by Zan Safra
“Indeed.” He sets a pair of small boxes on the writing desk, holding his injured arm rigid as the limb of a mannequin. The feverish pallor still tints his face, no matter how brightly he grins. “The latest fashion from St. Petersburg.”
Renzo takes one of the boxes, sniffing it. “Which one’s mine?”
Andreas plucks the box from his hand. “I already gave you your present. Eat your tyannuchki.”
Renzo shrugs and eats another toffee. Fiorella rises to peer into the box. “I want some.”
“You couldn’t eat any,” Renzo says through a mouthful of candy.
“But I want some,” Fiorella mutters.
Andreas opens one of the boxes. On a black velvet cushion sits a jeweled object, an intricate knot of engraved gold and wine-colored gems.
I stare. “What is it?”
“It’s called a chatelaine.” He draws it out. Five fine golden chains unfurl from it, each bearing a tiny object: a heart-shaped locket, a watch smaller than a coin, a perfume vial, a decorative key, and a pair of sewing scissors the length of my little finger. He gives it to me. “It’s worn at the waist.”
“Oh, thank you!” I pin it at my waist and arrange the chains over my skirt. “But why?”
He shrugs. “Does one need a reason?”
Gold glints on his lapel, a griffin-shaped pin with a chip of sapphire for an eye. “That’s lovely,” I say. “Does it come from St. Petersburg as well?”
A hint of color blooms in his face. He clears his throat. Renzo grins toothily and sings, “Andreas has a sweetheart…”
Andreas sighs. “Go away, Renzo.”
“And he’s royal—”
Fiorella snatches the box of toffees and flies out of the room. Renzo runs yelling after her.
“You have a royal sweetheart?” I ask.
Andreas rolls his eyes. “The very idea. It’s only a token of appreciation from Ki—
…from the prince. It means noth—”
His voice catches. He turns away, holding his arm.
“Andreas.” I ready myself. This is my chance. “I know what happened to you.”
Andreas stops trembling. He remains perfectly still, unbreathing.
“You were shot with a quarrel filled with black blood,” I say. “Weren’t you?”
He chuckles. “That’s fanciful.”
“Weren’t you?”
“If only my life were so interesting—”
“I saw that wound!” I lower my voice. “It was the fiend. One of her servants attacked you. The blood was meant to turn you into a…”
A shiver kills my voice. Moroi are indistinguishable…
Andreas turns his head. His face is expressionless.
“A what?” he asks.
“A…a moroi,” I say. “A vampire’s living slave.”
Fear sparks in his eyes. “I-I cauterized it.”
He collects himself, tossing his head to flick a lock of hair from his forehead. “I assure you, Belle, I’m—"
“You know more than you’ve said.”
“Enough, Belle.”
“Don’t you?”
“What have you to do with this?” His voice chills. “You seem remarkably well-informed.”
“Andreas—"
Pain crosses his face. He holds his arm, fingers sinking into his coat. “If you’ll excuse me.”
He bows and vanishes. Footsteps cross the room. The door opens and shuts.
I sink into a chair and put my face in my hands. If only I could sleep. If I could only rest I might think of something, some way to make sense of this…
The chatelaine’s chains slide over my lap, dangling at my side. I open its perfume bottle to smell it and find no liquid inside, only a tiny scroll of paper.
I fish it out and unroll it. Penned letters read:
Palaso Rurico, San Polo
Just in case.
I slide the scroll back into the vial and stopper it. Yet another mystery to fret about.
I drag myself out of the chair and set the carpetbag back on the bed. The second black box sits where Andreas left it. I open it to find another golden chatelaine, this one studded with green gems.
I set it atop the clothing and close the bag with a snap.
The last half of the chimerical illusion prickles on my skin as I cross the Rialto Bridge, passing shops and awnings crowded with fabrics and costumes. Aetherships sail overhead. The noise of the city bombards me from every side. Naturals walk past me without even glancing my way.
