Illusionarium (22 page)

Constantine froze, still crouched. His eyes widened under his mask, hanging on to my every word.

“She said that there still was a Jonathan in you. She said she knew there was.”

Constantine was sweating down his neck and collar. No—not sweat. Sweat didn't stream like that.

“She really believed that?” he said. “Underneath all my . . . noses and eyes and dye? She still did? Well—ha! That would make one of us, then.”

“Two,” I said. “And since I'm
you
, that would make three.”

Constantine rasped. I realized it was a laugh.

“It's not too late, Constantine,” I said. “I know it's not. Go back to Nod'ol and turn yourself in. Lady Florel is going to need your help. Divinity, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” said Constantine, rasping. It might have even been a laugh.

On impulse, I embraced Constantine—beast mask and all. I wanted to fix everything—take him back to Fata with me, to stay with my—our—family. He filled my arms in a misshapen hulk of a figure.

“I'll go,” he said, breaking away abruptly. And then, with more firmness: “I have to go back.”

“Wait,” I said, and feverishly searched for something to write on and write with. I settled on a torn piece of my coat, scratching in numbers with one of the numerous cuts on my numerous fingers:

x
= – 6.3114 x 10
¹⁰

“That's the key,” I explained, handing him the scrap of cloth. “The key to Queen Honoria's prison. A thousand years in a few seconds. Lady Florel can decide what to do with it.”

Constantine's eyes furrowed underneath his mask, but he pocketed the cloth and nodded. He thumped me on the back, nearly throwing off my glasses. My Nod'olian self had considerably more muscle than I did.

“Thank you, Jonathan Gouden,” he said, grasping the rusting latch of the Nod'olian White Tower. When his voice was quiet like that, he almost sounded like my father.

“Thank you, Jonathan Goodwin,” I said, and took my own door's latch.

We pushed the doors and crossed over the thresholds at the same time. Every inch of me rearranged itself as I stepped into the clean white of the infirmary and shut the door behind me. Many of the blue uniformed men had revived and stared at me in utter horror. I yanked off my mask, breathing clean air again.

The hallucinations came. Demons crawled on hundreds of legs inside my lungs and stomach and head, mechanical centipedes, schisming into hundreds more, filling my body . . . I fell to my knees, thrashing, clawing at my head.

Jonathan.

Fantillium would feed them. My hands tore and grasped at nothing.

Jonathan.

Arms grabbed me instead, keeping me from writhing on the floor, and pulled me into a tight embrace. The creatures inside me hissed and punctured my veins. I fought, but the hands remained holding me tightly.

And slowly, the demons waned.

Sweating and exhausted, I found myself in the arms of my father.

“My boy,” he said, and he was laughing and crying at once.

Dock 3, Fata Morgana (Class. A Aerial City)

January 1, 1883

T
he sun was a washed coin. It swung above the horizon for an hour a day now—a solar feast!—before plunging below again and sweeping the sky in purples and blues.

Much had happened since I'd stumbled back through the illusioned doorway nearly a week ago. The empire had slowly begun to limp back to life. The Venen had taken its toll. According to the light sigs, Arthurise was clothed in black. There wasn't a person who hadn't lost a mother or a sister, and everyone mourned the queen. But still, many had been saved. Within a few hours in his laboratory, my father had reconstructed the cure and immediately signaled the antitoxin's formula to Arthurise, halting its spread.

The king, who had revived after the attack of the masked guard, listened in my father's laboratory as I told the entire story—from Queen Honoria illusioning the door on the
Chivalry
and the way to falling back through the infirmary doors. I didn't leave anything out—not even Edward the Pathetic Miner.

I couldn't tell if the king believed me or not. He only remained slumped in one of my father's chairs, looking too heartbroken to even breathe. He'd nodded when I'd finished, taken the transcripts from the airguardsman who had been recording my words, and left for his ship. He'd be returning to Arthurise. I suspected this wouldn't be the end of my explanation; but for now, it would do. My father believed me, and that was enough.

In the meantime, Mum and Hannah, like Lady Florel, healed miraculously well. They remained in the infirmary for three more days, getting their strength back, and I took care to visit them at night, talking quietly and helping Hannah with her academy homework. At night, everyone in the infirmary was asleep. And Alice, who was healing without a freckle amiss, gratefully didn't see my splitting face.

The last illusion had hastened me into something like Constantine. My second face looked like it was sliding down my throat, my split nose askew and the eye at my temple splitting open. Another eye had begun to indent
on my neck. I had extra fingers splayed from the others, completely movable. Hannah teased that I ought to learn to play the piano, but at the look on my face, clamped her mouth shut. My extra toes made it hurt to walk, and I limped. I made certain to wear a large scarf at all hours of the day.

I'd been having hallucinations, too. They fevered and haunted me ceaselessly, twitching and crawling over me whenever I closed my eyes. I could only drive them from my soul like sweat—pounding them from my mind by running through Fata, over the pathways and by canal fronts, letting the cold sting my face and convincing myself that I didn't need fantillium to make the creatures go away.

