Fireworks and Darkness

by Natalie Jane Prior

  Casimir put his hand into his pocket and closed his fingers over a piece of quickmatch which he had trimmed off one of the shells earlier in the afternoon. It would burn brighter and faster than any tinder, and a spark from the flint and steel, a handful of black powder judiciously placed among the kindling would soon get a fire going. The irresponsibility of the idea went against every tenet of Casimir’s training and every grain of common sense as well. Simeon would be furious, and that thought filled him with a twisted delight. Before Casimir knew what he was doing he was walking out of the kitchen and down the darkened passageway to the workroom.

  There was gunpowder in barrels just inside the workroom door. It did not travel or store well, so Simeon mixed it himself regularly in the powder cellar under the shop, and brought it up as it was needed. Gently, Casimir prised the lid off the first barrel. It contained a slow composition used in rockets and had a high proportion of charcoal that would suit his purposes well. He selected a measure and dipped it into the gritty, pungent mixture.

  It was a soft pop which alerted him, a sound like a thumb being pulled out of a mouth. Showering gunpowder, he spun around just in time to see the air glimmer and a huge shell disappear from the workbench. Casimir took an involuntary step forward and his feet crunched on powder. Another shell disappeared, and another, and another. Then, to his right, the driving bench suddenly rattled into phosphorescent life, the paper rocket cases shaking down from their box into upright positions. Black powder flowed down into them from the reservoirs above and the wooden mallet Simeon used to tamp it down into the rockets started lifting and falling, as though held by an invisible hand.

  A smell gathered in the workroom and rolled towards Casimir like a wave. On the workbench the rocket caps flew, to and fro, fastening themselves to the finished cases, which then rolled off into a basket that rocked merrily on the flagstones; the twine unrolled and coiled around the unfinished shells which shimmered and disappeared in on themselves, giving the impression of an implosion. Suddenly there was a loud bang: the lids had flown off the barrels of fine birch charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur which Simeon used to mix their powder. Their contents poured up and out in three great arcs that twined together, like a three-stranded plait that swirled blackly and disappeared into nothingness.

  All this time, Casimir stood watching the fireworks making themselves, the black powder mixing and eddying away. The temperature in the room dropped, like the bitter cold before a storm, and the smell of magic gathered like a mist. Then the windows rattled and the floor shook and the paper stars and the firework cases and all the trumpery tackle of his trade suddenly lifted off the shelves. They whirled around him in a blinding, stinging storm until Casimir could stand no more, but turned and ran in terror from the room.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The whole ground floor was awash with the smell of magic.

  Casimir ran up the stairs two at a time. He did not stop until he had reached his attic, bolted the door and flung open the one low window as wide as it would go. Below him, Fish Lane had settled down for the evening. There were lights in the windows of some of the houses. No one, not even the Queen’s Guard, seemed to have noticed anything unusual except him.

  Casimir pulled away from the window and sat down with a thump. He buried his face in his hands and pinched his nose in a desperate attempt to quell his rising hysteria. Until this moment, it had never occurred to him to doubt his sanity. What had happened in the park had been an isolated incident, a freak which he had struggled to persuade himself would not happen again. But now there could be no doubt. Circastes had not gone away: he was out there, like a cat waiting for a mouse at a crack in the wainscot. Casimir wondered whether he was going mad, whether Circastes had forced his way into his head like a thief intent on robbing him of his equanimity. In the silence of his attic he could not even be sure whether the whole thing had been a grand delusion. Then he heard a noise on the roof above him and looked up fearfully.

  The slates creaked and there was a scraping, sliding sound as if someone was coming down the pitched section at the back of the house. For a moment Casimir sat listening, and then his paralysis broke and he jumped and ran for the door. He wrenched the bolt from its fastener and flung it open; at that very moment the skylight opened above the landing and a dark figure jumped down like a thunderbolt in front of him.

