by Kim Smejkal
Celia needed one name.
One name without a date of death.
That person would prove it was possible to survive the Touch, and perhaps even be able to reveal how. Even just one name meant hope.
A warning message came from Anya. Celia hid her arm from the plague doctor’s line of sight.
Every Touched mistico had a date of death exactly three days after affliction. The few names with different professions had a range of death dates, anywhere from one day to many weeks, depending on how quickly the temple could deal with the problem.
Another note from Anya. Out!
The plague doctor whispered a hoarse word, the first sound he’d made since following her into the room. “Time . . .” It’s running out.
A few pages left. She went quicker down the line, looking only for a blank space in the columns marked Date and Method of Death.
Hurry. One name. No time.
The plague doctor rushed over and tried to pull the book from her hands, but Celia blocked him with her body, flipping pages, scanning. Just one name . . .
Her finger landed on Halcyon Ronnea of Wisteria Township. Touched three years ago. No date of death, only: “Symptoms disappeared.”
She heard the voices—not approaching, but there, behind the curtain and cracked door—seconds before the plague doctor finally won their personal war, hastily placing the book back on its pedestal and fitting the glass lid on top.
On the wrong page. And without the lock.
The mistico who came in uttered an alarmed “What are you doing in here?” at the same moment that every bone in the plague doctor’s body deflated. A loose arm flung out, capsizing a stack of books. As his boneless body tried to catch them, he juggled through a cascade of apologies and knocked over the glass case, the lid smashing as it met the floor. The Roll of Saints was next, knocked behind the desk. The character Gemello made enough noise for ten people.
Celia had backed away, her gaze darting between the quickly recovering mistico and the plague doctor’s transparent act. There was no way out of the room unless they bowled the mistico down, and that became more impossible as each new body pushed its way in, drawn by the ruckus.
Slurred “Sorrys” competed with shouts of outrage as the mistico assessed the situation. Two shrieked and swept over to the Roll, picking it up tenderly and inspecting it for damage. One mistico had already left to summon officers. Another advanced slowly toward Celia, giving the-plague-doctor-as-Gemello cagey looks as he tried to help the mistico with the Roll. “I think I saw a page fall out. Is the spine damaged? What happens if you can’t find that page?” The plague doctor was a wild card no one wanted to play; Celia, on the other hand . . .
Celia’s mind spun as she muttered excuses. She’d give herself up willingly, end this game with Diavala, and face the temple’s justice, but she knew others would join her if she reneged on their agreement. She had to get out of there.
“Do you realize how much trouble you’re in?” The mistico’s chastisement was almost endearing, it was so misplaced. “This isn’t the place to bring your poor choices, young one. Officers are on their way.”
The plague doctor popped up beside them, his Gemello mask crooked but his smile wide. “Are you sure your ledger is accurate?” he slurred, gesturing to the floor where the mistico huddled, searching for wayward pages. “I thought I saw Great-Grandfather Kharin’s name, and trust me, he was no saint . . .”
Unsure how to answer, the mistico glanced to her colleagues, then took one step toward Celia and the plague doctor, flustered. “It’s not your concern—”
Celia grabbed his hand, and they pushed past, the plague doctor giving the mistico a hip bump for good measure, nudging her off balance.
It wasn’t a graceful exit: they swam through confused bodies, dodged angry mistico, ducked and feinted. Anya jumped in front of two mistico, cutting off their pursuit. “What sort of chaos is this?” she shouted over the other shouts. “Oh, my—look, it’s happening!”
Celia and the plague doctor pushed through the front doors and ran. She didn’t know how to lose him and didn’t have the time to try. Anya had jumped into diversion mode, and Celia had to deliver some ink for it. As they ran, Celia took out her quill, snapped it down to its nub to disguise its length and shape, and sketched on her arm without looking. It didn’t have to be much of an image, but it did have to be hidden from the plague doctor.
Nothing about the night had worked the way they’d planned.
But Celia had found one name that offered hope for Vincent, and Anya could boldly lie better than anyone.
