by Kim Smejkal
Dia, but her timing was the worst. His mind was a hornet’s nest at the best of times, and Diavala wasn’t helping.
The Ides of Martina? he said. Poet Martina Buggatin? The Plains of Martina’s Tears? I know a lot about all kinds of Martinas. You’ll have to be more specific.
Diavala didn’t respond to his agitation. If there was one thing she was very good at, it was ignoring inconvenient emotions.
“The most important Martina to our story is Martina Donesse. She was Halcyon’s lover. His obsession. His muse. Halcyon blames me for her death.”
Interested despite himself, the plague doctor stopped cataloguing his list of noisemaking diversions and turned his full attention to the purple-eyed player in his head.
He knew that Diavala had come to Wisteria three years earlier to confront Halcyon about the ink he wasn’t supposed to have, and poor Martina must have gotten in the way. Just like Vincent had gotten in the way. Just like Anya, ultimately, had gotten in the way. You know I won’t stand for you excusing Profeta’s atrocities. In that, I agree with Celia completely. As I said before, the Curse of the Divine has fallen on all of us, and there’s only one to blame for that, Diavala. He drew out her name for emphasis.
“Martina’s death had nothing to do with Profeta. If anything, Halcyon killed her.”
His hands clenched, and he started pacing. After a moment’s hesitation he decided he may as well multitask: he allowed his words to come out, starting out Griffin quiet and ending plague doctor loud. When will Rian the Toothless come a-knocking? A-knocking?
“So everything we’re doing here is based on a . . . misunderstanding,” he said. “You never came here and tried to possess Halcyon. Martina didn’t die as collateral damage in your fight. Halcyon never wailed from the Touch and got his name entered on the Roll of Saints. He never recovered from said Touch, thus becoming the only one who knows how to survive you.”
Not even the plague doctor’s bellows summoned Rian. Almost as if he weren’t a patient at all, and the healer already knew it.
Damn. Toothless was in on his captivity just like Celia and Halcyon.
“Yes, all of that is true, in a sense. I did possess him, but for only a brief moment in time. All his thoughts revolved around Martina, Martina, Martina. She was a saintly soul, the way he saw her, and could do no wrong.”
“Get to the pooooint,” he sang, flopping dramatically onto the bed. He rolled over, stared at the ceiling, and laughed. “You’re being almost as obtuse as I usually am. I’m starting to understand how frustrating it is.” He resisted the urge to punch the wall. “If you have something to say to me, then say it.”
“The point is this: Halcyon will say and do anything if he thinks it will help him get Martina back. Whatever’s he’s promised Celia is a lie he thinks will help him meet that end. I have a feeling Celia bargained for a cure for the Touch to try to save you, of which there is none. Unless you can find a way to break my curse and allow me to die, you and I are stuck together for the rest of your days.”
Angeli help him, there was so much nonsense to unpack in those sentences. He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried not to scream at the purple-eyed young player. “You just told me Martina is dead.”
“Plague doctor, you and I both know that death isn’t always final.”
For a moment the plague doctor didn’t know how to respond. He didn’t know if he even believed her, considering all the things he sensed she was still withholding. But if what she said was even remotely true, Halcyon’s quest was a particular atrocity. Hoping to bring back the dead was an abomination of nature.
“‘Allow you to die?’” he finally said slowly. “That’s an interesting choice of words.”
“I know you fear the afterlife, plague doctor, but I’ve lived a thousand years too long.”
He didn’t like how wistful the purple-eyed girl sounded, playing on his sympathies. “A few weeks ago you were on a stage claiming life at all cost.” They were so embroiled with her only because of her fight to be seen as the absolute and marvelous head of Profeta.
“On that stage I witnessed the beginning of the end of my legacy,” she said, her tone hardening. Then it softened into a sigh again, disarming him. “Now there is an appealing beauty in all that nothingness.”
Tantalizing whispers of new story lines were everywhere lately. Inspiration brushed up against him, offered a hand, took a seductive bow. The Appealing Beauty of Nothingness, a Rabble Mob production starring only two players: the Palidon and the Plague Doctor. But he had no Palidon, he had no stage.
