Masquerade

by Lam, Laura

  ‘Who do you think took them?’ Lily asked. She did not cry – she had spent all her tears. She was a coil of impotent rage, vibrating with the desire to move, to find her son, to kill anyone who came between her and Frey. I built up my mental walls against her, but her anger curled its way through me, too.

  ‘The Kashura. We don’t know how. They must have somehow compromised our guards, and I suppose your home would have proved no challenge. We’d heard rumours that Timur wanted a strong Chimaera, and hunted the city for one. I take it your son has powers?’

  ‘He does. He can move objects with his mind and control weather. But if they frighten him too much, he won’t be able to retain his hold on his powers. That’s partly why I kept him at home. I . . . tried to keep him safe.’ Her voice broke.

  ‘I tried to do the same for the Princess. We both failed, but my hope is that you can do what I can’t, and bring the Princess and your son back.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘We have an idea where they are, but I must stay here and sort out the riot outside my gates.’ He did not state the real reason why he must stay. If the Princess died, the Steward would be the last remaining heir.

  The crown would be his.

  Pressing away the traitorous thoughts in my mind, I followed their words.

  ‘Where are they?’ Drystan asked, his voice far too sharp for speaking to our monarch. The Steward didn’t seem to notice, or decided to let it pass.

  ‘An old observatory off the coast. Remote enough for their needs. There will be about fifteen people there, as far as we can guess. They want the Princess and your son for some sort of . . . ritual, but we have no idea what its purpose would be.’

  Anisa met my eyes and inclined her head, her blonde curls obscuring her new face. She whispered in my mind the words she’d said to me before the séance, just after Drystan and I left the circus: Take heed, Child of Man and Woman yet Neither. You must look through the trees to see the play of shadow and light. Do not let the Foresters fell you. The truth of who you are and who others once were shall find you in your dreams and your nightmares.

  Anisa had seen a man with a blurred face who wished to destroy the Chimaera. At one point, I’d wondered if it was Pozzi. Yet it had been Timur from the start, preaching his hatred and twisting it towards violence. And if Frey lost control like Anisa’s charge Ahti did all those centuries ago . . . all of Ellada was at stake.

  ‘We’re not fighters,’ I said. ‘Our abilities are limited in many ways. The Kashura will likely have Vestige weaponry. How can we hope to defeat them?’

  ‘I can provide you with a small contingent of soldiers. I can’t send an entire army, or we’d lose any chance of surprise. Weaponry I can also provide. The rest is up to you. I think you underestimate the power you hold.’

  Drystan’s shoulders jerked, and I took his hand. His yearning came through to me, clear as a bell. He wanted the Elixir hidden in my bag, to help us. If he asked me for it, would I be in the right to deny him?

  ‘No time to waste. I’m sending my most trusted confidant with you, and communication devices so you can keep me updated. I’ll send more troops to the shore, as many as I can spare from the riots, to follow you if you need. Bring her back.’ The words should have vibrated with emotion, but they fell flat. Deep where I’d buried the traitorous thoughts in my mind, I wondered just how different Timur and the Steward were, in the end.

  ‘We’ll do our best,’ I said.

  The Steward left us and gave a signal as he passed the door. In came a contingent of six soldiers, dressed in their dark navy uniforms, faces grim, Vestige guns strapped to their belts.

  Behind them was, of course, Doctor Samuel Pozzi, the Royal Physician of Ellada.

  24

  THE BLURRED MAN

  I keep dreaming of the man with the blurred face. I don’t know what he wanted from me. If those visions he showed me were real.

  I told fortunes for the first time in over a year at the Penny Rookeries street party. I was afraid that every time I looked at the crystal ball, or spread the tarot, or held a palm, that I’d see his face and the visions of the world on fire. I didn’t then. But I did when I closed my eyes.

  I don’t dream about anything else any more. I miss having pleasant dreams. I’d even rather dream of being Matla the owl-woman. At least she could fly.

  — From Cyan Zhu’s diary

  What do you say, when your supposed enemies help you?

  While I struggled to find the words, Lily had no such hesitation.

  She flew at Pozzi, jabbing her fingers into the pressure points at his neck. She’d barely touched him before two of the soldiers held her back.

