by Zan Safra
We go to the armchairs and gather about the map. The heat of the fire turns the room to a furnace. I clasp my hands in my lap and lock my fingers, squeezing to stop their shaking. Hold fast…they are only memories, they are nothing now…
“All right,” Ayanda says. “The plan.”
She taps the map. “We know she’ll likely make her move tomorrow night, when Mascherata begins. The Signoria will lift the curfew and Naturals will fill the streets, Venetians and thousands of visitors. It’s the perfect opportunity for the fiend to enact her plan.”
Belle purses her lips, thinking. “She did say that she would strike in only days.”
Strike. Fight. Blood, blood flying everywhere, blood and more blood and more blood and—
“It’s simple,” Yurei murmurs. “We kill her before she begins.”
“That will destroy the vampires, won’t it?” Belle asks.
Ayanda nods. “Destroying her will kill those that she created, yes.”
Andreas sounds confident again, certain. “Luckily, we’ve a decent opportunity to do just that,” he says. “The Mascherata ball.”
The hearth turns the parlor to a furnace. I cannot breathe. I grip the edges of the cushion beneath me, squeezing until my fingers sink into the stuffing. Concentrate, do not sink, if you sink you are no help to anyone…
The others murmur. We can’t all sneak inside in a crowd…perhaps two of us through the ball, and the other three some different way…I’d not be surprised if she’s at the ball in some disguise…she does love theatrics…
A ball. A crowd. A crowd, pressing in around me, hiding me until…
Hold fast…do not fall…DON’T FALL!
I fall.
It is the day of the trials.
It is dark in the holding place. There are only twenty of us left. I am seven years old and the smallest. I am very cold. The half-healed incisions on my scalp ache. Everyone has them. The wounds must pain them as well, but no one complains. Subject Seventeen always fought and complained, before she disappeared.
I hide in the back of the crowd, making myself smaller. No one notices me. All of them either pity or mock me, for my appearance and my eyesight and because none of the procedures ever improve me. They call me the little blind rat.
We gather at the gate of the stone ring. An awful brilliant light shines above it, so bright that it hurts to look at it. The magisters sit around the ring, but I cannot make out their faces. I can only see Subject Fifteen. He stands in the middle of the ring, swinging his shillelagh at his side. He is twelve years old and towers over all of us. He likes to fight. Last night he tore one of the iron bars from his bedframe and threw it at Twenty-Eight. It nearly struck his head off.
Everyone talks of him. He’ll be the final subject, they whisper. He’ll surely be the Hyde.
He has won the last three trials, against Forty-Three, Twenty-One, and Nineteen. The winner always chooses his or her opponent for the next trial. But he shan’t choose me. He cannot see me. I am a little blind rat. I can hide and no one will ever, ever find me…
The fighting-master Magister Byrne enters the ring. Everyone trembles. Everyone saw what happened to the last three.
But I am a little rat and no one will see me, no one will ever, ever see me…
Fifteen calls out, “I choose Forty-Nine!”
The others back away from me, leaving me plain to see. Subject Thirty-Six cries, “She can’t fight! You know that!”
Magister Byrne glares at him. Fifteen grins. He wanted this. He wanted the weakest.
“Forty-Nine,” Magister Byrne calls, “to the ring.”
I cry. Tears well from my eyes and run down my cheeks. Crying will make it all worse, but I cannot help it, I am frightened, I am small and weak and useless and scared and Fifteen will—
Someone grabs my shoulder and shoves me towards the barred gate. I know it is Twenty-Two. “Have done with it,” he hisses in my ear. “You’re worthless anyway.”
No one else says anything as I walk through the parted crowd. The ring and its awful light draw nearer. The light and the tears blind me completely. I trip over my too-long skirt and fall against the gate.
I cannot get away. There is nowhere to go. No one will save me.
Magister Byrne opens the gate and pulls me into the ring. The light burns my eyes like hot irons. Magister Byrne pushes a staff into my hands. It is so heavy that I drop it. I scramble about until I find it and heave it up. Magister Byrne shoves me towards Fifteen and barks, “Begin!”
