“Quiz yourself on those observatory doors, Johnny!” Lockwood said as we fell over the railing onto the large empty deck of Edward’s ship. My muscles screamed and twitched in agony. “Tonight!” Lockwood crowed, “tonight we save the Empire!”
“We did it! We did it!” said Anna weakly, collapsing against the railing. “Huzzah!”
“Just,” said Lockwood, rising to his feet. We were alone on the abandoned deck, the balloon above us echoing our voices in a booming, hollow way, our clothes torn and all three of us beaten thoroughly and marvelously happy. “Nearly thought I’d lost you,” Lockwood continued. “The way you threw yourself into the pit of masked guardsmen—might be a good habit to break, Anna, throwing yourself at Death without thinking.”
“Better me than you,” said Anna haughtily.
“No, Anna,” said Lockwood. “Not better you than me. Look, airguardsmen, we’re all right with dying. It’s our job. Anyway, I’ve told you, I’m not worth dying over.”
“Jonathan, are you all right?” said Anna, who had noticed that I wasn’t as jovial as the both of them. I was gripping the bottle of antitoxin in my pocket, pensive.
“Lady Florel is down there, Lockwood,” I said. “In the theater.”
And to Anna’s wide eyes and Lockwood’s grim face, I told them everything; finding Lady Florel, how she was only just being kept alive, giving her a dose of the antitoxin—and even how Queen Honoria was afraid of death.
Anna was as white as the snow on Fata when I’d finished. Lockwood was still stolidly grim.
“We’ve got to go back and get her,” I said.
“One thing at a time, Johnny,” he said. “We save Arthurise first.”
“I wonder what she saw,” Anna whispered. “Queen Honoria. When she fantillium-died.”
“Who knows?” said Lockwood. He shifted, almost as though he were about to wrap his arms around Anna and pull her to his chest. He refrained and instead said, “Demons, maybe. Brimstone. You religious, Johnny? I bet you are.”
“Well—yes. My family is Reformed Puritan,” I said.
“Never seen you wear black.”
“Well,” I coughed. “It is reformed. We don’t really believe in a Lower World, though. Mostly the soul serves as intermediaries. Sending light sigs of prayers to heaven, that kind of thing. You?”
“’Course I’m not,” Lockwood scoffed, then glanced at Anna and quickly revised. “That is to say—not a lot. I’m Maritime Protestant, same as every airguardsman.”
“Is that the religion that only goes to church on Christmas?” I said innocently.
“And Easter, please, don’t cheat us. If there’s a church near the port.”
“And uses curse words in their prayers?”
“Shut up,” Lockwood said, with another look at Anna. “No,” he continued. “Celestial airships. That’s what every airman looks forward to. If we captain our souls well in life, we pilot our own airship after death. Sailing among the stars, steering among the solar flares . . .”
We turned our eyes upward to the sky, which was mostly filled with Edward’s airship balloon and riggings. But even through the glass beyond, we could see the prickles of stars. That was a ruddy nice thought, I decided, living in the eternities with stars and moons in your wake.
“Anna,” I said, turning to her. “Didn’t you say you fantillium-died last year? What did you see?”
Anna couldn’t seem to talk.
“Well, we can talk about it later,” I said hastily, embarrassed I’d brought it up. “Let’s illusion the doors. Oh—wait, Anna—” I dug into my pocket, producing the airship ticket. “Got this for you. That’s nice, isn’t it?”
I presented the paper to her. She stared at it with wide eyes, then looked at me, then looked at it. She slipped it from my hands and read it, and her eyes grew shiny.
“A ticket out of the city,” said Lockwood in a hollow voice, reading the ticket over her shoulder. “So. I guess Johnny kept his promise after all.”
Tears began to stream down Anna’s face. It wasn’t noisy crying—the tears came with utter silence. It was a Weep.
“Oh, hulloa, it’s not that wonderful,” I said, sensing something was getting out of hand. I pulled Anna into a hug, and she silent-cried into my shoulder. “I mean, I sort of took it from Divinity. Hannah—I mean, Anna. Stop. Don’t cry. All right? I’m doing pretty badly at cheering you up, aren’t I? You know, save all this crying for when you see your father, hey?”
