Fireworks and Darkness

by Natalie Jane Prior

  ‘Stay here.’ He slipped through the door and went down the stairs. Casimir stood, obediently waiting beside the desk. After half a minute had gone past, he tiptoed out to the top of the stairs and stood listening in the darkness. A board creaked under his foot and his palms felt greasy with fear. Then he heard several sets of footsteps shuffling softly at the bottom of the staircase. There was a flash, as of a dark lantern briefly uncovered, and the tread of military boots on the staircase.

  The sound broke Casimir’s momentary paralysis. He thrust Simeon’s wand into the waist of his breeches. Conscious he would have only a few seconds to make his escape, he turned and ran upstairs to the attic landing as lightly as he could.

  Casimir opened the skylight and a blast of cold air and a spatter of rain came in. He grabbed the frame, its sharp edges excruciating against his bandaged hands, and swung himself up, once, twice. A voice sounded below and he heard footsteps on the stairs. On the third swing, no longer trying to be silent, he managed to hook a leg over the edge of the skylight and hauled himself bodily upwards through the gap.

  ‘Up here!’ yelled a voice, and Casimir rolled over onto the roof and slammed the skylight shut. The slates sloped vertiginously away from him, black and slippery with water and streaked with bird droppings, without gutter or purchase of any kind. At the front of the building was the street and an impossible three-storey drop onto sharp cobbles; the back prospect was scarcely less alarming, with only the separate roof of the workroom to break his fall into their backyard. Casimir started scuttling sideways on his hands and bottom, aiming for the abutting roof of the neighbouring house. Then something crackled in his pocket and he realised with a jolt of horror it was Ruth’s copy of Tycho’s letter and pamphlet.

  If he was caught with them in his possession, it could be deadly. Casimir dragged the papers out and started ripping them up as quickly as he could, driven by sheer terror and illogic, for he knew he should be escaping, not lingering where he would inevitably be taken prisoner. As he kept tearing, the amount of paper seemed to grow until it filled and overflowed his hands. Then suddenly there was a black hissing sound from his belt. Light surged from the wand and the pieces of paper flew up in a whirlwind around him, whipping his cheeks and blinding him in a miniature snowstorm of paper.

  Casimir yelled and flung up his hands, slipping on the tiles. The skylight flew back with a crash and a man’s head emerged.

  ‘Stop right there!’ He lifted a gun and fired it. The sound of the shot whizzing past his ear sent Casimir into a panic. He yelled again, lost his grip and started sliding on his backside down the roof, his booted feet struggling against the slate for any kind of purchase. Sparks flew up from his heels like stars from a grindstone and there was a whoosh of golden rain from the seat of his trousers. Then, like a small comet blazing earthward he slipped off the edge and fell with a thud onto the separate roof of the workroom.

  The slate cracked and sagged. Casimir grabbed at a hole and missed it; he flopped over on his stomach and continued to slide, his fingernails scratching silver sparks up from the slates. In another second he had slipped off the edge into space, banging his head as he went over and almost knocking himself out. It was a jarring nine-foot drop into the yard. Casimir hit the ground and slipped over. There was a loud bang, like a salute going off, and the kitchen door flung open and half a dozen men came pouring out of the house.

  ‘Stop!’

  But Casimir did not stop. Somehow, he did not know how, for he was sure such a fall should have broken at least an arm or a leg, he was on his feet and running for the yard gate. One hand grasped the latch and threw it open, and he was out and pelting down the mews behind Fish Lane. By now, he knew he was running for his life. The lane was filled with obscuring smoke, the smell of gunpowder inextricably mingled with magic. There was a hissing overhead and a flare of light, and down through the smoke, from the eaves of the houses and stables, a tunnel of gold and silver rain started falling around him. Casimir pulled Simeon’s wand from his belt and tried to hurl it away, but it seemed glued to his palm and he could not discard it. Military boots thudded against the cobbles and he saw the red-flashed uniforms over his shoulder. Again there was a flash, a roaring stink of gunpowder, and this time he felt something red-hot pass through his body. Casimir stumbled, but only for a moment. He kept on running, somehow knowing that the shot had passed right through him and that any moment he would fall to the ground, spouting blood, and go spiralling down to his death.

