The Wingsnatchers

by Sarah Jean Horwitz

  She imagined Carmer staring at her, studying her wing without her permission. Leave it to humans to think that their feeble inventions could achieve what ancient faerie healing magic could not! The arrogance was infuriating.

  Grit unsheathed her sword and hacked savagely at the parchment, hot tears stinging her eyes. It was only the sound of raised voices outside the Moto-Manse that brought her back to herself.

  “This is an outrage!” protested the Amazifier.

  Grit leapt to the window and saw the old man hastening out the front door behind a tall, imposing stranger in a black robe.

  “You have no proof!”

  The stranger turned to face him so suddenly that the Amazifier nearly walked into his chest.

  “Nevertheless,” said the other man calmly, “the accusation has been made, and an inquiry must follow.” He swept away with a swish of his well-made cloak.

  Kitty and Carmer hovered nervously nearby. They looked as surprised to see the man in black as Grit was.

  “Master Antoine?” Kitty asked. “What in heavens is going on?”

  Carmer’s face fell as he watched the retreating figure. “I think I have an idea.”

  “Do you know what I was doin’? The other afternoon at the theater?”

  Kitty spooned a liberal amount of sugar into her tea and took a fortifying gulp. She and Carmer huddled at the Moto-Manse’s tiny kitchen table with their feet resting on the stove. It was a chilly autumn night, and neither of them felt like socializing with the other campers around a fire that evening.

  Carmer shook his head. As preoccupied then as he was now, he vaguely remembered something about Kitty’s bag being bigger than usual.

  “I was showin’ samples of my work to the costume designer at the opera house,” admitted Kitty. “One of the girls who cuts and drapes there complimented me on my costume after our show. She said they’ll need more hands on deck when the holiday season gets in swing.”

  “Were you always going to leave, Kitty?” asked Carmer. He tried to keep his voice even.

  “You and I both know this trip was the last hurrah, honey,” said Kitty, crossing her arms. “Did you really think we were gonna win that competition and keep runnin’ the circuit like old times? Or maybe, we’d book our own steady gig at the Orbicle?” Kitty laughed. “I knew you were dumb, Carmer, but I never took you for stupid. And you know what I mean.”

  Carmer shut his mouth and sipped his tea. The Amazifier’s cup sat on the table next to him, cold and untouched. The old man had retreated to the sleeping berths and hardly said a word after he told Kitty and Carmer about the man in black. The man was one of the judges of the competition, and he’d come to inform them that the Amazifier was suspended from the Seminal Symposium of Magickal Arts on suspicion of cheating. An “anonymous source” had placed a formal complaint with the judges, and now a full-scale inquiry would be made into the Amazifier’s act.

  The magical world was rife with theft—this was nothing new—but it would be bad press to ignore an official and public complaint during the Symposium, when the public eye was trained directly on the Orbicle. Until the internal investigation was over, the Amazifier was forbidden to compete, and since the final round of the competition was less than two days away, he was effectively blocked from the competition for good.

  Carmer couldn’t blame Kitty for making contingency plans. Not really. They all needed to survive in this world, and Kitty was a talented girl. What skills did Carmer have to fall back on? He didn’t think tinkering with toy soldiers would count for much on his application to any of the science academies in Skemantis.

  All at once, the futility of entering the Symposium seemed to crash down on him. Had he really thought they had a chance? Their little band of misfits barely scraped by on tips from small-town crowds who wouldn’t know a hat trick from a handkerchief. Even if they won the competition with Grit’s magic on their side, what happened after she went back to the Arboretum? People would start asking questions—questions Carmer couldn’t answer—and it wouldn’t be long before the public figured out that Antoine the Amazifier wasn’t so amazing after all.

  “I hope you get the job, Kitty,” Carmer said, and he meant it. It had been foolish of him to expect things to stay this way forever.

  Kitty ruffled Carmer’s hair. “But then, I think,” she said in mock horror, “ ‘Who’s gonna make those poor boys their tea?’ ”

  As soon as Carmer smelled burning paper, he knew something was wrong. He vaulted across the attic to the smoldering sheet on his desk and grabbed the nearest pair of safety gloves. He patted the embers out and looked around for other signs of fire, but there were none.

