by Chele Cooke
He slid back to sitting and nodded.
Annalise took her seat opposite him and took one of his hands in both of her own. His skin was warm. There were calluses along the outside of his index finger and she wondered how long Lachlan Tack had been holding a gun for a living. He wasn’t old, thirty at the most, and yet he carried himself as someone much older. He had the worries of someone older. Too much for a young man to carry.
She closed her eyes then, sliding her hand along his and wrapping her fingers around his wrist. His pulse thudded, strong, steady, and predictable. It didn’t take much to reach further. It was more difficult than it had been with his sister but he was easy enough to find amongst the masses.
He was younger, much younger than he was now, little more than a boy. He stood in an open doorway, watching a couple run away into the night. The man looked back and two pairs of dark blue gazes met with each other. The man grimaced and quickly turned away. The young Lachlan gritted his teeth and went back into the house.
The water seemed to come from nowhere. Where everything was dry one moment, puddles of guilt and regret spread and deepened until it was around her ankles. She watched Lachlan wade through it without pausing, the water not holding him back the way it did her. She struggled as the waves lapped around her shins, her knees, and before she reached the doorway it was up to her hips. Lachlan bent under the water and sat on the side of a bed. He brushed dark hair from a young girl’s face and told the sleeping child that it would be okay. They would be better off.
Annalise gasped for breath before she was plunged back under the water. She could barely touch the ground for the waves, thrashing her arms to keep her head above the tide of responsibility. Every time she was thrust under, she could feel his guilt of that moment. The weight of the guilt and secrets he had kept from his sister made it difficult to swim. She thrust herself upwards, getting one clean gasp of air before the guilt swallowed the rest of the room.
When she found him again he was stood with his arms outstretched, pleading with someone. His face was drawn in pain and desperation. His fingers trembled as he stretched further. Annalise crept closer. His guilt remained within him this time and there was a scar on his cheek that the Lachlan in her reading room didn’t yet possess. He was dishevelled and panicked. Annalise placed her hand on his shoulder, stepping around him to look at the person he was pleading with. She leapt back as the crack of a gunshot rang through her.
Her chair clattered out behind her and when she opened her eyes she was on her feet, her fingers pressed hard against her lips. She breathed through her nose in hard snorts. Memories dripped from every crack and crevice, water pouring from every pore, but as she swept her fingers across her skin, she was dry.
“What? What did you see?”
She looked down at him. His dark blue eyes narrowed to slits and he leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. There was no guilt to him now, he looked harder, stronger, and completely untouchable again.
“Let me guess. Horrible death, or love?” his voice was snide as she blinked back at him.
“Lachlan,” she breathed.
She looked around the room, trying to find something, anything, that would reassure her. There had been a gunshot and yet there was no blood, nor a gun. Her gaze darted to Lachlan and settled on his fingers where she knew his skin was rough and stiff.
“Do you know me?” she asked.
“What?”
The chair was on the floor and she righted it with shaking hands. She placed it in front of the table with sure, precise motions. She knew exactly where it should stand but not why. Her hand slid across her stomach.
“Are you alright?”
Annalise sat and pulled off the headscarf. It felt tight and hot against her skin, unnatural. She never wore scarves, they weren’t useful. She placed it on the table. It looked gaudy and false, not her taste at all. There were too many colours and patterns. It wasn’t natural for things to be so bright, was it?
“Your name is Lachlan, you’re in the military,” she said.
“Yes,” he replied. His eyes narrowed even further and he leaned towards her. “Is this your reading? It’s not very good.”
“Reading?” she asked. Her gaze flashed across the table, but there was no book. A stack of cards was ruffled on one side of the table, and without thinking, she reached out to straighten them. Her fingers stilled against the smooth card. They felt so familiar that it made her heart ache but as she turned the top one over there was nothing she could remember seeing before.
“Who am I?” she asked. “I know you, but… but I can’t… I can’t remember.”
On the face side of the card, a woman stood in a flowing white gown. Every detail had been painstakingly drawn by hand. She could feel the ridges where the pens had made their marks. The woman clutched a baby to her breast. The woman in the picture looked so serene that Annalise could only smile.
Her gaze jerked up and met Lachlan’s suspicious stare.
“Lachlan,” she said slowly. “Where’s the baby?”
The face of his gold pocket watch was scuffed and partially opaque. After years of use it needed winding almost every week and yet he never thought to replace it. There were better timepieces, he knew. There were watches with digital faces that automatically changed times as you crossed borders and clocks that updated themselves on each new planet. Communication units and litcoms were programmed to show the faces of clocks when they were not in use. Cole liked his old pocket watch. It was so out of date that it was practically an antique and yet he dared not exchange it for another. His watch was the time to which the show ran. He was the order to which the Cirque operated. He had taken on that responsibility long ago and like his watch, he had guarded his role with his life and occasionally the lives of others.
Right on time to his watch, Marcus strode from the ring and into the staging area. His jeans were dirty and torn in places, which Cole hated. He knew that the man was talented, one of his most talented on the ship in fact but apparently he could not think to dress the part. It didn’t matter all that much, seeing as people rarely saw the real Marcus. They saw the gentleman in the crisp suit and top hat, not the scruffy man behind those unnaturally bright blue eyes.
