Camera Obscura

by Lavie Tidhar

  She looked around for someone from Dahomey but the place was too full and besides, she had left the place too long ago. Her links with the old country had been severed one by one, and now none remained, and she was a citizen of–

  Of what? of the Republic? Of the lizards' court? She belonged to all of these, and none. Perhaps she really was Xiake, a member of the secretive world Master Long had called the Wulin. She didn't know where her loyalties truly lay, but she knew what was right, and she knew what she had to do. What had to be done.

  And the Gascon was right, she thought. Somewhere in the throngs of masked women and men the killer, too, was dancing.

  A band of automatons was providing the music from a dais at the back of the hall, a player piano and a steam-powered orchestra. The lightning crackled overhead without thunder, electricity jumping from one spinning globe to another, casting odd shadows onto the dance floor, like a fractured mirror. And there – dancing together, a handsome young couple, both masked with the faces of some sort of fantastical animals – Mistress Yi and her shadow Ip Kai? She watched them as they circled the room, holding each other, moving fluidly with the dance, and yet – she could sense their awareness, the way they watched the room. And now she thought – there are many watchers here tonight.

  They were not alone.

  Here and there, the Gascon's men, trying and failing to blend, shouting gendarmes in the way they stood, the way they watched – the way they drank, for that matter. And now another familiar body waylaid her, and for a second time this evening she was taken aback.

  He was young and very beautiful, with his bare chest and his mask of a tiger, and he swept her up in his arms for a dance. "Remember me?"

  The voice and the physique… "The bartender at the Moulin Rouge?"

  "I hoped we'd meet again. You are very beautiful."

  "So are you," she said, meaning it, and he laughed. "I would like to make love to you," he said. She had to smile. He carried her effortlessly, a born dancer, and she said, "Perhaps when all this is over…"

  "The ball?"

  "Not exactly…" She gently pushed him away and he twirled back and bowed. "At your service, Milady," he said. Then he danced away and into the throng, and was soon engulfed in the arms of another woman.

  … who was familiar, also. A woman who needed no mask, for she wore one as a matter of course. Madame Linlin, who danced with the young man for a minute, then turned to speak with a minister and his entourage – the old lady making an appearance in an official capacity, then? Milady couldn't spot Colonel Xing, which told her nothing. She suspected he, and at least some of his men, where somewhere in the crowd.

  Well, well… this ball was certainly turning out to be more interesting than she'd thought.

  "Milady!"

  She stared at him. "Viktor?"

  "Wonderful party!"

  The scientist had replaced his habitual smock with evening wear, a jaunty black hat sat at an angle on his head, and his mask was that of her coachman, the stitched-up face of a monster. "What the hell are you doing here?"

  "Dancing!" the scientist said. "They gave me the night off."

  "The Council?"

  "Shh!" He made an exaggerated sign, finger to his lips. And now she could smell the alcohol. "I'm off-duty."

  "I thought you preferred the company of the dead," she said, and he shrugged. "The dead don't dance, and they seldom drink."

  She let it pass, said, "Who's on in the under-morgue?"

  Viktor smirked. "You think someone's going to rob the morgue?"

  Something cold slid slowly down her spine. Something was wrong, and the Council… She did not trust the Council.

  "Have you seen Tômas?" Viktor asked. There was something a little too casual in the way he said it, and it gave her pause.

  "Tômas?"

  Viktor had told her, hadn't he? Memory returned. Tômas had been in charge of the body-snatching duty, retrieving the grey-infected corpses. Tômas the cruel, the master of disguises, Tômas who they called the Phantom – and now suspicion bloomed. She thought about the Council. What were they planning? And she thought – I am their bait – but who are they hunting?

  "I shall speak with you later!" Viktor said, too brightly and, turning, hurried off after a troupe of green-painted, scantily clad dancers.

  The lightning flashed and flashed overhead. Something in Milady wanted to forget the currents, forget the other world, the murders, the futile chase for a thing that had no right to exist. Drink, she thought, and dance, and be merry – but she wasn't sure she remembered how. Find that beautiful young dancer…

  Then she thought of Tom Thumb lying on the Seine's bank with his throat cut, the grey swirls moving on his skin as if they were alive. Alive and hungry, she thought. And–

  The killer must be amongst the crowd.

  But which one of the masked creatures was he?

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The Fat Man

  "Drink?"

  She swirled round – and found herself at last facing the elusive fat man. "Mr Holmes," she said, and the man smiled. Unlike the rest of the crowd, he was not wearing a mask. "Always a pleasure to be recognised," he said, though she thought a hint of irritation had crept somewhere in there. And, "Please, call me Mycroft."

  "Mycroft," she said. "In our line of work it doesn't pay to be recognised too often."