  Grit sat in the open window, still as a statue, her face turned away.

  “Grit?” Carmer asked. She didn’t acknowledge him. Carmer looked down at the ruined papers in his hands and recognized them instantly: the rough plans he’d sketched for a mechanical wing. Her mechanical wing, eventually. “Grit, I didn’t—”

  “Didn’t what, Carmer?” Grit interrupted, still facing the window. “Didn’t want me to see those until they were finished? Didn’t think I’d mind? Or didn’t know, because you never asked me?” She whipped around then, and Carmer could almost see the fire in her eyes.

  “I thought you’d be pleased!” he said, suddenly annoyed. As if his day could get any worse. “I thought maybe I could help you. You could fly on your own, you wouldn’t have to hide in my hat all the time . . .”

  “Oh, there it is,” said Grit, standing up. The lamps in the room started to flicker of their own accord. “There’s the real reason you thought of this—for your own convenience! Getting tired of carting your defective faerie around? Did you think I’d stay with you after all this was over? That I’d flutter behind you like your old horse in his reins, your own personal pet?”

  Carmer stood in stunned silence. He wasn’t good at confrontation—he never had been—and all the words he wanted to say in his own defense jumbled up in his head, ricocheting around in inarticulate streams of thoughts and feelings. Like when he was cornered by the bullies in the alley, or the other children in the orphanage so long ago, or by the adults who took his oddness and curiosity for insolence. Somewhere inside of him, a wall went up, and anything he might have said stopped right at the great lump in his throat.

  Grit saw the tears well up in Carmer’s eyes and let loose the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

  “You didn’t even ask me,” she repeated quietly. “You didn’t ask me what I wanted.”

  “I’m sorry, Grit,” Carmer managed.

  “I’m used to it,” she scoffed. “Most people don’t.” I don’t know why I thought you’d be any different.

  Carmer crumpled the ruined plans in his hand and threw them in the overflowing wastebasket. He sank down onto the floor and tossed aside his gloves. “We’ve been suspended from the competition,” Carmer said, lowering his head into his hands.

  “What?!”

  “Someone lodged an official complaint with the judging committee accusing us of cheating.”

  “But that’s ridiculous!” exclaimed Grit.

  Carmer just looked at her.

  “Oh. Well . . .”

  They both smiled grimly.

  “Do they have any proof?” she asked.

  “Not yet, but that doesn’t mean they won’t find any. It’s not safe for you here, Grit.”

  “It’s not safe for me anywhere,” Grit countered.

  Carmer sighed. “It’s all the Mechanist,” he said. “Titus Archer. He offered me a deal. Let him win the Symposium, keep quiet about his identity, and I get to work with him in his lab. I said no.”

  So an accusation of cheating was the Mechanist’s response to Carmer’s refusal. Grit couldn’t help feeling proud of the boy. “Oh, Carmer.”

  “I should never have used your magic in the first place,” he said. “If I hadn’t, maybe things wouldn’t be so messed up.”

  Grit’s sympathy
vanished. “Wait a minute, so this is my fault?”

  “Grit, I didn’t say that. Why do you always have to—”

  “No one forced you to help me, Felix Carmer,” said Grit, indignant once more. “We had a deal, and I held up my end of the bargain.”

  “Well, so did I!” Carmer said. “And look where it got both of us.”

  They turned away from each other, sulking in silence.

  “If that’s the way you feel about it, fine,” said Grit primly. “I know who the Mechanist is now. I can handle things on my own from here.”

  “Grit, wait a second!” protested Carmer, but the faerie jumped from the window ledge and shimmied down the ivy growing down the Moto-Manse’s side. She’d already climbed down from the wheel spokes and fled into the tall grass before Carmer even made it to the window. She was fast when she wanted to be.

  “Grit!” Carmer called, looking desperately for her small form in the thick, reedy grass. It was too dark outside to see much more than a few feet from the Moto-Manse.

