Masquerade

by Lam, Laura

  I remembered what Anisa had said to me in my dream the first night after I’d seen her in the Pavilion of Phantoms at R. H. Ragona’s Circus of Magic. She’d touched my face with a transparent finger, as she’d done tonight: ‘I know your secret, little Kedi,’ she had said. ‘And I know what your future will bring. You poor thing.’

  Did I want to know the truth?

  Dawn continued to lighten the sky. Curfew broke as we approached our neighbourhood and people began passing us on their way to work, looking askance as we shuffled through the streets, wild-eyed and desperate.

  We arrived at the Penny Rookeries apartment. I’d never been so glad to see its cracked stones, the one broken pane in the window in the lounge temporarily mended with oilskin paper.

  Kai, Anisa, and Cyan sat at the table, while Drystan and I collapsed on the sofa.

  The door to Maske’s bedroom opened. He peered at us, blinking sleepily.

  ‘This is rather early to be having visitors,’ he said, glancing curiously at Kai and Anisa.

  ‘We’ve had a Styx of a night,’ I said.

  ‘Wait until I’ve had my brew,’ Maske said. ‘Then tell me everything. Anyone else for a cup?’

  We all said yes. Anisa couldn’t disguise her excitement. She hadn’t tasted anything in a few millennia, I supposed.

  Maske brought through the cracked mugs, milk, sugar, and a carafe of coffee. We procrastinated, taking our time preparing our cups. The coffee did little to wake me, but unsettled my stomach, making my limbs even more jumpy. Anisa drank three large mugs with relish.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Tell me what’s happened now.’

  ‘Well. This is Anisa,’ I waved to the blonde woman with knowing, ancient eyes. ‘You two have met.’

  ‘Hello, magician,’ she said.

  Maske startled. ‘How?’

  I opened my mouth to try and explain, but the exhaustion settled over me so heavily that no words would come. Anisa took over, her voice smooth, never faltering. Meticulously, she laid out everything. How Pozzi had been experimenting on women to create Chimaera, including Cyan’s mother. How the Royal Family was distantly descended from the Alder, yet the features came through most strongly in young Nicolette. At least it was Anisa performing treason. We had not technically broken our promise to the Steward.

  Next, she introduced Kai, Pozzi’s former assistant, and explained that he was also Chimaera. She skimmed over the fact that he had done the actual grave-robbing, and I was grateful for her tact. Kai was one small step from a breakdown. His shoulders were so hunched the outlines of his wings showed through his bulky coat. Cyan still held his hand. She didn’t use her powers on him, but she was a calming presence for him all the same.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ Maske asked, and my heart warmed. We did not deserve him.

  Seeing me sway in my seat was answer enough for him.

  ‘First, you sleep. We’ll figure out the rest later. Kai and Anisa, you can take the sofa and the chair. I’m afraid there are no other beds. We had much more room at the Kymri Theatre.’

  ‘You’ll be back into it soon,’ Anisa said, but I could no longer tell if that was prescience or wishful thinking.

  Maske only smiled sadly and retreated to his room, to reappear with blankets and a pillow. Cyan lent Anisa a blue dress, as they were close enough in size. Both the sofa and the chair were old and sagging. They would not be comfortable.

  ‘You sleep, Kai,’ Anisa said, settling into the chair and pulling a ratty blanket around her. ‘I’ve slept for centuries.’

  I found a small bag of jellied fruits in a cupboard and gave them to Anisa. She ate them happily. At least someone was finding some pleasure in this strange morning.

  Kai laid down but his eyes were open, meeting mine beseechingly. ‘I’m afraid of what I’ll dream.’

  ‘I know. Me, too.’

  I did not sleep easily that morning. I lay close to Drystan, listening to the sound of his breathing. We didn’t speak, but he stroked my hair until he drifted off.

  I stared out the window, over the chimneys of the next tenement.

  Every time I closed my eyes, I thought of the floating man in the Ampulla tank. We should have destroyed the tanks before we left. Pozzi said he was finished with his experiments, but what if that was just another lie? Yet, despite everything, the idea of breaking something Vestige felt sacrilegious. Plus, in one of the visions, the corpse had healed. Perhaps that could be used to help the living. There was so much about Vestige we did not know.

