Magic Under Glass

by Jaclyn Dolamore

  “It’s not too late to fulfill his dream,” I said, burying the thought that placing Erris on the fairy throne might take him away from me.

  “We all have business with Smollings now.” Hollin laced his fingers. “He killed Garvin, he’s taken Nimira’s fairy prince, and he’s forced me to keep my wife a captive in her own home. God willing, I don’t think it’s too late to save us all. But we’ll need your help, Dr. Greinfern.”

  For a moment, Karstor’s eyes followed the orbs dancing around Annalie’s head. “Anything I can do,” he said, “for an old friend.”

  After a poor sleep and a rich breakfast, choked down under the eye of Karstor’s enthusiastic cook, we rode through New Sweeling’s finest district to Sorcerer’s Hall, where the council held their meetings. Government buildings lined the entire street, with the clock tower of the capitol standing sentry over them all. The hall was compact but elegant, made of tawny bricks, and gilt adornments on the roof gleamed in the sun. Two men in sharp government uniforms holding sorcerer’s staffs guarded the doors.

  I wondered if Smollings was already here. Was Erris in the building now?

  “Half an hour?” Karstor asked Annalie.

  We planned to stay in the carriage while Karstor entered the council meeting. While Karstor questioned Smollings, trying to set up for our entrance, Annalie would make contact with Garvin’s spirit.

  “If you can’t get past the guards, just make as much commotion as possible to draw our attention,” Karstor said. He looked out the carriage window. “There he is.”

  Smollings was walking up to the doors, speaking to a plump sorcerer with ample sideburns. No sign of Erris.

  “I’d feel much better if we were allowed to bring our staffs inside,” Hollin said.

  Karstor snorted. “I do think we’d all have killed each other by now if that were permitted.” He checked his pocket watch. “Well, good luck.”

  “Same to you,” Hollin replied.

  “Wait,” I said. “I—I—could I come with you?” I had agreed to wait in the carriage before, but seeing Smollings again, knowing Erris might be in the building now, I couldn’t bear it. “I have to know if Erris is all right.”

  “No,” Hollin said. “You’ll disturb the plan.”

  “But how? Smollings will just think I gave you the slip and found Karstor—er, Dr. Greinfern on my own, and now Dr. Greinfern is bringing me to the council to present my side of the story. Right?” I looked at Karstor hopefully, and to my relief, he nodded.

  “We don’t have time to argue,” he said. “I know how it feels to wonder if someone you care for is alive or dead. Come with me.”

  Smollings and the plump sorcerer had disappeared through the doors. Karstor left the carriage first, then offered me a hand. Hollin seemed very tense, and I wondered if he had argued for me to stay so he wouldn’t be left alone with Annalie while she summoned Garvin’s spirit.

  We weren’t halfway up the stairs when a stone-faced guard stepped forward to bar our way with his sorcerer’s staff. The other guard slipped through the doors. “I’m sorry, Dr. Greinfern, but I’m sure you know it’s a council meeting today. Your company will have to wait outside.”

  “She’s with me,” Karstor said. “I have business with the council, very important, and she’s part of that business.”

  “Ambassador Smollings explicitly reminded us that the rules do not allow anyone to attend council without proper authorization.”

  The doors opened again. Smollings emerged behind the other guard, and if he was surprised by my presence, he didn’t show it.

  “Well, Dr. Greinfern, what fascinating company you keep.”

  Karstor stared at Smollings. He merely stared. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. The guards shifted uncomfortably, for it looked very much as if Karstor was about to grab Smollings by the neck and strangle him right there on the stairs of Sorcerer’s Hall.

  “Well,” Smollings said. “Look, you can’t bring her in.”

  “She is not company,” Karstor said. “She is evidence. Evidence of treason, Mr. Smollings. And I have every right by law to present that to the council.”

  “Treason!” Smollings shook his head. “My goodness. I shall be interested to see if this trouser girl’s affection for that machine has anything to do with such an idea.”