They swerved into an alley, and Celia almost collapsed. “So you followed us.” She panted, trying to catch her breath, not winded from running as much as from the concentration it took to hold the ink in place on Anya’s arm. It needed to last on Anya as long as possible without being permanent, and because they mostly concentrated on quick disappearances, the skill of holding an image was a novel one. She leaned against the brick building in the alleyway for support, concentrating on pausing the ink in limbo—not allowing it to go into Anya permanently, yet not pulling it back.
Voices coming up the street made both of them press into the shadows. Pia, Fallan, and a few other Mob fans swept by: “You wanted extra excitement tonight, Fallan. Stop griping at me; I didn’t know they’d cause a scene.” Pia’s tone sounded equal parts amused and haughty.
The plague doctor pushed off from the wall and checked around the corner. His Gemello mask didn’t suit him right then, despite what a good player he was. Gemello, the endearing, easygoing rascal, would never flex his hands into fists, stand so rigid, or start a sentence ten times only to cut himself off. He watched Celia expectantly, waiting for an explanation.
The seconds turned to minutes. Enough time passed that Celia worried their distraction had backfired. Instead of being momentarily distracted by the fresh tattoo on Anya’s arm, maybe the mistico had found a reason to detain her. Anya was supposed to dart away before any heavy questions began.
The minutes turned to more minutes. Come on, Anny, I can’t hold it much longer. She thought she might pass out from the concentration; her vision swam.
Turning the corner into their agreed-upon meeting place, Anya launched herself at Celia, knocking any remaining breath out of her. With relief, Celia pulled back the last thread of ink she’d been desperately clutching.
“Anyone?” Anya asked. Then she noticed the presence beside her and drew back.
Feeling as if she’d run a marathon, Celia waved a hand vaguely. “It’s just the plague doctor.”
Anya’s mouth popped open, her features rearranging themselves into hard lines and thin lips. “You followed us!”
Unbothered by her outrage, the plague doctor in the Gemello mask finally found his words, aiming them at Celia calmly. “Why do you hoard feathers?”
Whatever she’d expected him to say, it wasn’t that. She blinked. “They’re for a friend who loves birds but never sees them.”
“Ah! You can speak truths.” He exhaled, as if puffing away stray cobwebs from his face. “I was really beginning to worry it was a medical condition.”
They had one more thing to do that night. Celia hoped she wouldn’t pass out before it was done. How long could you function on adrenaline alone, exactly? She must be breaking records. “Here’s another truth for you, plague doctor: I’m glad your nimble fingers are here. We need to break into an apothecary.”
With only the slightest hesitation the plague doctor turned and strode to the main street, gesturing for them to follow. He tossed his usual smile over his shoulder, his lips now pairing nicely with his roguish mask. “Ah, now that is some mischief I understand.”
He knew something was wrong and he knew she kept secrets, but it was as if he imagined some minor tribulation and had every faith in an eventual win. Just like that, he’d hopped onboard her ship without realizing that the deck was rotted.
That time, his smile almo
st killed her.
Chapter 19
They returned too late to scale the fence and dissolve into the bustle of the Mob’s final preparations. Anya led the way through to the main gate, pushing a path to the front through the assembled crowd.
The stilt walker at the gate leaned down and turned the color of her name when she recognized the people under the makeup. “Are you kidding me?” Lilac hissed. “Kitty Kay is screaming for your heads right now!” She called for Ravino, and he used his murderous Savant persona, covered in blood and grinning as if he’d thoroughly enjoyed eating those children, to keep the crowd at bay while the three of them squeezed through the gates.
A few outraged shouts of “queue jumpers!” and “they didn’t pay!” rose up from the crowd.
Ravino bellowed right back. “The first of the blood offerings tonight, but not the last!” As he outlined the criteria for getting devoured by the hungry maw of the Rabble Mob of Minos, Celia, Anya, and the plague doctor flew toward their wagons to change. Ravino’s stalling, while a prime effort, wouldn’t last long; he wasn’t accustomed to monologuing.