  "Yet who could fail to recognise such a beautiful woman as yourself, Milady de Winter?" he said, and she smiled back, the boundaries stated, the chess pieces aligned.

  "You are British Intelligence?" she said. He shrugged, and she said, "They say it is an oxymoron."

  His face wore a pained expression. "Please," he said. "Let us not engage in hostilities."

  "Yet," she said. "Is that what you mean?"

  "I'm not sure I follow…"

  "Are we heading to war?" she said.

  "You and I, Milady? Never."

  "Britain and France," she said. "Lizard and machine. Is that

  what this has all been about?"

  "Please," he said. "Relieve me of my burden–" handing her a flute of champagne which she accepted but did not drink. "The white man's burden…" she said, and he laughed. "I want to know how Yong Li died," she said, watching him carefully. The fat man's face became carefully blank. "I am not familiar with that name…"

  "The man you met at the Clockwork Room," she said. "The man who showed you an impossible thing, the pictures of another world. Am I correct so far?"

  "I'll admit I'm impressed," Mycroft Holmes said. "I take it from what you say that Captain Li is dead?"

  "Please," she said. "We can speak candidly, here."

  The fat man took a deep breath, let it out slowly. "Very well," he said. Around them dancers moved, the music played. The harmless lightning flashed overhead.

  "Did you kill him?"

  "No."

  She nodded slowly, approving. "A straight answer," she said.

  "Then I shall be candid further with you," Mycroft Holmes said. "I do not know who killed him. It was not… it was not our work."

  "Did he show you what you wanted to see?"

  "What we wanted to see?" He made a helpless gesture with the hand holding his almost-empty glass. "I did not want to see what Captain Li had to show. But to close one's eyes, Milady, does not make unpalatable things go away."

  "And what," she said, "did you see?"

  Mycroft's face a sudden grey cloud…

  Imagine a camera obscura, Mycroft told her. Imagine a box of wood through which light travels. An image is projected onto a screen. Imagine a series of such images, flickering like grey shadows on a wall – what do they show? They are not reality, are not, perhaps, even an accurate representation but something else, an obscurity of form that hides rather than reveals. What do you see? What lies beyond, in the source of the light, beyond the images revealed?

  "I saw the future," he said, very softly. The silence, grey and featureless, grew a gulf between them. "You saw anot
her world," she said.

  "Yes. Almost within reach…"

  She said, "What do you intend to do with such knowledge?"

  "What will your own Council do?" he said. And now she had to consider him, looking down at the fat man, thinking – "But what makes you think the Council is aware–" she began, and he interrupted her. "Please, Milady. Let us not play games. This was not the first approach made, nor the last. A door has been opened, and it lies – for now, at least – in the east. What may come through it is a worry and a danger – but what may be gained by passing through it to the other side, now, that is another matter altogether…"

  "Could you take control of it, though?" she said, and saw she had hit a spot with him. "You will try," she said. "And so will we…"

  "And so will the Chinese," he said. "Unless we can all work together…"

  "Is that likely?"

  "No," he admitted.

  "You would try to use it?" Another thought struck her. "Or close it?"

  He smiled, and there was nothing pleasant in the expression on his face. "That is the question…" he said softly. "Would you excuse me? There is someone I must see…"

  "Of course," she said, and he nodded to her. "Please remain well," he said. "It would be a shame…"

  He turned away before she could reply. It did not entirely surprise her to see him, moments later, chatting quietly to Madame Linlin on the other side of the hall.

  This was how matters of politics and diplomacy were decided – how lives were added and subtracted, wars decided upon, like this – in a ballroom full of music and dancing and drink, in a civilised manner – in the manner of people who decided others' death without risk to their own.

  And what would be the end result?

  THIRTY-NINE

  The Phantom

  She waited and the dancing grew more frenetic around her, the drinks liberating the crowd, the dresses twirling, the music loud, the masks slipping as the humans celebrated – what? The air was thick with cigar smoke and a hint of opium, with spilled wine and the combined sweat of so many people. She needed fresh air. She turned to leave. She stood by the cloakroom and it was quiet there, and a little cool air came in from the outside, refreshing her.

  A step beside her. She turned and saw a man wearing an iron mask, the way prisoners were once masked.

  "Milady de Winter," the voice said. It was a familiar voice. He was dressed as an automaton, the iron mask covering his whole face. His hands were encased in gloves. "Tômas," she said. And now a dormant suspicion became more than that…

  "Milady."

  "What are you doing here?"

  "Drinking, dancing – watching the fools for an easy mark. The usual."

  She watched him but the iron mask never smiled. She thought about the man she knew, the man he'd been – a murderer, a thief, but human. The thing she had met in Place Pigalle was no longer that.