  After a sleepless morning, I stayed in bed until the early afternoon.

  Drystan got up and returned with a cup of coffee. I took a few sips and then dozed fitfully. A little later, Cyril came to visit before his lecture. He sat with me. I tried to fill him in on what had happened, but I was still so tired I couldn’t remember what he did or didn’t know. He sat with me, holding my hand.

  ‘Any change with mother?’ I asked.

  ‘No. No change. Will you visit her again soon? We should try again. You almost reached her last time.’

  ‘I will,’ I said. If I decided to miss my next dose of Elixir, my powers might grow weaker. They might return to their former, erratic state. The chance to help my mother might have already passed me by, and I’d let it, due to my own fear. Cyril left when I drifted off again.

  Cyan woke me. Come to the lounge. Right now.

  Fear flooded through me, and I flung myself from the bed.

  It was almost evening. Lily was in the lounge, her face streaked with tears, her hair falling from its plait.

  ‘Frey is gone,’ Cyan told me. Lily only sobbed harder.

  ‘What—?’ I started, but then the front door opened. Lily looked up in fear.

  Maske came into the lounge, holding a bag of groceries, and saw the whole messy scene. Lily in tears; Kai, Cyan, Drystan, and I surrounding her. He stopped short, setting the food on the table next to the door.

  ‘Lily? What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Jasper,’ she said, and she did not use the voice of Lily Verre, the merchant’s widow, but the Shadow Lily Verre. Gone were her flighty mannerisms, her high titter of laughter. She pulled off her mask. I couldn’t bear to watch this unfold, when I was so raw from the events of the night before. We had put off telling him, to try and avoid hurting him. Now he would only hurt all the more.

  ‘More secrets, I see,’ was all Maske said, but he was wary, every line of his body radiating the hurt he felt.

  ‘My name is Lily Verre, but I have had to keep things from you,’ she said. It was the first time I’d seen her hesitant. ‘I had to put on a fake voice, and initially I had to grow closer to you for a job. I’m a Shadow. Oh, Jasper, I swear I’ll explain everything to you as you deserve, but right now my son has been taken, and I have to find him.’

  ‘Your son . . . ?’ Maske echoed, faintly.

  ‘When did you notice him missing?’ Drystan said, forcing her to look at him. He was brusque, and she responded to it, falling back into her Shadow training.

  ‘Half an hour ago. I went out to fetch some food for dinner and when I returned, he was gone. No sign of breaking in. But he couldn’t leave on his own. I asked the doorman who had left recently, and he’d seen no one. It’s as if he vanished into thin air.’

  I opened my mouth. Closed it. ‘Where have you gone? Have you seen Pozzi?’ Kai was here, and the only other person who knew about Frey, as far as I knew, was the Doctor. My stomach sank with dread.

  ‘I would never have taken him anywhere without telling you,’ Kai said.

  ‘I know. I know. But I’d hoped he’d convinced you to come here for a visit – he has grown fond of all of you – rather than the alternative.’

  ‘Don’t you have a Mirror of Moirai? You used it to track our movements.’

  Her lips tightened. ‘I never let Frey near it. Didn’t want people to be able to find him so easily. I regret it now.’

  Maske missed nothing. ‘A Mirror of Moirai? You
watch Lily’s son, Kai? You all knew of this?’ He couldn’t even look at us.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

  ‘We were afraid of hurting you. And it didn’t seem our secret to tell.’ Cyan gave Lily a hard look.

  ‘I want to fix this, Jasper, I truly do, but my son is missing. We’ll go to Pozzi first. I can only hope he’s there.’ Her eyes were dry, but her hands shook.

  ‘We’ll find him, Lily, I promise.’ I closed my eyes, trying to stretch my awareness, but it couldn’t go far. The only Chimaera flames I sensed were Cyan’s and Kai’s.

  Maske backed away from us. He turned his shoulders from Lily. The repairs on the Kymri Theatre would be finished soon. Within a week or two, he’d be back on the stage, performing as the Maske of Magic. He thought his life was about to go back to the triumphant victory he’d only been able to enjoy for a few weeks after the duel. Everyone in this room had misdirected him with our lies.

