ARC: Shadowplay

by Laura Lam

  She shook her head. “I do not know. Some aspects of what is happening are a mystery to me as well. Alder tools have been around humans for millennia. Something else is at work.”

  “Is Vestige dangerous, as Pozzi said?”

  “Anything sufficiently powerful that you do not understand can be dangerous.”

  I wanted to ask: are you dangerous? But I feared I already knew the answer to that.

  “Do you think Pozzi is a threat?”

  “Perhaps. We shall tread carefully with him. He smiles, but it may be the smile of a snake, hiding fangs.”

  I sighed, so weary with plans and secrets and danger. “I’m never going to be safe, am I?” Someone would always be searching for me or want something from me. Pozzi thought I could drop dead at any moment. Anisa wanted me for some mysterious plan, the Shadow wanted to turn me in, my family most likely wished I could go back to being their precious little girl… “I want to know something. Clouds above, I want some actual answers.”

  Anisa inclined her head. “Your path is not easy, but most are not.” She reached out her transparent hand and rested it on my cheek. I could feel nothing, but I found the gesture oddly comforting.

  “You have been patient. I can show you a few more answers. If you truly want them.”

  I took a shaky breath. Could I really take any more impossibility this evening? “Yes,” I whispered.

  She leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. For a moment, I almost thought I felt it. And then the vision overtook me.

  I was Anisa. I could feel the wings flickering softly behind me. I was in Penglass – or Venglass, as Anisa called it – but half of it was dark, as though partly submerged in a cave. It was cold, and the furniture looked wrong to me, as if they were an older fashion than what I was used to. Even though I had cleaned the place for hours, it still smelled musty and disused. Late sunlight filtered through a wall of glass. My two wards, Dev and Ahti, played together in the corner. Ahti laughed as he raised his toys with his mind to balance on the tops of his horns. Dev, the Kedi, levitated glass globes that circled them both, like planets around a star. Both of their brows furrowed with concentration.

  “Food!” Relean called from the next room. The toys and globes fell to the floor.

  “Turn off the lights, please,” I told them, and after a quick sketch of a glyph in the air, the lights in the globes winked out.

  We ate. Soft music played and I relaxed. I had been tense since we came into hiding from the Kashura. The world had fallen apart out there, in the cities. Here, we could pretend all was safe for the children, but I knew that it wasn’t.

  They were turning the world upside-down looking for Ahti.

  In less than a week, we would be gone. A few of us were making plans to leave, head for another world where we could hide, at least for a time. The vast expanse between worlds scared me. I had lived most of my lives here. I was scared of the dark, deep sleep as we travelled. But it was a new beginning.

  The low thrum of an engine rose outside. I paused mid-chew. It could be allies, coming to drop supplies, but they had come only two days ago. There was no scheduled visit.

  We heard a knock on the door. All of us froze in fear. We were as silent as could be, but the music still played, echoing about the kitchen and down the hallway. We heard the sound of the glyph being drawn. I hung my head in defeat.

  I could not hear the music over the thundering of footsteps and shouting. They wore armor, faces obscured by visors. They slapped cuffs over my wrists – and over those of the children – and dragged us out of our brief sanctuary. My hands went numb. As they marched us down the hallway toward the craft, I heard a last snippet of music.

  The children were crying. How quickly the world changes. A generation ago, the Alder would never do something like this, even the ones loyal to the old ways. They would never hunt the world for one Chimaera, no matter how powerful.

  But politics can change with the wind. One leader to spark the zeitgeist, and the world changes.

  If the Kashura have their way, this would be my last life. My last time with Relean. They would forbid anyone to store my memories in an Aleph, to create a new corporal form. All the history and knowledge I learned as a curator of this world – turned into dust. I had raised countless wards for the Alder, and they had grown up to be good and made the world a better place. All save the ward that I failed.

  Our footsteps shuffled as we were escorted into the craft. We flew away, and I stopped the tears, but only for Dev and Ahti. I didn’t want them to be any more frightened than they already were.