The plague doctor grabbed his mask and held it up over his head, inspecting the sleek whiteness of it, making sure it was still amazing. Considering the glitz and shine of the lamps, the paintings, and the furniture, it was by far the most hideous thing in the room, and therefore perfect. “So this feud between you and Halcyon boils down to you wanting an impossible death and Halcyon wanting an impossible life.”
He pulled his plague doctor mask on. It settled on his cheekbones, the world tinted darker through the lenses. For the first time in weeks, he felt complete.
“You and Halcyon both have ink,” he said, running down all the things he was certain of. There weren’t many. “You hate each other. You both play god, only on different scales.” He paused, thinking about ghosts, and death, and performances. There was only one other thing he was sure of. “All of this is happening because gods shouldn’t exist,” he said.
“Or maybe that, Griffin,” Diavala said with a sigh. “Maybe that.”
Chapter 13
When Halcyon entered the studio the next day, Celia looked up from her pacing. “Let’s get going,” she said, holding out the bouquet of ink-flowers in her hand as an offering. Everything was about flowers in Wisteria. If she could just figure out flowers, maybe that would be good enough for him.
“Your friend’s regained consciousness and is nicely set up with Rian,” Halcyon said, referring to the healer’s home where he’d taken Griffin the night before. “You can visit him whenever you’d like.” Halcyon untucked a ledger from under his arm and gestured for Lyric to come over and look at an entry with him. Business, accounting, perhaps a grocery list.
As Celia, Lyric, and Halcyon had hauled Griffin outside the night before, he hadn’t stirred. Halcyon placated the people concerned for Griffin’s welfare with a charismatic smile and platitudes. In the short amount of time they’d been in the township, Griffin had made a lot of friends, but no one could dismiss and handle a Wisterian crowd the way Halcyon could.
“I feel like this is crossing all manner of lines, Celia,” Halcyon had said just before they’d parted. “I can’t claim to have much authority over morality, but—” And with a graceful shrug, he’d left it at that. When he shrugged, Griffin’s head lolled onto his shoulder and rested there. They were nearly the same height, with the same slim build and angular features. Despite their differences in hair and eye colors, they could have easily been siblings. That observation bothered Celia in ways she couldn’t explain, and she’d been all too willing to let Halcyon deal with setting Griffin up in his new accommodations.
Temporary accommodations, Celia told her rioting mind bees.
“I need more than what I’m getting,” Celia said now, jostling the bouquet. “These all smell the same to me, I’ve sniffed them so much.”
Halcyon leaned toward Lyric but kept his gaze on Celia. “She’s suddenly quite impatient, isn’t she?”
“I think she’s feeling a little guilty for locking her friend up,” Lyric replied.
Celia bristled. She was still in the room.
“I hate that he has to hide here,” Celia said. “It makes me angry that someone I care about can’t live his life like he wants to. I’m not impatient, I’m eager.” Celia had explained that they’d had an argument and that Griffin wanted to leave Wisteria, but considering his role in the takedown of Profeta in Asura, Diavala would be after him, and he’d be in danger as soon as he left. “Giv
en how much Diavala fears Halcyon,” Celia had said, “she won’t come here looking for us. Wisteria is the only place we’re safe, but Griffin’s too stubborn to see that.”
It was all for his own good, which was true, just not in the manner she described. From across the room, Xinto shook his head at her and turned away, as if he were thoroughly disappointed in her.
“I want you to succeed here, Celia,” Halcyon continued, snapping the ledger shut, nearly cutting off Lyric’s nose. “Having someone tending to affairs when I’m away, even with your little strange embellishments, will put my mind greatly at ease. It will allow me to be away longer and explore further, so perhaps don’t snap at me for your failures. I’m giving you everything I can. How fast we get what we both want is entirely up to you.”
Halcyon went over to his vast bookshelves and took down tome after tome, stacking his selections into three piles. “Try these,” he said. “Maybe academic learning will jog this last piece loose. Lyric can show you the proper sections.” He left with his ledger tucked back under his arm. “And I suppose I have to deal with this then,” he muttered, adding a door slam for good measure.
