by Jes Battis
Velázquez’s easel was positioned in the far right corner of the room, so that we could see the frame, but not what was painted on the canvas. That, too, had to remain blank. It was one of those unanswerable questions.
The artist himself was absent. All of the people had been erased from the painting, leaving only a pure landscape behind. It was beautiful and still. I could see the light dancing as it filtered through the high windows of the room. I knew that if I touched the easel, it would feel solid and reassuring, even if its true substance was far closer to that of a dream.
What had the fairy Puck called the human world again? This weak and idle theme / no more yielding than a dream? It was hard to tell, as always, where magic ended and technology began. The boundary was no more than a flickering cursor that vanished if you looked at it too closely.
“Okay,” I said. “Everyone needs to get into position. Becka, can you illuminate the coordinates?”
“Sure thing.”
Becka entered in a stream of code. The room shimmered again. Ten sets of floating crosshairs appeared in various positions, each a different color. Glowing letters drifted next to the marks: Velázquez, Infanta, María Augustina , and even Dog. For Baron’s benefit, of course.
“Mia, you’re the Infanta. Take your position.”
She sighed. “I wanted to be Velázquez.”
“Tough. Just stand next to the coordinates.”
Mia took her place. “Should I do a dance now?”
“No. Just stand still.”
“Am I allowed to talk?”
“Whatever. Just don’t move.”
“Not even—”
“Mia.”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay. Geez. No moving, I get it.”
“Good. Patrick, you’re Velázquez. Go stand next to the easel.”
He did so. “Is the canvas supposed to be blank?”
“Yes.”
“Can we paint something on it?”
“No. Just keep still.”
He muttered something, which I chose not to hear.
I scanned the room. “Hmm. Derrick and Miles, you’re going to have to be the meninas. Take the two marks on either side of Mia.”
“So gay,” Mia said. “I love it.”
They both took their positions.
I’m the pretty one, Miles signed to Derrick.
“You’re deluded,” he replied.
I remembered Lucian in my dream, standing at the door. I turned to him. “You get to be Don José Nieto, the chamberlain. Go stand in the entrance.”
“Am I coming or going?” he asked. “I can never tell from the painting whether he’s arriving or leaving.”
“I guess we’ll never know.” I kept seeing him as he’d been in my dream, wearing the shattered mask, his face bloody. Even though I knew that Braxton was the one who’d attacked me, I still saw Lucian’s eyes behind that mask.
I blinked to clear the image. “Right. We’re going to need everyone to pull this off. Selena, can you take the place of Mari-Bárbola? Behind the dog.”
She did so, standing three feet to the right of Mia. “Is this okay?”
“Yes. Perfect.”
“I don’t think we’re supposed to talk,” Mia stage-whispered to her.
Selena chuckled, but didn’t reply.
They were all going to drive me crazy.
“Okay. Becka, can you stand to the right of Selena? You’re going to be Nicolas Pertusato, the other little person.”
Becka took her position. “Should I be doing anything special?”
“Yes. We need Baron first, though.”
Miles whistled, and Baron was instantly awake. He snapped his fingers and pointed to the space in front of Selena. Baron trotted over and sat down.
I turned to Miles so that he could read my lips. “Is it okay if Becka rests her foot lightly on him?”
“She could sit on him, for all he’d care. It’s fine.”
“Okay. Becka, put your foot on Baron’s back.”
She did so. Baron glanced at it for a moment, then promptly fell back asleep.
“What about the remaining two figures?” Lucian asked.
“We don’t have enough people. We’ll have to shuffle.”
“It’s okay,” Becka said. “I’ve set the controls to remote, so I can shift the image parameters from where I’m standing.”
“Perfect. Can you call up Ordeño’s apartment now?”
“Yes. One second.”
Becka hit a button on a slender white remote. The room shimmered, and I felt another wave of static electricity.
Then we were standing in Ordeño’s living room.
“My God,” Selena said. “It fits perfectly.”
She was right. Even though Ordeño’s apartment looked nothing like Velázquez’s studio on the surface, it was spatially an exact duplicate. Everyone retained their positions without interfering with a single piece of furniture. The entire room had been designed to accommodate exactly this scene, as I’d suspected. Even the windows were in the right place, and the ceiling was just high enough. The only difference between the open doors was that Ordeño’s entryway still had yellow scene tape attached to it. Otherwise, their positions were identical.
“The painting is a map,” I said. “All we need to do is figure out what perspective we’re supposed to be looking from.”
“Ve por ella,” Lucian repeated. “‘Look through her.’ But who do you think he’s talking about? ‘Her’ might even refer to the room itself, if Ordeño was feeling truly diabolical when he wrote the instructions.”
“I don’t think he was being that arcane. There are five women in the painting. Six, actually, if you count the queen’s reflection. But we can check that later. For now, let’s try the perspectives that we can actually see.”
“I’ve programmed in image maps for the other rooms in the apartment,” Becka said. “All you have to do is say the name of each figure in the painting, and the program will provide their perspectival data. It’ll fill in the visual details for the parts of the room that are currently blank.”
Selena shook her head. “Tess, what made you think of doing this?”
