Illusionarium (10 page)

“That—was close, right?” I said, panting.

Hannah retreated against the leafy wall, twigs snagging her dress, her eyes wide with fear. A small curved scar marked her left cheek, just below her eye. I frowned at it.

“Who are you?” she said, backing away further when I tried to get a better look at the scar.

“It's—oh—” I removed my glasses and pulled off my mask. Air cooled my face. “Hannah, it's me!”

Hannah gazed up at me with wide blue eyes—

—and
kicked me
so hard in the knees I buckled over. Pain shot up my legs. My eyes watered.

Hannah untangled herself from the overgrown twigs and fled.

“Hannah!” I yelled, limping to my feet. My knees felt like they'd been kicked concave.

I stumble-ran after her, catching glimpses of lace before losing her completely at wrong turns. I yelled her name, fervently, until my voice grew as hoarse as Constantine's, and the stone beneath my feet became thick with weeds, and the hedge walls were a bramble of feral, untrimmed branches.

“Hannah,” I said, coughing. I'd lost her.

Or . . .

Had I?

My thoughts became as snarled as the maze. It didn't make sense. Hannah was in the Fata Morgana infirmary, ill with the Venen. Wasn't she? No—that girl was her, right down to the curve of her jaw and her rounded lips and devil of a temper. Hannah to the iota . . . except for that scar.

And slowly, like the monstrous grandfather clock, my mind went
clunk
and everything suddenly came together like a well-oiled mechanism.

That girl wasn't Hannah
.

And she was.

Lady Florel had said this world had schismed from ours. If Nod'ol had some of the same buildings as Arthurise, why shouldn't it have some of the same
people
? That explained why Hannah was here! Or—no. Not Hannah.
Anna
.

It explained King Edward, too. He wasn't a king here in Nod'ol. Only an aether miner.

Was
I
here?

I laughed aloud, forging through the overgrown bushes, imagining myself running around in ugly Nod'olian clothes, then stopped when I realized I
was
running around in ugly Nod'olian clothes. I shook my head. If my Nod'olian self existed, Hannah—Anna—would have recognized me. Perhaps I hadn't even been born.

I'd stumbled into an overgrown topiary. The cats had grown into lions and the elephants loomed as woolly mammoths. In the distance, the theater, with its lit domes and pillars, glowed. Constantine's voice still hoarsely yelled.

Run, Anna, I thought.

“Jonathan!”

Lady Florel appeared at the arched entrance of the topiary, accompanied by two dozen masked guards. She gripped her dress, clumsily picking her way through the weeds. The crimson masked guard stood at attention around her, silent as always.

“Well,
that
certainly was an exit!” she said breathlessly, though she didn't sound impressed. “Jonathan, I would ask you not to leave the theater. It's not safe here in the lower city. And far too easy to get lost. It took us weeks to
find Anna, and now you've lost her again.”

The guard poured around her and past me into the hedges of the twisted maze beyond. To find Anna, I supposed.

“What, exactly, do you want with Anna?” I said, twisting a leaf around my fingers.

“She's a favorite of Constantine's,” said Lady Florel.

The twig snapped off in my hand. I wished it had been Constantine's neck. I stormed through the hedge maze after Lady Florel with glowering anger, the remaining masked guard ushering me through the mess of leafy corners, bridges, and pathways, until the hedges behaved themselves into rows and opened upon the theater. The windows cast a glow over Lady Florel's smiling face.

Lady Florel never smiled
. . . .

I halted in the middle of the path.

“You're not Lady Florel,” I said.

And for the second time that night, the gears
clonked
together and formed a whole mechanical picture. She wasn't Lady Florel. And she
was
. I was speaking to the Nod'olian Lady Florel Knight.

“You lied,” I said.

Lady Florel—
Queen Honoria
—paused at the top of the veranda that ascended to the theater, and her eyes glistened at me.