  ‘Jasper,’ Lily said, and the word was filled with love, with sadness, with fear. ‘We have to go,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll grab my coat,’ he said, sighing.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ I said. ‘You can stay while we look for him.’

  ‘If I can help, I will. I can’t shake the feeling that this is much bigger than my own hurt feelings. Everything is coming together.’

  The first time I’d met Maske, he’d thrown a séance for us, to decide from our reactions if we were worth taking in. Anisa had used him to warn of her visions, but before that, he had mentioned images he saw in the crystal ball while in a trance that tied back into Lily and Frey. I had always assumed that was Anisa as well. Either that, or Maske had a touch of prescience himself.

  ‘Thank you, Maske.’ Drystan said.

  Maske pulled his hat low down over his eyes, so we could not see his face.

  Before we left, I went to Maske’s workshop for one of the hidden vials of Elixir. Cyan came with me. Drystan knew what we were doing, but stayed away.

  I prepped the syringes, tapping out the air bubbles as I’d seen Pozzi do. I didn’t want to take any more of the drug, even as I still craved it, but we needed all the help we could get. I pressed the needle into my skin and pressed down. Another faint green mark to add to the others.

  Then Cyan took her first dose. Her face was pinched with nerves. I couldn’t help but fear it would somehow affect her differently. Would it make her as high as Drystan? But no. Though her head fell back and her eyes closed tight as the drug did its work, when she opened them again, her mind was clear.

  ‘My gods,’ she whispered. ‘I can sense everything. Everyone. So clearly.’ She let out a breath, pressing her hands to her temples. I sensed her building her walls, blocking out enough of the noise that she could hear herself again.

  ‘That’s something,’ she said when done, looking down at the Elixir bottles.

  ‘Yeah. The comedown might be difficult. I was always exhausted, but that might have been because of my eavesdropping on Kai.’

  She squeezed my hand. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t sense it.’

  ‘No one did. Not even Anisa, apparently.’

  Kai tentatively poked his head in and saw what we were doing.

  ‘You’re welcome to one, if you think it will help,’ I said.

  Kai shook his head. ‘That enabled Pozzi to . . .’ he couldn’t finish the sentence. ‘I’ll never go near that.’

  I winced. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘We are,’ Cyan said, rising in a smooth motion. We followed her back to the lounge.

  ‘This is big, whatever is happening,’ Drystan said. ‘I feel the same as Maske. It’s all coming together. Maybe it’s the dregs of the Elixir, but I’m listening to the intuition all the same.’

  I shivered, the Elixir singing in my own veins, and feared he was right.

  We hailed the first cab we found and went to Pozzi’s. It was tight inside with all six of us, and we sat in a tense, awkward silence. Lily and Maske sat as far from each other as possible. Maske, squashed against Drystan’s shoulder, stared out of the window. I was smooshed between Lily and Kai, but at least I was no longer exhausted. Elixir sang in my veins.

  Where was Frey? And what would happen if he was upset and he couldn’t control his powers?

  Outside, night began to fall, and it was the Penmoon. The Penglass glowed blue, lighting the streets better than the yellow gas lights. The streets were crowded, despite the late hour. People walked through the streets in the direction of the Snakewood Palace. I saw no placards or signs that it was a late-night protest, but their stoic faces gave me chills.

  We arrived on Ruby Street. All was deserted. No one wished to be this close to the Constabulary. The driver muttered we were running too close to curfew, and we paid him double. Drystan jumped down from the carriage first and asked the doorman if the Royal Physician was in, as the rest of us lingered in the gathering dusk. We were so close to the Constabulary Headquarters that it felt certain we would be arrested for breaking curfew if he didn’t let us in.

  ‘The hardest thing is standing still,’ Lily said through gritted teeth. ‘I want to scream, scratch, or kill whoever took Frey. Instead, I have to wait.’

  Maske looked like he wanted to comfort her, but he hung back. The silence stretched.

  Drystan returned. ‘He’s not here. Doorman says a royal carriage came to pick him up, and when I gave him a coin he told me the Royal Physician is at the palace. Maybe we can find another carriage before full nightfall?’ He eyed the sky doubtfully.