Fifteen is upon me in an instant. I try to run and fall. Fifteen’s staff smashes the wall, showering me with chips of rubble. I drop the staff and run away, feeling blindly along the wall until I find the gate again. I try to pull it open but it is locked. No one will let me out, no one will help me, not the others or the magisters or anyone—
Twenty-Eight screams, “Forty-Nine! Behind you!’
A horrible smashing blow throws me into the air and down. I cannot even scream. I am broken into a thousand pieces and it hurts, it hurts--
He…hurt…me…
I hear Fifteen’s footsteps. He laughs. He has already won. Now he need only finish the trial.
He hurt me.
An even worse pain bursts inside my head, splitting my brain like a chisel. My shattered bones move under my skin, twitching and snapping. Crackles speed up my spine. With every jerk of bone more feeling returns to me, pain and fear and—
HE HURT ME!
I am up. On my feet. Running at him. He no longer smiles. He swings his staff at me. It strikes me. Snaps in two. I tackle him and throw us both down. Broken staff. Grabbing one piece.
YOU HURT ME YOU HURT ME YOU HURT ME YOU HURT ME—
Blood and more blood and more blood and more blood and more blood—
The heat of a hearth pulls me out. The parlor of the Palaso Rurico surrounds me. All of the others gather about the map, pointing, murmuring, tracing routes.
Tears dot the skirt of my vestment. I dab them from my eyes, slowly, without drawing attention.
They gave me my own cell after the trial. It had a dresser and a mirror and a trunk of gray uniforms. I tried to take down the mirror, but I was too small and dropped it. It shattered.
I curled up in the corner and wept. I wished I had died in the ring. I wished I had never existed at all.
But then someone came to me.
I raised my head and saw a shard of the broken mirror leaning against the wall, facing me. I was not alone. Another young girl sat beside me. She looked exactly as I did, a twin, as solid as anyone else.
Her reflection wrapped its arms around mine, holding me. I will always protect you, she whispered. I promise.
I felt her embrace. She was real. She would keep me safe. She promised...
The parlor returns. Its mirror hangs across from me, holding a sight I have avoided for years. I look into the reflection’s eyes.
You didn’t keep me safe. You’re a murderess.
And I hate you.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Yurei
THE PALASO RURICO’S BALLROOM is dim, but for a long shaft of moonlight illuminating the marble floor. I stand in its center, my left hand loosely caging my weapon’s weight, in perfect stillness, perfect silence.
Attack.
I launch my weapon at an imaginary enemy, a phantom drekavac. The vampire vanishes with the strike. I draw in the weight and attack again and again, using every movement and trick I know to kill shadow after shadow. I dodge imagined claws, pierce and bash drekavac faces, until a true shadow appears in the corner of my vision. Ayanda!
My weight flies back at me. I duck it and barely catch it, slapping it back into the mechanism. Why do I always become such an oaf whenever…
I see her clearly then, as I’ve never seen her before. She wears one of the Mascherata costumes Andreas brought, a gold-embroidered maroon garment that seemed only a lurid bundle of cloth when I
saw it last. But on her it’s a glimmering gown, making her glow in the moonlight like a spirit. Her hair is twisted into intricate braids, her delicate hands sheathed in golden gloves. But her eyes hold me, so dark and brilliant and…
She takes one end of her sash and lets it fall. “I look like a circus clown.”
“No! Of course not! You look—”
I catch myself. I’d flush red if that were even possible.
Ayanda quirks her mouth to one side, plainly not believing me, and goes to the window overlooking the square. I try to straighten my own clothing. Belle ordered the automata to sew me more, exactly like my own but new. At least I’m no longer in rags.
Ayanda rests her hands on the sill. “It’s started.”
I needn’t sharpen my hearing. The noise of the festival easily penetrates the glass. Chattering Naturals cross the square, billowing costumes rustling. Oarlocks creak as decorated gondolas glide up and down the canals. The colors of distant music crackle in my head. Mascherata has begun.
