maske. Charmed, I’m sure,” he said, taking her hand and bowing over it. “These are my associates: Amon and Sam.” We gave her cautious nods and she gave us a sidelong glance. My heartbeat quickened – did she recognize us, or did Temnians rarely enter her shop? Maske kept up a repartee with the shopkeeper, flirting with remarkable skill.

“This place is just as I remember,” Drystan said, sighing. He spoke with his Temri accent, placing the emphasis on the wrong syllables, the vowels sharp.

Lily rang up the purchases on the cash register, a gigantic mechanical beast.

As she did, I drifted back to the cabinet with the Vestige and other luxuries for sale. At eye level, next to the necklace that had supposedly belonged to the first Byssian queen, was a crystal ball with a Vestige metal base, much like Maske’s at the séance. Something drew me closer. Maybe it was the overlay of dragonfly wings etched into the rainbow sheen of the Vestige metal. Through the glass of the display case, I gazed into its depths.

Images emerged in the crystal. A woman in a red dress, her back turned to me, pushing a carriage down the road, the wind whipping the scarf around her neck. A distorted voice cried out “Doctor!” as if yelling from underwater.

The vision shifted to a crowd of people with signs, shouting and shaking their fists at the Royal Snakewood Palace. By their signs, I recognized them as Foresters, the growing anti-royalist party. Overlaid on the angry crowd was the face of a man with a beard and piercing eyes.

An audience replaced the crowd, with Drystan on stage next to a girl I’d never seen before, both in Temnian dress. Drystan beamed at the audience, his face radiant with a happiness I had not seen since before the tragedy of the circus. He draped a handkerchief over his hand, and when he took it away a white dove flew over the stage.

The doves obscured the view in the crystal ball, and I heard the flapping of wings and the ticking of a clock. I reached my hand into the pocket of my coat. The disc of the Phantom Damselfly was there, though I thought I left it back at the Kymri Theatre. I blinked, and the Phantom Damselfly looked out at me from the glass, the silver tattoos on her forehead glittering.