by Kim Smejkal
Later, she asked Nero, “How can you believe that a salamander told you to return home and say goodbye to your mother, but you can’t believe that the true devil is disguised in robes?”
“Stop making fun of my salamander.” His lips quirked again in his now-familiar wry way.
He sat on the bench while she lay on the floor, and they stared at each other for entertainment. Her stories went limp. Her mind dried.
Out of nowhere, Nero told her the answer to the question she’d needed since Malidora. “Anya Burtoni’s in the black carriage at the back with High Mistico Benedict and Solemn Mistico Aurelio.”
For the first time in days, Celia became unlimp. She hoisted herself to her elbows and stared at him.
“But you’re the prize, Inkling Celia Sand. It’s all about the devil in the bell jar.” Nero shifted on the bench, his knuckle cracking reaching absurd proportions. “I suppose the good news for you is that the more attention the devil gets, the less falls to your angel.”
It felt like a clue, a nudge. She cocked her head, assessing the tells she was somewhat of an expert on by then. He cracked his knuckles and wouldn’t meet her eyes.
Interesting. And she had nothing but time to unravel that mystery. She lay back down. “Thanks, Nero.”
Chapter 30
The carriage door opened and closed. Celia’s eyelids fluttered open, then closed.
Someone nudged her foot. “Visitor.” If it was Captain Andras, Nero would have tied her up. If it was anyone in the troupe, he wouldn’t have called them a visitor.
“This trip has been fantastic, but alas, it’s at an end,” Diavala said with Mistico Benedict’s gravelly voice.
This wasn’t the first time Diavala had come in to gloat. She loved the sound of her cold, authoritative new voice.
Nero cracked his knuckles. He lived on some perpetual fence now—a knuckle-cracking, fidgety guard, thinking things—unable to choose which yard to leap into. He’d listened to her horseshit story. He’d heard every conversation between Celia and the High Mistico-who-seemed-like-something-else. He’d asked Celia questions, trying to sort through the haze, but sometimes his voice had stopped working halfway.
“Celia Sand. Sit up.” Sounded like Diavala had been asking for a while.
Celia forced her spine to uncurl, and sat.
“Ah, you don’t look good, Inkling. There’s no glimmer of hope around you now.”
“You win.”
“Almost.” She sat forward and laced her fingers together in her lap. “You cut a straight path through the field for me, but you have to finish the harvest.”
“No thanks. Not interested.”
Celia started to lie back down, ready to return to her hard bed of wooden planks, but Diavala said one more thing.
“I see you’re lacking in motivation, which won’t do. I don’t want a fragile bird onstage accepting that nine-tailed whip. I want fire and rage. The louder you shout, the more devilish the devil looks, the better for my haloed coming. So I’ll give you this: if you can find your motivation to passionately hate me again and put on a good show of it, then you can be the first to die.” She laughed with cheerful choir bells in her voice. “Maybe I do work in the currency of mercy, after all.”
Diavala needed Celia’s cooperation.
Celia knew something like this would come, thanks to Nero’s nudge—“You’re the prize, Celia Sand. It’s all about the devil in the bell jar.” She also knew she could trust exactly nothing coming from Diavala’s mouth, and no bargain she made for Anya and the Mob would ever be honored unless it suited Diavala.
But Celia found that she still had it in her to hate something. She hated how much Diavala’s words appealed to her. Irrevocably selfish, she began a string of daydreams where she went first and didn’t have to watch Anya, Griffin, Remy, Kitty Kay, Lilac . . .
“I won’t help you.” Her voice cracked, giving away how much she wanted to if it meant an earlier death.
Celia held Nero’s gaze through the conversation. “I won’t help you.” She sounded firmer that time. Good. “They’ll see me as nothing but what I am, the Mob as nothing but what they are. There was never any evil. You’ll be executing a group of people for the petty crime of hiding a young runaway from the temple or for expanding their art or some other flimsy thing. Your haloed coming won’t be able to rise above those bloodstains. You’ve always tried to convince the people of your benevolence, but what kind of altruistic deity would do that? The people will see the truth eventually. You think flogging me will solidify your hold, but you’ll only be sowing the seeds of doubt. The reaping will come. It’s just too bad I won’t be around to see it.”
