Illusionarium

by Heather Dixon

  Lockwood knocked my head against the pipes again, giving me one last glimpse of the corridor. The ice had gone. The illusioned door was gone.

  And Lady Florel was gone.

  My consciousness gave up, and I surrendered myself to darkness.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Get up! Get up!”

  A large, thick boot attached to a large, thick leg attached to King Edward VII kicked me awake. I groggily peered up at the towering king, who glared down at me over his stomach and pointy beard.

  I lay in the exact spot I’d passed out, flat on my back and surrounded by angry airguardsmen, a wall of blue uniforms, belts, and brass buttons. My father stood among them, a pillar of brown beside the king, looking pale and worried.

  I leapt to my feet. A dozen gloved hands grabbed me and shoved me back to the floor.

  “Captain Crewe!” I said. “He’s been shot!”

  “Not that you care,” Lockwood spat, standing with the airguardsmen.

  “What gives you the right to steal my fantillium and attack my airguardsmen and release my prisoners?” the king yelled, dragging me back up by my collar. “Where is Lady Florel?”

  I writhed and twisted out of his grip and straight into the airguardsmen’s clutches, as the events before crashed over me. The illusion! The doorway! She had disappeared into an illusion!

  “Your Highness.” An officer saluted at the brig hall’s entrance. “The ship has been searched. She’s not here. All the dinghies are accounted for, as well.”

  “Keep searching,” the king said. “Search the city.”

  “She’s not in Fata!” I choked. “Lady Florel illusioned a door! She went through it and disappeared!”

  The king’s buggy eyes narrowed at me.

  “I know it sounds mad,” I pled. “But that is what happened, I swear it! The—the lieutenant saw it, too! Just before the illusion ended! He’ll tell you!”

  All eyes turned on Lockwood, who stood with a bruise across his hollow face and his yellow hair mussed. He turned his eye to the floor.

  “I don’t know what I saw,” he muttered.

  The king wrenched me up by my collar again, and with fists the size of boxing gloves, throttled me. My glasses shook off.

  “Enough, please!” said my father.

  The king gave me one last shake and shoved me away. I fell to my knees by my glasses, hand at my throat and gasping for air. The blood returned to my head.

  My father knelt in front of me, peering intently at me with his yellow-brown eyes. The past three days had drained years from his face.

  “I swear it’s the truth,” I said fervently to him. “She said she could find the cure. All she needed was fantillium! I—I had to do something!” I pled.

  My father brought a hand through his mess of graying brown hair and shook his head.

  “If my son says she disappeared into an illusion,” he finally said, standing, “then that is what happened. My son would not lie.”

  “And I suppose your son does not steal, either?” said the king. “Or help criminals escape?”

  My father mouthed words, but no sound came.

  “Two—two days ago, I would have emphatically said no.” His shoulders began to shake. “But now, I am not sure of anything.”

  My heart sank in my chest. The airguardsmen seized my arms and wrenched me to my feet. They twisted my hands behind my back and clamped iron shackles around my wrists. I struggled.

  “I had to do something!” I cried to my father. “I couldn’t just let Mum and Hannah die!”

  “Take him out!” the king yelled.

  The airguardsmen dragged me into the hall. I caught one last glimpse of my father, his long coat unbuckled and his tie askew, and I could see him crying.

  The airguardsmen forcibly escorted me to dock five on the other side of the city, up the lift, and into the old, small military airship, the Valor. I was locked in a brig cell. I lay there on the metal floor, exhausted, bruised, and sick inside.

  My own father hadn’t stood up for me.

  I pulled myself up and paced—discontent, angry—and the feeling only intensified when the airship’s engines rumbled to life and the brig guard informed me that I was being taken to Arthurise to await a trial there.

  “What?” I said, grasping the crisscrossed bars on the cell door. “To Arthurise? But—no! I’m Dr. Gouden’s apprentice, surely—surely they need me here to help!”

  “King’s express orders, I’m afraid,” he said. “Can’t go against those, eh?”

