Illusionarium

by Heather Dixon

  Now, as the theater roof drew near, Edward’s servant handed Lockwood and me each a coiled line attached to the docking anchor. Anna’s lips were razor thin and she refused to look at either of us. Lockwood cast a glance at her.

  “Think I could ask for a token?” he asked me, nodding to her. It was an airguardsman tradition, asking a girl for a ribbon or lock of hair before they left to battle.

  I glanced at Anna.

  “Not if you like your eye,” I said.

  “Ah, well.”

  And all at once, the theater roof extended far below us, a landscape of green panels, all slopes and gables, chimneys and grime. Lockwood and I threw the lines overboard and they uncoiled to the rooftop.

  In a blur of muddy white, Anna grabbed Lockwood’s line, threw herself over the railing, sliding down the cord until her arms released and she fell onto the roof’s slope, tumbling over and over until she hit a gable.

  “Anna!” Lockwood yelled. He leapt over the railing after her, rappelling down the line and releasing halfway, and several seconds later he landed lightly on the roof. I followed suit, graceless, the line burning my gloved hands until I hit the roof and did not die.

  Lockwood had run to Anna’s side by the time I got to my feet and had chased after him across the gritty metal landscape. Lockwood grabbed Anna and pulled her to her feet, but didn’t let go. His face was deathly white. Anna’s hands were bleeding.

  “Ending was a bit of a jolt,” she said, laughing weakly.

  “What d’you think you’re doing?” Lockwood said angrily. “You think this is a joke?”

  “I know the theater!” she pled. “I can help! I can’t just stay on the ship and—and—and agonize!”

  “Better on the ship than in Constantine’s arms!” Lockwood snarled back.

  Anna’s blue eyes glistened.

  “I—I can’t let you die,” she said.

  Lockwood mouthed wordlessly.

  “Da—darn you, Anna,” he finally said. “I don’t know whether to—to embrace you or throw myself off this building!”

  “Don’t let’s do them at the same time,” Anna said with a laugh. In a smooth motion she reached up, and tousled Lockwood’s blond hair.

  Lockwood looked as though he’d been hit by a brick.

  “Right, don’t mind me,” I said, arriving at their side, winded. “Only I don’t think there’s much time for, you know . . . being soppish. . . .” I glanced up at Edward’s ship. It had already sailed beyond the roof, lines dangling. Edward had given us exactly thirty minutes to fetch the cure.

  “What . . . ?” said Lockwood, dazed. “Right. ’Course we don’t have time, Johnny. We have to find that cure. Why are you always slowing us down? Anna, you wrap your arms around my neck as tight as you can. Stay right by me and not a hair of your head’ll be lost!”

  Anna bit her lip, inhaled, and wrapped her arms around his neck and shoulders. Lockwood carried her to the ledge, crouched, and swung from the roof to a ledge along the wall like a shadow. He carried Anna against his chest like it was nothing.

  “We’re going to splatter on the cement below!” Anna said through gritted teeth.

  “The cement will never be prettier!” said Lockwood happily.

  I followed after, lowering myself to the ledge, fighting against gravity and vertigo. We were at least seven stories up. I had to grab a carved pillar between two windows to keep from overbalancing. The wall extended out in long rows of windows to either side of me. In the distance stood the Tower of London. High above us, the sea of airships.

  And among them, rumbling straight above the theater, a ship’s hull trimmed with crimson, red pennants dripping from the envelope like streams of blood. It shadowed us with its vastness. An emotionless red mask of a guardsman peered down at us from over the railing. Fear stole the strength from my muscles.

  “That’s Queen Honoria’s ship!” Anna yelled.

  “Spotted!” Lockwood sounded far too cheery. “Windows, Johnny! We’re going to bash them in! Hold tight, Anna, and close your eyes—”

  With Anna still clinging to him, Lockwood grasped the eaves above the window in front of him. I wrestled my muscles into submission and copied Lockwood, grabbing the ledge above the window next. We pulled ourselves up, kicked back against the window, gathering momentum with each swing. One final shove off from the glass and we bashed through it, feet first.

  I released and careened through the broken pane, toppling over shards of glass and crashing, again, into more glass, knocking against wall, water and flowers pouring over my head. Two minutes of standing, banging into more porcelain, falling, crashing, more crashing, a rain of flowers, and I found my feet.

