Illusionarium (5 page)

“Another go?” said my father as the cold air stung our lungs. I winced as the room brightened.

“I expect this time, we shall require more arsenic.”

“No.”

My father stood with Hannah in his arms.

“A stronger dose of arsenic, then?” said the king. “I am not a scientist—”

“I will not illusion again.”

The king slowly drew himself up, the buttons on his coat flashing.

“We will illusion,” he said quietly, “until we find the cure, Dr. Gouden.”

“I will
not
.”

The fantillium air in the laboratory burned our faces and the king's face became red. My father remained solid beneath his glare.

With controlled delicacy, the king said, “I can see your daughter does not have the strength. You told me earlier your wife had the Venen, did you not? Perhaps she would volun—”

“I have a better idea,” said my father, striding to the door. “Why don't we experiment upon
your
wife?”

The king's voice grew dangerously low.

“Because my wife is the
queen
, and your wife is a little
nobody.
”

My father whipped around, his coat snapping behind him, and threw his hand out.

Wind shrieked through the laboratory. A razor-sharp jet of air howled past my ear. It sliced through microscopes and glass bottles on the table, sending the pieces skittering across the tabletop and onto the checkered floor—

—the razor wind of air slashed the king across the face like an invisible sword. Blood splattered. The crimson droplets remained suspended in the air as the blast of wind threw our sovereign over the mismatched furniture. He toppled into lamps and chairs and globes, slamming into the wall with a thunderous
thumpf
.

He crumpled to the tile floor among the wreckage of furniture.

Blood speckled his heavy coat and the sofas around him.

The king did not move.

No one moved.

Captain Crewe drew away, looking horrified. My father gaped from the king's mountainous form, to his own hand, then back to the king.

I was the only one with enough sense to end the illusion. I threw the kettle into the sink and once again, the laboratory darkened. The broken furniture about the king faded back into their original whole forms, though askew from the king stumbling back against them. The gash across the king's face disappeared. An illusion.

“Jonathan,” said my father quietly, Hannah still in his arms.

I hastened after him, out of the laboratory, with one last glance at the king as Captain Crewe helped him unsteadily to his feet. He touched his face where my father's wind-blade had struck him. His bulging eyes caught mine in a seething glare.

We're going to pay for that, I thought.

H
annah curled up in a ball, shaking with silent sobs, when my father gently set her back in her infirmary bed.

I paced up and down the aisle of the infirmary, distracted, drawing a hand through my tangled hair. The infirmary was so crowded I had to step over the wheels of all the extra cots and carts and chairs they'd brought in, to accommodate all those infected with the Venen. Mum. Hannah. Alice. Nurses. The miners' wives.

And yet, everything was eerily silent. None of the figures on the beds moved. Entering day two of the Venen: fever, discoloration, and continued weakness.

My father seated himself next to my mother's bed and took her hand in his. He held it tightly, squeezing her blackened fingers as though they would slip away.

“They can't do anything to you,” I was saying, my voice filling the sickening silence. “The king wasn't
actually hurt. It was an illusion. Not even a bad one—just a cut. Even if it had been real, stitches, at most. He'll be banged up from throwing himself back against the furniture, but that's his own fault, right? And anyway they need you. You're the best scientist they have. They won't—”

“Enough, Jonathan,” said my father. “Please, go away.”

His tone drew me short.

“You're—not angry with
me
?” I said.

“I am angry with
myself,
” he said, clenching Mum's fingers like a drowning man. “I have been a failure if my own son cannot even tell right from wrong.”

I tripped over a chair leg.

“I'm—I'm sorry, what?” I said.

“You went to Lady Florel,” he said. “That is how you knew how to speed time. You sought her help even though you
knew
something was wrong with her and that fantillium causes acedia and that—that it all points wrong!”

“Enough with the compass metaphors!” I snapped. “I'm not
two
!”

“And yet you act like it!” My father removed his classes. “You are a child. I cannot believe you even
think
you are fit for the university when you seek solutions through
questionable
means—”

“What choice do we
have
?” I yelled. Patients stirred in their beds. “I had to go to Lady Florel! How else can we find a cure in
five days
? Hannah would agree with me!”

Hannah pulled the coat she still wore closer and curled up tighter against the pillow.

“Oh, right, you're such a
fighter
,” I snarled. “That's fighting, Hannah. You might as well just die now and get it over with—”

I regretted the words the instant they escaped my mouth. The rest of the sentence died in my throat, choking me.

“I—I didn't mean it,” I stammered. “Hannah—”

Hannah cried underneath her coat.

“Get out.” My father stood. “Get out! I cannot even bear to look at you!”

“Right, right, I—I will,” I said, my face burning with shame. I hurried from the main wing, hating myself, pushing past Dr. Palmer and retreating into the blistering cold lobby of the infirmary, a room with chairs and a reception desk, all abandoned in the wake of the Venen.

