Shadowplay

by Laura Lam

  This thing between us was still so delicate, just blossoming and seeking the light. We still did not give it a name – no declarations of love, no promises. Though kisses always felt a little like a promise of what could be. A wordless reassurance of trust and longing.

  We heard the distant ding of the doorbell.

  “Cyan or Maske will get it.” Drystan nuzzled my neck.

  Any thought of leaving vanished. Small shivers ran down my spine.

  Drystan’s hands pressed against the small of my back. A tip of his finger rested on the bare skin where my shirt rucked up about my waist. The front of his thin white shirt was open, and I rested a palm against his chest, feeling the ropes of muscle just under the skin from years of tumbling and hard circus work.

  Someone knocked on the door. We broke away.

  “Yes?” I said, my voice strangled.

  Cyan poked her head into the room. She was still pale but more alert. She did not seem to notice our flushes or the sly way we rearranged our clothing.

  “What is it?” Drystan asked.

  “That magician Taliesin is here.”

  There were three men in the parlor. Maske sat, every muscle tense, pointedly staring at the younger man and not his age-old rival, Pen Taliesin.

  Maske, though in his late fifties, never struck me as middle-aged. Taliesin may have won the old feud between them, but he had lost against time. Deep lines engraved his face, and his back was humped underneath a rich mink coat. Golden rings bedecked his long, gnarled hands, which shook badly. The whites of his eyes had aged to the yellow of old parchment. He looked like a man twice his age, held together with string and matchsticks, as though a strong wind could blow him away.

  The other man next to Taliesin, by contrast, was all straight lines and calm stillness in his smart suit and expertly folded green cravat with an emerald pin. His sideburns and waxed mustache were of the latest style, and he had the long fingers of a magician.

  “Good evening,” the coiffed man said. “I am Christopher Aspall, the representative of the Collective of Magic of Ellada. I am the solicitor of the organization, and a retired performer myself.” A thin leather briefcase leaned against his shin. “I am here,” Aspall continued, “to deduce if you are violating the terms of your legal agreement between one Jasper Maske and one Pen Taliesin, signed by both parties on the fifth of Lylal, 10846.”

  Maske’s eyes snapped to Aspall’s face. “I have not violated the agreement.”

  “Horse piss,” Taliesin spoke. Most of his teeth were gone, the rest ruined gravestones in his mouth. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing here? Why did you hire these pups?” He gestured at Drystan, Cyan, and me, clustered at the séance table in the corner of the room. “You’re recreating our show!”

  “You know full well no performances have been held at the Kymri Theatre in these many years.”

  “But you’re planning to.” Taliesin pointed a shaking hand at Maske. The teeth, the shaking, the unnatural brightness in his yellowing eyes: Taliesin was truly one of the Delerious – a Lerium addict.

  “Per our agreement, I’ll never perform magic again. But, if you recall, the wording did not ban me from teaching magic and allowing others to perform, even in this building.”

  Taliesin sputtered. “It is your magic they’ll perform, and your magic cannot go on the stage.”

  Aspall cleared his throat. He brought a legal folder from the leather briefcase, opening it to reveal the printed and signed contract between Maske and Taliesin. He made a great show of reading it over silently before he spoke. Showmen. They never lose their taste for the dramatic.

  “While I have come here at Taliesin’s behest, I am impartial.” He gave the last word the slightest emphasis. “I am here to represent the Collective of Magic’s best interests. And, after much careful study of the syntax of the agreement, the Collective’s official announcement is that…” He paused again for dramatic effect. We leaned forward in our seats.

  “Jasper Maske is not violating the terms of this contract. As long as the performers are not performing the exact same tricks that were well-known to be Jasper Maske’s and Pen Taliesin’s when they were in business as Specter and Maske.”

  Taliesin gave a wordless cry of rage. “This is not what I wished.”