  I nearly strangled him through the bars. Instead I returned to pacing, pitching across the tiny cell when the ship jolted forward. I peered out the tiny port window in my cell, watching Fata Morgana growing smaller and smaller in the pitch-black sky. It stung my vision. The dome of the observatory, the chimneys and roofs and row houses, the prickly mining towers, all suspended in the air like a sliver of the moon. The city grew small and disappeared into the distance.

  It felt like my heart had waned and disappeared with it.

  I’d never been to Arthurise, but I knew it was a full day-and-a-half flight away. All that time the illness would progress in Mum and Hannah. For hours on end, I banged around the cell, refusing the gloppy food they tried to give me, kicking the door and walls until I could see the bars and rusty bolts of the door when I closed my eyes, every inch of it copied in my mind.

  When the Valor lurched out of the southerly aether streams, all I could think was: Four days left. Only four days.

  Presently, a sturdy officer with his arm in a sling unlocked my cell door. I recognized his friendly face and straightforwardness immediately.

  “Captain Crewe!” I said, relieved. “You’re all right!”

  The captain smiled. I noted Lady Florel’s shot had hit him just below the shoulder. If he was in pain—and I knew he would be—he did not show it.

  “Have you seen Arthurise before?” he asked.

  “Only in books.”

  “Then come.”

  I followed him up a staircase and emerged onto the command deck, a large open floor with windows all around the sides, and officers and navigators at their posts. Weak winter sun shone over us. Afternoon. I walked to the side and peered, fascinated, at the expanse of city that stretched below the ship.

  It was like the city Lady Florel had illusioned, but far grander. Steel and marble shone in the sun. Light semaphore of all colors made the city glitter over a tapestry of train tracks and commerce. Airships of all regulations and sizes docked to vertical ports and stretched as far as the eye could see. I could even smell it through the windows: burning orthogonagen and wet brick.

  Arthurise. The City of Virtue. Years ago it had been called London. That was before the Assemblage of the Round Table. Now it stood before us, the largest and greatest city in the world.

  “City is in mourning,” said Captain Crewe as we waited for permission to dock in the Old London sector. “Quarantine, too—though it’s doing little good. The Venen’s already spreading to New England and India. I had hoped the king would let you stay and work with your father, but—” He stopped and shook his head.

  I stared miserably at the towers and architecture that surrounded us as the Valor descended into the scrubbed brick of Old London. We docked; Captain Crewe and several airguardsmen led me out, handcuffed, into the docking lift. I couldn’t believe how warm it was here. At least thirty degrees! And the sounds! Airships. Distant trains. The lift opened into a courtyard and I stepped onto grass—grass!—strange and spongy beneath my feet. Leafless trees lined the stone wall around the courtyard, their spindly branches like veins. It smelled so thickly of a hundred muddled scents that I gagged when I inhaled.

  The Tower of London. I knew this place only from books. I stared up in awe at the water-worn towers attached to massive stone walls. Slotted windows and ancient doors punctuated the fortress. Queens and dukes had been held prisoner here hundreds of years ago. I hadn’t realized it was still used as a prison.9


  A large building stood in the middle of the courtyard made of brick, domed towers at each corner and arched windows in between. An Arthurisian flag flew from a pole at the roof, a blue-and-gold ensign. We climbed a wooden set of stairs to reach the entrance. I read a plaque next to the door that designated it as the White Tower, then my eyes caught the door.

  It was wooden and arched, with iron hinges and latch, and I immediately recognized it.

  It was the door Lady Florel had illusioned.

  And it wasn’t.

  This door had been tended to, polished and cleaned over the years, and the hinges weren’t rusting. But it was that door!

  I shifted impatiently, nearly bursting with the revelation, as the head yeoman—the main guard of the tower—reviewed my papers in his office, and exhaled loudly at me.

  “Why is it,” he said to no one in general, “that when the king is in a foul temper, we are always full?”

  Passed over to the tower’s stewardship, I managed one last word with Captain Crewe before we parted.

  “This door,” I said as we were led out the entrance again. “This is the door Lady Florel illusioned!”