Diavala cocked her head to the right. “It’s true, the people will judge. I’ve experienced it before. But before you give a blanket no as your answer, think for a moment about what you might be able to accomplish as a fiery scapegoat. With a strong enough scapegoat, someone to shoulder all the blame, the people might be inclined to see the Mob—Anya even—as deserving of mercy. If so, I wouldn’t overrule them.”
Celia trembled and clenched her hands into fists. Diavala offered her hope, but she had a way of twisting everything around to her own ends.
“You know this is the end for you,” Diavala said softly. “Why wouldn’t you do everything in your power to draw eyes away from the people you love? You might be the only one fated to die in Asura, depending on how well you perform. This has always been between you and me, Inkling. I really take no issue with these colorful souls. They’re only here to keep you inspired.”
The noise of the people who’d followed the caravan, always a background murmur, roared louder as High Mistico Benedict swung the carriage door open, stepped out, and swung it closed behind him. They always got so excited with movement.
Nero stared out the window at the crowd, his face soft for a moment, before he shook his head and cracked his knuckles and paced—one large step back and forth for him, crossing from one side of the carriage to the other—like a pendulum.
“If you had a quill right now,” he said abruptly, “what would you do with it?”
The truth popped out of her mouth before she could choke it back. “I’d ink messages to Anya.”
“What kind of messages?”
“A picture of a salamander, maybe. Whatever I thought she needed to hear.”
“And Anya would do the same for you?”
“Yes.”
He nodded, as if that made perfect sense. She thought he might ask something like And what would you need to see, Celia? but Captain Andras had returned and was gesturing for him to lead the prisoner out.
Instead of pushing Celia forward, he hopped out of the carriage and walked away. “I need a break.”
Nero’s conscience screaming so loudly didn’t make Celia feel all that great. Still, it was some consolation to know she hadn’t imagined the strange bond growing between them.
Captain Andras seemed unbothered by her officer’s dissent. She bound Celia’s hands in front of her, and Celia scrambled out of the carriage ungracefully, her gaze lingering on the spot where Nero had disappeared near the back of the long line of wagons.
The crowd of strangers drew Celia’s gaze. Hundreds of them, pressing together behind an iron fence and a giant gate, eyes wide open. People who’d decided that being there—right there in that empty field—was more important than attending to their regular lives.
Though there were no lit torches burning purple and blue, no haloed stilt walkers or welcoming plague doctors, Celia recognized it as the same Rover field where they’d auditioned so many weeks before. Where the devil’s bell jar was born and then smashed. Where Vincent had given her a bracelet and she’d found a home.
High Mistico Benedict walked with authority to where everyone could see him, Captain Andras muscling Celia along behind. The people cried out, craned their necks, surged forward, and threatened to knock down the gates. They were like those ultra-devoted fan
s of the Rabble Mob, like Fallan and Pia—the ones who went to every show and dressed as their favorite characters—but louder, and so many more of them.
They were there to catch the swirling rumors. To settle the frenetic energy. They wanted the truth; they knew it was big.
For the most part, High Mistico Benedict ignored them with an exaggerated aloofness that only made them crave his attention more. Since all the other mistico deferred to him, since he so clearly had the devil of the bell jar under his thumb, it was no stretch to understand that he was the leader. And he reveled in their cheers and cries, tossing significant looks at Celia to make sure she noted their interest.
Their adoration was for Profeta and for him, as the one who’d personally captured the heretics. Diavala had taken all the Mob’s fame and shifted it directly onto High Mistico Benedict’s shoulders.
And now she was giving the people a small glimpse before the true unveiling at the temple.
“This is either a procession of the faces you can still try to save,” Diavala said to Celia in a low whisper, “or the order in which they’ll be executed in front of the masses for my Return.”
