The Lights of Prague

by Nicole Jarvis

  “Which I’m sure include a dozen peepholes for you to spy through,” Domek said.

  Bazil shrugged. “I’m a curious man.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but I’ll pursue this on my own. You’ve given me what I wanted.”

  “We could help each other.”

  “I have a team. If I need help, I know who to go to.”

  Bazil leaned back in his chair. “I’ve given you more information in the last half-hour than you’ve found on your own in days,” he pointed out. “And I know more. I know the address the jars have been shipped to.”

  Domek stilled. “Where is it?”

  “Use that team of yours and figure it out yourself,” Bazil said. “You’re sure you don’t need me, and I certainly don’t need a condescending oaf who tripped into this. We’ve met and my curiosity is satisfied. Good luck on your own.”

  “If you really want to save Prague, you’ll tell me anyway.”

  Bazil just shook his head and pointed to the door. “I’ll be watching you, Domek Myska. There are countless lives resting on your shoulders. Don’t let your pride be humanity’s downfall.” He flashed a bright grin. “No pressure, of course.”

  * * *

  True to her word, Ora let Lina sleep in past midday. It was strange to pass the morning without her. Nedda was in the kitchen with Mila—Ora could hear them gossiping from a floor away. She could go bother them, but they deserved time without their mistress hovering. She could have summoned Hackett for an impromptu ride around town, but she decided that he deserved a break as well. He was probably still cleaning the blood off the interior of the carriage. Ora’s attempts to keep him from her secret would be damaged now. She would need to feign vapors in front of him soon to make up for her lack of fear last night. He had worked for her for years, weathering her eccentricities with a stoic face, but some things were too suspicious to overlook.

  She rattled around the large house, pacing from room to room. None of her books could hold her attention, though she picked up more than a dozen to flip through. The words slipped past her gaze like raindrops, insubstantial.

  The welt on her stomach ached.

  She should have closed the door between them the moment she had learned that Domek was a lamplighter. His departure was a blessing in disguise. Her recklessness had nearly gotten her killed. No soft lips and broad hands and gentleness were worth that threat.

  To occupy herself, Ora put together a house of cards using two decks, balancing them precariously on the tea table in the sitting room. The structure arched overhead, mathematically precise.

  From the front of the house, the doorbell rang. At least now it was daylight. Darina had left after their short conversation. As with all pijavice, she needed no sleep, and had professed an urge to explore the ways Prague had changed since her last mission inside its walls. Ora was not comfortable with Darina wandering the city, but it was a relief to have her on her side for once.

  Mila would answer the door in Lina’s stead, but she was less prepared to handle the array of visitors. Ora stood up, brushing the edge of the table with her knee. The house of cards collapsed, scattering across the floor in faded green and red and yellow like fall leaves. She sniffed the air, and then relaxed slightly. This guest was no threat to her household.

  Mila showed Sokol into the room. After making sure everyone was settled, Mila went to make tea in the kitchen. Sokol picked up one of the fallen cards before sitting in his usual chair. “Sorry for dropping in unannounced,” he said, flipping the card between his fingers.

  “You know, I believe this is the first time I’ve seen you during daylight hours,” Ora said. “I thought you were nocturnal.”

  “No rest for the wicked, or for those of us who work in government,” Sokol said.

  “Should I make a joke about not knowing the difference?”

  He shrugged. “I’ll consider it said. I got your note.”

  She had sent Mila out with a note after Alena had left about what she had learned from Czernin. So much had happened since then she had nearly forgotten. “And?”

  Leaning forward, elbows on his knees, he said, “I looked through our files and found some more research on the Zizkovs. They’ve been mostly small time to us as well, since they focus more on controlling other pijavice than trying to take a bite of human Prague. They’re involved with smuggling the same sort of things that any human smuggling ring would be interested in, mostly imported artifacts. This new rumor is the only thing that’s really worried us.”

