by Zan Safra
I tug at the medallion’s chain. It wasn’t clear that I was Unnatural at first. My metallaric arm would have marked me as Unnatural to the Natural world, but there was no sign that I was anything other than an ordinary child otherwise. Not until I learned Venetian and began to speak.
And spoke only of the Dead.
Madrina was bewildered, Padrino as well, in the short time that I knew him. At six years of age I possessed a complete understanding of the Dead, a library within my mind, knowledge that couldn’t have been the imaginings of a child. I knew every varianta, every shape the Dead could take, every way the ikhor might twist and deform its victims after they succumbed. I knew their powers, their unique traits and weaknesses.
I never thought it strange. I chattered about the Dead as a child would chatter about any subject, drawing pictures of vampires and proudly displaying them. After a time Madrina managed to turn me towards other things, but the Dead never left me.
A rush of dizziness sends me falling onto the landing. Needles of cold drive into my veins. The choking, filthy taste of ash pours into my mouth.
No!
I grab the medallion, my own head, anything to hold me here. Not again, not again—
Blackness swallows me. The stairs and the medallion and my own body evaporate. What’s left of me falls into the darkness, down, down, into an ocean of frigid, crushing cold—
Soaring on the wind. Prey staggering below. Blood burning bright, embers in the shadows. The same blood slicking my teeth. A living girl with white hair.
Claws. Teeth. Flesh rending. Ripping, gouging, ravaging, drinking the screams, gouts of burning blood pouring down my throat—
Something seizes hold of me and rips me out of the vision, dragging me up, flinging me through darkness and back into myself.
The taste of ash coats the inside of my mouth. I fight my way up the stairs and into the corridor. Doors blaze past me until I reach my room. I jerk the velvet cord to ignite the alchemical lights and run to my desk. Pages of schematics and tools cover its surface. I sweep all of them to the floor and snatch paper and charcoal from a drawer.
I slash the charcoal across the page, the stick crumbling in my grip. The image forms on the paper. The talons. The body. The pale girl.
The blood. The blood, everywhere…
Get out of my head, get out…
The stick snaps in two. The gory sketch gazes up at me, mocking me.
I find a leather folio in the drawer and take out a sheaf of more sketches. More corpses.
The nun. The tailor’s wife. The gondolier. The street juggler. The dockworker.
Twenty-one. Ripped apart.
I rest my head in my hands. The first vision came three weeks ago. I thought it some sort of hallucination, some mad waking dream. I thought I could cast it off, siphon it out of my head and be done with it.
But then it happened again. The next night I saw the vampire slaughter again. And again. And again.
Nothing like this had ever happened to me. I’ve seen nothing of the other Dead creatures that must prowl Venice by night. These visions only began with the first murder.
I’m connected to this monster. And I don’t know why.
Cogs clatter as a fire sparks in the hearth. Even the familiar sight of my room, its ivory wallpaper shimmering with golden glyphs, the red-brown wood of the furnishings, does nothing to comfort me.
I wrap a shawl around my shoulders and gather up the mess on the floor. I drop the armful back onto my desk: elements of my latest crossbow model, disjointed pieces of a half-built clockwork butterfly, and a long leather cuff bearing five razor-pointed silver hatpins. I push back my bell-shaped sleeve and wrap the cuff around my forearm. It fits. Good.
I collect the pieces of the crossbow and arrange them on my desk, leaving the single silver quarrel for last. I balance it on my fingertips, feeling its heft. Pure silver. A shot to the head or heart will kill any vampire dead. Permanently.
I set it down. The Naturals don’t even know that silver is fatal to the Dead. They’ve learned nothing in the ten years since London. They suspect the fiend’s true nature, but they’ve no notion of what to do. All they have is superstition, useless charms and symbols. Nothing that can protect them.
The crawling fear grips me again. It’s nearly Mascherata. The enormous costumed celebration is little more than a week away. The carabinieri won’t be able to enforce the curfew once the festival properly begins. Thousands of visitors have already arrived in the city, disembarking from steamships and aethercraft in swarms. Marching into the jaws of a beast.