Cole tapped his foot impatiently as Marcus turned to ensure his props were being placed in the right areas. They were, of course. The stagehands made it their job to know exactly where everything went. The large, upright mirror was propped against the wall, reflecting an elongated Cole. It was, unsurprisingly, completely intact, despite regularly staged smashes.
“Marcus,” Cole said, turning away from the mirror. “Did your performance go as planned?”
Marcus flicked his ponytail off his shoulder and peered back at him. He tugged his sleeves down over his wrists but no cards or flowers came pouring out like the cheap entertainers on the central planets. He surveyed every inch of Cole’s face from the furrowed brow to the tightened jaw and he grinned.
“Every performance goes as planned, Mr. Hatliffe,” he answered.
“Did you see anything?” Cole asked. “A girl in the audience?”
“There are a lot of girls in the audience.” Marcus’s crooked grin was slicker than the cogs in the engines.
Cole stepped forwards, his eyes narrowed as he grasped Marcus by the arm. The man didn’t make a sound as he was yanked forwards, brought so close that Cole could smell the smoke from the cigarette used in his act.
“You know what I mean, Marcus,” he sneered. “Was there anyone different?”
“This is an outlying planet, there is rarely anything different.”
He had to restrain himself from punching the slick smirk from the younger man’s face. Marcus knew how talented he was and his ego rivalled his gift. Cole’s breath rattled through his teeth.
“So, there was no girl in the audience? One that could see past your illusions?”
Marcus leaned as far back as he could without breaking Cole’s tight grasp
on his elbow. His bright blue eyes flickered as he searched his face again.
“There was one,” he admitted. “She wasn’t as drawn in. The illusion wasn’t completely broken but there were times when she could see the truth. I can feel it when they slip past the net.”
Cole released him and took a step away.
“What does she look like?”
Marcus pursed his lips and reached up to rake his fingers through the strands of his ponytail. He stared unabashed at him but Cole was no longer paying attention to the illusionist. He gazed past him towards the wall. Inside the mirror, a mist fogged across the glass like the condensation of a cold morning.
Releasing Marcus, Cole strode across the gap. The glass was cold as he placed his hand against it and smeared away the condensation. Inside the mirror stood a woman, a girl not much over twenty. She looked around the edge of the condensation before she stared out of the mirror at Cole. She smiled tentatively and reached up to touch an orange gem at her throat.
“Where was she?” Cole asked.
The girl disappeared as quickly as she had come. The condensation and the smears of his fingertips across the glass vanished. Marcus tapped his finger against the air, counting.
“Starboard rim, third from the back and seventh… no eighth from the second stair.”
Cole pushed past him and slipped past the heavy velvet. Out in the ring, three contortionists were slithering into unnatural positions that made the audience squirm. Their costumes were second layers of skin that left little to the imagination and the three moved as if they were naked, lovers slipping into intimate and impossible positions.
He was at the side of the ring, peering through the gloom of the lowered lights. He found the second staircase that ran through the seats and counted to the eighth along, third from the back. A man had the seat, pulling his collar from his neck, his gaze glued on the triplets. Cole swore under his breath and went back to the stairs, counting eight in the other direction.
There was a space between the two women, a space too conspicuous to be ignored. Whoever had sat there had left so recently that the spot had not yet been filled.
The girl Annalise had told him about and the one Marcus had pointed him to, the girl who could see past their cloaks and talents, was gone.
“I don’t understand,” Hadley panted. “What’s going on?”
Her shoulder hurt. She’d knocked into people as they passed, Jack pulling her too fast to avoid them. She tripped over her feet on the unfamiliar ground. Jack wouldn’t slow down.
“Your brother saw something he shouldn’t,” Jack said. “Now I have to get you both out of here.”
Hadley bit on her bottom lip. Everything Lachlan had seen since stepping through the gates could have been counted as something he shouldn’t have seen, given his position. He’d seen people intoxicated which was enough to order a raid. But now he’d seen the layout of the ship, he’d seen their numbers.
Not that it made any sense that Jack would know that. She’d mentioned her brother to Jack but the two hadn’t met. How did he know that the man who’d seen something was her brother unless Lachlan had mentioned her? How did Jack even know she’d still be in the main ring when he came to find her?
“Okay, so Lachlan saw something, why does that mean we have to go?”
Jack glanced back, shaking his head. His gaze brushed over her face but this time Hadley didn’t feel the shudder at the way he watched her.
“My boss is already looking for you.”
The carefree, charming man she had met earlier in the night was gone. His hair was messy and hung in awkward clumps where he had been tugging at it. His smile was gone, his lips pressed into a thin line from the moment he had appeared at her shoulder in the ring. The warmth of his eyes had frozen in worry and uncertainty. He’d been nice to her before, so she’d agreed to go with him when he asked. Even though he’d not said anything then, she had known it was serious.
“Your boss?” she asked. “The one we saw earlier?”
“Yeah.”