Kitty Kay intercepted the plague doctor by throwing his mask and some colorful words at him. Grisilda and Fawn, hands linked, ready to open the night as Passion, herded Anya toward her new position in their act, Remy and her friend trailing behind with Anya’s angel dress.
Celia darted toward the main stage, where she would wait, out of sight, until the end.
The Palidon waited for her by the back entry to the stage. “You went into Malidora.” Vincent’s mouth might have said those words, but Celia’s clenched stomach told her it wasn’t Vincent saying them.
Georgio launched themself past where Celia had stopped, tossed her costume at her, and continued on up the stairs. “Half an hour, tops.” They’d sweated through their costume already, dark crescents smiling under their arms. “Here.” They doubled back a moment later with a wet cloth, their wide-eyed Fazzi mask dangling from their ears.
And then Celia and Diavala were alone.
“We went to stir up some interest in the show.” Celia tried to steady herself with the rhythmic removal of her makeup. Wipe in small circles, Remy had told her. It doesn’t hurt as much.
“Did you.”
She balanced Diavala’s monotone, emotionless words with overenthusiasm. “We led a parade!”
A long pause.
Small circles, change direction, more small circles. Her makeup had started off yellow and red, but now it stained the cloth a cockroach brown. The crowd’s chanting had increased to a dull roar as Ravino’s story wound down.
Diavala took the devil dress from Celia’s hands, deftly undoing the clasps that Celia’s shaking, tired fingers couldn’t manage. Lifting the dress over Celia’s head and pulling it down, she smoothed the tulle, positioned the forked tail, adjusted the slimy scales on Celia’s shoulders.
The silence felt poisoned. Acrid, like a festering sore.
While Diavala fastened the long line of clasps at Celia’s spine—snap, snap, snap—cool fingers brushed her skin.
“You seem to forget how well I know you, Inkling. Always going left when others are content to go right. Your shock is wearing off. You’re coming to terms with this new reality. I don’t know why you went into Malidora, but it’s clear that your infuriating wiggling is returning. And so I have a gift for you.”
“No, that’s okay, I don’t need any gifts.” Celia’s thoughts galloped in opposite directions.
The clasps took forever—snap, snap, snap—but as the last one snapped with finality, Diavala turned Celia around and put her hands, Vincent’s hands, on Celia’s shoulders. Celia felt her breath, Vincent’s breath. She saw Vincent’s face. His flickering tenor in silvers and golds radiated around his body, a thing so taken for granted, but such absolute proof of life, of a soul. And Diavala had none.
“It’s something to focus you until we travel on and cross into Kinallen.” Diavala pushed a stack of pale cream letters, bunched together and bound with twine, into Celia’s clawed hands.
Celia recognized the thick paper. She’d handled hundreds of them. She’d inked according to the words on them.
Divine orders for new tattoos.
She undid the twine and flipped through the names gracing the front of the letters. One for every member of the Mob.
As if Diavala had known that Celia would eventually fall out of line.
“But I am focused. I—” I won’t stain what I love with what I hate. “I—” I don’t have time. We’re finally figuring you out. We have to plan . . .
“You’ll do them. Every single one. I’ll be watching.” So quiet and serious, Diavala sounded like a concerned parent. “You blame Profeta for your misery—the mistico, me—but one day soon, Inkling, you’ll realize that people aren’t worth all this effort.”
Diavala retreated, and Vincent returned. With his hands still on her shoulders, Celia felt the change from tension to relaxation, then back to tension of a new sort. He looked down at Celia. “You don’t even have your mask on!” Then his features arranged themselves into a deep frown. “Or did I already say that?”
Celia wrapped her arms around his waist, clasping the orders in tight fists, and pressed her cheek to his chest. “You’re breaking my heart, Vincent,” she whimpered.
He seemed to be trying to wind time backwards. A hand on the back of her head, gentle, holding her close. A shhhh of comfort. An awkward chuckle with a joke about absinthe delirium.
A whispered confession. “I don’t know what I did to break your heart, Lalita. But I’m sorry.”