“Guess taking a break didn’t work out for either of us,” Celia said. She stared at the flowers in her hand, hating every one of them.
Lyric tossed their hair and looked up at the ceiling, as if waiting for patience to fall from it and cover them.
Whatever the ceiling provided worked for a little while, because with infinite patience and measured words, Lyric helped Celia sift through the mountain of books for hours. Anything to do with scent, from the known science of it to detailed descriptions in fiction, Celia read and tried to internalize. They debated. Lyric asked pointed questions. Then, when they’d gone through the stack Halcyon had set aside, they urged her to apply anything she’d learned.
But nothing worked.
You locked him up for nothing, Cece, Anya said.
For nothing, for nothing, Celia’s bees echoed.
She refused to see Griffin—ashamed of what she’d done—until she had the inoculation against the Touch to show for her betrayal. Would he ever forgive her? It had been the wrong thing to do, but Diavala had stripped away all other options.
Not for nothing, Celia rebutted, clenching her teeth. So help her, the end would justify the means.
Although Celia set her mind to the task of learning scent, she wasn’t getting any closer. Her grasp of scent wasn’t reliable; it was too weak or too strong or too off, always giving away the illusion in some way. Everything else, she could do. In every other way she was just as adept as Halcyon, to the point where she’d been altering the town on his instruction: refreshing the color, restocking the insects or sunbeams, correcting flaws in texture. She and Xinto made rounds of the town, Lyric documenting everything Celia said needed to be fixed or changed, and along the way, Celia sniffed at everything like a ridiculous hound dog.
She had made some progress, enough to be heartening, but not enough. It wasn’t good enough for Halcyon, who insisted on perfection.
Celia had only one thing to do—master scent, appease Halcyon—and Diavala would have to find a new host to torture and manipulate.
One impossible thing.
Suddenly, five days didn’t seem like enough time. By the time she looked up at the clock, bleary-eyed and half delirious, she had only two days left.
Celia had tried to argue with Halcyon that it wasn’t important. She’d proved she could do everything else, the ink was hers to control in every way. What did it matter if she had to wait for him to return from his travels before fixing up the scent of the flowers?
Desperate to prove both Anya and her bees wrong, she’d also tried to bargain for more ink, thinking that all her experimentation had depleted the ink in her bloodstream or dampened its powers, or something. With her mind bees whispering how terrible she was, she had to prove them wrong, even if it took more ink in her blood to do it. Halcyon was constantly replenishing his; she’d seen him put his hands into the chest more than once already. “I’ll just put my hands in for a second,” she’d said. “Just to freshen everything up. What can it hurt?”
And wow, had that had been a mistake. He’d promptly moved the chest of ink that had been in the studio since the very first day and hidden it from her. “You will not steal from me,” he’d said.
So now, along with being obsessed with capturing scent properly, Celia was also obsessing over where the ink was. Where he’d taken it. Was this all a game? Was he setting her up to fail by keeping it from her?
When Celia went to fetch something from the kitchen, Lyric looped their arm through Celia’s and led her away from the door with the sunflower doorknob. Celia didn’t even remember stepping in the wrong direction, let alone reaching for the knob to open it.
“Is it in there?” Celia asked.
“Is what in there?”
“The ink.” If Halcyon was holding it hostage until she met his standards of perfection, it made sense that he’d put it in the forbidden room.
Celia looked at Lyric sideways, waiting for their answer.
At the fourth side glance, Lyric had had enough. “Before you bother,” they said. “I’m loyal to exactly one person in this life, Celia, and it isn’t you.”
Celia had to hand it to them, Lyric was a fantastic liar. Lyric might stand beside Halcyon, but there was something keeping them there that wasn’t loyalty.
As if Celia couldn’t recognize false devotion.
Lyric’s jaw flexed, and they ran their hand along the shaved bit of their hair, ruffling it with aggressive jerks. “If I were you, I’d definitely keep the door closed,” they said. If Lyric said “don’t,” they usually meant “do,” all part of their Contraryish charm.
And Lyric used door metaphors far more than anyone else Celia had ever known. They’d been encouraging Celia to open the door for a long time now.