  But he did not. Instead the fireworks faded behind him. Now he could see his fingers lengthening, straightening, changing colour before his eyes, turning into bound bunches of red crackers that protruded from his red and blue-striped sleeves. Their tips burst into life, spitting pops and sparks; his hair stood on end and burned like coloured matches, and his eyes spun around like catherine wheels. He was no longer Casimir Runciman, but the firework boy, and another shot would send him exploding into a thousand stars to light up the rainy night.

  Then, on the street corner opposite the cathedral he saw Circastes.

  The magician was barefoot and dressed in the same dark clothes he had been wearing on Friday night. He was sheltering under the eaves of a building and the men pursuing Casimir seemed not even to notice he was there. Casimir saw him draw back into the shadows and thought what fools they had been to even think he was gone away. He veered away, out into the street, and was relieved when the magician made no attempt to hold him back.

  Across the road was the cathedral, its dark windows illuminated by pinprick lights, comfortingly familiar in the darkness and the rain.

  Casimir pelted across the street and through the gate. Abruptly the fireworks vanished and he was dressed in his own drab, woollen winter clothes again. He rounded the corner of the building, and, in the shadow of the western cloister, saw the soup kitchen he had visited earlier in the day. Two men, one middleaged and burly, the other one young and bearded, were dishing out meals and blankets, directing newcomers to spaces where they might sleep among those already dossed down for the night. Casimir darted through the iron gate into the cloister. The young man with the beard took one look at him, heard the running footsteps of his pursuers, and threw him a blanket from the pile. Casimir dived into the press of mummied bundles and the crowd silently opened and engulfed him, another anonymous refugee from authority.

  He hunkered down, panting, under his blanket and buried his face between his knees. His palms were throbbing and sweating and he could barely catch his breath. Casimir wondered briefly what had happened to Joachim, whether he had been taken prisoner or somehow managed to escape. Then he heard the iron cloister gate creak open and knew the men from the Queen’s Guard had followed him in.

  Booted footsteps sounded. A voice spoke and was answered firmly. Casimir could not hear what was being said, but it was clear his pursuers were asking whether he had passed this way. A couple of guards started picking their way through the blanketed huddles, looking for a telltale shock of dark red hair. The elderly woman next to him reached out her hand for his. Casimir took it gratefully and looked up. There, sitting swathed in a blanket not three feet away from him, was Circastes.

  There was a sharp tug at his waist, and Simeon’s wand shot like a projectile out of his belt into the magician’s hand. With a great shout, Casimir jumped to his feet. A brazier went over, showering sparks and burning charcoal over the pavement, and someone screamed, knocked down, or burned by a flying coal.

  Casimir started scrambling towards the gate, but legs, bodies and the general confusion tripped him up. Three men in the uniform of the Queen’s Guard started after him, and a fourth, standing by the soup pots, aimed a gun and tried to fire.

  ‘Watch out!’ The young man with the beard grabbed the marksman’s arm, and the shot ricocheted off the stonework. Headed off by the other men, Casimir changed direction and ran for the cathedral door. His feet stamped on hands, bodies, legs, and then, just as he reached the soup pots, a guard caught
up with him and grabbed his jacket. Casimir could feel his arm being dragged out of his sleeve, he could see the open door behind the cookpots and the brazier, and sense the pulling quietness beyond. Then help was with him. A couple of sturdy vagrants rose from the pavement, wrestling with the guards and pulling them off him. In the confusion of the struggle one of the vagrants was knocked over, screaming. Casimir heard steel drawn. The bearded man shouted a warning. He grabbed a guard by his red-slashed sleeve and the man swung around, sword in his hand. Then, so quickly Casimir scarcely saw it happen, the blade passed through the young man’s body and he fell sprawling, blood gushing out of his mouth onto the cloister pavement.