She nodded into his chest. Wrapped her arms around him tighter. Fit herself between his arms. His hands stroked her hair in short, tender sweeps. And they stood together.
One crying.
One sighing.
Both confused.
* * *
That premiere night in Malidora, the devil had a full hour under the bell jar. The acts leading up to it had changed too—shifts in tone and theme—as if the effects of the sinister menace caged onstage had seeped into the Mob’s collective consciousness.
“That was fabulous!” Kitty Kay grabbed Celia where she huddled backstage, away from the dancing and celebration. “With that one hairline crack in the bell jar, a few in the audience bolted away, Celia. They’re losing all perspective!”
Kitty Kay shone with pride, patting Celia on the head. “But they’ll be back.” She winked and waltzed away to revel with the others.
Ah, the goal of every player—to con their audience so completely, Celia thought as she snuck to her wagon after her special curtain call. A few people caught a glimpse of her, a devil escaped and slinking through the shadows. “I swear I saw her horns!” “What are they keeping from us?” “She can sneak through the cracks . . .” Their loud, attention-grabbing intrigue forced her to take such a circuitous route that she’d sweated through her costume by the time she lost them.
Celia snorted. Losing perspective indeed.
But that meant their show was working exactly as they needed it to. In the wagon, Celia uncrumpled the Divine orders and ripped into the first few, waiting for Anya to be done with her new part of the show: paranoid dancing, looking over her shoulder as if waiting for something to take its revenge, flirting through distraction, her bodyguard Passion hovering close and on alert.
“They’re normal,” Celia muttered, exhaling hard. She’d expected the orders from Diavala to be decidedly not-normal: eyeball tattoos or full-faced masks of ink. Her instinctual response was to burn them, rip them into pieces and toss them back at Diavala like confetti. But Vincent would receive the Touch, then someone else, then someone else . . .
When Anya finally found her, Celia had worked herself into a full rage. “Diavala’s threatening the rest of the Mob now, not just Vincent. She’s gloating about the power she has over us.”
Anya read through the first few orders and inhaled sharply, hissing through her perfect
teeth. Through a gap in the window curtains Anya’s gaze drifted to Lilac. Like a rope connected her, Lilac looked up at the same moment and smiled, her lip rings catching stray rays of torchlight and making her smile that much brighter.
Diavala was staking a claim to their skin. “Screw her,” Celia said. “I kept thinking we have nothing, no bargaining power, but we have so much more room to maneuver than I thought. This stack of orders”—she grabbed the papers violently and crumpled them in a tight fist all over again—“is so we stay in line. She’s reminding us to be scared of her. But it also shows some desperation.”
Anya arched an eyebrow and tilted her head as her eyes slowly brightened. “She’s trying to shorten the leash.”
Exactly. If Diavala was trying to pull them in tighter, it meant they were tugging in the right direction.
“We have to do them, but we’ll design them our way,” Celia said. The stack of orders felt hot in her hand. “And we can test the ink’s boundaries, experiment with her connection to it.” I miss nothing, Diavala had said. But they already knew she did, so what other loopholes could they find?
Their biggest problem was time: inklings got significant breaks between orders because the work weakened them, depending on the complexity of the tattoo. More ink meant a longer recovery. They were, quite literally, giving part of themselves away. Once, Celia had done two full sleeves connected by a design along the collarbone—three days of intricate work—and she’d been incoherent for a week. Celia wondered what they’d look like after doing two dozen permanent designs without pause.
An aggravatingly clever diversion—this would keep them very busy indeed.
As if reading her mind, Anya said, “We just have to be organized about it.”
As the reality of inking tattoos on the troupe sunk in, Celia barked out a laugh. She put her face in her hands, trying to calm down. For weeks she’d felt every emotion imaginable, and her body tingled from it.
The trip into Malidora had still been worth it. If Halcyon Ronnea could survive Diavala’s Touch, Vincent could too, and if they needed it, they had a drug that would lessen Vincent’s suffering until they could find Halcyon and get answers from them.
