Illusionarium

by Heather Dixon

  My father seated himself next to my mother’s bed and took her hand in his. He held it tightly, squeezing her blackened fingers as though they would slip away.

  “They can’t do anything to you,” I was saying, my voice filling the sickening silence. “The king wasn’t actually hurt. It was an illusion. Not even a bad one—just a cut. Even if it had been real, stitches, at most. He’ll be banged up from throwing himself back against the furniture, but that’s his own fault, right? And anyway they need you. You’re the best scientist they have. They won’t—”

  “Enough, Jonathan,” said my father. “Please, go away.”

  His tone drew me short.

  “You’re—not angry with me?” I said.

  “I am angry with myself,” he said, clenching Mum’s fingers like a drowning man. “I have been a failure if my own son cannot even tell right from wrong.”

  I tripped over a chair leg.

  “I’m—I’m sorry, what?” I said.

  “You went to Lady Florel,” he said. “That is how you knew how to speed time. You sought her help even though you knew something was wrong with her and that fantillium causes acedia and that—that it all points wrong!”

  “Enough with the compass metaphors!” I snapped. “I’m not two!”

  “And yet you act like it!” My father removed his classes. “You are a child. I cannot believe you even think you are fit for the university when you seek solutions through questionable means—”

  “What choice do we have?” I yelled. Patients stirred in their beds. “I had to go to Lady Florel! How else can we find a cure in five days? Hannah would agree with me!”

  Hannah pulled the coat she still wore closer and curled up tighter against the pillow.

  “Oh, right, you’re such a fighter,” I snarled. “That’s fighting, Hannah. You might as well just die now and get it over with—”

  I regretted the words the instant they escaped my mouth. The rest of the sentence died in my throat, choking me.

  “I—I didn’t mean it,” I stammered. “Hannah—”

  Hannah cried underneath her coat.

  “Get out.” My father stood. “Get out! I cannot even bear to look at you!”

  “Right, right, I—I will,” I said, my face burning with shame. I hurried from the main wing, hating myself, pushing past Dr. Palmer and retreating into the blistering cold lobby of the infirmary, a room with chairs and a reception desk, all abandoned in the wake of the Venen.

  The front doors blew open, and a freezing gust of air brought with it ten airguardsmen, Captain Crewe bringing up the rear. The soldiers marched through the lobby with cold precision, but Captain Crewe stopped when he saw me.

  “Your father?” he said.

  I glanced at the main wing door before I could stop myself. Captain Crewe nodded.

  “You are needed in the laboratory,” he said. “Go, please.”

  I didn’t leave, but waited until the soldiers were inside the main wing, and listened at the doors. Captain Crewe’s voice said, “I am sorry, Dr. Gouden, but I’m afraid the king requests you work in a room on the Chivalry. Please accompany us.”

  A room just like Lady Florel’s, I thought.

  I pulled back into the shadows as the airguardsmen marched past in a series of blue uniforms, my father in the midst of them, his head bowed and graying hair mussed, his shoulders sagging. His hands had been cuffed behind him.

  I followed after them at a distance, hardly breathing, my chest was so tight. I kept behind each heat lamp, running to the next one they passed, and halted as they took my father into the lift that led to the dock three platform. His long coat flapped in the wind.

  The lift slammed shut.

  If I did have a compass inside me, it would have broken the moment he disappeared behind those iron doors. It would have shattered. It would have smashed, leaving shards in my chest and running through my bloodstream.

  Since I did not have one, I stood there, hollow. Two days ago, my largest worry had been asking Alice to write me when I left for the university. Now it was how to piece the world back together.

  Somehow my feet led me to the abandoned observatory, its dome shadowing over me as I climbed the stairs, walked the hall, and climbed again to the second floor. Three airguardsmen worked in the laboratory, packing my father’s things into boxes. I numbly helped them bundle his books and notes and wrap his microscopes to send to the Chivalry.

  When the room had almost emptied, I packed up the kettle—now dry—cleaned a mug, and stopped at the papers I’d left on the counter. One was the arsenic breakdown. The other—the Quickening Formula.

  I need proof. . . .

