Illusionarium (17 page)

T
he masked guardsmen allowed me to wrap Anna tightly in my jacket, succumbing to the grief that welled in my throat. Queen Honoria commanded the ship's navigator to steer back to the theater, and all the time Edward remained crumpled in a corner of the deck, wringing his hands and saying, “I'm so sorry, I'm
so
sorry! What a horrible night this has been!”

The airship docked. The masked guard pried me away from Anna's form and silently escorted me down the vertical dock—but not before I noticed the gleam of silver that lay by the anchor line. Lockwood's Excalibur pin. I numbly slipped it into my pocket.

Ten minutes later, I'd been locked in my golden suite. Demons of regret plagued me, twisting webs of darkness over my soul.
Your fault
, they whispered. Every decision I'd made schismed into dozens of others in my head, all
of them ending with Anna still alive. If I had bandaged her sooner. If I had stopped her from throwing herself at Constantine's rifle. If I hadn't tried to illusion the stupid doors, and done what Queen Honoria had told me to.

I sat on one of the spindly chairs, wishing Masked Virtue had already begun, just so I could breathe fantillium and just so I couldn't
feel
anymore.

A clean set of clothes lay folded over my sitting-room screen. Gold tureens and lidded platters sat on every available surface in the room, tables and chairs and all of them steaming hot. They smelled of breads and soups and roasted bird.

In one stride I kicked and overturned a table, sending soup across the rug. I kicked the table next to it, and it bashed to the ground, tureens clanging and food splashing. I couldn't stop. I overthrew a chair, sending it crashing, and commenced to destroy the room. I shoved the furniture on its side. I punched holes in the painted screen. I smashed the mirrors to pieces with a chair. I reduced my suite to shambles.

“Are you finished?”

Queen Honoria regarded me from the doorway. She wore new clothes—new for Nod'ol—which covered every inch of her. Her half-masked face looked as though it were coming out of a heap of rags.

I reared back with the chair and bashed it across the
last mirror. The glass shattered. Shards rained over the floor.

“And that's enough,” said Queen Honoria. “You're acting like a child, Jonathan.”

I threw the chair in the sitting room pool—it splashed and bobbed—and kicked a tureen lid across the room.

“Masked Virtue begins in three hours. You ought to at least use the time for rest,” Queen Honoria said.

“Masked Virtue?” I said, incredulous. “What in the world makes you think I'm still going to illusion for you?”

“Because you have nothing else,” said Queen Honoria. “Because your mother and sister will be dead by tonight, and Arthurise soon after, and Nod'ol will be all you have left.”

I lunged at her. The masked guard countered me midair and dragged me back. Queen Honoria stepped forward and gently tried to put her gloved hand on my head.

“I need you, Jonathan,” she said, giving up and pulling her hand away as I struggled. “I'll need you to illusion doors back to Arthurise for me. There will be so many people looking for a new life, here in Nod'ol. We can revive the city again with Arthurisians. That's why I infected your world with the Venen. I had to make them see—”

“You
what
?” I screamed.

And everything screeched and ground together, the gears sorting themselves out into a macabre mechanism. The Venen, a strange and unknown disease, originating in Old London.
Queen Honoria had brought the Venen to Arthurise
.

“You've ruddy killed Arthurise!” I yelled, writhing against the guard.

“I had to!” Queen Honoria pled. “I had to, Jonathan. I had to make them see how much they
needed
Nod'ol! I'm not a murderer! It was all for Nod'ol!”

“My mother and sister—”

“Are soon dead,” Queen Honoria finished. “And Nod'ol is your home now.”

I broke free of the guard with a burst of strength and charged at Queen Honoria.

Constantine arose from nowhere and stopped me short with a box across my head, disorienting me enough for the masked guard to pull me back into their gloved tentacles.

“Leave me with Jonathan,” he growled to Queen Honoria. He wore a mask with a protruding snout, several rows of fangs on both top and bottom. “I'd like to give him some . . . tips. For Masked Virtue.”

Queen Honoria waved her hand dismissively and swept from the room without a backward look. Constantine slammed the door. The masked guards' fingers tightened around my wrists and I was brought to my knees.

