by Lam, Laura
After it all, I was breathless.
‘Lord and Lady,’ Maske said.
‘It’s a lot,’ Drystan said.
‘I thought you were going to tell me you were sneaking off to Forester protests or something.’ Maske blinked, his eyes blank. ‘This may take me some time.’
‘We understand.’ Cyan laid a hand on her father’s forearm. ‘We should have told you much sooner. Yet it’s not exactly an easy subject to bring up.’
‘Also, not much of it makes sense. There are so many gaps in what we know,’ Drystan added.
‘That seems true. It’s hard not to be hurt that you kept it all from me, though. Did you not think I would wish to help?’
‘We didn’t want to burden you,’ Cyan said. ‘You were so upset by the damage to the Kymri Theatre. You had your own troubles.’
‘Of course I did. And I do. But first and foremost, I am your friend, your mentor. I would far rather know your troubles, and do all I can to help you, than hide away in ignorance.’
We were all sheepish. I opened my mouth, wanting to tell him about Lily, about Frey, about another piece of the puzzle with missing pieces. But my throat closed, my mouth snapped shut. It would come out eventually. The longer we hid it, the worse it would be. Hadn’t I already learned that, lying to Aenea for fear she would be hurt by my secrets? And it had cost me so much.
‘Thank you for telling me, truly. But I think I’m going to go to bed now.’
He stood, and took the whisky bottle with him into the bedroom. We lapsed into guilty silence, then broke off to our own rooms.
The next day, I saw Pozzi once again. Took my medicine, let it fill me with light. Drystan did not ask to come, and it was easier than me having to turn him down. Sitting alone in the lounge while I was dosed was too great a temptation with a spirit cabinet full of Elixir right in front of him.
Later that night, curled up in bed next to Drystan, it took me ages to fall asleep. The instant before I drifted into slumber, I knew that I would not dream. Instead, I would see.
The man and the woman floated in their separate tanks, their watery coffins. They were both naked. The resurrectionist had replaced the woman destroyed in the last experiment. The new one was still young, still beautiful, but this time with hair so blonde it looked almost white, her skin tanned from the sun. Her hair floated about her head like seaweed. There were no wounds on her. I wondered how she had died.
The resurrectionist moved towards the tanks, breathing shallowly. In the dream, their heart pattered within their chest. The fingers danced along the controls.
As ever, I wondered: was this happening now? Had it already happened, or was it all still to come?
The electrical bulb dangling above buzzed and then popped, leaving the damp laboratory in darkness but for the soft blue tinge of the tanks. Impatiently, the grave robber took a candle from their bag, lighting it and setting it between the metal tanks. The plain white candle was very similar to the ones we used for séances, but they were also used in churches. It made the laboratory seem like some sort of altar, a sacred space, the bodies depictions of dark gods.
The tanks whirred. The bodies arched as the full power of the Vestige tank took effect. The tops opened, the slab at the bottom of the tank rising until the corpses emerged from the water, glistening.
Except they no longer looked like corpses.
They both had flushes to their cheeks, and their chests rose and fell. Their hearts beat, marked by spikes on the small monitors by the tanks. Yet there was a stillness to them. Though their bodies had somehow come back to life, whoever had once possessed these shells was still long gone.
The body I trespassed within rummaged in the bag again, bringing out two Alephs. If I could have, I would have frowned. What was happening?
The resurrectionist connected the Alephs to wires attached to each corpse’s temples. Whatever they were doing, it would not be good, but there was no way to stop this. No matter how I tried, I could not move even the pinkie of the body I rode within.
The person fiddled with the consoles. Then they stopped, gazing at the suspended bodies. ‘Let it work,’ the resurrectionist whispered.
They hugged their arms to their body, then moved forward, pressing a button on the tank containing the woman’s body. The Aleph shimmered, lights of blue, green, and purple twining from the device and along the wire before settling on the corpse like a second skin. The body started, and the resurrectionist stepped back from the flailing limbs, watching avidly. The body arched and convulsed, the mouth opening and closing like a fish. The last of the shimmering colours faded into the skin, before the body slackened.
