Shadowplay

by Laura Lam

  Cyril conversed with Tomas Elmbark about starting their studies at the Royal Snakewood University next summer, their conversation the stilted words of childhood friends who realized they no longer have anything in common.

  The Royal Physician spoke with Lady Ashvale about hunting in the Emerald Bowl. The physician said he was looking forward to going back to his estates, but that he did not think the hunting could compare to the great cats of the Lindean jungle. I remembered my dream and shivered.

  My mother’s earlier jovial mood vanished. She kept looking at the door as though she wished she could leave. She had no great love for magic tricks or the supernatural.

  Her profile was turned toward the only window not covered by dark velvet. I remembered when we were young, during a summer at the Emerald Bowl, she told us to count the stars outside our window until we fell asleep, since we could not do it in Sicion with all its city lights. I closed my eyes against the sudden pang of homesickness. Had I taken a different fork in the road, I’d be a guest of this party, possibly, murmuring with my brother and Tomas, waiting for the séance to begin. My legs would be crossed demurely, with less between them, the scars from the surgery healed. The physical ones, anyway.

  Lord and Lady Elmbark began with a brief Vestige demonstration. Almost all nobles had a collection to rival the Mechanical Museum of Antiquities, except for my family. My mother had tried to convince my father to let her collect, but he always felt the money would be better put to use elsewhere. Like saving for that surgery, perhaps. To me, it always seemed a bit foolhardy to blithely show guests one’s most valuable possessions. But I was curious all the same.

  The butler unfurled a tapestry, though perhaps tapestry was the wrong word, for it was not woven, but made of Vestige fabric that did not decay like wool or cotton. It had been painted or stained with Chimaera – centaurs, angels, and other beings. I even spied a damselfly woman. As the butler rolled the tapestry away, I thought I caught sight of another figure hiding behind her – a creature with green skin and horns. Before I could blink, the tapestry was back in its canister, and I was left with more questions that I could not answer.

  Next, the butler pulled out a small hand harp. He ran his fingertips along the strings. They made the high, pure sounds of a finger dancing along a wine glass’s edge. The haunting melody lingered in the air before fading.

  After setting aside the harp to muted applause, he brought forth a cloth-wrapped globe. I thought it would be a glass globe of a rare color – deep purple, for instance – but when he pulled away the silk, I muffled a gasp with my hand. Inside the glass was a flower similar to a rose, though its blossom was more bell-shaped. Its petals were a brilliant turquoise that darkened to blue-black at the tips. The now-extinct flower was preserved at the height of its beauty for all eternity.

  The next item was an oval mirror framed with shimmering Vestige metal. But when someone looked into it, they did not see their reflection, but the vision of a beach, waves lapping across white sand. It reminded me of the Mirror of Moirai we stole from Shadow Elwood.

  Lastly, the butler showcased the automaton collection. All noble families had them. Even mother had convinced father to let her buy just one – a little sleeping baby poking out from the spiral shell on its back, like a hermit crab. My breath caught once again. The Elmbarks possessed an impressive collection, but I recognized the mermaid with the emerald green fin and close-cropped hair that Maske had sold. Maske’s smile remained fixed upon his face, but his eyes did not leave the mermaid.

  His show ended and our show for some of the noblest faces in Imachara would soon begin. The Collective of Magic had a hand in our invitation, but that did not mean I was not nervous at how the séance would be received.

  The guests drank aperitifs and ate little desserts of cream-filled pastries. I nibbled more fruits and nuts, but my stomach rumbled and I thought longingly of the mooncakes we had back at the Kymri Theatre.

  I was distracted from my hunger as the guests left the room so it could be prepared for the séance. I ducked out from my hiding place and helped fold the chairs and put them back in the storage cupboard behind a fold of black velvet. We set up the round table for the séance and draped it with more black velvet before topping it with the Vestige crystal ball. Cyan went to the washroom and returned with the black veil over her head. The guests came back to a transformed room. The winter wind shrieked against the windows, rattling the glass.

