ARC: Shadowplay

by Laura Lam

  Yesterday evening, Ringmaster R.H. Ragona and one of his aerialists, Aenea Harper, were murdered in the ringmaster’s cart by two members of their circus. A significant amount of money was stolen from the safe, and the two thieves escaped along the beach. The fugitives were cornered when something impossible happened.

  The City Searcher has an exclusive eyewitness account of a resident who claimed to see the event from her window.

  I fought down a choking noise. Seeing Aenea’s name in print brought all the grief perilously close to bursting. And now all of Imachara would be after us. Drystan read next to me, his shoulder pressing against mine.

  The woman, who prefers to remain anonymous, confirmed that noise drove her to the window. She witnessed the two fugitives cornered by their pursuers, the clowns from R.H. Ragona’s Circus of Magic, and it seemed they would soon be brought to justice.

  One of the fugitives screamed at the other to close his eyes and then pressed both hands to the glass. It was only after the fugitive, who was described as wearing a torn wedding dress, touched it that the Penglass began to glow. As the light brightened, the witness turned aside, saving her eyesight.

  “When I turned back,” she said, “the clowns were crying tears of blood. It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen.” The fugitives had fled. The Imacharan citizen contacted the police and tended to the victims until assistance arrived.

  Authorities are searching for the murderers and are confident that they will be apprehended soon. Fresh graffiti on a nearby municipal building stated: “TREES FOR ALL” and so policiers are not discounting that it could be a political Forester attack of some nature.

  Experts were not available for comment on the claims of glowing blue Penglass. Doctors have urged anyone who observes Penglass behaving strangely not to look at it directly and to contact authorities immediately.

  The two fugitives were the White Clown of the circus, known only as Drystan, and the other was the male aerialist of the final act, called Micah Grey. Former members of R.H. Ragona’s Circus of Magic were unavailable for comment.

  The clown is tall and slender, with white hair and blue eyes. The aerialist is the same height, with auburn hair and hazel eyes, seen wearing the torn wedding costume from the last performance of R.H. Ragona’s Circus of Magic, which they both starred in before the killing began. They are considered dangerous.

  Significant reward offered.

  I took a deep breath and looked at Maske’s expectant face.

  “This article makes it sound much worse than it was,” I said, and Drystan kicked me under the table. I rubbed my shin.

  An eyebrow rose, but Maske said nothing.

  “I once trusted you enough that I would stake my life on it,” Drystan said. “Have you changed in the past few years?”

  “I have taken you in,” Maske said. “But being discovered harboring fugitives would prove quite tricky for someone with a past like mine. I want to know what I am getting myself into, should you both stay. I’m not demanding you divulge all of your secrets – just the most pertinent.”

  Secrets. Always so many secrets. Sometimes I felt as though I would drown in them.

  “I’ll tell you what happened,” I said, on impulse. “But if I do, will you tell me your tale?”

  Both of Maske’s eyebrows rose. “My tale?”

  “The theatre has been shut for years, and Drystan only told me you no longer performed. I would like to know what happened.”

  “It is not a happy story.”

  “Neither is ours.”

  He gave me a long look, but I narrowed my eyes, not letting him win so easily. I gestured at the newspaper article. “Please.” I took a deep breath, holding it while I waited for his response.

  “Alright, I shall tell you.” He sipped his coffee. “But not yet.”

  I pressed my lips together.

  He smiled wanly. “I’m a magician. You can’t expect me to give up my secrets easily and so soon. All I’ll say for now is that someone I thought was a friend, my partner Pen Taliesin, turned out to be no such thing, and I have paid the price for it these past fifteen years. I can never again perform magic in front of an audience. When the time is right, I shall tell you everything.”

  I’d have to content myself with that.

  I licked my lips. Where to begin, and how much to divulge? Drystan still stared at his cooling coffee. It was up to me to speak.

