(Re)Visions: Alice ((Re)Visions)

by Kaye Chazan

  Aelister knows he must be gaping like a fish, but supposes that would put him on the level of the creatures on the wall, and so he does not mind. He wonders at the stone, reaches his hand out toward it as if that could help him read.

  “Does this explain anything?” the lady in gold asks, her voice just barely reaching Aelister’s ears.

  “It might,” he whispers back. “But if it does, I don’t understand the explanation. Though that might be the point,” he adds, when that, too, comes through his mind. “The same words. Different sounds. Some of them pictures. A level between, to help one become the other.”

  He can feel them smiling, their teeth polished as bright as the gods on the wall.

  Eighty-nine, he tries, by himself in the hansom, on the way home. Seven. Forty. Forty-one.

  Those are only numbers. They’re nothing, not even the rhythm of the carriage wheels or the patter of the rain on the roof. They’re words, and words in a language Aelsister already knows and has no need to remember.

  He envisions the Duke sitting across from him or beside him, tries to conjure up the heat and the headache and the dizziness. If I were him, what would I ask me? he thinks, and shuts his eyes because that thought makes him laugh. “Really,” he says aloud, and doesn’t care if the hansom driver hears him, “I can’t pretend I’m him and me all at the same time.”

  He remembers last time it was roses, paper-white roses. Oysters, the time before, marching in rows. He doesn’t see anything like that now, in the hansom or out the window, and no matter what he tries there is no point in just counting.

  “—the cards,” he realizes. “Of course. It always began with the cards.”

  Fifty-two, he begins with instead.

  No.

  Seventy-eight.

  Running up the stairs is no effort at all. Finding a servant is even less of one, and asking for a deck of cards is the easiest thing in the world. The Duke is out this evening, and Aelister thinks, good. Aelister doesn’t even take his shoes off, just skids to his knees on the floor of his room and opens the deck, fans it through on the rug to find the jack of hearts. The deck is unordered, and the jack is nestled between the fours of hearts and spades, and Aelister slips him out, holds him in front of his eyes and glares. The jack winks back, or at least Aelister thinks it does, but after Aelister wipes the rain from his forehead the card is unmoving again.

  “I know you’re in there,” Aelister snarls, “talk.”

  The card says nothing.

  Aelister puts him back in the deck and shoves all the cards together, stirring them around on the floor because even now he can’t shuffle them properly. He doesn’t even bother stacking them neatly, just crunches them into a pile once they’re all mixed up and draws them, one after another. Five of clubs. King of spades. Nine and three of diamonds, three of hearts, queen of diamonds. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Aelister tears through them, flings them down face-up so hard they flip. They say nothing. They do nothing. They mean nothing. He swipes at them, as if they had throats he could tear into, and falls to his side, jostles his arm in its cast when it can’t support him.

  For a moment, he is so frustrated he could cry. In fact, there is very definitely water at the corners of his eyes. He thinks, trying to be brave and grown up, that it is only the rain in his hair, or sweat from getting so angry, but the truth is rather clear to him.

  He swishes the cards about on the floor again, but has to pause to wipe his face in the crook of his elbow. Before the pile gets too messy, he plucks the jack of hearts out of the pile and sets it across from him, in a circle on the rug.

  “Play with me,” he commands, and says it again for good measure, “play with me.”

  The jack, predictably, says nothing, but at least stays where it is.

  It might not be proper to play baccarat with only one deck, and a deck of fifty-one at that, but it is pointless to play without a wager. Aelister empties his jacket of the pocket-money the Duke has given him, since his own money from Warwickshire has long since run out. “I’ll bet this,” he says, “and you can put whatever you like against it. I don’t suppose a shilling is worth much to you.”

  Aelister deals two cards to the jack, then two to himself. The jack’s total is four, three of diamonds and ace of hearts, and Aelister’s six, the ten and six of spades. “You’d ask for more, if you knew,” Aelister says, and deals the jack another card, and it’s the two of hearts. Six.

  “I suppose we’re at a draw now,” Aelister says, “I wonder what the rules for a draw are.” Either way, he draws himself another card, since he has nothing to lose, and—

  The jack of hearts winks up at him from his own hand.

  Aelister throws the card down and scrambles away, upends the card pile and knocks over his coins trying to get away. The jack lands upright on the carpet—or upside-down, since it is the same on the top and the bottom after all—and brushes itself off. It tilts back its heads into its red robes and laughs, without sound, but Aelister knows just how many beats and bursts there would have been if he could hear it.

  And then the jack turns its back and hops along the rug, up the leg of a chair and onto the windowsill, and folds itself flat through the cracks.

  Aelister rushes to the window but the card is already out it, and rules or no rules, nothing stops him from unlocking the window and chasing the card wherever it goes. He hops down onto the roof and almost forgets it should be, and is, wet, and slips on the shingles almost to the edge. The jack stops on a flue, as if to mock him, then flits onto the roof of the next house and down, down, down.