  Captain Crewe’s brow creased and he looked at me, confused.

  “It was older—rotting,” I said. “But it was this same door. I’m sure of it.”

  “What can it mean?” he said.

  “I don’t know. “But—Captain—will you tell my father? He might be able to sort it out—”

  “I am not returning to Fata Morgana, Jonathan. I have been given leave. My wife and daughter are dying.”

  I was struck speechless.

  We parted without another word. Cold rain drenched me as my new guard escorted me across the courtyard, up slick stone stairs, to a jutting tower in the wall. Here they unlocked a groaning door, and a musty-smelling dank rolled over us.

  “You’ll have to share this cell,” the head yeoman said wearily. “I really don’t want to hear of any trouble, is that clear?”

  I cautiously entered. My eyes adjusted, taking in stone, wood beams, an old empty fireplace, names carved into walls. A figure in the corner separated from the darkness. I noted the blue uniform, the glint of medals and buttons, a handsome figure with light hair and an eye patch—

  Lockwood recognized me the exact moment I recognized him. A feral cat couldn’t have pounced on me faster. My head hit stone and his hands gripped my throat.

  “You little maggot!” he snarled. “You disgusting flap of cut-off flesh, you murky chunk of filth! Thanks to you I’ve been stripped of my rank!”

  I kicked him off and dove, raining all my frustration and anger of the past four days upon him. He threw fists into my stomach and face. A crunch sounded in my head. I sputtered as blood poured down my lips.

  I didn’t care what I hit, so long as it was made of Lockwood. My glasses knocked off my face and skittered at our feet as he soundly thrashed me.

  Yeomen’s hands dragged us away from each other. Blood dripped down my chin as they held us apart, three yeomen keeping Lockwood from dismembering me. The head yeoman stood at the door, looking duly unimpressed.

  “Gentlemen, please,” he said. “Quite enough, what! I assure you, outside my office there is a lovely museum of torture instruments heartily used hundreds of years ago and I have always wondered what exactly they do. So unfortunate to have to use them on fellows so lithe and young, what! Shake your barking hands. Right now.”

  Lockwood and I glared at each other with concentrated loathing. His one eye had swollen up, giving me great satisfaction. With unexpected friendliness, he suddenly straightened and offered his hand. I grasped it to squeeze the life out of it, and was confused when he shook it firmly and fairly.

  “There. See? Aren’t we all so happy now?” said the yeoman.

  Grinding glass sounded against the stone. Looking down, I saw Lockwood’s boot driving my glasses into the floor with his heel.

  I dove at him.

  Five minutes later, Lockwood and I stood at opposite ends of the tower room, nursing our wounds as the head yeoman, still threatening us with all shapes and sizes of torture, locked us in. I fumed, face pulsing, as I examined the crack on my broken lens and slid them back on. I could hardly see without my glasses, so it appeared I’d spend my time in prison with the world half-broken.

  Through the slit of the window in our cell, I watched the Valor discharge from the long line of airships above us and sail away. Back to Fata. I couldn’t sit still after that; I paced the cell, and eventually settled on scratching the Venen’s chemical makeup on the floor with a piece of broken stone.

  “What are you doing?” Lockwood’s voice broke the silence from the other side of the room, the first words he’d spoken in hours.

  “Mapping out the Venen,” I said, and added, “not that you care.” I doubted he had any family that would die from it. Most of the airguardsmen—especially Northern airguardsmen—joined because they were orphans and could be on duty for months at a time with no one to miss them. That explained, anyway, why he was so miserable.10

  Church bells an hour later startled me from my work. They rang from the White Tower in the center of the courtyard. On top of those, bells began to chorus all over the city in symphonic discord. The dissonance filled our cell.

  “Why are the bells chiming?” I said, alarmed. “It can’t be Sunday already! It’s only just Monday, right? Wait—how long was our journey to Arthurise?”

  I scrambled to the window, and called out to the yeomen in the courtyard below. They patrolled the area, lamps held aloft.

  “Ho there!” I yelled. “Yeomen! Why the bells? What day is it?”