  “But you did have a file on them,” Ora said. She recalled Czernin’s casual accusation that Sokol was using her. “Why send me out to talk to Lord Czernin if you already knew all that?”

  “Everything we have is by humans, for humans,” Sokol explained. “Most of the time, that’s all we care about. What the pijavice are doing to humans. This ‘cure’ is out of our expertise.”

  “I told you going to see Czernin was ill-advised,” Ora said. “Yesterday was a disaster. Lina and I could have been killed. Are you this reckless with every member of your team?”

  “If I wanted you on our team, I’d ask,” Sokol said. He flipped the card in his hands with enough force that it slipped, skidding to hit Ora’s shoe. The Unter looked away at the acorn dropping from his hand, falling into the duplicate frame mirrored below. The card was nearly as old as Ora, the remnant of a deck mostly destroyed decades earlier. A relic. “Czernin is supposed to know everything. He should have had more information.”

  “I found out last night that he didn’t give me more information because he’s involved, Sokol, and now he knows we’re looking into it.”

  “He’s involved? How? Has he been in touch with Mayer?”

  “I don’t know the details, but it was a mistake to make me go talk to him. Now he knows you’re looking,” Ora said. “I’m finished with this investigation of yours. You’ve put my household in danger. Fortunately for you, I had a lucky break last night that will let you go find out more on your own.” She picked up the envelope Darina had given her and handed it to Sokol. “An invitation to the Zizkov house tonight. They’re gathering some pijavice to talk about their dastardly plans. Enjoy.”

  Sokol opened the invitation and stared at it. It was generic and formal, and only the assurance from Darina hinted that the party may be anything beyond a small friendly gathering. “This is precisely why I need your help. My team are all mortal. I couldn’t send them into something like this. You were born to infiltrate parties, Ora. Wear one of your pretty dresses.”

  “Don’t be an ass. This is no simple ball and you know it,” Ora said. “You’re shoving me into danger because your crack team doesn’t know what they’re doing. I’m trying to leave the pijavice behind me. It’s not who I am anymore. I haven’t been for a long time. You know that. You’d have me lie about who I am, pretend I don’t have the morals I do, just so I can find you information? Spending time with monsters like Czernin and the Zizkovs is exactly what I fought to leave.” She huffed. “For all I know, you have all the information already and have simply decided once again not to share it with me. I’m starting to wonder if this is what our entire relationship has been about.”

  “I’d be an idiot not to see your potential,” Sokol said.

  “I just want to live my life,” Ora said. “I’m not hurting anyone by being a neutral party. I never gave you a reason to expect anything else from me.”

  “You don’t like other pijavice, you don’t agree with what they do, but you refuse to actually help us at all,” Sokol said. “Sorry to be the one to tell you this, my lady, but if you’re not helping us, you’re helping them. You sit here in your fancy house while innocent people die.”

  “That’s not fair,” Ora said, standing up. Sokol rose as well, and she was torn between relief and irritation to see that he didn’t seem frightened of her. “I didn’t want this. To spend decades under Czernin’s thumb, to never see the sun, to outlive everyone I’ve known. What do I owe you for my
suffering?”

  “This isn’t about what you owe me,” Sokol said. “This is about who you are, who I thought you were. Think of all the good you could do working for us. What would your husband have wanted you to do? You say he was a good man. Would he want you to sit aside and think only of yourself?”

  Ora’s mind fractured like glass when struck with the unexpected remark. The memory of her horrible conversation with Alena surged forward again. She stared at him as she struggled to orient herself. “You’re bringing my husband into this?”

  “Well, it seems you’re not concerned about anyone still alive.”

  “You don’t know anything about Franz,” she said.

  “I know he believed the same thing I do about pijavice. He loved you, but he could see the potential for pain they could cause. If he hadn’t, you would have turned him. You’ve told me about his illness. Most men would do anything to escape that.”