  “Carmer, what on Earth are you yelling at?” came Kitty’s voice from downstairs.

  Carmer gave a frustrated sigh. “Nothing, Kitty!”

  Grit ran away from the Moto-Manse as fast as her short legs could carry her, the light of the moon peeking through the tall blades of grass her only guide. She didn’t look back. It was better this way, she told herself. For both of them.

  From her post in the shadows of the Moto-Manse, a little wooden maid watched the faerie princess dart away and shrunk back into the darkness.

  It was very, very late.

  Probably too late for respectable young ladies to be out on the town by themselves, Kitty Delphine knew, but then again, respectable young ladies didn’t run away from home to join the circus, either. She’d never been a conventional girl.

  Kitty tugged her faux rabbit fur shrug around her shoulders and took a fortifying sip of her drink. She sat at the bar in the lounge of the Legerdemain, one of the fancier hotels in Skemantis. It was a favorite of wealthy thespians, visiting businessmen, and all sorts of new money types looking to show off their wealth in the lap of luxury. She’d only managed to sneak in with her best gown and a promise to show one of the kitchen boys how to breathe fire.

  The gaslights were turned low—to add to the mysterious ambiance, Kitty supposed—and she had to squint to make out the faces of the group of men smoking at the billiard table on the other side of the hall.

  Not for the first time, she questioned what she was doing here, but then she remembered the look on poor little Carmer’s face when she’d mentioned looking for another job, and she steeled herself. She stole another glance at the men across the way from underneath her eyelashes. Sure enough, she recognized at least two of them as judges from the Symposium. The judging committee members were supposed to be a secret, but it was one of the worst kept in the city. But how to approach them?

  A man sat down next to her at the bar, blocking the group from view. Kitty dropped her gaze back down to her glass.

  “A rum swizzle, if you’d be so kind,” the man told the bartender. His smooth voice sounded awfully familiar.

  The bartender nodded and busied himself preparing the man’s drink.

  “And another glass of champagne for the lovely lady here,” added the man.

  Kitty nearly jumped.

  Conan Mesmer, the charismatic—if slightly slimy—emcee of the Symposium smiled wolfishly at her. “What brings you to this fine establishment, Miss Delphine? I would have thought the Amazifier’s retinue would be packing up by now.”

  Kitty wondered how he remembered her name.

  “I’m surprised you recognized me, Mr. Mesmer,” she said with a tinkling laugh. “Most people don’t pay us assistants any mind.”

  The bartender placed their drinks in front of them.

  “I make it a point to know all of the talent that graces my stage.” Mesmer slid a crisp bank note across the counter and told the bartender to keep the change. He was so slick it was almost comical; Kitty was surprised his hands didn’t leave a grease stain behind.

  “Word on the street is that your employer’s been suspended from the competition,” he stage-whispered. He, too, looked over at the table of smoking men, and even waved to one of them in greeting.

  “Which makes me wonder,” Mesmer continued, “what you could possibly be doing here at the very hotel where the majority of the Symposium’s judges are staying?” He raised his eyebrows suggestively, but his tone wasn’t accusatory. In fact, he looked almost amused.

  Kitty flashed a smile right back at him. “You caught me,” she whispered, leaning in closer to Mesmer. “I’m here to poison all the old coots’ drinks and blackmail them into giving us first place.”

  She’d taken a chance, but it paid off; Mesmer nearly snorted into his drink with laughter. He coughed and dabbed at his mouth with his handkerchief, carefully smoothing his silly goatee.

  “The Amazifier should let you write his bits,” Mesmer said, chuckling. “He has quite the comedienne on his hands.”

  “There won’t be any more laughs for us if we can’t make it into the last round,” Kitty said, pouting into her drink. “I was hoping I could run into one of the committee members here and persuade them to speed the inquiry along.”

  “And how exactly were you planning to persuade them, Miss Delphine?”

  Kitty took another sip of her champagne and shrugged, feeling foolish and out of place. It had been a mistake to come here. “Do you have a better idea?” she asked archly. She was tired, her feet hurt, and the sequins on her dress were chafing in uncomfortable places.