  ‘This is your fault,’ she screamed at him. ‘My son, who you swore you’d help!’

  ‘I’m helping now, as best I can.’

  ‘What if we don’t want you to come?’

  ‘Then I won’t,’ he said, simply. ‘But I hope you will let me.’

  Lily turned to us with an aching pause.

  ‘It’s up to you, Lily and Kai. What he’s done to us is terrible, but both of you have taken the brunt of his actions,’ Cyan said.

  Kai swallowed. ‘Whatever Lily wants.’ He could not look at the doctor.

  Lily sighed, her body coiled with furious energy. ‘Fine, but only because the Steward will likely stop us if we throw you out. One wrong move, though, and I’ll kill you myself.’

  ‘I have no doubt,’ Pozzi said, bland as ever.

  The guards led us back down the hidden tunnel out of the palace. Even down in the depths, we could hear the shouts of the crowd above.

  ‘Are they fighting?’ I asked Cyan in the dark.

  ‘Not yet,’ Cyan said. ‘Any minute now. There are people on both sides thirsting for blood.’

  A carriage, plain black and subtly armoured, waited outside the old pharmacy. We bundled inside, save for one soldier who climbed into the driver’s side and started the engine. It was a tight fit for the rest of us. The soldiers wouldn’t even look at us, or speak unless it was a direction. They made the rest of us uneasy. Perhaps they didn’t like that we were Chimaera, or maybe it was simply the Elladan soldier way.

  The ride through the crowds to the docks was tense. Sirens called through the night. Windows to apartments were boarded shut. Hands kept striking the sides of the carriage, trying to peek through the windows to make sure we weren’t escaping nobles. Some of us were.

  Through it all, the Penmoon glowed above us, full and watchful.

  When we reached the docks, the soldier cut the engine and we clambered out. It was quieter on this side of town. Pozzi led us to a warehouse right on the water, opening the door and motioning us inside. We hesitated, but in the end, walked in after the soldiers.

  Inside, the warehouse was completely empty but for a boat. It was smooth and Vestige. It’d cut through the water faster than any modern creation. Pozzi gave the soldiers a nod, and they manoeuvred the craft out to the water. Two soldiers stayed to guard us, or to stop us from running away, I wasn’t sure.

  Pozzi ran a hand through his hair and took off his scarf. He wore a bumblebee pin in his cravat. Cyan started at it, her mouth falling open.

  ‘You visited me in the circus, not long before I left,’ she said, her brows drawing down. ‘I read your fortune. And you showed me visions of the world ending.’

  ‘That was me.’

  ‘I couldn’t remember your face. In my mind, it was . . . blurred.’

  Anisa gasped, and Drystan grabbed Lily’s arm to caution her against flying at Pozzi again.

  ‘I showed you those visions because I want to stop them. I’ve dreamed of them for years, and they’ve grown stronger. The blurred face is not unique. A simple setting on a Cricket, and it’s difficult for anyone to remember a face. Cyan, with your abilities, you could probably create the same effect. And who else do we know who possesses a Cricket?’

  ‘Timur,’ she whispered.

  ‘I know you have no cause to believe me and every cau
se to doubt me, but I wish no harm to Chimaera. You are my life’s work. I love each and every one of you.’

  ‘Love doesn’t give you a blanket excuse to use others for your own gain,’ I said.

  ‘That was a lesson I learned far too late in life.’

  The soldiers came back to tell us we were ready to head out.

  ‘This could be a trap,’ I said. ‘You could be leading us right to him, to add our power to Frey’s.’

  ‘I am not. Cyan, I drop all my walls. Read me, find the truth of what I say.’

  Cyan moved forward, touching his hands. She closed her eyes, and she was not gentle. Pozzi stiffened, beads of sweat appearing on his brow. At one point he staggered, only barely remaining upright.

  She pulled away. ‘He tells the truth, as much as he believes it. It’s not a trap, unless he’s very, very good at hiding it.’ Her face was so haunted, I wondered what else she’d seen in Pozzi’s mind.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Lily said.