“Definitely don’t tell me the opposite of what’s not behind that door, Lyric . . .” Celia said, still side-eying them. Was that a double negative? A triple?
Lyric barked out a laugh—a miracle. “What?” they said through their chuckles.
“I’m trying to speak Contraryish,” Celia said, nudging them. “Is it working? Did you understand me?” Celia tried to wink playfully, but she was so tightly coiled, it probably looked frightening.
“Okay, you’ve officially lost your mind,” Lyric said.
“Will this silly party still happen, even if I haven’t figured it out?” she asked.
“Halcyon won’t be made a fool of, Celia. There’s no option for you but to figure it out.”
The fact was, everything was supposed to be settled by the day of the party. A celebration of an exchange: indenture for inoculation. Celia looked up. “But what if I don’t?” Their conversation had been laced with jokes for its entirety, but Celia heard the desperation in her own question.
Lyric heard it too. “Honestly, I don’t know. He thought he was giving you plenty of time. Part of the reason he’s deep-dived into party planning is to distract himself from the possibility that you won’t pull through.”
They stared at each other a beat.
“You still have time,” Lyric said. “And you are getting closer. You just need that one piece to click, and you’ll have it.”
That was, in all honesty, the nicest thing Lyric had ever said to her. Through her fatigue and hunger and desperation, Celia felt her eyes tearing up.
Lyric rolled theirs and turned away.
“What do you get out of this arrangement?” Celia said, swiping at the tears on her cheeks. She was still puzzled by Lyric’s role. They seemed indispensable to running the town, on one hand, but at the same time, Halcyon wouldn’t be so eager for Celia help him if Lyric filled in all the gaps. “Why wouldn’t you learn to use the ink? Be Halcyon’s apprentice rather than his assistant?”
“Well, that’s insulting on so many levels.”
“I didn’t mean anything bad. I just don
’t get it.”
Lyric glared. Any bonding they’d done had been fleeting, and now, judging by the heat in their eyes, was over completely. “You don’t need to ‘get it’—you need to focus. Halcyon won’t entertain this forever, and you’re running out of time to figure it out. The door of opportunity will stay closed if you don’t get around to opening it soon.” Another door reference. Funny. Lyric straightened and rolled their shoulders, as if trying to calm down. “If you’re not going to do any actual work here, let’s call it a day. It’s late, and you tire me right the hell out, Celia Sand.”
They walked shoulder to shoulder toward the front door. By then, Xinto knew the labyrinthine house inside and out and could easily lead the way if Celia got lost, but Lyric always insisted on escorting her to the exit. Perhaps they really were worried that Celia would die in a back room somewhere.
And Celia hated to admit that she was distracted. Halcyon had given assurances that Griffin was fine, if a “tad emotional” about the ordeal, but she still hadn’t visited him.
She refused to see him empty-handed.
Which meant she needed to be full-handed.
Celia snorted a laugh, making Lyric glance over at her. “Opposite of empty-handed is full-handed?” she muttered, then quickly looked away. When was the last time she’d gotten any sleep? She spent her evenings wandering the streets, smelling everything, practicing.
Lyric rolled their eyes, and as soon as Celia stepped outside, they slammed the door.
Celia knocked, and it flew open again.
“What?” Lyric barked, as if Celia had unceremoniously woken them rather than seen them moments before.
“I just wanted to say I like you.”
Lyric’s head tilted. “You can’t out-sarcasm me. Don’t even try.”
They tried to slam the door again, to leave Celia alone with her giant bee friend, but she rammed her foot in the door. She wasn’t being sarcastic at all. Lyric reminded Celia of Zuni—a tough friend with a soft center. She’d physically ached for Zuni lately: the somehow reassuring smell of death that always clung to her skullkeeper friend, the games Celia used to play with the shimmering rainbow of Zuni’s tenor, the whispers and confidences they shared. Dante had messaged Celia—before Celia had stopped reading his messages—that Zuni had left Asura, so Celia liked to imagine Zuni out in the world for the first time in years: adventuring, bird watching, laughing even, but probably with a bag of her favorite skulls tucked against her hip.