“It’s actually kind of logical. I remembered Becka saying how computer programmers were using these complex algorithms to try to map out all the lines of perspective in paintings like Las Meninas. They wanted to literally peer behind the canvas and see what only the painter himself was able to see.”
I walked over to the blank space, where Velázquez’s canvas had once been.
“Ordeño used the painting as a kind of transparency, in order to hide something within his own home. Obviously, it’s hidden somewhere in plain sight, but in a place where nobody would think to look. In order to find it, we have to locate the right perspective. I think.”
Selena looked at me. “You think?”
“Yeah. I mean, I’m pretty sure. I came up with all of this while I was getting dragged through an undead garden. I haven’t exactly had the chance to test my hypothesis out until now.”
“Why don’t we try looking from the Infanta’s perspective first?” Lucian asked. “She’s often seen to be at the center of the painting.”
“Okay,” Becka said. “Activiating the Infanta’s perspective now.”
“Mia, what do you see?”
She squinted. “A hallway.”
Indeed, the interior hallway had appeared, leading toward Ordeño’s bedroom. It was empty and silent.
“Right.” I turned to Becka. “What about the nun, or doña, or whatever she’s called? The one who’s supposed to be standing behind Mia?”
“I believe she’s Marcela de Ulloa,” Lucian said. “The Infanta’s chaperone. She’s talking to some anonymous guardadamas, or bodyguard.”
“Whatever. Let’s see what she sees.”
“I’m loading her perspective now,” Becka said. “Go stand in her position.”
I walked over to where the woman’s shadow was. “I can see farth
er down the hallway. A little bit of the bedroom, but that’s it. Let’s try the menina on the left. That’s you, Derrick.”
He sighed. “Always the menina, never the Infanta.”
“How long have you been waiting to make that joke?”
“Possibly my whole life.”
“What do you see?”
“The door to Ordeño’s room. And a bit of the carpet.”
I shook my head. “It has to be something obvious, but still hidden.” I turned to Selena. “Okay, Mari-Bárbola. What about you?”
“I’m activating her perspective now,” Becka said.
Another patch of the hallway appeared, this time leading in the opposite direction, toward the bathroom.
“I don’t think it’s in the shower,” Selena said.
“Shit. There’s nothing else in the hallway?”
“Just the A/C.”
My eyes widened. “Wait.”
I walked down the phantom hallway. Set into the wall, just as Selena had described, was a state-of-the-art A/C unit. I stared at the panel.
“Four pounds of snow for Mari-Bárbola,” I said softly.
Lucian stared at me. “You’re not serious.”
“I don’t get it,” Selena said.
“It’s something that Duessa said to me. Supposedly, Mari-Bárbola was promised four pounds of snow every year, and nobody knows why. Maybe an A/C unit is the modern equivalent of her four pounds of snow. We need to go to Ordeño’s apartment.”
“And you’re convinced that the secret to his murder is hidden within the air-conditioning unit?”
“I think it’s probably not the most insane thing I’ve ever come up with.”
Selena blinked. “That’s actually true. All right. We’ll take separate cars.”
“And no,” I said, before Patrick could even ask, “you’re not driving. You and Mia are staying here with Becka.”
“That sucks!” Mia glared at me. “We always miss everything!”
“You can play Nintendo Wii in the simulation chamber,” Becka told her.
Mia and Patrick exchanged a look.
“Have fun, Tess,” she said. “We’ll see you later.”
We met Selena in the underground parking of Ordeño’s building. It was cold, and the ceiling had that fluffy white insulation that seemed to be standard-issue in every subterranean lot. I could hear air ducts hissing.
“Did Ordeño drive?” I asked Lucian as we both got out of the car.
“No. He liked transit.”
“You don’t have a car either. Is it a necromancer thing?”
“I think it’s more of an environmentally conscious thing. And I used to have a car, but I sold it when I moved here.”
“From where?”
“That’s a conversation for another time.”
“You always say that when you’re about to get to the good stuff.”
“Maybe that’s a necromancer thing.”
“Hah.”
Selena emerged from a black sedan, which she’d borrowed from the lab. She clicked on the alarm, then turned to me, shivering beneath her coat. “I really didn’t think I’d end up here tonight.”
“I don’t think any of us did. Especially me.”
“But you’re the one we’re all following this time.”
“Right. But when’s the last time one of my hunches was actually correct? I thought this was just going to be another flash in the pan.”
“I seem to remember you having some premonitory dreams.”
“Yeah, but that’s pretty erratic.”
“I never remember my dreams,” Derrick said, following Miles out of the backseat. “Except for the nightmares.”
I thought it best not to mention my dream about Las Meninas. A dream was less convincing than a scholarly article, at least to this crowd.
Selena had brought Ordeño’s keys, and she used them to unlock the parking garage door. Stale apartment air washed over us. We filed into the elevator, and Selena pressed the button for Ordeño’s floor. It was one of those new elevators that was so quiet and still that you could barely tell if you were moving or not. Sometimes my life felt like that. I was never quite sure if I’d forgotten to press the button.