  The guard permitted us to cross the threshold, and as we entered the council room, I spotted Erris at once. But it was not Erris as I had known him. His arms and torso had been stripped of skin. He was metal and gears. A toy. A dead thing. His face and hands were still as I had known and touched them, but his eyes were closed, his mouth slack. I clapped my hand to my mouth, suppressing a shriek.

  Karstor took my arm and turned me around so I couldn’t see him, but I was still making some terrible whimpering sound, and I felt the eyes of a roomful of sorcerers upon me.

  “I apologize for the shock,” Smollings said. “I removed the automaton’s clothes. Some members of the council wished to inspect his mechanism.”

  “He had skin!” The scream ripped from my throat. “What did you do to him?”

  The sorcerers were murmuring. Smollings lifted his arm with a flourish. “Well, miss! And how is it you know this? Had you . . . disrobed the automaton?”

  Someone chuckled.

  “No! No, but—he was alive!” I spoke through sobs. “I just—I knew!” It was true, I never had seen Erris beneath his clothes, aside from where the keyhole showed in his back, but I had held his arm, embraced him, touched his hands. He had thought himself brought fully to life until his mechanism wound down. He must have . . .

  But now I wasn’t entirely sure.

  “I’m getting ahead of myself,” Smollings said. “Let us officially convene. I gathered you all here to present the interesting story of this automaton, and I do believe this girl may support my theory. She, in fact, has been living in Hollin Parry’s house, where I found the automaton.” He pointed at a chair next to the one that held Erris . . . or his body, at least. “Please. Sit down.”

  I took the chair, for I didn’t see how I could refuse it. I struggled to regain my composure. I must not let Smollings have any more of his desired reaction.

  Oh, but how my lips would tremble. And how my heart would break!

  “Some of you may have heard the rumor, that a prince of the House of Tanharrow still lived, trapped in the body of an automaton.”

  As Smollings told the council of his suspicions, I had a moment to muster my courage. I had fought for Erris before. He didn’t look truly dead, just unwound. Annalie would summon Garvin.

  Breathe . . .

  “When I heard Mr. Parry had purchased the automaton from Garvin Pelerine’s estate, it roused my interest, for I had never heard Mr. Pelerine express an interest in automata. I paid Parry a visit, and although he denied anything unusual, I heard this girl speaking with the automaton. Parry and the girl later managed, through forbidden contact with the underworld, to bring the automaton to a kind of grotesque life.”

  “This automaton is the fairy prince?” the plump sorcerer asked, although I suspected he already knew the story by the smug expression on his face. “Well, what did Mr. Pelerine intend to do with him? He should have turned him over to the council immediately.”

  “That is exactly my question,” Smollings said. He slipped his hand beneath his black vest and took out Erris’s key.

  I squirmed in my chair as Smollings walked behind Erris and inserted the key in his back. I imagined that key grinding in my own spine. I wanted to do something to spare Erris from the moment to come, but a terrible paralysis seized me.

  Erris began to tick. It was not a loud sound, but I heard it like a far-off cry for help. The sorcerers quieted their murmuring.

  Smollings didn’t take the key out. He kept his fingers on it while it turned.

  Erris opened his eyes. His expression was pure shock, seeing all the sorcerers with their pointed cuffs and serious expressions, sitti
ng at their heavy wooden tables.

  And me. Our eyes met, and my nostrils flared with the effort of not crying, and Erris looked down at his arms and chest. The slow turning of the metallic drum was visible through the armature.

  He let out a small horrified sound that echoed in the room.

  Smollings loomed behind him, cold and hard as the face of a rock. “What is your name?” he asked.

  I wondered if Erris had even heard. He seemed lost. He wouldn’t look at me anymore, but I couldn’t stop looking at him, although I would have torn out my own eyes not to see him so pained.

  Smollings made a jerking motion, twisting the key, and Erris started to fall. He snapped up again when Smollings let go, a look of shock on his face. “What is your name?” he asked again.

  “Erris!”

  Smollings could turn Erris off and on at will. And he was hurting him. Could he break?

  “Erris what?”

  “Erris Tanharrow.”

  “Did you know Garvin Pelerine?”

  A pause. Another twist of the key. Erris gasped, like a drowning man fighting to keep above the waves. “Yes.”