  Out on the dock, the only sounds were the lapping of the waves and our footsteps on the wooden planks. Our group climbed into the bobbing copper craft. The ocean wind was salty and cold enough to pierce my coat. Pozzi took the helm, and the engine was almost silent.

  Anisa curled at the end of the boat, looking a little green. Her blue dress was thin and she had no coat.

  ‘Are you still immortal?’ I asked her.

  ‘As long as there are Alephs and Ampulla tanks and I have access to them, yes. You could be too, you know. It’d work on any Chimaera.’

  ‘Pity we have no Alephs in case we die tonight.’ I’d meant it to sound flippant, but the words fell heavy as rocks.

  ‘I would have brought mine and the other empty one, had I known,’ Anisa whispered.

  ‘Too late now, Madame Damselfly,’ Drystan said. ‘We move forward, mortal as all the rest.’

  Even one of the soldiers flinched at that.

  We continued out onto the open ocean. The shore grew further away, until the city was a smear of darkness lit by Penglass blue and sodium yellow.

  ‘I’ve never even heard of this observatory,’ Cyan said as we cut through the cold, dark water.

  ‘It’s the old Royal Observatory,’ Pozzi said. ‘You’ll have seen it from the beach. The tiniest speck on the horizon. It was once the hub of astronomy studies for the university, but the harsh salt wind caused it to crumble too quickly, and eventually it was abandoned for a new Observatory erected on one of the hills in the city. It seems the Kashura have set up base there,’ Pozzi continued as he steered the boat.

  ‘Seems far. I’d have thought they’d want to have their base in the city, like the Foresters,’ I said.

  ‘Much more secretive out here,’ Drystan replied. I huddled closer to him, the cold wind and the fear causing me to shiver. He put his arm around me tight. Cyan wrapped her arms around herself, and Lily considered Pozzi with narrowed eyes, her hands falling into fists. Anisa’s brow was furrowed as though trying to remember something just out of reach, and Maske’s sharp mind tried to fit everything together.

  As we grew closer to the Observatory, Pozzi took an Eclipse from his pocket. It was a small, thin wand, with a small bulb at the end like an antenna – like the one Drystan and I had occasionally borrowed from Maske. It would temporarily turn off Vestige artefacts within a few meters in all directions.

  ‘Cyan,’ Pozzi said. ‘If you would be so kind, focus your power through here. I can direct it so they won’t see us as we approach. We’ll have to use the oars on this boat, but we’re close enough now.’

  ‘Eclipses can do that?’ she asked, amazed despite everything.

  ‘Vestige can do so much more than we could ever begin to fathom.’

  ‘I can help you,’ Anisa said. She took Cyan’s hand, lending her strength.

  Cyan hesitated, still mistrustful, but then her power flowed into the Eclipse and emerged from the tip, surrounding us in a bubble. Cyril, Drystan, and Lily probably could not see it, but to me, it had that faint rainbow sheen of Vestige metal. I could only hope that it would hide us from view as we approached, and that it wasn’t a beacon advertising our arrival.

  The soldiers began to row, and I was grateful for their muscle. Rain pelted us, and mist clung to the shore. The island was sparse and rocky. One side was a steep cliff face, the Observatory perched at the top like a strange growth the same dark grey as the stone. Blue light shone from a hole in the roof, meaning there was Penglass inside, yet it was strangely mixed with red and purple. The building was on the site of an Alder ruin, and other Penglass domes were scattered on the rocky island, glowing softly. To the right was a smaller cottage, barred and dark. There were no guards that I could see, and no sign that anyone was there at all, but for another, much larger boat tied up to the ruin of the old dock.

  Pozzi directed the soldier to steer us to the far side of the Observatory, and we tied up at the ruins of an even older dock, which looked as though it could crumble into the sea at any moment.

  ‘I remember this place,’ Anisa said. ‘From so long ago.’

  ‘Was it an Observatory then?’

  ‘Something like it. It’s where we saw the stars. I think it’s where the Alder eventually decided to leave this world.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘I do not know. I like to hope they survived – found another star. Another world.’

  ‘Despite how they treated you?’ I remembered the punishment she had suffered after letting one of her charges die. Had the Kashura killed that child?