  And so, hesitantly at first, I told him the bare bones. That I had run away and joined the circus in early summer the previous year and trained as an aerialist’s assistant and, eventually, the co-star of the pantomime. There was no need to mention that I had once been Iphigenia Laurus, the sixteen year-old daughter of Lord and Lady Laurus, and that the threat of surgery drove me from my home. I told him only that my life had once been comfortable.

  I told him I had struggled to fit in at the circus at first, and then found my place. But the past would not leave me behind. The ringmaster decided to extort me for money. He was a man prone to anger and drink, and I provoked him enough that he would have killed me, if not for Drystan and Aenea.

  At this last, Drystan looked up at me, eyes unreadable as I told Maske what Drystan did to save me. Bil had been a man to pity, but he was not innocent. In his anger, he killed his wife, poor Frit, and in his purchase of Vestige artifacts, he had all but brought the circus to its ruin. My throat tightened when I spoke of how he had killed Aenea, and Drystan had killed the ringmaster. We had no choice but to flee, leaving the circus a ruin in our wake. And I told him that what the newspaper wrote about the Penglass was true, but said that I did not think we were responsible.

  Maske nodded to himself when I was finished. “You speak the truth,” he said, no doubt coloring his voice. “Except for that last bit. You do think you were responsible.”

  I gaped at him. “How...?”

  He gave an illusionist’s smile. “A magician knows.”

  Drystan laughed without humor. “I wondered if you still owned your Augur. Let’s see it, then.”

  Maske lifted his chin at Drystan, and in the tilt of the head, the curl of the lips, I saw something of Drystan’s mannerisms as the White Clown. Drystan must have based his clown persona on Maske.

  Maske tapped his pocket three times. Out crawled what looked like a small, iridescent beetle, which hummed softer than the far-off buzz of a bumblebee. It lifted its wings, and below them, Vestige metal cogs whirred.

  Maske rested the mechanical beetle in his palm. “It is one of my most prized possessions.”

  I stared at the beetle, pressing my lips together. I had heard of Augurs before, of course, but never seen one. They were rare, and the few that remained were with the constabulary and the courts, for use in high-stake trials. They were not failsafe, though – some murderers had been so convinced that they told their own truth that they walked free. And, as with all Vestige, once the power ran out, it could not be rekindled. I swallowed. He had not used an Augur lightly on us.

  “What happens when you lie?” I asked.

  “Usually only the wearer hears the alarm, but there is a way that all hear it.” He fiddled with a clasp on the Augur’s underbelly.

  “There. Tell a lie.”

  “My mother was a giraffe,” Drystan said, straight-faced.

  The room filled with a rhythmic, high-pitched clicking and whirring. Maske set the Augur on the table, and its wings opened and closed in time. It was not loud enough to drown out conversation, but it was definitely annoying. I grimaced. Maske switched it off, and the clicking returned to a buzzing, and then faded.

  I did not like that he had used Vestige on us without our knowledge. But at the same time, I could not blame him. He knew Drystan long ago, and he might have changed in that time. And he knew little of me, though more than I’d have liked him to.

  A coal popped in the fire, startling me from my thoughts.

  “Where is Taliesin now?” I asked, deciding to risk the question.

  “You kn
ow him.”

  “I... I do?”

  “Taliesin’s stage name is the Specter.”

  “He runs the Specter Shows?”

  Every child knew of the Specter Shows, and I had even seen it when I was younger. Cyril and I had spent weeks afterwards trying to master card tricks after we saw them, but we never understood how they worked. The memory saddened me. I missed my brother.

  But I couldn’t focus on the past. I needed to know what we would do long term. Maske had agreed to take us in last night, but, judging by the state of the theatre, he did not have the means to support us out of charity. We needed somewhere to hide, and then a way to earn enough money for new papers, new identities, and new lives elsewhere in the Archipelago.

  But would Maske let us stay that long, and then how would we raise the funds?

  The idea occurred to me, brilliant in its simplicity. In the séance, Maske, or a spirit that spoke through him, had mentioned a stage, an audience, and magic. Something within me shivered. I knew how we could stay hidden for a time, and then make the money we needed to escape. Though it would be a risk, the gamble could work.