The ball begins in an hour.
“Is the plan...”
She nods. I nod. We only just solidified our plan to sneak into the Palaso Ducale. The five of us will separate. Ayanda, Jette and Andreas will enter through the ball in disguise. Belle and I will slip in through the southern wall, into the maze of secret passageways burrowing through the palace.
“Are you certain we’ll find her at the ball?” I ask.
She nods again, staring out. “Yes.”
“How can you know?”
She doesn’t answer at once, only softly presses her hand to her heart. “It’s in her character,” she says. “A masked ball. A performance.”
I can see her thinking, as though she’s constructing a device in her head, attaching piece after piece. “Think of her theatrics. Moroi in sinister masks, her grand declarations. She enjoys spectacle. She isn’t the sort to direct her plans from the shadows.”
She brings one fist against her other palm. “She’ll be there in some disguise. I promise you. There, in the center of everything.”
I turn over the rest of the plan in my mind. Ayanda, Jette and Andreas will prowl the ball in their disguises until they find the fiend. Belle and I will make our way to a particular chamber, the Room of the Four Doors, where we’ll create some grand spectacle, a lure that the fiend can’t ignore. She’ll come to us. The three of them will follow. When they and the fiend reach the Four Doors, we’ll strike, attack as one, and finish her.
Fear gnaws at me like a venomous worm. I don’t like this. I never make plans. They never play out as they should.
Ayanda drums her fingers on the sill, her teeth sinking into her lip. “What is it?” I ask.
“Nothing. I’m only thinking.”
The lie darkens her voice, turning its silver to ash. “What’s wrong?”
She twists her sash like a dishrag. “Nothing.”
“That’s not true.”
She turns to me. I look away, out at the starry sky, but still I see her reflection gazing at me, a look I can’t understand.
She lowers her eyes, winding her sash through her fingers. “Are you frightened?”
I won’t lie, not to her. “Yes.”
She wrings the sash like a dishrag. “You shouldn’t be here. All of you should have gone. This isn’t your battle. I dragged you into it.”
“Ayanda—”
“If things go awry I’ll have killed you all.”
“No. You mustn’t—”
She flings the sash away, her deadened voice exploding into jagged, searing white. “You should go. You should run! The fiend will—”
“Ayanda!”
I can’t bear this, I can’t bear to see her so frightened, so…
Ayanda lets the crumpled sash fall. Her arms slide around me and she lays her head against my chest.
The shock of it knocks the air from my lungs. My heart beats like a bird’s. This can’t be true, this must be some dream…Ayanda can’t truly be here, holding me…
My arms fold around her. I rest my cheek against her beautiful hair. I don’t know what it is that I feel. Ayanda, Ayanda is here, holding me, and I’m holding her, and we’re so close, so close…
Her arms tighten around me. She trembles, burying her face in my chest. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand to see her frightened, there must be something, something I can do…
I whisper in her ear, “See what I tell you to see.”
The black flames of my voice wrap around us. I murmur unheard, describing an ancient memory. I’ve forgotten so much of the past, gladly, but I never forgot this place.
The illusion takes shape around us. The moonlight brightens, filling a cavern formed of gleaming rock. Stalactites of ice shine with a faint blue glow, soft frozen flames. Lucifern moss patterns a ground of black stone, trapping pools of gleaming ice. Wind sighs through the icicles, carrying the whisperings of the trees, the scent of mountain snow.
Ayanda lifts her head and gasps. “What is this?”
“It’s…where I went when I was afraid.”
“Here?” She pulls away. The sudden space between us is unbearable. “It’s marvelous.”
She reaches out to touch an icicle. I whisper again, giving the illusion texture, the chill of ice. She touches its surface, a wondering smile brushing her lips. “How do you do it?”
“My voice.”
“Yes, but how? It’s as though you can…” She turns to me. “This is an illusion, isn’t it? We can’t have left the ballroom.”
“No.”
“Then how?”