  That would come soon enough.

  The vision shifted. I was in a cold Venglass cell. Outside, the world burned. The sky roiled orange, red, purple and gray. Smoke broiled toward the bruised sky. Distant screams were cut silent. The ground was ablaze with angry flames, licking and devouring all in their path. Relean stood next to me, our arms touching. Dev slept in the cot in the corner. They had taken Ahti.

  Relean reached into his mouth, wriggling something loose. He popped out one of his teeth and held it in his hand. I stared at him, aghast.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Shh,” he said, and unscrewed the back of the tooth, opening it. Inside were little transmitters. He took one and attached it to my temple, did the same for himself, and another for Dev. He looked down in his hand at the last remaining transmitter. The one for Ahti.

  “If anything happens to us, we’ll be transmitted to the Alephs I’ve hidden in a safe place. At least then there is a chance that we’ll be together again. I don’t want this to be the end.”

  “Oh, Relean.” He’d planned this for a long time.

  Dev slept. Outside, comets fell to earth, blooming into roses of fire. So much fire. There wasn’t long left.

  I drew Relean close for a kiss, clinging to him. We drew our wings around us as a pitiful, translucent shield.

  Something large hit the prison. The walls and floor shook. The smell of smoke filled the air. Alarms sounded. Dev woke up, crying. I held out my arm, and Dev came to me as we waited for the end.

  Pain.

  Pain as we started coughing smoke. The searing heat. We fell to our knees. There was no escape. Not while wearing this body. I spasmed on the floor, suffocating, my vision darkening.

  Another blast. I felt the transmitter start to work, and my last thought was that the worst part was knowing that it was my ward, my child, my little Ahti, who had ended the world.

  I came out of the vision and back into myself. I shuddered, rubbing my hands against my arms. For a second, I had felt myself die in Anisa’s body, felt my heart stop, my limbs burn away. My throat felt raw from smoke and screams.

  “What happened after that?” I asked.

  “My memories end there.”

  “How was Ahti involved?”

  Her face creased in remembered pain at the mention of his name. She touched my forehead again, drawing me into a vision, but this one was like the first she had shared with me – more of a waking dream than a memory.

  This time I was myself and stood next to Anisa. The sea boiled and more fire rained from the sky. All was eerily quiet. An Alder ship flew through the air, racing for the stars. But a piece of debris collided, and the ship floundered before exploding; burning wreckage raining down on the scorched earth.

  Anisa spoke aloud. “Ahti had two powers. He could control the elements and telekinetic energy. When I found him in the jungle, the Kashura and their human allies were trying to isolate his power, somehow take it out of him. They succeeded in dampening his abilities, but only temporarily.”

  Anisa turned to me, her eyes wide and dark. I could almost smell the smoke from the dying flames. “He had it in him to save the world or destroy the world and he fought back against the Kashura the only way he knew how. Only his powers were too great for him to control, and most of the world paid the price.

  “Many of the Alder left in their aircraft, and some of the humans with t
hem. But every Chimaera vanished, disintegrated into nothing. They must have told him it needed to be done, but I do not know how it was possible. The seas continued to rise, everything burned, and so many died…” she trailed off. “So much destruction for nothing. And it could have been avoided.”

  “How?”

  “Dev.” She looked back out at the patches of fire, the tendrils of cruel, dark smoke. “My little Kedi. Dev could calm Ahti down, and could almost absorb the effects of the power. If Dev and Ahti had been in the same room, history might have taken another fork in the path.”

  I reeled from this.

  “I have been dormant for millennia. It was only when I sensed you that I managed to fully awaken, to stretch out my senses and see how much I could do in this form.” She looked down at her body. In the vision, she seemed real. “It does more than even I knew. It did not feel like an accident that I found you, so close to me. And you remind me so much of Dev.”

  “What is a Kedi?”