  The guests took their places about the table, and then Cyan stepped forward, a sadness that could not be contained emanating from her. A servant turned on the gramophone in the corner and it filled the room with soft, mournful horns.

  Cyan sat at the head of the table, gathering her skirts about her.

  “Good evening, fair sirs and ladies,” she said with a Temri accent. “I welcome you to our humble séance.”

  She lifted the dark veil from her face, revealing silver swirls painted across her forehead, a crescent moon and stars in the center. With a start, I realized that the glyphs echoed Anisa’s facial tattoos. The Royal Physician narrowed his eyes at her, as though he recognized the symbols. I wish she had told me what she planned, as I would have dissuaded her. However, the result was undeniably haunting. She looked like a Chimaera ghost. She looked like Anisa.

  “Please join hands so we may find you the answers you seek from beyond the grave. I have lost all of my family, all of my childhood friends, and my one true love. All were taken from me too soon by death. In return, death saw fit to let me peek beyond the veil and share what I know. To let others have the solace I cannot find.” Her voice thickened, and tears slid down her face.

  The Royal Physician joined hands, but he still wore his gloves.

  “Please remove your gloves, esteemed sir,” Cyan said. “The skin-to-skin contact of the living strengthens the bond to the other side.”

  “Alright,” the doctor said, amused, taking off his gloves. His wore a small gold ring on his left pinkie finger that glinted in the candlelight.

  But his right hand...

  I had seen a clockwork woman’s head at the Museum of Antiquities last year with Aenea. The hand looked as though it could have matched, though the hand was masculine and the head had been feminine. Clockwork gears and pistons shone a dull brass, the hand covered with a substance that could be mistaken for skin but for the fact it was transparent. He flexed the hand, a sardonic smile on his face as everyone about the table gaped, open-mouthed. It moved as smoothly as any human hand.

  Who was he, to have such a priceless piece of Vestige for a hand, and where had he found it?

  Cyan was at a loss for words.

  What can you glean about him? I thought at her. The Royal Physician was not in the public eye much, so I knew next to nothing about him. Sometimes the Royal Physician gave lectures or went on research sabbatical, but most of his time was spent looking after the ailments of the royal family.

  Not a thing, which is strange. This house is full of Vestige and I can hear the others as clear as a bell. She frowned.

  The physician studied Cyan as if he found her fascinating.

  You’ve been silent too long, I told her

  “Lord Elmbark, please grasp the Royal Physician’s wrist above his… hand, and we will proceed.” Lord Elmbark gingerly touched the skin above the physician’s clockwork hand.

  The illusion of mystique had briefly shattered, but Cyan fell back into character.

  “Please. Give me the name of a beloved you have lost to the dark currents of the River Styx.”

  Silence. And then: “Robbie,” Lady Ashvale said. Her son had drowned in the Jade River, the river that ran through the Emerald Bowl.

  “Close your eyes, Lady Ashvale,” Cyan said, and the table gasped that she commanded her so plainly. “Close your eyes and think of young Robbie. Remember what he looked like and sounded like. Everything about him. A mother’s heart never forgets.”

  Lady Ashvale gave a small sob. Cyan kept her eyes closed. �
��Come, Robbie Ashvale. I call upon thee. Your mother is here. Come back and visit, just for a time.” She waited for a moment as I grabbed my props from the bag. “Robbie, are you here? If so, please give us a sign.”

  I rang the bell, and everyone at the table jumped except for the Royal Physician, Maske, and Lady Rowan.

  “Robbie?”

  I rang the bell again and tapped my fists against the walls, like footprints.

  “Robbie, will you share your story with me? Will you let me see?”

  Another ringing bell.

  Cyan tilted her head back. “I see Robbie. He is seven – the age he was when he was taken from you. He remembers drowning, that it was so cold. He remembers you trying to wake him. He was standing right next to you, but you could not hear him or see him.

  “Age beyond the veil has no meaning. Now he is a young boy of ten, the age he would be now. He’s sprouting like a weed. I see him as a youth of fifteen. He is so very handsome, the dark hair falling into his blue eyes. Now, he is a grown man.

