Illusionarium (14 page)

“I don't know the exact words,” Anna admitted, twisting even harder. “It happened ages ago. Over eighty years ago. The winter solstice festival that year, something really strange happened. During the main illusionarium. In the theater lobby, actually.”

Lockwood and I had stopped, riveted.

“What happened?” I said.

“Words,” said Anna. “Words happened. They seared themselves into the marble above the doors. The head illusionist—that was King Ignis then—hadn't illusioned them, and neither did any of the other illusionists. The words appeared on the wall by themselves. And when the illusion was over . . .
the words didn't disappear
.”

A shiver ran up my back.

“What did the words say?” I said.

“I don't know the exact words,” Anna admitted. “But my father told me mostly what they said. They said the Nod'olian empire was going to be destroyed. And nothing would save it—unless everyone changed their ways and followed a virtuous path. And they said, a Virtuous One would come from another world and show us how to turn Nod'ol back into London.”

Hairs rose on my scalp.

“Everyone was frightened of it, at first. My father said
because of
The Writing on the Wall,
everyone almost
did
change. But King Ignis laughed at it all, and he burned all the books and newspapers that printed the words, and he had the words on the wall destroyed, and—well, it all became a big joke.”

“I saw that wall!” I said, remembering Queen Honoria and the reporter both staring at the marble that had been chiseled away.

Anna sat on the metal rail of a track.

“That's why the winter solstice festival is called Masked Virtue,” she explained. “Because everyone made a joke of it. King Ignis changed his name to King Prudence, and since then, they've named all the illusionists after sort-of virtues, and they still have Masked Virtue every year. It's all a big joke to them. It . . . it sometimes would make my father cry.”

Anna's eyes glistened at her hands.

Lockwood adjusted the rifles slung over his shoulders.

I placed a hand on Anna's shoulder.

“It's all right,” I said, kindly.

“Done catching our breaths?” Lockwood said abruptly. “Theater isn't far; I see the domes. Come on, Johnny, stop slowing us down.”

Lockwood led the way after that, storming over the crumbling walkways. As we drew closer, the brick
walls gave way to pocked marble and overgrown hedges. Laughter wafted over the foliage, and several minutes later we emerged from the weeds into an open pavilion filled with Nod'olian miners. Above us their ships bobbed, chained to the docking towers, and they milled and danced gracelessly about the terrace, drinking colored liquid from thin glasses, talking, laughing in rasping laughs, and sharing fantillium masks with each other. They all wore diseased-looking feathers, which hung from their coats and sleeves and masks, making the gathering look like a flock of drunken birds. Everything smelt of burned orthogonagen and sour sugar. Even the harpsichord music was out of tune.

Lockwood took Anna's hand and we pulled back against the hedge walls as crimson guardsmen appeared at the other end of the terrace. They silently dragged with them an overlarge man with a gray pointed beard, buggy eyes blinking through his yellow mask, and feathers jutting from his torn clothes like a ruffled blackbird. I recognized Edward—my miner—immediately.

“His Highness!” said Lockwood.

“Not in this world,” I said in a low voice. I hurried along the sides of the terrace, past the musicians and behind the table filled with scraps of food, still out of notice yet close enough to hear what was going on.

At the end of the stream of masked guardsmen, Queen
Honoria strode from the labyrinthine hedges, pistol at her hip. The music halted. Constantine flanked her side, wearing a tiger's mask of orange and black jewels.

Every miner in the pavilion ceased dancing, backed away, and bowed deeply. Queen Honoria ignored all of them, paying attention only to the mewling, whimpering mass of Edward that the masked guardsmen threw at her feet.

“I—I—I'm not hiding him!” he whimpered, covering his face. “I
swear
!”

“Of course you're not hiding him,” Queen Honoria spat. “You would have told us far before now if you were. We're just giving you a friendly
warning
.”

Crack
. The marble tile by Edward's hand shattered. He screamed and scrambled back into the crimson guard, biting his knuckle. The bullet Queen Honoria had fired still steamed in the center of the broken tile.

Queen Honoria holstered her steam pistol and flicked her hand, and the crimson guard was at her side once more, leaving Edward on the marble, a lump of quivering feathers. Anna and Lockwood had joined me in the shadows of the hedge, warily watching the scene. Anna gripped my arm, hard, as Constantine hulked through the dancers after Queen Honoria, his mask of jewels flashing.