  “It is simply a word that ancient humans gave to those who did not identify as solely male or solely female, whether it was in a physical or mental way. It could relate to Chimaera, or human, or Alder.”

  “And they were worshipped?”

  “Some were, just as some men and women were.”

  “Pozzi told me that what I was… wasn’t related to my abilities.”

  “You and Cyan have abilities that few others in this time have. You’re like the Anthi, but you’re something different.”

  “But me being… both genders doesn’t relate to it?”

  She contemplated me. “There have been male Anthi, female Anthi, eunuch Anthi, and Anthi like Dev. And the Theri were as varied as could be. I myself have lived as a man, and also as a woman, and as a being made of clockwork. The power exists, and what body it inhabits is irrelevant.”

  I looked away from her, unsure what to say. The sea roiled beneath us, and a fierce wind whipped our hair.

  “Do you miss them? Your family?”

  “Every second of every day. But I live in hope. It’s often all that has sustained me through the centuries. There’s a chance that Relean and Dev’s Alephs survived. I want you to help me find them, if you can. I want my family back. And then we also have to make sure that this” – she swept her hands out over the wreckage –”does not happen again. For it might. And this time, it could end the world for good.”

  The fires darkened to dim glowing jewels scattered across the land. The sea still frothed, white and angry.

  Cyan shook me awake. I was lying on the rooftop of the Kymri Theatre. I felt so cold. I could tell I had been up on the roof for long enough that a normal person would have suffered from frostbite.

  She ushered me back into my room. Drystan did not move. Cyan’s gaze lingered on our beds pushed together.

  Thanks for finding me, I thought. You should go back to bed.

  Why won’t you tell me what happened? I felt her quest in my mind, asking me to share the memories so I did not have to explain. Gently, I pushed her back.

  We all have our secrets. Let me keep this one for a time, alright?

  Alright, she said. She strode to the door, the hem of her robe whispering along the floorboards. She paused, turning back to me. Wisps of her dark hair escaped the long braid down her back.

  Sometimes she speaks to me alone, too. You’re not the only one with secrets.

  The door closed behind her, leaving me in the dark, next to Drystan, wondering what Anisa had spoken to Cyan about, and how I was going to help save the world.

  27

  SCIENCE, MAGIC, AND STORY

  “A good magician’s performance tells a story. Each act should build on the next, becoming ever more engaging to fill the audience with wonder. It’s a bud that unfurls into a flower, meant to woo the audience.”

  The unpublished memoirs of Jasper Maske: the Maske of Magic

  Time slipped past, drawing us ever closer to the night of the duel.

  We shut ourselves off from the world, practicing from dawn to long past dusk. As the snow melted outside the windows, snippets of news found their way to us, through newspapers or visits from Lily when she dropped off supplies from Twisting the Aces. She usually stayed for a cup of tea, telling us of the latest antics of the Foresters.

  Lily brought flowers and berated us for staying indoors so much, lamenting the dust that again collected in the corners of the theatre. I did not know how often Lily spent the night.

  Finally and yet all too soon, it was the week before the Grand Specter-Maske Duel of Magic. The city was plastered with lithographic posters and tickets at the Royal Hippodrome had already sold out. The monarchy had even offered to lend several Vestige projectors so that people gathered in parks and public places would be able to see the duel as well, even if they could not afford the tickets. The gesture would have been sweeter if it had not so obviously been a token one to try to placate the rising ire of the Foresters.

  Two days before the duel, we invited Lily to be our test audience. Cyan’s beau Oli was there as well, returned from abroad. We had trained him to be our extra stagehand so he was backstage with me. My nerves fluttered. This would be the first time anyone would see our full repertoire. Lily was so excited she could hardly sit still. She wore a dress of watered green silk and cream lace.

  Next to me, Oli took a deep breath. He wore a clean but homespun shirt and braces. His face was tanned from months abroad the ship that sailed to Kymri, where winter never held power.

  The lights dimmed and the show began.