“No, Jonathan,” she said, smooth as a dream. “Not
lied
. It's still the truth, all of it. Nothing means more to me than rebuilding Nod'ol.
Nothing.
If I have to find ways to other worlds to do it, to find more illusionists and orthogonagen and fantillium, I will. All I need is for you to illusion in Masked Virtue tomorrow. All I need is for the miners to enjoy the illusionarium. Then you will have the cure and can go home. I
swear
it. I'm not the Arthurisian Lady Florel, Jonathan, but I still am Lady Florel. It was a five-percent lie, at
most
. A small impurity.”

“Where is the
real
Lady Florel?” I said coldly. “There weren't two of you running around in Arthurise.”

Queen Honoria smiled, then turned on her heels and hurried up the stairs back into the theater, the hollowness she left answering my question:

Queen Honoria had killed her.

I
fell out of bed the next morning in my golden room, aching everywhere after the worst sort-of sleep of my life. My nose throbbed, my kneecaps hurt where Anna had kicked them, and oddly, my fingers hurt, too. I examined them. They looked swollen.

I dressed haphazardly in a yellow arrangement of odd-ended clothes. Masked Virtue, their illusioning festival, began this morning, and the sooner I illusioned for it, the sooner I could get out of here. My door was locked—it had been locked and guarded all night—but on the floor next to it lay a steaming tureen of mush, toast, and eggs. Underneath the breakfast plate was a folded newspaper. I slipped it out and unfolded it, and found my picture staring back at me.

It had been taken in the theater last night, just before I'd started to illusion. In varying shades of gray it portrayed
me staring widely ahead, looking lost and frightened. My hair was a snarl of curls, and my soot-smeared clothes hung on me like a drowned rat. Around it, headlines percolated:
Riven Restless. Sacrifical Speculations.
And the largest headline of all:

NEW ILLUSIONIST—
A SAD DISAPPOINTMENT

I frowned and continued reading.

I crumpled the paper and threw it across the room. You're welcome, Press, for giving you my food!

A gentle knock sounded; I pushed the plate of food
aside just as Divinity opened the door a crack, revealing milk-white skin and one glittering green eye.

“Queen Honoria sent me to fetch you for the opening ceremonies,” she said. She opened the door a little wider and slipped in, wearing an emerald dress of corset and gathers and torn ribbons. She clutched the old biology book to her chest. “They start in about an hour. In the lobby.”

Her eyes caught the crumpled newspaper I'd just thrown.

“I read the article,” she said. “It was rather harsh, I thought. That reporter is
so
annoying; he always tells the truth. Are you all right? You look awful.”

“I can't
wait
another hour,” I said. “I only have a day and a half!”

“That's too bad,” said Divinity. She unfolded the biology book from her very fine chest and offered it to me. “You might need the hour, though. I brought you the textbook. I remember how nervous I was, last year. It was my first Masked Virtue. I hardly knew what to illusion. So . . . I thought you might like to study a bit. Before it begins.”

I eyed her warily, hesitated, and took the book from her hands.

“I—thank . . . you,” I stammered. I'd paced all night in agony, wishing I'd had a chance to get my hands on
this book. Guilt engulfed me, remembering how I'd hated her. “I—I really mean it, Divinity. You have no idea how much depends on this, and . . . I . . .”

I trailed off. Every page I flipped through had been drenched, blotted, splashed, and scribbled over with black ink, rendering the book entirely illegible. Divinity's chiming laugh escalated as my hopes sunk like an airship on fire.

I slammed the book shut, reared back, and threw it just left of her head. It ricocheted off the wall and thumped to the floor.

“You know, Divinity,” I snarled, bearing down on her. She cowered against the wall, giggling like mad. “You are
really
lucky it's against my upbringing to knock a girl's head off!”

“Do you even
know
what we do for Masked Virtue?” she said, countering me with narrowed eyes. “It's a death pit! The entire Archglass fills with fantillium, and all the illusionists try to illusion-kill each other! And if you
think
I'm going to go through death again—”

“Wow!” I said brightly. “We
kill
each other! What an absolutely unsurprising discovery and completely in keeping with this wonderful city of Nod'ol!”

Divinity surprised me by touching my face. It surprised me so much, in fact, that every thought fled. She traced her fingertips delicately up the side of my cheek. My face
had never been touched by a girl before.
¹⁴
It wasn't . . .

