by Kim Smejkal
Seer Ostra stood near her wagon at the back. Marco and his fire-master partner, Tanith, performed at the sidelines. A handful of Commedia Follia character players—with their outlandish costumes and colorful masks—peppered the crowd. She saw Tanza, Savant, Gemello, Divo, Fazzi . . . Everyone was staying visible.
Celia’s show had adapted to evoke the image of blood in a dozen ways. She pressed both palms to the cracked glass—smearing the red paint she’d written with earlier, her body coated with shimmering reds of glitter—and waited for another order.
Soon, she kept repeating to herself. Almost time.
When Anya signaled, Celia would give up. Look as pitiful as possible. Defeated. It would have been a nice touch to have a Kid point at the shattered devil and say, You’re making her cry! You don’t have to be mean! But, onward. They couldn’t rely on a child to point out the fallacy this time, so they’d have to make it stronger themselves. Once the crowd pitied her again, a black tattoo would appear on her arm and she would take off her glovette and show it to them. She would point at the angel, and then she would perform the order. And another, and another. For as long as they tolerated it, she would show them that her ridiculous actions were based on inked commands. Ink equals manipulation. Ink equals bondage. Ink equals tyranny.
That would be it for both of them. They would be done dancing.
They had to hope the message would be enough to spread through the audience, surge into Malidora, and crest in Asura. The Devil in the Bell Jar: the greatest Commedia ever performed, because it would take down a temple.
In the belly of the audience, the plague doctor pushed his way toward Lilac. He shook his head, his hands making a string of exclamations Celia couldn’t decipher. Lilac wasn’t nearly so animated in her body, stuck high on her stilt legs, but she nodded and her mouth moved with blistering efficiency.
Anya stood as still as stone, her twin bodyguards making space around her.
The crowd had changed, no longer held in thrall, but raging impatiently against the pause. A few people waved fists in Celia’s direction, angry that the show had stopped. Angry at being ignored. Kitty Kay had moved down to the grass, enacting her regal version of damage control as she put her hands out in peace to the people who clustered around her. She glanced at Celia, and sharp shards of desperation pierced through the distance.
Celia had thought that Anya was giving her time to her catch her breath after dancing the bennetravo, but it was more.
Some order had been commanded, but the devil wasn’t responding.
Just as that night with Vincent when Diavala first revealed herself, Celia’s body reacted in a way that prepared for a fight. Her bees rallied into formation. The fresh certainty that she’d missed something huge kept her company under the bell jar. She had no idea what that huge something was, but it caressed her shoulders, whispered in her ear, slunk up her spine.
This was Diavala’s work; otherwise Anya’s hesitation wouldn’t be so pronounced, the plague doctor and Lilac wouldn’t be arguing, Kitty Kay wouldn’t be panicking. Anya didn’t want to ink whatever demand had come from the crowd.
But the crowd required it.
What did we miss, Anny? Celia nodded. Whatever it is, the devil has to do it.
Anya nodded back.
The sting began on Celia’s forearm. She watched Anya draw it, impressed with her manipulation. She made it look as if she were holding her arms tight against a chill, giving no indication that one long fingernail existed or that it scratched into her skin.
In the cheater’s mirrors under the brow of her devil mask, Celia read her arm.
And knew what she’d missed.
No! She flushed, as red as her paint and glitter.
Diavala had managed to whisper a suggestion into someone’s ear, knowing it had the ability to sink them all whether Celia did it or not.
Mask off, was the command.
Mask off.
Her gaze bounced up to the plague doctor, now at the side of the stage, balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to leap into a run. He pointed at the audience, shouted more words she couldn’t hear, but she understood his Riddlish then. Pay attention, Inkling! This is going sideways on you!
The last order made its way through the crowd. “Mask off!” they shouted, passing it on. “She can’t ignore a command!”
A line of the plague doctor’s purple fire lapped around her, unsolicited. She had no idea what it was meant to accomplish. Where Griffin might try for diversion, Diavala would want to add to the chaos.