We emerged on Ordeño’s floor. The yellow caution tape was still drawn across his front door. Anyone walking past, including local authorities and the building superintendent, would see an incomplete unit still under construction. The veil would last until the cleaners arrived to erase any lingering traces of materia in the air. Then the scene would be released. Most likely, the unit would rent again in record time. Everyone wanted to live in the fancy building with the tree on its roof. It had a beautiful view of English Bay, and nobody had to know that a necromancer had died here.
Selena drew aside the yellow tape, and we entered the apartment, making our way down the silent hallway. Everything was as we’d left it. There were still dishes in the sink, and none of the furniture had been moved. I looked one more time at Ordeño’s degrees hanging on the wall. Like most paranormal folk, he’d managed to get through post-secondary education without arousing any suspicion. He must have been lonely, though. Could you use necromancy to cheat on a test? It didn’t seem likely, unless you planned on de-fleshing your TA.
“It’s weird,” I said, apropos of my own thoughts.
“What’s weird?” Lucian asked.
“This case. We’ve all devoted so much energy to solving the murder of a person we know virtually nothing about. No pictures on the walls. No family. Did he even leave behind a will?”
“It’s being contested by the Dark Parliament. I haven’t seen it yet.”
“I thought you were Fifth Solium, or whatever.”
“Seventh Solium. And that doesn’t mean I get to see every document. I’m not in Lord Nightingale’s inner circle.”
“But Ordeño was.”
“Sure. He could have ruled the Dark Parliament someday.”
“How did the two of you meet?”
“I don’t really see how that’s relevant.”
“Right.” I turned around. “Can I see a show of hands? Who’d like to know how Lucian and Luiz Ordeño met?”
Everyone slowly raised their hand, including Selena.
Lucian sighed. “He was one of my teachers.”
“What subject?”
“History. He was very passionate about the origins of the hidden city, and the ancient customs of necromancy. A little obsessed, in fact.”
“I didn’t notice a school when we were there.”
“You only saw ten percent of the city. Half of it is underground.”
“Ah. That makes sense.”
“He was a great teacher. We became friends.”
“What was his favorite color?”
“Tess.”
“Come on. I’ve got nothing on this guy. Give me a point of interest. What was his favorite color? Did he like animals? Was he straight, gay, asexual? He seemed to live the life of a perpetually single academic.”
Lucian seemed to consider this for a moment. Then he shrugged. “I suppose you’re right. Luiz was a very private person. Even I didn’t know much about him. Like most people who’ve lived for more than a few hundred years, I think that he was bisexual, or at the very least open-minded. But I never saw him with a partner of either gender. He didn’t have pets. He wore a lot of blue. And he collected vinyl.”
I brightened at this. “What kind?”
“Weird bands, mostly. Folk music. Zappa. The Incredible String Band.”
“Wow.”
“He read a lot of Maria Zambráno. She’s a philosopher.”
“Oh. I’ve read her in translation,” Derrick said.
We were all silent for a minute. There wasn’t much else to say. No matter how many anecdotes we traded, we’d never know anything more about Luiz Ordeño. He’d left an empty vessel behind, and it was locked in a morgue freezer. He seemed to have poured most of his personal energy into creating a puzzle that we
were on the verge of solving. Or maybe we weren’t even close. Funny how the positions of absolute certainty and folly are so similar when you’re standing on the border between them.
I followed Lucian down the hallway that led to Ordeño’s bedroom. The A/C unit was compact, about the size of a small kitchen cupboard. It was made of buffed metal, so smooth that it virtually disappeared into the wall. I held my hand in front of the vent. There was no air coming from it, cold or otherwise.
“Miles?” I asked. “Are you picking up anything?”
He approached the wall and held out his hand. “I’m not sure,” he said softly. His eyes narrowed. “Wait. There’s… something. It’s really faint, though. It might just be some defrayed materia left over from when the necromancer died. Or it could be microwave static. I can’t tell.”
I turned to Lucian. “What about you? Any necroid materia?”
He frowned. “I agree with Miles. There could be something behind there, but it’s like a dim echo. The barest suggestion of power. It could be anything.”
“Step aside,” Selena said. “I’ve got power tools.”
She used an electric drill to unfasten the bolts that held the A/C unit to the wall. When she was done, she dropped the screws into a labeled evidence bag.
“Lucian? You want to do the honors?”
“You’re just afraid that there’s a booby trap.”
“You’re the necromancer. You’ve got the highest chance of survival.”
He chuckled. “You OSIs really know how to charm a guy.”
“It’s called pragmatic romanticism,” I said. “Or romantic pragmatism. One of those, I can’t remember which.”
Lucian gently removed the A/C panel from the wall. A dark alcove full of wires lay behind it. He reached in and felt around the hole for a few seconds.
“Anything there?” I asked.
“Nothing that I can feel. But…” He frowned. “I don’t know how to explain it. Like when you’ve got a sneeze caught in your nose. There’s something in here, something not quite there, and it’s rubbing on the edges of my awareness.”
“That’s how I felt,” Miles said. “Can I take a look?”
“Go ahead.” He stepped back.
“Wait.” Selena handed him a pair of plastic gloves. “Put these on first. We may need to dust whatever you find for prints.”