. . . unpleasant. . . .

“Jonathan,” said Divinity with a voice like a dove's coo. “I—I know I can be a bit of a
naughty
child—”

“Yes—well—” I stammered. Divinity silenced me with a finger on my lips.

“It's just, I'm afraid of Constantine,” she said, her green eyes grave. “He's won these past
five years
. Dying
hurts
. An awful lot, Jonathan.” Her lips formed my name with pink softness. “I—I was wondering if . . . perhaps . . . you would like to team up with me? We could defeat Constantine together. Please, Jonathan. Help me.”

Common sense broke through my Divinity-induced haze. She blotted out the ruddy pages of the ruddy book! She doesn't want you to win!

I pulled away.

“Really,” I said. “And what happens after that? We'll just get along until the illusionarium's over?”

Divinity smiled softly, her half-moon eyes glistening. It was the same sort of glittering smile she'd given when she'd torn the glass heart away from her illusioned man.
¹⁵

“Yeah, no thanks,” I said.

“Not even—” Divinity lifted herself on her toes, her lips close to my face, “for a kiss?”

I stepped back. Divinity lost her balance and stumble-sat on one of the gold chairs.

“Not for a hundred kisses. Get out of my suite, Divinity.”

“Oh, please,” said Divinity. “Everyone knows
kissing
is all boys ever think about.”

“Yes, that's right, Divinity. That's all boys ever think about. Every bit of me can be reduced into one word:
kissing
. Thank you, Divinity, good-bye.”

I ushered her out of the room, and she stormed down the hall like a queen, chin up, golden hair swishing to her waist, her ears red. I had the feeling she wasn't told
no
very often.

I slammed the door.

So
that's
what Masked Virtue was. What kind of city was this? This was the sort of thing you read about in history books, stories of barbarous civilizations that would massacre their own people for entertainment. A Coliseum circus. I sat down on a gold-striped chair and rubbed my face with aching fingers. I couldn't kill anyone. Not even fantillium-kill.

You fantillium-killed Hannah
.

That was an accident! I never would have hurt her on purpose!

And she came back to life. So will they. It's not real.

My fingers throbbed.

Still conflicted, I arrived just minutes later at the theater lobby, watching the scene before me from the mezzanine banister through my broken glasses. Hundreds of Nod'olians filtered in from the arched glass doors below, descending from their sea of airships. Rows of crimson masked guards ushered them into place. Like the miners and the guards and nearly everyone I'd met here, the Nod'olians wore masks. Some of them expressionlessly peered up at me, pointed, and whispered to one another. They wore clothes like ours, but worse—torn and dyed so much they were colorless shades. Their raspy voices wisped into the domed ceiling and the prisms on the chandelier jingled.

Pipes had been set up around the perimeter of the lobby below, with vents along them to release steam. Masked Virtue, apparently, began in this room, then extended into the city and airships beyond.

Constantine appeared at the mezzanine entrance behind me. We spotted each other at the same time. Taking a page from Lockwood's book, I dove at him like a released spring, knocking him into the wall with the full force of my shoulder, stirring up the audience below.

“You!” I snarled. I punched him again and again,
frustrated I couldn't make any impact with his layers of vests and buckles. “You stay away from Anna! You keep your ruddy claws off her, you piece of filth!”

Constantine kicked me so hard in the chest my lungs felt turned inside out, and I tumbled back.

“What's she to
you
?” he snarled.

“Enough. On your feet, please.”

Lady Fl—
Queen Honoria
—entered the mezzanine, gracing the scene in an outfit as ridiculous as her others, with lumpy, torn pieces of red velvet, high-heeled boots, and a half mask. Her graying hair was pinned around her head in dozens of tiny loops, making her head look a bit like machinery.

I managed one last kick to Constantine's ribs before leaping to my feet and ducking out of his clawed hands. In a moment I was at Queen Honoria's side, descending the stairs.

“So we have to kill each other in this illusionarium?” I said, bristling. “Is that what happens in Masked Virtue?”