  Casimir screamed. He flung himself sideways and the intruder grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and shook him. When he struck out with his fist the man grunted, but did not let go; there was a moment’s scuffle in which both of them flailed around and then, ‘Be still, Cas!’ a voice said fiercely. ‘You fool! it’s only me.’ Casimir’s last kick connected and the man suddenly let go and he fell onto the floor.

  His uncle’s face loomed over him, silhouetted by the faint gleam from the skylight. Casimir sat up.

  ‘What are you doing, creeping around like that?’ he said indignantly. T thought you were Circastes, breaking in.’

  ‘Considering what I’ve been doing,’ said Joachim, ‘and the fact that the leeches are watching this building, you surely don’t think I’d be stupid enough to come in through the door?’ He reached up a long arm and closed the skylight with a snap. ‘Anyway, why would a magician come sneaking in through a skylight? I think he could manage a flashier entrance, don’t you?’

  Casimir scrambled to his feet. ‘Circastes has been here already. There was something in the workroom, it all went crazy. All the fireworks started making themselves. I ran away and then I heard someone on the roof. Of course I thought you were him. Who else could it have been?’

  ‘All sorts of people,’ said Joachim. ‘Me. Or even Simeon for that matter. Besides, how do you know it was Circastes in the workroom? There are two magicians in Starberg at the moment that I know of. If someone’s practising magic in this house, it’s just as likely to have been your father.’ He started down the stairs, his boots echoing loudly in the stairwell. ‘Come on. If you’re right, we’re not going to avoid trouble by hiding in the attic.’

  He disappeared around the bend in the staircase and Casimir heard him descending, his footsteps getting gradually fainter. Casimir’s hands were trembling. He felt almost too frightened to follow, but then he heard his uncle’s voice calling up reassuringly from the ground floor, and somehow he managed to put his legs into motion. Tread by tread, he felt his way down the darkened stairs. At the bottom he thought he caught a lingering whiff of the magic smell, but that was all.

  Joachim was standing inside the workroom, regarding the destruction. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit of a mess, I’ll agree. If Simeon’s not responsible, I wouldn’t like to be here when he finds out.’

  Casimir sidled up behind him. The window was open and rain had blown inside. A stack of rocket caps had fallen in a puddle on the work bench. There were sodden paper stars and a quantity of wet powder on the floor.

  ‘I left the window shut.’ Casimir went over and checked it. The catch seemed unbroken. Several dozen unfinished shells still sat on the workbench, but it was hard to tell how many of the finished ones were missing. The rocket basket beside the driving bench was empty.

  ‘Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?’ said Joachim, cynically. Casimir shot him a filthy look, and he went on, ‘Don’t worry. I don’t necessarily disbelieve you. But it’s always a possibility and the question has to be asked.’

  ‘I wasn’t dreaming,’ said Casimir flatly.

  ‘In that case, there’s nothing we can do until Simeon comes back. Let’s close up and have a drink.’

  Casimir shut the window and they crunched back through the wet gunpowder to the door. In the kitchen they got the fire going and lit the candles. The room at once felt cheerier and Casimir started to relax a little. Joachim rummaged inside his pack and produced a leather bottle.

  ‘Here. That’ll put some fire in you. Is there anything to eat?’

  ‘Cold pie. Some bread. There’s beer in the keg.’ While Joachim busied him
self drawing ale and hacking up the pie, Casimir unstoppered the bottle and drank from it deeply. The spirit burned his throat, but he followed his first swig with a second and felt better when his legs went weak beneath him. Joachim handed him a plateful of food and a knife. He hung his topcoat on the back of the door and began removing his sodden clothing.

  ‘You don’t have to drink it all,’ he remarked. ‘Leave some for your old uncle: it’s cold outside.’ His fingers ripped through the buttons on his leather waistcoat and he draped a long tattered scarf over the back of a kitchen chair. Casimir handed back the bottle. It was almost empty and he knew in a minute he was going to be horribly drunk.

  ‘Joachim,’ he said, ‘do you think I could be going mad?’