  I stood in the middle of a large suite, decorated in all shades of green, and now, all sorts of broken vases and flowers. Divinity’s suite!

  Lockwood and Anna were nowhere to be found. They must have bashed through a window that led to another room, or the hall.

  “Hello?” Divinity’s voice chimed from beyond the sitting room wall. “Who’s there?”

  I dove for the door in long strides. She arrived at her bedroom door, only wearing a frayed bathrobe, just as I slammed the door behind me. This was going all wrong. With any luck we wouldn’t see every illusionist and masked guard in the city.

  My heart pounded so hard my vision pulsed. I ran along the deserted hall, searching desperately for Lockwood and Anna. They were nowhere. We’d planned, if we were separated, to still follow through and find the cure. We’d meet up on the roof in thirty minutes.

  Frustrated, I hurried down the hall, checking around the corners before diving into more corridors, running down stairs, until I recognized the familiar main hall that led to the lobby. Rifle banging against my back, I ran through the massive arched doorway and into the mezzanine above the marble floor.

  The lobby was deserted.

  The light of the chandelier flickered and cast gentle shadows across the walls.

  The velvet stairs muffled my footfalls.

  And there, in the glass of the round display case between the split stairways, stood the little brown bottle. In a moment I stood before it.

  I pulled off my mask, sweat fogging up my glasses, unsure of what to do. I didn’t have a key. Well—I’d broken the theater window and about a hundred glass vases, so what was a little more? I threw myself against the case.

  It fell to the floor. Glass smashed. Thousands of shards rippled across the marble. The brown bottle rolled off the velvet with a clinkety clink clink. I swooped down and the bottle was in my pocket.

  My ears thudded. All right, time to meet on the roof. I made for the stairs, and then stopped. A slip of paper among the wreckage pulled me back to the overturned cabinet.

  PASSAGE TICKET

  Airship #278, Theater Station

  Destination: Sussex, dock 4

  I stared at the ticket. The words swam.

  Anna’s way out of the city.

  On impulse, I snatched it from the broken pieces and shoved it into my pocket. And—a slip of paper, next to it, caught my eye.

  ANNA.

  I picked it up and tore it in half, wishing I could do it in front of Constantine’s beastly face.

  “Piece of filth,” I said, glowering. I cast the pieces to the floor.

  Bang.

  A pair of glass doors behind me banged open. I whipped around, rifle hitting my shoulder, to see masked guards pouring through the door, and an unending stream of red.

  Bang. The pair of glass doors to my side. Eyeless masks on crimson figures poured through. Crimson figures dropped from airship lines from all sides outside the theater lobby. . . .

  Bang. The door to my other side.

  Bang. The door behind the stairs.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  “Oh, great!” I said, and bounded up the stairs. They poured like blood from an artery after me.

  Through the archway. Down the corridor. Up the stairs. It felt slow, like t
rying to swim the moat all over again. I lost sight of them, but their sticky silence clung to me and dragged me down.

  I couldn’t breathe. I had to rest. I pivoted around a corner to a dead-end hall and threw myself into the nearest door, slamming it behind me.

  I was encased in darkness. My eyes adjusted to the sparse furniture, and my nose adjusted to the smell of thick medicinal tea. I swallowed, catching my breath, examining the large four-poster bed that sat in the shadows at the far end of the room.

  Someone slept in it.

  I pressed the door against my back. Sweat dripped down my neck.

  The person in the bed, a woman, didn’t move. When she inhaled, the breath rattled in her throat. She was ill. Always the surgeon, I immediately hastened to her side.

  I recognized her before I’d reached the bed. Angry, arching eyebrows, tiny mouth and eyes, all severe as steel, hands that looked like they had bandaged a thousand wounds.

  It was Lady Florel.

  CHAPTER 16

  “Heinrich?”

  Lady Florel’s cracked, hard voice rose from the bed like a ghost from the grave. Each breath rasped. I marveled at how much she looked like Queen Honoria—but with black veins that covered her neck and cheeks. Her arms, too, had become mottled black. The Venen.

  “Well, come closer,” she commanded severely. “Let me see you.”

