by Laura Lam
“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
“Twisting the Aces is the oldest magic shop in Imachara, and possibly Ellada. It began as a small stall in the marketplace, with the old fortuneteller, Fay Larch, selling amulets against the evil eye. She later diversified, selling all manner of magical apparatus.
When attitudes toward magic shifted, her shop and wares likewise morphed. She bought the current premises and sold tricks to the early magicians of her day, from the simple cup and balls trick to the props for grand illusion. After her death, her son took over, and his child after him, and Twisting the Aces has continued for all these many years later.”
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.
“Soon, Child of Man and Woman yet Neither,” she said. “Soon it will begin.”
I was too frozen to do anything but look into her Penglass-blue eyes, full of ancient secrets and sad memories.
“Twenty-two silver marks and six bronze,” Lily declared, drowning out the sound of time and feathers and the voice of the long-dead Chimaera.
I let go of the disc. The damselfly disappeared from the crystal ball. When I took my hand off of the glass of the display case, my handprint remained.
My head throbbed, and my throat hurt from biting back screams.
Maske took out several coins, but also looked at us expectantly. I leaned against the counter. Drystan side-eyed me and reached for our dwindling supply of money. Maske paid Lily and she thanked him cheerily.
Maske tucked the parcels under his arm, lingering near the counter and Lily Verre. “It was my pleasure, Mrs Verre.” To us, he said: “Are you coming back with me or staying in town?”
Drystan and I exchanged a look and nodded, even though I longed to go back to the safety of the theatre. Drystan’s eyes were full of questions I would have to answer.
Maske smiled, as if he hadn’t noticed that I was about to faint. He passed us a spare key and we left him.
The light outside was so bright I closed my eyes. My ragged breathing echoed in my ears.
“Old dog,” Drystan muttered. “Never could resist a pretty face.”
I stumbled.
“Micah? What’s wrong?” Drystan asked, half-carrying me to a secluded alleyway.
“I felt faint all of a sudden,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him about the vision. I didn’t want to admit to him or myself that I was seeing things that didn’t make sense.
“I didn’t eat much at breakfast,” I added, hoping that would explain it. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth. When would I learn?
“Come on,” he said, and he put his arm around my shoulders. I smelled the spicy scent of his skin. I used my weakness as an excuse to lean into him further, comforted by his warmth and nearness.
The streets were quieter than when Aenea and I had come into the city in midsummer. The clouds promised rain. We came upon one of the smaller market squares. The clock tower in the center was carved into an upright dragon, the clock face resting between its half-furled wings. At its base was a puppet show. Near the stage was a food stall, and Drystan bought me some almonds roasted in honey. The sugar melted on my tongue. Drystan stole a couple, the almonds disappearing into his mouth faster than sleight of hand.
We drifted closer to the puppet show. A gaggle of children too young for school sat cross-legged, staring up in delight at the display. It was a shadow play – the puppets were wood carvings, their clothes cut out from colored paper, their paper faces well-painted. The show had already begun, but I recognized the political fairy tale that I loved during my childhood: “The Prince and the Owlish Man”. I watched the puppets act out the story against the late summer sun shining through the backdrop, losing myse
lf in the tale to forget what I had just seen and couldn’t explain.
A prophecy foretold that the young Prince Mael of Ellada would one day break into six pieces. To protect him, his mother and father locked him in a tower. He was not allowed to play. All of his possessions were soft and rounded. If he so much as pricked a finger, the greatest surgeon attended him. Prince Mael was watched and guarded by all, and the little boy was miserable.
One day, he was staring out of the window of his tower, watching the sun set. He clasped his hands and made a wish. He promised the Lord and Lady that if he could have his freedom, he would become the greatest king Ellada had ever known and he would go to the fate of his prophecy willingly.
He heard a flutter of wings. When Prince Mael opened his eyes, a young Chimaera perched on his window ledge. He was a youth with the large yellow eyes of an owl, and small feathers tufted his eyebrows. Great wings of banded brown and gray feathers sprouted from his back.
“The Lord of the Sun and the Lady of the Moon have heard your prayer,” the Chimaera said. “I have come to show you your kingdom and your colonies. You shall make friends and foes, you will love and you will hate, and during these ten years, no harm shall befall you. In return, you must promise to listen and learn from all those you come across. After the ten years have passed, you must return to the castle, your reign, and the fate of your prophecy.”
“I swear it.”
The owlish man held out his hand. “Then come.”
And the prince climbed onto his back and they travelled the world for ten years. He saw all of Ellada’s cities. He fell in love with a girl who did not love him back. He saw how the poor suffered, and how the rich profited from them. And then he went to see the rest of the world.
Danger had a way of finding him. A shark nearly devoured him off the coast of Northern Linde. He was kidnapped by bandits in Kymri. He was trapped in a landfall in Byssia. But he always managed to escape lasting harm.
Ten years passed. He had grown from a sheltered boy to a wise man. The day arrived when he must return to the castle and accept his fate.