  With a howl the crowd of homeless people erupted upward, shouting and babbling in a free-for-all of panic. Casimir saw the guard with the sword go down in the melée, but by then he had yanked free and was through the door and into the cathedral. His feet rang out on the flagstones and a few worshippers looked up from the pews. The last service was over, the midnight vigil yet to begin; there was only a handful of people praying in the entire building. Casimir ran for the opposite entrance, but the great wooden doors were closed and barred. There was nowhere he could hide and after the long pursuit from the firework shop he was tired and at the end of his physical and mental resources. For a second he remembered something he had seen on a previous visit: a sparrow, which had flown in through a door, flying frantically back and forth in the vaulted dimness, twittering anxiously and beating itself up against a stained-glass window. Without hope of escape, but merely from desperation, Casimir threw himself under a pew. His pursuers caught up with him. One seized him by the ankles and pulled him roughly out. He rolled over, flailing, fighting them, and then there was a smashing blow on his head and his flight was over.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Casimir was asleep. His head ached and he was deathly cold, but though he tried repeatedly to stir himself he could not wake up. Three or four times he drifted close to the verge of consciousness and then ebbed away again, there was a roaring in his ears and his cheek seemed to be resting in something fetid and sticky. But at last the smothering darkness fled away and left him stranded. He was awake. A bag or length of heavy cloth was draped over his head and shoulders, and he was lying trapped in a stinking mess of halfdigested sausage and baked potato.

  The smell was nearly enough to make him vomit all over again. Casimir tried to move his hand. The movement sent hammer blows shooting up his neck into his skull; he heard the clank of manacles and could barely lift his arm from the weight and his own weakness. Underneath him was a rough stone floor. As he realised this, wild, hallucinatory images started flashing through his head. Circastes had come back. The Queen’s Guard had come to the firework shop. His recollections were confused and patchy and he couldn’t remember what had happened at the end, but it was obvious he had been taken prisoner. Which meant there was only one place he could be.

  The Undercroft.

  The word arced through Casimir’s fuddled brain. In its wake came a kind of numb horror. That this had happened to him was more than he could comprehend. He hadn’t done anything, and he was only fourteen, he hadn’t even lived yet. Then it came to him that at some point in the next twenty-four hours he was probably going to die and he thought he had never known such aching despair. All the stories and half-whispered rumours he had ever heard about the Undercroft and the Queen’s Guard came back to him: the tales of tightly bound bodies, found floating mysteriously in the river, of prisoners locked up for years without reason, and the mysterious chute that the torturers supposedly used to dispose of their victims into the Ling. Why should he survive in a place where so many went in and so few came out alive? Tears gushed down Casimir’s cheeks and his nose ran until he could scarcely breathe in the confines of the sack. He struggled weakly against the material, and at last, with a great blubbering gasp, he succeeded in pulling it over his head.

  At once he found he could breathe better. After the bag, the air in his cell was not as dank or stale as he might have expected; there was no filth or ordure from a previous occupant, and the only thing that really stank was him. Casimir lay down on top of the sack, crying and shivering, for it was bitterly cold, and he was inexplicably missing his jacket and shirt. A faint, a very faint glimmer of artificial light showed under what was obviously a door, and gave him a glimpse of his surroundings. There was no chair, no bed, no bucket in the cell—which immediately made him wish there was one—nothing to eat, nothing to drink, and not so much as a flea-ridden blanket to huddle in. The only thing he could hear was the sound of his own sobbing breath and the occasional rattle of his manacles as he shook from the cold.

  After a while he heard footsteps and voices approaching. The door opened and two guards wearing the familiar red-slashed uniform came into the cell. The light from their lantern pierced Casimir’s eyes. He flinched away, trembling.

  ‘What a brave fellow,’ said the first guard sarcastically. ‘Dear me. Look at him. And nothing’s even happened, yet.’

  ‘Doesn’t look much like a revolutionary, does he? Are you sure he’s the one?’

  ‘Too bad if he’s not. Come along, firework boy. There are people who want to talk to you.’ The guard dragged Casimir to his feet. He felt his legs wobble and give way; an excruciating pain shot through his head and subsided to a vicious pulse as the man swore and hoicked him up again. Manacles clanking, he was halfled, half-carried from the cell. Then the door closed behind him and he was marched away into darkness.