  By now Aelister is past fear, and chases after it, slides over the edge of the house onto the window ledge on the far side, and from there it’s a matter of screwing his courage and stepping across onto the bough of the neighbor’s thin and sickly tree. Leaves shake free and splash filthy water into Aelister’s eyes, but he makes it to the trunk proper and then down from there. It is much more difficult to jump out of a tree than it is to fall. The last few meters down are the hardest of all, holding on to the bough with his good arm and cradling his cast close, since he’d rather not break something that’s already broken.

  The card wants to be chased, it seems. It waits at the edge of the neighbor’s property and then whirls out into the street on wind that Aelister can’t see or feel and plasters itself to the side of a passing hansom. Not again, Aelister grouses, but not aloud since by now his heart is in his throat, but he runs after the hansom and swings himself up onto the back like a footman.

  The rain worsens on the way, and the horses in the street kick up dingy water until Aelister is soaked through. He doesn’t know how long the ride goes, nor in what direction, but by the time the rain has washed the jack of hearts off the wall of the hansom and into the gutter, Aelister does not recognize the city around him at all. The buildings are packed close together but at different heights, as if someone built a wall out of sand and carved windows and iron stairs into the sides. Aelister jumps down from the cab and scrambles after the card, falls to his knees by the side of the street and skins them both raw, but the little jack washes down into the gutter like the paper and wax it is.

  Aelister could swear it laughs again, not that he can hear it over the buzz and the drone of the city and the rain.

  Fog swallows the streetlamps. Aelister sees no difference between the heaviness of the sky and the dark of the sewer grating he’s reaching down, grasping at the card. He can see its sharp corners and the glint of its axe, brilliant in the black. Slime stains his glove and it slips down his wrist, hits the card on the way down into the gutter.

  He gets up and turns, looks for anything with fire or at least light, but the streetlamps are barely managing in the rain and the traffic on the street seems to have thinned out, even if Aelister can hear the sounds of people everywhere around him. His feet trip clumsily underneath him, waterlogged and awful and backward all told, and he skulks into the shadow of a building. The rain drums onto its awning and fal
ls around him, so clear compared to the rest, and Aelister wonders if he should reach out and grab at that, if it’s any cleaner than what’s all over his clothes.

  His sleeve is soaked through in red. As crisp a red as the back of a printed card.

  Something is off, and Aelister knows it. He pats himself for blood and finds it on his knees but nowhere on his arm, except in the cloth. He creeps back to the sewer grate, then turns and runs, follows the gutter upstream and around the corner of the building and into its flooded backyard. What little light makes it past the lampposts doesn’t reach back here, but Aelister can just barely make out a man’s silhouette against the wall, broad and dark.

  In all these rainy weeks in London, the thunder and lightning have been rather quiet until now. This bolt flashes twice, but Aelister only sees after the first bright snap—

  Hands pry Aelister back from the building, back around the corner and flush to the wall. “You don’t want to see that, boy,” the Duke whispers, harsh and hot in Aelister’s ear, with his hands over Aelister’s mouth and eyes. “I told you not to go out alone.” Aelister struggles but the Duke only holds tighter. I followed the jack, Aelister tries to say, but his lips and teeth catch on the Duke’s palm and the Duke hisses in his ear, “Shush. You don’t know what you’re after. We’re going back. Now.” And the Duke lifts Aelister up and wrangles him into the back of a carriage, and only lets his hand off Aelister’s eyes to slam the door.

  The man from behind the house stands at the roadside now, in the half-light of the lampposts. His profile drips with blood and rain, sluicing down the long thin knife at his side.

  Aelister catches his breath, and the Duke sits still opposite him with his head in his hand. The rain has gotten to him as well, soaked through his gloves and the edges of his shirt, and his black eyes bore into Aelister’s like daggers.

  “What possessed you?” he snarls. “Where did you ever get it into your head to go to Whitechapel?”

  “It didn’t,” Aelister says. His breath is still coming short, and everything behind his eyes is swollen and red. “I got it from nowhere. I followed the jack.”

  “The jack?”

  “The jack of hearts. I followed it.”

  “The knave of hearts. Honestly, boy, I let you out of my sight for one day and you seek him out—”

  “I don’t know what I was seeking!”

  “Then it would behoove you to know!”

  “I can’t know if no one tells me.”

  “And I can’t tell if you don’t trust me.”

  “And I can’t trust you at all!”

  Perhaps Aelister should not have swung out his arm to emphasize his point: The Duke snatches him by the wrist and yanks Aelister across, shoves him to his knees. “You can’t trust me? You follow me home like a little lost dog and you can’t trust me? His are the claws that catch, boy, do I have to spell it out for you?”

  Aelister chokes, “The claws that catch what—”

  “What do you think?”

  “Let go!”

  The Duke doesn’t. In fact, he holds on tighter, and leans in closer. “You trust me. You will trust me, or you will die without answers, and wither in this place.”