  Lady Florel had been right. The equation had actually worked. The clock in the corner had agonized over days only seconds long, and the dust had jittered around us. It had actually worked.

  My proof.

  The small box of fantillium still lay in the corner where Captain Crewe had left it. I removed one vial of glistening black, extracted myself from the warmth of the observatory, and ran.

  I arrived at the brig hall of the Chivalry ten minutes later. The airguardsmen had saluted me at the entrance of the ship, remembering me from before, and ushered me through each checkpoint. Now, after the long halls of flickering lights and metal staircases, I halted at Lockwood’s checkpoint, the brig hall. The pipes hissed and sent steam into the corridor. Sweat dripped down my back. Lockwood had a presence that sucked air from the room.

  He didn’t stand and salute when I arrived. Instead he remained sprawled on the metal bench at the end of the hall, lazily touching his pistol to his lips and staring up at the ceiling.

  “I thought,” he said, not bothering to even look at me with his one eye, “I had made it particularly clear you were not welcome back in the brig?”

  “Not as such, no,” I said, standing my ground. “I’m looking for my father.”

  “Really. You know, you are a terrifically bad liar. If you were after your father, you would have asked the airguardsmen at the command deck. They would have told you he’s in the civilian’s quarters in sector one. This is sector five. Shove off, please.”

  “You know, I don’t think I will,” I said. I’d had enough with being ousted from the observatory, expelled from the infirmary, and now banished from the brig. My mother and sister were dying. I would not retreat any longer.

  Lockwood stood in an oiled-gear movement of perfect control and strode to me.

  “Out,” he said, clamping his hands on my shoulder and directing me to the door.

  Anger seared through me. I elbowed him sharply, whipped around, and punched him as hard as I could.

  He dodged it. And laughed.

  “Oh, Johnny, that’s adorable,” he said.

  I threw myself at him. We banged against the burning pipes before he had a chance to reach his gun. I landed a solid punch to his neck. He threw me off by kicking me in the chest. I hit metal ground, and the fantillium vial flew out of my hand and across the grated floor.

  Lockwood drew his pistol in a blur and pointed the barrel between my eyes.

  “Pick up your little science toy,” he said coolly, “and please exit to your left. Thank you.”

  My eyes not leaving the barrel, I slowly retrieved the fantillium vial. My cheek stung where it had scraped a bolt. I straightened, and my eyes caught the small, shoulder-height boiler by the doorway. It kept the brig warm, the steam pouring through the pipes, filling the air with hot mist, not unlike the teakettle in the laboratory. . . .

  My hands thought before my head. In a flash, I’d spun the waterwheel, threw open the tank door, and smashed the vial of fantillium like an egg on the edge of the tank. Broken glass cut my hand. Liquid and shards fell through my fingers and into the boiling water.

  I banged the plate lid shut just as Lockwood grabbed my collar and drove me into the ground.

  His gun pressed itself to my head. The grated floor glowed white in my vision. I writhed under his knee, which dug in
to my back.

  “All right,” said Lockwood in his lazy drawl. “I don’t know what you just did, but on the very probable assumption you have just poisoned us all, you murderous piece of filth, I daresay we ought to speak to Captain Crewe, hmmm?”

  He allowed me to shakily rise to my feet, the gun still at my head.

  As we reached the door, the steam in the hall grew thick.

  And glistened.

  I inhaled. Frigid air coated my lungs. The rumble of the engine roared. The smell of burning orthogonagen grew so strong I could taste it, and my dilated eyes watered as the hall lights burned.

  Peace filled my soul and pulsed with my heartbeat.

  “What the—” Lockwood gagged. His eye had dilated full black.

  I jerked around, pulling every wind current and aether stream of my knowledge together, and blasted them at Lockwood. Wind sucked itself out of my brain and lungs. Lockwood had a fraction of wide-eyed surprise before the gust picked him up in a howling gale and threw him across the hall. He smacked the floor and skidded, hitting Lady Florel’s cell door, the pistol spinning out of his hand.

  I laughed.

  “What was that you were saying, Lockwood?” I said. “Something about me being adorable? Would you like to say it again? Like, right now?”