“He's not here, all right?” he growled. “We're wasting our time!
You
promised we'd find Anna first!”

Twigs dug into my back. Lockwood made a sound in his throat.

Queen Honoria ignored Constantine, her eyes continuing to search over the dancers, the musicians, and finally—with cold, beady severity—stopping on me. Her eyes narrowed through her mask. I could clearly read what she was thinking:
Someone is not dressed for a ball
. . . .

A scream ripped the air.

A feathered woman among the flock of miners on the terrace pitched with violent jolts, throwing herself against the other dancers, clawing at the eyeholes of their masks. The miners responded by falling back against each other, scrambling out of her way and crying in broken voices, “Riven!”

In a streak of movement, the woman threw herself at Queen Honoria.

Utter terror flashed on Queen Honoria's face. She yanked the pistol from the holster at her hip and fired it.

The woman miner fell mid-lunge and crumpled at Queen Honoria's feet. Trembling, Queen Honoria holstered her gun, wiped sweat away from the edges of her mask, and gulped a breath.

Almost as quickly, she was smiling sweetly. It was a horrible thing, that smile. She seemed to have too many teeth for her mouth.

“It's all right,” she said to the miners, who were as ruffled as real birds. “Back to dancing, please. And for heavens' sake, if you're at that stage of Rivening, shoot yourselves so I
don't have to
!”

She snapped about and made to leave with masked guard and Constantine, who stormed back into the maze as though he couldn't wait to get lost. Queen Honoria paused a moment, then swept back to the Rivened woman's side and stripped the fantillium mask from her face. She pressed it against her own face and inhaled deeply. It only took a few seconds of breathing before her eyes relaxed and her hand ceased trembling.

A moment, and Queen Honoria cast the mask aside. It clattered beside the fallen woman.

“Back to the theater,” she commanded her guard. “Where it's safe.”

They disappeared into the tangle. The figure of the woman on the ground shuddered with final breaths. I made to go to her side and was held back by Lockwood.

“Don't,” he growled.

I shook him off and ran to the dying, broken figure anyway. Kneeling by her side, I gently removed her porcelain mask. Swollen eyes sagged to her neck, two noses and five nostrils and a mouth that drooped beyond her chin—and even teeth growing at her throat—marred what might have once been a pretty face.

She expired in my arms, her many eyes glazing over. I allowed a moment before I laid her head down. The miners swirled in a dance around us. Somehow they had already forgotten about her.

I withdrew from the terrace unsteadily, beyond the dancers to the giant metal beams of a vertical dock, enshrouded in shadows and hedges. Lockwood and Anna had retreated here, and I joined them. They paid me no attention as I collapsed against the beam, pulled off my mask, and let the night air cool the sweat on my face.

Lockwood was trimming his thumbnails with Lord Glamwell's hunting dagger, speaking in a lazy drawl: “This other illusionist, Constantine,” he was saying. “Know him, do you?”

“Of course not,” said Anna, glowering at her feet. “He's practically royalty.”

“Only he seemed dead set on finding you.”

“Well, I don't know why,” said Anna stubbornly, pulling her tangle of hair back and tucking it into the collar of her oversized coat. Her eyes caught me, and they brightened. “Jonathan! Oh—Jonathan. You look sick.”

I shook my head. Seeing the woman die had reminded me how Hannah had illusion-died in my arms, and the urgency of finding the theater hit me full in the gut.

“We've got to get to the theater.
Now!
” I said. I made to dive back into the maze.

“Johnny, wait!” Lockwood seethed, grabbing me and pulling back, pushing the three of us into the shadows. Footfalls had broken through the hedges.

It was Edward, who thudded to the docking lift from the Dance of Ravens, crouched and trembling still. He rubbed his hands over and over absentmindedly muttering to himself, and turning the docking wheel to summon the lift. He did not notice the three of us, huddled in the shadows a length away.

I glanced upward. Docked at the top of the vertical dock was what must have been Edward's ship: an old-fashioned machine that was something between a sea ship and a hot-air balloon, with exposed rigging and open deck. Far different from the sleek Arthurisian airships, with their long envelopes and great engines. A thought lit hope through me.

“Idea,” I whispered to Anna and Lockwood, refitting my mask. “We'll fly to the theater. We'll get there before Queen Honoria and her masked guard do.”