She struggled to sit up. It took a few tries, for the muscles were weak, but she managed. Water dripped from the wet ropes of her hair, which lay over her shoulders like molten gold.
‘Anisa?’ the resurrectionist asked.
‘It worked?’ the woman asked, a hand moving to the hollow of her throat, eyes widening in shock. ‘I didn’t expect to see you.’
Who was she looking at, and was this truly Anisa in a human body?
‘Just a moment, and I’ll explain everything.’
She peered at him. ‘Poor little bat-winged boy. Drawn into the game like all the rest.’
It fell into place.
Kai was the grave robber, working on Pozzi’s orders. All those protestations that he hated the Royal Physician just as much as us. All lies.
‘Not exactly,’ the voice said. I could tell it was Kai’s, now, even feel the wings pressed underneath the too-tight jacket. Yet the inflections of his voice were all far too smooth.
‘Ah.’ Anisa’s eyes flashed. ‘You’re not the bat-winged boy at all. Not truly.’
One of Kai’s hands started the other tank, connecting another metal Aleph to the corpse.
Using all the strength I had, I pulled myself out of the vision and away from Kai’s body.
Awakening with a gasp, I jumped out of bed.
‘What’s going on?’ Drystan asked.
‘Put on your shoes and coat. We need to go to the university. Kai is the grave robber, and yesterday Pozzi must have stolen Anisa.’
‘What?’
‘No time.’ I shoved my feet into my boots, not even bothering with socks, and shrugged on my coat. Cyan opened the door, awakened by my panic, putting on her own coat. It was deep in the middle of the night. We opened the stiff front door as silently as we could and ran to the university, keeping to the shadows. Mercifully, the streets were silent, and we didn’t see any Policiers. Perhaps Cyan gently gave them a push, urging them to turn down a different corner, away from us.
We were all panting by the time we arrived at the university. What if they’d left? In the last dream vision, I’d seen the stamp on the side of the Ampulla tanks. University property, and my guess was that they were in an underground laboratory, long abandoned.
Drystan picked the lock and Cyan strode in first, leading the way.
‘Are they there?’
‘They’re waiting for us,’ Cyan said, and I could only shiver.
I had no idea what to think. Anisa had a body. Had this been her plan all along?
The door to the lab was already open.
We walked in, gazing at the three people before us. Kai was hunched over, hands on his mouth, as if he were about to be sick. Anisa wore a robe wrapped around her new form. The candlelight flickered over her skin, still damp from the liquid in the Ampulla tank. That body was breathing, living –when only an hour before, it had been dead. Now Anisa lived in a corpse. The other body, the man, still floated in the Ampulla tank, dim and dark. In the corner, Pozzi waited, standing apart from the others, his face as inscrutable as ever.
‘Anisa?’ I asked, my voice catching on a sob.
She came closer to me, but I pulled away. ‘I’m so sorry, little Kedi. I did not know this would happen.’ Though her voice was still tinged with a long-forgotten accent, it no longer echoed.
‘What the
hell are you playing at?’ I asked Pozzi. ‘And you.’ I turned to Kai. ‘I thought we could trust you.’
Kai didn’t move, only kept his hands over his face. Pozzi moved closer. ‘Don’t blame him. He did not know what he was doing.’
‘What in the Styx is going on?’ Drystan asked.
‘An experiment,’ Pozzi said. ‘One I could tell no one about. On the Steward’s orders.’
‘You’re breaking your word.’
Pozzi nodded. ‘Indeed. I feel I’ve interfered in your lives enough, that you deserve to know what is happening. I owe all of you apologies that you have every right not to accept.’
My head spun. ‘Explain. For the love of the Lord and Lady, stop your riddles.’
‘No more riddles. No more games.’ He was the solemnest I’d ever seen him. ‘The Snakewoods asked me to bring Chimaera back to the world, as much as I was able. I was only too happy to agree to try. The Steward funded all of my research. I rose through the ranks of doctors and became the Royal Physician because he wished me close. For years I was lost in my work, convinced that what we were doing was worth it.’