  “What you wish does not matter in this case,” Aspall said, his nose wrinkling in distaste. He was not as impartial as he pretended to be. Disgust and pity coursed through me as well. How could that old man have been a performer? Everything about him looked twisted – his features, his spine, his grin and his scowl. I would bet that if souls were visible, his was as twisted as they come. Every fiber of my being wanted to lean away from him. He could not have been like this when he performed. Had the drugs transformed him so completely? What would Taliesin be like now if Maske and he had never parted ways?

  A small thought trickled through my mind, despite my best intentions. I wondered what Drystan would have looked like now, had he not given up Lerium, and what he would have looked like in another decade or more. It did not matter, I told myself. He’d never be like Taliesin.

  “I thank you, Solicitor Aspall, for your ruling on the agreement,” Maske said.

  Taliesin grinned, a fearsome sight in his ruined face. “Ah, but Jasper, my old friend, what would you say for a chance to absolve our old contract, eh?”

  Maske stared at Taliesin’s face for the first time since he entered the parlor. “You would abolish it?” he said, his voice carefully neutral.

  “Not for nothing, no.”

  “What are you proposing, then?”

  The silence in the room was almost another presence. Taliesin rummaged about in his coat pocket, bringing out a crumpled, wax-sealed envelope.

  “From my own solicitor,” he wheezed. “Just in case.” He passed it to Aspall.

  The solicitor held the envelope delicately, investigating the seal. “Are you sure you would not wish to have your own solicitor present? Should we arrange another meeting at a later date?”

  Taliesin motioned for him to open it. “Let him see what it says. We can sign it all official-like later if he agrees to it now.”

  Aspall broke the seal and read the letter. His eyebrows rose, just once. I nudged Cyan with my elbow, but she was already staring at him with a distant gaze I recognized.

  Aspall passed the crumpled paper to Maske. As our mentor read, his face flushed, and then blanched.

  “Alright,” he said. “I will consider it.” Maske’s eyes flashed to us, and the look in them made me shiver – there was rage, but also the fierce excitement of a gamble.

  Taliesin leaned back, a shaking hand resting against the patchy stubble of his cheek. “I thought you might, Jasper. I thought you just might.” Taliesin, too, relished the gamble, but what was to be gained or lost? We were ignored – children to be seen and not heard.

  Cyan knew. Her face grew thoughtful, but she couldn’t tell us.

  “Well,” Aspall said, somewhat taken aback by the turn of events. “If you are both in agreement, then we shall meet at the Collective of Magic’s headquarters on Thistle Street in a week’s time at 10 o’clock. I will discuss this with the Collective and ensure that this meets with their approval. Though the thought of two magicians emerging from the shadows to the limelight again will no doubt please them immensely. I know that many, like myself, were great admirers of the Specter and Maske shows as children.” He coughed, and the brief glimpse of the man beneath the solicitor’s façade disappeared. “You have until next week to change your mind. Once you put the ink to paper, it is done.”

  “I expect much the same result as last time, young Aspall. Merely proving another point.” Taliesin heaved himself to his feet. The shaking grew visibly worse.

  Taliesin took a cool look in our direction. I forced myself to meet his stare. “Hope these little ones don’t embarrass you as much as I think they will, old boy.”

  Maske’s knuckles tightened about his knees.


  “We shall settle this again,” Maske said. “And you may find that the last fifteen years have treated us differently.”

  Taliesin looked about at the faded glory of the Kymri Theatre. He arranged his fur coat, the gold rings on his fingers glinting. “That they have. Until next time, Jasper.”

  “Pen.”

  Maske stayed poised for flight until we heard the front door close, and then he collapsed onto the sofa.

  “What happened? What’s going on?” I asked.

  “A rematch,” he said, his voice faint. “In three months’ time. Between you two and Taliesin’s boys. The Specter Shows only started up again in the autumn. Perhaps when the Collective of Magic was going to ban him permanently from performing, he cooked up this scheme. With the expenses on his theatre and the lavish way he lives, money must be precarious. He wants the notoriety – the Specter Shows on everyone’s lips.” Maske seemed to be speaking to himself more than us.

  “You are going to accept it, aren’t you?” I asked. “And we’ll put Taliesin and his boys to shame.”