  I hurried and propped her up on the pillows to help her to breathe, and felt the pulse at her neck. I hardly felt it, it was so weak. She was close to death. And yet, here she was, barking commands at me. She really was made of steel.

  “Heinrich Gouden is my father,” I said. “I’m his son, Jonathan. Lady Florel, how long have you been here? Have you been in the theater this whole time? Did Queen Honoria bring you here? She must have—”

  “Hush, boy,” she barked. “You’re making my head pound. Stand up straight.”

  I stood up straight.

  “I—thought Queen Honoria had killed you,” I muttered, emotions twisting inside me.

  “Ha!” Lady Florel’s laughter turned into a cough. I quickly poured her a cup of cold tea from her bedside teapot. “Queen Honoria,” she continued, “is a vindictive little recreant who is too cowardly to even see my death. She’s died before—that ridiculous illusion-dying, at least—and whatever she saw, she’s afraid of it. And as such she is afraid to kill me—”

  She broke into whisper-coughs again. I recalled the look of utter terror on Queen Honoria’s face, when the Rivening woman had almost attacked her.

  “She’s letting you die anyway,” I muttered, disgusted.

  “She’s keeping me alive,” Lady Florel wheezed. “Just. I am only administered just enough antitoxin to be kept alive. . . .”

  She trailed off, leaning weakly into the mess of pillows with guttural breaths, and said nothing more. My hands were clenched so tightly they shook. Queen Honoria!

  I had the cure.

  I pulled the bottle from my pocket, and the brown liquid swished inside.

  Three doses. If I used one, there’d still be enough for Mum and Hannah. My father could reconstruct the cure from the bottle’s label. I hesitated for just a moment, and my father’s voice rang in my chest: My own son cannot even tell right from wrong. . . .

  “Yes I can,” I said firmly, and unsnapped and uncorked the glass lid.

  I mixed a third of the bottle with her cup of cold tea, quickly, expecting the masked guard to burst through the door at any moment.

  They did not. With especial care, I brought it to Lady Florel’s thin lips.

  BANG.

  A distant shot rang out. I jolted and nearly spilled the cup.

  “JOHNNY!”

  “Lockwood!” I said. I hastily helped Lady Florel finish the last of the tea. She fell into unconsciousness as softly as a sigh. I prayed it wasn’t too late.

  “Johnny boy!” Lockwood yelled, louder this time.

  BLAM BLAM BLAM. The gunshots were followed by a massive crash of glass exploding.

  “Jooooh-nnnnyyyyy!” Lockwood yelled again. “I know you’re hee-eeere! You’ve summoned the ruddy guard from the gates of somewhere not very niii-iiice! JOHNNY!!”

  Lockwood’s voice drove my feet into action. In a blaze I flew out of the room to his rescue and crashed full-on into the torn-uniformed, rifle-bearing, unmasked, flashing-eyed Lockwood.

  “Idiot!” he yelled, throwing me out of the line of fire. He brought the steam rifle to his shoulder and shots rang out. Masked guards barreled at us, pouring down the hall in a red barrage. Two of them fell, silent as a snowfall. Pistols fell from their hands. Beyond them, more fallen masked guards. In Lockwood’s wake, he’d left them strewn down the hall like roses. I felt sick.

  We retreated, taking cover behind a massive heap of crystals at the end of the hall. A glance at the ceiling, revealing torn bolts, confirmed it was a fallen chandelier.

  “You shot the chandelier down, Lockwood?” I yelled as bullets ricocheted past my head and jangled as they shot the prisms of the chandelier. I ducked down and shook the rifle from my shoulder.

  “Of course not!” Lockwood yelled, his rifle firing so rapidly it fogged the air with steam. “I climbed up the wall and pulled it down with my weight, what do you think?”

  “Oh!” I said. “Right! The old climb-up-the-wall-and-tear-the-chandelier-away-from-its-bolts maneuver! Where’s Anna?”

  “She’s—”

  A crimson figure appeared through the fog, its pistol levered at Lockwood’s head.

  Like a flash I raised the rifle to my shoulder, aimed, and squeezed the trigger. The pistons hissed, and a shot rang out.

  The masked guard dropped his pistol and fell to the rug with eerie silence.