  He was on his feet so fast his brass buttons blurred. He dove for his pistol. I threw my arm out and wind-blasted it beyond his reach, sending it skipping in my direction.

  “Oh look, I found a gun!” I said, picking it up. Lockwood halted, wary, his all-pupil eye glaring as I haphazardly brandished the pistol at him. I judged him to be about two centimeters away from murdering me.

  “What is this madness?” he seethed.

  “This, Lieutenant, is fantillium.” I motioned to the steam issuing from the pipes around us. “Ah! If only you’d paid attention in chemistry class, instead of playing with your guns. Open Lady Florel’s door. Now, if you please.”

  “Over your dead body, Johnny,” he spat, and lunged.

  The Johnny did it. The temperature plunged in my mind, and then plunged in the corridor around us. The pipes frosted. The hall turned white. Icicles grew from the ceiling and molded in glacial drifts around us. Ice froze Lockwood’s boots to the floor and he fell to his knees mid-lunge.

  “Very well.” I sighed. “I shall do it myself.” I reached for the brig keys at his belt.

  In a blur, Lockwood removed a dagger from his boot and slashed at me with lightning dexterity.

  The tip of the blade caught my arm and sliced neatly through my sleeve. I angrily knocked the dagger from his hand with a sharp gust of air, sending it flashing across the floor. Lockwood snatched at his other boot, extracting another blade.

  “What? Another one?” I said. “Do you have any feet in your boots, or just knives?” I illusioned another gust of wind, disarming him as he hacked the ice that fused him to the floor. The dagger hit the wall behind him.

  Lockwood clawed again at his boot and withdrew a third blade.

  “You’re joking—”

  In a flash, Lockwood had grabbed me and was choking me in the crook of his arm, pressing the knife against my throat.

  “You ruddy assassin!” I snarled. I hadn’t gone this far to get my throat slit!

  The temperature plummeted so fast the air snapped.

  It stung my ears. It froze my sweat and frosted my skin. Ice grew up the walls in thick white sheets and florets. The blade against my throat seared, and ice formed over Lockwood’s hand.

  The knife dropped from his fingers. It hit the ground, blade shattering. I twisted out of his grip and unleashed.

  Bullets of ice screamed past me. Sheets of ice. The ice at Lockwood’s feet broke and he fell to the ground under the assault. The world around me spun in glimmering white, blocking everything from sight.

  Frigid silence. The air glittered.

  I collapsed to my knees as the last flecks of ice floated to the ground. Shaking. Dizzy. The air cleared, revealing a hallway that had transformed into an Arctic cave. Icicles stretched from the ceiling to the floor, giant stalagmites of blistering cold.

  I swallowed, trembling, and got to my feet. Blotches grew in my vision and cleared. Lockwood lay against his bench, curled in a glacial nest of ice.

  Unconscious.

  I gulped. My throat stung. With a trembling hand, I unhooked the ring of keys from Lockwood’s belt, breaking ice as I pulled it free.

  “S—sorry,” I stammered to his unconscious form. Cold sweat dripped from my forehead. I wiped it away with a shaking arm. It was just an illusion. An illusion. I would never do something like this in real life.

  I stumbled to the cell door at the end of the hall, unlocked it, and pushed it open with my remaining strength. A gust of hot air swept over me, and I inhaled. The cell darkened even more as I breathed in the unaffected air. I glanced behind me. Without fantillium in my veins, the hall was back to normal. No ice. Only steam that glistened and hissed from the pipes. Lockwood lay on the corridor floor, breathing gently in the mist, eyes closed as though he’d fallen asleep.

  Inside the cell, Lady Florel had not moved save to turn around, slowly, and smile at me.

  “The quickening formula worked,” she said.

  “Yes—yes, quite,” I said, removing my cap and twisting it like mad. “You—you were right, Lady Florel.”

  “Of course I was.”

  She walked around the table and past me, her heavy coat brushing me, and stepped out into the hall. I followed out after, and the fantillium air frosted my lungs again. Cold air hit like a hammer.