  “Are you never meant to work in magic again?” I asked.

  “That was the terms of our arrangement.”

  “But are you allowed to teach anyone else?”

  Drystan perked up, and I felt his eyes on me as I studied Maske’s face.

  “That was not mentioned in the arrangement,” Maske said, his gaze level with mine. “I’ve even taken on a student or two in the past, but none proved suitable.”

  The words came easily, like I did not even need to formulate them in my mind. “Then you could teach us,” I said, my eyes on his.

  Thoughts flitted across his face. “And why should I do a thing like that?”

  His words momentarily stumped me. We were fugitives. Drystan had murdered the ringmaster. The policiers were after us. The Shadow was after us. Even if we let the trail die down, performing in public was not in our current best interests.

  But it was better than working in the docks for a pittance to pay for our passage out of Ellada, where the authorities were sure to check. The policiers and the Shadow wouldn’t expect us to perform in public. I could not stop the feeling that this would work.

  I needed to convince Maske that we were worth training, and not tell him that it might be in vain, if we still felt we needed to leave Ellada. I didn’t like to mislead him, but I couldn’t see another choice.

  “It could work,” Drystan cut in, almost as if he read my thoughts. “You have hinted that you have money troubles, and I know you, Maske. I can tell that even all these years later, you miss magic and performance. We can, in turn, pay our way.”

  “I do not know if you could be taught–” he started.

  Drystan laughed – a short, sharp sound. “You taught me plenty. I still remember it all. And I’m sure you’d find Micah a quick study. He learned the trapeze in a matter of months, rather than years.”

  Maske peered at me, and I could almost hear the cogs in his head turning as he considered our proposal.

  “I have not performed in such a long time. All of my tricks and acts are years out of date. I do not know if I have that in me anymore.” He stared at his coffee cup again. “And it would be risky.”

  Drystan smiled. “We could disguise ourselves. We’re actors as well, remember. Who would expect it? Sometimes, it is better to hide in plain sight.” His eyes were wide, and he was the most alert I had seen him since the night the circus fell apart. For a performer, the stage was a rush; a drug.

  Magic illusion was a performance, like the circus, and abandoning the stage pained me already. The thought of never seeing the shocked delight on someone’s face as I did something they thought impossible was unbearable. The circus had its own magic. I wanted to find more of my own. At least for a little while longer.

  Maske stood and took our coffee cups to the sink, washing them as he faced the overcast sky through the window. Several orange and red leaves danced on the whistling wind outside. I wished I could know his thoughts.

  Drystan met my gaze, and he nodded. He understood. We had both lost so much. We needed to gain something else in turn.

  And maybe I wanted to find out how Maske had done the trick in the séance, or what it meant if there was no trickery involved.

  The magician turned back to us.

  “Alright,” he said. “But I am not committing to anything long-term. You both need to hide while the authorities search for you, and to pass the time I will teach you, and you will create disguises and learn the basics. But if in three months, I don’t think it’ll work, that it’s too dangerous, then you will leave. And Drystan, you will consider the life debt paid.”

  Maske and Drystan stared at each other. After a long pause, Drystan nodded.

  “What kind of disguises?” I asked.

  “Pretend to be foreigners, newly arrived from the Temnes, or Kymri. You will learn some of the language, and speak Elladan with an accent. With that and your magicians’ uniforms and the wonders you create, no one will see you. They will see only the illusion.”

  I looked at Drystan’s pale blue eyes and blonde hair. Drystan guessed my thoughts. “How will people truly believe we are Temnian?”

  “I have a way, but it’ll take some tinkering before I can show you. But, even with that, people will probably not really believe you. But you would not be the first magicians to pretend to be from a former colony, nor will you be the last. There is an air of mystique to the foreign, mostly born from rumor and ignorance, but nonetheless there. We may as well begin sooner rather than later. I will go into town and gather supplies.” His enthusiasm faded from his features. “But I would appreciate it if, while I am away, you do not snoop behind closed doors. There are dangerous things moldering in the darkness, and other possessions that are for my eyes alone.”