  Franz’s death had been slow, inexorable. His body had betrayed him piece by piece. He had clung to his love for Alena even as he watched his body wilt beside Ora’s everlasting strength. When the time came, and Franz’s suffering had become too great, Ora had given him the one gift her supernatural strength could offer that he would accept: an easy death.

  “You would have given him anything. He must have told you he didn’t want to be like you,” Sokol continued. Ora’s fists clenched so tightly that her freshly grown claws pierced her skin. The blood was sluggish to drip out. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  Hands shaking, Ora pointed at the door. “Get out. I can’t believe I thought you were my friend.”

  “We are friends,” Sokol argued.

  She didn’t answer.

  He stared at her silently for a long moment. She stared at him, jaw set. “If you change your mind,” Sokol said, leaving the envelope on the table on top of the scattered cards. He rapped his knuckles on it and turned away. “See you around, Lady Fischerová.”

  Domek made his way circuitously across the city, checking over his shoulder for the girl or another of Bazil’s minions. How much of what he had said was true? If the pijavice were bringing multiple wisps into the city, perhaps they truly had struck some deal with the spirits for their aid. Was Kája working with them? Was Ora?

  Domek walked along the narrow streets, dodging the pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages that cluttered the city in pleasant weather, until he was at Cord’s flat. Fortunately, Cord was going to be out until evening. He may have already known about the pijavice, but Domek wasn’t going to tell him about the wisp. The situation was dangerous enough as it was.

  Ora had met Cord. If she were involved, it would not take long for them to find him. Perhaps it was time to bring the issue to Paluska.

  If Bazil was right and the pijavice were supplementing their forces by allying with other supernatural creatures, however, the situation could quickly escalate out of their control. Already, the lamplighters were stretched thin over their territory. There was a reason they focused their energies on the pijavice attacking people in the street rather than the ones hiding behind a mask of humanity. Their authority was limited, and their standing in Prague was of a common worker.

  Putting his back against the wall so he could keep an eye on the door—locked, just in case Cord came home early—Domek pulled the jar out of his bag once again. The symbols on his palms tingled when they made contact with the warm clay.

  The wisp appeared. The flame, so dim the previous night, had strengthened, though it was not as large as it had been at first. Its fiery form was incongruous in the lush bedroom, like someone had tamed a lightning storm in a museum. Domek remembered his uncle’s experiments with matches, including the pack still sitting deep in his bag. How did the wisp’s internal fire blaze continuously? What fuel allowed it to survive even when trapped inside an airless jar, and to heal there?

  “Did the boy survive?” Kája asked.

  Domek leaned back against the wall. If Bazil was right that the wisp was working for the pijavice, its concern for the footman was a quick way to gain Domek’s trust. “He did. I want to ask you again about the pijavica I took you from.”

  “This promises to be an exciting new conversation. We couldn’t have done this outside again?”

  Domek chewed on his lip. “What did you do for him before I found you? How long had you been under his care?”

  “Why don’t you ask what you really mean? You still don’t trust me. I’ve told you before that I wasn’t working with him. I don’t ally with those who hold me captive.”

  Domek waved a hand, brushing aside that line of conversation. “What had he instructed you to do before you changed ownership to me?”

  “There isn’t much to tell,” the wisp said. “He summoned me, stared for a bit, and then sent me back.”

  “That’s it? I compelled you to tell the truth.”

  “That is the truth. He’d found what he wanted. We were on the shore by the vodník’s pond where I’d first been captured. There were a dozen smashed jars on the ground.”

  “Why?”

  “Vodníks don’t usually catch us. They use their jars to hold the souls of the humans they’ve drowned. The rest of the jars were not like mine—there was no magic inside. The pijavica just said, ‘I found one,’ to someone else I didn’t see. Then he told me he was my new master before sending me right back into the jar. As though I were a slave. Though, since he had the jar, I suppose I was.”

  “He didn’t seem surprised at all to find you?”

  “Excited, but not surprised.”