  I couldn’t bear another moment of this. I shot to my feet. “You’re hurting him!” I screamed. I hardly even thought about the sorcerers anymore, or anything except the fury that raced through me. “Stop! You stop!”

  “I suspect the girl has inconceivably fallen in love with the automaton,” Smollings said. “She risked her life, indeed the lives of everyone in Mr. Hollin Parry’s house, to free him. Finishing a job that I believe Garvin Pelerine began. What did Garvin intend to do with you?” he asked Erris.

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “He didn’t speak of restoring you to the throne?”

  “I don’t want the throne!” Erris shouted.

  A nervous-looking man stood up, smoothing the front of his suit. “But . . . if this is true . . . Many fairies have yet to give up hope that the House of Tanharrow might be restored. What would this mean for us?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Smollings said. “All I know is that Mr. Pelerine was communicating with this—thing, this . . . fairy prince, and he told no one . . . except, perhaps, Dr. Greinfern.”

  “I did notice Dr. Greinfern took an interest in the automaton at Aldren Hall,” said a blond man with neatly parted hair and a mustache.

  Smollings twitched Erris’s key again, provoking another gasp. “Tell us, Dr. Greinfern. Please.”

  Karstor stood, his eyes shooting fury at Smollings. “Yes. I knew. I was in Heinlede, but Garvin wrote me. He had only just discovered the automaton and suspected he was the lost prince. I’m sure he meant to tell the council, once he was sure of what he had, but then he rather conveniently died.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Smollings. “You brought this girl because you had some far-fetched idea about . . . treason, was it? Please, Miss Nimira, let’s hear it.”

  “I—I—that is—” They were all looking at me, the sorcerers, with suspicious or incredulous faces. They didn’t want to believe a word I said.

  “Very impressive,” the blond sorcerer quipped. “Perhaps the little savage can’t find the words in our language.”

  “If I can’t find the words, it’s because there aren’t words nasty enough in your language!” Damn it all, what did I have to lose anyway? “I’m not the savage. Mr. Smollings is the savage. He killed Garvin Pelerine, and he keeps Annalie Parry a captive!”

  “That’s ridiculous,” the plump sorcerer said. “Annalie Parry? Hollin Parry’s wife? But didn’t she die a little while back?”

  He stopped. The doors were opening. Annalie entered, without her hood, so her hair flowed down her back. Her body seemed lit from within, her eyes a queer blue instead of brown. She was almost terrifying. Hollin entered behind her, rather like an afterthought.

  “I am here,” she said, with a voice so resonant that it sounded like two voices speaking at once.

  The plump man sputtered. “Isn’t—isn’t that Annalie Parry now?”

  “I am Annalie Parry,” she said. “I am also Garvin Pelerine. Two souls, in one body, for this moment, so we might tell the truth.” She stalked forward until she stood between the two council tables. “Let go of the key, Smollings. Now.”

  Smollings dropped his hand from the key and stepped back. “You’re not Garvin,” he said.

  “Oh, but I am. You know where I came from. You have used this girl, Annalie Parry, to speak to the spirits—dark spirits—many times. You must have known I would be waiting for you. You thought you could manipulate Hollin Parry because he lived in fear of the council’s reaction if it was discovered that he had conjured the spirit world to save her. . . . And for a while, I despaired that you were right.”

  Hollin stood quite still. His gaze had dropped, and now it traveled down the center aisle, toward Smollings—no, toward me. Our eyes met, and I’m not sure I could explain what was exchanged. Was he apologizing? Was he drawing strength from my support? Maybe he only wanted final confirmation that he was making the right decision.

  You are.

  Hollin spoke then. “I will attest to it. My wife, Annalie, didn’t die of the fever. I tried to save her life using forbidden necromancy. My attempt left her weak, and the spirits seemed to possess her. It also left her able to communicate with the dead. When I told Mr. Smollings, my father’s old friend, he told me he’d cover up my crime, but it was clear he had a motive. Ever since then, he has used my wife to tap into dark magic himself.”

