by Zan Safra
I remember the prison.
There was no one. There was no moon, no stars, no change, no time. There was only the stone of the cell, a box with bars so narrow that I could cross it in three steps.
No one ever came. Food and water appeared when I woke and empty bowls vanished afterwards, often in the time it took to glance away. I knew that someone watched me, I felt it, as though a million invisible eyes surrounded me, hanging in the air, embedded in the very walls…
I heard the footsteps.
I threw off the ragged blanket and went to the bars. A strange foggy light filled the corridor, though there were no lamps to cast it. A girl appeared, dressed in a gray shift like mine. Her skin was not blue but very pale, and her ragged white hair reached only to her chin. When she passed the bars of my cell I managed to croak, “Are you escaping?”
She turned, squinting. Then her eyes flew open and she rocked backwards. She stared at me. I stared back. “Let me out…”
She spoke in a language I had never heard, that I later discovered was called Scotian. “What are…who are you?”
I felt a change inside my brain, the opening of a box, the turning of a page. My thoughts and words shifted to match her language. “Let me out! Please!”
Despair, terror, misery swallowed me. “Please let me out…please don’t leave me here…”
Please…
I open my eyes.
The world is a mess of shades. I blink until it becomes a room with blue-papered walls. A pile of heavy blankets weighs down upon me. The volta in my chest thrums, brighter than before.
My hair falls in my face as I sit. The sand and salt are gone and the knots are untangled. I push back the blankets. I wear a white garment, of a kind I have never seen.
The word comes to me. Camisón. Nightdress.
I stare about the room. I have never seen the objects that surround me before, but somehow I still know their names. A canopy spreads above me. An armchair faces me, with a small table beside it, a candle calmly burning atop. A shawl lies draped over the chair and a book with a ribbon rests on the seat, as though whoever sat there has only just left.
These words. They must come from the Before. The life I must have led before I awoke in the cell. The time I know nothing of.
I climb out of the bed. Cold glass brushes the skin of my chest. I find the cord around my neck. The thumb-sized vial of chimerical illusion is still affixed.
Jette. The crash. The girl in armor. The men in blue. An underground passage, a boy in a mask, a river…
I left her.
I cover my face. She must be alive. We both fell from the aethership. The water was hard but it cannot have been deep, and both of us can swim. We have escaped before, the Scholomance, the constables in Bucharest, the railway guards in Belgrade, the automata in Dubrovnik—
The slap of footsteps sends me leaping up like a rabbit. They come from beyond the door.
I go to door and open it a crack. I see a hallway dotted with alchemical lights, miniscule balls of blue fire in sconces that cling to the walls like spiders.
A footprint appears on the marble floor.
I flinch back. I hear another footfall. At that precise moment another wet print appears.
I shut the door. The footsteps pass me. I wait until they are nearly out of hearing to open the door again. Far down the corridor another door opens. The glistening footprints cross its threshold and disappear.
I lean my forehead against the door, the volta around my heart writhing. I remember very little of the world, but enough to know that no Natural can become invisible.
There are people here. Ones like me.
I slip out into the corridor. The cold floor chills my feet, sending shivers racing up my legs. Ahead a shaft of candlelight leaks from the space between the threshold and the door.
I move closer, keeping well back. I see a bedroom much like the one I just left, but with walls of a different shade. Before my eyes the empty sleeve of a brown coat appears, simply appears, springing out of nothingness. The rest of it forms and falls with a wet thud to the floor. A belt appears, loaded with two holstered pistols, and slings itself over the table. Another follows it, one like Jette’s bandolier, but instead of vials it carries flat, leaf-shaped blades. A heavy gold ring forms and slams down onto the desk. The candle flame flutters, making its large engraved X flash and fade.