I slipped onto the lift with Edward. Lockwood and Anna hurried in after, squashing us together, just as the gates closed. That pressed Anna against Lockwood's chest, and Lockwood looked as though he didn't mind this in the least. I had a marvelous view of Edward's armpit, his feathers jabbing my ear and face. He smelled of sweat.

“Hello, Edward,” I said as the lift hummed up to the dock.

“What? What?” said Edward, snapping out of his own thoughts. He looked at me with disgust, sniffing. “Well, what do you want?”

I pulled my mask off with flair, giving Edward the full view of my face, complete with broken glasses.

Lockwood kicked my shins. Edward the Miner squealed like a girl and bit his knuckles.

“Fancy we ride with you?” I said.

“I
am going to be in
so much trouble
!” Edward cried in the highest voice I'd ever heard come from a man. “So so
so
much trouble!”

Minutes before, he had hurried us onto his ship, pale as a ghost, and “battened down the hatches.” Which is to say, locked every door we passed and closed every shutter on the windows as his navigator cast off. We found ourselves in a dark little game room in the center of his ship, with large overstuffed chairs, swaths of fabric, and a threadbare billiards table in the middle of the room.

It smelled of old wood and thick cigar smoke. Unlike the Arthurisian ships, which were beasts of sleek steel and machinery, this ship was wood, and the furniture was either nailed down or lashed to the sides with fraying ropes. Dim lanterns swung from the ceiling.

A manservant, dressed in swatches of fabrics cobbled
together in varying blacks and grays and wearing a half mask, brought in tea. Starving, we threw our masks aside and seized upon it. The dry biscuits were gone in an instant.

The manservant did not leave. He stared at me, and when I finally noticed him at the peak moment my cheeks were stuffed with biscuits, he bowed deeply to me. He wore a gold kerchief tied around his neck.

Edward, huddled in a large mass on the main sofa, kept looking around and over his shoulder, rubbing his gloved hands together. The fingers of his gloves were misshapen and thick. I convulsively felt my own splitting fingers, reminded that I was Rivening as well. I suddenly wasn't hungry anymore.

“Fly you to the theater?” Edward echoed my request. “But—but—but—I
can't
! They've searched this ship three times already! They thought I was hiding you! And now that I actually
am . . .
!” He was reduced to whimpers.

“I've never heard anyone whine so much,” said Lockwood.

“And not just you! The—the—” He pointed a trembling finger at Anna, who sat on the opposite sofa, politely drinking tea and ignoring him. “The Sacrificial Offering!
Eep!
And I don't know who that fellow is, but I am
certain
he is up to no good!” He fell into the mass of pillows on the sofa, a ball of jutting feathers, and buried
his masked face in his hands. “I am going to be in
so much trouble
.”

“Can you believe he's a king in Arthurise?” said Lockwood.

“Look, you won't get caught,” I said. “Have your navigator steer us to the theater. Send down a line. Lockwood and I climb down, you sail a turnabout, come back, we'll be waiting, and you bring us back up. Nothing to worry about.”

“
Everything
to worry about!” he snapped back. “You can't just—just break into the theater! They've got masked guards everywhere in there! They have
pistols
!”

Lockwood and I threw back our cloaks, revealing the steam rifles slung over our shoulders.

“Oh,” said Edward.

“Edward,” said Anna, setting her teacup down with a
clink
. “You're an air miner, aren't you? Don't air miners have fantillium on their ships?”

We all paused. I let this sink in, light filling me, and turned to Anna, a smile growing on my face. She grinned mischievously back. It made the scar under her eye wrinkle.

“You have fantillium on board?” I said to Edward.

Edward burrowed deeper into his sofa, wringing his hands.

“Edward,” I said, ideas growing within me like frost
on a window, “have you ever had a
private illusioning
before?”

“A—a what?”

“An illusionarium. Just for you. On this ship. Without Her Ladyship or any of the other miners?”

Edward stared at me with wide buggy eyes.

“My own illusionarium?” he whispered.

“Edward,” I said, kneeling in front of his sofa, “if you help us, I will illusion for you something so
incredible
, so achingly beautiful, it will knock the beard from your face!”

Edward blinked and blinked and blinked.

“You will?” he whispered.

“On your life. Right here. In this very room. The moment we return.”

