by Lam, Laura
Olivia took out her weapon and snuck closer. She knew that nothing would keep her from her child. Not even one hundred Sirens, or the Lord of the Sun or Lady of the Moon themselves. She moved silently through the swampy marshlands. The Siren had curled up to sleep protectively around her child. Olivia didn’t hesitate, and struck off its head. Her child cried, but soon quieted when she picked him up. She went back to her farm, keeping an even closer watch on her child from thereafter.
— Myths and Legends of Ellada and Girit, PROFESSOR CAED CEDAR, Royal Snakewood University
When I returned from Pozzi’s, the first thing I did was ask Maske if he wanted to perform for the Princess.
Whatever the Royal Family would pay us to perform would be a lot more than any coppers earned on the street. Maske’s eyes lit up with glee when I told him.
‘Oh, I do wish this, indeed I wish,’ he said. Performing for the Princess would mean we were favoured by the Royal Family, which would result in more séance and magic show bookings from the nobility throughout Imachara and the Emerald Bowl. By the time we were back in the Kymri Theatre, coin would flow through his coffers again.
I wrote the missive then and there, paying a boy to run the message to Pozzi’s apartments.
Maske ran into his room, which was stuffed to the gills with the contents of his workshop, to begin planning the show. As he slammed the door, dust fell from the ceiling.
The tenements where we stayed had no roof garden, so Drystan, Cyan and I crammed into mine and Drystan’s room so I could tell them why I had returned so late from Pozzi’s appointment.
Anisa emerged from her Aleph, as ethereal as ever. I told them everything, and filled Cyan and Anisa in on my two strange dreams.
‘I’m not sure who’s behind it, or why I’m eavesdropping on the crimes, but it’s worrying.’
‘Could Pozzi be behind it?’ Drystan asked.
‘Hard to say. Maybe, but why would he need bodies?’
‘Were the bodies human or Chimaera?’ Cyan asked.
‘That body I saw in the morgue was Chimaera, yes. The ones in the dreams didn’t look obviously Chimaera, but we know that doesn’t mean much if they were Anthi. Can you sense anything, Anisa?’
‘I’m almost completely blind now. I hate it. I feel powerless.’ Her transparent hands clenched into fists. ‘No body, and now not even glimmers of what’s to come. Only darkness.’
We lapsed into a temporary silence, mulling it over. The view from Drystan’s and my room was not inspiring. We looked directly onto the broken windows of an abandoned building. In the early afternoon, shouts from below and the rumble of engines floated through our thin windows. Our temporary home was so different to the Kymri Theatre. After dark, that area of town was quiet, but here, everything was always alive, curfew or no. Though the quarters were cramped and none too nice, I liked the brief change of scene. It was the polar opposite of my childhood in the richest parts of town. If Pozzi had decided to give me to a poorer family rather than one in the Third Ring of nobility, I might very well have grown up somewhere like this.
I sighed. ‘So why would our mystery grave robber need corpses?’
‘Experimentation seems the most likely reason. I can’t imagine Pozzi sneaking around graveyards at night or creeping into a hospital to suffocate someone.’
‘He has that assistant, Kai. Though to be honest, I can’t imagine him doing it either. He was very diffident.’
‘Could be an act, like Lily.’
‘Maybe. What if the university is doing it? To see if they can somehow learn more about the Chimaera? One of the corpses in my dream went missing from the university hospital, I think. That Doctor Maral was very keen on learning everything he could about the one body he had.’ The horrible Y incision on Dirk’s chest haunted me. The university had taken apart one Chimaera already. What was to stop them from procuring more to further their research? A prestigious paper in the right journals could make doctors rather wealthy from resulting lecture tours. Some of the doctors who saw me as a child had used me to make their fortunes. Chimaera were different. Exotic. The masses would be fascinated and fearful. Call us monsters. Exhibit us around the world, just like the circus freak show, but wrapped in a false veneer of respectability and the pursuit of knowledge.