The front doors blew open, and a freezing gust of air brought with it ten airguardsmen, Captain Crewe bringing up the rear. The soldiers marched through the lobby with cold precision, but Captain Crewe stopped when he saw me.

“Your father?” he said.

I glanced at the main wing door before I could stop myself. Captain Crewe nodded.

“You are needed in the laboratory,” he said. “Go, please.”

I didn't leave, but waited until the soldiers were inside the main wing, and listened at the doors. Captain Crewe's voice said, “I am sorry, Dr. Gouden, but I'm afraid the king requests you work in a room on the
Chivalry
. Please accompany us.”

A room just like Lady Florel's, I thought.

I pulled back into the shadows as the airguardsmen marched past in a series of blue uniforms, my father in the midst of them, his head bowed and graying hair mussed, his shoulders sagging. His hands had been cuffed behind him.

I followed after them at a distance, hardly breathing, my chest was so tight. I kept behind each heat lamp, running to the next one they passed, and halted as they took my father into the lift that led to the dock three platform. His long coat flapped in the wind.

The lift slammed shut.

If I did have a compass inside me, it would have broken the moment he disappeared behind those iron doors. It would have shattered. It would have smashed, leaving shards in my chest and running through my bloodstream.

Since I did not have one, I stood there, hollow. Two days ago, my largest worry had been asking Alice to write
me when I left for the university. Now it was how to piece the world back together.

Somehow my feet led me to the abandoned observatory, its dome shadowing over me as I climbed the stairs, walked the hall, and climbed again to the second floor. Three airguardsmen worked in the laboratory, packing my father's things into boxes. I numbly helped them bundle his books and notes and wrap his microscopes to send to the
Chivalry
.

When the room had almost emptied, I packed up the kettle—now dry—cleaned a mug, and stopped at the papers I'd left on the counter. One was the arsenic breakdown. The other—the Quickening Formula.

I need proof
. . . .

Lady Florel had been right. The equation had actually worked. The clock in the corner had agonized over days only seconds long, and the dust had jittered around us. It had actually
worked
.

My proof.

The small box of fantillium still lay in the corner where Captain Crewe had left it. I removed one vial of glistening black, extracted myself from the warmth of the observatory, and ran.

I arrived at the brig hall of the
Chivalry
ten minutes later. The airguardsmen had saluted me at the entrance
of the ship, remembering me from before, and ushered me through each checkpoint. Now, after the long halls of flickering lights and metal staircases, I halted at Lockwood's checkpoint, the brig hall. The pipes hissed and sent steam into the corridor. Sweat dripped down my back. Lockwood had a presence that sucked air from the room.

He didn't stand and salute when I arrived. Instead he remained sprawled on the metal bench at the end of the hall, lazily touching his pistol to his lips and staring up at the ceiling.

“I thought,” he said, not bothering to even look at me with his one eye, “I had made it particularly
clear
you were not welcome back in the brig?”

“Not as such, no,” I said, standing my ground. “I'm looking for my father.”

“Really. You know, you are a terrifically bad liar. If you were after your father, you would have asked the airguardsmen at the command deck.
They
would have told you he's in the civilian's quarters in sector one. This is sector five. Shove off, please.”

“You know, I don't think I
will
,” I said. I'd had enough with being ousted from the observatory, expelled from the infirmary, and now banished from the brig. My mother and sister were dying. I would not retreat any longer.

Lockwood stood in an oiled-gear movement of perfect control and strode to me.

“Out,” he said, clamping his hands on my shoulder and directing me to the door.

Anger seared through me. I elbowed him sharply, whipped around, and punched him as hard as I could.

He dodged it. And laughed.

“Oh, Johnny, that's adorable,” he said.

I threw myself at him. We banged against the burning pipes before he had a chance to reach his gun. I landed a solid punch to his neck. He threw me off by kicking me in the chest. I hit metal ground, and the fantillium vial flew out of my hand and across the grated floor.

Lockwood drew his pistol in a blur and pointed the barrel between my eyes.

“Pick up your little science toy,” he said coolly, “and please exit to your left. Thank you.”

My eyes not leaving the barrel, I slowly retrieved the fantillium vial. My cheek stung where it had scraped a bolt. I straightened, and my eyes caught the small, shoulder-height boiler by the doorway. It kept the brig warm, the steam pouring through the pipes, filling the air with hot mist, not unlike the teakettle in the laboratory. . . .

My hands thought before my head. In a flash, I'd spun the waterwheel, threw open the tank door, and smashed the vial of fantillium like an egg on the edge of the tank.
Broken glass cut my hand. Liquid and shards fell through my fingers and into the boiling water.

I banged the plate lid shut just as Lockwood grabbed my collar and drove me into the ground.