  The yeoman nearest called back to me, and his voice broke.

  “The queen is dead,” he said. “God rest her soul.”

  The bells were drowned out by my heartbeat thudding in my ears. I sank onto the stone under the window and buried my face in my hands, despair seeping into my soul. The queen. Our symbol of Avalon. My father had not been able to save her.

  She had looked so much like my mother. . . .

  I bit my tongue to keep from showing emotion in front of Lockwood, though I fear my shoulders shook. He silently watched me from the other side of the cell.

  I must have somehow fallen asleep in the following hours, because abruptly I was shaken awake by Lockwood, his face so intense you could have sparked fires with it.

  “Get up,” he said shortly. “Something’s going on.”

  I groggily pulled myself to my feet and squinted out the window, Lockwood poised beside it as tight as a wound spring. He nodded his head at the courtyard below, where the four dim pinpricks of the patrolling yeomen’s lanterns swung.

  “Two of them aren’t patrolling anymore,” he said in a low voice.

  I saw he was right, even through my broken glasses. The two lanterns farthest had fallen to the ground, still lit but unmoving. As I watched, a third lantern tumbled, and the yeoman made not a sound when he fell. The winter air held its breath.

  My heart began to thud.

  The fourth lantern fell.

  “Hello!” I cried out. “Hello, ther—”

  Lockwood grabbed me by the vest and flung me away from the window.

  “Idiot!” he seethed. “You don’t make a move until you know what’s going on!”

  Silence encased us. It wasn’t normal silence. It was the silence of a thick fog. The sort of silence you’d find in Fata’s cloud canals. Suffocating silence.

  “They’re after us,” said Lockwood.

  “What? After us? How do you know?” I whispered back.

  “We’re the only tower in this direction. Don’t you notice anything?”

  “Of course I do,” I snapped. “Just because it’s all under a microscope—”

  The hairs on the back of my neck rose. The silence had become thicker. Lockwood pressed himself against the wall next to the door, ready to pounce on whatever tried to come through. I copied him on the other side of the door. The silen
ce was so strangling now a dropped pin would be a cannon.

  A pin did not drop, but a voice beyond the door whispered, “Jonathan.”

  And the door exploded.

  The force threw me back against stone. Splinters rained over me; twisted iron and broken wood staccatoed over the wall. Smoke choked me. My ears rang and I couldn’t inhale, the wind knocked out of me. Dust stung my eyes.

  It settled like a snowfall. I coughed, my swollen nose throbbing, and in the thinning haze, a grandmotherly figure faded into view. She was surrounded by an odd assortment: a dozen men in facemasks and long red uniforms. They settled themselves about her in military formation.

  “Well, Jonathan,” said Lady Florel, beaming. “Shall we fetch that cure?”

  CHAPTER 7

  I stared. The scene could only be taken in by pieces, as everything all at once was too much whole.

  Piece 1: Lady Florel. She wore a small red mask that covered the upper half of her face, and a costume that covered almost every inch of her in striped rags and gathers. She looked like a seabird that had got caught in an airship engine.

  Piece 2: The guards that stood around her. Like Lady Florel, they wore masks, but these covered their entire faces. Their clothes looked as though they had been stitched together from pieces of various costumes from the past hundred years, and all of it—even the masks—had been dyed and painted a crimson red. Even the boots. They stood in broad-shouldered, perfectly symmetrical formation, silent and still as de—

  Lockwood snarled and launched himself at the crimson guard, a full-fledged assassin.

  “Lockwood!” I yelled.

  The following seconds blurred with blue uniform among the long crimson coats. Lockwood’s assault created a flurry of torn fabric and sprawling men. I dove into the brawl to pull Lockwood away.

  For a moment, I was suspended in a silent snarl of limbs and crimson.

  The tangle of fight spat me out. I hit wall.

  Lockwood fought on, and I didn’t need to be an experienced fighter to see that with our fights before, Lockwood had tolerated me. With these trained guards, he slipped out of their grasp and twisted arms behind backs and used their own weight to throw them on their heads.