I don’t know how to answer. I can’t explain it. My voice simply is, woven into the fabric of who I am. I mean to conjure and do. It takes only a thought.
“It’s a conjuring,” I say. “I speak to you. I tell you what to see. Describe it.”
She lowers her hand. “You can create anything you can imagine?”
“Anything you can.”
“Me?”
“You don’t see precisely what I see,” I tell her. “I can tell you to see an icicle, but it’s your mind that creates it.”
I conjure grave-sprites, balls of blue flame the size of a fist. They flit around us like fireflies, drawing close to investigate. Ayanda holds out a hand. A sprite dances through the air and hovers above it. “What color do you see?” I ask.
“Gold,” she says. The grave-sprite floats away to investigate a ripple in the cavern wall. Ayanda folds her hand. “You were happy here?”
Happy?
“I was…safe.”
The wind sighs past the icicles. No one ever dared follow me here. They thought it a place of spirits, dangerous things, the howling souls of the damned. But I never encountered a ghost.
A smile tugs at her mouth. “Here?”
“There’s music here.”
Ayanda raises her eyebrows. I nod. “Listen.”
I lower my voice, giving the memory deeper sound, the breath of the wind. Its colors are iridescent, an ever-changing river of light. It passes the towers of ice, sweeping around them…
“Singing,” Ayanda whispers.
She turns about, listening. “It’s a song.”
“Song?”
“Shh! Listen!”
I hear only the sigh of the wind, a cadence without melody. Ayanda hums notes I’ve never heard, ones that must come from her own imagination. There’s music in her too.
I close my eyes, watching the silver hues ripple in the dark. A streak of deep black twines through it, not dry like smoke but shining, a ribbon of night sky…
My voice.
I open my eyes. The echo of her melody and my harmony lingers in the hidden ballroom. Ayanda stares at me, openmouthed. “You’re smiling.”
Smiling?
Ayanda looks away, awkwardly clearing her throat. She hesitates, as though longing to speak but too nervous to do so. Then she looks to me again. “Why have you stayed?”
she asks. “You might die. You know that.”
“I can’t leave you.”
She blinks, unsure. There’s too much I don’t know, too much I must know. “Why haven’t you asked more of me?” I ask. “You know nothing of me.”
“I know some things,” she says. “You’re brave beyond measure. You’re kind.”
Kind?
I can’t accept it. I can’t lie, not to her. “You don’t know what I am.”
She sets her jaw. “You’re Unnatural. Like all of us.”
“No.” She must understand, I have to make her understand… “You don’t know what I’ve done.”
“You can’t have done anything so terrible.” Her face sets, her voice firms. “Not you.”
“I…” It comes out. The truth. “I’m a monster, Ayanda.”
“No!” She marches towards me. “A monster would have abandoned us to the carabinieri. A monster would have left Jette and Belle to die. A monster wouldn’t have surrendered himself to save a theater of utter strangers!”
She seizes my hands, squeezing. “Those who hurt you are the monsters, not you. Do you hear? They didn’t twist you. You’re too strong.”
The scar on my wrist crackles with pain. “I…I’m not strong, Ayanda.”
If I were strong I would have fought harder…overcome them…
“You are! You’re nothing like them!”
But I am…
She unfolds one hand, tentatively reaching out to touch my mask. My hand snaps out and catches hers. She lets it slip away.
“You can tell me what happened, if you like,” she says. “But nothing will change how I see you. Nothing.”
Her gaze meets mine again. Every thought flees my head. Her eyes, so dark but so bright, so…and she’s so close to me, so close…
A blow strikes me like a boulder, a racing train, knocking me to pieces, flinging me back together. I can’t…I don’t…Ayanda…
Her eyes widen. I don’t know what I see in her gaze, I don’t…no, it can’t truly happen, not with her, not to someone like me, not with someone so brave and kind and beautiful…
She glances at my lips. I’ve never been so afraid that a moment would end. I know that any second she’ll pull away, turn away, but she doesn’t, she doesn’t…