“My father,” Anna sobbed into my shoulder.
“You’ll see him soon,” I said.
“My—my father,” Anna wept. “Oh, Jonathan. My father is dead.”
It was like being stabbed. Lockwood and I blinked at each other over her hair.
“What?” I said.
Anna wiped her eyes with her sleeve. It took her a moment to dry off enough to stitch together an answer for me.
“The masked guard killed him,” she said to my shoulder. “They took me away and they burned the Compass Rose. He’s dead. I couldn’t tell you before because you look so much like him, but now you’re here with an actual ticket and you nearly had holes blown through you for it and I hate myself for that—”
She burst into a renewed round of tears. I pulled her in to my shoulder again, remembering the horrible words I’d last spoken to Hannah. Strangely, I felt I could atone for them now.
“Come with us, Anna,” I said.
Lockwood, a pace away, straightened. Anna hiccoughed and laughed.
“Sure,” she said. “Just like that.”
“Yeah, just like that,” I said, growing more fervent. “Come with us. Tonight. Now. Anna, you’ll love Arthurise! And Fata Morgana—I mean, the place is like an ice palace in the winter! And you’ll never have to worry about going hungry or being chased or hurt or anything. Not ever again, Anna. Come with us.”
Anna mouthed wordlessly.
“I—can’t,” she finally stammered. “Don’t be stupid. I—I don’t have any money or a home or anything—”
“Yes, you do,” I said stolidly. “You’ll be a part of my family. And my father will be your father, and my sister your sister, and me? Well, I’ll be your brother. What’s wrong with that?”
The tears streamed anew. Anna wrapped her arms around me, laughing and crying at the same time. I hugged her so tightly it lifted her feet off the ground.
“You’ll love my sister,” I said. “Ha! Actually, you’ll probably fight, but—in a good way. And Mum—she has this rice dish, you’ll never want to eat anything else again. And my father. You’ll like him, Anna. You’ll like him very much, I think.”
“Jonathan is very brotherly,” said Lockwood, warily eyeing us.
Anna finally pulled away, flushing to her ears, still hiccoughing but beaming.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
I shoved my hands in my pockets, fingers wrapped around the bottle of antitoxin, rocking on the balls of my feet, my ears burning but feeling so utterly right.
Anna turned about to Lockwood, who was leaning back against the deck’s railing, his face a picture of sprezzatura. Only his eye gave him away. Wary. Like a creature about to get eaten.
“And you, Lockwood,” said Anna, smiling. “Are you still going to stay here, in wonderful and enchanting Nod’ol? Or . . .”—Anna blushed a merry pink—“. . . will I still see you?”
Lockwood’s eye widened. A smile grew on his face like the sun rising. Before he could open his mouth to speak, however, Anna cut him short with: “Wait. First. Your eye. How did you lose it? Sorry. I’ve been dying to ask that all day.”
Lockwood laughed, then swept Anna up and set her onto the railing of the ship. Anna wound her arm through the rigging and leaned on the ropes, laughing as Lockwood pulled a dagger from his boot and began with: “Darkness! Winter over the Balearic Sea turned everything black, and miles away from my airguardsman ship, under the same storm in Madrid, the duke and duchess of Bourbon-Parma and their eleven children huddled
in the shadows of the servants’ quarters of their palace, gun blasts from the coup-d’état sounding in the halls, the exiled prime minister seeking vengeance—”
“And you’re the closest airguardsman ship!” Anna exulted.
“You’re getting ahead of the story,” said Lockwood reproachfully. “Where was I? Oh, yes. Eleven frightened children, huddled together, scared for their very innocent lives—”
I pulled away from Lockwood’s long-winded Brag about breeching Spanish airships and scaling palace walls, and for the first time, paid attention to the ship deck.
It was abandoned.
Lanterns swung slowly with the ship’s bob.
Hairs rose on the back of my neck.
“Not to interrupt or anything,” I said, “but shouldn’t there be someone on deck? Edward’s manservant—or—someone? Possibly? Lockwood? Am I actually noticing something before you?”