The chair slides away from the desk and creaks as someone collapses into it. A needle-thin silhouette appears in the air, the outline of a person, pale as a chalk tracing. It fills, tinting itself with colors that strengthen until with a snap of brightness an entire person appears: a young man with damp red hair plastered to his forehead. He slumps in the chair, his face deathly white, clutching his right arm. His sleeve is soaked in blood.
My stomach gives a twist at the sight of it. The young man takes hold of the cloth and draws back his sleeve. The wound beneath it is terrible, a bloody puncture and a burn. Strings of black slime smear his skin.
Without meaning to I gasp.
His head snaps up. He stares through the gap, gray eyes shining with fever, boring into mine.
I run down the corridor. A door springs out of the darkness, hardly wider than a clock case. I wrench it open and dart through. The floor disappears from under me. I pitch sideways, into empty space. My shoulder strikes a wooden step, then my back, my side, bang, bang, bang. I crash into another door. It flies open, throwing me out onto a stone floor.
My head pounds. My ears ring. Chilly dampness and the smell of water settle on me like a lowering fog. Stone walls surround me, shimmering with water-caught light.
I push myself up, every muscle in my body aching. Moonlight and the blue alchemical glow blend into a strange haze. The room is bare, with only three walls. Where the fourth should be is open air, a length of canal and the brick wall of the building opposite.
Light glows beneath me. I snatch my hands away from the ground and scramble backwards. More lights spark on the floor, golden symbols strewn over the stone with no order to them, as though someone has gathered up a handful and thrown them about. Alchemical glyphs.
I lurch onto my feet. More glyphs shine on the door I burst through, burning on the wood. Their golden light darkens to red.
The door slams shut. A lock clanks.
The glyphs shine molten. More of them sprout on the floor, a swarm racing towards the water. The same red-hot light burns beneath the surface, glowing like sunken coals. The ground shudders.
I run for the door and rock back as a blast of heat pelts me. A wall of broiling air shields the door. The glyphs dance with every ripple of heat, taunting me.
The surface of the canal bulges. An automaton climbs out of the water, man-shaped but huge, a metal creature armored like an insect. Burning glyphs whirl over the steel, the same color as the furnace-glow that leaks from the hollow holes of its eyes.
The automaton straightens. It has no hands. At the end of its left arm is a bulky club. At the end of its right is a blade, hooked like a crescent moon into two glittering points.
It turns to look at me.
“Stay back!” I scream. “Keep away!”
The automaton thuds towards me, every step quaking the ground. I stagger back but the boiling air halts me. The automaton raises its club arm. I throw myself sideways just as the club comes down.
The breeze of it whips my hair into my face. The club crashes against the floor. Cracks fork through the stone, chasing me as I roll onto my feet.
It means to kill me. Not capture me. It wants me to die.
“Get away! Leave me alone!”
The volta flares inside my chest. The glowing threads unwind from around my heart, racing down my arms, sparking from the points of my silver fingernails.
I yank it back in. It is not strong enough. I can hardly control it even when it is. If I cannot direct it, if I waste too much—
The automaton rises from its cro
uch, drawing its club from the rubble. It raises its bladed arm and aims it at me.
It will kill me. But if I drain myself I will die.
I have no choice.
I raise my hands. The smell of metal wraps around me, the scent of the air before a thunderstorm. My scalp prickles. My hair rises, floating tendrils that brush my face.
A humming fills my ears. Shafts of violet light stream from my fingers. The same purplish glow sparks on the automaton, coursing from the sharp corners of its armor and the points of the crescent blade.
The automaton turns its wrist. The blade fractures and launches at me, two halves whirling through the air, arcing straight for my head.
Now!
I let the volta surge. Blue sparks burst from my silver nails. The twin blades halt, inches from my fingertips. They slowly spin, floating as though the air about them has turned to water, purple light blazing from their points like jets of gas.
I close my fingers. The metal blades crumple, crushing themselves into spheres. They fall and I double over. My volta flickers, shrinking to a shred of what it was.
I raise my head. The automaton lifts its arm again. Two new blades unfold and slot into place.