  As if on cue, a lone man emerged from the shadows. He wore plain clothes, but he moved like a Policier. We backed away, preparing to run.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I’m here on behalf of the Steward. He requests your presence at the palace immediately. He’s collecting on his favour.’ He reached into his pocket, bringing out the royal crest.

  We’d protest, but the palace was another potential location for Pozzi or Frey. I’d only had a brief look at our guide before he turned and led us down the winding backstreets of Imachara. He had a stocky, muscular frame, a blocky face, and short dark hair. A forgettable face, which could be useful for a policeman. I could only hope we weren’t about to be arrested and unable to help Frey.

  The crowds grew thicker again as we came closer to the palace. The people were no longer silent, but yelling. The wrought-iron gates of the palace were barricaded, the grounds swarming with guards and soldiers holding Vestige guns. The sight made me cold. The centre of Imachara could become a battleground at any moment. How many people in the crowd had weapons of their own? It would take so little for the anger within the crowd to spark to violence, like it had the day we’d rescued Juliet and Tauro.

  The Policier took us to the side entrance of a storefront a few streets away from the palace. The store was long closed, the paint of the door cracked and peeling, the interior filled with only broken furniture, dust, and scattered leaflets put through the letterbox.

  ‘What you are about to see cannot be shared with anyone,’ he warned. In the low light of the streetlamps, I saw he had the faint scar of a stitched harelip below his nose.

  ‘Understood,’ Maske said. It wouldn’t matter much, in any case. The Steward would surely use the Lethe on us so we could not share more secrets.

  The man unlocked the door and led us inside. The store had once been a pharmacy, and the wooden bar of the dispensary dominated one wall, its glass displays cracked. A few canisters still lined the shelves, neatly labelled with their contents. We went to the back, and down in the storage area was a cellar with a trapdoor. Of course. There must be a veritable maze through Imachara so people could enter and exit the palace without being seen, and there was no way we’d be able to enter the front gates with the mob above.

  The man opened the drop hatch. ‘I leave you here. Keep straight, and do not linger.’

  The opening was pitch dark. Our guide took out a small glass globe and handed it to Drystan. Without a
nother word, he left us there, the door of the shop clicking as he locked us in. Drystan climbed down first, then Cyan, and Kai; Lily, then Anisa, then Maske. I went last, closing the hatch behind us.

  The Vestige globe did little to light our way. Down in the damp, the atmosphere was similar to Pozzi’s underground lab. Kai shuddered next to me, but put one foot in front of the other.

  After fifteen minutes we reached the end of the tunnel. Drystan opened the hatch and we looked up into the stern faces of no less than six guards. They stayed silent as we clambered out, none of us graceful. Anisa moved elegantly, but it was clear she was still growing used to having a body again. Her fingers moved in a ceaseless dance, skimming over the bones of her wrist, up to her elbows, to run along the moulding of the walls as we made our way down the corridor, flanked by guards.

  The Steward waited for us in one of his meeting rooms. I was glad it wasn’t the overlarge, over-imposing throne room. That cavernous hall had far too many nooks and crannies for curious ears to listen in.

  We faced him. He sat in a chair as ornate as any throne, at the head of a wooden table made of planks of the Twelve Trees. His face was grave, his hair mussed from its usual combed-back slickness. His thin, plain coronet was slightly askew on his forehead. The circles under his eyes were so dark, he couldn’t have slept in over a day and a half.

  Seeing him again, knowing what Pozzi had told us, was difficult. Here was the man who had funded the Royal Physician’s experiments on who knew how many women, so they’d birth Chimaera babes. Here was the man who had created us as his army, and now he was the general calling his troops.

  Cyan let out a little gasp.

  The Steward’s head turned towards the sound. ‘You found it even through the Cricket?’

  She nodded.

  His shoulders slumped. ‘The Princess is missing.’

  It took us a beat to process his words. ‘Missing, Your Highness? When?’

  Lily took a step forward. ‘My son has been taken today as well, Your Highness. He is Chimaera. I think it might be linked.’

  The Steward’s features sagged, as if he didn’t even have the energy to look surprised.