  I watched Lily’s rapt face through the peephole beneath the stage, pushing levers and pulleys when needed.

  At the finale, I shifted my attention back to the stage. Drystan sat on the stage in a chair, his head in his hands. Behind him rose a tall gauze curtain that looked a little like an artist’s canvas. Drystan stood and twirled, waving his arms and muttering incantations. The gauze fluttered and then pulled away. An automaton in a flowing dress with wide sleeves stood on a podium. Her face was of smooth brass, her false glass eyes fixed on a far-off destination. This was only the second time I had seen Maske’s creation, and the first time in action. A shiver passed through me as her head moved mechanically to survey the audience. She looked like a crude and primitive echo of the clockwork woman’s head.

  The automaton took a shaking step downstage. Drystan reached his arms out to her.

  “My creation is more beautiful than I could ever have imagined. But if only she could be transformed from metal to flesh and bone.” He paused, his eyes lingering on the props of magic books stacked to one side of the stage. “I wonder…”

  He circled the automaton. Her head moved jerkily, following him. Again, I fought down a shudder. This automaton was nothing but metal and cogs and oil. The clockwork woman at the Mechanical Museum had been terrible to behold, like a live woman trapped in a crystal cage, but the blank, dead face of the automaton unnerved me more.

  I tried to focus on the illusion, which would be perfect for the audience, for they would love the fusion of science, magic, and story.

  Drystan arranged more props around the stage – beakers and a magic wand. He shrugged out of his lab coat and into a magician’s tails, waving the wand. The beakers of liquid bubbled, sending swathes of purple and blue fog onto the stage. The automaton raised her hands above her head to cover her face, but midway through we heard a screech and she stopped. Her head slumped forward.

  Drystan paused in his motions, mystified. Cyan, who was beneath the stage, waiting to go through the star trap once the automaton dropped through, looked at me and Oli anxiously.

  I closed the peephole and opened the trap door to clamber onto the stage and held my arm down to help Cyan up.

  Maske fiddled with the gears on the automaton’s back.

  “I don’t understand…” he muttered. “She still has full power. She worked this morning.”

  Maske could not even unbend the automaton’s arms. We all stood on st
age frozen as if in a tableau vivant. Then Maske lowered his head, resting it on the shoulder of his creation. And he sobbed.

  It was disconcerting to see him cry so brokenly. But I understood. The duel was the day after tomorrow. If his final act was broken, then our chances of winning were infinitesimal. This finale could be incredible. But only if the automaton worked.

  Cyan moved toward Maske to comfort him, but he turned away from her. Gently, he gathered his stiff automaton in his hands and carried her away to his workshop.

  The rest of us stood in silence. Lily rustled her skirts, rising and clearing her throat self-consciously.

  “Oh my, will he be alright?” she asked. “Maybe I should go speak to him. Oh, and it was so wonderful as well before it went wrong. Poor Jasper…” She trailed off.

  “You’re probably the only one who could comfort him,” Drystan said. Lily lifted her skirts and bustled away. Oli came over and wrapped an arm around Cyan. She leaned her head against him. I wanted to do the same with Drystan, but I did not know how Oli would react, and so my arms stayed heavy at my sides.

  I could only hope that Maske was alright, and that the finale could be saved.

  I heard low, regretful laughter in my head. I frowned at Cyan. Her wide eyes met mine and she shook her head minutely. It wasn’t her.

  It was Anisa.

  “Excuse me, I don’t feel so well,” I muttered, leaving the room. I could feel their stares on my back. I took the stairs two or three at a time, trotting across the loft and grabbing the Aleph, as Anisa had called it. I pressed the button and waited for her to appear.

  “What?” I asked, too impatient and annoyed to be polite.

  She only stared at me, with her infuriating, mysterious smile.

  “Why were you laughing? Were you laughing at Maske?”

  “More at his crude contraption. Maske doesn’t know all he created, and so he does not know how to repair it.”