‘Like dosing pregnant mothers so their children would be Anthi or Theri?’ I asked.
Kai lowered his hands from his face.
‘Like dosing me with Elixir each week only to enhance my powers, but pretending it was because you were saving me? A cheap magic trick, and I fell for the misdirection.’ My voice had gone high, shaking with anger.
‘Like so.’
Cyan bristled next to me.
‘I never questioned it. I thought what we were doing was good. Worthwhile. Once I helped birth Princess Nicolette and saw her blue-tinged skin, I thought she was Chimaera too, even wondered if the Steward had somehow dosed her himself. Then he told me himself that the family was Alder. He wanted the Chimaera to return, to protect him and his family as the Chimaera had protected and helped the Alder centuries ago. I liked knowing that I was helping bring magic back to the world, even if I knew it had a rational, scientific base. It felt magical, anyway. Like I was chosen.
‘The Steward slowly had me do more experiments, deeper and more challenging. He gave me a selection of Alephs, like this woman Anisa’s, but they were all empty. I thought, perhaps, the one I tried –’ he gestured at the man floating in the tank – ‘might work, but obviously that was not to be. The Steward wanted me to bring back ancient Chimaera, so they could teach us more of the old ways and help us on our quest. I tried for years and thought it must be doomed to failure, until I realized you had a working Aleph all along.’
‘So you made Kai steal bodies?’
Kai finally met my eyes. ‘I did not want to.’ His voice shook with anger. ‘I did not have a choice.’
‘No, indeed he did not. I couldn’t do it myself. Fear of being recognized, and this hand isn’t as strong as you might expect.’ Pozzi waved his clockwork hand.
‘I remember none of it,’ Kai said.
‘I hadn’t quite cracked how to awaken Alephs, but I did discover that if I gave myself a large dose of Elixir, I could take over a Chimaera body, though only for a few hours. I did that with Kai, then Lethed him afterwards. I did ask you if I could borrow your body, and you said yes, though I erased that.’
‘If I did, I regret that,’ Kai said, his voice thick with tears.
My face drained with horror. He’d stolen Kai’s body, like Anisa did once to me. What if Pozzi had taken my body for some nefarious purpose, then erased all memory of it?
‘I helped bring back Chimaera,’ Pozzi continued, ‘though I cannot claim full responsibility. Others have come into this world on their own. I have proven we can bring back Alephs into bodies, to help bolster the numbers of Chimaera, should we need. You did consent, Kai, even if you can’t remember. I know that is scant comfort.’
Kai turned his face away. ‘I definitely did not consent to killing a man to obtain a body you couldn’t even use.’ He gestured to the Ampulla tank. ‘I can’t even remember doing it properly. Just . . . flashes. Now I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.’
Pozzi hung his head. ‘That was me, not you. I killed them. I could say I didn’t have a choice, but that’s a lie. There is always a choice. The Steward wanted the freshest bodies possible. He thought someone important might have been in that empty Aleph. The man in the university hospital would have died anyway, though that does not excuse what I did.’
With that, Kai stood and left. I could not blame him. Though I wanted nothing more than to follow him, we needed more answers.
‘The Steward thinks he needs Chimaera to protect him, but then he experiments on women, creates us without our consent, and threatens us. Why would he expect us to be loyal?’ I asked.
Pozzi stared into the distance. ‘He thinks war can’t help but break out, and when that happens, Chimaera will turn to the crown. And you weren’t ever meant to find out about the experiments. Why would you suspect?’
‘And why the sudden treason?’
Pozzi was still staring, his clockwork fingers moving restlessly. The underground lab was damp and smelled of stone and moss. The lightbulbs flickered, casting his face half in shadow. ‘It was far from sudden. It was slow, considered, measured. Yes, I willingly agreed to perform these experiments, but after creating you, of course I felt protective. The Steward wanted this for his own gain. He cares not if you’re destroyed. He only sees Chimaera as potential soldiers, as powers he can harness and control. If there’s one thing I’ve learned working for the Steward of Ellada these past decades, it’s that once he sees power, he never lets it go.’