I spot two carabinieri and lower my head, hiding beneath my bonnet. The men hold the leads of two sitting beasts, enormous scaly dogs with pointed bat-wing ears. The animals are so large that their heads are the height of my shoulders. They sit like statues, yellow eyes staring. Heavy golden collars encircle their necks.
A woman knocks into me. “Beg pardon, dear.”
I point to the beasts. “What are those creatures?”
“Those?” She raises an eyebrow. “Have you never seen an Infernal?”
“Infernal?”
“Beasts from another realm. The alchemists captured them and brought them here. Only the rich folk can afford to keep them. And the carabinieri, of course.” She shudders. “I’m not fond of them myself. It’s those eyes.”
She smiles and continues on her way. I do the same. I had not noticed any strange creatures earlier, but now I see them everywhere. A red-and-black striped cat crouches on a windowsill. A pair of white bats flitter past, carrying envelopes in their claws. A bird small enough to fit in my hand perches on a woman’s fanchon hat like a living decoration.
I marvel at it. The Infernal is dazzling, with a brilliant ivory crest and red tailfeathers that glow like petrified flames. As the woman turns her head I find myself facing the creature. Its gaze is vacant, eyes like beads of yellowed glass. The effect is strange, as though the creature is a taxidermied animal, stuffed yet still breathing.
I look away, discomfited, and follow the wharf. I sight the warehouse fourth from the Rialto Bridge and march straight for it, dodging Naturals and automata disembarking from boats and aetherships. Beatriz mentioned that a masked festival would begin soon, a celebration that draws visitors from every corner of the Continent. I well believe it.
A swarm of gulls scatters as I reach the warehouse. Men in workers’ clothing pass back and forth before it, but no one enters. It seems safe enough.
I find a narrow door. It opens into a cloud of dust. Once my eyes adjust to the darkness I spot a glow from a far corner.
I meander through a maze of crates, holding my bag close to keep from smearing it with grime. I reach the corner and blink at the sudden brightness. Jette’s luminant hangs from a length of twine strung between two stacks of crates. More strings stretch in every direction like the work of a mad spider, glass vials dangling from them like dewdrops. Jette stands in the midst of it all, fastening another vial. Three more filled with iridescent liquid hang beside it.
I duck under the strings. “Are those the illusions?”
Jette screams and swings about. Her staff barely misses my face. I jump back and fall into the web.
“Belle!” Jette runs to help me out of the tangle. “I might have—”
“Well…you haven’t, have you?” I unrumple myself. “What is this? A laboratory?”
“Of a sort.” Jette looks rather sheepish. “I am usually far better methodized.”
“It looks rather well methodized, considering.” I set the carpetbag on a crate. “What are these things?”
“These?” A torrent of words bursts out of her. “Yes, these! Miss Draculesti mentioned that vampires are vulnerable to silver. We saw that a silver weapon disrupted its hold over the moroi. My intention is to refine my silver nitrate into a hyper-concentrated state in order to don’t touch that!”
I snatch my hand from a vial. Jette adjusts it with her fingertips. “That is highly volatile!”
I use the pause to my advantage. “We should go out.”
Jette lowers her hands. “Out?”
“We have chimerical illusions. No one will recognize us,” I say. “Venice is famous for its sights, isn’t it? We ought to see them.”
Jette shakes her head and goes back to the illusions.
I throw up my hands. “Whyever not?”
She stares at me. “There are Naturals everywhere!”
“So? With the illusions we’ll look just as they do.” I pat the carpetbag. “And I’ve brought more than that.”
“What of the fiend?”
“It isn’t curfew yet, is it? It won’t do anything in the midst of a crowd.”
“It already has!”
“Because it recognized you!” I open the bag. “It won’t today.”
“This is mad! You have already endangered yourself by coming—"
“I’ll contend with it.” I take out the chatelaine and slippers. “We can both contend with it. You’re certainly strong enough, and so am…”
Jette freezes. Her face tightens. Her gaze seems to dull, growing vague.
“Jette?”