Edward gripped my hands in a sudden movement.

“My boy!” he said hoarsely. “Yes!
Yes!
My boy, let us steer,
steer
, I say! Onward to the theah-tah!”

He released me and bounded from his sofa, lolloping out of the room and singing hoarsely, looking like a flapping, overstuffed bird. The door to the game room slid closed behind him. Lockwood grinned.

“I might like this Edward better after all,” he said. “Any chance we could switch him out for the real one?”

I collapsed on the sofa next to Anna, overwhelmed. We were going to get the cure. We had fantillium. We'd be
home before the stars came out, and with a day to spare. Mum and Hannah would be well again, I'd be off to the university, and Alice might even want to write me. After I'd properly healed, of course. I glanced at my thumbs—still splayed from each other, purple at the ends—and grabbed a musty pillow, kneading it.

As the lanterns in the game room swung with the ship's ascent, Anna quizzed me again about the observatory doors—iron latches, wood pocked from ice storms—and Edward's servants visited the room, setting down another plate of biscuits or dusting the billiards table or just peering at me from the doorway. When I looked back at them, they fled.

“They seem fascinated with you, Johnny,” Lockwood said after another maidservant left the room. “Don't suppose it has to do with your extra fingers, does it?”

I tossed a pillow at him, which he dodged, grinning.

“They think . . . you're the Virtuous One,” said Anna quietly.

Lockwood and I both frowned at her. Anna blushed at her teacup.

“The person from
The Writing on the Wall
?” I said.

Anna nodded, eyes still fixed desperately on her cup.

“What? No!” I said. “I mean—I'm nothing special. Anyway, I can't stay here. I have to go back and cure the Venen. Save my own empire, all that.”

Anna's blue eyes glistened as she drew a hand through her dark curls, awkwardly trying to smooth them. Her dress was still streaked with mud. By the way she tried to disappear into the sofa's cushions, I could tell she rather wished she hadn't spoken up.

“Well, it isn't Queen Honoria,” she said in a tiny voice. “I know that much. She became the queen by convincing the miners that
she
was the Virtuous One. She had the masked guard fight the Riven out of the theater. Still. Everyone knows it's not her.”

I remembered our conversation with Queen Honoria in the room full of plants. She'd seemed utterly dead on saving this world. “She certainly
believes
she's the One,” I admitted. “She told us nothing meant more to her than restoring Nod'ol. Remember, Lockwood?”

“Not really, no,” said Lockwood. “Mostly I just remember her trying to kill us. At any rate, what kind of zealot believes in tripe like prophecies? Fodder for idiots who walk around sucking airship offal—”

“My father believed in it,” said Anna.

“—and are actually intelligent, bright sorts who have given it a lot of thought, of course,” Lockwood finished. “Of course.”

“
Believed
, Anna?” I said, frowning. “He doesn't believe it anymore?”

“I meant,
believes,”
said Anna, nearly toppling her
teacup. “He believes in it still. Of course he does. And—Jonathan—who's to say it
isn't
you? You're from another world.
You stood up to Queen Honoria
. How can it not be you?”

The words soaked into the furniture like red punch. Anna's face glowed with fervency. I shifted, uncomfortably. I rather didn't want to spend any more time in Nod'ol than I had to.

“'Course it's not Johnny,” Lockwood drawled. He stood casually at the side of the room, leaning against a display case of an old sea ship. “Can't be him, can it? He's toddling back to his aerial city tonight. Virtuous One has to stay in Nod'ol. Maybe . . . well, maybe I'm the one all the hullabaloo is about. Ever thought about that?”

“You, Lockwood?” I scoffed. “Part of a prophecy? Come on. You're not thinking of staying here, are you?”

Lockwood shrugged, nonchalant.

“Dunno,” he said lightly to the model ship. “Sort of feel funny about leaving Anna alone here. Took the Knightly Oath. Chivalry, that sort of thing. Can't go back on that, even with my ranking stripped.”

He glanced at Anna, who was blushing even redder at her teacup, and I caught that Look again in his one eye. The watching-airships-exploding helpless Look.

I stifled a cough. Lockwood was dead in love!

What, already? It was months before I'd even
noticed
Alice. I still hadn't plucked up the courage to talk to her.