I can’t do this.
I can’t fight this creature. The fiend is one of the Greater Dead. A vampire with an intact brain and abilities I can’t fathom without knowing its varianta. A brutal, murderous thing that tears its victims to rags…
The fear strangles me. This creature doesn’t attack to feed. The Greater Dead don’t care to make spectacles of themselves. They hunt carefully, stealthily, keeping themselves concealed.
It wasn’t hunger that drove the attacks I’ve seen. It was hate.
A knot cracks in the hearth. I pull the shawl more tightly around me. Hold fast. Take heart.
The sound of the fire brings memories. A crashing aethership and what happened after. Belle. Yurei. The masked boy with yellow eyes.
Yellow eyes…
The words cling to the inside of my head. Familiar words.
I open another drawer and take out my journal of oddities, a collection of notes and articles I snipped from the newspaper. I flip through the pages until I find an article from a fortnight past.
HORROR AT LA FILOMENA!
Seance at Opera House Ends in Chaos
Pandemonium ensued after nightfall when the hitherto merely alleged evil spirit haunting the theatre made its presence known, chiefly by destroying the accoutrements of renowned medium Madame Walburga Reynarde and exposing her questionable practices. Although many of the participants fled the scene, our reliable source informs us that the resulting mayhem presents grave implications for both the career of the unfortunate Madame Reynarde and the impending premiere of Marcelo Volpato’s Mircalla.
I read quickly, skipping the names of the sitters and the medium’s personal history. Upon beginning the seance, the medium appeared unduly startled to hear a distinct spectral voice responding to her initial query. The ghost commenced a scathing commentary on each of Madame Reynarde’s methods in turn. As she endeavored to employ the newest addition to her considerable repertoire, a form of divination originating in the Chrysanthemum Kingdoms, the spirit proceeded to mock her pronunciation before overturning the table, exposing an incriminating arrangement of pulleys.
When the highly agitated Madame Reynarde declared that the spirit was more malevolent than any she had encountered and that she must retire in order to better prepare herself, the ghost manifested as a hideous apparition, a specter of impenetrable darkness and sulfurous yellow eyes, promised disastrous consequences should any further attempt at communication be made, and departed in a gale of fiendish laughter.
Yurei. It can’t be anyone else.
I set down the clipping and go to the window. The mist blankets the rooftops, swirling among the towers and spires, and the distant gables of La Filomena.
Chapter Seven
Belle
I WAKE TO MOONLIGHT, pouring through a gap in the curtains, as somewhere in the Shadow Palace a clock chimes seven. The volta in my chest burns bright.
I sit up, blinking. The room looks as it did when I lay down, but for a large porcelain doll seated in the chair by the window, posed as though looking out.
I wonder groggily why there should be a doll in my room, but not for long. The doll turns its head to look at me. Its irises are blood-red, without pupils. In the shadow of the moon they glow.
The doll rises from the chair, gliding towards me like a ghost, slippered feet dangling inches above the floor. As it pa
sses through the shaft of moonlight I see that it is not a doll but a small girl, with black hair in ringlets and dressed in a frilled white frock. Her skin is pale as marble and gleams like glass.
She floats to the footboard, peeping over it. “I’m Fiorella,” she whispers.
I swallow hard. “H-…Hello, Fiorella.”
Her red eyes stare at me, unblinking, as she holds up four fingers. “I’m four next week.”
I feel myself shrinking back and force myself to stop. “You are?”
She nods solemnly, with a faint clink of glass. “What were you dreaming about?”
“Dreaming?”
She points to her eyes. “You were crying.”
I touch my eyes. My fingertips come away wet.
Someone knocks. I keep my eyes on Fiorella as I squeak out, “Come in!”
Madrina enters the room, layers of a lavender gown draped over her arm. An automaton follows her. This machine looks nothing like the monster that meant to kill me. It is shaped like an ordinary woman, a moving brass sculpture with jointed limbs, wearing a black chambermaid’s dress and a cap over its molded metal hair. Engraved glyphs burn on the back of its hands and neck. Its eyes are hollow, like those of an empty mask. A hot glow shines through its vacant sockets like the light of a furnace.