As officers led the Mob out, Celia barely recognized them. Gaunt and thin, with scrapes on their faces, matted hair, and ripped, stained clothing, they looked nothing like the bright, shining stars of the Rabble Mob.
They looked broken.
The crowd, unsure about them, didn’t cheer. Celia suspected that many had been ardent fans—some would surely have been at the last Malidoran show—but they were at a new show now. The Mob had deceived them with tricks and illusion, had affronted their morals by going against temple justice and harboring fugitives. The Mob had taken it too far, and until the truth was fully illuminated, they guarded their hearts against sympathy.
Cas and Sky walked out first in their natural pairing, holding hands. Celia realized that she’d never seen them apart. They breathed and lived together, and they would stop breathing and not live together. They looked so much smaller without their stilts. Cas didn’t front flip; Sky didn’t mime punting him in the rear; neither walked on their hands.
They nodded at her as they passed. Cas attempted a weak smile. Sky held their linked hands to the clouds and gave a blessing, Sastimos futura, as if it were still a possibility. Small defiances, trying to save their dignity.
They’d be the first to die.
Even from a distance, Celia could have counted Remy’s ribs. Remy locked eyes with her Lalita and didn’t let go. There was no accusation in them, only determination. Even after all she’d seen in Malidora—her desperation to help Vincent, a front-row view of his sharp, bloody end—it was as if she still believed that Celia wouldn’t let her down.
She’d be the third to die.
Marco and his partner fire-master, Tanith. As soon as his raging eyes locked on Celia, he shouted, “This isn’t over!” and earned a baton thump to his gut. He straightened and continued his march, his footsteps staking hard claims to the mud under his boots.
Seer Ostra, garish in her style, had unbuttoned the top clasps of her blouse so the Devil tarot peeked out at the world. A small rebellion from the sloth herself.
Though they weren’t bound, none of them left the line. The rain poured down on them, washing them out. Limp hair got limper. Beaten-up fabric clung to beaten-up bodies.
The plague doctor was next, wearing his one-winged cloak of shiny raven feathers over tight leather—darkness with hints of starlit sparkles. Or rain. Or tears. His plague doctor smile was big and brazen, and he turned his gaze to everyone he could. As he passed a mistico, she flung her hand out and knocked his mask and hat away. “Face them,” she hissed. She knocked his smile away, too.
The Mob sucked in a collective breath and stopped walking.
A few people in the crowd looked away, as if ashamed for him. Embarrassed. Marco, of all people, let out a dangerous sounding howl on his behalf.
Griffin stared at his mask, lying on the grass. He looked up at the mistico who’d exposed him. A few places in line behind him, Kitty Kay warned him not to do anything stupid. Those words made the mistico take a step backwards, as if she hadn’t quite thought her move through.
Slowly, the maskless plague doctor inclined his head, his curls sweeping across his brow, a dangerous smile playing at the corners of his lips. He maintained eye contact with the mistico as the smile bloomed back to full size. “I’m astounded at your boldness, Solemn Mistico,” he said, loud enough so his words rang out across the field. “Most people are more subtle when they’re trying to get me naked.”
Someone gasped, another someone giggled.
Caught in a spell of the ink gracing his face and his words, the mistico only stared as Griffin scooped up his mask, tucked it under his arm, then gestured for the Mob to keep moving. With the same huge smile, loud words, and confident body, he showed everyone that he was still the plague doctor, even without his mask.
“Arrogant ass,” Diavala muttered. She hadn’t missed how many people now wanted a longer look at him rather than the bald one in drab robes.
Griffin tilted his head to the left, offering Celia his Leonus constellation, and he pressed a hand to his hip, reminding her of the warm skin underneath.
Her heart ka-thumped, as always. If only she’d listened to it sooner, those last moments with him could have been so different: leaning into his arms, trusting him as he deserved, answering the pull of him. But instead she’d let paranoia put a wedge between them.
Only then did Celia realize that Kitty Kay had spoken. At midday.