‘And that doesn’t bode well for the Princess when she comes of age,’ I hazarded.
‘No, indeed. It was not any one thing, but so many. The final straw was killing for him.’ He met my eyes. ‘What would I do if he thought a Chimaera wasn’t loyal enough? Would he ask me to destroy what I had created? I was protective of you and Kai and Frey especially, as I saw you grow up. I became personally invested in my own experiments. A rookie mistake, perhaps, but not one I regret.’ He smiled, but as always, it never reached his eyes. ‘I started worrying for the Princess’s future, decided I was far more loyal to her and the crown than the current Steward in guardianship. Even as the thought of bringing back past Chimaera from Alephs excited me, I wondered if that was still the right course of action. They’d already fought their war. Would they want another?’ He shook his head. ‘I cannot undo what I’ve done, yet I also can’t say I regret my life’s work. The world is better with Chimaera and Alder returning to it, that I know, deep in my heart. It’s not magic, perhaps, but it’s still a wonder.’
None of us had any response to that. ‘Were you in on this?’ I asked Anisa instead.
‘No, little Kedi,’ she said, softly.
‘You weren’t surprised when you awoke in a body.’
‘When he stole me from you, he asked me what I wanted. He wouldn’t have done this if I’d said no, but would have kept searching for another Aleph.’ She moved over to the tank with the inert, dead man and picked up the Aleph. ‘I wonder who had been in this one, before it ran out of power.’ She held up the disc. ‘This could have been my grave. I was lower on power than I let you know, for fear of worrying you. Pozzi came at just the right time, so of course I said yes. I cannot help you if I’m dead.’
I swallowed. Drystan and Cyan clustered closer to me, their arms touching mine. They were the only ones I could trust. The only ones who didn’t have their own reasons for using me. For the crown, for some vague prophecy.
Anisa came closer and took her hand in mine. This was the first time she’d ever been able to touch me. Her hand was warm. Solid. Alive. She ran a finger down my cheek, and then she touched Cyan’s and Drystan’s faces, just as gently. She kissed each of our foreheads, feather-light. It reminded me, incongruously, of the night of my debut, when the women of the Twelve Trees had kissed each young woman on the forehead, welcoming us into adulthood. With Anisa, it was more of
an apology.
‘Your experiment is done, Pozzi,’ I said. ‘We are not your subjects any longer.’
Pozzi’s face closed to us. ‘I know, Micah. Cyan. Anisa. I know. It’s worth little, but I am sorry. So very sorry.’
We left him with his corpse and his laboratory.
23
PROPHECY OF LIES
You feel as if you know what the world is. What it wants of you, what it demands of you. But then, in a moment, all shifts, and you realize you never knew anything at all.
— From the soon-to-be published memoirs of the Maske of Magic
Kai sat across the street from the university, his head in his hands. I wasn’t sure if he’d waited for us, or if he’d been too overwhelmed to go home right away.
Cyan went over and took his hand and he rose, following us. It properly hit me about halfway home from the university. The sun was just rising over the granite buildings, the sky peach and pink. Curfew had not broken, but we were too exhausted to keep to the shadows. We could only hope no watchmen found us.
Kai came back with us, for he’d been staying in one of Pozzi’s apartments. He kept looking at his hands as if he did not recognize them. His body had gone places, done things, all without him knowing.
In eavesdropping on Kai’s grave robbing, I did not think my body properly rested. Pozzi’s drugs hadn’t caused all of the fatigue. Though I didn’t want to, it was hard to trust Anisa, walking beside us in the body of a dead girl. She could have taken over bodies while in her Aleph. What if she’d worked with Pozzi, taken over Kai to do his bidding? Pozzi had never specified which Aleph he’d used to make Kai more susceptible to his will.