  “Fortunately for you,” said Mesmer frankly, swinging back his drink, “I have a soft spot for the underdogs in life, and I’m loathe to see the ‘marvelously modern’ Mechanist strut home with the grand prize three years in a row. It’s bad for business when the show gets predictable.” He shrugged.

  “You mean you’ll help us?” Kitty asked incredulously.

  Mesmer held up a hand. “I’ll see what I can do, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Your little act has ruffled quite a few important feathers around here, Miss Delphine.”

  “I know,” said Kitty heavily. “No one’s more surprised than me.”

  Mesmer gave her a questioning look, but didn’t press the issue. “You should be getting back to the camp. Have the front desk call you a cab.”

  Kitty’s heart sank down into her knees. She hadn’t given much thought to getting back, and she certainly couldn’t afford a carriage ride all the way to the city gates.

  “I’ll tell them to put it on my tab,” added Mesmer casually.

  “Oh, sir, I couldn’t—”

  “Nonsense. You can and you will,” interrupted Mesmer. “Call it superstition, but everyone in this town knows it, and so should you. Skemantis is not a safe place after dark.”

  A chill ran up Kitty’s spine despite the warmth of the room. “Thank you, sir.” She turned to leave, but Mesmer’s voice stopped her.

  “And Miss Delphine?”

  “Yes, Mr. Mesmer?”

  “I do hope you’re not actually cheating. It would be very disappointing indeed.”

  Yes, it would, thought Kitty on her way out of the lounge. She’d swallowed Carmer’s muddled explanations about the Phoenix Engine trick—there hadn’t been time to do much of anything but learn how not to roast herself alive—and she’d believed that all the improvements were his own inventions, a concerted effort to make up for the first poor performance. But now that they were serious contenders, someone really wanted them out of this competition, and accusations like this just didn’t come out of thin air. Felix Cassius Tiberius Carmer III had some serious explaining to do.

  15.

  UNDER INVESTIGATION

  Antoine the Amazifier, Kitty Delphine, and Felix Carmer looked out into the nearly empty house of the Orbicle and shielded their eyes against the bright stage lights. They stood in a row, unintentionally ordered shortest
to tallest, like criminals in a lineup—which is exactly what they felt like, Carmer most of all.

  A messenger had come from the Orbicle that morning instructing all members of the Amazifier’s act to present themselves at the theater for questioning that very afternoon. They had just enough time to wrangle all of their supplies together; Carmer hastily rewrote his notes for the Phoenix Engine, editing out everything to do with Grit and trying to string together a plausible explanation for the trick that did not involve a faerie princess driving a train.

  The Amazifier had clucked about the injustice of it all, but his relief was plain. He clearly thought Carmer would be able to explain that everything was just a big misunderstanding.

  Kitty Delphine, however, made her suspicions clear. “Carmer, I wanna win this thing just as badly as you do,” she murmured on the way to the theater, out of earshot of the Amazifier. “But you haven’t been honest with us. You can babble all you want about new ‘propulsion mechanisms’ or the latest ‘naphtha derivative,’ but we’ve been doing things I can’t explain, and neither can Master Antoine.”

  Carmer couldn’t make himself meet her eyes. “I told you, Kitty, I’ve been learning lots at the Titan Industries workshops at the exposition. I . . . it’ll be fine.”

  Kitty shook her head, blonde curls bouncing around her ears. “I hope you can do a better job of convincing the judges than you just did with me, Carmer. I really do.”

  Now, Carmer could only stand and watch as one of the committee members—a stern man named Tellaferror with iron gray hair and the customary black cloak—ascended the stage stairs and made the one simple request Carmer had been dreading the most.

  “Antonin Tataziak and associates, welcome. We apologize for the inconvenience,” said Tellaferror, not sounding sorry at all. The Amazifier ignored the slight of being called by his given name. “But the formalities must be observed. We will begin with a demonstration. Please perform, to the best of your ability, your modified cremation illusion known as the ‘Phoenix Engine.’ ”