  “He is that age, the prime of his life, after death. He misses you. He loves you. But he is happy. And he says soon he will travel down the River and join the world of the living again.”

  She opened her eyes, and I thought I caught a flash of cobalt blue. I shuddered and shook my head. It felt like such a cheap ruse, to take the images of a grieving mother’s son and weave a web of lies.

  Yet Lady Ashvale was crying with relief and heartbreak. Normally, in noble gatherings, such a display of emotion would be unseemly. But not here in the circle of the séance. These were the words she wanted to hear. Now, she could imagine her son, grown and happy and waiting for new life.

  “Who else has lost?”

  “I… I am not sure if I have,” Lady Laurus said. My breath caught in my throat. My mother’s voice quavered, and in the dim light of the candles she looked even more worn and wan.

  Cyan nodded. “I know of whom you speak.”

  She’s thinking of you.

  I know.

  What do you want me to say?

  I took a shuddering breath. And I thought the words at Cyan, who spoke them to my mother.

  “The one who you miss is lost but not gone, this much I know. She has not passed into the currents of the River Styx. But she is dreaming at the moment, and so the spirits can sense her.”

  “Where is she?” my mother whispered.

  “The spirits choose not to say. But they do say… that she is safe.”

  “Will I… ever see her again?” There was stark hope in her voice. I doubled over behind the walls, my eyes stinging with tears.

  Will she?

  I don’t know. I don’t know.

  Cyan said her own words. “You might. She has her own journey to follow. It may lead her back to you, or it may lead her somewhere else. But I hope that you find her again, my lady.”

  My mother bowed her head, not speaking, and behind my wall I cried silently into the sleeve of my suit. I should hate her. She tried to change my life for me without giving me a say. At every turn she tried to make me someone I was not. But I could never hate the woman who raised me.

  One by one, the members of the table asked for a message from the dead, all save Maske and the man with the clockwork hand.

  “I’ve said all I wanted to say to those I have lost,” were the physician’s only remarks. I wondered if that were true. By that point, my tears had dried into stiff tracks on my cheeks.

  Cyan performed beautifully, perhaps too beautifully. She plucked the details from their minds, molding them to the tale they wanted and creating the illusion of what life was like after death. A world much like ours, but softer around the edges, like a dream. The dead could shift their realities, and time and pain left no mark. Religious Elladans believed that the dead rested in the afterlife before coming back to the world for another life. But if the Lord and Lady felt they had lived their lives with sin and evil, then Styx kept them submerged in darker currents for longer.

  I flitted behind the walls, adding the sound effects as needed.

  She should have not been so detailed. If they knew what she was really doing, they would lock her in prison. Or put her into a hospital and examine her. Just as they would do with me.

  At the end of the séance, she asked all of the spirits to congregate in the center of the table to prepare to return to the spirit world through the crystal ball. The servants blew out more of the candles. In the near darkness, I sneaked from the hidden wall and crouched between Cyan and Maske, reaching through their legs to wobble the table. If we’d been able to take our mechanized table from the Kymri Theatre, I wouldn’t have needed to leave my hiding place, but it was too heavy to move. People gasped. The center of the table had a hole so I could reach up and switch the lever at the bottom of the crystal ball. It glowed blue, a cheap trick rather than true Vestige. Cyan chanted in Temri, and the glow faded.

  Before I retreated, I crept around to Cyril and slipped a note into the pocket of his blazer. But as I left, the physician’s elbow grazed me. He looked down and met my eyes.

  I felt a visceral shock. We stared at each other in an impasse. He turned from me, letting me scurry back to the wall, with the rest of the séance none the wiser.

  I darted behind the wall and glanced through the peephole, shivering at the near miss.

  Tears still slid down Lady Ashvale’s cheeks, and other eyes were wet.

  Cyan, I thought. In the future, I think you should tone it down. You’ve really upset them.