  And the illusion returned. Ice blossomed up the walls as I felt my veins turn cold, the corridor growing white around us. Lady Florel stared aghast at the sheer winter beauty before us.

  “Look, Lady Florel,” I said, kneading my cap like bread. “I—I had a vial of fantillium and I—ah—I used it on the boiler to, ah, get to your cell. But I expect we can go to my father’s laboratory and get another one. Er—if we can get past the guards. Actually, perhaps you ought to stay here and I’ll be right back—”

  “You illusioned all this?” she breathed. Her eyes glittered.

  “Right, um, we don’t have much time. . . .” I stepped quickly over Lockwood’s unconscious form and grimaced. I was going to be in so much trouble. . . .

  “No need,” said Lady Florel, stopping me as I made for the door.

  And she began to illusion.

  She illusioned like it was an art, her gloved hands turning around themselves, glistening streams emanating from them in whorls. The air warped around her fingers and extended across the hall, growing in layers of white.

  Awestruck, I stepped back as the illusion solidified and grew on the corridor’s wall. First the white outlines of an arched doorway, which darkened into decayed colors of white and gray, and rotting textures of wood and brick. Rusty iron hinges and a latch formed. It looked like it could be a door from Old London and smelled thickly of must and rot.

  My head swam, thinking of how many elements and metals she had to know to form something so complex. Wood . . . iron . . . stone . . . how was this possible? I stared at the illusioned door, stunned.

  A voice from beyond the brig hall echoed distantly into the corridor.

  “Lieutenant?” It was Captain Crewe’s. My heart began to bang against my rib cage.

  “Lady Florel—” I began, panicking.

  Lady Florel swept up Lockwood’s steam pistol, which had lain by her feet, and held it with experienced authority. She swept to the illusioned door, grasped the latch, and opened it.

  Warm air blew into the corridor from the doorway. Watery sunshine and the smell of orthogonagen offal washed over us. I winced against the light, and when my vision caught up with me, stared at what stretched before us through the illusioned door.

  It was a city.

  An expanse of building and towers and bridges, black and gray stone in ruinous grandeur. I stepped forward, pinpricks of memory stinging; I r
ecognized some of them! I’d seen pictures of Arthurise before. There stood the Elizabeth Tower before us. And there, like a golden sliver, the same river that ran through Arthurise.

  And yet, it was not our capital city. It lacked the spires, the tall railway bridges, the semaphore towers. In the distance, an unfamiliar glowing white building with pillars and domes rose from the tangle. And above the expanse of the illusioned city, hundreds of airships bobbed, darkening the skies with their hulls. Beyond even that, high above everything, stood crisscrossed steel beams and glass. The entire city was encased inside a giant glass building.

  “Lady Florel!” I choked, twisting the life out of my cap.

  Lady Florel smiled at my reaction.

  “This is Nod’ol,” she said simply, motioning to the door. “The cure to the Venen is found here. Come along, no time to sit here gaping.”

  “What?” I said. I backed away sharply. “What is this, Lady Florel? How—how did you illusion all of this?”

  “Lieutenant, have you seen the Gouden boy?” Captain Crewe’s voice called into the brig hall. I whipped around as Captain Crewe stepped into the corridor.

  Lady Florel raised her pistol and fired.

  The crack shattered the air.

  The bullet hit Captain Crewe.

  His face registered surprise, then pain. He fell back, hitting the wall and then the ground. It vibrated under my feet.

  “Captain Crewe!” I ran to help him.

  An arm grabbed my throat and yanked me backward to the brig floor. My vision filled entirely of Lockwood, entirely conscious and seething in my face. His blue eye flared. Shouts filled the air from beyond the brig hall.

  I writhed out of his grip. The ice around us had begun to fade. The boiler was running out of fantillium. With a futile effort I made for Captain Crewe; Lockwood pounced again and thwacked my head against the nearest pipe.

  In a sweep of coat, Lady Florel fled through the illusioned arched doorway, into the city of airships and glass sky. She slammed the rotting door behind her, and—

  Disappeared.

  I gulped hot air. The brig darkened as the pipes sputtered and the steam grew transparent white again. The fantillium had run out.