His gun pressed itself to my head. The grated floor glowed white in my vision. I writhed under his knee, which dug into my back.

“All right,” said Lockwood in his lazy drawl. “I don't know what you just did, but on the
very probable
assumption you have just poisoned us all, you murderous piece of
filth
, I dare
say
we ought to speak to Captain Crewe,
hmmm
?”

He allowed me to shakily rise to my feet, the gun still at my head.

As we reached the door, the steam in the hall grew thick.

And glistened.

I inhaled. Frigid air coated my lungs. The rumble of the engine roared. The smell of burning orthogonagen grew so strong I could taste it, and my dilated eyes watered as the hall lights burned.

Peace filled my soul and pulsed with my heartbeat.

“What the—” Lockwood gagged. His eye had dilated full black.

I jerked around, pulling every wind current and aether stream of my knowledge together, and blasted them at
Lockwood. Wind sucked itself out of my brain and lungs. Lockwood had a fraction of wide-eyed surprise before the gust picked him up in a howling gale and threw him across the hall. He smacked the floor and skidded, hitting Lady Florel's cell door, the pistol spinning out of his hand.

I laughed.

“What was that you were saying, Lockwood?” I said. “Something about me being adorable? Would you like to say it again? Like, right now?”

He was on his feet so fast his brass buttons blurred. He dove for his pistol. I threw my arm out and wind-blasted it beyond his reach, sending it skipping in my direction.

“Oh
look
, I found a
gun
!” I said, picking it up. Lockwood halted, wary, his all-pupil eye glaring as I haphazardly brandished the pistol at him. I judged him to be about two centimeters away from murdering me.

“What is this madness?” he seethed.

“This, Lieutenant, is fantillium.” I motioned to the steam issuing from the pipes around us. “Ah! If only you'd paid attention in chemistry class, instead of playing with your guns. Open Lady Florel's door. Now, if you please.”

“Over your dead body, Johnny,” he spat, and lunged.

The
Johnny
did it. The temperature plunged in my mind, and then plunged in the corridor around us. The
pipes frosted. The hall turned white. Icicles grew from the ceiling and molded in glacial drifts around us. Ice froze Lockwood's boots to the floor and he fell to his knees mid-lunge.

“Very well.” I sighed. “I shall do it myself.” I reached for the brig keys at his belt.

In a blur, Lockwood removed a dagger from his boot and slashed at me with lightning dexterity.

The tip of the blade caught my arm and sliced neatly through my sleeve. I angrily knocked the dagger from his hand with a sharp gust of air, sending it flashing across the floor. Lockwood snatched at his other boot, extracting
another
blade.

“What? Another one?” I said. “Do you have any feet in your boots, or just knives?” I illusioned another gust of wind, disarming him as he hacked the ice that fused him to the floor. The dagger hit the wall behind him.

Lockwood clawed again at his boot and withdrew a third blade.

“You're
joking
—”

In a flash, Lockwood had grabbed me and was choking me in the crook of his arm, pressing the knife against my throat.

“You ruddy assassin!” I snarled. I hadn't gone this far to get my throat slit!

The temperature plummeted so fast the air snapped.

It stung my ears. It froze my sweat and frosted my skin. Ice grew up the walls in thick white sheets and florets. The blade against my throat seared, and ice formed over Lockwood's hand.

The knife dropped from his fingers. It hit the ground, blade shattering. I twisted out of his grip and unleashed.

Bullets of ice screamed past me. Sheets of ice. The ice at Lockwood's feet broke and he fell to the ground under the assault. The world around me spun in glimmering white, blocking everything from sight.

Frigid silence. The air glittered.

I collapsed to my knees as the last flecks of ice floated to the ground. Shaking. Dizzy. The air cleared, revealing a hallway that had transformed into an Arctic cave. Icicles stretched from the ceiling to the floor, giant stalagmites of blistering cold.

I swallowed, trembling, and got to my feet. Blotches grew in my vision and cleared. Lockwood lay against his bench, curled in a glacial nest of ice.

Unconscious.

I gulped. My throat stung. With a trembling hand, I unhooked the ring of keys from Lockwood's belt, breaking ice as I pulled it free.

“S—sorry,” I stammered to his unconscious form. Cold sweat dripped from my forehead. I wiped it away with a shaking arm. It was just an illusion. An illusion. I
would never do something like this in real life.

I stumbled to the cell door at the end of the hall, unlocked it, and pushed it open with my remaining strength. A gust of hot air swept over me, and I inhaled. The cell darkened even more as I breathed in the unaffected air. I glanced behind me. Without fantillium in my veins, the hall was back to normal. No ice. Only steam that glistened and hissed from the pipes. Lockwood lay on the corridor floor, breathing gently in the mist, eyes closed as though he'd fallen asleep.