Before long, the entire crowd yelled and waved their fists at her. “Mask off! Mask off!”
If Celia ignored the order, she knew with certainty that the crowd would riot. They nudged close to it already.
The angel and devil act had always been a little too real, disbelief suspended so far that people forgot they were at a show. The Mob had become so popular because of this more they’d brought to their act. Their effect on the masses was what gave their plan the possibility of success.
But now it would be the very thing to trap everyone.
Cas and Sky battled to stay on their stilts as people turned on them. Tanith and Marco enacted Distraction Level Red Flame but were being yelled at with equal measure. Seer Ostra and some of the other players had their hands up in deference, backing away, looking wildly around for help.
It came down to a few dozen people at the mercy of an angry six hundred. Celia and Anya had thought the crowd could be protection, but they’d been so eager to cause mayhem of their own, they’d forgotten the one solid rule of the business—don’t lose control.
And unveiling someone wanted by the temple wasn’t on the playbill.
Diavala didn’t need her mistico after all. The Touch wasn’t her only weapon. She’d found a way to unmask their con just moments before they’d been set to reveal her ink and unmask her. She’d turned their own crowd against them first.
Quaking, trying to steady her breathing, Celia deliberately exaggerated her movements so the people would understand that the last request was coming. She produced her paintbrush again with as much flourish as she could. She waited, building up the performance, buying time so Anya could work her way out of the heart of the crowd. Once Celia took off her mask, it would be confirmed, irrevocably, that the devil under the bell jar was a true devil after all—a criminal worth a thousand posters, whose crime, ominously and mysteriously, remained secret. It wouldn’t take long for them to unmask Anya after that.
Diavala had bided her time, watching patiently, knowing she had a failsafe against any inkling shenanigans.
A subtle move with the cut of a dagger’s blade.
The inklings had escaped the temple, the devil had escaped the bell jar once already. Both times Celia had thought they’d managed it because they were lucky and cunning and good.
She saw the whole truth then.
And under the bell jar, the devil took off her mask.
* * *
It didn’t take long for people to realize where they’d seen her face. Celia had seen it herself. Every street corner in Malidora showed either the wanted criminal or the devil in a bell jar; her two identities, one or the other, pasted all over town.
Now merged, front and center.
She couldn’t hear their reactions clearly—the shouts and exclamations had been muted to her for the whole act—but she saw shock and outrage plastered on hundreds of faces. The exact reaction she’d wanted when they revealed Divine ink, but now for the wrong reason.
Every show they’d done since Asura had added kindling. A spark in the crowd had ignited after they heard the screams behind the gates. The plague doctor’s mini-spectacle had stoked the fire higher. Then they’d gotten more riled up with Anya’s pause. Frenzy to frenzy to frenzy, and now, justice in their hands.
Anya and her Passion bodyguards were almost at the stage, pockets of people trying to halt their progress until they were drawn to other movement: Caspian, tr
ying to get to Sky’s side; Ravino trying to assert his blood-soaked authority. The crowd surged this way and that, confused about where to aim their attention but knowing it needed to be aimed.
Celia turned toward the white-masked plague doctor as he leaped into a run toward her. Ready to smash her out of the bell jar as he did that first night. Could he summon carpentry tools as well as purple fire? Where had he gotten that hammer?
Absurd. Hilarious.
If he freed her after this particular unmasking, he’d directly link the Mob to their heresy.
She shook her head imperceptibly. Calm down, dagger. You’ve read the crowd, you know this is going wrong. But look at me.
She mouthed, protect and lead, and held the plague doctor’s gaze as if he were still the plague doctor. Steady. Begging. Pleading.
One last chance to be wrong.
Now was the time to make sure the Mob claimed complete ignorance. Diavala may have forced Celia’s identity out in the open, but the Mob might still be able to wriggle free if their leader guided them well.