  I dropped my rifle with shaking hands and scrambled to pick it up, air choking my throat.

  “All right there, surgeon?” said Lockwood, glancing at me. “Take a breather. Second time you’ve saved my life—thanks.”

  I nodded, still gulping steam, and managed to pull the pistol back up. If I ever had to face combat again it would be too soon.

  “I’ve got it, Lockwood. Let’s get out of here—”

  A giggle sounded behind us like scratched glass. I’d recognize that wonderfully chalk-on-slate laugh any day. Divinity. She sat crouched in the doorway behind us, barricaded with us behind the chandelier, trapped at the end of the hall. She was biting her pink lip and laughing as merrily as if she were attending a puppet show. Her hands had been tied together with what looked like a hair ribbon.

  “You are going to be in so much trouble, Jonathan,” she said, looking absolutely delighted.

  “You tied up a girl, Lockwood?” I said.

  “Yeah, real angel. Tried to kill me with this—” Lockwood aimed a tiny green steam pistol, studded with emeralds, at an oncoming masked guard, and shot.

  “Queen Honoria’s going to catch you,” she said smugly. “She’s going to tear your thumbnails from your—”

  “Shut up!” said Lockwood and I in unison.

  Divinity broke into chiming laughs all over again. The bathrobe she wore had slipped down her shoulder, revealing the upper part of her corset—my face reddened—and exposing something more at the base of her neck.

  A swollen slit of an eye stared back at me.

  I grabbed Divinity and pulled her to her feet.

  “All right, tell them to stop!” I said, going against every iota of my upbringing and strong-arming her past the chandelier barricade. A sea of masked guardsmen legions deep had appeared at the end of the hall, sending hailstorms of bullets, then halting up short as Divinity showed herself. “Tell them to stop and put their pistols down. Now.”

  Divinity rolled her green eyes and with great exaggeration stepped forward into the line of fire. The masked guardsmen lowered their rifles.

  “Stop,” she said lazily. She shook her golden hair back. “Stop fighting already. These silly little boys, they’re just playing, aren’t you, you silly little boys?”

&nbs
p; “That’s right, we’re having a tea party,” I said.

  “With guns,” said Lockwood as the masked guardsmen that filled the hall froze in perfect formation, like chess pieces in a stalemate. The eye on Divinity’s shoulder blinked blearily at me.23

  “Lockwood!” Anna’s voice broke through the silence. “Lockwood—I’ve found the stairway to the roof—”

  A door down the hall yielded and Anna appeared, throwing herself into the mass of masked guards. Before anyone could even react, Lockwood had leapt over the chandelier and grabbed her by the waist.

  “All right, girly,” Lockwood yelled at Divinity, who stood there, both petulant and amused. “Keep them happy, keep them still while we get out of here, and we won’t shoot you in the eye. You know which one.”

  That wiped the smile off of Divinity’s face.

  I caught up to Lockwood and Anna, and we were off, through the door at the side of the hall, barreling down corridors, the lamps along the walls a blur, and careening through a doorway into a rickety stairwell.

  “All right, now you can kill them!” Divinity’s voice cheerfully rang out. “Shoot them dead!”

  “What a lovely girl!” Lockwood snarled as the three of us raced up the stairs, two at a time. “I fancy she’s got loads of beaus!”

  “Yes, someone you bring home to Mother,” I said.

  Shots hissed and pinged below us. We extended our leaps to three stairs at a time, and moments later we fell through a door at the top of the stairs, up an even ricketier set of stairs, and ending at a dim room full of old props. Anna led us out an old gable door—and the stagnant black air of night. The grit of green tile ground under our feet.

  And there, looming over the theater, Edward’s creaking airship whirred. Two lines still hung over the side of its deck, brushing the sloping rooftop.

  Lockwood pounded me on the shoulder. “The ruddy coward came back! Ha-ha! I hardly believe it!”

  I ran to the line and began climbing, hand over hand, pulling, reaching, pulling up again. My muscles wept for their loss of innocence. With Anna’s arms wrapped tightly around his neck, Lockwood climbed the line as easy as a knife to pudding.

  Below us, the masked guard poured from the roof gables and stopped short, eerie masks peering up at us, and growing smaller as the ship rumbled forward. They lowered their rifles, still staring.