Jette blinks. Her gaze sharpens again, but the muscles of her jaw remain taut. She lowers her gaze and rubs her eyes. “I cannot go,” she mutters.
“You can’t carry on this way,” I say. “What do you mean to do? Hide forever? Trade one cell for another?”
She lifts her chin, opening her mouth to argue, and says nothing at all.
“Here, you’ve something proper to wear now.” I draw out the bodice of a green day dress. Jette takes it gingerly. “For…me?”
“Of course it’s for you!” I find the matching bonnet. Jette passes the fabric through her fingers, feeling its shape as I open the box with the second chatelaine. Jette gasps. “What is that?”
“A gift.” I hand her the box. “Here you are.”
“Gift?”
I lower the bonnet. “Yes, Jette.”
Her eyes focus on mine, wide with bewilderment. “Oh.” Her face reddens. “Thank…thank you.”
“It’s called a chatelaine. You pin it at the waist.” I give her a lavender underskirt. “Try this. It ought to fit.”
Jette bites her lip. “I do not know how to wear this.”
“I do. Look.” I help her out of her pilot’s coat. Her hair shifts, revealing the back of her neck. A long scar follows her spine, too precise to be the remnant of a wound.
I help her to dress, article by article, but the more I see the more I forget their order. Jette is covered in scars. They stripe her limbs and back, tracing the outlines of muscles and bones. Healed punctures dot her skin. As I pin her hair my fingers brush more scars crossing her scalp.
A feeling grows within me, one I do not know, a drop of acid, fomenting, boiling—
Its name comes to me.
Anger.
I want to find those who did this. I want them to pay.
I want to make them pay.
“Ow!”
I let go of Jette’s hair. She rubs her head where the hairpin poked her. I force the anger away. “Forgive me.”
Jette slings her bandolier over her chest and collects the vials. She unties one chimerical illusion and sips it, closing her eyes in concentration. Hues wash over her like spreading watercolors, tinting her skin pink, dotting it with freckles, soaking her hair with a delicate red-gold.
She opens her eyes, wilting. “Do I look odd?”
“You look perfectly lovely.” I take a hand mirror from the carpetbag and hold it before her face. “See?”
Jette jerks away. I lower the mirror. “What is it?”
She shakes her head, not meeting my eyes. I say nothing else. I return the mirror to the bag and set the bonnet on her head. “Let’s be off.”
Jette sweeps the mantle over her shoulders, hiding her bandolier and staff. She sets her jaw and nods.
We leave the warehouse and make our way into Venice. The moonlight catches on the pale walls, filling the streets with a pearly glow. After a time Jette’s gaze turns from cautious to curious. Both of us gasp when we turn into the next lane.
Colors leap at me, as though a jewelry box has exploded and flung its gems in every direction. Rows of masks shine inside the windows of shops, some white and expressionless, others glittering with paint, others drawn into strange shapes: gruesome smiles and weeping frowns, ink-black faces with drooping birdlike beaks. Men and women crowd the windows, pointing.
It must be for Mascherata, I think. I wish I could go to this festival. I have never been to a celebration. I would not even need a chimerical illusion, only a costume…
I catch sight of two very lovely girls standing at one of the windows, examining a pair of gowns. When they look my way I turn my head, heat flaring in my face, and realize I have lost Jette. The crowd is so thick that I cannot see her at all. The current carries me along, forcing me to move forward or be trampled underfoot.
Sweat beads on my forehead. I do not care for this at all.
A voice breathes in my ear. “Belle?”
I turn my head. A woman in a dark mantle stands behind me, a hood hiding her face.
“Belle Frankenstein,” she whispers.
She beckons to me and sidles into the mouth of an alley. Naturals jostle me but I shove past them, elbowing my way to the lane.
She knows me. I am disguised, but she knows me.
My heart beats faster. Could she be from the Before?
I reach the alley. The woman stands in thick shadow, hunched beneath her mantle.
“Who are you?”
She beckons again, retreating further into the dark. I follow. “How do you know me?”