  The sorcerers were whispering amongst themselves, and even the ones that had insulted me or expressed suspicions about Garvin now seemed nervous. Annalie was so striking, and she spoke with such conviction, that Smollings had lost his poise the moment she arrived.

  Now I could see him fighting to regain it. “And why should we believe you’re Garvin Pelerine? You could tell us you’re anyone, but I see no proof. You’re trying to frame me for what Hollin Parry did.”

  “You’re pale, Smollings,” Annalie said. “As pale and shocked as I must have looked when you ambushed me that day in the forest. I knew we’d never agree on the fairies or much of anything else, but I couldn’t believe you’d kill a man over politics. You obviously planned this a long time—you anticipated every spell in my repertoire. Since you know me so well, ask me anything, and I’ll tell you. I can tell you, Mr. Fidinch”—she indicated the plump man—“once we were at lunch, discussing griffon hunting laws, and we had a very buxom waitress you had taken a shine to . . .”

  “That’s enough,” Fidinch said, getting quite red.

  “Exactly,” Annalie said. “What about you, Melsing? I have some stories of our school days I’d be happy to share.”

  Melsing held up a hand for Annalie—Garvin—to halt.

  “But I also know your sorrows and your hearts,” Annalie said. “Those of you that have them.” She looked at the blond man. “When your boy was so ill, Mr. Favier, I sat up with you, distracting you, talking of philosophy and pastries.”

  “It is Garvin,” Mr. Favier said. “She might look like Annalie Parry, but she talks like Garvin.”

  No one seemed to notice Smollings taking out the pistol. I didn’t notice myself, until I heard chair legs screech, and saw Erris launch himself at Smollings and seize him from behind.

  The pistol fired, striking not Annalie, but Karstor, who lurched backward, clutching his shoulder, knocking into his chair before slumping to the ground.

  “Karstor!” Annalie cried, swooping to his side.

  Erris kept his grip on Smollings, who had gone strangely limp.

  Hollin reached inside his own jacket and pointed his pistol at Smollings. “Drop your weapon.”

  Smollings opened his hand. The pistol fell. A queer smile slashed across his face.

  “I hope you’re happy, Parry,” Smollings said. “You’ve secured a victory for that which is dark and godless. I see the door closing on Lorinar’s golden age. At least I can say I fought to the last.”

  I
sensed hesitancy in the room. No one wanted to cheer for Smollings—not at this moment—but some eyes were suspicious. Some hearts agreed. Moments ago, the sorcerers had been under Smollings’s thumb.

  “It’s only his shoulder,” said one of the sorcerers who had knelt to help Karstor. “But he needs a doctor.”

  Annalie stood, obviously reluctant to take her attention from Karstor. Her breath came heavy. “You’re wrong, Smollings,” she said. “Lorinar’s golden age is just beginning. What you call our golden age has been a time of war and intolerance. It isn’t the place of mere men to judge who is godless, but rather, our duty to be the world’s keepers and protectors—a job at which we have, thus far, failed.”

  She took a step back, clutching her head. “I can’t stay much longer . . .” She dropped to her knees. Karstor struggled to rise.

  “Greinfern, don’t, you’re injured!” said the sorcerer who had been tending to him.

  “I have to say good-bye!” He touched Annalie’s back. “Hang on, old friend. Hang on. Don’t go, don’t leave me.”

  “I have to go . . . ,” Garvin whispered with Annalie’s voice. “It has taken great effort, for me and for Annalie Parry, to be here today. You must stay . . . help our country find a peaceful resolution with the fairies . . . I know you have it in you.” Annalie’s hands reached for Karstor, drawing his ear to her, where she whispered something.

  Karstor’s eyes welled.

  “Good-bye,” Annalie said. The luminous presence that had entered seemed to retreat, and she became Annalie of the shadows again, drawing her hood over her hair with one slender, trembling arm.

  Karstor clutched his wound, obviously in pain as he shuddered with soundless grief.

  The doors burst open. The police stormed into the room, their coat buttons gleaming. Someone must have called them.

  “Please, everyone—stay seated,” one of the policemen shouted, in vain.

  A number of the police were halted in their tracks, staring at Erris. “What—what is this thing?”