Hadley gave a sharp tug, pulling him to a stop. He turned back to her but his gaze went straight over her shoulder, scanning the crowd. Gritting her teeth, Hadley reached up and took hold of his chin, turning his face towards her.
“Why would your boss be looking for me?” she asked. “Is he still angry that you took me backstage? I didn’t even see anything.”
Jack growled under his breath and pried her fingers from his chin. He looked past her again and checked over his own shoulder. Ushering her a little further through the crowd, he drew her towards an alcove off to one side. He ducked in, pulling her with him. Pressing his fingers into his eyes, he rubbed his hands vigorously over his face and pushed his hair back from his forehead. It flopped back immediately but he paid it no mind.
“I was told to keep an eye on your brother, alright,” he said in a quick, low voice. “Make sure he had a good time and enjoyed himself enough that perhaps he wouldn’t bring a squad down on our asses tomorrow.”
Hadley opened her mouth to reply but found there was nothing that she could say. She’d not wanted to tell Jack that her brother was a coalition soldier. Jack was funny and kind, he was attractive and made her stomach do flips in a way it had never done before. She didn’t want to think about the fact her brother might have him in jail by the next night.
She’d wanted to think that he was nice but Jack’s words made her suspicious. He had been watching Lachlan, ordered to spend time with him. She gulped as she wondered whether he had been ordered to spend time with her as well, using her to make sure Lachlan cooperated with them. No, that didn’t make sense. That didn’t explain why his boss had been angry to see them together.
Jack laid his hand on her shoulder.
“They know exactly who he is and now he’s seen something, something that won’t be forgotten because he sees the good attractions,” Jack continued. “If my boss finds out he’ll do just about anything to make sure your brother doesn’t talk.”
It had all sounded a bit ridiculous up until now, like perhaps Jack was overreacting. She still didn’t know what Lachlan had seen, nor why that meant Jack’s boss would be looking for her. Yes, she was Lachlan’s sister, but that wouldn’t stop her brother from doing his duty. Nothing stopped her brother from his duty, let alone her wishes.
“Why are you helping us?” she asked. “Surely you’d want your boss to stop him? After all, you’re part of the cirque too.”
He paused for a long time, staring down at his shoes. When he looked at her again, his eyes were wide.
“Because something is seriously wrong here,” he said. “And I’ve seen what he’s willing to do when things go wrong. I have other people to protect too. If Hatliffe finds him… it won’t just be your brother. We’ll all be screwed.”
“He’d hurt him?” Hadley asked.
It was the way Jack looked at her that made the decision. It was the tight line of his jaw and the way his gaze darted to anywhere but her. For some reason this cirque worker he was truly worried for Lachlan’s safety instead of ensuring the Cirque didn’t get into trouble.
“Alright,” she nodded. “I trust you. We’ll leave. Just take me to my brother.”
“Anna,” Lachlan said “That’s your name, right? Anna?”
He leaned towards the woman on the other side of the table.
The buzz and the heat had gone from his body, leaving him feeling sore and cloudy. His temple was beginning to pound. Nothing was funny anymore and the cirque had lost the glimmering sheen it had been painted with. The pretty fortune teller sat with her head in her hands, staring at the tablecloth with a desolate desperation.
“I don’t know,” she murmured. “I can’t…”
“You can’t what? Remember?”
He wasn’t the best person to comfort anyone, he knew that, let alone someone he didn’t know. Still, with no one who knew the fortune teller nearby, Lachlan was on his own with this one. There was no one who might p
rovide a better comfort or at least be able to remind her of the things she couldn’t place. Lachlan shuffled his chair around the side of the table until he could take her hand. She looked up at him and shook her head. Her braids were still perfectly in place. Everything was in place except her. The mocking mischief that had been in her eyes earlier in the night had faded like the cirque sheen. She looked older, more worn, and fear glazed her face.
“I can’t remember,” she repeated.
Lachlan stared at her fingers where his own wrapped around them. Her hands were small and delicate, the copper skin flawless. Against his own worn fingers, hers looked like they’d been sculpted to be as perfect as a doll.
“The other man, he called you Anna.”
“Other man?” she asked.
He growled under his breath and leaned back in his chair, trying to think of a way to explain. The more he thought about it, the less he could remember. Everything was shiny and blurred around the man he’d spent some of his night with. The edges around him were hard to pick out, like the cloaked edges of the ship earlier in the day. His name was… he was always so good with names and now he couldn’t remember this one for the life of him. Lachlan let out another growl and slumped in defeat before the woman who couldn’t remember her own name, let alone anyone else’s… except his. She knew his name.
He watched her cautiously and with no way to explain it all to her, he remained next to her and kept a gentle grip on her small perfect hands, the silence asking questions neither of them had the answer to.
Lachlan tugged his hands back as the drape was swept aside. A blush crept into his cheeks and he turned, clasping his hands tight in his lap. He’d not been able to think of a thing to say to the fortune teller as they waited. He wasn’t even sure what they were waiting for anymore. His head pounded and his stomach churned uncomfortably. He should still be checking out the cirque, he’d not even seen the main show to ascertain how many men were within the walls. Yet still he’d sat there, not able to leave the woman before him.