  ‘Not all of them were so harsh. Like any people, they were a mixture of the marvellous and the terrible. Look at all they created, and all they left behind.’

  ‘All they abandoned once things became difficult, more like,’ Drystan said bitterly, and no one had a response to that.

  Pozzi climbed out of the boat first, assisted by two soldiers. I hated how interchangeable they all were, how they surrounded us. To help us and to watch us and send every word back to the Steward.

  ‘Do you have a plan?’ I asked Pozzi. ‘I don’t think we can exactly knock and walk in, can we?’

  Pozzi held up the Eclipse. ‘I’m hoping this will be enough to disarm the Vestige within.’

  ‘It’ll take out our weapons, too.’

  ‘For a few minutes, yes. The Steward has provided us with non-Vestige weapons as well. Gentlemen,’ he said to the soldiers, and they took off their packs. The soldiers grimly passed us each guns and knives.

  Lily took a gun immediately, checking it was loaded, and looked like she’d like nothing more than to point it at Pozzi’s face and press the trigger.

  Drystan took another gun, as did Maske and Kai. Cyan and I hesitated. As a noble girl, I’d never been allowed to touch a gun, and in the circus, Cyan had only used little toy guns in the carnival booths.

  Anisa took one and then set it down. ‘I may not have much power in this human form, but it’s still more than that cold metal.’

  ‘I’ve never held a gun before,’ Cyan said. ‘I’ve never liked them.’

  ‘Take both anyway,’ Pozzi said. ‘Knives will only work in close contact, and guns are fairly straightforward. You point and shoot.’

  ‘Condescending arse.’ Lily’s hand twitched on the gun, and Pozzi flinched.

  We all took knives, even Anisa, and I checked the edge before strapping it to my belt. Sharp. The gun was cold and heavy in my hand. I could kill someone with this. And tonight, I might have to.

  ‘We don’t even know what we’re walking into,’ I said, helpless.

  ‘There are around fifteen members who are in the closest rung of the Kashura,’ Pozzi said. ‘They are the ones Timur will likely invite for whatever he’s doing tonight. Other than that, I know as much as you. How many weapons he’ll have, what he’s planning to do. No idea.’

  ‘That’s comforting,’ Drystan said. Sarcastic to a fault, and I was grateful for it.

  Pozzi still held the Eclipse, and a tiny thread
of Cyan’s energy still kept us surrounded in the bubble that should hide us from sight.

  ‘Why does Timur hate us so much?’ Kai asked.

  Pozzi shook his head at his former assistant. ‘I don’t know, Kai. I wish I did. It’d be easier to take him down, to find his weaker points. Hatred, a ploy for power, a blend of both. He may even hate the Alder more than the Chimaera, hence why he’s trying so very hard to take down the monarchy. We may never know.’ He stood a little straighter, pushed his shoulders back. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Yes, let’s give the Kashura a piece of our minds,’ Lily said, her face hard and determined.

  Though fear rattled through me, I couldn’t help but react to Lily’s confidence that we could do it. She gave me the slightest hope that perhaps we wouldn’t all die.

  She strode up the hill, holding her gun aloft, and the rest of us followed close behind, gazing up at the warm yellow lights in the Observatory.

  25

  THE KASHURA

  Some older fragments of Alder script refer to a splinter group called the Kashura. Many scholars have spent their lives puzzling through these crumbling scrolls, yet there is much about this group we do not know. They might have been religious extremists who were against humans worshipping Chimaera. Some posit that the Kashura despised humans as well, but there’s no surviving evidence to corroborate such a claim.

  The scholar Professor Shawn Arbutus went one step further. A classics linguist, he spent much of his life translating Alder scrolls on all subjects, rather than concentrating on ones that referenced the Kashura. After decades, he came up with his own proposition, which many still dispute: the Kashura despised both humans and Chimaera, wanting to kill Chimaera and return humans to slavery. No one is sure what happened to the Kashura, any more than we know what happened to the Alder or the Chimaera, but in the end, it seems that only humans survived.

  — ‘Theories of the Alder’, A History of Ellada and its Colonies, PROFESSOR CAED CEDAR, Royal Snakewood University

  Cyan kept the barrier around us and the soldiers as we made our way up the hill.