It took one infinitely stretched-out second, and then the plague doctor turned from her toward the audience. Asking for an explanation for their distress, she assumed, as she watched hundreds of people give it to him with the force of a tidal wave.
Celia stood straighter, her heart thudding against her ribs.
One giant of a reveler near the front of the stage brandished a wrinkled wanted poster he’d kept on him, doing his due diligence. An officer of the law, maybe.
The plague doctor gave him a giant shrug, as big as the baker forty stories tall in Sabazio, and nodded. The officer enlisted some helpers, and they advanced on her after the plague doctor waved them up.
Such a small thing under the bell jar, needing so much muscle to detain her.
Well, she had made it pretty far from Asura. Who knew what other tricks this devil held in reserve?
As they lifted the glass, Celia kept her eyes on the plague doctor.
He spoke in clipped, angry bursts. “We live in a small world—isolated, even as we roam—we had no idea we were harboring a fugitive.”
The opposite of what Diavala would say—she’d want them all roped together.
Oh, thank mercy. Celia pressed her hands to her stomach, the butterflies threatening to burst out. He met her gaze, and his glare would have shattered the glass around her if the people hadn’t already lifted it off.
He did a lot of yelling, most directed at the Mob. “Lead the people out.” “Refunds.” “Apologies.” And a not-so-subtle “We will cooperate fully, of course,” through his teeth, as if he were infinitely pissed at this turn of events. Still, it boomed as a firm order to every set of ears in the Mob. Cooperate fully. Cooperate. Listen to me.
He met her gaze as he gave a solid hiss of “We trusted you” when the giant officer and the mistico were sure to hear. “All this time.”
And she finally heard him.
You’re not the storm, Celia. I’m with you, as I’ve always been.
But because she was so manipulative and devious, she didn’t apologize. Of course she didn’t. She glanced over her shoulder at the officer who’d bound her hands, saying, “Dumb of them, wasn’t it?”
She shrugged at the plague doctor, hiding a wave of relief behind a mask of resolve. One consolation to the show’s end was how well he understood her; he’d taken on the role she’d cast for him without flinching.
The plague doctor growled, turned away, legitimately pissed at her, as he should be. It brought her back to the reality closing in. Instead of safety for his people, Celia had tightened the chains even more. So focused on outmaneuvering Diavala, they’d forgotten about the mistico still hunting for two runaway inklings.
“I have to get this under control.” The plague doctor said it straight to her with the familiar tilt of his head to the left, then disappeared into the crowd before the officer could argue.
Not how we wanted this to go, Anny, she thought when she glimpsed Anya in white lace struggling against her own captors. But at least we didn’t help her take the poison to Kinallen. A victory.
Celia shrugged away from the officer, determined to walk on her own. Head high, proud, arrogant, she pushed herself into a new character—the cold, manipulative deviant. The Mob could still be safe if they did this right.
Chapter 27
Hope, panic, hope, panic.
Celia didn’t know how to be anxious when she didn’t know exactly what to be anxious about.
Officer Nero Ferrara was the type of person who didn’t know the meaning of the term off-duty. “I don’t think I like you,” Celia said. She had no idea why he’d even come to the show in the first place, since fun also didn’t appear to be anywhere in his vocabulary. His tenor was an unusual combination of bronze and silver hues, each as dull and muted as he seemed to be.
He snorted. “I’ll survive.”
The crowd had been disbanded with force when more officers and then mistico had descended. The gates were locked, this time not to keep others out, but to hold the Mob in. Celia had been taken backstage, the curtains drawn shut, and sequestered with Nero. It had gone deathly silent outside, and Celia knew little about what had happened in the three hours since the abrupt end to the show.
At one point she’d heard Marco yelling that no one knew anything. That they’d been deceived by Lalita. He used her nickname, as if she’d given them an alias to cover her identity and dupe them all. Infinitely smart of him to follow the plague doctor’s lead. She urged him to yell louder, savoring his bellowed outrage because everyone, all the way to the streets of Malidora, would hear it.