‘It is curious, but I’m not sure if this corpse-stealer is our most pressing concern. Hopefully if you have any future dreams, you will be able to deduce a little more about whoever this is. In the meantime, isn’t it time you confronted this Lily Verre about the fact she has been spying on you and reporting to the Royal Physician?’ Anisa looked pensive.
There was an awkward silence. As usual, she was right and cut to the heart of the matter. We’d all been putting it off. Something had to be done, but none of us knew what.
‘Isn’t it better she doesn’t know the game is up?’ Cyan asked. ‘Then we can control what information reaches Pozzi and what doesn’t.’
‘To a point, perhaps. Personally, I am quite curious to know what Pozzi has on her that ensures she will do his bidding. I have a feeling it is not something she truly wishes to do, but rather something she is being forced into doing.’ Anisa raised an eyebrow.
A loud bang from the direction of Maske’s new workshop caused us all – save Anisa – to flinch.
‘I feel bad, keeping Maske in the dark about all of this,’ I said. We had not told him about Lily. Again, she had not been around much as we moved – letting us settle in, she claimed. But I wondered if she sensed that we knew about her. Was she avoiding us? Yet it was cruel to know that Lily was false and not tell our benefactor. Poor Maske was oblivious. But if we told him, his attitude to her would change, and she’d realize we knew she wasn’t who she claimed to be.
And then there was everything else. Maske thought Pozzi was simply the prestigious Royal Physician, and was delighted that he was a patron of our art. He did not know that the Doctor was the man who had found me on his doorstep when I was a babe – or so he claimed – and though we told Maske I needed to see Pozzi weekly, we kept the reasons why vague. Maske was curious, of course he was; but I doubted he thought about it overmuch, especially with all the recent troubles.
‘If we tell him about Lily, he’s going to be heartbroken,’ Cyan said. ‘I feel just as you do about hiding all this from him, but though he seems to be keeping it together, he’s not coping well. The Kymri Theatre has been his home for decades.’
‘If we figure out what this Lily Verre is up to, then we can ascertain what her motivations are for seeing Maske,’ Anisa said. ‘Is he but a pawn to her, or is he something more?’
‘I think she’s using Maske. If we know her game, then we could have power over her,’ Drystan said. ‘I think we should do what we did to Shadow Elwood. Search her apartments when she and her son are visiting Pozzi, and see what we can find. If we find a secret we can hold over her, then we can skew the information that reaches Pozzi.’
‘So we follow her, and when she takes her son to Pozzi, then we strike?’ Cyan asked. She too had some misgivings, but she was curious. So was I. Either Lily Verre was a Shadow who had no qualms following anyone and pretending to be in love with someone, or Pozzi had power over her. And it didn’t take much to guess what it might be.
‘Pozzi is probably dosing her son with the same Elixir he’s giving me,’ I said. ‘Threatening to take it away would probably drive her to do anything. What if that’s all he has on her? That’d be enough, wouldn’t it?’
‘She’s hiding more, I’d bet on it.’ Drystan paused, and gave a little smile. ‘If I was still the betting sort, of course.’
I didn’t like him even joking about that. He and Maske had met at the poker tables in the underbelly of Imachara. He’d still never told me the details of what happened to them there, but I knew it involved card-counting and cheating drug lords.
‘Fine. Who’ll take first watch?’
‘I will,’ Cyan said.
‘We shouldn’t have to wait long.
Her son will probably need to be dosed once a week.’
‘By this time next week we should have our answers, then,’ Anisa said. ‘Take me with you when you go and I’ll help however I can.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to tell Cyril about this, so keep him out of it. He doesn’t need to be dragged into my trouble.’
I only saw my brother once every few days now. His schedule was gruelling, with hours of lectures and labs, and many more in the library. Then, he usually went to sit with Mother in the hospital. He no longer asked me to come with him.
‘Turn me off,’ Anisa said. ‘I still have a decent amount of power, but there’s no point wasting it.’
I’d never considered that before. ‘What happens if you run out of power?’
‘When it gets low, we’ll have to find another Aleph and transfer me to it. Otherwise, I’ll die.’
‘How long do you have?’