But I
was
healing. Anna had been right about that. After the first three days, the hallucinations weren't as vivid; their pricks not as sharp. The Rivening was beginning to heal, too. The eye at my temple had closed and scabbed over, the bridge of my second nose had gone soft, like cartilage, and my extra nostrils had begun to close up. My fingers were taking their jolly time. Dr. Palmer, my father, and I examined the extra pieces of me with great interest, sorting out how the bone and muscle had split.

We decided I ought to accompany my father to Arthurise, and as we helped quell the Venen there, we
could consult the top surgeons of the empire. My father had promised, in fact, that I could have a hand at the scalpel and make some incisions!
²⁹

And so it was, just nine days after returning from Nod'ol, my father and I packed our things and prepared for a season-long stay in Arthurise. Longer for me, because after I'd recovered, I'd be remaining in Arthurise to attend the university and become a surgeon myself.

Mum and Hannah, well enough now to brave the cold air, gave us a send-off on dock three, surrounded by benches and jaunty-tune telescopes. Leaving my family in this familiar setting reminded me of Anna, and I couldn't say much. At the top of the vertical dock, the
Chivalry
loomed, engines fired up and ready to brave the polar storms to transport the empire's head medical scientist—and his apprentice—to Arthurise. Northern airguardsmen walked to and fro, up and down the lift, loading the hull. We stood as a family, still among the harried last-minute work. A cold wind caught our backs, flapping our coats.

“I'm going to miss you,” said Mum, the breeze blowing dark wisps of hair in her eyes. The mottled black of her skin had disappeared, and she was as soft-spoken
and sweet as she had ever been. I wiped her tears away with my misshapen glove—stuffed with both pairs of fingers—and smiled at her through my scarf.

“Nothing to worry about. Spring isn't far away, right enough,” I said encouragingly, finding my voice. When Hannah finished her studies, she and Mum would join us in Arthurise and eventually accompany my father for holiday in Amsterdam. I would remain at the university. I was still going to miss her.

“Don't board yet, Jonathan,” said Hannah, clutching her shawl and running to the city end of the dock, searching or waiting for something.

Lockwood appeared from the lift door, grinning like a fool when he saw me with my parents, surrounded by trunks. He was dressed smartly, in a new uniform, his Excalibur medal polished at his throat, and, I daresay, a new black eye patch. His rank had been reinstated, and was he ever cocky about it.

As odd as it sounded, Lockwood had been my stolid friend this past week. He never said a word about my extra face and spent his free time from the
Chivalry
in the observatory with me. I was teaching him chess, and he was teaching me how to use a dagger, or we were trying to, anyway. We were both hopelessly bad at what the other one did. But we kept each other occupied, a good thing. He was deathly hollow-cheeked over Anna.
I hadn't told him about seeing her in the illusion, and I hadn't told him she was my sister, Hannah, either. I didn't quite know how to bring it all up.

Lockwood, on the other hand, helped me keep the demons at bay. Every time I started to feel creatures crawling over me, and I cringed and tried to shake them off, Lockwood would leap on me, slam me against the floor, sending chairs scattering everywhere and say, “All right,
Johnny
, you pathetic little worm, let's see if you can manage the Leffinger kick when I'm pressing so hard against your spine it punctures your stomach—” And we'd break into a brawl, scattering books across the library floor and banging against the shelves. Only after I'd stumbled to my feet, smarting, would I realize the demons had gone.

“I'll take that, Dr. Gouden,” he said now as we prepared to leave, heaving my father's chest of books from his hands. “We've got a civilian's room for you two. Very nice. Very neat. Has a writing table. Smells like those little purple wossnames.”

“Oh, how nice,” said my mother, smiling at me and wiping her eyes with the end of her shawl. I pulled her into a big hug and didn't care if Lockwood saw. He thumped me on the shoulder as I released her.

“Jonathan and I, we're going to have
great
fun,” he said to my parents. “I'm going to teach him how to properly
fight. In the mess hall. Dinner with entertainment. The officers are already placing bets on if he ends up breaking his own leg.”

“Afterward,” I said, “I'll cut your finger and they'll laugh even harder as you pass out.”

“Hardy har har,” said Lockwood, not sounding amused in the least.

“Jonathan, don't board the lift yet—just wait two more minutes—” Hannah came running to us, beaming, her boots clanging over the platform. Her hair had been pinned up in ringlets but was falling out in dark curls around her face, and the cold stung her cheeks rosy and put a spark in her eyes.

Lockwood dropped my father's chest of books.

Hannah stopped short at seeing the young, smartly dressed lieutenant, eye patch and all. She pulled back shyly, tugging her shawl around her shoulders.

“Hello,” she said, and then looked to me for an introduction. “Jonathan, who's this?”