  ‘That depends on how you define madness,’ said Joachim. ‘You’ve always seemed sane enough to me and I doubt you’re headed for the asylum. On the other hand, if you are worried whether someone is magically deluding you, then I’m afraid I honestly don’t know. Why?’

  ‘I thought Circastes had got into my head again. Then I thought—I thought for a moment, maybe it was me. That I’d cracked. That something had come out of me that I didn’t know was there. But it’s not like that, is it?’ Casimir pleaded. ‘Just because Simeon is—it doesn’t mean that I am, does it?’

  ‘Do you mean, a magician?’ Casimir nodded, and Joachim shook his head. ‘It doesn’t work like that, Cas. Magic is a skill, an ability you acquire. You could certainly choose to become a magician, if you wanted to. But it isn’t something you’re born with, like red hair or flat feet.’

  ‘But a magician can send you mad, can’t he?’ The pent-up fear was suddenly released by the emotion and the alcohol. ‘It was what happened to my mother, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?’

  Joachim looked at him, not unkindly. ‘Don’t you remember?’

  Casimir shrugged and stared at the table. A small child’s muddled memories came back to him. He remembered Simeon fetching him in the middle of the night, his hair and clothes pungent with the smell of magic. He remembered a journey through the darkness in a military carrier’s cart, nights under canvas, nights in the open, nights in dirty lodgings, sleeping in Simeon’s arms. But Jessica’s departure he could not remember at all. His mother had simply vanished, and Simeon had never even told him why she had gone.

  ‘They weren’t happy together,’ said Joachim softly. ‘Simeon was always difficult and she was just—wild, I suppose. When he spouted his crazy ideas, talked about free will and the destruction of oppressive power structures, she just laughed at him. And then she went out and did what she damn well liked. It was what had attracted him to her in the first place, but it didn’t make them a compatible couple.’

  ‘What happened?’ said Casimir.

  ‘Circastes found them,’ said Joachim. ‘Simeon had grown careless. He’d stayed in the same place for too long, for one thing, and then, he’d started circulating his ideas in writing. That was foolish. It drew attention to him, and since his theories were mostly a reaction to what he’d learned when he was a magician, it didn’t take much for Circastes to make the connection. You see, Casimir, magic is all about control. Control of inanimate objects, control of your immediate environment, but chiefly, control over other people. Simeon believes the type of magic he was taught dehumanises the victim by taking away their right to self-determination. That’s why he has made such a fetish of free will in his politics. He’s trying to atone for what he did and for the knowledge and skills he wishes he didn’t have. And of course, Circastes understood exactly where all this was coming from.

  ‘We were in Osterfall at the time; Simeon was working there as a powder monkey in one of the silver mines. Circastes found your mother alone at home. She invited him in without realising who he was and he got into her head, made her try to kill Simeon with a carving knife. I was there, I saw her do it. Simeon had to use magic to snap the hold Circastes had over her. And it broke her utterly. That’s why Simeon’s so frightened now. He’s afraid that what he did to your mother he will end up doing to you.’ Joachim paused. ‘Your mother’s not mad, Cas. She was too strong-willed to do anything but survive. But she became a different person in the process. The girl your father fell in love with is gone.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ said Casimir simply. ‘Sooner or later, Circastes is going to come. I don’t know why he hasn’t already. I don’t know what Simeon’s planning, I don’t even know what he’s thinking. I wanted to run away this evening, only I had nowhere to go to.’

  ‘Running away won’t solve anything,’ said Joachim. ‘Simeon’s first instinct, to stay here, was right. I would like it better if he hadn’t gone storming off, but I think the best thing we can do now is wait for him to come back. If he doesn’t, we’ll obviously have to rethink our options. But in that case I think we’ll almost certainly have heard from Circastes first.’

  Casimir had fully expected Simeon to return some time during the evening. But by ten o’clock, there was still no sign of him, and the combination of strong liquor, beer and mental exhaustion overcame his intention of sitting up. He went to bed, leaving Joachim reading in the kitchen, and slept so soundly that an army of magicians might have come over the roof without his noticing. When he woke the next morning, it was to the sound of church bells ringing discordantly across the city. Casimir lay in bed for a few minutes listening to them. It was a Monday, and at first he could not work out why they were ringing. Then, belatedly, he realised it was Christmas Eve. With all the disturbance over Circastes, he had completely forgotten the date.