Constantine knelt in front of me, his long coat-of-many-coats brushing my face. He placed his gloved finger under my chin and lifted my face to meet his. His eyes had been dyed again; one yellow, the other red. The clumps of hair that stuck out from beneath his hood had been dyed lurid white. He pulled off my glasses and threw them into the pool behind us with a little
ploosh
.

Then he brought his arm back, balled his fingers, and slammed me in the cheek with the hardest punch I'd ever gotten in my life. Bone and cartilage crunched. White glittered in my vision. And when it cleared, Constantine's snout was in my face with rancid breath.

“You killed Anna,” he seethed.

“Sorry?” I coughed, spitting blood. “
You
killed Anna. Pretty sure. The rifle was in
your
hands—”

He slammed his fist into my head again. The world turned black.

“Why didn't you just do what Queen Honoria told you to do? Anna would still be alive!”

“She'd still be alive if you hadn't shot her,” I snapped back as the world regained colors.

Constantine stood, walked away, then made a running start. It ended with him kicking me so hard I lost the air in my chest. The masked guardsmen set me back on my knees, readying for another of Constantine's blows.

“I, at least, had the decency,” he said, “to make sure
she'll be laid to rest where the rest of her family is buried. Unlike
you
.”

I coughed.

“Constantine,” I said, “I
really
don't get you, you know?”

“She was all I
had
,” he said. Rivulets of sweat ran down his neck from beneath his mask.

No, I realized. It wasn't sweat.

They were
tears
. From his other eyes.

The rain of blows continued. Constantine beat me across the head, knocking it against the floor, kicked me in the chest and throat, produced a whip and struck it across my back and face. Blood specked the floor.

I struggled, but couldn't fight back. Anger, instead, grew within me like a demon. If I'd ever had a compass, it had broken and disintegrated thoroughly, leaving only razor shards of hate coursing through my bloodstream.

He finished just as the sun rose in the windows, leaving me in a heap on the suite floor.

“I'll kill you, Constantine,” I said hoarsely, too broken to move. “I'll kill you. I'm ten times the illusionist you are. I'll make you feel death the way you made Anna feel it, but a thousand times slower, until you are screaming in agony and
begging to die.
”

Constantine stared coldly at me from the doorway.

“I'd like to see you try it,” he said, and left.

Hours later, it seemed, I gathered enough strength to pull myself to my feet, holding my hand to the stinging cuts on my face. I didn't dare pull my glasses from the pool, because I didn't have the strength to swim. I knew I needed to find bandages, at least, because I was leaving a trail of blood, but instead I set to finding Constantine, hate flaring in hot tendrils through my veins. I staggered into the hall, and collapsed.

“Oh, you poor thing.” Divinity's voice whispered above me.

I awoke in a soft green aura not long after. I lay on a pale green sofa in Divinity's sitting room. The broken vases and strewn flowers from the night before had been cleaned up and replaced, the broken windows covered with a screen. I pulled myself up against the arm with agony; I ached and throbbed all over.

Divinity arrived, wearing a dress with gauzy bits and a black corset, carrying rags of bandages. She sat on the edge of the sofa, just touching my side, and began to gently nurse my wounds, touching ointment to the stinging cuts on my cheek and cooing.

I hated Divinity almost as much as I hated Constantine. I grabbed her wrist just as she was about to touch my face again.

—and recoiled. The fingers I gripped her with had split at the ends. The illusion on Edward's ship must have
progressed my schisming. My thumb was coming apart down to the knuckle now, giving me an extra piece of thumb I could wiggle freely. My fingers had each widened into extra fingertips that melded together at the first knuckle. I hurriedly felt my face.

A thorough examination revealed the bridge of my nose was so wide it was almost two bridges. One of my nostrils was wider than the other. I had an indentation in my temple. I kneaded it, feeling a cavity in the bone. It was tender to my touch. An extra eye. I was growing an extra eye.

I gagged.

“It's always worse around Masked Virtue,” Divinity said soothingly, stroking a hand through my hair and pressing her other hand to my chest. “You'll heal. We all do. Well—I'm not sure Constantine does, anymore. Don't illusion again after M.V. for a few weeks, and you'll be fine.