Lockwood dragged himself out of the story long enough to cast me an annoyed glare, which quickly snapped to attention when he saw the silent deck. The riggings around us creaked. The sea of airships whirred around us. Lockwood’s brow creased.
The three of us dove for the hull door at once.
Our steps pounded and thudded through the spiral staircase as we descended into the belly of the ship. The silence thickened.
“Probably hiding behind one of his sofas, right?” said Lockwood. “Shivering on about getting caught—”
We burst into the game room with the overstuffed chairs and dim lighting—
Thwack—
White burst through my vision. Gloved hands grabbed me and wrenched my arms behind my back. Misshapen fingers dug into my wrists. The masked guard.
They filled the room, flanking every side, standing as a wall of soldiers. They grabbed Anna as she came through the doorway, dragging her to Constantine, who, arrayed in all layers of leather suits, stood by the polished table in the middle of the room. He clenched her to his side. She grew feral against his grip and fought tooth and nail.
It took four masked guardsmen to keep Lockwood from attacking and strangling Constantine with his bare hands. They threw him to the ground and shoved his head against the wood, removing the rifle from his shoulder.
“Anna!” said Lockwood, which earned him a kick in the throat.
“Yes, Anna,” Constantine growled, “who is not yours.”
Edward huddled behind one of his sofas, a mountain of anxiety, wringing his hands and biting his knuckles. His mask was askew and sweat dripped down his face.
“I’m sorry,” he whimpered, tugging his beard. “I’m so sorry. They just came! I knew we would be in so much trouble! I knew it!”
The masked guard dragged us to the side of the room, and Queen Honoria’s boot stepped in front of me. My eyes followed up her long coats to the mask that covered half her face. She was smiling.
“Ah, and the prodigal son,” she said, “has returned. Kicking and screaming, of course, but he has returned.”
CHAPTER 17
The masked guard held us hostage, and the ship navigated back to the theater, hovering above it long enough to bring Divinity on board. She’d dressed in a wreckage of a dress with a tall collar that covered the face growing from her neck. The emaciated reporter, too, joined us from the theater. He set up a camera tripod at the edge of the room with shaking hands. A gold piece of fabric was pinned to his frayed jacket pocket.
And all the while, the masked guard built a network of piping around the room, behind the sofas, connecting to a small boiler by the door. It hissed and gurgled.
Edward remained behind the sofa, moaning.
The masked guard had removed Anna from the room and returned with her as the boiler began to steam. She wore a new outfit of white—a long, patched gown that licked the floor, a bleached corset, a white jacket. Her hair had been brushed shiny, her face washed and powdered, covering her scar, and she stubbornly held her chin up. Lockwood made a sound from the corner of the room.
I was forced to the table, between Divinity and Constantine, wary of the situation. Queen Honoria was determined to finish the botched ceremonies from this morning, here and now on this ship. Her brown beady eyes shone from her wrinkled face as Anna was brought to the table.
“Your Highness,” said Constantine as the pipes hisshed around us. “We don’t need to sacrifice Anna. Why can’t we kill him instead?” Constantine nodded his beastly mask at Lockwood. “He’s worthless!”
“Yes, why can’t you?” said Lockwood fiercely.
“Constantine,” said Queen Honoria, ignoring both of them. “If Jonathan so much as illusions an ember, shoot him.”
Constantine leveled the rifle at me. I stared stonily at its barrel, then at his unnaturally bright eyes. They almost seemed to burn.
Hisssssss.
Steam burned my skin. The game room was immersed in a fog. I inhaled. Ice air prickled down my throat and stung my lungs. The room grew unbearably bright, and the smell of rotting wood and musty pillows engulfed us. Guardsmen turned the lamps down as my thoughts grew heavy and swirled in my head. Constantine’s rifle seemed far away, and my agonized soul rested.
The masked guard pressed Anna down on the billiards table, her cheek flat against the green felt, her dark curls spilling over her shoulders. Her glistening eyes caught mine and cut through the euphoria of the fantillium’s spell.
Illusion. Her lips formed the word. Jonathan. The doors!