  The Undercroft was not, strictly speaking, a prison. It had started life as a granary, owned by the Crown, but had long ago been converted to military usage. As the Queen’s Guard had grown in size and power, attendant buildings had sprung up around it so that there was now an entire complex of barracks and storerooms. Casimir was taken up some stairs and then briefly into a small high-walled courtyard, where he saw the stars peeping mistily through a veil of cloud; he was then pushed through a door into another building and up some more stairs into what seemed to be a suite of offices. At the third door, one of the guards knocked and a man came out. He was wearing a uniform with more red on it than usual and he had a key and a gold quizzing glass on a looped chain around his neck.

  ‘Ah, yes. The firework boy. Wait a moment.’ He turned and went inside. Casimir could hear him talking to someone. Then a voice called out and he was shown into a room with high walls, a small window, and a long wooden table in the middle.

  A fire was burning and the shutters were closed, there was a carpet on the floor and a jug of wine and some goblets on a side table. Casimir’s first impression was that the room was full of people. Then his own escort withdrew to the passage, and he realised there were in fact only five men there, two of whom were guards. At the central table sat two men. One was writing on a sheaf of paper and was plainly a secretary. The second wore no uniform and sat in a slightly larger chair. He had dark brown hair, unusual in Ostermark, which he wore cut shorter than the fashion, and a neatly trimmed beard that was starting to turn brindle. One grey eye drooped slightly. Casimir thought he might be about Simeon’s age, or a little older. Unbidden, a recollection of the obscene picture of Margrave Greitz he had seen amongst Joachim’s papers popped into his head. He thought the likeness was far better than he might have expected.

  On the table was a pile of old clothes: a brown jacket, shirt, and two grubby, woollen undervests. It took Casimir a few moments before he realised they were his own. In a separate pile were several other familiar objects. Simeon’s black book from the trunk, Tycho’s letter and ‘On the Death of Monarchs’.

  The man with the quizzing glass whispered to the procurator, then sat down beside him. The procurator turned to Casimir and spoke.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’

  Casimir did not say anything. The procurator waited a moment, then answered his own question in a soft, clear voice. ‘I think you do. You may be surprised to see me here. Of course, I have a particular interest in this
matter. I am always interested to meet people who want to kill me. Who else is implicated, Cassel?’

  The man with the quizzing glass produced a list. ‘In custody: Joachim Leibnitz, a foreigner of no fixed abode, ex-Ostermark artillery. Graff Marcus Tycho, formerly of Osterfall, now resident in Starberg. William Thursday, printer, a foreigner resident in Starberg. His wife Annice, foreigner, resident in Starberg. Casimir Runciman, apprentice, a foreigner resident in Starberg. Under house arrest: Ruth, Margravine Winterhalten, a native Ostermarkan formerly of Osterfall, now of Starberg. Still at large, Simeon Runciman, firework maker, ex-Ostermark artillery, foreigner resident in Starberg. There are others under surveillance we have not yet taken in.’

  ‘So.’ The procurator turned back to Casimir. ‘Conspiracy. Treason. The black arts. Not a bad collection of misdemeanours for someone of your age. There’s also the matter of the scene you created in the street, and the priest who was killed at the cathedral when you were taken prisoner. I regret that. Our relations with the church are bad enough already. All in all you’ve caused me a lot of trouble. I’m not disposed to be lenient, but it would greatly help your chances if you were prepared to talk.’

  ‘Begin with this.’ Cassel picked up the jacket and tossed it at Casimir. He fumbled and caught it awkwardly in his manacled hands. The jacket was one of Simeon’s, cut down to fit last winter and now too small for him. Casimir turned it over, suppressing a desire to drape it around his shoulders, for he was still very cold. He did not entirely understand the question, for as far as he could see, it was just a jacket. Then his searching fingers found it: a neat round hole in the middle of the back where the lead shot had pierced the cloth. There was a matching one on the front where it had exited, but not a drop of blood, or anything to explain how he had survived what should have been a fatal shot.