‘Don’t worry, little Kedi,’ Anisa said. ‘Though I am touched by your concern, I have plenty of time left yet.’
‘Goodbye for now, Anisa,’ I said. She inclined her head at me, and I switched her off, putting the little disc in my pocket.
‘Well,’ Drystan said. ‘We better start practising if we’re going to perform for the Princess, shouldn’t we?’
10
STREET MAGIC
A blink is all you need. A second of distraction, and you trick them with that precious moment. Magic is both the easiest and the hardest thing you will ever do.
— From the soon-to-be published memoirs of the Maske of Magic
The next day, we did street magic.
Maske wanted nothing to do with street performances when there was the strong possibility of performing for the Princess. ‘When I’ve sorted out this new device, I’ll do it,’ he said at breakfast, oil smudged across one cheek, before he returned to his room. I doubted he had slept a wink.
Street magic wasn’t the same as performing in the Kymri Theatre, but it had its own challenges and its own rewards.
We decided to perform in the merchant part of town. Rich enough that people would have spare coins to throw our way, but not rich enough that Policiers would chase us off. We set up our makeshift stage – a threadbare Arrasian rug – and set out the hat for coins. We wore our full magician regalia, me and Drystan in our suits, Cyan in her Temnian sarong. The street was busy, and many did not give us a second glance.
The air was loud with calls, the clop of horses’ hooves, and the ceaseless footsteps of hurrying pedestrians. Nearby a blacksmith rang an anvil in a steady beat. Dust choked the air, and the sun beat down on the windows of shops and the tops of the heads of people rushing past. From two streets over, we could smell the butcher’s row: old blood, offal, and the smell of meat about to turn. Two young women were walking down the street. They had no big bags, no children, and did not seem to be in a rush.
‘Excuse me,’ I called to them with a smile. ‘Would you care to see some magic?’
A pause. A shy smile in return from one, a sceptical raise of the eyebrow from the other. ‘All right,’ said the disbeliever, with a tilt of her chin as if to say: impress me.
‘May I see your ring, just for a moment?’ I asked the shy one. She wore a simple wooden band around her thumb. ‘I promise, it’ll just be for a second, and then it’ll return to you safe and sound.’
She hesitated.
‘Here, you may hold my ring as insurance.’ I passed her a silver band. She took it and then slipped her ring off her finger and handed it to me. A few more people gathered, wondering what we were doing. Cyan might have been pushing minds, just the slightest bit, to draw attention to our corner of the street.
I took the wooden ring from the girl. A quick close and open of my fingers, and it was gone. The sceptic puffed up. ‘If you steal it—’ she began.
‘Never fear, miss. As I said, it’ll be back in a moment. Now,’ I said, holding my hands wide. ‘Would you be impressed if the ring showed up in my pocket?’
‘Yes,’ the shy one said, hesitantly.
‘Well.’ I reached into my pocket. I brought a small wallet, opened it, unbuttoned a smaller pocket within, and revealed the wooden ring, chained to the wallet itself. I unclipped the ring and passed it back to her.
The shy girl gave a delighted laugh, and even the sceptical lady was grudgingly impressed.
‘Now, please pass me back my silver ring.’
She patted the pocket where she had stored it and then reached in. Her fingers came up empty. She gazed at me with wide eyes.
Another quick flourish of the fingers, and the silver was back on my finger. Both of the girls clapped.
We performed more sleight of hand with a pack of cards as the crowd gathered. We chose the correct cards, made them disappear and appear in pockets, on the bottom of shoes, underneath hats. Drystan did a trick he’d performed at the Elmbark’s on the Night of the Long Lady, telling a story of love and jealousy, having the right characters – the jack, the king, the queen – appear at just the right time.
For some of the performance, we used our acrobatic skills – handstands, cartwheels, and flips. These impressed the audience just as much as the magic, and I spied one small child trying a cartwheel of his own before his mother stopped him from smashing his head on the cobblestones. By the end of the performance, our hat held plenty of coin. It’d help us buy food, as almost all of our money was now tied up in the sale of Taliesin’s theatre and the repairs on our own home.