The automaton sets a steaming basin of water on the vanity. Madrina lays the pieces of the gown on the bed, a bodice and a matching skirt, an underskirt, a chemise, camisole, and corset.
I stare at them. I have never worn anything finer than a shift. I never imagined I would ever so much as touch such clothing…
Fiorella drifts closer, looking at the gown. Madrina pats the little girl on the back. “It’s after mistfall. The moon’s risen, you see?” She sweeps a wing towards the window. “Go on. Down to breakfast.”
Fiorella stares out the window, frowning. “What’s above the mist?” she asks. “What casts the daylight?”
“No one knows. Not even the aetherships can fly high enough to pierce it.” Madrina steers her towards the door. “Off you go.”
Fiorella glides out. Madrina sighs, smiling. “They are darling at that age, aren’t they?”
I pretend my shiver is one of cold.
After I have washed Madrina helps me to dress. The corset forces me to stand tall and gives me no room to slump. The automaton jerks the laces so tight that I feel my ribs begin to compress, but I see no sense in complaining. Madrina’s gaze flits to the vial of chimerical illusion still strung around my neck, but she says nothing of it.
As I slide the skirt over my head I am relieved to see that it is not stiff like the other dresses I have seen, those billowing gowns spread over a cage contraption underneath. It looks more like the riding habits I saw on the women on horseback outside of Budapest, with only a single underskirt and room to move about.
Far better. It will be easier to search for Jette if I am able to fight if need be. Given what I have seen thus far, I may very well need to.
I button my bodice, careful not to snag the fabric with my fingernails. Jette and I had planned to find the Academia Alchemica once we had arrived in Venice, to steal alchemical supplies for weapons and disguises. She may yet have gone there.
The volta in my chest writhes. Jette is unusual, but not as plainly Unnatural as I am. But still, should someone attack her…
I have no more time to waste. I must find her now.
“Ordinarily we sleep during the daylight hours and wake at moonrise,” Madrina tells me, as the automaton approaches with a comb in one hand. I flinch as it nears me, until it occurs to me that the thing cannot do me much harm with a comb. It motions for me to sit at the vanity. After I do the automaton takes a fistful of my hair and begins to rake the comb through it, hard enough that I barely stop myself from yelling with each stroke.
“Why sleep…then?” I manage. “Why not…awake…at mistrise? Morning?”
“The better to avoid running afoul of…” Madrina inclines her head towards the window. I take her meaning.
“Not long ago it was safer for us to go out in the dead of night,” she sighs, “but now, with this murderer afoot, and the carabinieri…”
I blink away a tear of pain. “A murderer?”
“Yes. But you need not worry.” She brushes a lock of hair from my forehead. “You are safe here. Our defenses are impregnable, both alchemical and automatical. None have ever breached our walls.”
The automaton parts my hair and begins to wind it into a knot at the nape of my neck. “Was the Shadow Palace…built…for Unnaturals?”
Madrina gathers a pair of pearl hairpins from the vanity. “Yes, as a haven. We have rescued Unnaturals from every corner of the Continent.”
“Are there…ow…many of us?”
“No. Very few, in fact.” Madrina hands the hairpins to the automaton. It stabs them into the knot and finally retreats.
Madrina smiles. Her fangs flash but her eyes are kind. “How lovely you are.”
I turn to the vanity mirror. The reflection gazes back at me, astonished. Her skin is a light, vivid blue. Her black eyes are bright and shine from within. The lines of delicate stitches that cross her cheeks are not charcoal-black, but silvery, iridescent. She stands upright, no longer cringing. No longer a prisoner.
A shimmer ripples the reflection. For a heartbeat I see another face. Mine. Not mine.
It vanishes. The face of the blue girl stares back at me.
I know what I saw. A shard of the Before.
Madrina’s reflection nods. “Come along, ijica.”