Kitty Kay wore her sparkly orange nighttime dress, but tattered and stained, it hardly looked like the same garment. Her red hair seemed more gray than usual for the nighttime version, but more red than usual for the daytime version, and it was pulled back in a tidy bun, not one strand of it hiding her face. She wore no makeup, her age lines showing, and her eyes looked smaller. She held hands with Ravino and Georgio as they walked single file, and her gaze scanned up and down the line of Rovers, taking in every detail of their dress, their bodies, their expressions. She leaned back to whisper something to Ravino, while giving wide-eyed Georgio’s hand a reassuring squeeze.
All those weeks ago, it had been Lupita who told Celia what Kitty Kay’s true self was. Not gray-robed reaper. Not even nighttime phoenix.
Mother hen.
And as her gaze continued to assess the state of her family, she included Celia. Their gazes locked, and she lifted her hand to the sky.
“Sastimos futura,” Celia whispered back. Her voice cracked. She’d never seen anyone so beautiful as the real Kitty Kay.
At the end of the line, separated from the rest, were Anya and Lilac.
Celia didn’t realize that she’d lurched forward until Captain Andras grabbed her by the shoulders, delivered a swift punch to her side, and hauled her back. She blinked hard, her vision swimming. “Anny.”
Celia tried to pull away from Andras’s tight grip. “Anya!” Why wouldn’t she look? What had they done to her? Lilac walked beside her, arm in arm, watching her intently, occasionally whispering a quick question or reassurance. Anya appeared thinner but not emaciated, so her motion sickness must have been more or less under control despite the constant travel. By all accounts, Anya appeared her usual self—composed, calm—but given the circumstances, it had to be forced. She’d amassed an anger so volcanic since they’d left the temple, it couldn’t just vanish.
Captain Andras leaned over Celia. “I’d love if you made trouble.”
“Screw you!” Celia yelled in the captain’s face. “You think I care about your shit? You think you’re bloody relevant to me?” Celia turned away. “Anya!”
Nero appeared but lingered back. “Why isn’t she talking?” Celia yelled. “What didn’t you tell me, Nero? Anny! Dia, look at me!”
She finally did. Infinite pools of deep blue found Celia. Those same eyes had soothed her for ten years, reminding her over and over again
that life was more than absinthe and shisha and despair—that freedom and love could exist even alongside fear and sorrow.
“She was ever so loud,” Diavala said. “Sowing discord among the other prisoners, trying to hatch plans under my nose. When I caught her trying to bribe an officer into delivering a message to you, I had to do something.”
Anya held Celia’s gaze as her lips moved for the first time. But no sound came out. She put both her hands to her throat. And Anya shrugged, with a crooked smile tickling at the edges of her mouth. No big deal, Cece. I’m fine.
“You took her tongue.” Celia was shocked that she wasn’t more shocked. Hate, dormant for weeks, now flooded her, lighting every bit of her skin on fire, her body suddenly engorged with it. It was so big it smothered her shouts, closed her throat.
“No.” Diavala laughed, as if the idea were absurd. “I couldn’t risk having her starve. You’d be no good to me at all if she died.” So the idea was absurd only because Diavala didn’t want to lose her leverage, not because it would be cruel and inhumane. “I simply told her if she uttered one word, about anything, to anyone, I would force you to watch us kill one—or more—of your friends. We have a lot of spares. And she’s been blessedly silent ever since. You two are a perfect package; threaten one with a knife, and the other bends in half trying to take the knife herself.”
This new hate tasted as bitter as bile, as caustic as acid. Captain Andras pressed the dagger to Celia’s throat when she tried to push forward again. Celia ignored it and held Anya’s gaze.
Then Anya made a point of tracing the purple and blue bracelet around her wrist, reminding Celia to focus. Without words, she signaled the same thing to Celia that Kitty Kay had said to the plague doctor. Don’t do anything stupid.
Celia reached out with her bound hands, trying to grab Anya’s pinky. She filled in the silence with what she thought Anya would say. You look like shit. Always such a mess. Or maybe Here I am, Cece. You’re not alone.
Nero was right. Anya was Celia’s weakness.
And her strength.