“What?” I said.

“Unless, of course, you've started seeing demons,” said Divinity, rather peevishly. “That means your brain is splitting, and you've become a Riven.”

I grasped Divinity's slender, delicate, perfect hand.

“You don't have extra fingers,” I accused.

A strange smile curved over Divinity's face, as though to say,
You have no idea where I'm schisming. . . .

Appalled, I pushed her away and got to my feet. My vision sparkled with lack of blood and I fell back to the sofa.

“Hush,” Divinity said, pressing me to the pillows as I tried to get to my feet again. “Hush. You're in a bad way. Here, I've brought you something warm to drink. It'll calm you down.”

She fetched a mug of steaming tea from a small room at the side of her suite, then gently sat down next to me and held the mug full of black liquid to my lips.

I immediately recognized the familiar, sweet, and rather chemical smell I'd known from Dr. Palmer's medicine cabinet. I stood sharply and shoved Divinity away, sending her knocking against ornamental tables and chairs. The mug hit the floor and sent liquid everywhere.

“Trithyloform, Divinity?” I said, anger logarithming inside me. Divinity scrambled back, flower vases tumbling behind her. She cowered. “You know,” I said, “we use that stuff in the infirmary in Fata Morgana, Divinity. Dip a rag in it, press it over the patient's face, and if it doesn't put them right to sleep, it makes them good and sluggish. Trying to drug me, are you, Divinity? In time for Masked Virtue, Divinity?”

She squeaked, faltering to her feet and then backward, tripping over her dress as I bore down on her. Fumbling, she grabbed a fallen vase of flowers and brandished it at my head.

“You stole my airship ticket!” she cried.

“Boo-
hoo
!” I snarled, snatching the vase from her hand
and smashing it to the floor. Shards rained over our feet.

“You made Queen Honoria's illusion a thousand times larger!” she said, cowering against the wall. “How am I supposed to compete with that? I can't! I don't want to die again!”

“You'd better get used to it,” I said. “You and Constantine both are going to die at my hand and I
cannot wait
, you little piece of garbage.”

I strode unevenly from the suite, leaving Divinity a mewling little mess among the broken vases and strewn flowers.

The rumble of Masked Virtue emanated through my suite. Endless airships docked around the theater, unloading their passengers. The clang of bells and drums, and an organ grinder's tune that prickled and stuck like taffy to the air. Such jolly music for a massacre.

A masked guard arrived, presenting me with a gold coat. It was the only new piece of cloth I'd seen in Nod'ol. They fished my glasses from the pool and also offered me a new gold mask.

This mask covered my whole face. The eyes were furrowed to slits, and the mouth opened to rows of pointed teeth, as though it were yelling. I put it on without hesitation.

Noon, December 22: my family would die in just hours.

I would make certain they weren't the only ones.

The masked guard flanked me as I limped from my suite, escorting me into the vast halls and up stairways to the roof. It was like swimming; Nod'olians filled every inch of the halls, a susurrus of hoarse voices and masks and all of them wearing either orange or green. Venders swam among them, selling sticks with dingy ribbons attached for people to wave around. They had abundances of yellow.

That didn't bother me. I wouldn't be winning for
them
.

We arrived at a far west door on the roof, which was filled with more Nod'olians. High above, the sea of airships had congregated over the theater, with dozens docked at the docking towers that extended across the roof. In the distance, across the landscape of slopes and domes, I saw the pinprick of a beast mask skulking among the crowd: Constantine. Another distance away: Divinity. Each of them was headed to a docking tower that hosted a mass of airships with pennants in their color.

I peered up at the closest tower; a single airship with frayed riggings and patched envelope bobbed at the top. Gold pennants hung from it like dead fish. Edward's airship—my only airship in the game.

It was at a disadvantage, of course. The idea was, we would sail to different parts of the city, fantillium mist
would fill the air, and then we would drop into the city and hunt each other down on foot. Constantine and Divinity could disappear anywhere into the city with the help of their multiple airships, but I could not.