I force myself upright, prying more threads of volta from my heart. The last of them.
The automaton takes aim. I bring up my arms, take a final breath, and release the volta.
Heat sears me. Volta roars down my arms and explodes from my fingertips, twin bolts of lightning, split-second flashes that bind me to the automaton with a deafening crack.
The automaton blows apart. Pieces of red-hot metal fly in all directions. The burnt-out shell of the creature collapses, falling into a shapeless, smoking mass.
I fall. The stone tugs at the single thread of volta still pulsing within me, calling it towards the earth. My heartbeat thuds in my ears, too weakly. I am falling…sinking…
Footsteps patter against stone. The lights brighten from blue to silver. A form in a dark gown gathers me up.
Arms hold me, rocking me. A voice murmurs words in my ear, ones I do not understand.
My remaining volta sparks. The arms about me slide away as I sit. A woman kneels beside me. The world sharpens, bringing her clearly into sight.
She has wings. They rise from her back, enormous, furred and jointed like those of a gigantic bat.
She turns to the wreckage of the automaton. Her hair is reddish brown, graying at the temples, parted and gathered into a bun. The sharp points of her ears jut through the strands of hair. Her jaw is delicate but her nose and mouth are long, pushed out, halfway between an ordinary face and a muzzle.
She turns back to me. Her pupils are huge, with only the thinnest ring of brown surrounding them. “The gatekeeper,” she says. Four fangs glint in her mouth. “It did not recognize you.”
She reaches for me. I jerk away. Her voice is thick with regret. “I am so sorry.”
“What do you want with me?” I choke. “Where am I?”
“It is called the Palaso dei Ombre. A place for Unnaturals,” she says. “Ayanda brought you to us not three hours past.”
Palaso dei Ombre. Palacio de Sombras. Shadow Palace.
“You’re spent, poor thing.” She reaches for me again, unfolding her unbloodied hand. “Come.”
Ayanda, the armored girl. She saved me once. She would not have brought me here to die.
The Unnatural woman helps me to stand. She wraps a wing around me, steering me towards the door. Remnants of heat still radiate from the wood, warming me. As we start up the stairs she says, “All call me Madrina.”
“I…I am Belle. Belle Fr—”
I trip on a step. Madrina catches me. We reach a corridor and travel down it until we return to the room where I awoke. Madrina guides me towards the bed and draws the covers over me.
Jette…Jette is still…
I try to speak. Madrina brushes my hair from my face. “Shhh. We will speak in the evening. Rest now, Belle.”
I sink into darkness. The sound of my name follows me, along with the rest of it.
Belle.
Belle Frankenstein.
Chapter Six
Ayanda
TAPTAPTAPTAP.
My metal fingertips drum against the medallion as I pace across the parlor. Candlelight sets the soft red wallpaper aglow with warmth, deepening the burgundy of the armchairs and heavy drapes, making the scatter of portraits perched atop the mantelpiece shine as though newly painted.
I go to the parlor window. The cold seeps through the alchemized glass as I part the curtains. The mist is already rising in the east, a heavy bank of fog rolling over the water, silver in the light of the sinking moon.
An hour until daybreak. Soon the mist will rise high above to blot out the starry sky, and the strange, inexplicable light that’s bewildered the world since the dawn of time will bloom behind it. Then the mist will move on to the west and the night will return. Unnaturals wake then.
So do the Dead.
Light footsteps echo from the corridor. I compose myself. Face calm. No quavering. Try not to let on that you’ve just escaped gruesome death.
Madrina sweeps into the parlor. Exhaustion soaks every inch of her, from her disheveled hair to her sagging wings. The flickering light fills their creases with shadows.
Madrina has never spoken to me of her creation. All free Unnaturals escaped from their creators’ alchemical laboratories, but she never answered the questions I asked her as a child. I can only assume that her alchemists meant to create a being capable of flight, combining the blood essence of human and bat, and failed. Madrina can only glide.