  Downstairs, he heard the shop door tinkle. The sound, and the fact that it was a working day—perhaps the busiest working day in their entire year—forced Casimir to roll out of bed and look for his clothes. He pulled them on, noted there were three extra hairs on his chin—soon, he thought optimistically, there would be so many he’d have to stop counting—and went downstairs. The shop was open and he could hear voices and people moving around inside. It seemed to be business as usual, and he felt a surge of optimism. But when he opened the door, instead of Simeon’s familiar figure behind the counter, he found to his disappointment it was Joachim, a string of crackers around his neck and a catherine wheel pinned to his lapel.

  ‘Sore head?’ asked his uncle maliciously. The shop was full of customers and he was evidently doing a roaring trade. Casimir shrugged. His head was aching, but he’d had worse hangovers, and he knew he’d get no sympathy if he admitted it. Simeon was nowhere to be seen and it was clear he had not come back. A wave of depression washed over Casimir and he sat down on an empty powder barrel.

  A man with an armful of fireworks handed his uncle a five crown piece. It seemed so little for all he was buying Casimir could not help but be distracted.

  ‘Are you sure you’ve added that up right?’

  Joachim shot him a meaningful glance. ‘You’ve forgotten, nephew: it’s our Christmas sale. I put the sign out first thing this morning. Half price on all fireworks, as long as I don’t have to wrap them up. We’ve been very busy. I think the word must be spreading.’

  ‘What?’ Casimir looked around, saw how much was being purchased, and did some rapid mental arithmetic. He got up and hissed in his uncle’s ear. ‘What are you doing? That’s our best stock you’re selling. Those prices won’t even pay for the gunpowder. When Simeon finds out, he’ll kill you.’

  ‘Wait a moment.’ Joachim took some money from another customer, watched him leave, then pulled Casimir to one side, out of earshot of the other people in the shop. He whispered, ‘Listen to me. Use your brains. You and Simeon are in deep trouble. If you have to run, the fireworks are worth nothing to you; you need cash, not catherine wheels and rockets. And you’ve got another problem you don’t know about, yet, a big problem. About half an hour ago a man came here from the Ordnance Office. He says you have fifty-seven small calibre shell mortars on loan and he wants to check them. My guess is, he’s been sent by the Queen’s Guard. Somebody’s tipped him off about wha
t happened on Friday night.’

  Casimir felt his stomach turn inside out. ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I said I was only an employee and I didn’t know anything about it. He was displeased. He said he would come back and he’s not going to be put off. This has been planned, Cas. He has written authorities, an inventory, and I wouldn’t mind betting, a warrant for Simeon’s arrest as well.’

  ‘The mortars are all at Ruth’s place,’ said Casimir, dismayed. ‘Simeon borrowed them for the display on Friday, we have them on loan until the wedding. He told Ruth’s servants to put them away in the stables.’

  ‘If that’s the case you’d better go and look at them. Check them, count them, make sure they’re all in working order. Because the fellow was talking about taking them back and if there’s anything amiss, I’ll lay you an odds-on bet it’ll be used as an excuse to take you and Simeon into custody.’

  A woman with a gaggle of children came trailing up to the counter. Casimir backed off and slipped away in a state of considerable upheaval. Joachim was right: he had to go to Ruth’s immediately. Unlike Simeon, he did not have a permanent passport for the River Court and Palace Precincts, but he still had his expired pass from Friday. Casimir took out his pocket knife, which he mostly used for cutting fuses, and neatly trimmed off the stamp the sentry had put on the bottom of the document. Then he found a pen and altered Friday’s date, 21 December, by changing the figure one into a skinny four. It was not a very professional job, but he hoped the guards would not look too closely. On Christmas Eve, with any luck, they would have other things on their minds.