She glides away. I reach out to catch her shoulder. “I asked who you—”
She turns. What stares at me is no woman. A shriveled face leers at me, bulging black eyes faceted like an insect’s, four black fangs jutting over ragged, misshapen lips.
The Dead creature grabs my mantle and jerks me close. A gloved fist closes around my throat. Metal points jab into my flesh. The volta around my heart surges and rushes out of me, into the creature’s hand. Its hold tightens. Draining me.
My legs turn to water. I fall into the vampire’s grasp. The world melts into a muddy cloud, and then there is only…
Chapter Twelve
Yurei
I CROUCH FADED ON the roof of the church, sheltering between two stone gargoyles. The square before the opera house teems with life. Patrons chatter as they filter through the doors of La Filomena. It’s finally come, the night of the premiere.
The wind pulls at my hair, streaking across the cut on my scalp. The skin’s already knitted together and even the pain in my shoulder is less than it was. But the lingering aches are nothing, nothing compared to the memories.
My shrieking voice. The words that tore from me, that ranted through my dreams, a staccato chant that ripped me into waking countless times. Let them suffer! Let them die! Let them rot in hell!
I lost my head. I’ve never lost my head, never lost control of my words. I never knew such words lived within me.
Their faces haunt me, Jette’s stunned, Belle’s drawn with horror, Ayanda’s astonished, then furious, then…
Frightened. I frightened her.
I wish I could wither to nothing, crumble like dust and dissolve into the wind. I went insane in that crypt. I raged at Ayanda like a madman, like a…
Like a monster.
I run my fingers over my mask, sensing the faint heat of the glyphs. I only remembered what happened after I ran. The shock as my mask came away. Air like acid against my face.
Then the pain...
Misery and panic boil inside me, propelling me onto my feet. Ayanda. Jette. Belle. I must find them again. I must do something, say something, something to prove that I…that I’m not—
A shout of laughter spikes from the square, a red firework in my mind. Sounds
and colors that were once calming pour over me like a river of sand. I can’t stand it any longer.
I leap into the wind, letting it carry me into the square. I dodge the lingering patrons and run into a foyer bursting with life. The chandeliers burn, like snow but afire, scattering flecks of light over an explosion of color. The patrons glide about, fans and feathers fluttering. The heat stifles me. I’ve run into a forge.
I dart behind a marble pillar and slip through the wall, into the darkness of a wooden staircase. The colors die like embers.
I run up the stairs, into a cloud of chalk and sawdust. The backstage swarms. The ballet corps practices a sweeping movement. The principals prepare, trilling their tongues.
I sprint for a darkened doorway and skid to a halt, not quickly enough to avoid knocking into a table. The person slumped over it lifts his head, blinking at me.
It’s too late to fade. I use my voice, snatching for the first name I can find. See me as Zanetti!
The illusion forms around me, a double of one of the younger stagehands. The young man at the table stares at me blearily. Marcelo Volpato, the composer of Mircalla.
I’ve never seen him so disheveled. His dark hair is wild and his clothes are so rumpled that he might have slept in them. A half-empty bottle of wine sits on the table. Cesare the black theater cat purrs on his lap.
Volpato holds out the bottle. “Drink?”
I shake my head. Volpato shrugs and drops the bottle back onto the table.
What the devil is he doing here?
I adjust my voice, transforming it into the stagehand’s. “Your opera’s about to premiere.”
“I know. They’ll hate it,” he mumbles. “Everyone will hate it.”
“What?”
He takes a swig of wine. “The overture’s a disaster. The colors clash.” He slams the bottle down and covers his face, shoulders slumping in despair. “You’d never believe how…” He gulps. “How…”
It can’t be. It’s impossible…
“Colors?” I whisper.
“Eh. I see sound.”
Every word in every language flees my head.
He rubs his eyes. “You think me mad.”
“No!”
Cesare flattens his ears. Volpato drops his hand, a drunken smile tugging at his mouth. “You too, eh?”