  Drystan perched next to Maske, taking his hand in the first sign of affection I had seen between them. “He has no choice. The Collective already know of it.”

  The Collective. It sounded so sinister. “Why?”

  “The Collective would have salivated at a chance for this much publicity. Magic shows have fallen a bit out of favor lately. They get amalgamated into circus or theatre acts rather than having the starring headline. They’ll never keep it quiet.”

  “So if Maske turns it down, everyone will know anyway,” Cyan said, and I wondered if she were voicing her own thoughts, or echoing Maske’s. Or Drystan’s. The thought of her reading Drystan’s mind made me uneasy.

  Maske nodded miserably.

  “But why wouldn’t you say yes, Maske? It’s a way to get Taliesin back and show him who the best magician is.” I frowned at them.

  “Well, we still don’t know the entire rules of the game,” Cyan pointed out. “Mister Maske, what happens if we lose?”

  Maske wilted even further. “My ban on magic remains in place, but is also passed onto you. And… I’d have to give Taliesin the Kymri Theatre.”

  “Lord and Lady,” I breathed. “This time you’d really lose everything. What would he lose if we win?”

  “His ban is put into effect for a certainty, and extends to his grandsons. We gain his premises.”

  High stakes indeed. “No matter,” I said. “We’ll win, right?”

  “Sam,” Maske said.

  I sighed. “You can call me Micah if you wish. Cyan knows.”

  He blinked in surprise. “Micah. Taliesin’s grandsons might be new to magic, but they’ll still have been around it their whole lives. And Taliesin has been designing tricks for the last fifteen years, studying the psyche of the audience, which always shifts with the times. I’m a decade and a half out of date. Washed up.”

  “Rubbish!” I said. Maske blinked at me as I continued. “You’re the Maske of Magic! You taught him everything he knows. And he’s a ruin of a man, now. We’ll beat him and his kin, no problem.” Though I was not as confident as I pretended to be. We were outcasts from the circus, novice magicians and would be up against performers trained enough to star in the Specter Shows. We could not even pull off the levitation illusion yet.

  Drystan and Cyan echoed my reassurances, knowing it was what Maske needed to hear. From the stiff way he held his shoulders, it was clear that seeing his old rival had unnerved him. And no wonder – he had been living in his workshop, dreaming and creating. Occasionally, in the evenings, he went off for séances or card games with his friends. It was a rude awakening from his dream world, with performing only a distant fancy. Not three months from now. Not as a duel. All of his old hate, betrayal, and jealousy were naked on his face, warring with a forlorn fear. Taliesin had tricked him again.

  As we told him we could do it, that we knew that we could beat him, he straightened and his eyes grew beetle-bright with the challenge.

  “You’re right. I was only being foolish. We’ll win. And then I’ll perform again…” He faltered. His next words were whispered in awe: “I’ll perform again.”

  “You will,” I said, clasping him on the shoulder.

  He looked up at me, a slow smile on his face.

  “We’ll beat him,” I reassured him.

  Inside, I hoped so. And I could not shake the feeling that while the Shadow was off our trail, other problems still darkened our path.

  17

  DUST MOTES

  “With each life, they learn more, they become the truer essence of themselves. With each passing generation, our children are growing into what we hoped they would be. Of course, there is always the threat that they will learn too much.”

  Translated fragment of Alder script.

  The next day, we threw open every window of the Kymri Theatre, despite the thin layer of snow on the ground and the bite in the wind.

  The work warmed us. We swept dust from the stage, and then sanded, stained, and varnished it until it shone. We scrubbed the aged velvet of the seats, mending the tears. We mopped the mosaics and glued the loose tiles back into place. We washed the stained glass windows. I climbed to the roof and made it possible for light to shine through the grimy skylights again.

  Lily Verre, true to her earlier promise, helped us during two afternoons. Maske said nothing of their date, but I knew that they planned to meet again. Lily kept meeting his eyes and smiling as she chattered and dusted vaguely. She brought bouquets of roses “to freshen the air,” even though it was rather pointless. No members of the public would enter the Kymri Theatre during the remaining life of the dying roses.