“Fantillium-kill, Jonathan. It's a very different thing.” Queen Honoria nodded at the landing before us, which had chairs lined up across it and a polished wood platform in the center. “Take a seat, please. Masked Virtue begins with an opening ceremony, in which I illusion. Then, you go with your miners into their ships, and the Archglass
fills with fantillium, and—well, what you do after
that
is up to your discretion.”

“But we kill people,” I said.

“Do you want that cure or not, Jonathan?”

I angrily sat myself down in one of the landing's chairs, next to Divinity and Constantine, thinking of the cabinet holding the antitoxin. I couldn't see it due to the masses of Nod'olians below. They all bowed as Queen Honoria stepped up to the banister, then hoarsely cheered as she raised her hand and introduced us one by one.

Constantine stood first and strode to the railing by Queen Honoria, his cloak billowing out behind him. By the rise of rasping and unintelligible words from the crowd, Constantine the Beast was the obvious favorite. He bowed sharply, and the crowd went mad.

Divinity took his place next, gracefully blowing a kiss to the slightly more subdued crowd. Her lacy collar slipped back, revealing something on the base of her neck, half-hidden by her golden curls. I adjusted my glasses. A curved rim of hair. Very much like . . . eyelashes.

A crescent glint of something white and green glistened just below them. Divinity lowered her arm, and her collar straightened over the odd growth once again.

“Your Riven is showing,” Constantine muttered as she sat down.

Divinity gasped and hastily pulled her collar tight
around her throat, blushing furiously. I couldn't tear my eyes away from her neck and had to be shaken from out of my chair to face my own introduction.

The crowd silenced as I stood by the wooden platform, staring down at the emotionless sea of masks.

Someone coughed.

Only one large man, wearing a tiny gold mask, pumped his fist in the air from the middle of the crowd below.

“That's my boy!” he boomed.

I smiled wanly and waved to him. Edward the Pathetic Miner, my one supporter. I stormed back to my chair.

Queen Honoria then began a long speech about Masked Virtue and the Writing on the Wall and Traditions. A cough sounded next to me; I turned and found the emaciated reporter I'd met last night. He cowered, half-hunched, against the railing, as though afraid I'd bite him, and held his pen poised above his notepad, ready to spring at an interview.

“I suppose I owe that wonderful introduction to you,” I said in a bitterly low voice. “Thanks for that really great piece in the paper. That's really going to help me in the competition. I really appreciate it.”

“I always tell the truth,” said the reporter, his pencil quivering against his notebook. “I will never lie. You can kill me and yet with my last dying breath, I still shall—”

“All right, all
right
,” I said, annoyed. “I'm not going to kill you already. All right? You ruddy sound like my father.”

“And who, exactly, is your father?” said the reporter, daring to pluck up courage. “Because, you see,
Jonathan Gouden
, I have spent the entire night looking up every parish and government record of every town and city up north and there are
no Jonathan Goudens
. Not one. Where are you
really
from, illusionist?”

I stared blankly at him.

The crowd burst into deafening cheers. Their cries were so loud I could
smell
them, perfumes with undertones of dankness. They screamed themselves hoarse. Movement stirred beyond the masked guard at the top of the stairs.

“What's going on?” I said, confused at the suddenly excited crowd.

“The ceremony is beginning,” the reporter said. He'd suddenly gone white. “Oh . . . I hate this part. . . .”

“What? The ceremony's been going on for the past ten minutes!” I said.

“This is the part where they make an offering,” he said. “A sacrificial offering. The queen kills a selected person.”

“
What?”
I said.

“Oh, yes,” he said mildly. “Only fantillium-kill, of course . . . which really, hardly makes a difference to the person offered.”

The cheers increased in decibels as the pipes along the walls billowed thick steam, howling and rumbling with their voices. Clouds of hot, metallic white fogged over everything. The crowd became lost in the steam and so did we. The masked guard standing around us faded to crimson silhouettes.

With the steam came the stinging cold fantillium. I coughed and inhaled, and the chemical coated my lungs with liquid ice.

The change of fantillium swept over me. The world brightened. Each individual breath from the crowd rang in my ears. The overpowering smell of perfume. Divinity's green eyes had dilated full black, and the chandelier prickled my vision with blasts of highlights.