All Unnaturals are failures, according to them. Failures who escaped before they were destroyed.
Madrina opens her arms. I go to her and embrace her. She wraps her wings around me, the way she did when I was small. “You might have been killed,” she murmurs.
I rest my forehead on her shoulder, holding back tears. I nearly died tonight. I might never have seen her again.
She unfolds her wings and I pull away. “Belle?” I ask.
“Resting.”
Something about her tone makes my throat tighten. I think better of asking further.
Madrina’s expression changes, furious. “What do you mean by this conduct? Roaming about the city in the dead of night? Alone? With a murderer at large, no less!”
She glares at me. “What if you’d done yourself an injury? What if the fiend had come upon you? What if the carabinieri…”
She clasps her hands, pleading. “How am I to know what has become of you? How am I to save you from the Academia? From the guillotine?”
A horrible chill races down my spine. I know the stories of those who were captured. I know what happens to Unnaturals who aren’t strong enough to escape.
I’ve tried not to give thought to what might happen if the carabinieri catch me. I’ve tried not to imagine the prison. The tortures. The pamphlets advertising the public execution of a monster.
I’d not be able to fight. There would be no Dead nearby to give me strength. I would die. Helpless. Before a screaming, laughing crowd.
“You…you needn’t worry yourself. I’m not a child.”
“Not a…” Madrina throws up her hands. “What possible reason could you have had to go wandering at this time? Why, Ayanda?”
“To hunt a Dead creature.”
A silence falls, thick, heavy. The parlor holds its breath.
“What did you say?” she whispers.
“I destroyed a vourdalak tonight. One of the Lesser Dead.”
Madrina sinks into a chair.
“I-I heard rumors in the market that a vampire had fixed its attention on a particular family, appearing every midnight to torment them. I investigated these rumors and discovered them to be reliable. I put an end to it tonight.”
Madrina closes her eyes.
“I fought it.” I clench my teeth. “I won.�
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“What concern is this of yours?”
Madrina opens her eyes. The candle-shadows play over her face, turning her eyes to pools of blackness. “What has the fiend to do with you?”
Her enormous fangs glint in the candlelight. “The Naturals are brutes. Savages. Beasts.” Her blunt claws dig into the velvet armrests. “They would tear you to pieces without a thought. You know this.”
Her voice rises. “You would risk yourself for them? After all they have done? After those they have burnt? Tortured? Torn apart?”
She stands, lips drawing back from her teeth. “After what they did to your padrino?”
Her words strike me like a slap. “He may still be—"
“Let them look after themselves! You owe them nothing, do you hear? Nothing!”
The calmness I tried to muster collapses. I can barely choke out what I say next. “And the child?”
The snarl vanishes from Madrina’s face like a falling mask. She returns to herself, lips hiding her fangs, the colors of the parlor warming her again.
She stares at me. I stare at her.
“It was no fault of yours, Ayanda,” she says.
I can’t bear to look at her any longer. “May I go?”
“Ayanda—”
“May I?”
Her shadow nods. I go out, shutting the door behind me.
I wipe tears from my eyes. I mustn’t think of my padrino or the child. I can’t bear it. Not now.
I follow the corridor, turning the medallion in my hands, tracing its markings with my right, feeling thumb. I’ve memorized every detail, every scratch and miniscule dent. I’ve had it since I was discovered, ten years past. It was all I carried with me when I was found, a feverish child with a mangled arm wandering about in the snow, sobbing in a language no one understood. When my fever broke I remembered nothing of my life or whence I’d come. Only my name.
I start up the stairs. It wasn’t until years afterwards that I learned that my name came from the language of the Ulundi Empire, a land at the southern end of the earth, but that knowledge alone was hardly any help to me. All I had was the medallion and the name engraved upon it. Long ago I took it as my own. Ayanda Draculesti.