We thanked everyone, took our coins, and packed up our things.
‘One of us should go back to Lily’s,’ I said. We’d been taking turns watching her apartment building the last few days, trying to have one of us there at least a few hours at a time.
We couldn’t go back to Maske’s to drop off the props, for we wanted him to think we were still out performing. We went to a tea house, setting the props under the table. The waiters disapproved but did not object. Cyan would watch our things as we tailed Lily.
‘I prefer doing this bit of the job,’ Cyan grinned, leaning back in her chair as her tea steeped.
‘It’ll be your turn again before you know it,’ I said making a face at her.
She sighed. ‘True enough. When do we make our move?’
‘Soon,’ I said. ‘I just want to see what we can discover from afar, first.’
So far, all our attempts to tail Lily had failed. We’d wait for hours outside her apartments, yet she never emerged. We were not hopeful as we made our way to her blocky tenement building yet again.
Dutifully, Drystan and I went to another tea house, one which gave us a direct view of the entrance to Lily’s apartments. It was here – a few weeks ago, at the very table where I now sat – that I had realized Lily Verre was the woman in the red dress I’d seen in visions. Our tea arrived. A Penglass dome to the right of the tea house cast the veranda in blue shadow. My eyes kept snagging on it. Penglass always called to me, especially on the night of the full moon, but this was stronger. It was as if the Penglass emitted heat, and I wanted to unfurl in front of it.
Turning my back on the glass, I focused on my cup. ‘This is nice,’ I said, raising my tea and clinking my glass to Drystan’s. ‘Like a date.’
‘A romantic date of spying on a Shadow with a Chimaera son who may or may not wish us harm.’
‘Yes, well, we don’t have the time or the money for any other dates, so I’ll take what I can get.’
Drystan laughed, and we settled down to drink our tea.
After half an hour of waiting, Drystan nudged me with his elbow. ‘There she is.’
Lily came out, without the wicker chair or her son. She wore a hat festooned with flowers against the early summer sun. We followed her at a distance. Using my Elixir-enhanced powers, I reached out to her mind. But like Cyan, all I heard was an incessant chatter of noise. She kept it up whether or not she thought we were near, then. Where had she learned to shield herself, and what was she hiding?
/> Then, suddenly, Lily was nowhere to be seen. It was a busy market, with thick crowds and stalls packed as closely as possible. Perhaps she knew we were following her before we’d even begun. After a few minutes’ fruitless search, we headed back to the Penny Rookeries.
On the way home, I kept turning my head to the left. It was like the Penglass at the tea house, like heat emanated towards me, and I was as transfixed as a moth to a flame.
When I slowed down for the third time, Drystan asked me what the matter was.
Telling him about the Penglass, I craned my head. ‘This is different. It’s like I’m drawn to a person . . .’ Our eyes met, and at the same time we whispered: ‘Chimaera.’
As soon as we said it, I knew it was true. Somehow, I was sensing another Chimaera. Not Cyan. It was someone new, someone different, yet somehow familiar.
I followed the feeling, Drystan trailing behind. A street later, the feeling faded, leaving behind only a vague, warm blush.
‘That was bizarre,’ I said.
‘Potentially very useful, though. If this Elixir has strengthened your powers and you can sense others, you could find more. Maybe even find some answers from one of them.’
‘Or draw myself right into danger.’
‘That too. Let me know if you feel it again, but don’t go running off after anyone on your own, all right?’
I nodded. A headache bloomed at my temples, growing stronger with each step. By the time we reached our rooms, my vision was blurring and it was as though ice picks skewered me through the temples. Drystan settled me into bed and then went back out to help Cyan carry the magic props back from the other tea house.
I reached out with my mind, trying to sense any other Chimaera. There was nothing until Cyan rounded the corner and came back. She burned like a flame in my mind.
When she came up, it was almost too strong. Somehow, I pulled back until she was only a glow. Drystan told her what had happened. Cyan rested her hand on my forehead and pressed gently into my mind, reliving the memory. She jerked her hand away. ‘That’s incredible.’