“Oh,” I said. I coughed. “Lieutenant Lockwood, this is my sister. Hannah.”

Lockwood blinked rapidly at her with his one eye, his mouth agape.

“Hello,” said Hannah, smiling at her feet.

Lockwood snapped about and fled into the dock's lift. I ran after him and slipped beside him just as he clanged
the doors closed on Hannah's hurt expression. “You never told me she was your sister,” he snapped as the lift jolted upward.

“Oh.” I coughed. “She's my sister, Lockwood.”

Lockwood remained still.

“She's um. Well. Quite a bit like Anna, actually,” I said. “You might like her.”

Lockwood drew a hand through his hair, grief written across his face.

“That's what I'm afraid of,” he said.

The lift doors slid open. He stormed onto the platform, making for the
Chivalry
doors. I tackled him, twisting his wrist over his head, kicked his feet out from under him and he fell, slamming onto the metal with an echoing
booooong
. I pinned him there with my forearm, pressing so hard against his neck that his adam's apple made cider. Lockwood had taught me this trick himself.

“A,” he choked, “Knutsen hold—position—number two—” He sounded impressed against his will. “Well—done—”

“Go
introduce
yourself,” I said. “Tell her your name. Bow or something. Exhibit some sprezzatura—”

“Some
what
?” he choked.

“It means,” I said, pulling him to his feet and strong-arming him back into the lift, “don't overdo it! Go attack the foe, Lockwood!”

I shoved Lockwood out of the lift the moment it had thudded back to the dock and the doors swooshed open. He stumbled into the curious reception of my parents and Hannah. He straightened, eyeing her with cold wariness.

“Hello,” said Hannah again, regarding his eye patch with fascination. “I'm Hannah.”

She offered her hand, palm down, for Lockwood to take and bow.

Lockwood stared at it, paralyzed. When nothing happened, Hannah glanced at me, then gave up and let her hand drop.

Lockwood grabbed it in a blur and fell gracefully to his knee. He cupped her hand in both of his and bowed deeply.

“And I am your faithful servant, forever,” he breathed.

Hannah looked as though she had been hit by a brick.

“Ah. Hm. Well,” I said, coughing. “That might be overdoing it.”

“What a nice boy,” my mother said, from my father's side.

My father regarded them both with narrowed eyes.

“Jonathan Gouden!”

An angry voice carried up from the front of the dock and Alice appeared, a long coat over her infirmary clothes, fiery red curls a tangle and clutching a knitted shawl around her shoulders.

Panic seized me. I pulled my scarf tighter around my face and backed away, wanting to disappear into the beams of the vertical dock. She arrived, bearing down on me with fierce freckled anger.

“Oh, hello, Alice,” I stammered, shrinking into the shadows. Hannah! That ruddy little imp, she'd invited Alice to the send-off, and she
knew
I didn't want Alice to see me until I'd healed! “You're—well now, eh? Infirmary's discharged you, then?”

“Yes, although they don't know it yet,” she said angrily, her hazel eyes glistening. “You never came to visit me! And now you're leaving? Without even saying good-bye? I'm sorry—I just—I didn't realize I was that horrible!”

“Alice, no,” I said. “It's nothing to do with you, I swear it. I'm just a bit—um—not
pretty
right now, that's all.”

“I know,” said Alice. “Hannah told me you looked hideous.
³⁰
I don't care.”

She was near tears, an infirmity that rendered me helpless. I remained still as she reached up with her delicate hands, touched my cheek, and tugged the scarf away. I held my breath as she got a full-on view of my splitting nose, extra nostrils and eyebrow and scabby eye on the side of my face.

“Oh, honestly,” she said. “All that fuss for this?”

She pushed herself up on her toes and kissed my cheek, her lips and the tip of her freckled nose softly brushing my skin.

I could have bottled that kiss forever and opened it to brighten rooms.

“Just checking for fever,” she whispered.

“Oh, just!” I said, feeling faint.

She laced her fingers between my misshapen and knobbly gloves and hugged herself to my side, burying her cheek in my arm.
³¹

I thought I had died again.

We stood there in the waning polar light, ribbons of bright blues and purple searing the sky, and the sun seemed to freeze on the horizon. My father held my mother in a tight embrace. Across the dock, Hannah had asked Lockwood how he'd lost his eye (her first question of him) and she sat on a bench, listening raptly as Lockwood commenced telling her in great detail of eleven children huddled—
huddled
—in fear in the Palace of Madrid as he scaled the walls ledge by ledge and burst through the window. . . .

I took the last few minutes to put a coin in the telescope, and as the tune plinked and plonked, Alice
and I took turns looking out over the ocean and then to the observatory's dome, which glowed a brilliant white against the deepening blue. Alice promised to write and tell me all about the happenings of Fata, and I promised in kind to write her about my studies, if it didn't make her feel ill (she assured me it wouldn't).

And everything felt . . . right. Like an airship straight on course. The sky was clear; and I pointed north.