Later, a scuffle between one of the officers and the plague doctor had pushed through the curtains. He’d still had his mask on, yelling a number—“Twenty! Only twenty!” as if it were the most important number in the universe—as the officer tried to catch him. He’d danced away and leaped back out into the fray, but not before shouting it once more at Celia: “Only twenty of us!”
There were twenty-nine in the Mob. He didn’t want them going after Gil, Millie, and the Kids. And a couple of others who had managed to sneak away? Another consolation, then, that not everyone would be swept up in this net. But where was Anya? Kitty Kay? Celia expected her allies to be keeping her company.
Celia would have loved to pace, as that had become a hobby of hers even more pronounced than shisha and absinthe of late, but her bound ankles made it impossible. “What’s the plan, then?” She felt with her bounded hands along the crate she sat on, hoping for a miracle sharp nail to appear. “Are we road-tripping back to Asura together? Because that would be a riot. You’re so much fun.” She was close to spilling her insides into her lap.
Nero raked his hands through his short brown hair, and it stayed up, standing at attention. She wondered if he came from Bickland, for he had nearly the same shade of tawny beige skin as Lilac and was big all over too. Celia tried to ignore the fact that those huge hands could snap her neck like a twig, should they be so inclined. “What drama,” he muttered.
“I have to pee.” When she tried to stand, Nero kicked an abandoned top hat over to her with one tree trunk leg.
She pushed her fingernail into her palm so hard it drew blood, but she managed to hold in her scream. “Damn it!” She squirmed like a worm against her bound hands and feet. “In case you missed it, you’re about ten times my size and could break my entire body with one flex of your big toe, Nero, so why the hell do I need to be tied up like this?”
He ignored her comment, but asked, curious, “You must have known this could only end one way?”
“We fooled the Rabble Mob for weeks; it was the crowd who surprised us.” Lying used to be so easy for her, and now, when she needed her skills the most, she could feel them slipping away, gossamer thin.
He snorted again.
Asshole.
“Yours and Anya Burtoni’s faces were everywhere. Stop trying to claim that no one here knew any
thing.” Nero appraised her with a long look, cracking his knuckles. Of course he had an annoying habit like that. Then he pulled his shirt out of his trousers and lifted it, showing her the inked image of a salamander perched on his brown abs as if sunning itself on rocks. “This appeared when I was eighteen.”
“Pretty. And what universal wisdom did a salamander give you?”
He ignored her sarcasm. “One spring when I was young, the pond near our house was overrun with yellow and brown salamanders. My siblings and I spent months catching and playing with them. I left home as an angry sixteen-year-old, but the ink told me to go back. A month later, my mother died.”
A touching story, so Celia tried to be reasonable. “I don’t think you’re stupid, so I won’t point out that you could have found significant meaning in anything that showed up on your rock abs. You wanted to go home. The ink gave you an excuse.”
He nodded and, for the first time, smiled at her. It shaved a decade off his face, and she wondered if he wasn’t closer to her in age than she’d first thought. “Maybe that’s true. But if it hadn’t been precisely a salamander at precisely that time in my life, I wouldn’t have had a chance to say goodbye to my mother. The ink tells us what we want to hear; I’m glad I listened.”
It settles the chaos inside. Some of Diavala’s words intruded, Nero unintentionally giving them life. “A charming story of utter coincidence,” Celia said, squirming more, infinitely annoyed at her bladder because mentioning having to pee made her aware that it might be a good idea.
Nero stood and went to the curtain separating backstage from the front. He poked his head out and growled some nonsense to himself. When he turned back, his face held the deepest frown she’d ever seen. “When my captain is done rounding up the Rovers, she’ll want to have a conversation. And while I don’t have any loyalty to you, I’ll give you a warning you should take to heart: she’s not as personable as me, certainly not as patient, and you’d be smart to not hand her any bullshit, because she can sift through it better than anyone I’ve ever known.”