  She said, "Let me see your hands."

  "You wish to become intimate?" And though she couldn't see it she could hear the leer in his voice. She kept her voice level, said, "I need to see your skin."

  "Many women have told me that," he said. "But you, I never expected–"

  Before he finished speaking a gun was pointing at him. "Now," she said. Suspicion turning to understanding, but horrified – she had not thought of another Council agent…

  "You want to shoot me?" he said, and his voice was low and husky, and he bent towards her and put his forehead against the muzzle of the gun. "You did before…"

  And now she noticed how elongated his skull seemed–

  She reached for his hand, tore away the white glove–

  His hand rose up, freed. She saw the grey swirling on the metamorphosed skin–

  His hand closed to a fist and swung at her. His knuckles were like metal, and he knocked her back and there was blood on her cheek. She fired, point blank. She felt him sag against her–

  And rise again, laughing, a wild inhuman sound – and now he reached for her, and a tongue licked her cheek, tasting her blood, and his voice said, close to her ear, "And all the time you thought you were hunting, it is I who has been hunting you…"

  She fought against him but couldn't break free. "And now I am tired of the game," he said. "Now I wish to enjoy the rewards of winning…"

  His hand grabbed her by the throat. She watched the grey swirls climb up his wrist and onto his fingers. "The Council set you to catch me?" he said. "Me! Did they really think a girl like you could stand up to what I've become?"

  He shoved her, hard, and she stumbled, gasping for air. "I'll give you," the thing that had once been Tômas said, "one more chance. It will be… how do the English say? It would be sporting. Come and get me. I'll be waiting for you, Milady de Winter."

  She raised the gun and fired, and fired, and fired. There were screams in the distance. The man in the iron mask laughed and ran, his gait that of a strange lithe animal, jumping impossibly off the walls of the hall and out through the open door, where the rain was falling down. He ran through the crowds and they scrambled away from him, and there were more screams. She ran after him, firing until there were no bullets left, not heeding the crowds.

  Far away, the figure that had been Tômas turned to face her. He had pushed up his mask, and now she could see him for what he was, a grey, wolf-like thing, that grinned at her with wet teeth in the thin moonlight. "Catch me if you can…" his voice came, like a whisper, on the wind.

  Then he was gone.

  There was a commotion in the hall, and now she saw the watchers coming outside, and now she knew why the Council truly set her to find Yong Li's killer. She was their bait, to flush out the Phantom – but not only him, all the other watchers too. The Council had used her twice, to identify the other players and draw out their rogue agent – two birds with one stone, and she was the worm. Outside the gates she saw an old Asian man with one eye, sitting in the shadows. Ebenezer Long, watching. She went to him and dropped a coin into his begging bowl, and his serene face smiled up at her. "The darkest hour," he said, "is the one before dawn."

  "Spare me," she said.

  "We will protect you," he said, "if we can."

  "I won't hold my breath."

  She turned away from him. There, on the steps, watching. Viktor, still holding a drink in one hand. He had known, and hadn't told her. The Council had set her searching, in ignorance, counting on her to stir up events. Whether she lived or died mattered little to the machines.

  "But you would do the right thing," Master Long said. "You always do, Xiake."

  Then he, too, was gone, a whisper on the wind.

  Her hand closed around the other gun, the one she hadn't used, the one she should have used: the Toymaker's gift. She would use it, and she would destroy the menace that the Phantom represented. She would hunt him down, out of compassion, and put a bullet in his head and watch him die.

  She knew where he would go.

  And now her sense of urgency was gone, replaced with a cold expectation. She summoned her coach and it came. The crowds had gone, the music had died behind her in the hall. A fearful, expectant hush…

  "We're going back to Montmartre," she told the silent coachman.

  She watched the lights of the Hotel de Ville recede in the darkness. They would all be mobilising too, she thought. All of them who wanted the key, the thing that was stolen when Yong Li died. The Council must have been furious when their own agent turned on them. When the other world reached out and touched him, and remade him in the process, a key of their own to open this world…

  She sat back and closed her eyes, and her fingers tightened around the gun.

  FORTY

  Rise of the Jade Grey Moon

  The thunder still rolled over Montmartre Cemetery; lightning continued to flash above the caretaker's miniature castle, and the night was dark and full of menace. Or so it felt to Milady. She listened out for bird cries but heard none. The cemetery was silent, the graves almost unseen but for when the li
ghtning illuminated the headstones. Such an elaborate façade, she thought, for a depository of dead things… They were all gone and finished with, the men and women who lay there. Their minds had gone, and what was left crumbled slowly, flesh peeling, blood draining, only the bones remaining – but they, too, would turn to dust. Only the headstones remained, names and dates inscribed in stone, signifying nothing.