  The carriage rolls on, and Aelister’s wrist swells in the Duke’s grasp, and cuff of his shirt is drenched with someone else’s blood.

  “I trust you,” Aelister says, in a voice that sounds about three inches tall. “I’m sorry, your Grace.”

  “I should hope so.” The Duke lets go, as if he’s casting something away, and sinks back into his seat, finally shutting his eyes. “Then understand that I keep you in my house as much for your own protection as to assuage your curiosity. How did you get the card to lead you to him?”

  Aelister rubs at his wrist with his chin, and sits back up. “You’ll have to ask me that question at chess, your Grace,” he says, and belatedly remembers to smile.

  The Duke laughs. “So I will.”

  Pieces fly across the board this time, as if both of the players already know how the game will proceed. Aelister moves out his rook, the Duke moves out his bishop, and both of their cuffs are still damp and stained. Aelister moves a pawn. The Duke advances a knight. Aelister’s hair drips onto the chessboard when he reaches over to advance the pawn blocking his other rook from play, and the Duke moves his bishop out to chase it. Aelister has to make two grabs, and roll up his sleeve to take the bishop with his pawn.

  “How did you find me just now?” he asks, with the bishop still clasped in his palm.

  The Duke is not bothering to record the moves anymore. “The same way you found him, I suspect, but as you said, I will have to ask you.” He moves a pawn without even looking at the rest of the board. “And my methods of divination are older.”

  Aelister mows another pawn down—not that one, the one that’s threatening to advance to its last square. “Is that murderer from the same place you and I are?”

  All the Duke says to that is, plainly, “Yes.”

  For four moves, his bishop and Aelister’s rook have a dance in the quadrant on Aelister’s side, until Aelister realizes, too late, that the bishop has set itself up to capture another of Aelister’s pieces. “How did you find him?” the Duke asks as he pinches the piece and removes it from the board. “You followed the knave of hearts: How did you get him to lead you?”

  “I faced it in baccarat.”

  Of all the times Aelister has heard the Duke laugh, it has never been this startled or this boisterous, and the Duke even tips back his chair. Outside, the sun is just beginning to rise, and sleep shows on him, puts more color in his face. “That works,” he says, “that’s very good, naughts and all,” and he is barely even looking when Aelister moves his next pawn forward. He slides up his rook, and Aelister is almost insulted, to wonder if the Duke is playing this game at all.

  Aelister breathes deep, though it shakes on the way in, and asks, “Do the murders have anything to do with me?”

  “Yes,” the Duke says, and moves one of his knights into a stronger position.

  Aelister realizes just how vulnerable both of their kings are.

  His heart races, and he swears the rook he moves is beating back his own blood. Marble has veins, he remembers, and those veins moved something once. The Duke counters with his bishop, and Aelister snatches it up with his other rook, never mind how exposed his king’s flank is now.

  “Are you in league with him?”

  “No, however much I wish I were,” the Duke says. He moves a pawn forward along the king’s flank. “It’s more dangerous to be his enemy.”

  Aelister shivers. Sweat or rain or blood slides down his collar, and the next few moves pass silently, and he sees—whether through the Duke’s error or his own planning or simply luck, exactly how the next salvo will go. His pawn in the C file, his little red soldier, has its journey all mapped out to the eighth square, and there is nothing the Duke can or will do to stop it.

  He takes the Duke’s knight, sitting idle since it moved to protect the king. “What card is the murderer?”

  “The Tower,” the Duke answers, already moving his remaining knight. He takes one of the pawns that guard Aelister’s king. “Do you want to go back?”

  “To the deck? I don’t know,” Aelister says, “and I hope that’s true enough.” He knocks the Duke’s pawn out of the way, sacrificing rook to rook but it’s more important now to move forward. “What card are you?”

  The Duke picks up the rook that’s about to fall and rolls it in his fingers, considering, appraising it. “I am the Magician,” he says, “the axle of the wheel.” He knocks Aelister’s rook down, and sets his own rook in its place. “What is your name, boy?”

  Aelister closes his eyes, and is silent for a moment.

  “I have none,” he says, then opens his eyes and adds, “nor number either.”

  The only sounds in the room are the scrape of Aelister lifting his pawn, and the gentle snick as he sets it down on the eighth square. He reaches
across to his captured pieces and reclaims his queen.

  “What was in the little green pouch?” he asks the Duke, and puts his queen in place.

  The Duke’s black eyes are inscrutable and hard, and his lips form a pale, thin line. He places his hands on the table, and stands taller than Aelister has ever seen, and turns away. He leaves the room without a word, and shuts the door behind him.

  Once his breath and wits return to him, Aelister doesn’t wait. He topples over his chair getting up from the chess table, and runs after him, and up the stairs, but the Duke and the servants are nowhere to be heard. The house echoes with footsteps and breath and the crackle of lightning, but only the white marble statues see where he goes.