  That confirmed Bazil’s claim that the pijavice had found other wisps. How many wisps had already been smuggled into the city? “We think that pijavice are bringing wisps into Prague. More than just you. We’re trying to figure out why. Does your power increase when you work with other wisps?”

  “Not that I know of. We don’t work well together. Even if we did, we’re not a stack of firewood that grows stronger when used at once. Maybe they’re collectors. People have always hoarded power to be admired.”

  “You think they’re gathering wisps to, what, gloat that they can?” Domek questioned. It seemed a benign hobby for the bloodsuckers, but the address Kája had mentioned was on Kampa Island, close to the river on the west bank in a neighborhood growing more expensive by the day. Perhaps spending resources on collecting soul jars was the sort of activity the wealthy did for pleasure.

  “Hoarding slaves as a status symbol has been a human trait since the beginning of time, living or dead,” Kája said. “Pijavice tend to focus on the type of slave with blood for them to drink, but this isn’t a surprising turn of events. They’re just as interested in power as the rest of you.”

  Domek nodded thoughtfully. He lifted the jar, ready to return the wisp inside. He hesitated. “If they offered, would you join sides with a pijavica?”

  “There are no offers with that jar.”

  “What if they offered your freedom? Would you work with them against humans?”

  Kája considered the question more seriously than Domek had expected. “Freedom means not having to follow someone else’s instructions. In that type of deal, I would still be in servitude. I wouldn’t give up one set of chains for another, even if they were gilded. But they would not free me,” it said. “It would not help their cause. It’s slavery that makes our magic malleable to an outsider. Once freed, I’d only be as useful as I wanted to be. And I’ve always been contrary.”

  “You helped me last night.”

  “It was not an order. I offered. It was the right thing to do.” Kája’s form flickered. “If you want to thank me… Take me outside.”

  “What?”

  “This small room,” Kája said, “is mind-numbing. The inside of the jar is even worse. I want to see the stars.”

  “That’s all?” Domek was suspicious. Was there some power the wisp would gain from being outside? The invitation to the opera had seemed benign at first as well. Surely Domek was missing some t
rick.

  “Isn’t that enough? I wasn’t always a wisp, you know. I miss the sky.”

  “What were you before?”

  “A witch.”

  Domek blinked. “You were human?”

  “All souls leave the body at death. Normal humans can get stuck as ghosts—insubstantial, invisible to anyone without their own magic. Powerful witches create powerful spirits, and not all of us make it to the afterlife.”

  “I didn’t know that was possible.”

  “Not many do. You’re still determined to keep me in here, knowing that?”

  Domek hesitated. “Even if you used to be a human, you’re a spirit now. You’re powerful, and you said yourself that you’re contrary. How do I know you won’t hurt someone if I freed you?”

  “Witches are powerful in life, but death breaks the bonds of flesh and magnifies our powers. I’m not more than I was in life, just unfettered. You’d have to trust me like you’d trust a human. Like you trusted me last night.”

  Domek hesitated.

  There was a sound of frustration from the wisp, a noise that would have been a sigh from something with a throat. Domek realized how much the wisp’s lost humanity explained—the personality, the opinions. Domek couldn’t see the wisp as an ‘it’ in that light. “If you’re determined to keep me enslaved, at least take me outside. You said yourself that it’s a simple request.”

  Domek hesitated. His instincts trusted that the wisp was telling the truth. He had weakened himself saving the footman the night before, though Domek would never had thought to ask.

  “You asked if I’d ever work with you,” Kája said suddenly, before Domek could find an answer. “This is why the answer is no. You have all the power here. I have, what, a tricky tongue and an insubstantial form? Surely you’re man enough to be confident that you can handle me. You can grant me one request.”

  There was a knock on the door. “Mister Myska? You have an urgent message.”

  “Back in the jar,” Domek hissed to Kája.

  He disappeared without fanfare. It looked like defeat.