I glanced at Lockwood. He nodded, imperceptibly. A muscle twitched in his jaw. At the table, Queen Honoria illusioned over Anna. Wearily, jerkily. She slowly drew silver wisps from the air, forming them into pointed steel.
“Are you writing this down?” she asked the reporter. “All of it?”
The reporter nodded, sagging so close to his notebook his nose touched the paper.
Constantine stared at Anna, his lurid orange eyes betraying nothing. But the rifle, still pointed at my head, trembled.
I’m calling your bluff, Constantine, I thought. Whatever you are, you don’t want Anna to die, either.
I closed my eyes and inhaled. The observatory doors.
Twice my height. Dark walnut. Four carved panels on each door, iron latches, hail-pocked, worn. I even pulled to mind the groan they made when opened. I thought of the chemical structure of wood and iron I’d committed to memory. My head grew heavy, weighing me down. I opened my eyes and exhaled.
The thoughts evaporated from me. They wisped from my head like vapors. The illusion sucked itself from my head and air stole from my lungs.
Queen Honoria finished illusioning the dagger, all eyes on her but mine. Behind her, between the model airship and the wall, the air shimmered.
The walnut panels grew opaque, then bold, dark, polished, and then regressed with age and weather. Hail pocked them in shadowy staccatos.
Divinity screeched, noticing it first. Queen Honoria dropped the knife and twisted around.
The latches burned white hot as I manipulated iron construct in my head. The hinges, the white curls at each end of the latch, glowed and then faded to black. I warped the wood of it forward, molding lions’ heads and manes of walnut until my vision blotched and sweat poured down my face.
There before us stood the observatory doors.
“Now!” I yelled.
Lockwood fought out of the masked guard’s grip like an assassin, twisting necks, kicking joints backward.
I did better than that. I mentally grasped an oxygen particle from the air, then multiplied it thousands and millions of times over, mixed it with one methane particle, and with the speed of someone who actually listened in his chemistry class—
Contracted it all to the size of a pin.
BOOM.
The explosion in the game room hit like a spark in an airship balloon. The force threw Divinity, Constantine, Queen Honoria, and the guardsmen against the wall, sprawling over sofas, top hats flying, and setting Lockwood free.
Black and red embers chased a vortex around us
as Lockwood and I leapt onto the billiards table and pulled Anna into our stream of cool air. One lope, and I was grasping the latches of the illusioned doors.
I twisted. They opened with a groan.
We leapt through—
—a rush of air—
—and slammed into Edward’s game room wall.
The door had opened into nothing.
We stumbled backward. I shoved the doors closed and opened them again, revealing the plank wood of Edward’s wall. I ran through the door once more, and hit wall.
I twisted about, managing a second look at the doors I’d illusioned, and took in what I hadn’t seen the first time: the carved panels were the wrong dimensions. The latches looked as though they’d been molded by a child. The lions were toothless, their eyes misshapen.
I hadn’t created the observatory doors. I’d created a cheap imitation. The doors glistened, then faded in wisps, to nothing.
Queen Honoria had shut off the boiler. The room darkened. Utter failure encased me. My knees gave way beneath me, and my hands hit the floor. Around us, the masked guardsmen, still strewn across the room, slowly roused and took possession of Lockwood and Anna.
“Oh, Jonathan,” said Queen Honoria wearily. Then, to the remaining masked guard pulling themselves to their feet, “Search him.”
A multitude of gloved hands seized me and shuffled over my clothes until they found the bottle in my pocket. They flipped me back to my knees, holding me tight, and handed the bottle to Queen Honoria. She received it with cold eyes.
“No,” I said, panicked. “No! Your Highness! You said if I illusioned for you—”
Queen Honoria reared back and smashed the bottle to the floor, sending a burst of glittering minuscule shards and brown liquid droplets across the wood. My soul shattered with it.
“Why, Jonathan?” Queen Honoria pled. “Why couldn’t you have just illusioned for me?”
The liquid seeped into the wooden cracks of the floor.
Lockwood had not yet given up the fight, still thrashing against the guard. Unconscious guardsmen lay at his feet. It took six more guardsmen to hold him still.
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