My thoughts overthought. Well, Lockwood was an
absolute
sort of person, wasn't he? He wouldn't fall in love like tripping over a brick. He was the sort to rear back, run,
catapult
over the side of an airship's railing, and fall, fall,
fall
into love before smacking into the Ocean of Delirious Wanderings.
²²

I felt rather peevish about this. Anna was
my
sister, after all! Who did he think he jolly well was?

I scrutinized Anna, still gripping her teacup, and blinked. I couldn't tell her feelings on the subject. Her dark lashes brushed her cheek as she remained looking down.

“I could help you find your father,” said Lockwood gently. “If you want.”

Anna blinked rapidly.

“I . . . don't know,” she finally said.

Lockwood, who had laid his soul bare before her, hastily retreated, anger and embarrassment across his face.

“Right, well,” he muttered. “'Course. Sort it out later. Better go up on deck. Bet we're close to the theater.”

Lockwood was right—by now, among the sea of airships, we were close enough to the theater that its light glowed over us. We watched the maze below turn from overgrown hedge and brick to trimmed foliage and polished marble. The pennants that drooped from the sides of the painted envelope above us barely fluttered in the wind. That's because there was no wind to speak of. Nod'olian air was stagnant and smelled of over-boiled laundry. The only breeze came from the ship's propeller.

Lockwood and I both wore our masks and the layers of coats we'd found in Lord Glamwell's manor. I adjusted the rifle slung over my shoulder. I knew how to shoot—not like Lockwood, of course, but every academy boy at the age of fourteen had to take Empirical Combat 101. But every time I shot a target, the Reformed Puritan inside me kicked me in the proverbial shins. I was a surgeon, not a soldier. My plan was to slip in, grab the cure, slip out; stick to drawing blood and sawing off legs, that's my style.

Anna stood a length away from us at the aft of the ship, staring daggers at the maze below, her teeth gritted and her arms crossed. Lockwood and I had had a quick discussion minutes before, and I'd pulled her aside and told her (in very calm and measured tones) that we really, really thought it was a much better idea if she
stayed here and made certain Edward stuck to the plan and anyway, it was much safer if she didn't come along where there might be gunfire.

She took it pretty well.

“Stay
here
?” she cried in a voice that could break glass. “Who do you think you are? You need me!”

“Come on, Anna,” I said. “You could barely lift that rail-yard pipe! D'you really think you could even climb down the line?”

“Oh, and
you
can?” she said, her eyes blazing. “Lockwood! You'd better not be behind this!”

Lockwood, putting the rifle he was cleaning back together, had suddenly acquired incredible powers of deafness.

“Keep an eye on Edward,” I told her. “Make sure he comes back for us.”

“I
know
that theater!” Anna seethed. “You'll both get lost!”

“We get caught, we only get killed, Anna,” said Lockwood coldly. He shouldered his rifle. “What do you think will happen to
you
?”

And Anna was reduced to blushing furiously, looking embarrassed and wanting to break Lockwood's neck at the same time.

Now, as the theater roof drew near, Edward's servant handed Lockwood and me each a coiled line attached to
the docking anchor. Anna's lips were razor thin and she refused to look at either of us. Lockwood cast a glance at her.

“Think I could ask for a token?” he asked me, nodding to her. It was an airguardsman tradition, asking a girl for a ribbon or lock of hair before they left to battle.

I glanced at Anna.

“Not if you like your eye,” I said.

“Ah, well.”

And all at once, the theater roof extended far below us, a landscape of green panels, all slopes and gables, chimneys and grime. Lockwood and I threw the lines overboard and they uncoiled to the rooftop.

In a blur of muddy white, Anna grabbed Lockwood's line, threw herself over the railing, sliding down the cord until her arms released and she fell onto the roof's slope, tumbling over and over until she hit a gable.

“Anna!” Lockwood yelled. He leapt over the railing after her, rappelling down the line and releasing halfway, and several seconds later he landed lightly on the roof. I followed suit, graceless, the line burning my gloved hands until I hit the roof and did not die.

Lockwood had run to Anna's side by the time I got to my feet and had chased after him across the gritty metal landscape. Lockwood grabbed Anna and pulled
her to her feet, but didn't let go. His face was deathly white. Anna's hands were bleeding.

“Ending was a bit of a jolt,” she said, laughing weakly.

“What d'you think you're doing?” Lockwood said angrily. “You think this is a joke?”