  At the end of the week, the theatre was in a semblance of order. Decades of grease and grime no longer coated everything. We discovered the original pinkish beige of the walls before we coated them with warm yellow paint.

  When the paint had dried, we surveyed our handiwork. My back ached from the dull, repetitive motion of scrubbing. I was weary to the bone, and my palms were wrinkled and chapped from filthy soap suds.

  In that moment it did not matter. The Kymri Theatre sparkled. It looked like a place for magic shows and wonder. I could imagine audience members in the seats. The rustle of skirts, the waving of fans and the crinkle of paper as men and women consulted their programs. Before, the dusty seats only seemed like they could be filled with ghosts.

  “Tomorrow is the meeting with Aspall and Taliesin,” Maske said, breaking the silence of the theatre. “You three still want to participate?”

  We did.

  “Then we’ll see this through to the end.”

  With that, he twisted the controls, and the chandelier of gas lights above us shimmered to life, bathing the empty theatre in a warm yellow glow to match the walls. I breathed in the smell of the varnish, lemon-soaped water, and roses.

  It was not a circus ring, but it was our new stage.

  To celebrate the scrubbing of our home, we invited Lily for tea. She hadn’t reported us to the policiers, after all, and Maske wanted every opportunity to see Lily Verre. Around her, Drystan and I always wore our Glamours, just in case.

  We cooked the most lavish meal within our capabilities, with Cyan making traditional Temnian dishes, the recipes passed on from mother to daughter for generations. Cyan wore a bittersweet smile as she kneaded the dough for mooncakes, the smell of yeast and spices in the air. She marinated chicken and vegetables in a thick, spicy sauce before cooking them on a skillet and made rice, a fluffy grain I had only tried a time or two before.

  To showcase my cooking lessons over the past few months, I made little savory tarts filled with leeks, cheese, and bacon. Drystan made an old circus favorite for a second dessert – peanut brittle. It was an extremely disparate meal, but it was ours.

  Lily brought a bottle of wine and a bottle of whisky, which I still could not stand to drink. She wore a russet dress, her hair tumbling from its chiffon in its usual
disarray.

  We gave her a tour of the finished Kymri Theatre.

  “You worked your magic on this place, right enough,” Lily said.

  “Thank you, my dear Mrs Verre,” Maske said.

  We sat in the kitchen rather than the formal parlor. For a time, the only sounds were the clink of cutlery and the splash of wine into glasses, then Maske and Lily carried the conversation through the meal. I was too hungry from a solid week of cleaning to do much but put one spoonful of food after another into my mouth.

  “It’s a shame about those Forester protests, isn’t it?” Lily said, fluttering her hand. “Frightful, really. Not that I’m completely unsympathetic to their cause, mind, but the protests are truly getting out of hand, aren’t they?”

  “Out of hand?” I asked.

  “Well, there were those fights outside the palace the other week, and now there’s the vandalism of the estates in the Emerald Bowl. They cut down all the trees around it and painted: “LEAVES TO ROOTS” across the windows. That’s a bit much. They’re even threatening a civil war if their needs aren’t met.”

  Civil war? Surely it wouldn’t come to that. “Which family was vandalized?” I asked, nervously.

  “The Ash-Oaks, I believe.”

  They were staunch royalists. I knew them. Lord Ash-Oak was an adviser to the Steward and very active against the Foresters. Their son was only eight. He must have been so frightened.

  “I bet the Steward wasn’t too happy about that,” Drystan said.

  “I’m betting that’s a gross understatement,” Maske said. “That man will be calling out for their blood, and that leader Timur’s especially.”

  “He won’t be able to do anything to them. And no one knows where Timur is hiding, do they?” Cyan asked, biting her lip.

  I felt a… knocking on my mind, like someone was asking to enter. Cyan’s brows furrowed.

  I know a few Foresters, she said in my mind. Some of those in the circus left to be Timur’s followers.

  I nearly reeled in shock at the sound of her voice in my head, setting down the wine glass with a clatter. Cyan’s voice in my head. What had she discovered? What had I unwittingly disclosed?