  He held his gaze with ours, unblinking, and I was reminded of the man from the séance who spoke in three tones at once. What had been a growing sense of comfort around him dissipated, leaving a thick lump of misgiving in my stomach.

  Of course, that only made me wonder all the more what he was hiding.

  We broke our fast on toast and butter and marmalade – more luxuries. My breakfast for the past several months had been porridge and a fried or boiled egg. The second cup of coffee was a mistake, though, for I could not sit still.

  Maske left. The kitchen seemed oddly silent once he left.

  “Well, we should leave some things alone, but we can at least do a little exploring. Come, I’ll show you the roof. It has some of the best views of the city,” Drystan said with a ghost of his old smile, and we made our way up the dusty wooden steps. I paused at a landing, staring down its murky depths at the closed doors. Full of secrets – Maske’s to tell, not mine to find.

  Drystan laid a hand on my shoulder. I followed him up the stairs. On the landing opposite the door to our loft, we clambered onto the wrought-iron balcony, climbing the twining steps to the roof.

  I gasped at the view, reminded of childhood memories of climbing buildings in Sicion. The theatre was taller than the surrounding tenements, so we didn’t have to fear neighbors noticing two fugitives when they looked out of their window as they washed dishes. So many memories of life as Iphigenia Laurus flitted at the edge of my consciousness. My brother Cyril’s face as he climbed with me. Tucking my hair under a cap before I stole through the streets to climb, and returning to change back into a dress and pretend I had been practicing the piano the entire time.

  The gray-tinged clouds cast shadows over Imachara’s swirling streets. Its tall buildings jutted toward the clouds, dark granite spotted with the colors of laundry hung between the wynds, and the flowers in the window boxes, still clinging to life before winter took them.

  Twin spires of the churches of the Lord and Lady reached toward the sky, one made of white marble and topped with gold to represent the Lord of the Sun, and the other of dark marble and t
opped with silver alloy to represent the Lady of the Moon. And twining through the backbone of the city were the blue Penglass domes, their surfaces unmarked, taunting the world with whatever secrets they held within. I pushed away the memory of what happened when I touched them.

  In the parks, the leaves were turning to fire, the grass dulling. The day was warm, but with a chill on the wind that promised true autumn and rain, tinged with the sharp scent of chimney smoke. The wind whipped our hair as we stared over the vast expanse of Imachara, Ellada’s capital and former seat of the Empire of the Archipelago.

  Drystan sighed and turned from the view, lying down on the sun-warmed roof slates, holding a hand to shade his eyes, gazing at the clouds.

  Up here, I could not help but think of our troubles. Our tragedies. Tears pricked at my eyes, my breath hitching in my throat.

  I stared up at the sky, trying to stop the tears from falling. Drystan did not notice my tears. Or chose not to.

  I turned from him, lying down under the faint warmth of the sun, and, as if I could not stop it, a hole opened in me, and I bit down on a keening wail of grief. I let the tears come, dropping onto my shirt.

  Glancing over my shoulder, Drystan’s shoulders hitched. He, too, remembered our horrors. Eventually, the autumn sun dried my tears, though the pain felt no less. I turned over on my stomach, avoiding Drystan’s gaze, the sun warming my back.

  “So we’ll stay,” I said when I trusted my voice enough to speak.

  His eyes flicked over to me, his skin blotchy from his tears. I looked away.

  “Yes, Maske can harbor us for three months. If things are alright, then we’ll perform with him for a time and then leave Ellada like we planned.”

  “Will that upset him – his taking the time to teach us and then us just leaving?”

  Drystan stared into the distance. “He’ll understand.”

  I hoped he was right.

  “What else can you tell me about Maske?” I asked.

  “It’s his story to tell,” Drystan said.