  I know! I know. Her thoughts were frantic. I thought I was helping them.

  Maybe you are in the long run. In the short term, they are heartbroken. And remember, we’re using them for our own gain, too.

  As they left, they took a moment to thank Cyan, holding her hand, sliding extra coins into her palm. She thanked them with a grave incline of her head. The Royal Physician was effusive, saying it was a marvelous performance. She shook her head haughtily at him. “It was far more than a performance,” she said, her voice sharp.

  “Ah, but of course.”

  Lord and Lady Elmbark took Maske, Cyan, and Drystan into the other room to settle payment.

  “I’ll be just a moment,” he said, pulling his gloves back on slowly. “And meet you in the hall. I wish to ruminate on the séance if it’s not too much trouble.”

  “You’re never trouble, Doctor,” Lady Elmbark demurred. “Thank you for coming, and we’ll see you at your lecture next week.”

  “It will be a pleasure.”

  When they left, he finished tugging on his gloves.

  “Well,” he said. “You can come out now, if you wish.”

  Bollocks.

  “Just want to say a quick hello and congratulate you on a job well done. I almost did not see you.”

  If I stayed silent, would he leave me alone?

  He waited, patiently staring at where I was hiding. He wasn’t going to give up.

  Resigned, I took a breath and opened the hidden door and peeked around it.

  “Hello there,” he said. He squinted at me. “I assume you’re there under that mask.”

  I coughed, embarrassed, and feeling unsure why I had come out from behind the walls. Curiosity. Idiocy.

  Quicker than I expected, he darted toward me and pulled off the mask. His eyes flashed with recognition, and I realized my error too late.

  “I thought so. Nice to finally meet you, Iphigenia.”

  I froze.

  He held out his hand and he said the words that, somehow, I almost expected. “I believe you know who I am. I am the Royal Physician of Imachara. My name is Doctor Samuel Pozzi.”

  23

  THE DOCTOR

  “The Royal Physician of Ellada is one of the most esteemed positions. The doctor, when in residence, attends to the royal family in all of their health needs. Sometimes, the physician is called abroad to oversee important medical developments to take back for the good of the citizens of Ellada. Often, Royal Physician
s have known more about the royals than even their closest advisers, and have therefore become advisers in turn.”

  A History of Ellada and its Colonies, Professor Caed Cedar, Royal Snakewood University.

  I stumbled backward. The physician held out his hand. “Wait.”

  “What do you want?” My eyes flashed to the door, hoping Drystan or the others would come through.

  “I want to speak with you. We have much to discuss, do we not?” His voice was clipped and perfectly articulated.

  “How do you feel about pretending you never saw me, don’t know who I am, and I just go on my merry way?” I hid behind the sarcasm, but the quiver in my words gave me away.

  He laughed.

  “I’m not out to capture you, Iphigenia.”

  “That’s not my name.”

  “No, it isn’t any longer, is it? Alright then. Micah.”

  Styx. “How do you know who I am?”

  “A little birdie whispered in my ear.”

  The gears fell into place. “You. You’re the second client of the Shadow.”

  “And which Shadow would that be?” He smiled and tilted his head, as if confused.

  “Shadow Elwood.”

  “Ah, yes. He found you for me. I wasn’t planning on meeting you, until I realized you’d be here tonight.”

  “What do you want?”

  He shook his head. “You’re not acting very ladylike.”

  “Never did. Caused my mother a lot of grief.”

  “The Lady Laurus. It must have been difficult, seeing her here tonight.”

  “You don’t know how I feel.” I sounded so surly, but I could not help it. The man who gave me to my parents had appeared out of nowhere like a ghost. Shock knocked all manners aside.

  He rubbed the back of his neck with his false hand. “This is not going well.”

  “You’re being enigmatic. I don’t like enigmatic people. Why’d you hire a Shadow to spy on me?”

  “No nefarious reason, I assure you. I was merely curious to see how you have been doing. You were my charge, and I felt responsible. When I discovered you ran away, I wanted to find out why, and see how I could help.”