The automaton remains, straightening the bedcovers as I follow Madrina into the corridor. All is changed. The ghastly blue lights have brightened to a soft silver. The floor is dark wood, so polished that it shines, and the walls are covered in black wallpaper shimmering with a leafy golden pattern. I stop, studying it more closely.
The paper is alive. Golden glyphs the size of dewdrops swim and march through the pattern: stars, whorls, triangles, interwoven and locked into strange combinations. I reach out to touch them, brushing my fingers over the paper. The glyphs spin away from my fingertips and continue to flow and dance. As the points of my silver fingernails touch the wall I feel a shiver rippling through its surface, a low, clattering rumble, like the turning of gears.
Our defenses are impregnable, both alchemical and automatical…
“Are…are we…”
The hissing name sticks in my throat. But I must say it. I must ask. “Are we safe from the Scholomance?”
Madrina stops dead.
The name lingers in my mouth like a coating of slime. For an eternity there is only silence, so deep that I can hear the beating of my own blood.
“Yes.” Madrina turns to me. Her face is unreadable. “Why do you ask such a thing?”
“I…” Something within me quails. “I have…heard of it.”
“Of course.” Her voice is even. “The Shadow Palace’s defenses are more than a match for their alchemy.”
She smiles, but it is forced. “Come. It’s time to meet the others.”
I keep my mouth shut as we continue down the corridor, wishing I had said nothing. The name itself seems a poison.
We reach a marble staircase and follow it downwards. My mind still churns. Scholomance. I did not know the name of the place that held us. I learned it from Jette after our escape, as we both crouched hidden among the crates of the railcar, bruised, bloody, chips of rubble caught in our hair. Through cracks in the railcar’s side I saw the forests of Carpathia racing past, a blur of moonlit trees tilting away as we tore down the mountainside.
It was so strange, so utterly changed from the stone of my cell, so different from the fortress. I saw it when we fled: the castle of black stone, perched on the island in the center of the black lake, surrounded by a ring of jagged peaks.
“The Scholomance,” Jette said. “The center of alchemy. They oversee all of the alchemists on the Conti
nent.” She held out her hands over the flaming crucible between us. “It is an ancient place. They have controlled alchemy for hundreds of years.”
“Why did they lock you away?”
She lifted her gaze. The alchemical firelight filled her transparent blue eyes with a reddish gleam.
I never asked again.
Madrina and I come to an atrium, a square-shaped room with a windowed ceiling. Shining potted lucifern ivies glow in the corners, glowworm-green, wispy blue, silver. “We dine in the lunarium,” Madrina says as we cross the atrium. I follow her through another door and gasp as I step through.
A silver chandelier hangs above a dining room furnished with a long table of dark mahogany. Most of the room is a half-dome of paneled glass, a vast window overlooking the city. Heavy winter clouds creep across the moon, leaving only a glimmering patch in its place. The silver light of the chandelier and the shine of the candles set atop the table keep the darkness at bay.
Three others stare at me, just as startled. Two of them are small boys seated at the table, one with a plate of raw meat before him and the other with what looks troublingly like a glistening dead eel. The first seems halfway between a boy and a cub, with a face slightly elongated and a nose that is black and doglike. Thick black fur covers all of him not hidden by his clothing, from his blunt-clawed hands to his wild mane of hair, making him seem all the more like a child half-transformed into a wolf.
The other child is about the same size, but instead of skin he bears a coat of silver scales, like those of a sea creature. His neatly-combed hair is the same shade of silver and his eyes are like mine, without whites at their edges, but a gleaming, voltaic blue. Hundreds of needle-thin, fish-like teeth glitter at me as he gapes.
The third is a girl, younger than I am, dressed in a gown of soft yellow. Her braided hair is black and glossy and her skin is brown, but tinted with an emerald cast. Her widened eyes are a brilliant, almost venomous green, and plant-like tendrils wind through her hair, sprouting with star-shaped leaves. The fourth at the table is Fiorella, frowning in concentration as she spoons clear water from her bowl.